'Green Bean Couch'

TW: substance abuse, minor wound (gore), destruction of objects in anger (violence)

Rose gripped her coffee mug by the handle, glaring at the messy countertop. She began to sweep crumbs onto the floor with her empty hand, then stopped, realizing she’d have to sweep them up later.

“What have I told you about leaving messes, Harold?” she murmured. “Soon, it’ll attract pests. You know I hate pests.” She muttered angry nothings about roaches and rats until her eyes caught on the empty barstool where Harold usually sat. She glared at the empty space, knowing an excuse would have been thrown at her were it occupied.

“Honestly, its like I’ve raised a child. A grown child of a husband. Always leaving your messes for me to clean.” She started angrily shoving dishes into the sink when she heard something shatter. She looked into the sink. A bottle had smashed, leaving glass shards strewn on the dinner plates piled inside.

“Perfect, what a great way to start my morning. Thank you, Harold.” She slammed her coffee mug on top of a pile of unpaid bills and stuck her hand into the sink to feel for the shards. “Honestly, let’s just add messes to the long list of why this relationship has been failing since '05. What even is this—” she yelped and jumped back.

She had cut her hand on a shard from the bottle, and it was dripping red all over her stained bathrobe. She grabbed a towel from the countertop that looked mostly clean and clutched it to her palm.

“Now look what you’ve done. You’ve hurt me, Harold.” She paused as her gaze lingered just past the sink. There, on the counter, were three more empty bottles. Brandy, whiskey, and wine. On the opening of each was a rim of cherry red lipstick.

She stepped to the sink and gazed inside. Among the shards of what looked to be a wine glass was the same cherry red. She scoffed in outrage.

“Oh, your mistress wears red lipstick now? She drinks with you, huh? Or are you just having her sip from each one to pin it on her?” She was fuming now, her arms swinging wildly.

In her motioning, she knocked her purse off the counter. The contents splayed across the floor like entrails in her true crime dramas. She wrapped the bloody towel around her hand tighter and knelt to begin shoving items haphazardly back into her purse.

“This never would have happened if you didn’t move it. I would have never put it there,” she yelled. One of the items pressed into her wound through the dish rag and she yelped, dropping her handful of mints and compact mirrors. She readjusted the towel and looked down.

Directly below her hand was a well-loved tube of lipstick. It was in the shade Cherry Red.

“So you’re letting her wear my lipstick now, Harold? That, too?” Her voice shook, and she forced out a strangled laugh that sounded more like a cough. Avoiding looking at the lipstick, the bottles, or the empty barstool, Rose pushed herself up on shaking legs and stumbled to the couch.

She sat down in her favorite spot, staring at the floor. She pressed the blood- soaked towel into her hands, letting her eyes drift to her smudged blue nails until she couldn’t look at them anymore. Despite her best efforts, her eyes wandered to the lipstick on the floor.

She suddenly found herself elsewhere. A younger, smiling version of Harold sat across from her at a candlelit table for two. He winked as she reapplied her lipstick in a pink compact mirror.

“That really is your color, Rose,” he said with a cheeky grin. “I always say it. Whenever I see anyone else wearing it, I always say, ‘That’s my wife’s color. Ain’t no one else wearing it like she does.’” Rose blushed, though she had heard that line a million times.

She lifted her wine glass in a toast and tapped his, then raised it to her lips. When the glass came away, it had its familiar red rim.

She shook her head and was back in her living room. She stared through angry tears down at her couch. Her ugly, ‘green bean’ colored couch. Why couldn’t he have just let her get beige, like she had wanted? Why did everything have to be a fight? When did the fights even start?

Her eyes started to sting, and she started to sniffle. She instinctively reached to her right and gripped the wine glass sitting there.

The wine glass, she realized, that had been abandoned the night prior to drink straight from the bottle.

The wine glass next to a bottle of sapphire-blue nail polish, tipped over, spilling onto the carpet from a drunken swipe of a hand.

The wine glass that she left there the night before, stained with a familiar red rim.

The tears flowed, free and hot and angry, but not angry at Harold this time. She blinked and she was still in her house, but it was dark outside. Harold was yelling from across the counter in the kitchen.

“Yes, I brought her here. Yes, I had sex with her, all right?” he said.

Rose screamed, a guttural, animal sound, an orange satin dress three sizes too small for her hanging from a clenched fist.

“But what do you expect me to do? The kids aren’t here; we sent them away because their mother can’t keep away from a bottle for a week! They’re off at boarding school because you’re so drunk you keep forgetting them at soccer practice!” he yelled.

“Oh, so it’s my fault you cheated? It’s my fault that you chose to make a mockery of our marriage? That you had her over enough she was keeping her clothes here?” She waved the dress for emphasis, the light fabric feeling like lead in her hand.

“I never said it was your fault I cheated. You’re right; I did that all on my own. But you ‘made a mockery of our marriage’ long before there was another woman.” She gasped in outrage but he continued, rubbing his forehead. “Don’t say anything, Rose. Please, this once, I’d like my wife to actually hear what I’m saying.”

Rose stood, silent. Tears flowed down her cheeks, but she gave a small nod and crossed her arms, the dress hanging like a white flag in battle.

“Rose, for the last five years you have been drinking. You’ve drank, and drank, and drank. Every time we fight, every time there’s an unpaid bill, every time I try to talk about my day at work. It’s like I’m not even married anymore, because the woman I married isn’t there. There’s constantly a stranger passed out on my couch, or staggering in at 7 in the morning from some bar.” He laughed a little, though there was little humor in it.

“You know, the bar on 7^th billed me for the couch they got at the back for you. Called it ‘Rent for Rose’s Corner,’ because you pass out there so often and they stopped trying to get you to call a cab. They sent pictures of you there, multiple times. I paid that bill, and told them to burn the pictures,” he said. Rose clenched her jaw.

“The kids were embarrassed. I was embarrassed. Every time the kids were left at school and I pulled up late to the parking lot, I felt shamed…I felt like a single dad. And our savings just kept keep dropping, because God forbid you let the liquor cabinet go unstocked for a week. I’ll give you that, that’s one thing you never forget.”

“How dare you—” she started.

“I’m not done," he growled. “I lost my wife. I refused to turn to a bottle to cope. I refused to be like you.” He kicked at a scuff on the tile. “Then someone came along to comfort me. I let her.”

Rose screamed and threw the dress at him. “Take this and get the hell out of my house. Don’t come back until you can tell me where the hell you got the nerve to make me the villain.”

“I’d love to say I’ll come back when you’re done drinking, but then I’d never come back!” he shouted.

“Good, then don’t!” she shrieked.

He grabbed his coat from the coatrack by the door and gripped the handle. “This hasn’t been a marriage for a long time,” he said. “I just wish I would have seen it sooner, so I could take the kids and find them a real mother.”

Rose let out a scream as he slammed the door behind him. She ran to the bedroom and began throwing his things in a trash bag, smashing anything breakable. She stopped when she found the wedding photo he’d kept in his wallet.

It was at the bottom of a drawer, placed purposely upside down under a pile of socks. She saw through teary vision the note she’d written on the back:

As long as I live, I’ll love you. Here’s to forever. -Rose

She ran to the liquor cabinet and reached to the back, where she kept her hard liquors. She tried through tears to open the damn thing but was interrupted by the phone ringing in the other room.

She ignored it and tried again, dropping the bottle when it rang a second time. The bottle smashed on the floor and she dropped to all fours, shrieks pouring from her as through being ripped from her chest. She was so desperate she nearly began lapping it up like a dog when the phone rang a third time.

She pushed herself up and ran to her nightstand, where she’d left her phone the night before. She picked it up and began yelling obscenities at the person on the other end before she could even hear what they were saying.

Rose gripped the side of the couch in present-day, shoving the memory back down. Choking sobs erupted from her throat, and her tears stung like they were made of acid. She instinctively reached for the wine glass for comfort but realized what she was doing.

She gripped her arm as if restraining herself, and tried to steady her breathing. Her tears slowed and became mournful instead of angry. She wiped her nose with her sleeve and choked out a renewed sob when her sleeve came away smeared with red lipstick.

She glanced away from her sleeve, eyes landing on the item across from her. It was on the floor, facedown, where it had been for months. She had thrown a blanket over it to hide the frame, but the corner peeked out just enough that she could identify it.

She hadn’t wanted even a photo of her family to see her drinking like this.

But she had chosen this. Chosen to keep them from seeing instead of stopping herself from drinking.

She felt herself shaking but rose to remove the blanket and turn over the frame. Her children started back at her. So did Harold.

So did she.

She drew a sharp breath at the sight of their faces. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—be this person anymore. For them, and, she realized, for herself.

Rose walked to the countertop, stepping over the spilled remnants of her purse, and gripped the bottles in shaking arms. She ran to the backyard and dumped them in the trash can. She ran back inside and, with only a moment’s hesitation, emptied the contents of her precious liquor cabinet into a large black trash bag.

She slung the bag over her shoulder, bottles clinking together loudly. She took shaky steps towards her spilled contents of her purse and dropped to her knees. She searched until she had her keys and wallet gripped in a fist, then left through the back door, tossing the bottles in the trash on the way to her car. She knew exactly what she had to do, even if it was too late.

Rose stopped at a local grocer that was blessedly empty, save for two people. One was a teenager napping at the register. He barely looked at her as she handed him the flowers to scan. The other was an old woman from their neighborhood, who patted Rose’s arm as she passed.

“It’s good to see you again,” she said softly. “I’ve missed your kids’ chalk drawings in front of my house. Will they be home for summer?” Rose muttered something about scheduling and practically ran to her car with the flowers.

She drove the car with shaking hands to where she thought knew her husband would be. She got out of the car and pushed open the gate with a loud creak. She parked the car, grabbed the flowers, and started walking. The next few steps were a blur, and she couldn’t tell you how she got there, but in a moment she found herself a few steps away from her husband. They were both silent.

“Harold, I know it—it’s been a long time, since we’ve spoken.” Her eyes welled with tears. “But—but really, that’s your fault, isn’t it?” Harold didn’t respond. With no anger to spur her on, she shrank into herself.

“Harold, really, it’s…it’s not your fault. It’s mine.” She was crying again, wiping her eyes on her soiled bathrobe, which, she realized, she was still wearing. “I failed you, Harold. As a wife. As a mother to our kids. I drank too much, and then instead of getting help I…shut down.” She sniffled. “Instead of reaching for you to help, I reached for a bottle. Instead of holding you and our kids close, I pushed you all away.” She sank to her knees before him.

“You cheated. You hurt me, Harold. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive you for that. But I suppose you could say the same thing about me, and I wouldn’t blame you. Not one bit,” she whispered.

“I’d like to try, Harold. In spite of everything, I want to make things right. And I don’t know if I ever can, but here’s all I have: I’m so, so sorry.” She placed the flowers on the ground between them, a desperate offering. “Can you ever forgive me?”

He was silent, still. She knew he would be.

  After all, even drunk she would have known that headstones can’t speak.

She pushed the flowers until they rested against the stone and ran her fingers over the lettering, the cold sending a shock through her arm. Her smudged nails looked garish against the stone, and the wetness of the grass seeped into her robe. She hadn’t been there since his funeral, hadn’t seen him since before the car accident.

Since the day she told him to never come back.

“Beloved husband of Rose Sterling,” she read in a whisper. “I want to be worthy of that, Harold. I want to be worthy of those words. So…I’m trying.” She pulled herself closer to the rough stone and rested her head against it.

“I threw out all my liquor today. Every last drop. After this, I’m taking the wine glasses to the thrift store. I’m…even thinking of even joining a group. Going to a doctor. Calling James and Daphne,” she winced at the sound of her kids’ names. She knew, though, that the hesitation she felt was why she needed to call them. Why she needed to keep pushing ahead.

“’As long as I live, I’ll love you,’ Harold," she said. “And starting today, I’m going to live like it.”

…

“Okay, sweetie, I love you,” Rose said. “Oh, and Daphne, give your brother a hug from me, please. Okay, I love you so much. Mhm, bye honey.”

Rose set the phone down on a spotless countertop. She’d been working to keep it, and the house, clean since the day she spoke to Harold.

She was sober. Only completely sober by three months, but it was the longest she had gone without drinking in years. She had been working towards not having a drink at all for over a year, and had finally been able to.

She smiled to herself and walked to her desk to begin sorting the mail. No overdue bills in sight. She looked up at the photograph of her family above her desk. She placed her hand above Harold’s in the picture and smiled ruefully.

“I hope you’d be proud of me,” she whispered. “I’m trying, Harold. I’m trying so hard to be a good wife, to make things right.” She stroked his face on the photograph. “I hope it is enough. I hope, if you were here, we wouldn’t be fighting as much.” She laughed despite herself.

  “Who knows, maybe we’d even agree on something nowadays. Or, at least compromise.” She smiled and went back to the mail.

The stack was made of mostly advertisements, and she began to gather them up to throw away. She noticed one advertising a furniture sale and, despite herself, began to flip through.

“Harold, if you were here, I’m sure you’d know exactly what I was looking for,” she laughed. “Sale on sofas,” she read. “The old ‘green bean’ may just finally be hitting the curb.”

She flipped to the ‘sofas’ page and stopped. There was only one couch shown on the first page, an ‘experimental piece,’ it was labelled. She ran a shaking hand across the page and smiled as a single tear fell onto the photograph.

The couch was a swirl of beige and deep green. It was the ugliest thing Rose had ever seen. She loved it.

“I wish I could show you,” She gazed up at his picture and smiled again. “But you already see it, don’t you? A compromise,” she said. She placed her hand lovingly on the photograph once again. “Thank you, Harold.”