BEDDING
by Lindsay Reid Fitzgerald
She says the backyard looks like a lunatic's village.
Twenty rabbit cages sprawl behind the house, poking up through snow. Other backyards on the road are cluttered with swing sets and tree houses, occasionally a frozen swimming pool. It started with one litter. Their neighbor was moving, and Nathaniel agreed to take the rabbits off his hands, one cage full. They multiplied without warning and he made new cages as fast as they bred. He built them with care, wiring the screens tight against coydogs and racoons. He put wood nooks at either end, stuffed hay inside for them to shape into beds, to guard against the chill. He considered the design one of his finest achievements, but his pride has slipped through his fingers.
For weeks they have been dying, a few at a time. He does not know why. He finds them in the mornings, piled together in the corners of cages, drooping. The living ones stare at him, waiting to be fed.
=
Dawn comes on weakly. He makes his way across the ice, knowing that Helena is watching from the kitchen window. It is colder than it was yesterday, but not so cold that they will have frozen. He checks how many more he has lost. He gathers the three in large gloved hands and looks at their tiny mouths, their faces and paws no bigger than bigger than his thumbs. He tries to imagine them last night, edging together in the blue moonlight, seeking heat and the comfort of other heartbeats.
He carries them to the steel drum behind the garage, lays them out on a tree stump as the fire catches and builds. He drops them in one at a time.
He returns to the cages, counts heads. There were over one hundred of them a month ago. Now there are fourteen. He feeds them from a fresh sack of pellets in case the food has been poisoning them. He gives them clean water. He checks the cages for holes or jagged nails. He picks each one up, holds it close, feeling for temperature, looking for signs, though he does not know what a sick rabbit looks like.
He looks into the eyes of the last living mother, wondering if she is grieving.
He treks back to the house, kicks snow off his boots before stepping inside. He removes layers of clothing and stands in the foyer adjusting to the heat. In slippers and cardigan, Helena looks over from watering a plant. She pushes glasses up her nose—his glasses; their lenses are interchangeable. He feels her looking at the soot streaked across his cheeks and caked on his brows. He drops his eyes and rubs his hands together. “You look like you’ve just been through war,” she says, sleepily, but he thinks he hears derision beneath.
She turns back toward the kitchen to prepare his eggs, her oatmeal. He follows her and sits at the table to watch the reassuring movements of her hands pouring milk, stirring egg, lifting the skillet, reaching for plates. Light has begun to filter through the window, lighting the back of her smooth brown hair. He notices that there is a new section of gray. It comes to her suddenly, in fully formed patterns.
They sit at opposite ends of the table. There are chairs between them on each side.
“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” he says, peppering his eggs.
She regards him with unblinking, pale green eyes. She chews. “I don’t know either.”
He looks away.
=
They have not replaced the bed since their studio in the city, a full size that took up most of the tiny apartment. In this bedroom it is a dwarf. Why be wasteful, why get a new one, they decided, when they moved into the house. They have no children, few bills now, but they are careful with their money.
Sometimes he wanders into their room to fetch something, and is startled by the sight of the bed. He stares at it stranded in the center of the room, a pitiable, forlorn thing with a dip in the mattress, from the years he slept in the center and she spread out on top of him.
Now she is sleeping flat on her back beside him, her mouth opening into an O and closing in a P, little puffs. The temperature has dropped in the night and some fiber in him knows he should get up and go down to the basement to chuck more wood into the stove. Instead, dreaming, he turns toward the warmth of her side, pulls her against his body.
He wakes a couple of hours later to find her looking at him through morning eyes. Her face is creased and she looks embarrassed, as if waking naked and finally sober next to a stranger.
“Oh,” he says, pulling his arm back from where it had been tightened over her belly. He folds it against his chest, trying to make himself compact. “I’m sorry.”
=
At the breakfast table, he finds her looking through a catalog. “I’ve been thinking it’s time to replace the old bed,” she says. She does not look at him and her mouth is weak.
“Oh?” He pauses with his arms halfway into his coat. He waits for the panic to ease out of them before sliding them through the sleeves.
“Yes. It’s time, don’t you think?” She tears out the photograph of the bed she likes and hangs it on the refrigerator.
“Maybe we could keep it in the garage, just in case.”
“In case what?”
He doesn’t know.
“I don’t really think it’s worth saving,” she says. “Do you?” She gets up and runs a sponge under water, squeezes it, wipes breakfast crumbs off the table.
He looks at his boots and puts on his gloves. “If you think so, then.” He quietly makes his way to the door.
There are five more dead and his knees threaten to buckle under him, pitch him against the ice.
He picks up the bodies and carries them back behind the garage. He does not duck as smoke blasts his face, forcing long trapped tears out his eyes and down his blackened cheeks.
=
He drives home from Sunday dinner at the Benjamin’s. The pavement is slick as a wet bottle.
They slide softly left to right on the ice. She seems not to notice the condition of the road. She has had wine. “You shouldn’t have snapped at Sherry,” she says. She turns her head toward the window, looks up at trees looming over them, black skeletons edging a road quickly disappearing under snow.
“She shouldn’t have said what she said.” He is embarrassed by his defensiveness, the way it punctured dinner’s smooth surface. He is embarrassed that he could not control it.
“Those cages are an eyesore.”
“Sherry is an eyesore.”
She looks at him for a long moment and winds her scarf tighter about her neck. She closes her eyes, mumbling, “Why don’t you find another hobby.”
A slow heat creeps up his neck and into his cheeks. He wants to defend, explain himself. But he is not good at explaining.
When he delivers them safely, pulling up the driveway grown thick with snow, he feels this is a kind of atonement. He hopes she sees this.
=
She is asleep next to him. He lies on his stomach, his cheek against the mattress. With hands, chest, limbs, and face, he tries to memorize it, the springs, the dip in the center that slants him against her. He knows that when the snow stops coming and the ice melts from the roads, they will borrow a van and make a trip into town. They will buy a bed, king size.
He moves toward the edge of the bed and gets up, careful not to wake her with light or sound. He feels his way out of the bedroom through the kitchen. At the door, he slips his feet into boots, pulls a coat over his pajamas.
The moon lights the backyard and snow drifts gently onto the top of his head.
At the cages, he counts them. All eight are alive, hearty.
He holds them in his palms in turns and thinks of Helena asleep in bed. He picks up a heavy one, holds it in the air, level with his face, and prays. For an invincible winter in which snow does not melt and roads never clear.
He lowers the rabbit to his chest and holds it close, watches the other rabbits watch him with glossy black eyes. He thinks there may be some God in them.
=
On the evening news there are car accidents and schools closing, advisories to conserve water and food.
She puts another scoop of canned corn on his plate. “Sherry called this morning while you were out with the rabbits,” she says. “She and Walt are separating.”
His hand goes slack around the butter knife. “But we just saw them last night.”
She gets up for a can of diet soda. “I know. Didn’t you notice how tired Walt looked?”
He thinks that Walt always looks tired. Everyone he knows looks tired.
She comes back to the table and opens the can. She replenishes their glasses.
“Why?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” She chews, says quietly, “Maybe they don’t know.”
They sit. The news ends and a game show fills the screen.
“I’ll load the dishwasher,” he says.
“I’m going to take my bath.”
He takes the plates to the sink and pauses at the window, looks through pregnant white flakes at the lunatic’s village. He wonders if they sense that some of them will be gone by morning.
He hears her distantly from the bathtub. “Could you get me an aspirin from my purse?”
She is adrift in bubbles, her only luxury. When he hands the capsule to her, she opens one eye. “You should take one, too,” she says, pulling a washcloth over her eyes. “Good for your old heart.”
He lowers the lid on the toilet, sits down beside her. She lifts an edge of the washcloth, peeks at him. “What,” she says.
“Nothing.” He rests his forearms on his knees.
She removes the washcloth, looks at him fully. “Tell me.”
“Nothing.”
She drapes the washcloth back over her eyes and forehead, sinks lower into the tub.
He twists the wedding ring around his finger. It is tight, has indented his flesh. “It’s just sad. I can’t do anything.”
“You know, it might be this weather. Maybe you should put some more hay in their houses. Could be the pellets, too. Who knows what they put in there.”
“I mean Sherry and Walt.”
She is quiet. “You’re right. There’s nothing you can do.”
He sits. She remains beneath her washcloth. When the fading bubbles allow him glimpses of her pruned pink skin, looser every year, he feels that his eyes have stolen something.
He rolls up the sleeves of his flannel and reaches for a cloth. He leans forward, dips it in the water.
“What’re you doing?” she mumbles, reaching to pull the washcloth from her eyes.
He slips his palms behind her shoulders and nudges her forward. She is stiff, hesitant against his hands pushing gently against her, but sits up and leans forward toward her knees. She covers her breasts with her arms. He moves the strands of hair curling at her nape and begins to wash her back. She bows her head.
Their breathing is shallow. Mismatched.
He is careful not to chaff her skin. She is prone to rashes and bruising. He has treasured this about her without knowing he has, the vulnerability of her flesh. Her mind is so firm. Unbending.
She makes a sound, he thinks. He thinks it is a sigh of comfort.
“The water’s cold,” he says, after a while.
“I know.”
When she does not move, he hands her a towel. He goes to their room and gets in bed. He can hear the water moving as she stands.
He has turned out the light and lies on his back listening to her opening a bureau drawer, pulling on a nightgown.
She pulls back the covers and moves onto her side of the bed. He does not touch her. Still he feels her dampness.
Her voice is a modest thing coming through stillness. “Thank you,” she says.
“You’re welcome.”
They sleep.
In the night, three more die.
=
They are snowed in. The roads are closed. She is in the shed, pulling supplies from shelves—canned foods, bottled water, batteries, matches, candles. Electricity and phone lines will not be with them for long. While she is in the shed, he picks up the phone and dials quickly. He calls the vet for the second time, at home.
“Well,” says the vet, “if you’ve done everything else we talked about, I don’t know what to tell you. You can bring them in when the roads clear, but my best advice is to let them go.”
Nathaniel is silent.
“Well then, how’s Helena holding up in this blizzard?”
“Andrew,” he says, striving to keep his tone reasonable, a back and forth between pals. “You can tell me. Did I do something wrong?”
“Nah, you never know with these things. Some litters just aren’t sturdy enough to make it.”
“But I’ve done everything right. Haven’t I?”
“Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do. Try again in the spring. Start fresh. And pray some of this ice melts while you’re at it, okay?”
They speak for a few minutes about the storm. The vet says that they have months worth of supplies at his house, in case Nathaniel and Helena run out. His son has a snowmobile, should it come to that. Nathaniel is half-listening. He says thank you and they hang up.
He reaches under the sink for the mopping bucket and rushes head first out the back door. When his feet push into the snow, he realizes he is only wearing socks, and has forgotten coat and gloves. He turns to go back inside for boots. He thrusts his feet into them and bursts outside, scurries across the ice.
Coming back from the shed, she yells, as if the snow coming down in sheets prevents them from hearing each other, “I found the thermal sleeping bags. No water damage, either.”
“Good,” he says, skidding past her. He slips, crashing into a cage. He rights himself. He pulls open the door of the cage holding three of the remaining five. He hopes they are not frightened by his lurching movements, but he cannot seem to calm himself.
“Nathaniel, what are you doing?”
He ignores her.
“Nathaniel.”
He piles them into the pail. They wriggle and crash against each other, step on each other’s heads, cower. Snow covers them in moments. It coats him and soaks through his clothes.
She is at his elbow. “There’s no time for this,” she says. “Help me move the propane heater into the kitchen.”
He runs to the cage in the back, breathing heavily. He piles the last two into the pail.
“Please,” she says. “Before it’s dark.”
He moves past her toward the house, his pail swinging in his fist. He falls. The rabbits spill. Snow swallows them.
A wail sounds in the back of his throat and he digs, reaches his fingers blindly and pulls them out in wet clumps. They are too terrified to squirm. He cannot find them all.
She is there. She is beside him. Thrusting her arms into the endless white, finding them.
“They’re all here,” she says, clamping her hands around his wrists. He throws her off and continues to dig. He hears a sob. Maybe it is his.
“Nathaniel, they’re all here. Five of them.”
He stops. He looks up at her. He clings to her eyes.
She helps him stand, then slips herself. He helps her stand.
He holds the pail to his chest and they make their way toward the house. “Oh,” she says.
The power has gone out. They stumble inside. She gropes for a candle and matches.
“I’ll make a fire,” she says. “Why don’t you hold them until it’s ready. Body heat.”
He pulls off his wet shirt. He holds them against his skin in turns, rubs their shaking bodies.
=
Night falls. They sit on the floor next to the fire, eating crackers and canned stew. The rabbits cluster in a cardboard box beside them.
The wind hurls snow against the house. It has begun to creep over the windows.
“How long do you think it will be like this,” she asks.
“I don’t know.”
“We have plenty of food.”
“Good.”
She pulls an afghan around her shoulders and curls on the floor by the fire.
He looks in the cardboard box. They are all alive. He wants to thank her. “Helena,” he says. She does not answer. “Helena.”
She is sleeping.
=
When he wakes, opening his eyes and looking toward the windows, the snow has built white walls against the glass.
He realizes he is alone. Her afghan is folded beside him. The rabbits in their box are gone. He stumbles into the kitchen. She is there, opening a can of soup. She looks in his direction and her face is tight.
He moves toward her. “Are you okay?”
She looks away. “I’m okay.”
His eyes sweep the kitchen. He does not ask.
She empties the soup into a small pot she will hold over the fire.
He sinks slowly onto a hardbacked chair and braces his forearms on his thighs, folding his fingers together. He clenches his jaw. “What did you do with them?”
She half-turns. Her voice is low. “I put them in the garage until it clears up and you can burn them.”
“How did they look?”
“They were piled together. They weren’t breathing.”
He nods and casts his eyes around the kitchen. They alight on the refrigerator. The photograph of the bed hangs from a magnet.
He lowers his face into his hands.
Pots clank and then there is silence. Beside him, he can smell her, firewood, clam chowder, dish soap on her skin.
Her fingers close around his.
He opens his eyes slowly and looks at their hands. Their fingers have always seemed odd together, but necessary, even now. “I’m going to try again when the weather’s nice.”
His shoulders tense as he waits for her fingers to go slack around his, for her to let go and walk away. But she doesn’t.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?” He thinks he’s misheard her but he does not push. She stands with him for a moment and the wind picks up, blows snow against the kitchen window. They watch it fly and descend.
She lets go of his hand and returns to the sink. “Okay.”