Please don’t look at me like that. Don’t look at me with pursed lips, wrinkled nose, with that combination of pity and disgust.
From the middle of the alley I look normal, like any other couch. People walking or driving by see only my backside, which is still intact. I didn’t ask you to come over here and peer over to see the disarray where my cushions used to be. If you had kept walking down the alley you wouldn’t have seen where my upholstery has been ripped, my batting tossed here and there, my gray innards revealed.
Just like you, I have a story, a past. I didn’t ask to be torn apart and left propped up against this garage for people to sneer at.
A nice couple bought me years ago, in the '90s, from Becker Furniture. They were newly married and just moving in to this house here in the Standish-Ericsson neighborhood of South Minneapolis. Shelley had straight blonde hair and was in her last year of nursing school. Matt was medium-tall with brown hair and was a meter reader for NSP.
You might think my large flower upholstery is unattractive, but taste is subjective. I was chosen to match the living room’s tan carpeting, and because Shelley and Matt figured that dirt and stains would not show up on my pattern. They were right. I served them well.
Shelley and Matt put me against the living room wall, facing the TV on the opposite wall. They put a coffee table in front of me and matching end tables beside me. Shelley graduated from nursing school and went to work in the emergency room of a hospital. Matt kept working for the power company. They were both on their feet a lot so when they got home, both Matt and Shelley liked to flop down, lie across me and put their feet up, watching TV for hours. It was a good thing they worked different shifts so they didn’t have to compete for couch time.
After a couple of years they had a baby girl, Samantha or “Sami.” Sami didn’t have to go to day care since Shelley could watch her while Matt went to work, and vice versa. Shelley would sit on me and hold the baby in her lap to feed her. When Shelley was out, Matt did the same using a bottle. The first time Sami stood up, it was my armrest that she held to steady herself.
It wasn’t until about six years had passed that Matt and Shelley had their second child. It wasn’t for lack of trying, believe me! There’s a lot more I could say about that, but I won’t. A couch knows but doesn’t tell.
So Alexandra (“Ali”) came along and now there were two girls giggling, running in the house, jumping on me, and being generally adorable. By now Shelley had some day shifts so there was more time with the whole family together. Matt had thickened around the waist a bit and there was a little bald circle at the top of his head. He still favored a plain black teeshirt and jeans for relaxing around the house.
Matt and Shelley had a strict rule against eating on the couch. The girls always had to go to the table to eat, even a little snack. When Sami got old enough to watch her little sister, she ignored that rule almost right away. Once Matt and Shelley were out the door, the girls would bring their sandwiches or pizza or crackers right over to me and sit down to watch their favorite TV shows. They would do their best to hide any evidence of me, picking up crumbs as soon as they were done, but there’s always a stray bit of food or two that makes its way between the cushions. I remember once when Matt and Shelley’s car came in the driveway about an hour earlier the girls expected. The girls screamed, jumped up, grabbed their napkins and pop cans and ran to the kitchen to throw them away. Sami came back and tried to kick the breadcrumbs under me before her parents walked in. Both girls sat back down and tried to look casual. They pulled it off.
What Sami and Ali didn’t know was that their parents were doing the same thing. After both girls were upstairs in bed, Matt might pull a beer out of the fridge and open a can of salted peanuts, then make himself right at home on me. Shelley would open a wine cooler and join him. She didn’t care for peanuts, but she did like those goldfish crackers. They tried to be quiet because they didn’t feel like explaining themselves to the kids, but once in awhile they’d play around, throwing goldfish and peanuts at each other’s mouths, and trying not to laugh too loudly.
After awhile I noticed that Matt and Shelley were fighting more often, sometimes not speaking for a few days. I got a lot more use in this period because one or the other of them would sleep on me all night instead of going to bed. Eventually, Matt packed up a trunk, a suitcase, and three garbage bags full of stuff. He took one of my end tables, an armchair, and a few other things, and he was gone. He hardly stepped into the house after that, but he did come to the door to pick up the girls.
Shelley cried and cried. On her days off she would just schlep around the house in yesterday’s blue scrubs, and not even shower or get dressed. I remember the night a girlfriend of hers came over to keep her company. They ordered an extra large pizza to split and watched a movie--Dirty Dancing. When they were done with the pizza they shared a pint of ice cream, eating right out of the carton. Then Shelley foraged through the kitchen cupboards and came back with a bag of China Boy chow mein noodles. The two of them dug into that like they were starving. They chomped away at whole mouthfuls of the stuff. It was something.
That’s about the time that Sami turned 14. Shelley started taking a real suspicious tone with Sami, asking lots of questions about her new friends, nagging her about homework, and wanting to know where she was all the time. Sami was spending a lot more time in her room.
The more Sami spent time in her room, the more Shelley nagged, and they had yelling fights. I overheard Shelley say on the phone that she thought Sami was doing drugs, and the school counselor thought Sami was doing drugs. When Sami got home that afternoon, Shelley demanded to know where the stuff was. Sami said she didn’t have any stuff. Shelley kept demanding, and Sami kept denying. Finally Shelley marched upstairs to Sami’s room, her ponytail bouncing from side to side. I could only hear what was happening, but I gather Shelley started going through the room, pulling out all the drawers, just throwing everything around. Both Shelley and Sami were screaming and crying and screaming some more.
After awhile, Shelley marched back down to the living room. Now she had Matt’s old pocketknife in her hand. She kept saying things like, “If it’s not up there, where is it? WHERE IS IT?”
“Is it in the couch? Tell me!” Shelley had the knife open and held it up in front of her. She looked at her daughter with steely eyes.
Sami cried, “No! No, there’s nothing!”
Just then Shelley took the knife and sliced completely across my right cushion, then the middle one, then the left one. She pulled each cushion apart. Then she sliced all along the back of my seat, all along, and tugged at the fabric. She set down the knife and started trying to pull me apart with her bare hands. She got deep into me, deeper than those hand vacuums are able to go. She found Cheetohs, goldfish, M&Ms, Cheerios, breadcrumbs, and popcorn, not to mention the nonfood items like pennies, a safety pin or two, buttons and a long lost key. She didn’t find any contraband. I could have told her there were no drugs on me, but of course I wasn’t asked.
Finally Shelley gave up. She ordered Sami to her room. She sat down on the carpet and took some deep breaths. She took Ali to McDonald’s for dinner that night. They brought back a burger, Coke and fries for Sami.
The next day when Matt came to pick up the girls, Shelley stepped outside to talk to him on the front step. A few minutes later they both came in and together they carried me out here, to the alley, and set me down next to the garage. Now I’m just waiting, for what I don’t know.
I didn’t ask to be torn apart and left here like this, so don’t look at me with disgust. But don’t give me your pity, either. I’ve been a good couch, I’ve had a good life. To everything there is a season.
