A short story by Reagan Davenport.
One of my very first memories was of the back of our family’s couch, a worn corduroy with dull green buttons spaced along the front of each cushion, resting on a delicately carved set of claw feet. It held the same place in our family room, as steadfast and predictable as a statue, a few feet from the rear wall in front of the window to the street. It was worn along the seams, with a slight lightening of the fabric under the predictable square of sunlight that came through the window behind it, a sun stain as my older sister often called it. I would watch the light slide through my grandmother’s antique lace, hanging as lifeless as an exhumed bride, discolored with time and smelling faintly of detergent and mothballs.
The kerosene heater beside the window kept me warm as I built towers of wooden blocks, played with my matchbox cars that still had all of their wheels and drew pictures with broken crayons on curling sheets of lined paper, the leftover pages from the yellowing stenographer pads my mother brought home from work. When I would sneak a handful of Cheerios from the box or an extra piece of fruit from the basket before dinner, it was here that I would hide with my treasure, hunkered down in the shelter of the patchwork quilt my grandmother had made when I hung it over the back of the couch in a tent around my body. It was here where I found my very first marble, a shining blue cat’s eye left over from my mother’s childhood, on the cream colored carpet by the radiator.
The couch withstood the abuse of a feral kitten my sister found on our back porch, the spills of milk and grape juice my mother scrubbed out with baking soda and vinegar, and the crumbs of nights eating popcorn as a family watching reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore show. It stood witness to every Saturday morning cartoon, every family tiff, and every Christmas morning of my childhood. It watched as my sister loaded her bulging suitcases when she finally left for college a short summer after graduation. It was about this time my mother finally had to patch the lining in a few places, adding bright green throw pillows to cover her amateur handiwork from the scrutiny of company. On my very first movie date with my very first girlfriend, a thin wisp of a girl named Kathy, I reached for my first clumsy, awkward kiss on the familiar seat. A few years later, I gave my virginity to her, no longer knees and elbows under a bob of frizzing blond hair, but then a young woman. Her rightly placed curves and a trembling lip had begged for attention despite my nervous tremors, the two of us an angular tangle of limbs, heavy breathing and creaking springs while my mother worked late at the office.
Soon the day came when I too was standing for candid pictures with my mother and grandmother before our family couch, black gown just showing my tennis shoes and my smile just barely showing my braces. A year later, after working for the local grocery store saving up for my own place, I was packing my own bags. I left for an open flat on the other side of the country with my best friend, knowing that when I came home for the holidays, we would gather in our small living room, cramming our too many bodies on the couch in the evening, under the quilt my grandmother had made.
My mother is older now, too old, she said to live all on her own in this house. She couldn’t take care of the land any more, and the empty spaces that remained after my sister and I departed were filled only by echos of our childhood here. After a year on the market, the house finally sold, my mother relocating to the west coast behind me, where I could keep an eye on her. After living our entire lives in a house we could no longer return to, we found ourselves in a sea of cardboard boxes on the cracked driveway, meticulously loading our lives into a large moving van with no rearview mirror.
A small pile of discarded items lay beside the curb for pickup the next morning, a cracked set of porcelain dishes, some broken beach toys and limbless Barbie dolls with horrorshow haircuts, a dusty exercise bike that had sat as more of a room decoration than a tool, and the green corduroy effigy of my childhood. The clawfoot had a large crack in the design, the patchwork along the cushions was bursting with yellowed foam and stuffing, and the back imprints of its occupants over the decades still visible even as it sat vacant on the blacktop.
I climbed the tall step into the truck cab, sliding over and pulling my mother up behind me into the passenger side. We buckled, and she rolled down the window to look behind as I turned over the engine with a forceful turn of the key. As we pulled out onto the suburban street, her head hung out the window like a golden retriever, despairing at the sights and smells that passed her by too quickly to investigate, to fully explore and appreciate one last time. As I was heading toward the highway, I was thankful for the bulky load blocking a lasting look behind.