Bed Springs

A short story about a couple whose marital troubles are channeled into an ongoing, accelerating frustration with the conditions of their mattress, which, rather than their difficulties with each other, they cite as the reason for their lack of sleep, restless demeanors, and increasing anxiety. This leads to an endless search for a better mattress, which inevitably adds to their troubles those of financial insecurity and the physical strains brought on by the recurring trips to mattress discount stores and repeated trips up and down their third-story walkup, with and without a mattress bridging their cold shoulders.

Once the economic toll of again purchasing a new mattress clearly becomes untenable, the couple turns to mattresses they find on the street. Through these dirtier acquisitions, they begin to also take on the psychic weight of their neighbors’ marital troubles—a blood spot there, bed bugs everywhere, copious urine stains, and unreadable traces index the unspeakable plights of the others they hear arguing on alternating weeknights, or see returning hand in hand from the grocery, or nod to across the subway platform each morning, or pass on their way to the bodega at night.

While chatting casually, laughing, gleefully, even, for example, they have sex, but, finding it unfulfilling, spend ten postcoital minutes discussing the relative merits of the springs on this mattress compared to the last and decide that it did not provide enough give for the positions that would have given them satisfaction.

A month later, she announces at breakfast that she has noticed a decided slump in his shoulders, an irregular curve that begins at the nape of his neck and gently holds the S curve of his scalp at a low angle, as would a slack line. It’s not firm enough, he complains, and she knows what he means.

They had begun with the pillows: Sealy, Tempur-Pedic, insubstantial, IKEA, his deceased grandmother’s, her childhood’s. None provided quite the right level of support. Switching sides of the bed similarly provided little relief, though they did have a discussion about the tissues he found stuffed into the crack between the wooden siding of the bed platform and the mattress.

They take a trip to Home Depot that May to purchase some plywood to line the underside of their box springs, a DIY solution he had proposed in hope of solidifying their mutual commitment to this bed, this mattress, his back. She runs her finger along the rough surface of the boards, procuring a splinter.

One morning, she wakes to a high-pitched whine; the window has been left open in winter, introducing a strong, cold breeze, which in turn gently rocks the closet door back and forth on its old hinges. Dutifully, she rolls back the clammy blanket from her chest and lifts herself from her foam imprint. Before closing the closet entirely, she sees (nearly glowing in the light of dawn) an air mattress folded tightly on the top shelf. It has traditionally, in their household, been reserved for guests, but now, she reaches for it. It is inflated by mid-morning and remains so until the subsequent evening, when she warmly suggests that they try something new. He complies, eagerly. By morning, her shoulder blades make contact with the hardwood floor.

It ends only when their landlord complains about the number of mattresses in plastic wrap that have been abandoned on the sidewalk in front of the building over the past few months, in increasing numbers—a sign to current tenants and potential future renters that the building is unclean. Soon evicted by force of increasing monthly rent, they begin their search for a new studio, but, finding that their respective commutes from affordable boroughs will likely have to increase, they find that they would instead, perhaps, be better off finding their own respective places, at least for the next year. Rather than returning to the mattress store in search of two comfortable twin mattresses, one for each apartment, they agree to retain the mattresses of the previous tenants of their new respective rooms.