One Thursday morning, as therapy for my engagement jitters Candler and I set out on a sightseeing tour of luxury home furnishings in Buckhead. In the early days of our engagement, still flattered by the attention, I had not yet begun to notice that my fiancé followed me like Peter Pan’s shadow after it was reattached. Wandering through the gallery of luxury furnishings at Matthews on West Paces Ferry Road, our eyes feasted on their exquisite offerings. Soon we splintered off, taking in the treasures that appealed to each of us individually. From opposite sides of the showroom, our electromagnetic fields were drawn into the current of an enormous brick red couch. Its tufted back rose 45 inches before cascading onto the 12-inch bronze Valentino fringe. The mouthwatering silky handwoven strands, exquisitely secured with large bronze nailheads, hovered millimeters above the floor. My fiancé and I met smack in the middle of the sofa. Still unable to pull our eyes from its curvaceous form, we simultaneously exclaimed, “It’s magnificent.”
The twelve-week delivery time was more than I could bear. Having risen from the ranks of poverty-stricken single parenthood to the top 5% of income earners in the US, I was now able to purchase at will. I drew my Platinum American Express and offered to pay an additional $1,000 if they would sell me the floor model and deliver it the next day. We waltzed from the showroom delirious, almost unable to breathe, dizzy from the excitement of the kill.
We arrived home to my Parisian-size apartment still walking on air. My fiancé stood in the middle of the “great” room looking around. His face grew progressively puzzled.
“Where are you going to put the sofa?” he asked. Tasered by his words, I surveyed the landscape. Feverishly my mind began moving all the furniture in my apartment. The cane settee could go in the hall. The ivory linen couch in my bedroom would be moved to my office, the desk from my office into my bedroom, the Louise XIV chairs could be moved to each end of the dining table, the blue French couch. . .and there it all came unraveled. No matter how my mind sorted, moved and redesigned my space, it was pointless.
My fiancé naively asked, “Isn’t there anything you can get rid of?”
“No!” I shrieked. Every piece, every fabric, every paint chip had been customized. How could I possibly part with one thing?
We called in an expert.
My mother stood regally studying my living room. I bit my cuticles. The Obi-Wan Kenobi of interior design walked from room to room silently moving furniture in her mind. My fiancé opened his mouth to make a suggestion. She raised her hand to silence him. Minutes passed like hours. I prayed for a decorating miracle.
“I don’t know what you were thinking. Honestly, Violet.” Guilt poured over me like warm oil.
“What if we. . .” She raised her hand. I fell silent.
“All right,” she said, “This is what we’re going to do.”
We followed her instructions, moving furniture here and there. With every new arrangement tempers grew closer to the edge. The entire afternoon we shoved, lifted and fluffed at her bidding. My fiancé came undone by the fifth hour. Clearly he was not born with the perfection gene. The room looked worse than when we started. My mother’s and my sense of visual perfection was under acute assault. We began to come unraveled.
At last she uttered the words that I had been dreading all afternoon, “You just need one more room.”
A knife plunged into my heart. Stomach acid rose into my throat. This can’t be, I thought. If Obi-Wan couldn’t reposition my furniture to accommodate my new sofa, it could mean only one thing. I stared out the window at my magnificent view, the reality of my unwise purchase taking hold. What had I done? I could feel a shift in the space-time continuum pulling me out of my beautiful blue apartment like Christopher Reeves in Somewhere in Time.
“You’ll have to move,” said my mother. I raised my hand for silence.
Stepping out on my balcony, suspended high above the earth, the cool spring air stroked my skin. Night was encroaching. I let the breathtaking view of Oz wash over me. Dizzy from the reality I was doomed to embrace, I closed my eyes and breathed deeply to calm myself, soaking in the now that was at least, temporarily, still mine. In that moment of mindful meditation, inspiration dawned. I looked back through the glass at my red couch, the problem child that had brought me to the brink. I saw myself dragging it across the room, pulling it onto the balcony and heaving it over the railing. It seemed to fall forever, the Valentino fringe lifted by the March air, fluttering as it plummeted toward the street below. A couple suddenly appeared in its path.
“Watch out!” I screamed, but the height of the building and the wind carried my words upward over the city and into the night. My red meteorite streaked toward them.
My beautiful red sofa had landed on the couple, not unlike Dorothy’s house had landed on the Wicked Witch of the West. From my balcony I could see their shoes poking out from under the Valentino fringe.
By the time their remains were scraped off the pavement, I had already been arraigned down at the Fulton County Jail. The trial brought swift justice; in a heartbeat I sat behind bars for two counts of manslaughter.
I settled back in my cell, saved from marriage, from a life of serving a man like a slave. I was allowed paper and pen. With no one to take care of and no real demands on my schedule, I was at last able to write my memoirs. I finished my first book in prison. Moonlighting as a ghostwriter for the warden’s own novel won me certain favors. I was permitted weekly readings of my book before the entire prison population. My fellow inmates howled at the calamities that besieged me. When I would read particularly difficult sections about how I’d struggled as a single mother, all the black women in the cell block would call out, “Preach it, sister!” They’d nod and all say, “Un huh. Oh, yeah,” the way only black women can do who have struggled through prejudice and hardship that comes with poverty.
The warden allowed me to send my manuscript to agents, as it behooved him for me to build publishing relationships. My book, The Red Meteorite Killer: Guilty by Admission, was picked up by Random House. It became a global best seller and was published in 27 languages. Throughout Europe, America and the Far East, petitions for my release began to circulate. Eventually President Obama would come under so much pressure from the international community that he was forced to pardon me.
By this time my fiancé would have moved on and married a woman with more money and strong maternal instincts. My apartment was still vacant, as it had been deemed a crime scene which frightened renters. The building super, who was so fond of me prior to my manslaughter conviction, welcomed me back with open arms. And there I was, in my rapturously beautiful blue apartment, a famous, successful writer, unmarried, smiling like a sunflower over my magnificent view of Oz.
“You’re going to have to move, Violet.” My mother’s voice broke my concentration. The gods had spoken. My vision of prison, success and a happy marriage-less future plummeted to the pavement below.
My old Terminator persona rose from the ashes and wrapped itself around my ankles. “Yes,” I said.
If I’d known what had been set in motion, I would have thrown my engagement ring and that damn red silk couch off the balcony, prison or not. Jumping from the balcony would have been far less painful than what was to ensue. But I drank the potion and turned the key that opened a door to a maze that seemingly had no end.