The Night Before

What it's like to travel with my wife. A "true" story.

We agreed to start packing by eight. But execution rarely follows agreement in this relationship. There’s always an excuse: tired from work, a sudden urge to clean the already-cleaned kitchen, a headache. At nine forty-seven, she finally comes up to the bedroom. I had been there since eight as agreed, folding laundry, organizing clothes, making checklists. She stands in the doorway of her closet with a mug she isn’t drinking from.

“Do you know where the dress is that I wore to the wedding last year?” she asks, like I wore it last.

She drifts from the closet and settles on the bed, pushing the suitcase I carefully laid out for her, and turns on the TV. I turn to my dresser and pull it open. Shirts first. I take out what I need and a few extras. There’s a system I have to traveling. It’s not so much overpacking as overcompensating for the fact I sweat and I’m clumsy.

When I turn back, Daisy has made her grand entrance. She’s settled into one side of the suitcase, folded neatly into herself. I pause, a shirt half-folded in my hands, and consider the logistics of removing her. She blinks slowly, which I’ve come to understand is not affection so much as a dare. I take it as the warning she likely means and start building around her, shifting the stack to the other side, leaving a small border of untouched space around her.

“Are you going to start packing?” I ask her.

“Yeah, I’m thinking about what I need,” she says, her eyes not moving from the TV.

I continue packing, returning to the dresser for shorts and pants.

“Have you seen my green shirt?” she asks.

I freeze. I think back to the clothes I folded earlier. I don’t remember seeing a green shirt.

I turn around and face her. “Did you put it in the hamper?”

“No,” she says, getting up. “I left it downstairs when I changed for my conference call.”

And then the gut-punch. “I guess it didn’t get washed,” she says, her eyes flicking to me, like somehow, I was supposed to know it was left in a wad next to her desk.

“And I guess you’re wanting it for the trip?” I ask her.

“Yeah. It’ll work for dinner the night we get there.”

I put the pants in the suitcase. Daisy still doesn’t move. “Is there anything else that needs to be washed before I put this on?”

She nods. “Just check by my desk, there might be some other clothes there.”

Grumbling, I leave the bedroom and make my way downstairs, through the living room, down to the basement. I look on the side of her desk and find three shirts, a pair of socks that look like they’ve been dragged through mud, and a pair of sweatpants with a hole in the leg. I collect them all and put them in the quick wash cycle, setting the countdown timer on my phone to come back in 30 minutes.

I return to the bedroom and continue packing. Underwear now.

She’s still on the bed. Still watching TV. Still not packing. I place the underwear in the suitcase, and go for socks.

“I’m almost packed,” I say, as I return with a handful of matched socks. “Are you going to start packing?”

“I had a really bad day at work today. Give me a few minutes,” she says.

“Babe, we need to get going here. Five AM is going to come before you know it.”

“What time is our flight again?”

“Seven thirty,” I say. But that’s a lie. It’s at eight fifteen, but we’ll miss the plane if she knows that. This is not my first rodeo with her.

Daisy is still in the suitcase. I shoo her out and use the space to pack dress shoes and slides, then close my suitcase, pull the handle out, and set it on the floor next to the bed.

“Okay, I’m packed. How can I help you?”

“I need underwear,” she says. Nodding, I go to her drawer and pull out a handful, counting them as I hand them to her. She hands me three pair back.

“I don’t like these kind, they’re uncomfortable. Give me more of these kind,” she says, holding a black pair up.

I grab another handful and hand them to her. “I don’t know what kind those are. Pick what you want and I’ll put the rest back.”

The timer on my phone chimes and vibrates. The laundry’s done. I leave the room and make my way downstairs to the laundry room. I flip the laundry into the dryer and set it to “quick dry.” I note the time to completion, set my timer again, and make my way back up.

When I return to the room, she’s on her hands and knees in her closet.

“Have you seen my slingback heels?” she asks.

“Uh.. No,” I say, as I pull a backpack out of the top of my closet for carry-on items.

“I found one in here, but I can’t find the other,” she says, standing up.

She takes a step back as I move in. I find the missing heel, not in the shoe rack I bought her, but dangling by the straps from the third shelf, held in place by a folded wool sweater I’ve never seen her wear.

I hand it to her and go back to packing the carry-on. I pack the extra chargers, a charging cord for my phone, and begin packing my medicine. When I turn around again, she’s sitting on the bed. The underwear exists in two piles now: one in the suitcase next to where Daisy landed next, one off to the side.

I look over to her. “So what’s next?”

“Pants,” she says, “and I still can’t find the dress I want to take.”

“Did you look?”

“Not really.”

I close my eyes and breathe out through my nose. “Do you think it’s in the other closet?”

“Maybe. I didn’t look.”

I don’t say anything, I just leave the room and walk to the spare bedroom. I open the closet and there it is, along with several of her other dresses, the ones she doesn’t wear often. The ones she moved last summer when she decided she had too many options in her closet.

I take all of them and return to the bedroom. She still hasn’t moved. Neither has Daisy.

“You didn’t need to bring them all,” she says, as I hang them from the top drawer of her dresser.

“You tell me which ones you want, and I’ll pack them,” I tell her.

She looks at the dresses for a solid minute while I wait.

“The blue one and the black one,” she says.

I nod and pick them out, carefully folding and putting them in the suitcase.

Then the phone alarm. Laundry. I grab a basket and take it down to the basement again, collecting her laundry and bringing it back up. I set the basket on the bed, and look over at her suitcase. Two pair of pants have joined the underwear and the dresses, along with a lone pair of socks.

“I can’t find my socks,” she says.

I walk over to her dresser and open her sock drawer. At least twenty pairs in there, various colors and styles.

“Which ones?” I ask.

She walks over and digs around in the drawer, pulling out a few pairs.

“My favorites aren’t in here,” she says. “The fuzzy ones I like to wear at night.”

“When did you last wear them?” I ask.

“Sometime last month,” she replies.

I look over at the clock. It’s midnight.

“Babe, forget it,” I say. “This is why I told you to start packing a few days ago. So we could find this stuff and we weren’t scrambling like we are.”

“I know,” she says softly. “It’s just so hard to pack.”

“What’s hard? You put clothes in a box, zip it up and call it a day.”

She doesn’t answer me. She just mindlessly plays with the cuff of one of the pairs of pants in her suitcase.

“What time are we leaving again?”

“Five Thirty.”

“Okay,” she says, and gets up.

She putters around for another thirty minutes or so, spending time picking specific shirts, specific outfits for specific days. I fold the laundry, help her find a few things, and then ask her four times if that’s all she wanted to pack. We shut off the lights at one in the morning.

***

My alarm sounds at five. I don’t want to get up, but I do anyway. I quickly shower, get dressed, brush my teeth, and pack my toiletries. She sleeps through most of it, stirring at five thirty when I make her get up, threatening her that we’re going to miss our flight. She completes the same steps, and I pack her toiletries with mine. My suitcase comes up on the bed long enough for me to put the ziplock bag in it.

We make our way downstairs, me carrying both suitcases. She handles the carry-on. Daisy follows us. We stop in the kitchen and I feed her. We’re having the neighbors take care of her while we’re gone, the cans of food stacked on the table, a short note left on feeding instructions.

We load the car, I put the suitcases in the trunk and hop into the driver’s seat. When my wife shuts the door to the passenger side, I look over at her.

“Got everything?” I ask.

“I think so.”

“Toothbrush?”

“Yep.”

“Deodorant? Because you stink.” I raise an eyebrow.

“Yep.”

“Phone charger?”

She doesn’t answer. She just looks at me, her eyes wide.

“I charged my phone last night at my desk. I—”

I’m out of the door before she has a chance to finish. I go to her desk and find the charging cable wrapped around her work laptop cable. Three infuriating minutes of untangling wires while contorted over the desk and it’s free.

I make my way back to the car, get in, and shut the door.

“Anything else?” I ask her.

“No, I think that’s it.”

I look over at her again. “Are you sure?”

She nods back at me. “Positive.”

I start the car and put it in gear, and we drive away.

When we reach the end of the alley, I look over at her, a look of panic on her face.

“I forgot to pack a belt.”

I shake my head and sigh. “We’ll buy a new one when we get there.”

---

This is a response to day 6 of Bradley Ramsey’s “Halls of Pandemonium” writing event. Although I’m not participating in the scoring portion of the event (you know, since I, uh… wrote the backend for it), likes, comments and restacks will (maybe) help us achieve community goals and spread the word about the challenge.