Room as Refuge in “Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge” https://ift.tt/CZPEXIy
Author Helen Ellis is a “Southern lady,” born and raised in Alabama, but more than two decades ago she transplanted herself to New York City, where she’s lived with her husband ever since. Her newest publication, Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage, is a perfect mingling of her Southern upbringing and her big city life, imparted through anecdotes of time spent with family, friends, and, especially, her husband.
While this is her fifth publication (and her third book of essays), it was my first experience reading Ellis and, I assure you, it won’t be my last.
Nineteen essays cover subjects that range from the obnoxious nasal grunts of significant others to collecting art in an unpretentious and haphazard way to receiving the obituary of the man who Ellis first kissed.
In each essay Ellis comes back around to her marriage, specifically to the coral lounge in the Manhattan apartment that had for decades belonged to her husband’s parents, the lounge they decorated and found sanctuary in during the pandemic. She effortlessly merges the messy with the exaggerated and is still able to wrap it up in a bow by the end, giving the reader a great laugh and finalizing the tale with great hope.
In “We Are Not That Couple,” Ellis speaks of spending Greek Easter with her husband’s family:
I have never been as high as I was twenty-two years ago at my husband’s cousins’ house in Tivoli: jacked up on half-priced jelly beans and Robin Eggs, pogo-sticking with one kid and then climbing a tree with two others, hollering, ‘Christo anesti!’ in my deep southern accent, my mouth smeared with chocolate rabbit’s carcass like Cujo with Cadbury rabies… I — an Alabama native who grew up thinking Easter meant it was time to bust out my white Buster Browns — would never have imagined I’d be this into my husband’s traditions. But marriage is trying out and finding out what kind of couple you are. Or aren’t.
Ellis’ humor and savvy for writing about the obscene is a balm throughout Coral Lounge. Given that we’re not that far removed from the pandemic and quarantine and the all-too-real events of that devastation, I’d normally refrain from picking up a book that had so many pandemic-related anecdotes, never mind suggesting others read it. However, Ellis leaves out the raw bits and removes us from the dire circumstances. Instead, she shares the loving, playful moments.
In “What’s in the Box” she relates that her husband would take nightly walks with a friend who manages buildings in Manhattan. During these walks, his friend would check on his buildings, and one time the friend emerged with a shoebox containing an unbelievable find. This event became the subject of a game for Ellis, her husband, and their friends. Ultimately, they’d share the story and then make their friends guess what was in the box. When they finally divulged the information, there would either be delight, disgust, laughter, or balking. Only one person ever guessed right, and then the game was over.
What’s important, though, was that Ellis’ husband knew that she’d appreciate the event as a great story, and that she’d appreciate it better than most would. “I’m the one who married a man who knew how happy this story would make me… I’m the one who got lucky,” Ellis writes.
Similarly, in “The Bright Side,” the first sentence reads, “My husband got a prescription for Viagra three months into lockdown.” In a world that was dark and scary, and at a time when the world had literally shut down, Ellis was able to find moments of light and appreciation for what she had right in front of her. The love and security she had with her husband, their family, friends, and, of course, the many moments over the course of decades spent in the coral lounge — she translated all of these into a collection of buoyant essays.
But buoyancy isn’t all there is. Each story has an edge to its optimism; there is something embedded deep within each sardonic comment. Ellis’s sharp prose, witty anecdotes, and clever storytelling make Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge a collection for every reader.
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