THE TRAMPOLINE

BY MATTHEW LEVY

“I wish you would come home.”

Maggie, young, fragile-looking, with bright blond hair, stares at her husband. Her face is still and as she exhales, her breath appears in the cold.

“It just doesn’t feel right without you. Like I’m doing something wrong...”

Maggie tilts her head down; she stares at the ground beneath her.

“I...I guess I’m frustrated. I don’t understand it, any of it. It’s all bullshit, really, all of it. None of it ever really mattered to you; I mean, how could you?” She catches herself.

Maggie fails to choke back tears; she wipes her eyes with the gray sleeve of her sweater, and when she can no longer bear to look at him, she turns away; she stares up at the pinetrees surrounding her towering over her consuming her. She glances past the trees, up at the sun; it’s bright. The light shines through her pale, sickly skin, and she remembers a feeling once present, but now blown away by time of happiness.

Maggie thinks back to when she and her husband and their kids were happy. She remembers how Dave would come home from work every day and play for hours on end with their two daughters. He’d push the girls on a little swing-set they had in the backyard, yelling “Underdog!” as he sent them flying. He’d sprint with them down the street, waving his wallet in the air, trying to catch the attention of the ice-cream truck man; Maggie, all the while, would just sit back on an old lawn chair and watch the show.

There was this one weekend in the middle of June; on Friday, Dave came home from work with a trampoline completely disassembled. He and Maggie spent all of Saturday trying to build it, and on Sunday, it was finished. The girls had a blast. At this point, Dave and Maggie were both sitting on lawn-chairs, drinking lemonade, and watching their two daughters bounce up and down on something that they'd built together.

Dave looked at Maggie...or Maggie looked at Dave...and one of them suggested that they climb up on the trampoline and bounce around. Maggie can’t quite remember, now, what her youngest daughter, Elise, was shouting. If it was, “Come on, Mommy! Come on with us!” Or “Mommy, Daddy, come on and jump!” she doesn’t know. She just knows that bouncing up and down on that trampoline with her husband and two daughters as a family WAS her happiness. And after hours of jumping around and playing, and singing songs, the trampoline broke. The bottom tore; there was something wrong with one of the springs, and the whole family fell onto the wet, sticky grass still laughing all the while.

Maggie’s oldest daughter, Amber, said something “I love you” is what Maggie remembers, and in that moment, Maggie found her purpose. She turned to her husband. “Life’s not all that bad with you in it.” And with a smile, he said... something. She can’t remember the exact words; the memory is so faded now still, deteriorating as time goes by. Timeislikeadisease, she thinks to herself. The more it passes, the less it leaves behind. She wonders what will happen to all of her memories: The swing-set, the ice-cream truck, the trampoline will they all slip through the tears?

Maggie’s shaking now not just because it’s cold; tears stream out of her eyes, freezing on the surface of her face. She holds a bouquet of flowers in one hand. Roses, just like the ones they had in their backyard. She kneels down on one knee, the same way he had when he proposed to her, and she places the flowers on his grave.

Engraved:“Lifewasn’tallthatbadwithyouinit.”