PA-2019-047 · KINSHIP · 2019 · DEMONSTRATION
The Chair in the Kitchen
Goochland County, Virginia
Deposition
Fictional demonstration record. Not a genuine eyewitness account.
A woman, then forty-one · Demonstration deposition
My mother died on a Thursday in October. The following Wednesday I drove out to the house to start on the kitchen, which was the room I thought I could bear. It was late afternoon. The light in that room always came in one piece, through the west window, and landed on the table like a cloth.
Her chair was pulled out. Not far — the distance a person makes when they sit and then think better of the angle. On the table, in her place, was the cup with the chip at the rim. She would not throw it away. The cup was empty and dry. I stood in the doorway longer than I mean to admit.
I sat in the other chair. I said, out loud, that the coffee was terrible without her to complain about it. I did not feel watched. I felt accompanied, which is a different thing. The house was ordinary. A truck went by on the road. After a while the light moved off the table and I washed the cup and put the chair back in.
I am not asking anyone to tell me it was her. I am saying the chair was out, the cup was hers, and I was not afraid. I was late getting back to town, and I did not mind.
ALSO ON THIS HEADING
Who Sat With Him
During a last night in hospital, a woman in a pale cardigan sits with a dying man while his daughter fetches coffee. The desk has no record of her. The daughter is not frightened. She is grateful, and she is not satisfied.
Richmond, Virginia
The Hour That Wasn't
On a rain-slick stretch of Route 29, a closed diner is passed three times in different states, and a wristwatch loses forty-seven minutes that a household clock will not give back.
Route 29, south of Lovingston, Virginia