The Red Chair

We bought the red recliner together. My mother and I were decorating her new apartment and there was a perfect spot for a recliner in the far corner of the still-bare living room. It would look out on the apartment courtyard where a family of deer lived and at the Empire State Building, which was 25 miles in the distance, but a "city view" nonetheless. After 35 years of marriage, 26 in the same house, my mother never got the reclining chair she always wanted. My father's ever-expanding CD collection, my brother's baseball trophies, my running medals and academic team plaques - these were the things that took up valuable space. Her "reading nook" never happened.

But then my parents got divorced. And as she stood in her living room in her new apartment - at 56, her first experience living alone - my mother finally decided to buy her recliner. Getting up early one Saturday, we drove to Sears where we'd seen circulars proclaiming the "fabulous one-day sales." We rode the escalator to the third floor and walked into a room full of recliners. Eyes wide, we looked at each other and with a shrug to say "here goes" began to explore the landscape of living-room furniture.

Immediately I found a plush "chair and a half" in cool cream leather. I sat back and put my feet up and sighed with relaxation. My favorite was obvious. My mother came over, and settling into the inches of cushioning, she, too, was in awe of the comfort of the chair. But awe quickly turned to shock when she saw the price tag. Still reeling, she stood and uttered a sing-song "moving on." And so we did, looking through all the prints, the leathers, the tweeds, the swivels and rockers, but finding none that fit our price range.

"Ah, well," my mother said as we completed the circle around the showroom without success, "after I'm done paying off lawyer fees, we'll come back maybe. Let's go drown our sorrows in Ben and Jerry's." As we walked out, heads down in resignation, we turned the corner towards the mall and saw in the hallway one last recliner. It was smaller than the others, squat and short. It was lined well enough but hardly plush. And while it was shaped like a recliner, no handle was visible. But its burgundy color matched our couch and loveseat print perfectly, and at $100, fit well within our price range with room left in the budget for ice cream. We hailed a sales associate, who pointed out the "manual pushback" - in order to recline, one had to sit, and with feet squarely on the ground, throw their bodies backwards until the footrest emerged with a creak. With a few practice runs, my mother and I mastered it in no time. We decided to take the recliner, but worried briefly about carrying it to the car until we lifted it. While seemingly structurally sound, we realized the wood beneath was clearly plywood. We loaded it in and out of the car, carried it up the stairs with nary a bead of sweat and placed it in the corner of my mother's new apartment.

Ever since that day, the chair has served its purpose. Two years later, despite our fears, the recliner has yet to collapse and the manual pushback mechanism still functions. My brother and sister and I laugh when we see my mother throw her body into the chair, grimacing and grunting, and then try to look cool as she lies back. But my mother is a woman who worked relentlessly for almost 40 years to raise three children and run her household. It's fitting that it takes a little elbow grease for her to truly kick back.

Every time I see her settle happily into her reading nook, I can't help but smile. If anyone deserves time to read quietly and watch deer graze in the courtyard, it's my mother. And while it may not be cool cream leather she sits on, the city in the distance sparkles just the same.

Kerry White writes creative nonfiction and fires up future writers in her middle-school English classroom in Baltimore, MD.

~Kelly White