Scruple the Second

THE ARMCHAIR

It was a squash yellow: the velvety corduroy print was the sinewy entrails of ripe pumpkin.  The arms were low and thinly padded.  If they were plush and comely once, years of 1st graders’ sidling bottoms, or ramming knees, or pounding fists had aptly deflated them.  The seat cushion sagged from so many stories told from behind your ear in Mrs. Barbezat’s jean-skirted lap.  She added “r”s to her words: “washed” was “warshed” to her.  The first graders were willing to overlook it: so long as she played the last page of A Very Quiet Cricket more than once. The armchair concealed a “spinney” bottom behind a mustard duster.  The intrepid youth received “yellow lights” on their conduct cards for testing the limits of inertia upon the armchair.

I look back into the closed doors of my memory.  Walk down the pale lemon hallway of St. Joseph’s Catholic School.  Open the wood-stain door with the glass inlay.  And in the dark, muffled, cloudy quiet of a school on Sunday, rests the yellow armchair.