The Chair

         The old chair stood in the corner of the room as it had for years.  Its faded blue fabric was still nappy on the shoulders but its seat and back had been worn smooth as leather with use.  The arms of the chair were just as smooth as the seat but the color of them was darkened, smudged with sweat, the slip covers having been lost long ago.  It was a comfortable old chair, well-loved by the man of the house.  His wife had tried to talk him into replacing it several times over the years but he would hear none of it.  He loved the comfort and familiarity of the old chair and couldn’t bear the idea of it being gone.

         She smiled sadly at the chair as she came into the living room and sat down the tray holding a bottle of wine and a real wine glass.  In the kitchen, she had automatically reached for a plastic cup.  Years of having little children in the house and then habit for years after that, she had drunk so much wine from plastic cups.  But she had stopped herself and taken down the real wine glass that now stood on the tray.  Today was not for remembering her babies as little boys but for adult things. 

She reached into her pocket for the little baggie she’d picked up from a friend while shoppping for dinner that morning and set it on the try by the wine glass.  Then she retrieved the television remote from the lampstand by the chair and sat down in her usual spot on the couch.  She pressed the power button, put down the remote and started to open the bottle of wine.

         “If you loved me you wouldn’t keep dogging after all those skanks,” hollered the young lady on the tv as it came to life.  She checked the onscreen tv guide and found the subject of the talk show to be “Women Who Love Playahs”.  The studio audience hooted and hollered, obviously enjoying the show the young lady was putting on as well as the anticipation of figurative, and perhaps literal, bloodshed that would follow.  The young man the girl was yelling at just grinned, two gold caps on his teeth beaming out into the camera as he responded with some well worn line about a man having needs and one of them being variety.

         The woman on the couch thought about her own man and was genuinely glad he’d passed the age for such nonsense.  Of course, he’d never been the boy on the tube - never a player.  He was a good man and had been from the day she’d met him.  As she poured the wine her thoughts drifted back to those early days they’d shared.  She remembered the times when they’d gone over to Kevin and Andrea’s house to play cards after she and Andrea had closed down the pizza shop.  She’d been so painfully young then, in her early twenties, just like the girl on the tv.  But she’d been lucky.  Her man was a solid, one-woman man who made her feel special.  She sipped the wine and realized he could still make her feel special when he chose to.  But it didn’t happen as often as it had then.  It wasn’t that he didn’t still love her, she knew.  It was just that he’d gotten used to her.  Familiarity hadn’t bred contempt in their relationship, just comfort, which was sometimes just as bad. 

         Downing the first glass of wine and pouring herself another, she let her mind drift back to the days of their youth, before they’d had children.  Those were the days when she could sleep in until one in the afternoon after having stayed up half the night partying with him and friends or watching the World Series with him. It hadn’t mattered to her what they do, just that they were together.  The sleeping in  was a habit she’d continued, if only on the weekends, once she’d matured from fast food jobs to office work.  It was a habit that had been irrevocably lost along with so much else once she had babies.  Their need for mommy coupled with a young child’s defiance at missing any of the magic of life for the boringness of sleep meant she’d spent years getting up very early.  And once they’d grown past it into snoozing teenagers, she’d changed too.  She’d tried sleeping in a few times over the past years, but she always woke at dawn and once awake and thinking about what needed doing that day, could never get back to sleep.

         Not that her babies needed mommy anymore, she thought as she took a long drink of her second glass of wine.  But the thought didn’t bring her the sadness she once thought it might.  She glanced over at the picture of them from that first cruise.  They were standing side to side, grinning in their rented tuxedos  They were teenagers in the picture, just barely, but she could see hints in their faces of the young men they would become.  A single tear dropped to her cheek as she thought of her babies.  This would hurt them, she knew, and she knew they were far to young to understand even though they were both in their twenties now.  Young men busy with all the twinkling promise of their own lives, they enjoyed the rare moments when they could lounge around comfortably.  They were quite simply far too young to grasp how utterly depressing comfort could end up being.  Or maybe it was a guy thing.  Maybe no guy could understand how utterly depressing comfort could be.  Or maybe it was a legacy from their dad.  She wasn’t sure, but she was sure they’d never understand.

         As she finished the second glass and poured more wine she glanced over at the later picture of her eldest wearing his USMC dress blues.  The edges of her lips turned upwards slightly as she saw the stern expression on his face that couldn’t quite hide the pride in his eyes.  He’d wanted to be in the Corps for just about as long as anyone could remember, seizing on the idea when he was six or seven and never once letting up through the years.  Oh, he’d mentioned other careers, of course - firefighter, policeman, paramedic -- but always there was the idea that whatever career he chose, his training for it would come while he was in the Corps.  She knew he would miss her, but she also knew his brothers in the Corps would help him get through it.  She was very glad he’d finally found a place where he fit and had friends.  It would make his life so much fuller.

         Turning to the latest picture of her younger son, the one of him with the cute little brunette who adored him and who he thought the world of, she thought about how his life would turn out.  His path had never been as straight as his brother’s and had meandered from vet to doctor to scientist before he’d finally settled on the idea of being a marine biologist.  She’d known all his life it would have something to do with animals.  There was just too much love in him for every critter he’d ever seen for it to be anything else.  She remembered all the puppies and kitties and goldfish and hamsters he’d wanted all his life.  Sometimes she’d given in but most of the time she knew better than to take on yet another animal.  She knew he was going to be devastated when she was gone.  This was the one that had never really gotten over the loss of the dog he’d grown up with, even though she’d lived a good twelve years.  She looked into the eyes of his girlfriend in the picture.  Yes, she was a sweet and caring girl but this was a big load the woman was putting on their relationship.  She prayed the young lady would help him through this. 

         Pouring the last of the wine from the bottle, she took a sip and then opened the little baggie of Xanax from her friend.  She pulled out three of the pills and held them as she looked around the room.  It was clean, she’d cleaned it top to bottom that morning.  And it was fragrant, not with the florals of other houses, but with a pine scent of cleaning mixing with that from the roast in the crockpot and the bread baking in the bread machine.  Those were the things her husband liked, she knew, things that brought him familiarity and comfort.  No fancy meals for her man, she thought and smiled.  He was much happier with roast beef and potatoes rather than some exotic and new concoction.  Over the years she’d managed to convince him of the value of a little salt and just the tiniest pinch of pepper cooked into the meat instead of just the salt sprinkled over it after it was done, but that was it.  No spices.  Nothing to mar the comfortable familiarity of his favorite foods. And no vegetables, although he’d valiantly eaten a few spoonfuls of them at each meal when the boys were young, as an example. 

         He was such a good dad, she thought as she sipped her wine and swallowed the pills in her hand and followed them with the other three Xanax from her friend.  She hoped that would get him through, that he would see the need for him that her sons would have and that would give him a reason to keep going.  She knew he would never understand why she was doing this.  And she knew he loved her, deeply, if not madly.  And there it was, she thought as she downed the last of the wine.  There was the reason for her need to do what she now did.  She seriously doubted if anyone would understand her but knew for a fact that her husband wouldn’t.  The man who wouldn’t get rid of that damn chair, who kept old pairs of jeans stained with paint, who wouldn’t quit wearing a t-shirt until it was fit for nothing but a rag, that was a man who valued comfort.  He would never understand what a cage comfort could be.

         She set the wine glass down on the tray next to the empty wine and Xanax baggie and stretched out on the couch.  She felt her mind drifting through scenes from their lives together.  The fire of their love had never fully gone out and she knew he loved her just as much as she loved him.  But time and parenthood had changed it.  She didn’t know if it was because they’d gotten older or just tireder from the effort of raising children, but their love had become like the embers of a fire, warm, glowing but not flaring.  It was comfortable, like his old jeans or his chair, and for years it had been enough for her.  But then she changed.  She had never been quite sure if it had been hormonal or just the fact that her babies didn’t need a mommy constantly anymore but something had flared in her.  She needed flame.  She needed spice.  She needed him to miss her so much during the day that he’d call her or to need her so much at night that he’d wake her. 

         Unfortunately, these things were just not in her man of well-ingrained habits.  A companionable cup of coffee and reading of the newspaper in the morning, a perfunctory peck on the cheek when she got home, a quick good-night kiss as he tucked her in every night before going back out to the computer to check on his online games, these were the ways he showed her that he loved her.  His love was steady, long-term, a comforting glow to him as he looked forward to the rest of their life together. 

         For her it was like the light from a fluorescent bulb.  She could see he loved her just as much as she could see the light from an office overhead and she felt just about as much warmth.  She knew she didn’t excite him anymore.  Despite everything she’d tried over the past several months, she just didn’t excite him anymore.  For weeks she tried to deny it, to convince herself that there were other reasons.  She knew physically a man of his age just couldn’t get as excited as a younger man, but she also knew there were products on the market to counteract the effects of age.  Sure they weren’t cheap and that would be an impediment to her frugal husband, but if he loved her, really loved and wanted her, he would try them, she thought.  But he didn’t even want her enough to try.  That remembered realization brought another tsunami of tears, surprising the part of her that didn’t think she had any tears left. 

She knew he loved her, but however much he felt the warm glow of their shared past and expected future, there was no flame.  She’d tried to live with it as the flame of her love for him danced in her the way light danced within the embers of a fire.  She’d tried so hard to find just the right words or just the right nuance to make him understand how much she needed to be wanted and needed, but she had never found them.  She knew it wasn’t a lack of love.  She understood it was a simple fundamental difference in needs and personalities.  She had come to accept that she would never find the right words, no matter how she tried, because her need to be exciting to him -- to be madly and insanely wanted by him -- was as completely different a language to his need for comfort as Spanish was to English. 

         She knew some of her friends met their needs by finding a different man to fan the flames, but that just wasn’t in her.  She considered herself extremely lucky to have found the love of her life while she was still so young.  And she knew she could never be with another man.  Oh, she might look at them from time to time, appreciating and fantasizing about their smoky eyes or broad shoulders, but the emotion would never be there, she knew.  There had only ever been one man who could touch her heart the way he had.  And so, over the past few months, the flames that had danced within her had grown colder.

         A new flood of tears started as she remembered how it had all become crystal clear to her last night.  Her pride cringed anew at the memory of how badly she’d wanted him.  Her heart tightened at the renewed battle between pride and desire.  Her need for the flame clashed with all the logic of the situation and the clanging crash between the two rang in her ears.  The frustration, both physical and mental, beat against her own pride and self-worth until there was nothing left to hold her to herself.  No self-esteem.  No pride.  No flame.  It had died in her last night, along with so much else. 

         She knew he’d never understand how the glow that was so comforting to him was so cold to her.  He’d never understand how the comfort and familiarity that felt like such a home to him felt like a tomb to her.  He couldn’t be the man she needed, couldn’t love her with a passion that matched her own.  And she wanted and needed him like no other man, pride and self-esteem be damned.  Her need for the flame had left her without pride, without self-esteem and with a cold, empty, dead feeling inside her as the flame died. 

         She looked at the old, comfortable chair in the corner.  She saw the paint-stained pants and the comfortable old shirt she’d folded carefully and laid in the seat.  She saw the glint of light, cold, from her wedding ring that she had laid on top of the clothes.  A fresh wave of sobs spread over her, the pain of her broken heart filling her as completely as the passion and desire had last night.  When her body stopped shaking, she hugged one of the couch pillows tight and let herself fall into the comfort of darkness where no flame would burn her again.