Suburban Noir

At one point in time, the wicker chairs had looked charming, but Rick couldn’t quite recall when that had been. Was it the day they were purchased and then it was all down hill from there? Or was it that they looked nice, painted a crisp green, until she added the floral cushions that were so inappropriate for outdoor furniture. Maybe wicker spoke of a certain kind of life and he saw himself as more cosmopolitan. Charming wasn’t what he wanted at all.

All this time and they’d never actually sat in the chairs. Instead, spiders constructed elaborate cobwebs, mirroring the woven straw arched between each leg. The chairs collected fine particles of dirt that mingled with fumes from passing cars and turned to a sticky grit. Worse, cats often napped on the cushions, leaving fur glued to the fabric, and who knew what else. Rick scratched his neck. The itching grew more intense. He scratched more vigorously, until his skin felt raw.

It was a romantic idea, a couple sitting on the porch on a summer evening, like couples had reportedly done back in the day, and in more rural parts of America, not on the west coast, not in Silicon Valley where most of the occupied chairs were in cubicles and coffee shops and bars.

He’d come to hate the chairs. Now, Chrissy was so busy with her hippie friends, the chairs seemed to mock the lack of togetherness. Her evenings were owned by the wannabe poets and sculptors and painters — people who had materialized shortly after her first pottery class, followed by all those other interests she pursued at the community center. Now she spent at least one night a week meeting her friends for meaningful conversation. Smoking pot was what it was. He hated that she smoked. They fought about it every week. She said it was no different from his nights out with co-workers, downing cocktails. But it was completely different. He wanted her to be normal, like the women he worked with, sipping a glass of wine or pursing her lips over a cosmo. Not puffing on a rolled up piece of paper stuffed with bits of dried plants.

Sometimes she spent the night with her friends, too stoned to drive, she said. She was being safe.

He turned away from the front window and went to the doorway of the spare bedroom. He surveyed her work table, covered with plastic bags of clay, half finished pots and vases, tools with hardened clay stuck to them. A small sofa sat on the opposite side of the room and next to it a low table, stacked with notebooks and volumes of poetry, bookmarks sticking out from multiple places.

He walked into their bedroom. It was time to leave for work, but he felt something brewing at the base of his skull, a dull rumble like the motor of the Harley that strutted down their street every Sunday afternoon. Only his side of the bed had the covers thrown back. He’d slept alone again. Across from her side of the bed was her dresser, the top covered with the jewelry several of her new-found friends had crafted for her. He walked across the room and yanked open the top drawer. It was filled with more jewelry and knitted scarves of delicate, sparkling fibers.

He left the room. In the kitchen, he pulled a black garbage bag out of the box. It snapped open with a few flicks of his wrist. He returned to the bedroom and dumped the contents of the top drawer into the bag. He held it to the edge of the dresser and swept all the rings and bracelets and pendants inside.

The bag had only a small bulge at the bottom, so he went into the spare room and dropped half-formed heads and damp clay bowls inside. They landed on the stuff at the bottom with a satisfying thud. He grabbed the notebooks and volumes of poetry off the table. When he was done, the room looked ready for something new, although he wasn’t sure what.

He dragged the sack through the living room, across the floor of the entryway, and down the steps to the front path. He lugged it to the curb, flipped back the lid of the trashcan, and heaved the bag inside. He heard the rumbling of the garbage truck, making its way to his street.

He rushed back to the front porch, nested one wicker chair on top of the other and carried them to the curb. He shoved them halfway into the yawning trashcan and went back to the porch. The massive truck rounded the corner. It stopped at the first house. Its mechanical arm reached out and grabbed the container, swinging it high in the air and upending it over the bin — an entire week of his neighbor’s life falling on top of the muck left by other lives.

In a few minutes, he’d be rid of the chairs. He opened his eyes, the truck was next door. The chairs were perched on top of his trash bin, the cushions slipping down as if they’d lost their grip. The cobwebs were no longer visible, probably ripped to shreds by the force of stacking the chairs and trying to get them at least partially inside the container.

The truck hissed and roared its way to his front curb. She loved those chairs. He backed up closer to the front door and watched the arm come down. He glanced across the street. Two chairs sat side by side on the front porch — smooth, silken mahogany, simple and dignified. He would get some chairs like that. She’d realize they were more comfortable than wicker. Chairs that exuded quality.

© Copyright Cathryn Grant 2012