Night Sweats
by Amy Lyons
My husband is curled on the pull-out and I’m soaked on the ottoman, Googling menopause. In fairness, the dog’s commandeering of the chair took valiant effort. I can’t kick her off. She struggled to climb, circle, and settle while the cone of shame slaughtered her peripheral vision, undid her balance like vodka-spiked kibble, widened her head into an unwieldy megaphone. She’s positively Elizabethan in the moonglow. Four techs fought to restrain her pre-op.
Wet paint in the bedrooms forced us to decamp down here. I campaigned for hippopotamus grey in the master but my husband vetoed with ancient sky. The kids claim they don’t care what colors cling to the walls they’ve escaped, but opinions will flare at Christmas dinner. They don’t have a say on the roommate we found to dig out of post-layoff debt. I thrill at the thought of a strange woman leaving a sliver of bar soap in the half-bath, peeling a carrot over the wastebasket, tucking her condiments and mugs between ours.
The pancakes I could take or leave, it’s the syrup that sets me craving at this time of night. A battery of hairline fractures sustained from fork tines puts our best pan past its nonstick prime. It can’t perform unbuttered. Spatulas disappear in this house like socks tumble-dried into the void.
The bathroom lighting is new, the best in the house. I go there to revise my cover letters. Hard and cool, it’s the toilet seat that finally lowers my body temperature, to whom it may concern. LinkedIn says my bullet points lack leadership verbs.
I text my daughter not to talk but to pour part of myself inside her dorm, lay my words down near a twin bed, a wooden desk, a caddy of makeup, a view of the great hall, two pairs of shower shoes, a syllabus.
Amy Lyons has had recent work in Lunch Ticket, Literary Mama, and The Independent. Her work has been supported and recognized by a residency at Millay Colony for the Arts, a fellowship from The Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and an Honorable Mention from Miami Book Fair's 2020 Emerging Writer Fellowship in Fiction.
