Joseph Lambo’s The Parlor appeared in Stirring: A Literary Collection, which is an online lit mag I recently ran across, back in April. The literary magazine doesn’t feature a lot of nonfiction, which usually kind of turns me off, but their April issue had this one and it really reminded me of David Sedaris mixed with David Rakoff. Which basically means it was humorous but also a little dark.
Growing up, the narrator’s mother is obsessed with their family parlor. His was one of only two families in the neighborhood with a parlor and it seemed like nothing but a nuisance. His mother spent all her time looking at magazines to decide exactly how the parlor should look. It was where all the “good” furniture went, which everyone knows means the room is rarely used. It’s simply there to give the illusion of a perfectly happy family. But as this story shows, the family was not “perfect.” The narrator is growing up and has no privacy in his home, which gives him edginess and attitude the mother doesn’t appreciate. The father is physically absent from the scene but his presence in conversation makes him a ghostly character and the other two sons are running around the house like crazy.
I loved how Lambo started with describing the parlor then moved into the scene. He establishes how important the parlor is to the mother and then shows us why the parlor is important to the mother and how it might not be representative of their home.
You can read the entire essay online here.
