Unfashionable But Unbowed (Eve)

A swank Merc pulled up to the gravelly driveway of the gleaming new house.

The driver's door opened and well-heeled sling backs and stockinged, shapely calves pushed out first, followed by the rest of the compact, pretty blonde Sarah. She carried a dossier.

The Poundstones greeted Sarah Stern cordially, if trepidatiously.

Their phone conversation the previous day replayed in Taryn's head:

"I tell all my clients they need a thick skin to get the most out of my consultations. If you take any of what I say personally, we'll all feel bad, and you might end up throwing the bassinet out with the bathwater.

"I do try to be diplomatic," Sarah said in her most unctuous voice, "but sometimes I let my decorating passion carry me away."

At the end of two hours of unrelenting feedback (at $120/hr.), the Poundstones were told they would be sent the decorating scheme within the week.

Just as they were seeing their decorator off, Taryn, in a masochistic moment, thought she'd try to squeeze out one more bit of advice.

"Sarah, if you had to change just one thing about this Great Room, what it be?"

"Ah, I'm so glad you asked," she gleefully responded. "I'd get rid of that big overstuffed, tired and tawdry, not to mention out-of-date sofa. The upholstery, no matter how practical it was at the time to get washable covers, has unsuccessfully visited your washing machine too many times."

Sarah was on a roll now.

"Even new covers wouldn't save its stuffing, as it's sagging in the framework from too many bums over too many years. Don't bother with Vinnies, they won't take it," she harumphed.

Breathless by now, she bid a hasty goodbye and gingerly tottered out the door on her spiky high heel shoes.

That night their loyal 18-year-old divan cried itself to sleep. Sobbing softly in between wet statements like, "All these years of unstinting support at all hours - Taryn's pregnancies, nursing the babies, and her soapy watching in the afternoons, Sam's insomnia over whether the house was going to get built and then whether it was going to bankrupt them, the trampoline-style trouncing of three kids, only one year apart each, and then, the canoodling of teenagers when their parents left them alone with girlfriends and boyfriends. Oh, the injustice!"

The next morning when the Poundstones came out into their open plan kitchen/dining/living area for their ritual cuppa, they saw this slightly damp note on the coffee table.

Dear Ingrates,

Thanks a lot for the rude and cruel assessment you subjected me to from that bitchy snob. It’s not as if I don’t have feelings, and I couldn’t just get up and walk out of the room, could I?

In fact, if I could have cleared out overnight, I certainly would have. There are people in this world that might appreciate owning a broken-in, faithful sofa, such as myself.

Now that I’m seen as past my shelf life and unattractive, I want you to know that I’m not going to even try to keep it together for you anymore. Be very afraid because when you are least expecting it, after slumping into your old couch after a hard day’s work perhaps, I may just crash down around you, broken down finally with a broken heart.

Your former devoted and steady friend,
The Big White Sofa

Taryn poured a coffee for Tim and herself and carefully approached the sofa, looking at it with amazement tempered with newfound respect. She tentatively sat down and then patted the seat next to her, motioning Tim to join her. The couch seemed to groan abjectly from more than the weight of just the two of them.

It’s not something you see everyday, and it’s certainly not anything you’d hear often either, but the couple spent the next few hours soothing their old piece of furniture and convincing it that the decorator’s view was not in any way theirs.

Taryn said the sorry word many times, and after awhile, the old settee seemed at last to settle into its old steadfast bearing, none the worse for wear.