Spring, 2013. We bought the couch on a Saturday from a store that hocked last season’s Ashley loveseats. It was our first major purchase as a couple. The furniture was new, but discount– like us. My husband and I were recently married and even more recently not broke. A tall stick of a salesman whose tongue tripped over his words approached us. He waved his arms as he gushed about the two-year warranty.

“He looks like a broken windmill,” I whispered to my husband when the salesperson sprinted across the showroom, arms flapping, to grab a price chart. Lyndon stifled his laughter. I’d always been the talker– the cracker of jokes, the maker of reservations, the arranger of dinners with friends.

“B12 injections,” the salesman explained the jiggling of his leg under his desk. He drummed his fingers across a walnut end table. “Been taking them for years!”

He seemed to forget his words as soon as they left his mouth, quoting us at least three different prices for the sofa and loveseat without us even asking. We pounced on the cheapest one. Mr. B12 Junkie threw in a coffee table and an accent chair.

The couch was brown reconstituted leather with overstuffed cushions and a matching loveseat. Ever the tech aficionado, Lyndon insisted on the power lift over the manual model. In the room in our home designated as his office, neatly coiled cords hung on nails in the closet. Computer parts littered the floor under his World of Warcraft flag. RPG gunfire echoed from his computer speakers on Saturday afternoons.

“Why do we need the power lift? What, are your arms broken?” I’d teased, but didn’t argue about the extra hundred bucks. I’d work a dozen extra hours to keep that smile on his face.

How do you put a price on your true love’s happiness? On your first big purchase as a young couple? On finally ditching the futon Lyndon’s father had salvaged from a dumpster?

Two days later, a massive truck maneuvered into our driveway and two men hopped out. Like ants carrying three times their body weight, they hefted the couch through the front door and into our living room. The loveseat, coffee table, and accent chair embroidered with bird silhouettes trailed after. We would leave the tags on for a week because it was the most expensive thing we had bought together.

After the movers left, Lyndon and I snuggled together on the sofa. The cushions smelled of reconstituted leather and young love. Lyndon fingered the button beside him, making the footrest dance. Our living room had changed, subtly, in a way that had nothing to do with the golden sunset filtering in through the windows. Visions danced through my mind: friends gathered around the new coffee table, lazy Saturdays spent on the couch watching movies, perhaps even little bodies tumbling face first into the cushions. From the look on his face I know Lyndon saw them, too.

 *** 

Summer, 2014. Fatigue pressed my body into the couch cushions. Lyndon sat beside me, feeding me pieces of salmon and green beans from a plate because I couldn’t manage a fork. Even the act of chewing leached the energy from my body.

My chronic illness had crept into my life two years before the wedding while we were still dating. Lyndon had seen the clumps of hair clogging the shower drain and even breaking my old vacuum. He’d witnessed my abandoned dreams, my tears of frustration and grief. “For sicker or even sicker,” we’d joked after the wedding.

On the TV in front of us– a wedding gift from Lyndon’s colleagues– Arya Stark plunged her sword into some nameless bad guy. I turned away. “The blood’s gone,” Lyndon said after the scene ended. He watched each episode in advance just to let me know where the gorey parts were so I knew when to look away.

Outside, the summer heat settled over our yard like an oppressive force. Under my body, the couch was cool, sturdy but soft — a cloud of gentle support. I couldn’t imagine ever thinking the power lift was a bad idea.

The knowledge that I was growing sicker had lingered at the periphery of our lives for the past few months. It seeped into the pauses in our conversations. It wriggled like tree roots into the foundation of our relationship. The growing piles of pill bottles by the bathroom sink pushed Lyndon’s razor and toothbrush to the side.

Years later when I think of that evening on the couch, the memory of Lyndon feeding me bites of salmon will darken under the looming shadow of what was to come. We didn’t yet know my disease would spiral out of control, robbing me of my ability to walk and speak coherently. We didn’t yet know that the steroid infusions to save me would sear my throat and deform my body. That we would cling to what once repulsed us, like portable hair wash basins and sponge baths. That for the better part of a year, I would be too sick to even sit on the couch with Lyndon.  

*** 

Winter, 2015. Couch Day, I called that particular day in early January. Lyndon was at work at the time, unable to witness this milestone. In the months I spent bedridden in the spare room, he’d slipped in to sit on my bed and talk after work. Every evening at first, then less and less. Sometimes I asked him for food or to refill my water bottle. Sometimes he forgot.

Over the past month, I’d started to string sentences together again. I read a book, then asked for another. I wrote thank-you notes to my doctors and nurses. I had shuffled down the narrow hallway to the living room, then back. Close enough to catch a glimpse of the puffy leather armrest. But on that January day in particular, a lightness replaced the rubber band feeling of my leg muscles sagging against my bones. The fog in my head cleared.

I had to leave my laptop in the spare room. When I was unable to leave my house, it had been my only portal to the rest of the world. Now that I was too weak to carry it, it weighed me down like an anchor. I shuffled down the hallway, touching the wall for balance, into the living room, its high ceilings intimidating after half a year in the tiny spare room. Then I sank into the couch cushions I hadn’t touched in months, my legs quivering. That new leather smell lingered faintly, although the couch wasn’t as supportive as I remembered. My weakened abdominal muscles would ache for weeks as I readjusted to sitting. My caretaker flashed me a grin, then brought me coffee. When I realized I wasn’t strong enough to lift the ceramic mug, she passed me a straw.

From my bed, I had watched ghost-like over the past few months as the world kept turning without me. I’d sat and listened to Lyndon talk about his day, his work, his inept assistant. I had nothing to contribute to the conversation. But there I was, back on our couch. Ready to talk. Ready to resume my life. Ready to re-enter our relationship.

When Lyndon came home, he sank into the cushion beside me. But only for a minute. A dark cloud seemed to form behind his eyes. Then he rose and disappeared into his office, shutting the door behind him.

***

Summer, 2015. We’d deflated the hair wash basin and set it on a high shelf in the closet. The cartons filled with pills, books, snacks, and water disappeared from the spare bedroom, along with the caretakers and visiting family I’d relied on for support. Sometimes I left the house to shuffle down the aisle of the pharmacy, staring wide-eyed at the colorful array of pens, paper, and stationery. The pharmacist passed me my prescriptions, knowing I wasn’t strong enough to stand in line. But mostly, I retreated to the softness of the couch, my computer on my lap.

When the garage door growled, my heart thumped. Sometimes Lyndon opened the door to the house with a smile. Other times, he’d fling the door open so hard it slammed into the wall. The flash of darkness I’d seen behind his eyes had grown to an ever-present storm. His footsteps pounded into the floor. My “how was your day?” could be met with a kiss or with a snarl. The pantry door and the twisted metal of my bedside shelf bore the scars of Lyndon’s fists.

I’d sit barely breathing with my back against the couch as he screamed. The thought lodged in my mind like a splinter: if Lyndon tried to hit me, my legs were too weak to run. I wished for my skin to change like a chameleon’s, to blend in with the leather cushions behind me. I wished to disappear.

It was on the couch that I picked up Lyndon’s phone once when it pinged. I glanced at the closed door of his office, then down at the screen to see a message not meant for me.

I can’t wait until I can hold you in my arms again. Another woman’s name texted a reply. I gasped for breath.

***

Fall, 2015. The end was never a straight line. It meandered and sagged, yielding like an overstuffed cushion to the weight of our dying union. Boxes of my books and clothes filled the spare room, waiting to be whisked away. Plates and silverware divided themselves in half. Conversations and dinners out trickled to a standstill.

I spoke only in soft tones, nodding and forcing my lips into a smile. The evenings with my back pressed against the couch as Lyndon screamed at me loomed fresh in my mind. I abandoned the softness of the couch for the safety of the spare room. I tiptoed around what was once my home, desperate not to start a fight I couldn’t win.

When I moved out, I took the coffee table and the accent chair. I might have taken the loveseat and left Lyndon the couch but even the loveseat’s heavy cushions and extended footrests would never have fit in the tiny living room of my new condo. What was once wanted would have slowed me down. By that point, I’d learned to recognize an anchor when I saw one. As I shut the front door for the last time, I caught one last glimpse of the puffy armrest. The new leather smell had long since vanished.

I never finished watching Game of Thrones. There was no one to cover my eyes. Occasionally, I’d receive a text from Lyndon or hear an update from his mother. A year after we divorced, he packed his computers and books into boxes and moved to a small apartment. The last I heard of the couch, it was sitting outside his mother’s back porch, wrapped in tarps. Far from old, but now thrown away. Sometimes, I consoled myself, men discard even things of value. I still think of the couch every once in a while, my feet propped up on the coffee table in my condo. Something once so comfortable had become a burden too big for either of us to carry.

Meghan Beaudry began writing as part of her rehabilitation from brain trauma in 2014 and simply never stopped. Her work has been published in Hippocampus, Ravishly, TODAY, Al Jazeera, and the Huffington Post. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017. In 2020, she was selected as winner of the Pen 2 Paper Creative Writing Contest in fiction. She blogs for Lupus.net.