Corduroy Couch

It never occurred to me that our marriage was in trouble.

It was the summer of 1981. We'd just moved into a lovely apartment, replete with an upstairs study where I immersed myself in American drama in preparation for a four hour field exam. Passing it would earn me my masters degree and make me eligible to teach Freshman Composition at the University of Oregon. (I passed.)

I was naive and blind.

My wife was doing a copy editing internship at the Oregonian. I was doing very good work in graduate school.

And we had just bought a new corduroy couch.

Things looked good. To me.

When my wife told me she wanted out of our marriage, I kept thinking of that tan corduroy couch.

I couldn't put it together. Didn't that couch embody a purchase that signified permanence?Why would Eileen insist we buy a couch we had to buy on time if she was going to then insist on a separation and then a divorce?

And those new unfinished bookshelves. We brought them home and stained them together. Is this what couples about to split do?

That's what I thought in 1981. I had had no reason, I thought, to think that our marriage was in trouble. We bought a corduroy couch.

It's funny what objects take on magnified meaning in a break up.

When Eileen and I stopped sleeping together, I spent nights on the corduroy couch.

When I wanted a break from my upstairs study, I came downstairs and studied on the corduroy couch. Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller sat on that corduroy couch.

When I came home from studying German during the summer that Eileen was doing her internship, I'd walk in the front door and I always felt a little surge of pride when I looked at our brand new corduroy couch.

It was firm, strong, and soft at the same time, that corduroy couch. That corduroy couch deepened my sense of the enduring nature of our marriage. I looked forward to where we would go next, after we were done with our graduate studies, and where we would take our corduroy couch.

When the truth came out that Eileen wanted more in her life than our marriage was giving her; when the truth came out that she wanted to live in a more metropolitan place; when the truth came out that she was making new friends in Portland that she didn't want to leave, including the man she's been married to now for twenty years, we had these talks on the corduroy couch.

When I was frustrated and confused and couldn't believe what was happening, I pounded my fists on the corduroy couch.

It turned out the corduroy couch wasn't a sign of anything. It doesn't matter. Buying a corduroy couch in July that seem to signify permanence doesn't mean a thing when a spouse wants to leave the marriage in October.

Yet, we invest these household things with what we want them to signify. It might be curtains. It might be bookcases. It might be the purchase of a new living room rug. In my second marriage, it was the purchase of a house. I invested a sense of permanence in that corduroy couch.

When Eileen and I separated, when I stayed in Eugene and she went to Portland, we divided our belongings.

The one thing I knew I couldn't bear to have in my possession any longer was the corduroy couch.

It went to Portland.