Written: on my couch
Powered by: the last of the Oreos
Inspired by: A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf and the real-life ridiculousness of fireworks this year (see this Times article for proof)
*
It started in May. The Rachel Maddow Show was almost over when the first boom caused them both to jump. Mutt lifted his head from the couch, ears rigid and eyes wide, both ready to defend and terrified at the thought.
“What are we celebrating? Did I miss something?” Tash asked wryly.
Every night that week they were startled by fireworks. Sometimes it was early, just after dinner. Other times it would wake them in the middle of the night, the light-sleeping Tash accidentally elbowing a catatonic Gwinn in the face. The noise was too much for Mutt, already prone to anxiety from his former life as a stray. He began to pace the length of their bed at night, mis-matched nails clicking against the hardwood floors as he went, until he couldn’t take it anymore and would jump up between them, shaking and panting heavily in their faces.
After months of the blasts, they felt haggard and paranoid. Gwinn would make herself multiple cups of coffee, forgetting them on the counter and then returning and thinking they were Tash’s, agitatedly dumping the now-cold liquid down the sink. She would find a full bottle of mouthwash tossed into the trash without being used. She would find her mail opened but couldn’t remember reading it. She would be telling Tash a story, some recap of her day, and find that Tash wasn’t even in the room with her.
She heard them everywhere. She heard them as she left her yoga session. She heard them as she drove herself home. She heard them as she went inside and found Mutt on the couch without Tash, she called for her but the answer was not her voice, she looked more closely and saw that this was not their house, that she didn’t recognize anything, and then
*
It started in May. On her way home from work Gwinn stopped by the market, to pick out pieces of salmon, a bundle of asparagus, some lemons.
“What are we celebrating? Did I miss something?” Tash asks devilishly.
Up the stairs in bed, she comes at the same time as the fireworks shudder the windows. Mutt, who was left downstairs, begins to whine.
Sweating and tingly, she rolls onto her stomach and waits for Tash to come back from the bathroom. Satisfyingly spent, she begins to drift to sleep when the next explosion brings her back with a gasp, and then a sigh. She can feel Tash on the other side of the bed, reaches for her hand but can’t find it, turns to hold her close but this body is the wrong one, she jumps and pulls away as it reaches for her tenderly, and then
*
It started in May. It got so bad that Mutt refused to sleep at all, started whimpering and peeing when they turned out the lights. They tried everything they could think of to soothe him—special treats infused with CBD, letting him sleep next to them in bed, a white noise machine—but nothing worked.
By the time July 4th came and went Gwinn decided that enough was enough. She refused to live the rest of her life sleep-deprived. When a particularly hateful burst woke her, she rolled over Tash to see the clock on the table.
“What are we celebrating? Did I miss something?” Tash asked sleepily.
Gwinn kissed her forehead as she got out of bed, told her to go back to sleep. Downstairs she pulled on her sneakers without socks and took her car keys, sliding each one between the fingers of her fist, the way her sister showed her when she was in high school.
Outside she wandered vaguely in the direction of the noise that jolted her awake, for the first time hoping to hear another one. A series of pops and bangs a few blocks north led her to an alley that she refused to walk down in the dark, but then there was Tash, bearing a brightly lit Roman Candle in her hand and racing out onto the street. She ran with her knees turned wide to keep her pants up, the pockets overloaded with more slim cylinders of explosives. Adrenaline floods her system as Gwinn begins to run after her, reaching for her exposed shoulder, forcing her to turn around but when she does it is not Tash’s eyes or nose or mouth, and she shoves the Candle spattering with sparks in to her face and then
*
It started in May. Or maybe it was August. The months aren’t as important when its years that have gone by. Her life runs through her like a stream now, interrupted only by the fireworks. Everyone hates them, the way they startle them out of their daydreams, or nightmares, or realities, forcing them to tell the difference. In memory they are all the same, the anniversary dinners and cabinets full of coffee mugs and feeling what isn’t there and the way the street looked at night and all the ways it could have been different and then
*