story955.xml

story955.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-01

Copyright 2002 by:
Pamela Manch? Pearce
P.O. Box 1848
New York, New York 10021
(212) 879-7935 Phone/fax
Pamela. Pearce @att.net





THE WOMEN IN THE WING CHAIR


On September 11th at 9:00 AM my husband, Barry, was on the phone engineering his mother, Eleanor?s move into a Connecticut nursing home the next day. Actually, he was dealing with her furniture. Always that furniture. I remember thinking ?I can?t wait until all this is over,? as I rushed past him to answer our second phone.


My friend, Sharon, was crying on the other end, stuttering, gulping for air. ?What is it, what is it?? I pressed. I thought of an accident ?her son, her husband.


?They?hit the World Trade Center again?. with planes. Turn on the TV.? I hung up and, as I raced passed my husband, I heard the words, ?the wing chair, be extra careful with it?it would be awful if you damaged it.?


I watched the screen and thought it was a joke as I saw the towers?one smoking, one with a plane slicing through it, bursting into blood-red flames. A joke until I heard the announcer?s voice. I ran into the dining room. ?She?s taking the Federal dresser with her. The original brasses are irreplaceable,? Barry said into the receiver. It sounded so insane to me--furniture. I pulled on his arm, hysterical, blurting ?Get off, get off. The World Trade Center?s been attacked.? It didn?t register with him. He was listening carefully to the mover. Barry looked at me and hissed, ?This is an important call. We don?t move these pieces every day, and I want it done right. What?s the problem?? I repeated, louder, ?The World Trade Center?s been attacked.? He muttered ?I?ll call you right back,? and he ended his call.


By the time we stood together in front of the TV, news of the Pentagon attack was being announced, even as we watched the smoking towers, mesmerized. Outside our apartment fire trucks and ambulances, sirens blaring, raced downtown.


?We have to get out of here NOW!? my husband announced. Fearing the city might be locked down any minute, he killed our plan for an evening drive to Eleanor?s Guilford apartment. ? I?m going to the garage. I?ll meet you down stairs in 15 minutes.? Panicked, sure our apartment would be destroyed, I raced around?grabbing folders of writing, a wedding picture, a baby picture of my husband, another of my parents, my



good jewelry, water. A mad scramble of stuff thrown into a canvas tote. I pushed the two cats into their travel bags, and a sack of their food and stuffed mice into my own.


As everyone else, we were stunned by the attacks. And with terror surging in our minds and bellies, we wrestled with our arrangement to move my mother-in-law, Eleanor, the next day. She didn?t want to go, she loved her apartment, but she needed more help. She?d confided that over and over in our nightly phone calls. The waiting list at the nursing home in Old Saybrook was at least a year; her spot could only be held for another 24 hours. We had to grab it. So my husband insisted we stick to the plan, even if it meant leaving New York in a rush, traveling bridges and highways while highjacked planes were still flying around.


We made it, and we escorted Eleanor to Old Saybrook. She was nervous but didn?t show it, her back straight, her eyes alive. I was especially proud to be in the same family as this dignified ?Yankee Empress,? impeccable as ever in a pale pink blouse, pearls and lace-up oxfords that matched her taupe skirt as I wheeled her to her new room past residents in fuzzy sweat suits and wrinkled housecoats and slippers. I squeezed her shoulder and she instantly covered my hand with hers as we neared room 219, her new home. Inside were the Federal dresser, wide frame pine mirror and Hepplewhite nightstand were in place to greet her like old friends. They had been with her for 70 years. Her half of the room?elegant right down to the Queen Anne footstool and flame-stitched easy chair?proved that nothing could deny this 95 year-old the pleasure of her most-cherished furniture.


Soon after I met my husband in l993, I learned about his family?s passion for their furniture. Early American had never been my taste. A standing joke between us is Barry?s dream of living in a Shaker room and mine in Marie Antoinette?s lingerie drawer. Early American furniture always reminded me of suburbia in the ?50?s and ?60?s, with all those fakes--those eagle-topped toilet paper holders and waste- paper baskets shaped like drums. One of my aunts was mad for the stuff: ball fringe hung from the edge of every curtain, and patriotic red-white-and blue was everywhere, including a canopy on the baby?s crib. I hated those matching maple bedroom sets my cousins had while I was growing up--the ones advertised in the color section of the Sunday papers as ?5 pieces for $199.00, box spring and mattresses not included.? I despised those austere hooked rugs and sexless beds with tight covers.


But what my husband inherited is, like him, the real thing. In the l930?s, when his parents visited relatives in Vermont and they picked-up then unfashionable pieces at lawn sales. They liked the clean lines and fine wood, frequently hidden beneath layers of cheap white paint. My late father- in- law lovingly refinished their finds in his basement workshop, gently stripping thick, alligatored paint from various furniture, including a Hepplewhite chest and a museum-quality tavern table that may have been used to sort laundry or hold pots next to a stove. In keeping with their love of Colonial antiques, Barry?s parents bought the David Hale house in Glastonbury, Connecticut. A cousin of patriot Nathan (?I regret that I have but one life to lose??) Hale had built the house in 1760 where my husband grew up. The furniture fit perfectly and was frequently photographed for glossy magazine features on historic Connecticut homes.


The more I learned about Barry?s furniture, the more interested I became. I grew to love our single-plank blanket chest and elegant dining room chairs, painted with a feather brush to simulate grain at a time when the American Revolution was an idea discussed in secret.


But, it wasn?t until the attack on the World Trade Center that I really began to appreciate the history of these objects.


The next week, still shaken, we returned to Guilford, to pack up Eleanor?s abandoned apartment. It felt strange to be there without her to greet us. There was no kettle whistling an invitation to tea, and no homemade cookies from her rose- printed tin. And the fragrance of her lily-of-the-valley cologne, an integral part of her welcoming embraces, was now just a faint scent on the clothes left behind in her closets.


Alone while Barry went to the truck, I surveyed what was left. Did we want to keep the wing chair after all? I had never liked it; it was too big. You could barely see the person sitting in it except from the front. To me, the mustard and olive upholstery was ugly. Save it? Or drag it across the room to the Salvation Army pile?


Exhausted, I sat in the massive chair for just a moment. I grabbed the arms with
my hands, pressed myself into the strong support of the back, allowed the wings to
shelter my head. For the first time since September 11th, I cried.


I felt safe after 10 days, after 10 sleepless nights. Waiting for my bed to rock
from a bomb blast; waiting for poisoned gas to seep under the doors, choking me to
death; listening to sirens on the street; counting their number and figuring their direction; dreaming again of the fireball on the South Tower; and waking early to see it again and again.


But in the chair I felt safe. Not just physically safe, but safe in the knowledge that
I am not the first woman to feel afraid. Not the first woman whose life has been
catapulted from the everyday dangers of life?s--accidents, illness, and nature-- into the
disorder of enemies outside the house: everywhere, hidden, enraged. I sensed that the
chair had a history of women in danger, sitting in it. Not women on battlefields, but in
domestic places, surrounded by uncertainty, risk, violence, and war. I felt the presence of
other women who once were here, afraid. Just as I was now afraid.


I can imagine a woman seated here, in the relative calm before the Revolution, just after she had slid closed the wood-paneled Indian shutters, which were the size of doors. Listening for the enemy?the crack of every twig, the call of every bird: ominous. Waiting in the chair, trembling inside. Listening. Praying to live. Praying for the strength of her house, the safety of her children. Her heartbeat ticking time until night became morning and she left the chair to open the Indian shutters and begin another day of life.


Eleanor and her new husband Charlie bought the wing chair at an auction in the mid-1930?s. I envision them driving around the New England countryside, newlyweds, with it all before them: peace and prosperity. Feathering their nest, Eleanor chose upholstery fabric to go with her new braided wool rug. Little did she know that she would occupy that chair through years of personal heartbreak, the grim tightness of a depression, and the dark, dark hours of WWII. Seated in this chair she knitted endless pairs of socks, as the world she had counted on became one of hospital ships full of injured men, and black - rimmed letters and funerals held without bodies.


I have always been somewhat American, but not as much as my first-generation parents would have liked. They wanted very much for me to be an ?All American Girl,? but I rebelled against their plans by embracing European ideas and culture. I distained the brashness of Americans and what I saw as their lack of history. Rather, I looked across the Atlantic as if my spiritual home was there. Now, I am choosing to be an American.


My ancestors are all lost to me. Left behind in France and England as my grandparent?s stomachs clutched in steerage, in ships sliding into the huge ocean toward the hugeness of AMERICA.


There are no family portraits in paint or words for my reference. No legendary great, great aunt Adele, who survived the German takeover of France in l871. No stories passed down of an English ancestor named Mary Elizabeth, remembered for burying the family silver on the northland as marauding Scots set fire to cottages and barns. There are no family tales of danger and survival to help me. I now look to those American women who went before me and who lived through dangerous times with courage. I draw strength from them.


I understand Eleanor and her furniture, at last. Her Early American furniture is her ancestral portrait and her personal coat-of-arms. And now, the wing chair is these things for me, as I learn from the courageous American Women who went before, showing me how to survive, how to be strong and brave. And that I am not the first woman to be afraid when enemies are outside my house.

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