Feels Like Home by Tammy Falkner

Author:Tammy Falkner [Falkner, Tammy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Night Shift Publishing

26

Eli

When Sam and I get back from the store, we unload all the things we just bought. I very quietly open the bedroom door and peek inside, surprised to find our bed empty and the covers jumbled. Bess doesn’t like a messy bed; she always makes it up. So I go and straighten the covers and rearrange the pillows the way she likes them.

When we first moved in together, we actually fought about making the bed. I refused to do it, because I couldn’t figure out why anyone would feel the need to make up a bed that you’re just going to get right back into a few hours later. But Bess argued that there was something very soothing about getting into a bed with fresh, crisp linens. I didn’t agree, but over the years I learned that I could avoid the argument with her if I just made the damn bed.

For me, one of my sticking points was the kitchen. Bess didn’t like to cook and then have to clean the kitchen. She preferred to do it the next morning. After a meal, Bess wanted to lie on the couch and cuddle, stretch her feet across my lap, or have a conversation. Cleaning was the last thing on her mind. But for me, I couldn’t rest if the kitchen wasn’t clean after a meal. I couldn’t mentally leave it until the next morning, so Bess slowly learned that cleaning up after a meal was important to me so that there was no left-over mess the next day.

We learned to compromise, as happily married couples do. But at some point, we stopped listening to one another, stopped compromising, stopped caring entirely. Bess wasn’t the only one at fault. I had to accept my share of the blame.

So when I make the bed, I recognize that I’m still trying to fulfill her needs, even without realizing it. I put the few groceries I picked up away in the kitchen, and I notice that there are no dishes in the sink. Not a single one.

“I guess we should go see where everybody is,” I say absently to Sam.

She’s out the front door before I can blink, and I just walk in her wake over to the cabin next door. But I stop short when I see Bess still in her jammies, rocking a sleeping baby in her arms. She looks so calm and so peaceful as she rubs the top of his little head, and I stop in the doorway to stare at her, taken aback by how natural motherhood looks on her.

“You’re back,” she says. She doesn’t get up. She just rocks slowly, and then she does something that is almost surreal.

She smiles at me.

My guts do that roiling motion down toward my toes, the feeling that I used to confuse with seasickness when I was a teenager. Bess is happy and I am happy about it.

“What are you doing?” I ask quietly, trying not to wake the sleeping baby.

“Rocking,” she says.

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