Trampoline by Jonny TwoxFour

On Christmas Eve night Britany McConnell and Christian McConnell went outside to set up a trampoline for their children. Trampolines had been formative to both Britany and Christian; a place to learn to flip before the big exposition of the diving board at the pool once summer came around, a place to lay down and say something corny about stars for the first time like that if you look at them for long enough it feels like you’re bathing in them and a place to have a first kiss, which both of them had had on a trampoline but not with each other. 

Britany’s kiss was bad. She wanted to be kissed in the seventh grade, but she also wanted to just jump on her trampoline with her crush. Austin Powers (his family didn’t know the movie would be such a big deal) asked if they could sit down after jumping only about three good jumps and she had hated that. He told her he thought they should kiss and then they did. It was tight lipped and only lasted for a second. It was the type of kiss she gave her parents before bed and a little she was devastated. There was none of the passion she’d seen in movies and teen Nickelodeon dramas. Austin Powers said he had a lot to think about after the kiss. He climbed off her trampoline and never spoke to her for the rest of the seventh or eighth grade, or ever again. Britany was glad for it. Austin Powers got into a terrible car accident his senior year of high school and died. He’d gone to a different high school than Britany so she didn’t really know the person he’d become and definitely didn’t know if he’d come to any conclusions about what he had to think about after their kiss. She was not sad about him dying when he died, only that people die at all.

Christian’s kiss was the kind maybe Britany had imagined. It was at night and his parents didn’t know his girlfriend, Madison, was coming over or that Christian was not in his bed but on their trampoline in their backyard. Christian and Madison never even jumped because they were in a hurry. Madison was supposed to be at a sleepover at Christian’s neighbor Connie’s house. Connie had eczema and sometimes Christian would look at her dry patchy skin in algebra and think about all the lepers Jesus healed and wonder if Connie believed in Jesus. Madison’s skin was divine. So soft. When she was climbing onto the trampoline her butt crack showed a little from her hipster jeans and her butt skin looked just as soft as her nose, her wrists, her belly he’d felt when he flicked her belly button ring while she was showing people in the back of the gym once. He asked if Connie knew she was with him. Madison said, “Yeah, but she’s asleep and doesn’t care.” Christian wondered if Madison was wearing her belly button ring. He thought she probably was because he’d heard that the holes close up if you take them out. He suddenly felt overwhelmed with needing to see her belly button ring and asked her if she had it on. She said, “you’re so weird,” and lifted up her shirt a little to show him the dangling silver seahorse. He said, “I think it’s sexy,” and she said, “you’re so weird.” He flicked it again the way he had in the gym and she laughed now like she had then. He rested his hand on her belly and she got goosebumps. He kissed her. They both used tongue. They both used too much tongue and had to wipe their faces off afterwards. She told him she should go back to Connie’s. 

Christian did talk to Madison again after she left his trampoline but only until the end of middle school. She too, like Britany’s Austin Powers, went to a different high school and like Britany’s Austin Powers died as a young person a year after she graduated from college while giving birth. Christian always felt weird when he thought of her now because he remembered so distinctly finding out about her death from a friend and immediately wondering if his baby would have killed her. 

As they set up their children’s trampoline, Britany and Christian thought of their kisses in this setting. They looked at each other and thought about the twenty years of sex they’d had and sort of both, in a silly way but in a way they couldn’t help, thought, “What if my first kiss knew then about all the sex I’d have.” They imagined going back with their twenty years of experience to their middle school bodies and really giving it to Austin Powers and Madison; straddling them, holding their waists confidently, kissing them well. Wouldn’t they have been shocked? Maybe it would have changed everything if during their first kiss they had proved themselves using the technique of someone with twenty plus years of sex. Maybe people would hear it about them and very early on no one would make suggestions to them that people make to people who don’t know about anything like what to do in college, when to marry, when to have kids, what car brands have expensive parts to order when it’s time to fix them. People instead wouldn’t impose anything on them because they’d think surely this child has some wisdom from somewhere I don’t know about to kiss so well. They’d forge their own path. 

Christian and Britany weren’t unhappy now in a path that was forged with a lot of input from everyone who could guess about them that they didn’t have a wildly experienced first kiss. They liked their kids and their house and their Honda and celebrating Christmas by surprising their children with a trampoline. They weren’t displeased with any of it, but they held in their mind like something they could always see in their peripheral vision that everything was incredibly stupid. Even each other. Everything they enjoyed together, things that they really did believe were important and justifiable like healthy eating, saving for their retirement while also putting away money to travel and see Stevie Nicks play in New York, reading to their children, taking them out for a nice meal before summer ended—all wonderful yet all piling up in a shadow just inside their line of vision as stupid, stupid, stupid. Even that shadow felt stupid and undeserved and a product of a poor habit of never writing down what they were thankful for. So both of them in an effort to conquer their stupid shadow tried to bring up what they were thankful for in the life they shared. What was shared was true but what was unshared, that they both thought everything, even things that were a blessing were so stupid, also felt so true in such a very heavy way. 

Britany and Christian finished setting up the trampoline for their kids and it was still early Christmas Eve night, like around maybe eleven o’clock or something like that, and Christian asked his wife if they should test it out. They climbed through the safety netting with their knees aching against the springs despite the blue padding that ran like a track around the mesh. They jumped and tried to do tricks that they used to practice at for a long time. Britany tried a toe touch and after, holding her groin, she told Christian that she used to be a lot better at that. Christian did a three sixty spin. They both knew it was pretty lame. Britany made him stand against the edge of the trampoline and she did a back handspring that ended with her falling into the net and then grasping at her back which had pulled a little. Christian said, “Oh yikes,” and helped her off the net. He smoothed the padding that her foot had collapsed between two springs. “It’s ok. It’s just a little pull. Actually jumping might help.” So they jumped. They jumped just up and down and all around the trampoline. Christian said, “I’m glad I can still have fun with you,” and Britany said, “yeah,” but immediately became overwhelmed with how little fun she was really having and how little fun she was always having and felt a craving to really freak out. She said, “Let’s bounce each other high.” They bounced, first far away, and then closer, really storing all the energy from the trampoline and then really close so they landed at the same time and Britany’s feet sent a wave of momentum to Christian’s and he bounced way up high and flew past the trees. He was going up and up and Britany, who’d fallen to her knees from such a good bounce of Christian, saw him at level height with a passing airplane. He went up so high that Britany couldn’t see him anymore and Britany, with a lot of time before Christian came back down, crawled off the trampoline and ran across her yard and inside quickly. She grabbed her car keys and drove away. She drove fast and there was no traffic and there were no cops. There were only possibilities for every stupid thing in the world ahead and she would try four of them.

Possibility Number One: SO SEXY

Britany stops in a town in some state and gets a job at a Home Depot. Her whole existence here is a life in a music video. She has long, blonde hair, abs, and long nails. She wears tight leather pants, a cheetah shirt and high heels with the orange Home Depot apron on over her outfit. She blows bubbles while riding the scissor lift and gestures for the camera to come closer as she does a chasse into the lumber aisle. She takes down a two by four and does sort of a grind on it and around it while singing, “I’m just a working girl so let me work, work, work.”

One day a man comes down the aisle and looks sort of confused about all the dancers surrounding this Home Depot woman mixing paint and then sticking her finger in it and holding it over her neck as she tilts back her head and lets it drip down her shirt. He says something to Britany that is too quiet to hear over the music but from the way she jumps over the counter and pulls his tie in the direction of the fertilizer it’s obvious it was a gardening question. The sprinklers go off as soon as they enter the outdoor plant area. It’s too much water for a real Home Depot but in this music video it makes sense and they both get drenched. Britany lets the water wash off the paint she was dripping on herself just minutes ago. The man watches. She knows. She moves her hands sort of unrealistically over her neck and boobs in slow motion on a down beat of the song. The sprinklers stop pouring and she walks over to the fertilizer and puts on a big show of bending over to pick up a bag of it while singing, “Let me see your uh oh, uh oh a miracle gro gro, gro gro” and at this point the man just can’t take his lust anymore so he takes the bag from her and throws it on the ground and then moves Britany down to the ground too. He is kissing her neck and her legs are wrapped around him but she’s looking into the camera singing, “Baby, baby.” When Britany checks out his bag of fertilizer at the register she is dry again and the man is looking guilty. Britany winks at the camera. 

A little later on in the music video a middle-aged woman comes into the Home Depot. She is wearing culottes and a bright yellow shirt that says, “Walk for a Cure.” She finds Britany in the bridge of her song throwing washers and screws into the air. Her request too is drowned out by the music. But Britany takes her to the lighting section of Home Depot which looks a little like heaven because all the chandeliers and sconces are always on. It’s the brightest part of the store and when the woman looks back at Britany she’s done an outfit change and is wearing angel wings. The woman makes an expression like she’s overcome by Britany’s beauty or at least her helpfulness. Britany sings, “My heart feels bright like a million lights,” as she pushes the woman’s brown bangs behind her ear. She leans forward and kisses her softly and all the lights start to flicker. The woman leaves with a touch sensitive lamp. 

At the end of the video the man and the woman come back in through opposite doors shaking their heads, wanting to return their fertilizer and lamp and they see each other and it’s clear they recognize one another. They are married and Britany, who the camera has panned to, realizes it and gasps but then smiles, winks at the camera, and sings “That’s just the way it goes. Oh oh oh.” After the video is over Britany resigns from Home Depot and drives away in her Honda.

Possibility Number Two: SO SPECIAL

Britany drives all the way to a research facility. She parks haphazardly and hurries inside. She’s changed from the long hair and high heels and orange apron and is wearing, well who cares! It doesn’t matter what she’s wearing, she thinks as she opens double doors to a large white research room. There are about twenty scientists in there or it may be more like four hundred and all their attention is on her, this woman who is wearing… well who cares! It doesn’t matter what she’s wearing, they all think, because she’s yelling out that she’s figured it out. “I have figured it out! The thing you’ve been trying to figure out! The thing that matters so much and will reduce costs while saving lives!” This small prestigious scientific community of twenty to four hundred gasp and crowd around her while with a pen and paper, a few beakers and tubes, drops of water as well as some light mechanics with a paperclip and, the most surprising element, a beer cap, demonstrates to them that she has figured it out. They rejoice. They high five and then hoist her over their shoulders. “Do you know what this means?” they say. “Yes,” she says. 

Her days are so packed after that. It’s all these interviews at news stations and traveling to hospitals to let people know the good news. She passes the woman from her music video in some wing of one of the hospitals she is visiting. Britany gestures towards the woman’s bright yellow shirt and says, “You don’t need to walk for that anymore.” She leaves the woman crying with relief and pokes her head into a few more rooms to say, “Don’t worry, it’s solved.” 

One of the rooms she pokes her head into has an old man and his son. The old man is the sick one and he’s sleeping. The son looks up from a magazine he’s reading in a chair when Britany comes in the room. Britany whispers to the son, while pointing at the dad, “I’ve cured the thing he’s dying of.” The son whispers back, “Thank you, but he’s dying of a lot of things.” Britany throws her hands up and whispers, “What do you want from me?” The son is about to reply but she slams the door before he can speak. She storms down the hallway and passes the music video woman again and says, “Keep walking.”

Possibility Number Three: So Simple

Britany rages out of the hospital and cancels her interviews for the rest of the day and emails someone that they can shove their Nobel Prize where the sun don’t shine. She drives all the way to the airport and books a flight to France and sleeps the whole way there.

In France, Britany finds an apartment that is small but has tall, old windows. The apartment is white and bright and there are old parquet wooden floors. The doorknobs are an old, embellished brass. The flowers she puts out are old and already a dried wheat color. She is overwhelmed by the loveliness of this apartment. She is very skinny here. She wears old linen dresses that accentuate her unbelievable waist and carries a straw bag that has a book in it that she’s reading as well as a lipstick which sometimes she blots onto her cheeks before a night out, or at least she could do that. She only wears mascara on her top lashes. She drinks small coffees and has a cat. Her name is no longer Britany, it’s Gabrielle. All of her things here are packaged in amber colored bottles. Most everything she touches is wonderful and sweet. She eats little raspberries and little breads. She works in a shop that sells pastries and books. Her hair is tied back with a ribbon but sometimes as she’s organizing the books or swapping out a pastry tray a strand of her hair will fall across her face.

Gabrielle (Britany) has a lover here. He is older than her. Their sex is sweet and they make sweet little noises. Only their first sex was unsweet. He came in looking for a book or a pastry and asked her for her recommendation. She recommended Wilde or the chocolate croissant. They got to talking and he ended up staying there until right before closing. She asked if he’d help her put some books away. There was a sexy little moment as he was leaning over her to put something on a high shelf. She touched his shirt. He kissed her and then it sort of progressed in a normal wild way with lots of moving around of her linen dress. He moved her linen dress up so he could grab her butt and then he moved her linen dress down to get to her boobs. The sex was standing with him sort of leaning her against the bookshelves. Every other time they had sex after that was in her lovely apartment on her white sheets. He was married and this hurt Gabrielle’s (Britany’s) feelings but him being married actually matched the aesthetic of her simple French life nicely. She only saw him for dinners, when he’d come in to talk to her about books and of course at her lovely apartment for their lovely little sex. 

Gabrielle (Britany) had lots and lots of free time to take walks and to take up pottery. She read books and learned to speak French. She watched television and went to plays. She took a bath in the morning and at night. She had lots and lots of free time. She actually had almost a full set of dishes she’d made at the pottery studio she went too. Only four bowls and a plate left. But she wouldn’t be able to finish them because the last time she was there her back started spasming after leaning over her wheel for a while. She had to lay down flat on the floor. Someone asked her if she was ok and she said, she was – it was probably just a recent injury flaring up that she’d gotten from stupidly doing a back handspring on a trampoline. When she thought of the trampoline she thought that if she didn’t head back soon that she wouldn’t be able to see her kids’ reaction to the trampoline on Christmas morning and she’d be sad to miss that. So she went to the airport to go back home.

Possibility Number Four: So Familiar

On the airplane home Britany explores one more possibility but this time just in her memory. She goes back to the day of her first kiss but earlier before she was on the trampoline with Austin Powers. She stands in her room with all her old posters and the quilt that her and her mom had picked because it was a very cool and mature color of purple that would suit a very cool and mature middle schooler. She wonders if here in her memory if she can look for real at when everything started feeling really stupid because in this moment right before, everything did not feel stupid. It felt very important that Austin Powers was about to come over and kiss her. It felt important that her mom supported this color of purple as the right one. She leaves her room and starts walking down her stairs and still instinctively does not lean too hard on the railing because “it’s coming loose” her mom sometimes says. In the memory as it was she will go outside now and jump on the trampoline but there is that noise that in the memory as it was she didn’t pay much mind to and continued outside but she has this time now and it’s a long flight back from France so Britany decides to take a moment to explore this moment that she knows she’s always balancing against every joyful thing she ever does. 

The noise she hears is a muffled gasping of breaths and some very soft sniffling. She goes into her mother’s room and puts her ear to the closet door. The light in the closet isn’t on but these crying noises are coming from inside. She can tell her mother is sitting on that stool that she stands on to reach her sweaters from how low to the floor these crying noises sound. They are muffled? Is she burying her face in her arms? Does she not want Britany to know? Why not? Britany feels angry. She knows she has to go soon. Austin Powers is waiting to kiss her. But why is her mom crying in her closet? Why doesn’t she tell Britany about what’s making her sad? Why didn’t she tell her about what things she thought were stupid? Britany knows she can’t go into the closet. It wouldn’t be true to the memory. Why hadn’t she asked her mom about this moment in the hospital? Why hadn’t her mom told her why she was crying when Britany was in the seventh grade and she was still healthy? Why’d Britany just have to sit there looking up cures on the internet when at that point her mom was dying of a lot of other things too? How did her mom balance all the stupid things in the world against each other? Why was crying in secret not a stupid thing to her mom but something that mattered a lot? Britany has to go now. Britany kisses the closet door and then walks outside to not really her first kiss. Britany wakes up as an adult in America back from France and drives home in her Honda which will need a new part soon but luckily Honda parts aren’t very expensive to order.

When Britany gets home she goes inside and lays on the floor of her youngest child’s bedroom and listens to him breathe. He’s been sleeping for such a long time. She gets up after a few minutes and makes her way outside to the backyard and over to the trampoline. Her husband is almost back down from his high bounce. As she watches him fall back towards her, she imagines trying to explain where she’s been. She imagines trying to explain how she weighs every single moment against that stupid shadow but she feels like the words will sound really stupid and anyway, what really will probably happen is that all that force from his coming back down will bounce her really high way up into the night sky before she can say anything at all. She climbs through the netting and gets ready. He’ll be back down any minute. Any minute now and she’ll be bathing in stars. 

Jonny TwoxFour is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has been published in Electric Literature and Anomaly Magazine. She is the winner of the James Knudsen Fiction Prize and is from Virginia. 

13 May 2022