THE CHAIR

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by

Marianne Carlson

"I won't be home for dinner," said Cora as she tucked her iPhone into the small compartment in her Coach purse. 

"Oh? Why not?" Cora's husband had arrived home from a business trip, dead tired. A balding, patient man with thick glasses, he had noticed there was almost nothing in the refrigerator: a plastic container of mayonnaise, some pickles and half a quart of sour milk. 

"I am meeting Amanda at Annabelle's, we thought we would have dinner and  go to a movie."

Cora was a peevish young woman in her 30's who hated her husband. She would have been quite pretty but for the fact that she constantly wore an expression of extreme irritation. When angry she looked like a rodent, a mouse or perhaps a hungry rat, and since she was angry most of the time, since her hair was mouse brown, since she had a habit of darting her eyes around as if looking for food, since she scampered rather than walked, the rodent image prevailed. It was never more obvious than when she shopped. All this could have been changed in the blink of an eye if she was not constantly obsessing about her husband, the man who kept her flush with cash.

"And what am I supposed to eat, Cora?"

"You're a grown man, figure it out. Order a pizza."

Almost too tired to move, let alone fight, Blake Thompson said nothing as the door slammed shut. The mouse had scampered away.  Blake sat at the kitchen counter in their ultra modern coop on the Upper East Side. As he looked around he realized how much he hated the kitchen, the bare living room with the dark floors, white sofa and large glass table centered in the middle of the room. It was useless, that glass table. Cora never allowed anyone to put so much as a glass on it.  “Rings,” she would say with a grimace, “can’t you ever use a coaster?”

Strange, Blake thought, he never quite realized (or would allow himself to realize) how much he hated the table. A methodical man, Blake was capable of negotiating huge business deals, yet he allowed this little mouse of a woman to almost destroy him on a daily basis. 

He unloosened his tie, took off his suit jacket and  pants and padded back to the living room, glancing around as if it was the first time he had seen it. Perhaps it was. These damn chairs, he thought them hideous. Why had he allowed Cora carte blanche in decorating?  Was it too much to ask for a big old leather recliner he thought while positioning his backside gingerly on to the chair. Cora said the chair was designed by an orthopedic surgeon. If so, he never wanted to be under this particular surgeon's knife, every vertebrae in his back pressed against the wood.

It was at that moment that the ramifications of his naive, youthful decision became crystal clear. Why did he marry her? What in the world had he ever seen in her? Was he blind to her selfishness, her deceit, her cunning? Did he actually, for one minute, find her attractive? Cora, the rodent? They hated each other, clearly she hated him as well. 

The television offered nothing much, over a  hundred channels and nothing to watch. He dozed until a voice woke him. "Big Bob's Furniture guarantees you delivery within the hour anywhere in Manhattan. A beautiful  black leather recliner with a matching footstool flashed on the screen and within a half an hour there was a buzz on the Blake’s intercom.

"Delivery for Mr. Blake Thompson."

"Yes, come on up, it’s the Pent House. Blake ushered two burly men into the living room.

"Where do you want it?"

"Put it here, let me move this one aside."

"That sure is a strange lookin’ chair, Mr. Thompson"

"Do you want it?"

"I don't think so, Mr. Thompson, the Mrs. wouldn’t like it."

"I can't say that I blame her.

"Just put the monster outside the door."

And this is how the war began. Cora came home late in the evening, a little tipsy. Beyond furious, she told him to get that piece of shit out of her living room. Blake responded by overturning her favorite jade plant. He dumped it, plant, dirt and all, in the middle of the glass table, hoping the table would break. It did not. The glass was surprisingly strong but so was Blake's resolve. 

Within two months the rodent sued for divorce claiming her husband was mentally unstable. Although she sued for a healthy chunk of change, she did not receive nearly as much as she wanted because Blake had a better attorney who he subsequently married. They live in a large, rambling home in Larchmont full of old saggy couches and chairs covered in dog hair.

It's All Temporary