The Perfect Mattress

Juliet Waller

As I suffer through the humiliation of testing new mattresses, the young mattress seller says something to me. His voice shouldn’t startle me, but it does. “Sorry,” he says. He is maybe twenty-one, and his accent is slightly British. I wonder if he dreamed of selling mattresses as a child. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He holds a tablet by his side.

“You didn’t,” I say, not wanting to admit that in the moment of pretending to sleep, I’d forgotten my surroundings. I sit up and pull my skirt down for the fifth time. I mentally note never to wear a skirt again while mattress shopping.

“Do you have any questions?” He sits on the bed next to the one I’m sitting on. We face each other, eye to eye, knee to knee.

“Nope,” I say. I have many questions about cost, firmness, and warranties but feel too shy to ask them. He has seen me curled on my side, hand tucked under my chin, shrimplike and dreaming of sleep.

I dream of sleeping a lot these days, but my current mattress is making my back ache four hours after I go to bed. It wakes me up and reminds me that I am almost fifty. I spend the rest of the night rearranging my body, sure that each time, this position will allow sleep to return. I don’t get the physics of this pain. I understand backache from the enemies of the body, the toiling, lifting, impact, and gravity. I don’t understand the pain from repose and its supposedly supportive best friend, a bed.

The young man leans forward a bit, hands on his thighs. In response, I lean back, but there is nowhere to go but my elbows. The position makes me look relaxed and ready for anything, which I am not.

He says, “May I ask you a few questions?” I look at his name tag, which reads Juniper, and have one of those inflated moments of thought, where an entire paragraph happens in your mind in what seems like a second but is really who knows how long to the outside world. I think, “Juniper, huh, is that a bush or a tree? I think bush because of the berries, right? They use the berries to make gin. I don’t like gin. Was it gin and tonics that they drank in The Great Gatsby? Something with gin.” I don’t know where this thought might have gone next because I cut it off and sit up when he says, “It won’t take long.”

How long had I reclined on my elbows? Had I stared at him blankly the whole time? I remember he wanted to ask me questions. In my embarrassment, I told him, “Sure.”

“Great.” He picks up the tablet. “Are you comfortable? Would you like to lean against the headboard while I go through them?” I scoot back to the headboard. I pull my skirt down on the right side, then the left.

“Ok, first question, did you wet the bed as a child?”

I gasp and look at him. He raises one hand. “I know, I know, it’s a very personal question. The answers are recorded anonymously. I have no judgment. My only goal is to find you the perfect mattress.”

I keep staring at him. I’m so tired. I lay back against the headboard and give my skirt one tug. “I did,” I say.

He taps something on the tablet. “When this happened, did you worry about A) getting in trouble, B) embarrassment, C) getting back to sleep, or D) two or more of the above.

I think for a moment. “D.”

He nods and taps. “Did you have nightmares as a child?”

“Yes.”

I can just barely hear his fingers as he taps the screen. “Did you have a recurring dream of A) breathing underwater, B) flying, C) being chased, D) none of the above, E) two or more of the above.”

I ask him to repeat the question. He does. I say, “A.” He swipes the tablet. “Just a few more. When you think of sleep, is it in the range of blues and greens or reds and oranges?”

I tell him blues and greens. He asks more questions. I answer that I go to bed excited to wake up five to six days a week, but on the off days, it’s not death I crave but an all-day nap. He types that into the tablet. I answered that I was very immature until about thirty-five. He nods and doesn’t ask why. In a quiet voice, I answer that I currently sleep alone.

He asks more questions and learns that I am not a list maker, that I like rules and order, and that I read my horoscope and only believe it if it portends good news. He taps, swipes, and nods. A few seconds pass with his eyes on the tablet screen, and then he says, “I have the perfect match for you. Please follow me.”

We walk to the back of the store and through a door with a sign that reads, “Yes.” The air feels different back here; it’s cooler. The lighting is warm and dim, not loud and fluorescent like in the central part of the store. There are beds tucked away in large dressing room-type spaces created out of long, forest-green velvet curtains. Juniper leads me back to one of the beds. He gestures, and I lie down. I notice that the blanket of humiliation I’d felt earlier is gone. I lie on my side. I tug my skirt. I tuck my hand under my chin. A feeling of calm overwhelms me. I smell my mother’s perfume, bright and springy. I drift to sleep, knowing I will dream of breathing under blue-green waters.

Juliet Waller is a playwright, short story author, and playwriting & theater teacher. Her pieces have appeared in The Kenyon Review (as a co-author), Seattle’s Poetry on Buses, 3Elements Review, and Gold Man Review. Her plays have been produced by a variety of Seattle theaters. Her work often focuses on large or small disasters and strangers meeting in unusual circumstances.