25: "Bauhaus" by Amanda Marbais (Thursday, July 30)
Sherry and Mike argued over their breakfast table, a circa 1980’s wicker and glass oval, that Mike was sick of, because he “wanted the Crate and Barrel”. He used the article “the” in front of anything he strongly desired, an annoying habit. And, still, it troubled her that she was annoyed. Perhaps it was the end of any unity in their taste. What if they lost all their common interests?
The chairs were a perfectly balanced, brass-finished cantilever design, both functional and perhaps, twentieth century. After a web search she discovered their original designer, Mart Stam, was part of the early Bauhaus movement making the chairs “historical” and “universal”. Would they get rid of the gleaming, bagel-crumb covered wedding-toaster? Mike silently turned to his milk-crated collection of 70’s albums and put on The Who.
Once, the set had been a focal point in Mom's divorce-nest during a time when Sherry’s friends referred to Sherry’s mom as hot-as-hell-mom, and she wore home-died shifts and rustled to the window to yell at the neighbors, her ass perfect, so said members of Rising Vale Basketball Team. To Sherry it was a symbol of wild feminine freedom AND functional domesticity. Mike looked at her as if she had just taken psychotropic drugs, and visibly shuddered at Sherry’s involved reiteration of this childhood scene.
Mike should have liked the chairs because they were easy to have sex in, functional, yet remarkably pleasing and bearing the nostalgia common to every 80’s kitchen. During these romantic interludes, she liked to listen to the band Bauhaus. Mike didn't think this was clever. He wanted to throw the kitchen set out in the rain. Secretly, Sherry mentally recreated this scene, since they lived in New York City. All the best romantic movies included a rain-in-New-York scene, where couples kissed and people were rescued in back alleys, hair matted to their face as their limbs flew and twined, and each realized a renewal of human hope, perhaps a precursor to a relationship. Hot!!! This just struck her as triply ironic and made the chairs more beautiful, a place to pin romanticism in a bouquet, a triumvirate of irony. She imbued the chairs with this meaning, while Mike played his lo-fi stereo equipment and crouched in the living room like an exceptionally large, clothed wolf, as motionless as the nearby couch.
One day, he came home with new, plastic-covered Mission-style chairs and dragged them into the living room. “They’re dining chairs, not kitchen chairs,” he said.
They had bad sex that night and did not listen to Bauhaus. She began to worry about her own ability to take care of herself.
She called her mom. Mom sent a picture of the yellow-glowing kitchen during the divorce-nest period. In it, they watched Good Morning America, as Sherry ate her Wheaties, and Mom’s cigarette ash hung from the end of her Capri, the open window apparently billowing the 1980’s neon curtains. Sherry was reminded of the chairs calling to them with whispers of function and style, signifying a triumph of the object. Sherry whispered of his stereo equipment, spoke in his native tongue Greek, and they turned toward the chairs, which glistened in the kitchen light.
