B35
Collective Memory
Excerpt from collection:Call it Awash: Stories and aphorisms.

The other night

Vernon was asleep in bed
and I had the TV going, just sort of staring at it,
when out of nowhere he just starts sucking for breath
like his tongue got caught in his throat or something.
I looked at him and yelled “Vernon,”
but he just kept pulling from his lungs
for what felt like minutes
and didn’t open his eyes.
He had had three generous gins before we went into bed
so he was just that far gone I guess.
I said his name again, louder,
and he still just laid there choking.
He has this thing where every once in a while
he’ll stop breathing for a couple seconds in his sleep
like maybe he just forgot to, but this was different.
I remembered that I should turn him on his side
to take pressure off his chest and keep his tongue out of his throat,
but instead I just sat looking at him
with my eyes open just enough that if he woke up
he’d mistake me for sleeping.
The TV was trying to sell me a single-serve blender
and I was just sitting there watching my husband turn blue
and thinking about what he had said four hours earlier.

I had bought scratchers at the liquor store when I was getting his gin
and he waited until none of the cards won to criticize me for buying them.
“Glad we spent money on that,” he said.
That was all he said about it until after his second gin.
Then he started spilling words and spit out over his lips, smiling even,
when he told me that I was just like my mother,
which is just about the worst thing he could say to me and he knew it;
that’s why he was smiling.
Now I was watching that little dent at the bottom of his neck
pull in and release over and over,
getting faster and more desperate,
and thinking ‘roll him over!’
but not rolling him over.

I have an alibi, I thought.
I was sleeping and he was dead like this when I woke up.
In my head I rehearsed how I would tell the police
or the judge or whoever it is that you tell these things to.
I wondered if I would be able to muster up some tears in the moment.
But I can’t just let him die there.
“But wait, there’s more!” the TV said.
No matter what anyone says or how they make you feel or how free you’d feel after they choked to death
they don’t deserve to suffocate in bed, if it can be prevented.
We do have life insurance, though.
Goddammit just roll him over.
Then in all of his gasping he rolled over to his side and started breathing.
He was breathing so fast I was sure she would wake up
but he never did.
So everything turned out alright, in the end.

Ruth Crimson-Forde