The Transporter Couch

The other day I made a reference to a room at a bar, and I called it “the front living room.” I have lately been informed that the establishment itself calls it “the parlour.”

When I was a kid I lived in a rather large house and one room was “the living room” and it was pretty much off limits to children. It had these big monster fancy pocket doors that were used not really to keep anyone in or out but for ventilation purposes. The furniture was nice. It was always clean. It was where my parents entertained company. There was, incidentally, also a dining room, with its own scary big doors, with nice furniture, and we (children) only ate in there five times a year. The sort of center of the house was “the den” which served as the living room and dining room and gathering place for the whole family, every day.

One day …. it’s a complicated situation so I won’t spell it all out …. Carolyn Stiles came over to bring a gift. Only my sister Anne and I were home and we ushered her into the living room. The room was painted greenish silverish blue, “french blue” I think it was called, and the trim was white. The hardwood floor had a very handsome rug. And Carolyn said, “what a lovely parlour.”

Anne and I just sort of did a double-take. Like….. WHAT? It was like Barbara Stanwyck in The Big Valley. (Nick! Heath! Jarrod! Come into the parlour!) I was more or less a grown man at that point, perhaps 18 or 19 years old, and I KNEW the word existed but I’d always associated it with a funeral home. (These thoughts gel as they do because of the long week I’ve had and it isn’t over yet.)

This morning I lay in bed, as usual my body at rest and my mind in motion, and I remembered Herman Munster, tragic character that he was. And he worked at a funeral parlour, evidently. And he would come home and give Lily a kiss and she would casually ask, “how were things down at the parlour today?” And he would say, “fine.” And only this morning, as I lay there, did it occur to me what macabre humor that was. Then I thought about the irony of going from the funeral parlour to the Lincoln Street “parlour.”

Many years later, after my parents moved, the house sat empty for a couple of months and I had occasion to stay there for a little white. There was a table and two chairs downstairs, and a bed upstairs. They did that for tax purposes or something but in any case it was convenient. Oh, and there were towels in the bathroom. One day I was rollerblading downstairs. You could start in the kitchen and just zoom around the empty house and go in big circles. And I was doing just that when I zoomed into the front hall and found the realtor and three prospects standing there. And Bob said, “should you be doing that?” And I was at once abashed and belligerent, and I went with the latter: “It’s still my house, Bob. As soon as you sell it I’ll stop.” Then I bladed away. And hid.