Short Story: A Plush Teddy's Life
Short Story: A Plush Teddy's Life
Jane took Jack, the plush teddy, home two years ago. They met at a wedding party where Jack was spending his time in the hotel's gift shop. Jack was big and kind, and Jane instantly melted at his friendly brown eyes.
For two years, she lived with Jack. Jack would either sit on the couch or lie on the bed. Jane could snuggle up to him after a bad day at the library or when she had put on a couple of kilograms, which she perceived as a world-class tragedy. The woman's life wasn't easy. Although she loved her job, an unbearable boss at the library made her life miserable. Books were her passion. She adored them. She could spend all day quietly arranging them, cataloging, or sorting out the ones donated to the library because someone no longer wanted them. The only problem was, she found it hard to discard any, even if the book was titled The World in 1983. She knew exactly how much effort it took to write all those pages. She knew someone found it important enough to pen down every single letter. They truly wrote it on paper and didn’t simply type it into a word processor where edits and corrections could be made effortlessly. Jane appreciated this.
Three of her short stories and at least as many novels lay unfinished in her desk drawer. Writing seemed so straightforward. She just had to write, or should have written. But it didn’t flow. The beginning of the story always came easy. The first character, maybe even the second, but then things got stuck. Either she couldn’t craft a meaningful dialogue between the two characters, or one character became stubborn and refused to fit into the previously well-thought-out plot. Sometimes the other character felt lost, uncertain about the next move in a particular situation. At such times, Jane stopped writing and waited. Waited for inspiration, for the story to break out of the deadlock. Often, she'd wait for months until the whole story faded away. The initial thrill was no longer there when she thought of it, the familiar tingling sensation indicating she had stumbled upon something special was gone. It simply died. Thus, the drawer of her writing desk essentially became a cemetery of stories that had died prematurely.
On weekends, after numerous attempts, when she turned off the light over the deceased, she stood up and sat down next to Jack. Jack's support and understanding were indispensable at such times. Jane put in one of her favorite movies, grabbed a large portion of chocolate from the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet, and snuggled up to Jack. Midway through the movie, helpless rage usually erupted from her. She yelled, cried, and Jack listened in silence. The support and unconditional understanding felt good to the woman. When her agitation and frustration were finally gone, she watched the film's conclusion, then she discreetly placed her lifeless story into the drawer, discarded the remnants of chocolate packaging, and retired for the night. After days like that, the next day she felt as if she had gained three kilograms, something even Jack's loving gaze couldn't help with. She concluded that writing was the greatest enemy of dieting.
On Monday, it all started over again. She tried to sneak into her workstation without crossing paths with her boss. Though he would appear in front of her desk every day, at least she didn't have to endure his snobbish intellectual face until then. Her boss didn’t like books; he liked being a director, anywhere. The library could've been a meat processing plant to him; it would've been all the same. The velvet chair and the title mattered; the books he read were like trophies on his belt, much like how indigenous people once carried the heads of their defeated enemies on their belts. Jane always felt that books came to life when someone read them, but with her boss, it was the exact opposite. After he took a book home and read it, he would leave it on Jane's desk like a bloodied corpse. It took her days to breathe new life into the volume. She would wipe it, keep it beside her, and stroke it once or twice a day. Only when she felt that the book had finally regained its zest for life would she place it back on the shelf. Sometimes she received unexpected help. If a book-loving person wanted to borrow the very book she was reviving, she would hand it over. Usually, when she got them back, she could feel the life pulsing within them again, and they would happily reveal their secrets to new readers.
During the day, Jane didn't think of Jack. She knew Jack was waiting for her at home, that she could trust him and cuddle up to him whenever she needed. Though she didn’t dwell on it, deep down she was aware that Jack gave warmth and security to her empty home.
She often came home late on weekdays. Her boss’s favorite hobby was to assign her a new task at five in the afternoon that she had to finish by the next morning. Thus, she often stayed hours after closing. On Thursdays and weekends, she visited her parents. She had dinner with her mother on Thursdays, who lived alone since divorcing her father. These dinners were quiet but filled with love. So, on these days, Jane wouldn't get home before ten in the evening. Jack would always wait unwaveringly on the couch for her to sit next to him for a while before going to bed.
She spent Saturdays with her father, who, after three unsuccessful marriages, was once again on his own. Most of the time, he would pour out his complaints about his latest ex-wife, with whom he couldn't agree on which house should belong to whom, and they had heated disputes with each other but only in the presence of their lawyers. Jane couldn't take sides in this and had grown weary even of listening. Every Saturday, she would come home utterly exhausted around four in the afternoon. By evening, she didn't feel like doing anything, so she resorted to watching movies on the sofa, cuddling with Jack. She had no idea how Jack had the patience to watch her favorite movie, Singing in the Rain, for the hundredth time.
On Sundays, wracked with guilt, Jane went to the gym, where that cute receptionist boy again smiled at her so kindly. During the week, she often thought about making her visits more regular, but she simply couldn't motivate herself to exercise after leaving the library around eight in the evening following a tiring day. So, she settled for light Sunday flirting and then the rigorous weightlifting session she had scheduled for half an hour, followed by the steam room. The steam bath was the most enjoyable event of her week. During those moments, she would relax, briefly forgetting her boss, the cemetery in her drawer, and the four bars of chocolate she'd consumed since last Sunday. As her vision became cloudy in the steam, so did her feelings. Occasionally, the images of her father or mother would appear, and every now and then, even Jack would come to mind, but then they would all fade into the mist.
It was again around four in the afternoon by the time she got home, after a few rounds in the steam room, a shower, and blow-drying her hair. She felt relaxed and drained. Around seven in the evening, she began her usual "tomorrow is going to be Monday again" stress. At such times, she didn't even feel like sitting next to Jack, and just glancing at her writing desk nearly sent her into a fit of rage. She stormed into the bedroom and angrily slammed the door behind her. Jack looked after her with understanding.
Monday was the start of it all over again. Nothing really broke the monotony of the week. Her friends had long since disappeared, as she never found the time for them due to endless overtime. Only her cousin Lyam and his best friend, Dylan, remained in her life. The two boys somehow didn't want her to sink into the daily grind, so at least once every two weeks, they would take her out somewhere. They'd either dine out or try to shout over the music in some loud bar. It also happened that the boys would come up to her place on a weekday evening when she managed to get home at a reasonable hour. They would collapse onto the couch, laughing loudly as they shared some of their dating stories while draining Jane's wine collection. On these occasions Dylan would toss Jack onto the floor. Every time this happened, a little pang of pain struck Jane's heart seeing Jack treated so roughly. Yet, she never mustered the courage to stand up for him and object to this harsh treatment. So, Jack just sat, leaning against the armrest of the sofa, patiently waiting for the guests to leave.
After such occasions, Jane would always pick Jack up with great affection and place him back on the couch in his rightful spot. The two boys exhausted her, yet she felt that if this bond were to break as well, she would entirely lose her chance of finding a suitable partner, although in the bars they took her to, she stood no chance of meeting someone. Everyone was about ten years younger than her, she couldn't see their faces in the dark, and she couldn't hear a word they said over the loud music. Once she believed, that the handsome guy sitting next to her at the bar counter started to flirt with her, but he talked to her only because her coat slid off the back of the chair, and everyone passing by stepped on it. In the overwhelming noise, it took minutes to understand what the guy was talking about, and she embarrassingly switched from flirt mode to gratitude mode. It was excruciatingly awkward! A few minutes later, she left the place and fled home to the understanding and reliable Jack.
This week started just like the others. On Monday morning, Jane bid farewell to Jack and, with a knot in her stomach, took the bus to the library. She failed to avoid her boss that day. The man saw her dart past the door of his office and called her in. He tasked her with re-cataloging all the economics textbooks, sorting them into publications from before and after 1985, and taking the older ones down to the storage room. She was supposed to complete the task that day, but Jane protested since there were almost a thousand books in question. In the end, her boss relented and gave her three days to finish the work. To emphasize his authority, he tossed a gutted copy of the first volume of Stanislav Lem's complete works onto the far end of his desk. Jane nearly burst into tears when she saw the barely alive victim. The man proudly posed over the carcass, declaring that he had read the entire thing in two days and that Lem was an overrated writer. Jane deeply doubted both claims, since Lem was a great writer and as the book was more than fifteen hundred pages long, one could only read it in two days if they didn't sleep and read all day long. She was quite certain that at such a pace, no one could possibly enjoy the reading. It was precisely this that killed books, this trophy hunting. The boss sent her off with the command to bring him the second volume by evening. Jane tenderly cradled the predator's latest bleeding victim and carried it to her own desk. There, she set it down, cleaned it up, and placed it next to her papers. She knew that her attention and care would heal the book in a few days, and it would be its old, proud self again.
For the next two days, Jane was in the library until ten in the evening. She cataloged, sorted, and dusted off the books. She only thought of Jack fleetingly. There was a pang of guilt when she thought about him waiting for her, sitting on the sofa, but she quickly refocused on her task.
On the morning of the third day, her boss appeared at her desk. Jane initially thought he had come to check on the task ahead of the deadline, but instead, he dramatically announced that he was leaving the library and whether Jane chose to finish what she had started was up to her. For someone who had made her life a misery for years, the man spent quite a lot of time at her desk. It seemed as if he expected some form of commiseration from his long-standing employee. However, all Jane could muster was a ‘Really, how surprising!’ and nothing more. In the end, the man returned the volume he had borrowed two days ago and then took his leave.
Thankfully, it seemed he hadn't even started this one. The book was in a better condition than the others he'd thrust back into Jane's hands. The woman did a little dance of joy. She couldn't have received better news! She was free of the one who had completely poisoned the place that was most sacred to her. Two hours later, she received a call from the local municipality, informing her that she would need to temporarily take over the management of the library until a successor for her boss was found. Jane was initially in near shock, but an hour after hanging up the phone, she was jubilant. In the meantime, until there's a new person at the helm of the library, she can do whatever she wants! She can bring books up from the storage so they can be out in the light again, organize programs for school children, thematic days, and writer-reader meet-ups. She can do all that she has wanted to do for years but never got permission for. She stopped cataloging, walked around the building, caressed a few particularly beautiful leather-bound volumes, and talked to the other two employees. She told them about the situation. They also welcomed the boss's departure with relief. One of them, a middle-aged literature teacher who realized after ten years of teaching that she didn't like children, simply remarked:
‘I hope they now put someone in charge who knows what they're doing!’ The other, Paul, a man about Jane's age whom she only knew in passing and who was responsible for finances, acknowledged the announcement with a broad smile and asked:
‘Well, what's next, Madam Director?’
Jane smiled. She savored the words in her mind: Madam Director.
'I don't know. Give me some time to think it through.’ With that, she left her two employees and went home at the regular time that day.
Jack was waiting for her on the couch and was thrilled when she broke the news to him. He hoped that this way they could spend more time together, as Jane wouldn't have to work overtime every day. Jane glanced at the two squares of chocolate she had left on the coffee table the day before, and then at her desk, but now the abandoned novels and short stories didn't seem as dramatic. After all, she had become the director! She put the chocolate back in the kitchen cabinet and sat down next to Jack on the couch.
For the next two weeks, she worked feverishly at her desk. She had been given her former boss's office, but she felt it would be strange to move in. She wanted to wait a bit longer. She and Paul worked a lot together. They went over the library's finances and identified areas where they could save money to organize events. Jane enjoyed working together. She found the man to be sharp-witted, kind, and she really liked his smile.
One and a half months had passed since Jane became the temporary director of the library, and in that time, she worked more than ever before. It wasn't so much the volume of work, but Paul's company that kept her in the office late into the evenings. After their colleague had left and the library had closed, they would order sushi or Chinese food and chat for hours over books. They weaved plans for better layouts, invented programs, and sought spaces within the building for community gatherings. Neither really wanted to go home. Jane had almost forgotten about Jack. When she arrived home in the evenings, she was already pondering her outfit and hairstyle for the next day, barely glancing at Jack sitting on the couch. Two months after her promotion to director, the first kiss between her and Paul happened. They were musing over Chinese food about how to get more students to read and frequent the library when Paul's phone rang. He stood up, answered the call, and moved to another room. When he came back, Jane was gathering the paper boxes and heading for the trash. He blocked her way and kissed her. It was heavenly. The initial kiss was followed by many more, and Jane got home even later that evening.
She didn't even look at Jack, just threw her clothes aside, took a shower, and went to bed. She woke up excited the next morning. An SMS from Paul awaited her, saying he couldn't wait to see her. Jane hurriedly dressed and dashed to the library. They spent almost the entire day together, and she was swimming in happiness. Even when they weren't together, the text messages flowed constantly. She barely managed to work. Two weeks later, they agreed to spend the weekend together. Jane organized everything. Using various excuses, she cancelled Thursday dinner with her mother, wanting to shop for clothes, and she also cancelled her Saturday plan with her father. Only to Jack, she didn't know what to say. Thursday came, and she still had no idea what to tell him.
On Friday morning, Jane stood long under the shower, her stomach shrunken to the size of a walnut. She needed to think of something. Just then, the shower door swung open, and there stood Jack with her phone in his hand.
‘This Paul says he can't wait to spend the weekend with you. I thought we were finally going to see that new French film this weekend. Are you cheating on me?’ he asked, with an unfathomable pain in his eyes.
Jane didn't know what to say. Over the past two years, their relationship had become stale. They hardly spoke anymore. She then realized that from the very beginning, she had treated Jack like a stuffed teddy bear; there when needed, and left on the couch for days when she didn't feel like interacting. A plush teddy bear, that’s how she saw him since they met at a gift shop during a wedding, where he was looking for a souvenir for his four-year-old niece.
Jane still couldn't find words. She swallowed hard, recognizing the magnitude of her mistake and realizing she never truly gave this man a chance. She looked deep into Jack's eyes and simply said, ‘I'm sorry.’
The phone dropped from Jack’s hand onto the bathroom's red rug. It lay there, resembling a murder weapon in the middle of a blood pool. Jane stayed in the bathroom until she heard Jack packing. She heard the rustling of clothes, the opening and closing of cupboards, and his footsteps around the apartment. Just as she stepped out, Jack stood at the door with his bags. He glanced back at her one last time before silently shutting the door behind him.
Stunned, Jane watched him go. She slumped onto the couch, now feeling the void left behind by her kind, understanding teddy bear. Suddenly, she found it hard to breathe. It took minutes for her to gather herself enough to get dressed.
‘After all, it's better this way for everyone,’ she tried to convince herself. ‘This relationship never really worked. Jack always just wanted to stay home.’
When she arrived at the library, they introduced her to the new head. The new director was young, energetic, and incredibly stylish in her casual white trousers and blue-striped long-sleeved top. Her hair was short, almost boyish, but she had an Audrey Hepburn-esque aura that instantly captivated men. Clearly, Paul was no exception. Jane couldn't believe her eyes as she watched how Paul interacted with the woman.
In the end, the weekend turned out to be a disaster. Jane mourned, and at the same time, was furious at the man who shamelessly pursued the new director. For two days, they argued non-stop, and by Sunday evening, they agreed it was best to remain just colleagues. Jane got home at seven in the evening. She dragged her suitcase through the door, kicked off her shoes, and collapsed on the couch, where the painful, empty space left by Jack gaped at her. She curled up in the corner where he always sat. The cushion still bore his imprint. Jane pulled the striped blanket towards her, which had been left abandoned over the other armrest for years. She had never needed the blanket before, as the warmth from Jack's body had always been more than enough to keep her warm. She wrapped herself up and cried herself to sleep.
– Eszter
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