Love Seat

Yellow, nineteen-seventies-ugly-looking, coffee stained cushions, the loveseat attempted to provide decorum to the hospital room, a quality absent with the ultrasound machine and other obstetric technology.   

In that hospital examination room with Mama, my daddy thought heavy thoughts lounging on that ugly loveseat. The old man would zone back to reality to find his right mind then stand, pull up his sagging red and black plaid pants, adjust his black tie, grab the door handle then turning it, the door would open and he’d be on his way, leaving Mama and his unborn baby boy. Later the old man would revisit, tapping his knuckles twice on the russet door, the second tap louder than the first. The two taps were merely a technicality as in the driver seated in the sedan five-feet ahead of you who makes that left turn simultaneously as the left-turn-signal blinks so to enter your lane; a brief discourteous warning, you loathe those careless drivers but you break to secure their comfort and place ahead of you. Then the old man would spontaneously depart once more, not unlike that careless driver, who’d too, impulsively change their mind thus turning right out of your lane—this time void of a turn signal.   

“Honey, I’ll be right back,” he told Mama.

“Where you going?”

“I’m gone go have a smoke.”

Mama gazed at the egg yolky yellow loveseat reminiscing about life before she meant Daddy, before the mitosis—the ensuing evolution of me.  

“Boy, I didn’t think about what my life was like before I met your daddy as I stared into that ugly loveseat. And I sure ain’t thought about no mitosis; that loveseat reminded me of some of my old high school papers, yellowed by old age.”

Mama’s unsure of herself; she has to be. I imagine Mama’s paunch belly, legs wide open, staring at that loveseat. Of course her imagination was at work to rescue her as she gazed into the yellowish pigments. Pouting alone for the reason that the old man ditched her; gapping into the loveseat, Mama’s subconscious acted as her hero; she sought structure; she sought a body or any form she could identify in the messy loveseat’s patterns; eyeballing, Mama drew in on a form; that form was undefinable in terms of a sane woman observing; you could conceivably rationalize it as an adult looking at a three-year-old’s crayoned scribble and going “Ooh, I see me now, you and Daddy, too.” 

The thing is you don’t really see anything at all but at that moment you need too, desperately; therefore you lie to that three-year-old; you lie to yourself—you say that you see Daddy and your three-year-old, and you too, as a big happy family on that olive 12 x 8 construction paper; you even remark about the bright sunset in the background—you lie to yourself so to labor through.

This was just an ultrasound in which the doctor put cream on Mama’s belly; they looked at me; Mama said the old man wasn’t in the room much, that he roamed; that it didn’t matter anyway because she wasn’t in labor; that “that woman your Daddy messed around with crept into the hospital, too, that day; she was further along than me just by a month; your Daddy was outside having a smoke; he was shocked when he saw her drive up in the parking lot; he probably choked on his Newport [she laughs]; they spoke; she told him she’d come to see her unborn baby’s doctor, but that she and her baby were doing fine. Your Daddy didn’t know which way to turn—it was like a scene out of some silly sitcom. He’d be in the room with me and you, baby, smiling and showing his teeth. Then out to have a smoke, or what I learned years after, in the other room with that woman and her baby. Yeah; I was mad at him but both babies were his; what was he gone do?” 

What Mama didn’t tell you is that while the old man was out of the room she drew in on that messy chaotic loveseat and a figure bled through, something she could identify. It was like one of them paintings you stare at until what you’re supposed to see appears. 

A real gentleman, not flippant or yellow in character, but yellow in the skin like the loveseat, appeared. This man’s delivery and speech surpassed that of my biological daddy’s. But it was this man’s moral principles that punctuated him in Mama’s memory. Had this real gentleman walked in as she slept while waiting for Daddy to come back? Or was this man a manifestation of Mama’s imagination as she laid there longing for a faithful man who wouldn’t cheat—staring at that hideous loveseat, waiting for daddy to come back and sit in it? 

Was this man made up by Mama?

No, because Mama didn’t learn about daddy cheating until years after this hospital scenario. She had no reason to imagine a better man than daddy that day; in her eyes daddy was a real gentleman.

Therefore this real gentleman wasn’t a figment of Mama’s imagination: an idea to help her cope with Daddy’s infidelity because she didn’t know about his cheating; so this real gentleman must have been in the room that day rubbing and kissing Mama’s belly.  

“Boy, ain’t no man enter the room as I lay there waiting for your daddy; and I ain’t imagine no real gentleman either. 

“But Mama—.”

“Boy, you came up with that real gentleman story so that you can cope with my recollection of that day. From my belly you might’ve somehow scoped in on what was happening in that room that day—maybe you knew what was up before I knew. And therein is where your overactive imagination likely started because you always had a kind of heroic imagination especially when bad stuff happens to you—your imagination is like a sidekick that comes to rescue you from defeat.

“Now, I understand how you must feel, your daddy should’ve been giving you his undivided attention, rubbing my belly and all that stuff, but ain’t no real gentleman enter the room and I ain’t imagined no real gentleman.  

Mama doesn’t know what she’s talking about; the real gentleman was in the room that day.