The Bedroom

After our divorce, my ex-wife and I shared custody of our two-year-old daughter, who stayed at my house three nights a week. My daughter would have difficulty falling asleep, so I’d lie in her bed with her, sometimes for hours, until she was out. Then I’d sneak away, only to feel her climbing into bed with me later in the night. Eventually I invited her into my bed, where she’d fall asleep in minutes. I imagined she needed this closeness to make up for our lost time together. I suppose I needed it, too.

My daughter wasn’t a quiet sleeper: she rolled a lot, threw her legs over me, and once kicked me in the throat so hard I couldn’t breathe. Sharing a bed, however, brought us both comfort. As a man, I was aware that some people might see this arrangement as inappropriate, so we pretended she had her own bed. I figured she’d outgrow her need for the odd sleeping arrangement eventually.

Eight years later, after I remarried, she started to sleep in her own room. My daughter is fifteen now and would be mortified if she knew I was telling this story. I’ve loved many women, but I’ve never felt closer to anyone.

Name Withheld

When I was twenty, I married Oscar, a Bolivian I’d met while working on a vegetable farm in Virginia. I was one of the few nonnative Spanish speakers on the farm and could hold my own in conversations over pepper plants and raspberry canes.

When I first saw Oscar, he was on his haunches picking beans. He had a kind face and glossy black hair that fell sexily across his eyes. He smiled at me, and I later learned that his friend, at that moment, had leaned over and said, “I predict you will marry that girl. ”

For nearly a year, Oscar and I rented a drafty room in the boss’s modern brick farmhouse. Our full-size bed took up half the space, but we were content to spend most of our time in it. The bed, a hot plate, and a space heater were enough to get us through the four Virginia seasons. Once, when Oscar and I hadn’t left the room all day, his sister Maria left sandwiches for us on the doorstep.

In that bedroom we spoke only Spanish; I was more eager to refine my skills than Oscar was to work on his English. We cooked eggs and greens foraged from the farm. Oscar taught me the folk dances of Bolivia, drilled into me the importance of saving money, and urged me to go back to college.

The bedroom was also where, several months after we’d married, Oscar cried and told me he’d made a terrible mistake. He said he loved me, but he was still married to a woman in Bolivia. I was devastated, and Oscar was genuinely contrite.

We got an annulment and somehow managed to remain friends. Even now, he sends me the occasional e-mail, telling me how his daughters are prospering and how his wife beat breast cancer. He and his family live in the States, and I’ve met them. My friends find this outrageous, but I have no regrets. For a short time we loved each other well.

M. B.
Rochester, New York

I used to wish for the day when I’d want to do something creative, like build furniture or write short stories, as much as I wanted to obey the animal call to the bedroom, where fleeting moments of sexual gratification often ended in confused emotions and broken relationships.

Now that wish has been granted — by age and a pinched sciatic nerve that makes it impossible even to lie down in my own damned bed. Gone are the wasted days of sexual passion. My life is full of cerebral and artistic interests. But I yearn for a night of painless sleep, for a drug powerful enough to dull the pain in my back. The bedroom has become a place to store clothing and confirm that the aging man in the mirror still exists: nothing more. It may as well be roped off with red velvet, like the chambers of a dead president.

Jamie Huling
Nashville, Tennessee

My married bedroom was famous for its swan-shaped bed, crafted by my ex-husband, a woodworker and furniture maker. The foot of the cherry-wood bed was carved into a swan’s neck and head, six and a half feet tall. On the headboard was a painted swamp scene with a built in reading light, and the sides looked like the sides of a small boat.

My ex still drapes his arm over the swan’s neck and tells the story of Leda and the Swan to impress visitors, especially the women. He was often mistaken for Mick Jagger when we were together, and though his rock-star quality has been dimmed by years, pounds, and smoke, the bed remains fantastic enough to captivate an audience.

As romantic as the bed was, our marriage was troubled. We were both too young when it began. At first I relished my role as supporter of and inspiration to the great artist, but then I learned that his creativity took precedence over my own — unless mine was domestically expressed. There were many problems with our house as well. Though it was a wonder of curved walls, turrets, and fantasy details, few projects were ever completed. There were leaks in the roof and gaps where the walls and ceilings met, and it was heated by wood that he chopped or I dragged in from the forest.

During the last winter we lived together, he left to spend a weekend with his new girlfriend. I was not innocent in that department, but he chose to leave me in that falling-apart house during a winter storm. A cold rain fell and coated everything in an inch of brittle and twinkling ice, beautiful and dangerous.

There had been a persistent leak over the swan bed, and before my husband ran off, he’d suspended a black plastic tarp over it, just in case. The next morning the temperatures reached the mid-forties, and the ice began to melt. When I awoke, the tarp above me was tight as a tick. In the few seconds it took me to comprehend what was happening, the tarp gave way, dumping a load of freezing water all over me and our bed. As I struggled free of the soaking blankets, I said out loud, “This is my last winter in this house. ” It was.

Stephanie U.
New York, New York

At twenty-five my son Azja (pronounced “Asia”) moved out of our house and into an apartment with his friend Eric. He and Eric reveled in their new bachelorhood, partying and playing video games till dawn. Although I was happy for Azja, I hated seeing his empty bedroom. So I invited my ailing mother to move in with me, and I transformed Azja’s masculine, African-themed bedroom into a feminine boudoir for Mom.

A few months later Eric called, crying, barely able to talk. He’d gotten back from work that day and discovered Azja on the kitchen floor, dead from an asthma attack.

I hated every moment of the weeks that followed. The worst part was dealing with my suddenly healthy, attention-seeking mother. I needed to be alone. I wanted Azja’s room back.

I took a second job, bought my mother a condo, and reclaimed Azja’s bedroom, re-creating the African décor. Three months after his death, I lay on Azja’s bed, played his drums, and sobbed.

Madonna O.
San Diego, California

I had hip-replacement surgery in December, then an aneurysm in January, which put me in the hospital for a month. When I came home, I moved into the bedroom down the hall while my husband of fifty years continued to sleep in our king-size bed. I would rest better knowing that my recovering body could keep its own hours.

But when I was ready to move back into our bedroom, my husband didn’t want me there. He’d found that he slept better alone; my late-night reading disturbed him, and my snoring kept him awake.

I told myself this arrangement was sensible, but I missed touching, cuddling, knowing he was near. We sacrificed closeness so my husband could have his precious sleep.

Eight years later I think of the fifteen yards from one bedroom to the other as a symbol of the gulf between us.

Name Withheld

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