Sticky

I didn’t mean to end up here. It was never my intention to stay. Honestly, it was supposed to be a joke. A way to scare my nieces and nephews, to send them running through the house screaming before ultimately dissolving into laughter and disbelief when they realized the monster in the attic was actually Auntie. But now I’m stuck. The false wall at the back of the attic snapped shut behind me and won’t budge.

 I can’t call anyone because the Airbnb we rented is way up in the Tennessee Smokies, and there’s no service. Still, I opened my phone and tried only to have the message bounce back to me, mocking little red exclamation point like a middle finger. On the bright side, I can still scare the kids… if they ever come back up here.

With my back against the wall, I wait for them to come up from the game room. I made a mistake assuming they would choose the attic space with the skywalk that stretched the length of the cabin over the Pin-Ball games, air hockey table, and foosball in the basement. I’ve been looking for a way to connect with them all weekend, but it’s just not working. I’m realizing that maybe I am not the “cool Auntie” I intended to be. Maybe I’m just the weird, off-putting Auntie. The Auntie with no kids and no partner. The one with tattoos and piercings and black clothing.

This family reunion was supposed to be an opportunity for everyone to reconnect, but it’s been more about fighting and complaining than bonding. My siblings all feel discontent and angry to me. They flash fake smiles and pass off their quibbling as normal, but to me, it adds to the tension and makes the measured conversations unbearable. Like everyone is hiding something profoundly troubling, and if they get too close to it, they’ll explode. I don’t know how I fit into the family anymore. I don’t want kids. I’m not married. I’m pretty sure I’m queer. I hate surface-level conversations. They make my skin crawl, but when I ask for something more, my siblings pull back, get distracted, laugh uncomfortably.

Maybe I should be trapped up here, protected from the misery downstairs. Free to be immersed in my weird little head. Alone. I pick at a run in the short taupe carpet; there’s a black quarter circle etched into it from where the fake wall opens and closes. As a kid, I would have loved this space. It’s small and secretive, the perfect place to hide from monsters or command a spaceship.

The piece of carpet I’ve been picking at starts to unravel. I let go so I don’t cause the run to deepen, but it’s stuck to my fingers. I try to pull it off with my other hand, but it’s like pulling on Silly String. The tacky strings catch between my fingers and coat my palms. The floor turns gooey, and I start to panic as my legs sink down a quarter inch, then a half inch. I try to free myself, but it’s no use. The more I struggle, the more I sink. I roll onto my belly and reach for the hatch door, but it’s sealed shut.

Faintly, I can hear my family calling for me downstairs. I scream for them as I start to slip beneath the carpet. They can’t hear me. They don’t know where I am. My legs dangle into empty space beneath the floor. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to know what lies under this sticky mess. I hold onto the lip of gluey carpet for as long as I can before it gives way, and I slip into darkness.

The next few minutes are disorienting. I zoomed downward like a child in a tube slide. Flashes of light and sporadic discontinuous sounds surround me. A feeling that I’ll be dumped into the open jaws of a waiting leviathan at any moment. My family left stumped, fearing that I had been dragged off by one of the black bears we had seen roaming the backyard earlier that day.

Just when I think the movement will never end, I come to a gentle stop. There’s water around me, and for a moment, I think I’m in the middle of the ocean, but then the details start to come into focus. There’s steam rising from the water and the gentle rumble of jets. The sky above is thick with stars, and there’s music playing.

My sister is sitting across from me. “You okay?” she asks, multicolored LED lights bouncing off her face.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”

“You kind of zoned out there.”

“Got relaxed, I guess.” I’m sitting in the hot tub at the Airbnb. I pat the top of the overly chlorinated water; it’s real. There’s a chilled glass of rosé next to me. I pick it up and sniff it. It smells like wine. I sip it. It tastes like wine.

“Hey, babe. I can’t get Logan to fall asleep,” a voice behind me says. I turn my head to see who it belongs to. A man with dark brown hair and brown eyes is standing near the back door, staring at me with a beer in hand. “She says she wants you,” he gestures to me. I point at myself, confused, trying to figure out who Logan is and why she would want me.

“Can you please just do it? I’ve been trying for an hour,” the man huffs.

“Sure, I guess,” I say, still trying to figure out who Logan is and why this man is asking me to put her to bed. As I leave the hot tub, the man removes his shirt, obviously ready to slip into the hot water. I stand momentarily on the steps, mulling over the question in my head and how detrimental it would be to say it out loud. I sigh and take the gamble. “Where is Logan?”

“In our room,” the man won’t make eye contact with me. His familiar disdain is throwing me off. I feel exposed in front of him as if he knows more about me than I do. To avoid looking stupid, I grab a towel from one of the chairs, wrap it around me, and head upstairs. I hope my room with Logan and the man is the same one I was in before slipping under the carpet.

I make my way up three flights of tight carpeted stairs, half expecting them to sink under my footsteps, and stand in front of my door, our door, the mysterious our.

My heart thumps in my ears as I push the door open. Sitting upright in the middle of the bed is a little girl about three years old with brown hair and green eyes.

“Mommy!” she exclaims. Fuck. What the hell? My stomach drops. Goosebumps prickle over my skin. Not me. I’m not your mommy. But there’s no one else around, and Logan is looking at me with absolute certainty. I can feel the connection to her crawling deep in my bones, into my heart. She’s mine, and I have no idea what to do with her. I don’t know how to get a toddler to sleep. I don’t know what she expects from me.

She’s staring at me. I should say something. “Hey…b-bubs..?” The pet name doesn’t feel right.

“What’s bubs?” she asks.

Shit. “Just a nickname I thought I’d try.”

“I’m not bubs. I’m LoLo.”

“That’s right,” I say, breathing a little. “You’re LoLo. Little LoLo.”

“No, just LoLo,” she says, crossing her arms.

Her constitution is jarring. She has more autonomy than I thought someone so young could possess. Bedtime was going to be trickier than I thought. I realize I’m still standing in the doorway, wrapped in a towel, terrified of the three-year-old sitting before me. I should go to her, right? Comfort her. Read her a bedtime story.

I walk over to the bed, snagging a crumpled sweatshirt on the desk, and throw it over my swimsuit.

“That’s daddy’s.”

“He won’t mind.” So, the brown-haired man is daddy. That means he’s… my…husband? The word sticks to the inside of my mind. I want to scoop it out and throw it against the wall, but it’s lodged in there now. “So, do you want me to read you a story? Or, I can make one up.”

“No, you can’t.”

“What? Yes, I can. That’s what I do. I’m an author.”

“You’re being silly. You’re a mommy.”

“That’s not all I am.”

“Yes, it is.”

So, my life is traditional. I have a husband. I have a kid. I gave up on my dreams. “I don’t write at all?” I ask.

“Noooo,” Logan says. “Can you read me Brown Bear Brown Bear?”

I pick up the book sitting on the bedside table and begin reading the familiar rhyme. What have I done? I didn’t do anything I said I wanted to do. I never wrote a novel. I never put myself out there. Did I climb? Was I adventurous? The extra fifteen pounds and the stiffness in my back said no, I was not adventurous. I doubt I did anything other than take care of Logan.

As soon as Logan fell asleep, I got up to search for the brown-haired man who was my husband. I needed to know more. Were we happy? How did we meet? Was he kind to me? Does he love me?

I notice a laptop on the desk. I opened it and entered my password. To my relief, it unlocks. I go to Word and click Recent. I smile. I’m still writing, perhaps in secret, but I’m still doing it. The pieces are filled with experiences I’ve never had and people I’ve never met. They’re bewildering and alluring and give me hope that I haven’t given up on myself. I find anecdotes of love for Zack, my husband, and hilarious quips about things Logan does. After reading a few stories, I head downstairs.

My brothers, sisters, and their spouses are talking loudly in the hot tub. Zack is talking with my brother-in-law about insurance. I slip out of the sweatshirt and step into the hot tub.

“Hey! She’s back. You get Logan down?” One of my sisters asks.

“Yeah. I did. Brown Bear Brown Bear knocked her right out.”

“Mom for the win. Hear that, dads?”

The men on the other side of the tub smirk begrudgingly before returning to their conversation.

“Here, I put a little ice in it so it wouldn’t get warm,” Zack says, handing me my glass of rosé. He kisses me on the cheek. “Thanks for taking care of Logan. You’ve got the magic touch. I get frustrated when she won’t go down for me. Makes me feel like a bad dad.” I will myself to look into his eyes. He’s handsome and tired. He has smile lines around his eyes and a dimple on his chin. He’s clean-cut, average, definitely not my type, but I can tell in the way everyone else disappears for a moment that he’s good to me. We’re bound by something other than obligation. My anxieties melt away.

I sip my wine and listen to the conversations. Zack slipped his arm over my shoulders; it was comfortable and alarming, like Déjà vu. There’s still a lot of complaining between my siblings, but now it’s twinged with a tone of sacrifice I hadn’t noticed before. Their lives are more complicated now but ever fuller, too. Maybe in my quest to do things differently, I have barred myself from experiencing unknown satisfaction. Maybe I’ve always despised this life because I’ve always been afraid of this life. I see why. It’s frightening to have so much to love. So much to lose. Their dreams may be better than mine ever were. I think I can do this. Live this life. Meld the traditional with the non-traditional. Love Zack and love Logan and still be myself. I think I’ll stay here on the sticky side.