She remembers. She doesn’t always want to, but she remembers the sadness, disappointment, and pain when she realized, in retrospect, love came with conditions and rules . . . so many rules. For her, the rules were steadfast, solid, unwavering. For her partner, they changed as frequently as the directions of the wind.
It was November and it was bone-chilling cold with threats of freezing rain. Darci and Carrie, her partner of six months, headed to bed. Carrie stopped off in the hallway and dropped the thermostat so that the heater would warm the house to a numbing fifty-eight degrees Fahrenheit during the night. It was a routine that Darci was familiar with and had come to accept as one of many of Carrie’s quirks. But, she was willing to accommodate the love of her life. If Carrie was comfortable with the icy temperature during the night, then Darci would bend and adjust.
When Carrie wandered into the bathroom to brush her teeth, Darci dug out a pair of sweatpants and an over-sized t-shirt from the chest of drawers near the foot of the bed and began changing.
“What are you doing?” Carrie asked, as she came back into the room.
“Getting ready for bed.”
“No.” Carrie’s eyes bore red-hot holes into her skin. She looked for all the world as if Darci had suddenly lost her mind.
“No what?” she asked.
Waving a finger at the clothing, “You are not wearing that to bed.”
It had been their custom to sleep in the nude, cuddled up next to one another. Inevitably, during the night they would drift apart in the king-size bed and the cold would crawl beneath the plush comforter. Darci would wake during the night so cold she could see her breath the moonlit room. She would curl into a tight fetal position, trying not to move because the sheets were like touching frozen glass.
“But I’m cold.” Darci’s voice sounded small even to her.
Carrie shook her head. “Not in my house.”
It was Carrie’s house. It was also her bed, her blankets, and her rules. They were all Carrie’s rules and benefitted only Carrie.
“Can we at least get an electric blanket with dual controls so that you can have your side of the bed as cold as you want it and I can have mine warm?”
“No. I will not have an electric blanket. I don’t like them,” she declared, climbing between the covers.
It didn’t make sense. Her reasoning never made sense.
“Can I put another blanket on the bed? It would make it easier for me to sleep.”
“No.”
She was getting desperate. “Can I put another blanket on just my side of the bed?” She sounded like a child pleading with a parent. She hated that sound.
“No.”
And Carrie’s word was final.
Reluctantly, Darci put the sweatpants and t-shirt back into the drawers and naked, climbed into the icy bed.
She had no idea how long she had lain there before finally falling asleep. She awoke to her body shivering and teeth chattering. She pulled the covers up over her head, tucked her knees tightly into her stomach, and tried not to think about how cold she was, but she couldn’t stop shaking.
Darci felt the bed move and then the violent jerking of the covers. She held tightly to the top of the covers to keep them over her and listened to Carrie stomping toward the walk-in closet. She peeked over the blanket and could just make out Carrie’s nude body as she dug around on a shelf. Whatever she was doing had nothing to do with her, so she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
A sudden weight landed hard on her feet and Darci bolted into a sitting position. She grappled for the comforter that had slipped away and found a thick, heavy blanket laying across her legs. “What the hell is this?”
“What does it look like?” Obviously angry, Carrie got back into bed, bouncing onto her side facing away from Darci, and jerked the covers over her head.
She sat there, heartbroken and shivering but afraid to move. Her mind raced, looking for the right response to having had a blanket thrown at her from across the room. Should she graciously accept it as a gift and spread it over her side of the bed, or should she ignore it and pretend to not be cold? What was the right answer?
If she accepted the blanket, Carrie would be pissed at herself for having given in and broken her own rules. If she didn’t accept the blanket, Carrie would be pissed that Darci was not appreciative of her efforts at making her comfortable. Either way, that anger was going to be taken out on her, so it didn’t matter.
Darci laid down, leaving the blanket where it had landed. She played the whole scene over and over in her mind trying to see Carrie’s point of view. It only left her with more questions and a foreboding sense of not being able to do anything right.
Kat's Books 