Girls Versus Chairs, a Treat to Watch

     I’d walk into the echoing entrance hall, across the slate floor, past the huge fireplace, and toward the back of the house, where, on the right, there was the kitchen, with its round table and set of chairs in an extension that reached into the courtyard, like a conservatory. That area of the house faced south and caught the sun so well that the Glynns kept the windows open on most fall days, and even, occasionally, in the winter. In my memory of those Saturday mornings the sun is always shining. Margot and Martha, careless and leggy, with the coltish awkwardness of girls at that stage of gracelessness that I suppose marks the end of childhood, a stage attractive for its artlessness and freedom from self­consciousness, are sitting there at the table. That’s not quite accurate. They didn’t sit on their chairs, really. They set themselves onto their chairs and then immediately found it impossible to keep all the parts of themselves in the custom­ ary places. A leg would fling itself outward or bend itself under the other leg, and then the whole girl would have to be rearranged, the chair shifted, and then the girl’s nates would find that they couldn’t fit themselves into the two scoops in the wooden seat, and that meant more shifting, and the girl might get up and give the chair a shake and set it down at a different angle and try again. The inflexible chair and the flexible girl were engaged in a struggle, with the chair bent on teaching her the necessity of compromise, but the girl had a will and it was a will to win, to dominate, and she meant to get the best of that chair, and while she was working to do it she was a treat to watch, and watching was my part in the procedure.