The Chair

This is a short story I wrote some time ago – totally fictitious, though I did try my hand at reupholstering a chair once. It didn’t go well.

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When my grandmother died, she left me the chair. It had occupied the corner of her living room for as long as I could remember, solid and unbearably floral. I had fond memories of that chair and was glad to have it, though I wished I had been included in the distribution of the things with value. I understood, on an intellectual level, that those should go to her children, not her grandchildren, but it didn’t stop the resentment that began to build deep in my heart.

I took the chair home, having borrowed a truck from a friend for just that purpose, and spent the better part of a week moving it around, trying to find just the right placement among the other furniture in my living room. The problem was, it just didn’t fit. My furniture was new, and not just in age, but in style. I had decorated my home with contemporary pieces, reveling in their straight, uncompromising lines. There was no room for a solid wing chair, standing out against the simple black and white with its raucous red and pink floral upholstery. Every time I looked at the chair I cringed. It didn’t matter if I put it under the window or beside the couch, there was no doubt that it had no place in the living room. I could imagine several of her vases adorning my coffee table, or her collection of Santa Clara Pueblo pottery filling the shelves of my curio cabinet in the dining room, but this chair, the sole of my inheritance, would not blend.

I tried to leave it there and ignore its presence, but inevitably my friends would remark on it when they came over. Sitting on my elegant, curved couch, they would glance at it in all its floral glory and arch a brow at me. I would simply shake my head, or offer a shrug and mumble about how it was all I had to remember her by and every comment would etch itself into my mind, feeding the resentment.

It got to the point that I couldn’t walk past the room without glaring at the chair and reciting in my mind the things I had done for my grandmother. Hadn’t I brought her to this town, moving her at my own expense into an apartment that I paid for every month? Hadn’t I come over every day to make sure she was all right, called every evening before her bedtime, even if I was on a date? Hadn’t I taken her to church every Sunday and sat with her, though my membership was at a different church? Didn’t I deserve at least a vase, or a bracelet, or one of her many pots? Surely all my care had earned me more than this old, ugly chair? Surely doing the things her own flesh and blood couldn’t bring themselves out of their self-centered lives to do demanded some kind of recognition. But the chair stood there silently, clashing with my carefully planned life, offering no answers or comfort. I grew to hate the chair; I couldn’t even sit in it without becoming angry.

Finally I gave up. I took the chair into my spare bedroom and dropped it in the corner facing the wall. I shut the door to the room so I wouldn’t have to see it when I walked by. It worked for a while. But I knew that chair was behind the door and that knowledge was enough to start the painful stabs of resentment burning again. And so I decided. No chair was worth being upset constantly in my own home, my place to relax and unwind. I would sell it at a garage sale and use the money to buy something that represented what I should have been given. I passed an antique store every day on my way home from work. It had a window display of carnival glass vases similar to the ones Grandmother had had. I would buy one and pretend that it was from her. Something of value would at last replace the chair.

One of my girl friends was having a garage sale that weekend and I borrowed her truck again and carted it over. I plopped it on her lawn amidst the other junk and waited with her, watching as item after item was paid for and hauled away. By the end of the afternoon there were only a few things left. The largest was the gloating, floral, wing back chair. Annoyed, I threw the chair back into her truck and drove it home, returning it to the corner of the spare room and contemplated another way to rid myself of it.

I carted it to several antique stores and got it appraised, but none would take it, or, if they would, they wouldn’t pay enough to get something of value for it. I couldn’t bring myself to give it away; I needed to have something to remember Grandmother by, even if it wasn’t what she had left for me herself. There didn’t seem to be anything to do but try to live with the thing. No one wanted it, least of all me. But the chair and I seemed to be stuck with one another.

After three months of ignoring the chair, I grudgingly accepted the fact that it was here to stay. I couldn’t bear the thought of putting the garish floral upholstery in my neat, contemporary living room. I found myself staring at it, sometimes for hours. The lines themselves were not at fault. Perhaps covered in something other than a garden of roses, it would fit in. I chewed my lip and considered, mentally covering it other fabrics until I had an idea of what I wanted.

Grandmother had taught me to sew, it was one of many things I had learned at her knee as a child with a mother too busy to notice or care. I saw no point in paying the outrageous sum quoted me to have it professionally re-covered. Surely it couldn’t be that difficult. I found the fabric easily enough, a simple black on black pattern; the subtle shadow of roses had caught my eye. It was a nice touch, I thought, to keep some memory of what had been there before.

The Saturday I chose to re-cover the chair was a dreary, rainy day. Perfect, I thought, for covering over this monstrosity of the furniture world. I couldn’t suppress a groan as I looked at the thing, now once again in the middle of my living room. I played with the idea of throwing the fabric over it and just leaving it, but the wing back style needed the cleaner lines that only would come from true re-upholstery. So I flipped over the chair and began to work at the tacks that held the fabric in place. It didn’t take long to remove the back and the sides of the arms. Once those were done I worked free the tacks holding down the cover of the seat cushions and tugged at the fabric to free the top from the bottom.

What I thought was another tack falling to the floor tinged on my wood floor. I glanced down so I wouldn’t step on it in my bare feet and stopped. Blinked. Sitting back on my heels I gingerly reached for the envelope on the floor. It was not a big envelope, but a tiny manila one, like you might use to hold a key. It had been carefully sealed and when I turned it over, I saw my name written in Grandmother’s unmistakable scrawl. With shaking hands I ripped off the top and emptied the contents into my palm. It was her wedding ring.

We had all thought it strange to find the ring missing when she died, but I assumed it was in the drawer of jewelry my aunts had divvied up quickly between themselves. No one had mentioned that it was not there and, surprised as I was not to hear them bickering over who got to keep it, I never gave it another thought. But there it was in my hand, the small ring of sapphires catching the light and reflecting it on my wall.

Gingerly I slid it on the ring finger of my right hand. It fit perfectly, though I already knew it would. Grandmother had let me wear it on occasion as a reminder of when she would loan it to me as a child so I could play dress up. The flood of memories that washed over me all centered on the chair. Grandmother sitting in the chair showing me how to make the X’s of my cross-stitch look as nice on the back as they did on the front. Grandmother, again in the chair, applauding my magic tricks, no matter how poorly pulled off they were. Grandmother pulling me onto her lap, again in the chair, and reading to me, or having me read to her. The images were endless, and the chair was always there, cradling my Grandmother just as snugly as she had cradled me.

I don’t know how long I sat there remembering; staring at the ring until tears blurred the stones into a blue haze. She had died in this chair, and not long before that she had sat in it, telling me it would be part of my inheritance and making me promise that I would make it my own. I had promised, not understanding what she wanted other than for me to put the chair in my house. I hadn’t realized it would be all she gave me and, as I sat there looking at the ring, I reminded myself that it was not.

Grandmother had wanted me to re-cover the chair; she knew how out of place the bright floral pattern would be in my life, had even commented on it and tried to make her point. But she had left it to me to accept her gift, and I very nearly hadn’t. The remorse I felt as I contemplated the chair, sitting with its floral fabric dangling off a few tacks in the center of my house, nearly overwhelmed me. I had tried to sell it, had almost given it away. I would have lost not only the center point of all my memories of my grandmother, but also the center of her memories of the grandfather I had never known.

I removed the rest of the floral fabric, but I didn’t re-cover the chair that day. I left it, naked, in the center of my living room for nearly a week.

The chair is still the center of attention in my living room though I’ve moved it to a corner. My friends have asked about the interesting upholstery, a contrast of roses, some bright in their floral-ness, others a shadow of black on black. I never know how to answer their questions, so I usually just shrug. But when I look at the chair, I see my grandmother and all that she taught me while she lived. But even more I see a reminder of her final lesson to me, that resentment festers until you forget everything, even the joy that comes from sitting comfortably, surrounded by roses.