“People who prevent women from having abortions. Isn't that right, Uncle Bob?”
“Not everyone here is Catholic, you know,” Miriam said. “Not everyone here has to rebel against the pope.”
“What are you, Lucy?” Uncle Bob said, turning to me. I was smoking a cigarette and trying to stay out of it.
“I wasn't raised any particular way,” I said. “I'm not anything.”
“Everybody's something,” he said, kindly.
“I for one am Jewish,” Miriam went on.
“Well, congratulations,” Spike said.
Spike and I climbed the stairs to the guest room. As I went, I steadied myself against the walls with the palms of my hands. I was drunk, a lazy, liquid kind of drunk, not a loud and talking kind. I was learning to like this about drinking, that there were so many moods to it; in this it was like sex, one physical situation that could go in a million possible directions. Spike pulled his clothes off and dropped them in a pile on the floor. I lay down on the bed and watched him.
“Are you okay?” he said. I said I was. He stood looking out the window, in only his long underwear.
“How old do you think Miriam is?” he said. “I mean, she's got to be younger than I am.”
“So?”
“So I'm worried about Uncle Bob. Ever since Aunt Mary left, he's been meeting these crazy women. He's always got these crazy women up here.”
“She didn't seem that crazy to me.”
“The last one was a Jehovah's Witness,” Spike said. “She left Uncle Bob because he wanted to celebrate Christmas, for crying out loud.”
“I don't think Miriam celebrates Christmas, either,” I said, and closed my eyes.
Spike climbed on top of me and stroked my hair and kissed my forehead. I kissed him back but then stopped. I liked to drink with Spike in general and I liked to have sex drunk, too — it made everything velvet, blurred edges, smoothed time. But I was spinning.
“Sorry,” I said. “Can't.”
“Let's get married,” he said. I looked for his eyes in the darkness, hoping they would stop the spinning, but they didn't. He touched my nose, which was very cold, and then traced my lips with his fingertip.
“I don't know,” I said.
“You love me. But?”
“I love you but I wasn't thinking about getting married. I mean, not right now.”
“I love you but,” Spike said. He put the palm of his hand on my neck, moved it to my breast. I arched my back to press against it. He stuck his fingers into my armpit, and I laughed and clamped down my arm.
“But what?”
“But nothing,” he said, his fingertips walking along on my collarbone and down my chest. “But nothing at all, not ever.”
The bed was the worst I'd ever slept on in my entire life. Lumps in the mattress competed with broken springs to torture my back. I woke an hour later in agony, and Spike was groaning in his sleep, tossing back and forth, like a fish dying on land. My head hurt and my mouth was dry. The moon shone over Spike's face. With his eyes closed, his cheek against the pillow, he looked like a child.
From the other bedroom I could hear a bed squeaking and Miriam's voice saying, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”
Without waking, Spike reached up and pulled me close to him, warm together against the cold air of the room.
In the morning, the house smelled of syrup and bacon. We sat up in bed and spent a while kissing. There was a holiday sort of feel to things. Downstairs, Miriam was mixing pancake batter and Uncle Bob was building a fire in the stove. He winked at us.
“You two sleep all right?” he said.
“Well, okay,” I said.
Spike collapsed on the couch. I walked through the kitchen and stepped out onto the back porch, squinting as the sun glinted against the snow. The air smelled clear and fresh, and there were no other houses in sight. The land sloped down to a rocky valley and up to a clearing on the other side. The wind rattled pine needles over the snow, and maple trees stretched their naked branches to the sky. I was only a little hungover. After a minute I went back inside and offered to help Miriam with breakfast, but she said she was all right. She hummed to herself as she stirred the batter. I poured coffee for me and Spike and went back into the living room. Uncle Bob was lighting the stove.
“So, Lucy, you didn't sleep all right?”
“I slept okay. It's just, well, to be honest, the mattress isn't very comfortable.”
“It's not? Why isn't it?”
“It's lumpy, Uncle Bob,” Spike said from the couch. I sat down next to him, and he rubbed my back.
“Well, God, Spike, you should have said something. God, you kids, I'm so sorry. I'm really sorry.” He stretched out his hands, looking dismayed.
“It's not a big deal,” I said. “We'll survive.”
“Absolutely not,” said Uncle Bob. “I mean, if a person comes to my home, I'd like that person to do more than survive. I'd like that person to have a good night's sleep. That's the very least I can do, isn't it? As a host? Well, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to buy a new bed.”
“You don't have to do that,” I said.
“Yes, I certainly do. I can't have you kids coming to my home and not sleeping. You should be able to relax in your Uncle Bob's house. I just can't have it any other way. I'm buying a new bed.”
He wouldn't talk about anything else over breakfast. As soon as we were done eating, he and Miriam drove to a furniture store in Rutland. Spike and I did the breakfast dishes. Then we went back to the old, uncomfortable bed and had sex.
They got back at around two in the afternoon. We were reading next to the stove, Spike engrossed in a paperback thriller he'd found in the guest room, and me battling Middlemarch. I had to write a paper on it, but kept falling asleep in the middle of chapters.
“Spike!” cried Uncle Bob as he came into the room. Cold air blew in behind him. “Come help me with this goddamn bed.”
Miriam sat down next to me. She looked tired.
“Good book?” she said, and I made a face.
With great difficulty, Uncle Bob and Spike dragged the old mattress down the stairs and across the living room. It was a feathertick mattress, lumpy and huge and mottled white. It looked like a dead animal, say a polar bear — something they'd hunted and killed but that continued, even after its death, to overwhelm them. I stood in the kitchen as they dragged it in there.
Uncle Bob let his end drop. “I need a break,” he panted. His face was red. He looked at me and Spike. “I bought this bed with my ex-wife. Let that be a lesson to you,” he said, and shook his head.
Finally they managed to get the mattress outside and they left it in the snow behind the house. Then they carried the new one up the stairs. The whole thing took hours. Miriam stood at the base of the stairs, saying, “To your left, Spike,” and “No, you have to lift and angle it,” until Spike lost his temper and told her to leave them alone. She went away muttering. I stayed in the living room.
Finally, Uncle Bob came downstairs and sat down next to me. “Lucy,” he said. “I think Uncle Bob needs a drink.”
“Thanks for the bed,” I told him. “You really didn't have to do that.”
“But I did, didn't I?” He smiled widely, that impish look again. “You know, you're the first girl Spike's ever brought here.”
He and Spike started drinking whiskey to celebrate the new bed. It was already dark when Uncle Bob got the idea to burn the old one instead of taking it to the landfill. He got some kerosene out of the garage and told Spike to help him drag the mattress down to the valley. Spike seemed to like the idea. Miriam came out of the house, scowling.
“What are you doing, Bob?”
“Burning this old mattress.”
“Where? Under all that tree cover? Are you crazy?”