The mystery of the missing footstool
While reading in my overstuffed chair one of those stay-inside days this week, I noticed something was missing. My left leg was slung over the arm, as I always do when I’m sitting there. And then it occurred to me.
Where’s the ottoman?
Why was my leg hooked around the arm when it should have been stretched out across a footstool? Hadn’t there been one in this room? Where was it?
Not that an ottoman is something easily hidden, but I went searching; I opened doors and pulled back boxes and trudged through bedrooms and closets expecting to unearth that large, white-upholstered block of cushioning. It was not in the house. For long moments I stood in the living room, looking at the space on the area rug in front of the big white chair. How could it be that I’d lived here for well nigh three years and have not missed a significant piece of furniture, until now?
Obviously, this sent me sliding into a rabbit hole of worry about my mental faculties, if not my eyesight. I checked the area rug for divots where an ottoman’s feet would have been. Nothing. I scampered around the whole house again for one last check, and concluded that maybe I’d never bought the ottoman in the first place.
Was this a case of being so used to one’s surroundings that you just don’t notice anymore? I thought of how people who live in a flight path eventually become inured to the airplane noise. When we lived near the Ohio River, overnight guests would comment on the grinding noise they’d hear at night. It was the opening and closing of the river locks, sounds I’d long since stopped noticing.
I called the furniture store and yes, in March 2019 I’d purchased a sofa, chair and ottoman, so at least I hadn’t hallucinated it. And then my mind went to all sorts of far-flung places to find an explanation.
Had the movers forgotten the ottoman back at the previous house? Why, then, did the new owners not tell me? Had the movers left the piece on the truck? Or maybe someone had made off with my footstool, but who?
And this is where things got out of hand. I conjured a scenario in which during a visit, my daughter’s sweet bulldog puppy chewed one of the ottoman’s legs and, worried that I would be angry about it, Grace and her husband spirited the ottoman into their truck with the goal of having it repaired and then returning it before I found out – like the Grinch stealing the Christmas tree to “have it repaired.” And yes, I’ve snapped my cap.
“Yeah, Mom,” Grace said, “we stole your furniture in the middle of the night.” And then we talked about how I wouldn’t be mad if the pup had chewed something, anyway. But she did say she remembered there being an ottoman – in my previous house but not this one. To confirm that, I found a photo I’d taken of my current living room right after I’d moved in. No ottoman.
“Maybe the movers lost it,” Grace said. That seems to be the logical explanation. I’m glad to know I hadn’t imagined something as significant as a piece of furniture. But I still wonder how I could have been so distracted for so long, and so oblivious.
But now that empty spot is bothersome. I took myself to the furniture store to buy a replacement. Of course, that model and fabric is no longer available. I ordered something close enough.
Delivery is scheduled for February. There will be a space waiting for it.