The problem with the breakup was not the breakup itself but the couch traded between them before it happened. This was an old couch, something of a family heirloom, and what mattered was not its quality but the history it held\u2014this was a couch she\u2019d often played on as a child, tucking the pillows in, violently shrieking, its 80s-era floral cushions still inundated with crumbs and pieces of Ritz crackers smothered in peanut butter.<\/p>\n
His ownership of the couch now seemed wrong, as if the universe should step in and do something about it, and she wished it would hurry up. She regretted ever giving the couch to him in the first place, though at the time it seemed the easiest thing to do; it would be a burden to try and move it\u2014lifting, hauling, having to ask him politely for help. It seemed easier to leave it there, along with him and the rest of her life she was so carefully but quickly abandoning: the bookshelf and old kitchen table, the nautical vase adorned in rope, plastic ladles, a hand-thrown mug.<\/p>\n
She reasoned that even if they broke up after her departure\u2014and of course, she was departing with the hope they would\u2014it wouldn\u2019t matter that he now had the couch. It was, after all, just a couch.<\/p>\n
But now that she was gone, she thought of the couch and other things: the woman undoubtedly lying beside him on that old couch, for example, her body thin and tan like a matchstick. She imagined the words the woman might use.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so nicely broken in,\u201d and, \u201cwhat a lovely, elegant slipcover.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, the slipcover was something of a source of pride\u2014she\u2019d spent three days and eighty dollars on it some several months before and yes<\/em>, he\u2019d say, it was<\/em>, indeed a very nice and classy slipcover, and of course he\u2019d take that credit, and in so doing, further endear himself. She imagined the new woman now rolling over and onto her stomach in a sort of admiration, lifting her ankles like tiny toothpicks, thinking, This apartment is a fine place to be<\/em>, unaware it had once been her<\/em> apartment, and in fact that couch was, rightfully, still<\/em> hers. The woman would run her fingers along his wrist, one she presumed capable of selecting fine home d\u00e9cor, and might even envision their future home\u2014white wicker rocker and seasonal mums\u2014and the children, equally fine.<\/p>\n And how now she wished that she could be there, sitting on the furthest edge of that beige slipcover, and remind them both that underneath, something was positively stinking, full of the mold and gunk of childhood, crusted boogers, dehydrated scabs. And anyway wasn\u2019t his forgetting or withholding sort of a lie in its own right? Wasn\u2019t that a shitty thing to do?<\/p>\n Yes, she thought. It was.<\/p>\n Amy Butcher is an essayist whose work has appeared in <\/em>the Paris Review, Tin House, Salon, the Kenyon Review and <\/em>Brevity, among others.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The problem with the breakup was not the breakup itself but the couch traded between them before it happened. This...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-issue-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/lures.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}