Kieran Mulligan
There is a version of this story in which I arrive at the rug store and say “I’m working on a project for my writing class where we have to immerse ourselves in a location and write about it, I promise I’ll do my best rug impression and stay out of the way,” to the proprietor of the rug store (who is invariably some strain of wise old man) and he would respond with something beautiful and quirky like “A real rug commands attention. There is a reason we call the things we notice underfoot.” This is not that version of the story. That exchange did not happen. Neither of us said those particular words in those particular orders. In fact, we never even met. I spent the better part of a week building up to this encounter only for it to not happen. I walked 20-something minutes through warm, damp city downtown to get to the rug store only for neither of the building’s two doors to open. I could see the rugs through the window, like they were taunting me. Saying I’d never really unravel their mysteries. And I was totally okay with that, because I found something better.
Having abandoned the rugs (as they abandoned me) I I was doing my darndest to be present in the moment, so to take the path less travelled by I turned a corner where I usually go straight and suddenly I was staring through a window into the eyes of HGTV’s Property Brothers. They had a different message for me than the rugs, probably because they were in a mattress store instead of a rug store. I went inside, because I am not going to ignore such an obvious sign that this, of all places, is where I am meant to be.
Have you ever had a calling? That is how the mattress store’s grey walls and grey-enough floor made me feel. The air is a different texture in that square building. I inhaled once upon entering, and I swear that single breath sustained me until I left. They must get the air from some far-off mountain somewhere, or a cave in the part of the earth’s crust where it is still cool but is just barely starting to heat back up from the pressure. Somewhere full of potential because nothing happens there which makes everything new. The pain in my jaw that had bothering me all of last night and this morning vanished after what felt like mere moments but might have been eternity. I lived full lifetimes in that mattress store.
I asked the guy who worked there if I could hang out in the store for a while for this project. He said sure, and that they weren’t too busy this time of day (the morning). I guess I broke up the routine. Cheerful guy, he seemed. I wondered why he was working in such a quiet place and then remembered how it made me feel. I sat with my bag on a ledge in one of the windows (one without a Property Brother gazing softly yet intently out of it) and listened to the road and the voices of people outside. A few minutes in, I noticed an incredibly faint piano. Clair De Lune, playing on the radio. The guy who worked there took a phone call, something about lengths and tape measures and extras in the back. It might as well have been another language.
The mattress store has such an intense nothing happening in it. Far more potent than your average nothing, it had me entranced. I wasn’t displacing anyone by being there, or taking up space I shouldn’t. It felt like I belonged. Just another rectangle in the square that holds rectangles. It was like my entire existence coalesced at a single point inside of this mattress store. I find it mesmerizing how stepping into the four walls of the mattress store was like taking a single step and finding yourself on Pluto. I relaxed for the first time in too long, finally far enough away that my troubles couldn’t catch up.
Halfway into my stay I got up to walk around and take in the wide array of white, blue, or purple mattresses available. The guy who worked there (I never asked his name, which I regret) asked if I wanted to try out the mattresses. I couldn’t say no. I spent the rest of the time on two different mattresses. One was a fun little number from Tempur-Pedic, where you could adjust the incline of the head and feet. It felt like I was being cradled in the hand of a god. Like some unknowable thing with only benevolence in its heart and softness in its hands picked me up and held me for a while. During that time all I heard was the guy in the room stand up from and sit down in his creaky office chair like a feather, the thrum of the air conditioning, and the faint buzz of the wheels turning in the unfathomable hand as it loosened and tightened its grip on me. Something that sounded like the theme to Jurassic Park (but was not) floated softly down from the speakers. The other mattress was made by Purple, and it was purple. On it I felt like a hammock. Like my limbs were just little ropes and I was swaying in the breeze. Like everything would work itself out in the end.
Eventually I had to leave. I pulled myself up from the purple Purple mattress like I weighed nothing, slipped on my shoes and my bag and then slipped out the door. I said bye to the man working there, and thanked him. Then I walked home feeling like my nervousness had been burned away.
I don’t believe in heaven or hell but I think that, when I die, I want to go to the mattress store.
Kieran Mulligan is a junior studying theatre and creative writing. She plays the kazoo sometimes.
