Last night, it was raining. It had been raining for the entire day and the world was wet wet wet. I had driven into the city on Monday for therapy and I generally only like to do that once a week at most. But I found myself driving in again last night on a whim of Wes'. It seemed there was a dirt cheap womb chair on sale in the Tribeca area. He had seen it last weekend. He had called about it to be sure it was still there. And then he had convinced me to drive into the city for the second time in a week. In the rain.
I have been driving for 15 years now. I learned to drive on the mean hills of San Francisco, and I enjoy driving in a city. I am good at staying alert for the constant obstacles. I am patient in traffic but have learned to be aggressive. After ten years of driving in and around Manhattan, I consider myself a New York Driver - safe and serious. I have faced all manner of driving challenges in these years - getting lost, car trouble, idiot bridge and tunnel people, transit strikes, traffic.
But I cannot remember the last time I sat in traffic like I did last night.
Don't get me wrong. I am sure I have probably been in worse traffic (and blocked it out). And I was only trying to go about 10 blocks in this traffic. But that 10 blocks took one hour before I gave up and ditched my car in an illegal parking spot and walked the last 5 blocks to the furniture store.
Wes wasn't there yet so I did as instructed - he'd told me that the guy had said the ottoman for the womb chair was in the back and I should ask him to bring it out. I found the big, olive green chair, the item that has haunted our lives for years now. I sat in it. I sighed.
The womb chair has always been Wes' dream. It really isn't mine. I think the womb chair is a stylish, classic piece of furniture and I am thrilled with the idea of having one in my home. But there are dozens of other chairs that would thrill me just as much. Not so for Wes. We have, over the years, carefully considered a wide array of chairs in our quest for the right one. We have seen many others that we liked. Only a few times did I veto something. I am really quite flexible. But it soon became apparent that no chair ignited that fire in Wes' eye the way the womb chair did. And at that point, after comparing the price range to that of other options, I decided that I would just have to suck it up and find him a womb chair. I realized and accepted that I would spend a large chunk of change on serving a need that I would as happily have met with a specimen from Ikea. There are sacrifices in marriage. Mine is Mid-Century Modern furniture.
I asked the man to bring out the ottoman and he went back to find it. As I sat there, I thought about how I might be experiencing The End of Our Quest. It felt strangely anticlimactic. I wished we had won the leather one at the auction. Maybe we should have coughed up the money for a new one. But then...
this one cost $500.
Yes. We were ready to pay at least $1800 for this chair a few weeks ago. A new leather one costs almost $3000. And Wes found one for $500 (not leather). We figured that we could take the olive green color that we liked well enough for now, let the cats destroy it for a few years, have it recovered in something durable and STILL pay less than we originally would have.
Then the guy came out with the ottoman. In cream.
"You don't have the matching one?"
They didn't.
I wished I had a cigarette.
90 minutes in the car to go four miles. In the rain. And there was no ottoman. And I hated Wes.
I went to buy Cheetos at the sub place across the street so I could use their bathroom (and because ever since Shadow Pregnancy told me that she had them for dinner the other night, I have had a strange craving). Then Wes arrived and I went back to the store. So that I could kill him.
I yelled at him for a while, alternating tactics between trying to get him to give up his womb chair dream and then urging him to just buy this one because at least then the damned search would be over. Even I didn't know what I wanted him to do. We considered trying to find an ottoman later, but ottomans on their own can be stupid expensive, and then it wouldn't match anyway so we might as well get this one. We could put them in separate places for now and then later, when the cats have had their way with them, get them reupholstered to match one another and be reunited. I allowed for this with the promise that Wes will not freak out, moan or whine, or generally bother me about the fact that it may be years before we recover them. I also extracted a promise that if I manage to have a baby (not looking likely since my period has disappeared seemingly for good), I will be allowed to breastfeed in the unmatching set even though it is tacky and odd. We haggled $50 off of the price and got it for $100.
We got a womb chair and ottoman for $600.
I can't believe it's over.
It took me half an hour to get the car back over to where Wes was waiting, under the awning of the now-closed store with our plastic wrapped chair. As I inched along, I thought about what a life lesson our womb chair has been. You think about things for a long time, you want them to be delivered unto you in a specific and timely manner, you search and search and... in the end, you might get the thing you wanted but in a different way. In other words, we can get what we want in this world, only sometimes not exactly the way we wanted it.
I shared my newfound wisdom with Wes as we poked the five blocks back to the Brooklyn Bridge.
"Oh, that's not the lesson I was thinking about while I was waiting," he said.
"What was yours?"
"That you should always pay full price and get what you want."
