We meet at three o'clock in front of one of the numerous home stores that seem to pop up out of nowhere. (Actually, I waited for Matthew to show outside, but that's of no consequence.) The July heat has reached its peak and he and I have adjusted our business attire to comfort our bodies as best we could. Even though it is Saturday, we're both working. Last Saturday our bed, a monstrosity of wood, gave out beneath us, taking our mattress with it, so we'd decided to replace them together. We originally didn't want to spend a week sleeping on a broken bed and uncomfortable mattress that, but of course, things came up. A deadline of Matthew's was moved up, and I took on a new client and things got busy. Today is the first day in a week that we had open blocks in our schedules to spend time together and we were going to spend our little block of time in Home Galore! It can be depressing if you really think about it. The first time in a week I spend with my husband that's not spent with one of us unconscious and we're spending it in a place filled with cardboard couples.

Their cookie cutter smiles annoy me as we make our way from the front of the store to the bed section. I'd much rather be having lunch or something far more interesting, but I know that I can't trust Matthew to pick out a bed on his own. The fiend that has fallen had been one of the things he'd brought into the marriage home, and the biggest compromise I'd made in our marriage. Even when we were dating, I hated the huge carved headboard with the odd angles that turned into ugly faces in the darkness. When I confessed that to Matthew after the first night I slept in the bed (stupidly), he laughed as though I'd been joking. I never brought it up again, and when it came time for us to choose what we'd keep and what we'd sell, my tiny full bed lost to his king sized one. I hate that he is to be so damn big in so many ways. It seems like he is always commanding space and attention when I least want him to. Even his name takes up more space than mine. Matthew (never Matt) and Alex. Three more letters, twelve more inches, and on and on it goes.

A week of uncomfortable sleep and a demanding new client is not making me the nicest person, though Matthew probably hasn't noticed. We seem to take turns getting home before one another and falling asleep before the other spouse returned home. It was an ugly routine, and we'd only recently fallen into it. The advertising firm Matthew works for is beginning to recognize my husband's genius and a promotion is being dangled in front of his face. Honestly even if the promotion wasn't on the line, Matthew would be working his butt off because he's a self motivator. He wants every client to be 100% satisfied or nothing at all. I think his mother best described him as a ‘bulldog with a bone'. He doesn't let go.
I on the other hand, can let go. But when you're an events manager for a fast growing firm, you do tend to put a little hustle into what you're doing. The announcement that our firm was granted the privilege of putting together the city's most anticipated fundraiser, The Toast of the Town, definitely had me hustling. There were planning sessions, board members to impress and about a million other things to get started. That, along with my other events and my social obligations only made it impossible for us to spend more than twenty minutes together. The last time we even had sex was... Oh my God, I don't remember. What kind of wife forgets the last time she preformed her wifely duties?
Wait! A week from Thursday. It had to be Thursday because I had a bride cancel a consultation. We had a quickie before we had dinner with some friends at that new restaurant I'd been dying to go to.

"Can I help you?"

The salesman. They're always lurking aren't they? This one is young, about the same age as my brother-in-law James. Only he doesn't have the gift of Vreeland DNA. His blue eyes are small and beady, and though he has a nice shaped face, he's not exactly the guy I imagine selling us a bed. Life insurance maybe, but not a bed.

Matthew gives me a look before answering the question as though he wants to make sure I feel included in the response. In a voice that I can now pick out of a crowd of hundreds, he tells the man what we're looking to purchase and tacks on a generous price range. Say what I will about Matthew but he has a way of putting things to people so that they light up in appreciation or satisfaction. The sales clerk lights up as he is suppose to at that added tidbit. Encouraging us to follow him, he starts toward a model in the back, shooting off facts as we trail behind him like dogs after their master.

As he raves to Matthew about a sleek bed frame that would lift us about fifty inches off the floor, I look around us at the various shapes and models. Where Matthew is probably seeing the difference between their heights and their prices, I'm seeing a completely different side to these beds. My eyes settle on an oak sleigh bed and my mind asks if I wanted to conceive our first child in a bed named for a mode of transportation for Santa Clause. The bed next to it is a canopy, but I can't see Matthew comfortably sleeping in it because it is too girly. The modern one beside that is neither my taste nor Matthew's with its odd copper color and unusual angles. I can't imagine our children jumping on the one next to that and the one beside that is entirely too low on the ground. One right after another has something wrong with it; I can't see any of them fitting into our home or our life.

We needed a bed that is sturdy. Matthew's build demanded that quality. It would have to be stylish too because there is no way I would re-decorate the entire room just to suit that one piece of furniture. Sturdy and stylish, wasn't that what Matthew's grandmother had said about us when we took the wedding pictures to her nursing home for her to see? No she said something like ‘You two look solid and smart together.' That's almost the same thing isn't it? At the time I'd written it off to her dementia, but maybe she'd been seeing something.

If I had a problem, I can always call Matthew. Even if he doesn't have an immediate solution for me, he does have the comfort of being there for me. And he does have the talent of being there even when he isn't. The last time he was out of town, he'd left notes in the oddest of places. Everyday I'd discover a post-it that proclaimed that he loved me, or a slip of paper in my pocket that reminded me that he'd call me that night. Those simple gestures pulled him out of my heart and filled the room with him.

So I'm mad that he is working all the time. I'm working all the time too. He takes comfort in work; it's something he's good at. All those years of being Andrew's little brother had melted away when he discovered his talent for advertising his first year of college. I did not know him then, but I could see it in the Vreeland family albums. All the ones of him before college were of Matthew struggling to fit in Andrew's shoes. Pretending he wanted letters in three sports and felt that student council was important for his college transcripts. Wasn't it me who'd looked at those pictures the first time he took me home and known that I would have never fallen in love with that person? So why am I forgetting how much work makes him the person that I am in love with?

Mulling over the question, I frown as I turn to look at my husband. The salesperson is explaining something to him, and Matthew is focusing on what he is saying. His green eyes meet the man's and his head bobs at the appropriate times. A passerby might think he is being too animated to be paying attention, but I know better. Attention is important to him. Growing up in the middle of the shuffle, he feels like he had to fight for it all the time, so he'd very careful when it comes to attention. He readily gives it to whoever with little regret or impatience. It's one of the things I liked best about him the day we first met. Crowded bar, noisy and smoke-filled and he was still managing to hold to give his complete attention to everyone he engaged in conversation. Matthew doesn't even know this, but I watched him for a full thirty minutes before I worked up the nerve to have a friend introduce us. I think I was already in love with who he appeared to be then. My friend Marguerite says that I'm lucky that did not doom our relationship from the start. When you fall in love with something you think is real only to find out that reality isn't that perfect, the disappointment can be devastating, at least according to her.

I'm trying to think if Matthew's ever been disappointing and there is nothing. Not that we're perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but there's nothing big. He leaves the toilet seat up sometimes, regards ESPN as the only real ‘news' network on television, and reverts back to childhood when it comes to his brothers, but that's normal man stuff. He's never forgotten something truly important or hit me or intentionally hurt me. No, until recently I have never been annoyed this long with Matthew. The voice in the back of my head also informs me that he's never been this busy before. It's been our unspoken rule that I come first with him and he comes first with me.

"So baby, what do you think?"

"I'm mad at you." I answer without thinking, but I don't regret it. The salesperson looks like a dear caught in headlights, but Matthew seems like he was expecting my answer. I swear I see a slight smile as he asks the clerk to give us a minute.

The man scrambles off, eager not to witness customers engage in a marital spat. Matthew's attention turns back to me once the little man is gone. "This isn't about the bed."

"No. This isn't about the bed. It's about the fact that I had to schedule this time to see you and even now we're not spending this time alone. We're in a home store picking out a bed."

"We do need a bed Alex."

His understanding tone only makes me angrier. Like he's talking to a child throwing a temper tantrum or something. "Don't be reasonable. I hate it when you're being reasonable and I'm talking about feelings."

He is holding in a laugh, I can see that as it sparkles in his eyes. "Alright then. What exactly is it that you are feeling Alex?"

The question makes me feel shy for some reason or another. I pause before offering my answer. "I feel silly that the only reason I'm seeing you today is because we have to pick out a bed. I feel like we don't see each other just cause any more. Remember when we used walk by each other's apartments just cause we were hoping the other one would be home?" Matthew smiled at the memory. It had actually been his practice to walk by my apartment to see if I was home, but I never let him be alone in being a fool in love. "You do remember. Now tell me would those two people schedule time to see each other and spend it doing anything that wasn't horizontal and involving a bed?"

His laugh finally escapes and I find myself being hugged before I even realize he intended to hug me. "I missed you this week." I answer back that I missed him too, but it is muffles against the fabric of his shirt.

"Um... Sir, ma'am?" I turn my head to find that the sales clerk has returned, his face unsure. Giving him a reassuring smile, I almost laugh aloud when he asks "Have you made a decision yet?"