Motion to Table

by James Joaquin Brewer

Glenda and her mother having recently moved into a one-bedroom apartment “furnished” with but one piece—an orphaned funeral-parlor folding chair with an out-of-town telephone number stenciled in black on its dented metal back—were in need of some functional furniture, each having tired of employing the tiny kitchen’s wide pull-out cutting board as a combination desk and dining table. On an early morning walk in late autumn, their attention was flagged by a section of faded-blue bed-sheet flapping in the wind on a Falls Avenue telephone pole, red felt-pen letters falling vertically toward the brown-weed ground:

Y

A

R

D

S

A

L

E

The two women ceased their aimless sidewalk shuffle. Peering through latticed branches of a tall boxwood hedge a few feet across from the pole, Glenda’s mother glimpsed the orange plastic seat of a battered lawn chair and the splintered wooden leg of a stained davenport. Feeling like an intruder—it  was barely seven on a sleepy Sunday and the paint-peeling house was curtained and quiet—but determined not to be a disturber of the peace as well, she pressed a finger to her daughter’s cracked lips before leading her along the edge of the hedge toward the semblance of an opening. It was just wide enough to allow Glenda’s mother to lower her head, twist her sweat-shirted shoulders, and thrust her blue-jeaned legs through to the back yard without having to circle all the way to the end of the block to get to a curb-cut entrance. Turning at the sound of complaint, she saw that Glenda’s coat-belt was snagged in bent boxwood brambles. “Glenda! Glenda! Stay calm! Just shrug out of your coat and step through.”

Glenda did as she was told, leaving her wool winter coat hanging in the hedge like some headless all-hallows scarecrow. “I’ll just keep it there for the time being,” she stated quietly, fastening the full row of buttons on the navy blue letterman’s sweater she had picked up for two dollars three months ago at the Salvation Army’s Fourth-of-July-Eve half-price sale. “I’ll retrieve my coat on the way back out,” she said evenly.

Her mother nodded and proceeded toward the unattended pieces of furniture, wondering about the effects on them of overnight exposure to the elements. On closer inspection, she concluded that such concerns were too late: a good rain shower would probably do nothing but improve the condition of most of the dirty and unrelated pieces dozing before them.

The notable exception, auspiciously enough, was the table. Unlike the wobbly-legged chair that leaned against the nearby davenport (with its flattened cushions of differing styles), the table appeared to be in approximately the same condition it probably had had for its original owner.

But Glenda’s mother was not about to kid herself. She knew this was nothing fancy, nothing one would take “pride” in possessing—was nothing more than a medium-sized brown table of a reasonably wood-like substance held up by four metal legs that seemed to be the same length. She was heartened to assess that it would be adequate to the task of supporting a typewriter, a notebook, and two plates of macaroni at the same time.

A torn index card taped to the table’s surface proclaimed in dark blue ink “DINETTE:  $35.”  Under that, in a different scrawl in red, someone had appended: “For this? Dream on!” Glenda’s mother decided that the anonymous commentator was onto something. On the other hand, she and Glenda definitely needed a table. A table similar to this table. Maybe she could engage its present owner in a little open-air marketplace back-and-forth bargaining.

They stole cautiously up the steps of a warp-floored front porch to a brown wooden door with prominent gouges around the key-lock. “Glenda, what would Miss Manners think,” asked Glenda’s mother quietly, “if we were to just tap softly? It is an early hour, but we can always hope that someone inside is already awake. What do you think?” She arched her eyebrows as if awaiting advice. She had no desire to arouse a tired table-seller from Sunday slumber; but she was concerned, too, that if they went home and returned later in the day, some early-rising, equally-untabled soul would have preempted their quest.

Thumbtacked at the side of the door was another index card, one showing potential purchasers a telephone number. Glenda pointed to it. “Let’s call first, Mother. There’s a booth in the Grand Union parking lot just a couple of blocks away.”

“Fine,” agreed her mother, happy for a moment at being reminded of how renewed Glenda could become—energized with a unique brand of enthusiasm—whenever one of her suggestions was accepted. But she became unhappy a moment later at being reminded also of the way Glenda’s front teeth threatened to pull away from the loose white flesh of her gums whenever she smiled too hard. If only her husband had provided decent family  benefits all those years. Oliver Curnan—you bastard! She definitely would have let Glenda go to a dental specialist during her teen-aged years if only they had had decent benefits! “Well . . . maybe not so fine after all, Sweetie. If you think about it just a moment longer, Honey, you will realize that if it is too early in the morning to knock on someone’s door, it is also too early to make their telephone ring.”

Glenda flared her nostrils. “You should not have said fine, then.”

“I’m sorry,” said her mother. “We can call after all. Like you suggested. We’ll just wait a few minutes. Sometimes I make snap decisions I later regret.” That selfish bastard!

She led the way up the avenue to the Rainbow Diner, the two of them having decided to invest enough money and time in coffee, toast, and Sunday papers to allow themselves to place a needed call with “clear enough” consciences.

The voice that answered on the sixth or seventh ring was sleep-stuffy and accented. Glenda’s mother could not identify the country, but vaguely pegged it as what she was conditioned to call “Middle Eastern.”

“I’m calling about the table,” she began. “The one out in your yard.”

“Oh yez—is wonderful table.”

“Well, speaking of wonder, I was wondering if you’d take ten dollars for it.”

“Yez-but-you-see . . . is wonderful table. Comes with two chairs. Twins.”

“I guess I didn’t notice.”

“Still inside. Not out yet in my yard sale.”

“Well, we had no way of knowing that, of course. Still, would you consider selling the table by itself for less than thirty-five dollars?”

“Yez-but-you-see . . . is set. All goes together.”

“Umm-hmm.”

They agreed to meet in fifteen minutes.

A short young man with a vinyl-backed chair in each hand, an old Sunbeam toaster clamped under one arm, and a new-looking Waring blender pressed precariously under the other, was bumping and banging through the doorway as the two Curnan women entered the yard from the curb-cut entrance. Mother and daughter alike were struck immediately by the bright red, unusually thick-knit, sailor’s watch-cap on the man’s head. The back of his neck plus the skin around and above his ears appeared freshly shaved. When he saw them approach, he put the items down on the porch—all but the blender. “Never used!” he called out, thrusting it toward the sky. “I sell you eight dollars!”

“I’ve never seen a cap that red before,” whispered Glenda. She stood close behind her mother, hunching slightly in her open wool coat. “I’ve never seen anything that red!” 

Her mother turned, shook her head curtly, then quickly returned her attention to the young man. “All we need today is a table.”

“Yez. Excellent table. My friend puts hot cooking pot on it—doesn’t leave burn mark!” He hustled over to the table and rapped his knuckles on it. “Is obviously solid surface. Strong legs. Long-lasting.” He seemed not to notice the edited version of the index card.

“How about ten dollars for it?” ventured Glenda’s mother, plunging her right arm into the large leather tote bag she carried as a purse. “Cash. Here and now. No need to wait for our check to clear. On the spot.” 

“Yez but . . . is set, you see?” He strode back toward the porch, snatched the two chairs, and lugged them toward Glenda. “Only thirty-five dollars for table plus matching twin chairs. Here, Miss. Clean chairs. Comfortable for a princess. Please be seated.” He swept a rugby-shirted arm toward the chairs in a grandiloquent gesture of showroom hospitality.

Glenda immediately seated herself, laughing softly. The metal legs listed uncertainly for a few seconds before settling unevenly in the yard’s soft sod. “Comfortable,” she reported, gazing directly at the man’s eyes. “Very comfortable,” she added.

“But we have a chair already,” interjected her mother. “We’re interested in the table by itself. Will you accept an offer of fifteen?”

“Four buck for toaster,” the man responded, snatching it up and shaking off some crumbs. “Is working perfect condition.”

“No doubt it is, sir,” agreed Glenda’s mother, “but we have a good little toaster oven left over from better days than we are currently faced with, and it serves us just fine. What we’re really in need of is a good practical table that’s inexpensive. We’re in a period of transition, you might say. Our cash flow situation is—well, it’s inhibiting our taste for the finer things. Actually, I think we’re between employment offers. And it could be that our tax refund is missing in the mail. Our previous address and all . . .” She sat in the second chair, her face paling, and reached for her daughter’s hand. “They never forward the important things, do they?”

The young man shook his head several times, side-to-side and then up-and-down.

Glenda shook her head in imitation. “Just the bills,” she said.

“I really think thirty-five is a bit high for this one,” said Glenda’s mother, pulling a tissue from her bag and blotting her forehead. “About twenty or so too high.”

“Yez . . . but is . . . set.”

Glenda’s mother moved the tissue down to her eyes.

“Mother needs a table to do her schoolwork on,” explained Glenda, her voice flat and solemn. “She’s taking college-level courses as what they call a returning older student and I, for one, am more than proud of her.”

“Thank you, Sweetie,” said her mother quietly, eyes downcast, tissue now lowered further to her nostrils, muffling small nose-blowing sounds.

“Take twenty-six dollars for set. Strong table with matching comfortable twin chairs.” His grin was abundant; his palms, reflecting upwards, were most receptive.

“Sixteen,” countered Glenda’s mother, sniffling. “But just for the table. Twenty-six is simply out of the question.”

“Without a table, it will be difficult for my mother to do her homework.” A breathy sound, almost like a low growl, vibrated in Glenda’s throat. “If she does not complete her continuing education degree she will not be able to compete in today’s brutal labor market. That’s what we’ve been led to understand. Where will that leave us?”

“However is okay,” said the young man, turning his palms toward the earth and shrugging his shoulders toward the sky. “Eighteen it can be.”

Glenda’s mother seemed to perk up. She stowed the damp tissue in her bag and arose from her chair. “Well, if you really think—”

“Take eighteen dollars for set. Long-lasting table with two matching comfortable twin chairs.”

Rummaging around in her voluminous bag, Glenda’s mother produced an assortment of greenish bills, each folded over and over down to the size of a miniature Halloween trick-or-treat candy bar. She placed each one on her daughter’s lap, and Glenda began unfolding them. When she was finished, one five and thirteen singles lay wrinkled and exposed on the thin corduroy of her skirt.

“Eighteen dollars for you, sir,” announced Glenda merrily, cheeks glowing around a broad smile. “Yours for the taking.”

“You can see that the full amount is there,” said Glenda’s mother. “If you would like, my daughter can fold them up again for you like she sometimes does for me. She says it makes it easier to hide if you plan to be traveling. You know—to unfamiliar places where you don’t exactly trust the locals.”

He said nothing for a long moment, just smiled and glanced back and forth between mother and daughter. “Ah yez,” he said at last, tugging at the sides of his bright red cap, tightening it against his temples. “But I have no plans like that. You can leave the money unfolded.”

“Then I’ll merely stack,” said Glenda. She made a neat pile of bills on her lap, doing her best to smooth the wrinkles from each. “Here’s eighteen dollars in payment in full.” She stood up to present the money.

“For one reliable table and two twin chairs,” he affirmed. “Thank you lots so very much.”

“No, no, no,” corrected Glenda’s mother. “We weren’t bidding on the matching chairs. We have a chair already. Maybe you can sell the chairs separately to someone else. Someone who already has a table.”

“Oh you mistake my meaning. Is set, you see? Eighteen dollars payment in full for three-piece dinette set. Table by itself cost you thirty-five dollars. Table plus matching chairs cost you eighteen dollars. More expensive if breaking up set. You see?” Laughter escaped his lips. His eyes squinted several times irregularly in the manner of a child just learning to wink.

Glenda’s mother enacted a slow double take, looked at her daughter, and separated her lips as though to respond. But her daughter broke in before any words emerged. “Some have said that compromise is a lost art in the modern world. Well, I think not. What about this suggestion, Mother—couldn’t we give him our one unmatched chair when we accept these two matched chairs? That way we would all benefit—the whole group of us, we three. We would each have a chair—you and me, Mother—and he would have another chair to sell for cash in his yard sale.” She raised her eyebrows expectantly. “And we wouldn’t be breaking up the set.”

“Done!” said Glenda’s mother.

“Huh?” He looked genuinely puzzled.

“We agree,” interpreted Glenda with a bright smile.

“Oh yez . . . sure, I know . . . good.”  He sighed, then pulled a wide black wallet from the side of his carpenter’s overalls. He placed the money carefully into the wallet and returned it to his pocket.

“I’m supposing you do not drive over a truck for moving?”

“Oh, we don’t have a truck,” said Glenda’s mother.

“We’ve never had a truck,” muttered Glenda. “But my father used to command airplanes.” She glowered at the ground.

“We live only a few blocks away,” said Glenda’s mother. “We’ll make two trips.”  She placed the tote bag on the table and both of her hands under the wooden front edge. “Glenda, if you’ll just . . .” She nodded toward the other side of the table.

“Oh no no no!” exclaimed the young man. He handed the tote bag back to her and in one seamless motion hoisted the table high into the air, deftly flipping the legs skyward as he did so, then lowered the tabletop gently until it rested on his watch-capped head. “Lez go,” he said, “take each a chair.”

“You truly astound us,” said Glenda, her gaze steady and serious, her voice clear and sincere. “You take us off guard with your agility—why you’re almost like that strongman in a circus our father told us about once upon a time.” She picked up her chair, handed it to her mother, then picked up her mother’s. “We’ll carry ours, I’m afraid, in a less impressive fashion.”

They followed him toward the sidewalk.

“Are you moving?” inquired Glenda’s mother. “Is that why you’re having a yard sale?”

He nodded awkwardly from under the table.

“Out of the Niagara Falls area entirely or just out of that house?”   

“Out of America.” Pivoting his torso but retaining his upright posture, he looked her full in the face. “I’m returning home. Iran.”

Glenda’s mother clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, agitated, appalled, thinking not only of the Shah and the Ayatollah and the recent bloodbaths but also of Jimmy Carter’s long sad face. And the graffiti, too. The writing on the wall behind the Grinder King dumpster: “Iranians are swine! Off the pigs!” The letters were still there, she knew: large and purple and fuzzily thick, no doubt sprayed from one of those paint cans with the noisy metal balls inside. (Cans whose emissions are bad for the environment, she reminded herself.) The indefensibly offensive words had been there for several days. Weeks, maybe. Whose job is it to clean up such horrible things?

“When was the last time you saw your home?” 

“Three years. Before I came for the vocational school near here.”

“But the political situation has changed so dreadfully since then!” Glenda’s voice was not loud, but its tone suggested a small shriek.

“Glenda!” admonished her mother. “Not so rude, if you please.”

“Is my home. That’s all. You know?”

The trio walked in silence for more than a minute, then Glenda’s ears started to become conscious of what she finally decided was the barking of an abandoned dog. It became gradually louder, then gradually quieter. But she realized that the animal itself was probably not barking any “quieter.” She had read about Christian Doppler and the “Doppler Effect” in one of her mother’s science textbooks from the community college. No, she figured that the poor dog was probably barking “at a constant volume” and it was she who was changing—her perception of the sound waves altering as she moved from relatively closer to relatively farther away. She wondered if her mother, too, was thinking about the abandoned pet and the changes in its voice. She looked up just in time to see what her eyes told her was a little swarm of white butterflies circling her mother’s head. It looked like a garland—a halo of flowers. The little swarm—might they really be moths?—completed two or three laps before fluttering away toward a large green bush with rot-brown flower-like growths along its top. Glenda felt anxious and confused about what caused them to—

Startled—gunshots?—she jumped—bumped her mother’s back—felt tears burning her eyes.

“Backfire,” said her mother without turning. “From a car. It’s okay. I heard it too. Don’t be alarmed. Just keep on walking.”

A big-wheeled pickup with a Massachusetts license plate was speeding through an amber traffic light at the intersection up ahead, flaunting an ugly, large-lettered bumper sticker: HOW AM I DRIVING? CALL 1-800-UP-YOURS! Glenda said something under her breath that sounded like a string of disconnected words from a foreign language, but then calmed somewhat as the droning tones of an airplane distracted her—masking her immediate memory of the rude car with long-ago memories of something more profound. She concentrated on the new sound . . . approaching from the east . . . but avoided looking up too soon. As it proceeded toward the west, she finally raised her head to see what she thought might be a UNITED logo in red-white-and-blue. She watched it without breaking stride or falling behind the pace of her companions, muttering the words “unfriendly skies” too softly for them to hear.

They were passing a souvenir shop with a shrunken head displayed out front. And rubber snakes. And white cotton “SLEEP SHIRTS” with colorful silk-screened images of a man and a woman poking their beaming faces up out of a large brown barrel, bobbing contentedly on calm waters, the mighty falls pouring majestically in the Goat Island background. Glenda wondered if they were supposed to be on their honeymoon and wondered as well if they talked to one another inside that barrel as it dropped crashing over the edge of the falls. She feared she was about to develop one of those headaches that she had long ago nicknamed “telepathic migraine” and felt pretty sure her mother was about to develop one too.

“Let’s stop just for a moment,” said Glenda’s mother to the young man in the red watch-cap. “To give you a chance to rest.”

“Are you going home for good?” mother and daughter inquired simultaneously.

The young man’s face clouded as he carefully put down the table. He stood without replying, hands on hips, head tilted back, face toward the sun, eyes closed.

“I think we’ve upset him somehow,” whispered Glenda.

He must have overheard. He lowered his face, opened his eyes, and looked at Glenda. “Not you,” he said. He looked at her mother. “Not you,” he said. “But . . .” For another half-minute he added no comments, just moved his head slowly from side to side. Then, matter-of-factly, he spoke: “I have the tumor. In my skull. Just finished the operation last month.” He rolled his light-brown eyes upwards as far as they could go, as though to look at the top—perhaps the interior—of his head.

“Oh my God!”  Glenda blurted. “We should not have given our permission to allow you to carry the table that way!”

He said nothing.

“I hope it didn’t put much . . . additional pressure on your . . . on the top of your . . .”  Glenda’s mother did not finish her sentiment with words; instead, she reached out her hand and tentatively touched the man’s blue-striped forearm.

“Is wonderful cap.” He smiled enigmatically. “Acts just like . . . cushion. You don’t worry about my pressure.”

“Well, I guess you must be going home to be with your family while you recover,” said Glenda’s mother. “From the surgery. While you heal.”

His smile dissolved. He scratched the side of his tanned cheek, studied his fingernail for a moment, then placed each hand under its opposite armpit. Glenda and her mother both instantly noticed—each immediately planned to discuss it with the other later—actual deepenings, physiological intensifications, of shifting shades of color in his irises. Glenda claimed to herself that for a moment his eyes were the color of an expensive burgundy wine she had once seen her father pour into a glass for her mother.

“Hope so,” he remarked at last. “Hope so truly so.” He glanced from mother to daughter and seemed to shiver. “You are Americans, yes?”

They inclined their heads in assent.

“Do you believe in the goodness of what people call Almighty God?”

They were still debating whether or not to incline their heads in response to this question when he immediately continued: “I hope truly to show my atheist American doctors they are in error—telling me only nine months to live: nine miraculous months to give birth to end of myself on our beauty-filled earth.” His voice was hushed. His gaze was level and steady but directed elsewhere, at neither Glenda nor her mother.

Glenda’s mother’s mouth opened. She appeared to be trying to work her lips. No words were coming out. Her mouth remained open. She sat down on her chair in the middle of the sidewalk.

Glenda hesitated before following her mother’s example and sat on the twin chair. “There is nothing we can say that will begin to . . . even begin . . .” She looked at her mother.

“Nothing at all,” confirmed her mother quietly, eyes visibly tearing and reddening. “How do you . . . ? Oh you poor young—how have you been able to . . . adjust your mind to . . . ?”

“Not my mind,” he answered slowly, “but my . . . I should perhaps describe it . . . spirit. I feel my spirit grows inside. Maybe only since operation. Your unbelieving doctors, maybe they fix my faith. Allah is more mysterious than even they with all their American degrees framed on their fresh-painted walls can try to explain. You see, my two friends, to imagine death this close is . . . radically funny.” His voice cracked, like a teenager’s, then modulated into a hollow laugh. He flipped the table into the air once more, legs up, bringing the surface to its resting place on his cap-cushioned head. “Well, not funny, you know. Not your Saturday Night Live. I mean, certainly, strange. I mean maybe should not be normal. But maybe I mean also that to know death is at last to know life—as I tried to say to my favorite college classmate friend—outside the classroom. To feel life inside and actually feel its miracle vibrating. Its wonderfulness. Just by itself. Maybe like a woman can relate to who has been pregnant?”

Glenda’s mother looked down into her leather baggage for a tissue, located a dry one, and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

The young man began to march away from them. They arose, lifted their chairs, and rushed to catch up. “Is funny what people worry about. My friend who put hot pot on this table top is worried because she made ‘B’ instead of ‘A’ in chemistry lab. ‘O, Woman!’I say to her in exasperation, ‘That is problem?’ That is no problem—she is yet alive. Next year she will sure do much better. She should be grateful she can have next year to do better in!” He rotated his body so he could look at them while he walked. “Another year of life here in an American school is a miracle. An ‘A’ in your chemistry is nice of course, yez . . . but is not a definite miracle. You know?”

“We know,” said Glenda.

They walked in silence.

“We’re here,” said Glenda’s mother. “This is the end of the line.” She pointed at a pale-rust, eroded-brick, three-story apartment complex that in a previous incarnation had been the “Universal Arms.” The pale shadow of its former neoned name could still be read along the street-side of the U-shaped complex. “Put everything down. We’ll take it from here.”

The young man placed the table carefully on a patch of yellowed grass. “I can carry it in for—”

“Oh no,” interrupted Glenda’s mother, thinking how thin he suddenly seemed—for one so obviously strong. “We can manage it from here,” she repeated.

“Mother!” Glenda’s tone was urgent. She whispered something private directly into her mother’s ear. Her mother nodded and reached into her purse. She extracted a folded five-dollar note and handed it to the young man. “For the two matched chairs,” she explained.

He backed away, placing his hands, fingers smoothly interwoven, on top of his capped head. “No, we negotiated—remember? Is set you bought for eighteen dollars.”

“But the table plus the chairs is worth more than eighteen dollars. If you won’t accept this additional payment we can’t accept the matching chairs.” The left side of Glenda’s mother’s mouth curled in a hopeful smile; the right side remained horizontal.

He sighed and shook his head in disagreement.

“We insist,” said Glenda’s mother.

“I insist,” said the young man. “I insist that you not pay extra to keep from breaking up the set.”

“The fine art of compromise has survived the decay of civilization in the second half of the twentieth century,” interjected Glenda, glassy beads of sweat breaking forth on her forehead.

“Yez?” He grinned.

“Yes?” Her mother looked doubtful.     

Glenda approached the man, her back to her mother. She unbuttoned her coat. “It’s getting warm,” she said.

The young man continued to grin.

“We were going to trade you our one unmatched chair for your two matched chairs so you could put our one unmatched chair out in your yard sale and convert it to cash. Have I stated our understanding correctly?”

“Well yez maybe—I guess I remember something like—”

“Well then, we’ll simply save you the trouble of bearing another burden back to your home. We’ll purchase the unmatched chair ourselves—convert it to cash for you. Will you accept five dollars please?” Glenda looked at the sky, an impatient, almost pained expression clouding her face.

He hesitated. Then: “If you feel better about it, I can accept.”

Glenda walked up to him and started to place the bill into his side pocket. He intercepted her hand, removed his watch-cap, put the bill onto the top of his smooth and shiny head, replaced the cap, smiled one more time, moved an eye-lid up and down in a perfect wink, waved his hand, turned his back, and moved slowly away.

Working wordlessly in tandem, mother and daughter transported the table along the uncarpeted concrete hallway which led to their apartment.

Glenda began, “Thank God we live—”

“On the first floor,” continued her mother.

“Yes,” agreed Glenda, “that is one of the things . . .”

“And another is that now we won’t have to go looking for a second chair.”

“Yes. Now that we have somehow ended up with three . . .”

The orange paint had begun to fade, but the door in front of which they set down the table was not dirty—thanks to the soapy sponging Glenda had given it the day they moved in. A tinny numeral “7” was fastened to the door with two screws: one, apparently the newer, judging by its relatively shiny surface, had a Phillips head; the other, flecked with graying rust, had a conventional slotted head. Neither screw was twisted all the way into the wood. “Not the work of a master cabinetmaker,” had been Glenda’s assessment on move-in day, “not an example of the fine art of carpentry.”

Nor had Glenda’s mother been happy to discover that the glass security “spy lens” was missing from the tiny open circle under the “7.” Without it, strangers would appear to be their normal size—instead of “fish-eyed” and diminished. Without it, strangers might try to look directly into the apartment to see—without distortion—what was on the other side. “If we’re still here in the late winter,” she had mentioned to Glenda, “we will have to stuff it with some proper insulating material.” Glenda had more-or-less agreed, but added an optimistic twist: “There can be good and there can be bad. It would be bad to become the victim of unwelcome chilly winds. It would be good to be able to pass our dollar bills directly through the door without having to open it if that nasty landlord comes banging for overdue rent money.”

Glenda now twisted the knob and pushed the door open as far as it would go.

“Glenda—you forgot . . .” She shook her head softly at her daughter. “I distinctly recall telling you to be sure to lock the door behind us on our way out this morning.”

“I’ll be more careful from now on,” replied Glenda, eyes downcast, face flushing, “now that we have more things worth stealing.” Her mother raised her eyebrows, but did not otherwise respond.

Picking up the table again, they stepped across the threshold, first Glenda, then her mother (bumping their newest possession against the jamb only a few times in the process, and without visible damage). They grounded it in the center of the front room. Standing at either end of the table, they observed one another for several seconds without changing postures. Then the older woman leaned slightly forward toward the younger and pressed her palms on the table’s surface. She spoke quietly, tiredly: “Oh, Honey, I was so embarrassed for you when I remembered that the other chair—the one you were going to give him—was . . .”

“Had that awful black writing on the back . . .”  Glenda turned away from the table and began sliding her feet toward the unit’s one bedroom.

Her mother nodded, pushing herself back upright, away from the table. “Honey, where are you going? We need to go back for the chairs before —”

“Mother—I’m getting a tablecloth! That’s all.”

“But, Honey, we don’t . . .”

“This will just have to do nicely for the time being.” Glenda held aloft a rumpled white sheet just snatched from a pile of blankets on the bedroom floor.

“Well, I don’t know if—”

“Take the other end,” instructed Glenda. Using their hands and their chins and their chests, the pair of them managed to fold the sheet over-and-again until it was a rectangle of proportions reasonably appropriate to their table.

Pausing at the door on her way out to retrieve one of the twin chairs, Glenda’s mother turned to mention the need for Glenda to help with the other one, but felt a paralyzing catch in her throat at the sight and sound of her daughter dropping her winter coat to the floor, pushing up the sleeves of her letterman’s sweater, and leaning forward to attack the remaining tablecloth wrinkles, trying to roll them smooth with the thin white cylinders of her naked forearms.

BIO

Raised on the rural coast of Oregon (near the enchanting Sea Lion Caves), James Joaquin Brewer currently shelters in West Hartford, Connecticut.  Among other places, his writing in a variety of genres has appeared in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Write Launch, LitBreak, The Hartford Courant, Aethlon, Jeopardy, Rosebud, The Poetry Society of New York, Closed Eye Open, The Manifest-Station, Quibble, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, BlazeVOX, Madswirl, Apricity, Lowestoft Chronicle. “Motion to Table” is from a work-in-progress containing several linked short stories (working title: Things They Don’t Do On Broadway).of Arts & Letters, BlazeVOX, Madswirl, Apricity, Lowestoft Chronicle.