The Spray-Painted Chair: A Symbol of Desperate Connection in All Fours

What Is the Spray-Painted Chair?

The spray-painted chair is a pink canvas folding chair that the narrator steals from her own trunk, spray-paints with the words “CALL ME,” and leaves across the street from the Hertz rental office in Monrovia. The chair first appears in Chapter 12 when the narrator drives back to find Davey. She discovers it is his day off and, desperate to leave a sign only he would understand, buys black spray paint from a garden supply store. She practices on a free weekly newspaper, writing “CALL, CALL, CALL” and “ME, ME, ME,” then tilts the chair and sprays “CALL” on the backrest and “ME” on the seat. She sets it up next to a bus stop opposite the Hertz building, where Davey will see it on his way to work the next morning.

The chair is not an arbitrary object. This is the same chair Davey used to step on to climb into the narrator’s window at the Excelsior Motel. By choosing it, she makes the message personal—only Davey would recognize the chair and understand what it means. She intends it as a secret code, a tangible plea for contact.

Where the Chair Recurs

The chair appears in two key locations across the novel:

The chair thus migrates from a private message of desire, to a shameful object retrieved, to a discarded piece of trash, and finally to a permanent fixture in the family home. Each relocation changes its symbolic weight.

How Its Meaning Changes

1. A Desperate Signal (Chapter 12)

When the narrator first paints and positions the chair, it represents raw, unguarded longing. She is acting “with the precision of a suicide bomber,” preparing the chair as if for a mission. The spray paint is “quick drying” with “no going back.” The words “CALL ME” are a demand, but also a confession: she will accept any contact, even at the cost of dignity. She imagines Davey recognizing the chair and understanding the message. At this stage, the chair is pure hope.

2. A Source of Shame (Chapter 12–13)

Jordi calls the act “stalkerish.” The narrator immediately drives back and retrieves the chair because she cannot bear to leave evidence of her desperation. She calls it a “dead body” in her trunk. The chair now feels dangerous—an object that, if found, would expose her. She tries to discard it in a park, hoping someone will steal it. The chair has shifted from a hopeful signal to a shameful secret.

3. A Domestic Irony (Chapter 13)

Harris finds the chair in the park. He does not recognize its history. He reads “Call me” aloud, treats it as whimsical found art, and wants to take it home for the backyard. The narrator is forced to agree: “We can put it under the linden tree.” The chair that was supposed to summon her lover becomes a piece of family furniture. Every day she must look at the object she created for Davey, now serving as a mundane lawn chair. The message she intended for one man becomes a public curiosity her husband and child sit on without understanding. This is the novel’s most painful irony: her desperate plea is absorbed into the very domestic life she was trying to escape.

Relevant Character Connections

• The Narrator: The chair is her creation, her explicit projection of desire. It shows her willingness to humiliate herself for connection, and later her inability to fully escape or hide her actions. The chair becomes a physical reminder she cannot discard.

• Davey: He never sees the chair. The message fails to reach its intended audience. This gap between the narrator’s intense effort and Davey’s obliviousness mirrors the imbalance in their affair: she is far more invested than he is.

• Harris: His reclamation of the chair is the most cutting moment. He treats it as a charming oddity, sits in it, and brings it into the family space. He never suspects it was part of his wife’s affair. Harris’s role here is that of the unknowing husband whose domestic normalcy overwhelms the narrator’s secret.

• Jordi: She is the moral compass who names the act for what it is. Without her intervention, the narrator would have left the chair for Davey. Jordi represents the conscience the narrator tries to ignore.

• Sam: The child discovers the chair first, reading the words aloud. Sam’s innocent question—“What’s that mean?”—forces the narrator to confront how her secret is now visible to her own family.

Relevant Theme Connections

• Desire and Aging: The narrator is forty-five, in the midst of perimenopause, and her desire for Davey feels juvenile and desperate. The chair is an artifact of that late-life reawakening of passion, rendered embarrassing by its nakedness.

• Marriage and Transformation: The chair’s journey from clandestine message to backyard decor mirrors the narrator’s failed attempt to transform her life. She wanted to step outside her marriage, but her secret is reabsorbed into it.

• Fantasy vs. Reality: The narrator imagines the chair as a romantic gesture; the reality is that it ends up in her own yard, ignored by the man it was meant for. The fantasy of a secret language between lovers collides with the mundane truth of family life.

• Open Marriage and Nonmonogamy: Though the narrator does not have an open marriage, her affair with Davey is a covert nonmonogamous arrangement. The chair represents the unsanctioned communication that cannot survive exposure to the real world.

4 Study Questions with Answers

1. Why does the narrator choose the pink canvas folding chair specifically, rather than any other object?

The chair is the one Davey used to step on to climb into her motel window. By using it, she makes the message legible only to him. She tells Jordi she needed to leave the note “in a language that only Davey understood.” The chair is not just any object; it is a shared artifact of their intimacy, and its presence signals that the message comes from her.

2. What does Jordi’s reaction reveal about the narrator’s actions?

Jordi says the act is “stalkerish.” This shocks the narrator into retrieving the chair. Jordi’s judgment exposes how far the narrator has drifted from normal behavior. The scene shows that the narrator’s friend will “not cheer [her] off a cliff.” Jordi provides the reality check the narrator cannot give herself.

3. Why does the narrator agree to put the chair in her own backyard?

She has no choice. Harris has already decided it is a cool piece of found art. If she objects, she risks revealing why she does not want the chair at home. Her agreement—“We can put it under the linden tree”—is a performance of normalcy that deepens the irony. The secret object now lives in plain sight.

4. How does the chair’s final location under the linden tree comment on the narrator’s emotional arc?

The linden tree is part of the family home, a stable fixture. The chair, once a symbol of escape, is now rooted in the very domestic space she wanted to leave. It becomes a daily reminder of her failure to connect with Davey and her inability to fully separate from Harris and Sam. The chair’s permanent placement suggests that her fantasy has been contained, not fulfilled.