My Favorite Chair
By Brett Townsend
I was sitting there, sitting in my favorite chair. I was bent over, tying my boots—old leather boots with stitching frayed and one string shorter than the other. On the left boot, I noticed where the steel toe cap poked through the dried and cracked leather. That bit was polished smooth, and while I bent to lace up that foot first, I noticed something I never had before. There, with my heel on the floor, in the shine of my toe, I could see myself a bit. It wasn’t a perfect reflection. I appeared there on the metal just so, warped by the curve of the steel into a cartoonish head. I almost laughed, but something about work and the day ahead crept into mind, and I only let go a little smile. I was headed for the other boot when I heard my younger son’s room door open upstairs. I sat there bent, strings in hand, for moments. I turned and listened to how he addressed the stairs. Anybody else might’ve guessed three grown men were stumbling drunk down, but no, I knew it was him.
As he rounded the corner into the room where I sat with the one boot tied, strings for the other in hand, I was struck again, twice in a morning, with a sense of hilarity. I resisted. He came in like a ghost—like the classic Halloween costume, only without the eyes. He seemed taller than he should’ve been, a mass of white cloth covering his body. At ten, he had decided to take up my trade for the summer, and this fine day, he was riding along to a job. I’d sprung for a new pair of white painter’s pants, which he had on. Above that, wobbling and contorted, twisting and writhing, he stood, stretching and reaching, but caught somehow inside a plain white t-shirt. I sat there in my favorite chair with my boot strings in hand. I sat, wide-eyed and grinning. I watched him search and try one sleeve and then the other. I heard him mumble little ten-year-old curses. I continued with the other boot.
As I bent there, negotiating the laces, I remembered a time just like my son was having. I must’ve been about the same age, and I remembered that strange sense of panic I had. It was a panic that didn’t make sense, and panic is that way sometimes. But I remembered finding my way easily into a shirt, and just as easily, suddenly getting lost. And the more I searched, the more elusive the neck hole seemed. I heard my dad call out. He wasn’t laughing. He had that tone, the one that sounded like I was disappointing him somehow. And I was frantic there in my shirt, while he said, “What the heck are you doing? We’ve got to go son, quit messing around.” And from above, I felt his hands jerking and twisting the shirt; he turned it right and shoved it proper down over my shoulders. I looked him in the eye there, and there was no joy between us.
I pondered that moment, that time, so many years before. I wondered what made my relationship with my sons different. I had flaws too, that much was sure—those moments when kindness and understanding aren’t the first instinct. And I would fly off the handle, and even surprise myself, and stop, and wonder why. But that seems to be the way of it—parenting—you start without a clue, and maybe you never find one, but you try.
Once, when the elder son was two, I put him in the yard on a blanket while I repaired some deck boards. He toddled around in the grass while I measured and cut and sawed. I watched him try to catch a butterfly for a bit. He chased it in circles there in the yard. I wanted bad to get the project finished, and I was back at it for a handful of minutes when a kind of shuddering fear crept up my back and draped my shoulders. The late-morning sun was shining down, filtering dappled through the Gary oaks, and the yard stood quiet as a ghost town. I looked back and forth, and I couldn’t see the little man. I circled the house, calling. Nothing. I saw handfuls more butterflies flitting this way and that. The fear moved and tightened in my chest; it wrapped cold hands around my throat. My cheeks went flush, and my pulse felt heavy along the sides of my neck. I raced through the house. I called out to his mother. She rejoined, and I explained, “He was just there, and then he wasn’t!”
Thoughts of rapture coursed through my mind, others too, thoughts of a cougar, or a bear, or a stranger from the woods. I couldn’t decide which would be worse. We took different courses circling the house. I strained my eyes staring hard down our long and straight tree-lined driveway. The forest around echoed our calls; it responded with birdsong and chittering squirrels. A single crow flew through, cawing. His mother and I met again in our crisscrossing, round-and-back search pattern, and the worry now began reaching a peak. The heat of the day had set in, and sweat beaded on our brows. “We should call the police,” she said, eyes wet and hollow. “I will,” I said.
I called, and they sent an officer on his way. We continued with the search, now holding back tears, now struggling to imagine anything but the worst. I tore and tripped and tumbled through the dense brush and undergrowth surrounding our yard. Thick cords of thorny blackberries, heavy with fruit, pulled at my legs and arms. I thrashed about. I called his name, and the tears, once they started, wouldn’t stop. I was out along the driveway, ten yards off in the trees, when the officer rolled by slow, his windows up. He looked my way and noticed me there, then turned back away. I bounded down the drive behind him, back towards our house. On my approach, he exited the car and stood arms crossed, facing me. “Have you been drinking?”
It didn’t register at first. I stared at him hard, blinking, wiping my brow. Sweat and blood from cuts and berry juice too smeared across my forehead.
“Have you been drinking?” He asked again, this time he moved his hands to his hips. He leaned in toward me as he said it. His tone was crisp and direct, and not kind in the least. “What? My son is missing! I called you here to help.” “I know you called, and I know why you called,” he shot back, “and I need to know why your son went missing.”
Some seconds passed while I came to and struggled with a response. Just then, out the side of my eye, I saw movement in the back of the squad car to my right. A muffled sound came too. I turned, and there he was, naked and laughing behind the glass. That moment still echoes in my memory. All the color of the world around drained from my view, everything except his face, laughing, blackberry juice stains on his lips. Suddenly, my wife, who’d been watching from across the yard, came barreling through, cussing and gnashing her teeth. She knocked me back from the window and pressed her face to the glass for moments. Then, with a kind of rage I’d never seen in her before, she turned and began screaming and clawing at the officer, demanding her son be released. She was doing God’s work there, and I stood with my jaw slack, just as surprised as he was. The officer didn’t seem inclined to continue with his line of questioning. In short order, the boy was back in her arms and whisked away into the house. In place of the fear that had engulfed me, a kind of arrogance mixed with exhaustion set in. I stood tall and looked the officer up and down. “It’s none of your goddamn business,” I said.
Turned out, it was his business. That evening, a pair of CPS people, along with a different officer, paid us a visit. The officer, a woman, explained that our son had been found a quarter mile down the county road that adjoins our driveway. Though he had left our house fully clothed, along the way, he had peeled layers off in the late summer heat. So when the officer found him covered in berry juice, scratched too, and naked, he assumed we were just terrible parents. I explained that yes, I had cracked a beer while working the deck, but that I’d only just cracked it, and that there were still three out of six in the fridge. It was looking pretty grim there in our living room as they explained how they planned to press charges, how that might result in our boy at least temporarily being taken into foster care. It was either grace or good fortune that I didn’t overreact in the moment. What I wanted to do would have certainly been criminal. Grace found me again when I called a client whose house I’d just painted. He had been mayor of the town nearest to us for many years. God save me, he made some calls, and we never heard from CPS again.
I’ve tried so many times to understand just how it happened. Best I can figure, he went chasing the butterflies and then just kept going, off down the driveway. By the time I went to look for him and then made it around to look down the drive, he’d already turned left down the country road. It took me years to relax again when it was my turn to keep an eye on him.
I thought of my dad then. Around the time I finally buckled down and got my house painting business off the ground, I got the call. “Yeah Dad, you can stay here. It’s alright, the boys can share a room.” So then he ended up at our place for the last years of his life. And that wasn’t easy, but there were some good times. One day, he was all there. Next, he’d forgotten how to make toast. I had to remind him about showering and make sure he was eating enough. I had to tell him to slow down with the beers, and eventually I had to take his keys. That was a tough one. And I had this thought around that time, I realized something I had missed knowing before. Something like, if you live long enough, you do become a kid again, and your kids, if they’re around, if you’re around them, then they become the parents, and damnit, that’s a hard one too.
I finished that boot with a double knot. I finished and I settled my pant legs down over the tops of my boots. I felt strangely free and unencumbered there, in my favorite chair. I tried to get the angle right so I could see my reflection in the steel toe of the one boot. I leaned this way and that. I tried for moments, but I couldn’t quite find the right angle again. I heard a voice calling from across the room. I didn’t recognize it. I looked toward the sound. It was all a blur. I saw a head emerging through the top of a plain white t-shirt. I saw a crown of thick dark hair. I saw a full beard. The face, it seemed familiar. I felt this strange sense of peace, like I was disconnected somehow from the world I had known. I settled back there in my favorite chair, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I couldn’t stop it, and I didn’t want to, so I didn’t even try. And the face, that familiar face, it laughed too.
Brett Townsend is a writer and musician based in the Pacific Northwest. He authors “The Townsend Review”, a Substack journal of introspective quasi fiction exploring identity, modern life, and moral conflict. He also fronts the band Brother Townsend, known for its Americana-infused sound, evocative rhythms and emotional tone. Whether through song or story, his work reflects a deep attention to human nuance and our myriad inner landscapes. He insists on color-coordinating his socks and underwear—not for anyone else’s benefit, just to keep the universe in balance.
Read More at The Townsend Review: https://thetownsendreview.substack.com/
Listen at Brother Townsend: https://brothertownsend.com/