The Sectional

As the kids in this house started moving out and their rooms got little use, I decided we should put the t.v. in one of the downstairs bedrooms. As a nod to my husband who gave up having much of a say in the decor around here, I painted it a caramel color, bought some leather furniture, and went a little nuts with the antler trend. This was a special touch seeing as how Mark never hunted anything in his life except fish, but a room with antlers was cool even if had no bearing on your life.

The room stayed like that for many years until I told Mark that it didn’t make sense that there wasn’t even room on the leather loveseat for both of us to sprawl out and watch t.v. together, and that maybe we should look into a sectional. I’d been looking at the same one for two years at West Elm, paying frequent visits and checking the price, and so one day last August we both went on a Saturday afternoon to look at it again. While I have to kick the tires on a big purchase forever, Mark shopped differently. He had taken over doing the weekly grocery shopping because I hated it, and explained to me that shopping needed to be planned like a reconnaissance mission. “You move in and out. Under the radar before you’re detected.” This sounded more like an episode of WWII on the History Channel than a trip to the neighborhood grocery store but that was his style.

We got to the destination of our reconn mission and I pointed out the sectional I’d been courting the last two years. He sat down and said “I like it. Let’s get it,” and my anxious heart started skipping like a rabbit in the eye of a Jack Russell terrier. “Like today? Oh god, no. We can’t just buy it today. We came to look at it and think it over and then maybe look at Craigslist for awhile longer until we find something similar.” Mark hated Craigslist. Over the years I had involved him in enough hauling of furniture and having to rent U-Hauls to get it home that just the idea of Craigslist sent him over the edge. “I’m not going into another stranger’s house to look at another piece of used furniture that we can’t fit in our car. We’re here, we should buy this, and we should get it delivered.” I wasn’t prepared for it to be that easy. “That’s it? We just buy it now?” He nodded while relaxing on his new sofa, and because I can’t make anything simple I had to agonize over the fabric choice for an hour.

After we finished ordering the sectional, I told him I wanted to stop in Banana Republic to look for a dress for a wedding we were going to the following month. Taking Mark out shopping was often like taking an alien who had just landed from Mars. Everything was a wonder to him. He followed me around while I looked until I said, “The whole other side is the guy section. Why don’t you see if there’s anything you need?” Amazed by this piece of information he said, “They sell men’s and women’s clothes here? In the same place?” It was Friends & Family Weekend and everything was discounted so he came back with a sport coat, a few shirts, and a belt. I struck out on finding a dress but got a skirt and two tshirts. When they told us how much we saved with the discount plus opening a credit card we high-fived each other at the checkout. Never mind that we didn’t really need anything we got, we saved a significant amount of money or so we told ourselves. All that spending made us hungry and we finished our shopping spree with lunch at McCormick and Shmick’s. On the drive home I started adding up how much we spent in a couple of hours and when I told him the total he said, “Good. It was worth every cent.”

At the time of Mark’s death he had worn the sport coat just once, the shirts and belt hung in his closet unused. He also wouldn’t live long enough to see the sectional delivered. Since then the room has been repainted, the antlers are gone, and it looks more feminine than it would have been if Mark were still here. On that August day we thought we’d have so many more years ahead of us. We didn’t know that there would only be a few weeks, and that the jacket he bought that looked so great on him would be one of the few things of his that I could give away. When I offered it to Brian, who lost his mother and close friend in a matter of days, he said, “Are you sure you want me to have this?” I told him I was positive and after he tried it on he said it fit like it was custom made for him. “Mark would like that,” I said.

The sectional is a different story. Unlike his clothes, I can’t avoid looking at it every day. It’s what I thought I wanted and it works better in the room, but like most of the things I thought were important, I am apathetic about it. Because I remember everything about that day I want to believe that there are threads of Mark exuberant life stitched into the cushions, waiting to be unveiled to me at some point. Until then I only can see it through the lens of sorrow, that exuberant life of his drifting farther from my reach day after day.