Thursday, December 16, 2010

Because I feel daring.

  Bailey wondered why she had never sat in this chair before. It was a perfectly adequate, sturdy seat. It faced the left window in the downstairs den, and had lovely view of the yellow rose bushes flourishing in the backyard.
      It was one of those filler furniture pieces, she supposed. Although, she wasn't exactly sure what qualified this one. It was a little stiff, maybe. The cushion, a little lumpy. She bought it a garage sale, she remembered, a few months after she and Collin had celebrated their fifth anniversary. The dull green upholstery had called out to her from the crackled sidewalk, beckoning her to take it home. She couldn’t help but comply.
      She had been so pleased with her find.
      “Look what I got today!” she had exclaimed when she arrived at their quaint Victorian home a few minutes later. “It was only twenty dollars, can you believe that?” Collin had grunted something from behind his newspaper, but his coarse brown hair remained hidden behind an article over last night’s Yankee game. He hadn’t even bothering to look up. It was hardly the response she had been wanting.
      Bailey had felt so foolish for believing a piece of furniture could rekindle their spark that had been waning for so long; as if the missing piece of the living room would suddenly morph into the missing ingredient to their tattered marriage.
      Maybe that’s why she never sat in this green chair. It was another failure, another mark on her record. Another reminder that she couldn’t fix anything, no matter how badly she wished she could transform this icy house into a warm life filled with laughter.
      If only furniture had that kind of power, she thought.
      From the window, she saw Collin’s black truck pulling into their long driveway. Dust flew into a whirlwind as the tires screeched to a halt. Bailey tightly closed her eyes and grimaced. When they were first married, she would run out to greet her husband as he came home from a long day at the church office like a child anxiously awaiting the return of his father. Now, she knew better.
      Collin was usually exhausted from the smiling, tired of trying to invest in the members of his congregation’s lives. By the time he got home, his compassion had cindered to ash and his moods became as uncontrollable as the dust flying around the tires of his truck. Bailey decided to wait in the den.
      She sighed as she fiddled with the faded fringe around her forgotten piece of furniture.
     
It was perfectly adequate, she thought. Yet, they never used it. How quickly she had abandoned her magnificent find, when it hadn’t held up to her high expectations... 

5 comments:

  1. I want to read your book. period.
    and also I really want that chair.

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  2. Wow, that's some powerful writing. You create a sympathetic character and introduce her conflict all in, what, two pages?

    The chair metaphor is cleverly executed, and I think the contrast between the husband's role at work and the man he is by the time he gets home should make for some excellent drama.

    I'm with tp. I want to read your book.

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  3. Loved this. I want to read the ending!! Does he change? Does she leave him?

    You should make a one year book for you and your man. I did that too and it's really fun to go back and look at!

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  4. Jena,
    This is really good. I want to read it!

    ReplyDelete