Every Day Just The Same

I open my eyes.

I am lying in a bed, with a puffy patchwork quilt and tissue-thin sheets pulled up to my chin. Two windows on the wall render the sky a flat, dull shade of blue. Pink curtains lay flush against the violet wallpaper, whose paisley pattern shrinks away into the shadows of the dim corners. Against one wall rests a petite nightstand; on the other, a lavender-colored boudoir, doors ajar, big enough to walk inside. Within, I spy the silver glint of a mirror.

I sit up, the bedspread falling to my lap, and find myself wearing a scratchy terrycloth bathrobe. The mattress is thin and lumpy with a hard frame beneath, I find, after indenting it with my fingertips. Somehow, my spine isn’t moaning with pain after sleeping on it. A smell of disuse lingers in the air, a scent of too many exhales and not enough inhales. I fill my lungs with it, then try and fail to remember how I arrived here.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!”

I glance over. Framed in the doorway is a girl: tall, with long blonde waves tamed by a white headband. Her dress is green gingham—puffed sleeves and a long skirt made for twirling in, just like one I wanted when I was young—and she is daintily propped up in white heels. Savannah—that’s right, named for her eyes, the color of a hot summer morning—gives me a delicate, pastel smile. “Aren’t you getting up? We have a busy day today.”

“Um…yes.” I slide my legs out of the sheets and slip my feet into the chunky sandals waiting at my bedside. The fuchsia carpet is plush, trailing fuzz between my toes, but I can feel the hard press of wooden boards just underneath.

“Do you remember how we always did it?”

I shake my head, half expecting to see mental fog wisping from my ears.

“That’s okay. Here, every day is just the same.” Savannah links my arm in the crook of her elbow. Her skin is cold. “I know it’ll come back to you soon.”

“First is breakfast, of course,” she tells me as we float down the steep spiral staircase. I am now wearing a denim dress with a high, pointed collar, and the descent sends air fluttering against my thighs. Savannah leads me into a snug kitchen complete with a stove, sink, and microwave oven. A white plastic table and matching chairs bunch together at the center of the tiled floor. Cheery teal wallpaper, wooden cupboards, a striped backsplash—touches that would have been all the rage back in the ‘70s.

I wobble a bit in my sandals, frowning. “Oh, I don’t know. I usually just have a coffee…”

“Nonsense! It’s the most important meal of the day,” she cries, opening the boxy refrigerator. I brace for a blast of cold air, but none comes. In the blink of an eye, she sets two cups, two plates, and a paper drink carton onto the table. I hadn’t even seen her grab a pan. “Breakfast is served! Come sit.”

I sit. A cartoon orange slice is printed on the carton, next to a yellow sun radiating squiggly rays. On my plate sits two perfectly blob-shaped sunny-side-up eggs and a wavy strip of bacon, arranged in the shape of a smiley face. Savannah props herself up in the chair next to me. “A happy breakfast means you’ll have a happy day,” she chirps.

The yolk-eyes ogle at me. I squint back. Where had I heard that before? “Someone used to tell me that. I used to—”

My thoughts slip from my grasp like ribbons caught in the wind. All of a sudden, I am hungry. I bring my spoon to my mouth, again and again, tasting nothing; the food is gone before I know it.

“See?” Savannah beams at me. “Now let’s go have a happy day, just like always.”

I smile back at her, the sense of unease in my gut loosening. Perhaps I could use to have a happy day. Perhaps I could use to have a happy day, like always.

Savannah leads me into the parlor. In opposite corners squat a matching linen sofa and armchair; a standing lamp bows its head between them, its bulb dark. A thin bookshelf sports a rainbow of books in unusually even rows. A vase of white lilies stands ten-hut atop the low coffee table. Surreptitiously I sniff one of the blooms: plastic and dust. Against the far wall looms a grandfather clock, hands set at noon-thirty.

“It’s time for our daily chores!” Savannah presses the handle of a vintage-looking Dyson into my hands and attaches a feather duster to her own. Mechanically I begin to vacuum the carpet, making long sweeps across the room.

Savannah swats at the mantel, her back to me. “Don’t forget to sing the vacuuming song!”

I pause. “The—what?”

Savannah’s eye twinkles, as if remembering an inside joke I’ve been left out of. “You must remember the vacuuming song, silly! We used to be afraid of the vacuum cleaner, until you made up a little song to drown out the noise. Now, how does it go again?”

Something inside me clicks into place, and unwittingly I start to hum a simple, bubblegum tune. How had I forgotten it? Though my voice is rusty and my memory faltering, slowly the melody of the vacuuming song rises through the house, fighting for ground against the silence.

At the finale I elongate the last few notes, mind whirling like a child’s top just out of reach. Savannah gives the baseboards one final flourish. “Spic-and-span! Next is story time.”

She settles me into the parlor armchair, pressing a book into my hands. “STORY BOOK,” reads the canvas cover. It is wide, the size of an atlas, and roughly made, with uneven edges and massive crooked stitches marching up the spine. I crack it open and flip through the very few pages. Yellowed at the edges, and brittle with age. All blank.

Savannah perches on the couch facing me. Her eyes are unblinking, her smile expectant. She has pulled the couch’s sham pillow—a lump of mincy embroidery—into her lap.

“There’s nothing here for me to read.” I show her the empty pages.

Savannah’s arms tighten around the pillow. “But you always tell the stories. Remember the one about the adventures of the lady pirate? And the one about the squirrel family living in the garden?”

My temples throb as if trying to squeeze juice from my head. I offer her the book. “Can’t you read to me today?”

The walls seem to press in around us, hovering too close at the edge of my vision. The shadow of the grandfather clock lengthens, creeping nearer and nearer to the foot of my chair. Savannah’s voice darkens. “No, I can’t. You’re the one that reads to me. That’s how it goes, every day.”

A barrier snaps, and I gasp. Memories tinkle past my mind’s eye like shards of a broken mirror. Me, tucking into smiley-face eggs and bacon, fried up by my father in hopes of a happy day. Me, humming the vacuuming song against the drone of my mother’s Dyson in the next room. Me again, reading aloud from a children’s storybook, Savannah nestled close in my lap. Idyllic and true, but just as bygone, just as dated as the kitchen décor.

I blink, my view coalescing into focus. For the first time today, I see my surroundings—this room, this house, this girl—as they truly are: imitations. Eternal, yet hollow. “Savannah, I’m sorry. I can’t stay with you any longer.”

Savannah tilts her head. “But we still have so much more to do! We’re supposed to do laundry, and cook dinner, and take a bubble bath, and—”

Grabbing her hand, I pull her into the bedroom—the single bedroom, with a single bed, for the one and only person who really lives here. Stepping up to the lavender boudoir, I fling open the doors. The two of us stare into the mirror.

Savannah’s skin is smooth, pore-less and wrinkle-less, fixed in a caricature of beauty. Her summer-morning eyes are open wide, too wide to be natural, and glisten with a glassy sheen. She holds her posture stick-straight, heels aloft as if balanced on the edge of something, teetering so as not to fall. She is in the prime of her youth: is, always has been, and always will be. But I am undeniably old, older than when I last knew her. Curls still frame my face, but they are more silver than brown. Deep creases subdivide the skin near my temples, on my forehead, beside my cheeks. Laugh lines, worry lines, they are called. The price I have paid for a life of joy and heartbreak. My eyes are smaller, but they glisten, too, from the tears I hold back.

“Don’t you see?” I murmur. “I don’t belong here.”

The house is silent. The clock downstairs still reads noon-thirty.

Slowly, Savannah sinks to the edge of the bed. I follow. Her skirt creases against the quilt, and I reach out and finger its checked fabric. “I love this. I used to—”

“—want one just like it,” she interrupts. “I know. You told me.”

I look deep into her glass eyes. The same smile remains painted on her pastel lips, but something about it now looks sad, very sad.

“You don’t have to frown,” she tells me. “Not here.”

“You don’t have to smile.”

“I do.” She makes a little huffing sound, the child of a chuckle and a sigh. “I’m meant to be happy, every day, even when you aren’t. Especially when you aren’t.”

I study the veins rippling over the back of my palm, and bite my lip until it hurts.

“You could stay here with me, you know.” Savannah reaches over, takes my hand with her cold, plastic fingers. “We can live in this house together, and have eggs and bacon and for breakfast, and do our chores, and read stories, and tell each other goodnight. You’ll never have to be unhappy again, if every day is just the same.”

It is my turn to smile, ever so sadly. “My dear friend. We’ve had some wonderful times, you and I. But living every day just the same is not a life.”

Savannah’s face swims in my vision. I squeeze her palm one last time as warm, watery sorrow wends its way down my cheek. And then…I really open my eyes.

I am lying in my bed, with cozy flannel sheets and a navy comforter piled haphazardly at my waist. A curling bouquet of daffodils blooms in a vase atop my chest of drawers, their floral scent an ongoing gift from my sixtieth birthday. My closet doors hang open, their innards stuffed to the brim with a lifetime of clothing. Tawny morning light shines through the blinds to stripe the opposite wall, like lines of a blank notepad in which to inscribe a new day.

I sit up, the bedspread falling to my lap, and am greeted by the old, familiar ache in my lower spine. At my bedside is Savannah’s house—as tall as my knee—with its thin fuzzy carpet, its ‘70s kitchen, its grandfather clock forever set at noon-thirty. Next to it, a cardboard box labeled “DONATIONS” sits open and waiting.

I smudge the tears from my face and stand. Gently, I lower the beautiful house into the box. I hesitate a moment. I can’t see Savannah—her beautiful dress is cloaked by the shadows of other toys—but I know she is smiling up at me, telling me it’s okay to let her go.

With care, I press a kiss to the top of the dollhouse, then close the lid.