Twelve Stories

Rebecca Serle

My wife’s world has turned upside down. Last week, I came home to find her standing on the ceiling, drinking coffee.

“Come down this minute,” I said, but she didn’t.

She eats up there, sleeps up there. I tell her that I cannot possibly have every conversation with my neck lobbed back, that it’s uncomfortable, but she stays up there anyway.

Today, she is sitting at her computer and typing. She has brought a chair up there and a desk too. She has a mattress and pillows, sheets and blankets. She put a ladder against the wall of the bedroom so she can get up and down freely. We have quite a tall ceiling, so she needed one of those industrial ladders, the kind the painters use when they need to reach the roof.

“Are you having lunch?” I ask.

“Maybe,” she says, not looking down.

“I will not have this,” I say, “I will not have this at all.”

“I’m working,” she says.

At first, I thought it was a phase, maybe some kind of sickness or something. I asked the doctor, and he said this happens sometimes, after something like this. “It’s normal,” he said, “don’t worry.” But it has been almost five weeks now, and she has not come down for longer than it takes to use the restroom or take a shower.

In the beginning, I asked her nicely, kindly, in a way I thought might make a difference. “I understand,” I told her, “but please come down.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“It gives me a headache. My ears ring.”

“That is ridiculous,” I said, but she just shook her head.

I go into the kitchen and start fixing sandwiches. After a few minutes, I hear her above me.

“I’d prefer no mayo,” she says, shuffling her feet.

“Then come down here and make it yourself.”

I finish her sandwich and hand it up to her. I have to stand on the counter to be able to reach. She grabs it and shuffles back into the bedroom.

“Wash your feet,” I yell. There are smudges all over the ceiling. I see them at night when I lie in bed, tread marks of oil and dirt.

The television is gone by the afternoon.

“You cannot have that,” I tell her.

“Why not? I want to watch.”

“Then come down here.”

“You don’t understand,” she says.

“Try me.”

“You’re still down there.”

“What else can I do?”

“You could come up here.”

“How?”

“Just try.”

I try. I can’t. I climb up the ladder but I’m afraid to step off.

“I’ll fall,” I say.

“No, you won’t,” she says, “look at me.” She demonstrates, swinging onto the ladder above me and back off again.

“Here goes,” I say, but when I do the same thing I fall, straight to the ground.

“Are you okay?” she asks, looking down.

“No,” I say, looking up.  My wrist is throbbing, my leg is in pain. We look at each other, our foreheads squished, our faces distorted. “Come down.”

“I told you, it makes me sick.”

“You make me sick.”

“Then don’t look up.”

I hear her walk into the bedroom. She comes out dragging something, probably her mattress.

“It shouldn’t have been like this,” I say. I am not sure she hears. I am not sure she is still in the room.

****

We stop speaking, almost entirely. The ceiling becomes littered. Old socks and dishes. Newspapers, breadcrumbs. Papers everywhere. A few weeks later, one of them drifts down. I pick it up and turn it over. A name, scrawled in the top left corner.

“I’m starting to forget,” I tell her that night. She is in the living room lying on her mattress. I look up and can see the outline of her torso through the blankets, the curve of her breasts, the shape of her hips. It is odd to me that her body looks the same, that she hasn’t changed up there, mutated or something.

“What?”

“Everything.”

“Oh.”

“Is it better up there?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“Yes, you do.”

“How could it be?”

I walk from the living room into the bedroom. I leave the door open. She follows inside. I lie down on the bed. She lies down on the ceiling. We are exactly opposite. I can see her features perfectly. Unlike her body, her face looks older. I want to reach up and touch her, put my palms on either side of her face, and hold her head in my hands.

“I miss him,” I say, “but I miss you, too.”

She reaches out her hand, and I do the same. Our fingers don’t touch; there is too much space, but the intention comforts me. Then she drops her hand, takes a deep breath, and gets out of bed. She goes over to the ladder and climbs down.

“Okay,” she says, when her feet are on the floor. She gets in bed next to me.

“How do you feel?” I ask.

“Fine.”

“Really?”

“Let’s sleep,” she says.  She curls into the fetal position, tucking her knees tightly into her chest. I put a hand on her cheek and run it down her neck. She brushes me away and lifts the pillow out from underneath her head. “Goodnight,” she says, and turns over.

The next morning, when I wake up, she is already out of bed. Immediately, my eyes dart to the ceiling, but she is not there. I keep my neck in my hands as I make my way into the living room. I am so focused on the ceiling—her discarded blankets, the same shape as the day before—that I knock right into her. She is standing in the kitchen, making eggs.

“Good morning,” she says.

“You’re here,” I say.

She smiles and rubs her forehead, motioning for me to take a seat at the counter. “Do you want toast?” she asks.

“Okay.”

We eat in silence. It takes her a long time to finish her food. She keeps coughing and scratching her neck.

“What should we do today?” I ask. I take our plates and stack them in the dishwasher. I cannot remember whether the others are dirty, but I run them all anyway.

“I’m kind of tired,” she says, “I may just go lie down.” I notice that her face is red. It looks swollen, filled, ready to explode.

“You’re sick,” I say.

“Maybe,” she says.

“Come on,” I say.

She gets into bed, and I lay a cool compress on her head. I take two pillows and stack them under her feet.

“Thanks,” she says, quietly.

In the afternoon, it is worse.  Her face is sweating, her hands and feet white.

“Go back up there,” I say.

“It’s okay,” she says, eyes closed.

“You have to,” I say, “or you will die down here.”

She shakes her head.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“For what?” she asks.

“That it’s like this,” I say, “that we’ve ended up here.”

“It’s not your fault,” she says, reaching for my hand. She takes it to her cheek, which is so hot that I think it might burn my skin.

“We should have done something differently,” I say.

“How could we?” she says, whispering.

I help her out of bed and up the ladder. I hoist her onto the ceiling, see the blood drain out of her head, down her neck. I see her wiggle her fingers, stretch her arms.

“I’ll go,” I say.

She nods and opens her mouth, but no words materialize.

I start packing my stuff immediately, dragging the two trunks out of the closet and filling them. It seems ridiculous to leave; there isn’t even a reason to, and it’s not as if we share this house anymore. I wish she could go on living up there and I could go on living down here. I remember what it was like to have her down here. To watch her picking up the toys, turning off the lights. The memory is too much, but it is for precisely this reason she will never leave.

I close the trunks in the living room and walk back into the bedroom. I can hear her up there, typing softly. She stops when I stop. We are both silent, still, our breathing like a harmony, one note on top of the other.

“Please,” I say. I offer this word up like a prayer.

I drop to the floor in supplication, placing my head on the hardwood, my palms flat. I am not sure whether I am expressing sorrow or hope. With my head still pressed to the ground, I hear her move above me. I know without looking that she is prostrating herself, too. We lie like this: I am on the floor, and she, is on the ceiling. Both on the ground, like children.

_______________

Rebecca Serle is a writer living and working in NYC. She is the founder of Nurturing Narratives, an organization that brings storytelling and narrative building workshops to young children. Rebecca holds a MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and a BA in English from The University of Southern California. Her work has appeared in SLICE Magazine, The Ampersand Review, The Raleigh Quarterly and KP Press among others. She is an avid fan of yoga, the written word in all its forms, and, of course, New York.