A Bolt of Muslin

Brian sits me down. The kids are asleep—Emma, seven; Jack, three—and Brian sits me on the couch, takes the gray armchair. I sit back. I’m tired. He leans forward, over his knees. He’s also tired. First thing he said when he got home: “I’m tired.” Then, “Where’s dinner?” Then, “Look, I only ask for a few things.” Then he picked up Jack and tossed him so he squealed. “How’s my little monster? How’s my guy?” Then he hauled Emma to the living room and launched her giggling onto the couch: their big thing. And I turned up the heat on the stew.

Now he’s told me we need a few changes.

“Caroline,” he says, “I love you, baby, but you need to do what you say you’re going to do. You said you’d have dinner—”

“Jack had his stomach today—”

“There’s always something. Always. And I think what we need is this. It’s like at my work. We need performance reviews. I just had my annual review, so I know what I need to do. I mean, it’s how I get my promotions. And you’re letting me down a lot.”

I held Jack all morning; Emma drew; I let Jack pick two of his favorite cartoons.

“First I think we need to start weekly with you. We’ll make a list. Together.”

His hands hang between his knees like claws in an arcade machine. The couch is deeper than I remember, softer. It holds me.

“When you’re meeting weekly goals, we can go monthly. And I believe in rewards. I mean, it’s our family, so you should know—”

Then a bolt of muslin descends from the ceiling. The most beautiful muslin, fine and white. And it unspools—gently, like a hand opening. Then it begins to wrap Brian’s head, one loop after another. His black beard goes gray, then white. His mouth becomes a divot in fresh snow. His eyes, pale shadows: a pastel sketch of his skull. His voice now muffled. Now indecipherable.

As a girl, I had this most amazing ability. I could rise outside my body and witness things being said, being done, to me, and from high above watch them pass through me without hurt. At school, I could rise. Left alone with Rick, I could rise.

I don’t rise now: it’s curious. It’s the muslin that descends and winds. Brian’s a Q-tip; cotton candy; the final cloud a factory lets go on the day it closes the line.

I feel my body. The faint pulse at my temples: even that. I intend to check how our children are sleeping; no one knows like I do how they breathe when they sleep. But first, the muslin. Wherever it came from, I intend to find more. Whole bolts more. It’s a form of grace, really, that I can remain so still at a moment like this. I needn’t rise. I needn’t even raise my hands.

__________

Andrew Bode-Lang’s fiction chapbook, Field Trips with Exceptional People (2016), is available from Red Bird Chapbooks. He earned his MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona, and his short stories and poems have appeared in journals including Beloit Fiction Journal, Epoch, The Greensboro Review, Poetry East, and Rattle. He lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife and daughter and teaches at Penn State University.