The Ward
June 4, 2009
AS RICHARDS SAT cross-legged and fuming on the kitchen’s dirty linoleum floor, yards away, in the front room of the house, his fiancée Priscilla reclined on top of a threadbare orange sofa, trying hard to avoid his moody stare.
For ten minutes now this impasse had lingered on between them, the whole time Richards hoping that his crafted expression of piety and exasperation might eventually compel his fiancée to respond, and, though his efforts thus far had been unsuccessful, still he went on glowering, faithful that at some point she’d have no choice but to fold under the nagging weight of his persistence, while in the meantime the couple’s ward, a five-year-old boy named Cyrus, had spent those same minutes lying ignored on his stomach near the foot of the orange couch, carefully sorting a small pile of paint chips he’d peeled away from the wall.
At first Richards had felt more than confident that this grievance with his fiancée would resolve itself easily—shortly and in his favor—and he’d been surprised when a speedy resolution was not forthcoming. He was, however, no longer surprised when, having already been engaged in their struggle for over ten minutes, he and Priscilla then managed to continue the stalemate, unchanged, for another five, at which point he suddenly found himself faltering, dropping his glare and allowing it to glance accidentally over the face of his forgotten ward, who, unlike Priscilla, answered the glare with a look of his own, causing Richards to redirect his eyes sharply toward his fiancée, all the while keeping Cyrus at the edge of his vision, watching as the boy cast aside the paint chips he’d been sorting with a wave of his small arm.
“It would be helpful, I think,” Cyrus said, dryly, “if we discontinued whatever this is we’re doing and got back to the task at hand.” The boy’s eyes were fixed on the stained carpet.
“The task at hand,” Richards chuckled, punctuating his statement with a snort that came out louder than he’d intended. “Believe me, I’d love to, but unfortunately one of us is making that impossible.”
As he spoke, Richards narrowed his eyes and glared harder at his fiancée, who then responded with a sigh from the couch, still refusing to meet his stare.
“Look,” she said, “I know you think I’m at fault, but I didn’t even touch them. All I did was walk past.”
“That’s not the point,” Richards answered through clenched teeth. “The point is that you were the closest one when they fell, therefore rules of common decency suggest that you should have stopped what you were doing and at least started to put them back up, instead of walking away like nothing happened and expecting someone else to fix them for you.”
“If I remember correctly, repairs are your responsibility,” Priscilla said, finally giving in and making eye contact with Richards after all of her resistance, though Richards was now too caught up in his own aggravation to appreciate the victory. “In fact,” she continued, looking straight at him, “you were the one who sold us on this house in the first place, since, supposedly, you’d be able to handle whatever work needed to be done.”
“That’s true,” said Richards, and while he did he stood up, turning away from Priscilla and walking toward a heap of mini-blinds that lay crumpled beneath the kitchen window, “but when we chose this house the work didn’t include broken blinds.” He leaned down to inspect the heap more closely. “Not that I can’t handle broken blinds,” he added, “they’re exactly the kind of repair I can handle. Cleaning up, changing light bulbs, hanging things that have fallen down—this is precisely what I had in mind when we chose the house, so, of course, a broken set of mini-blinds isn’t out of reach…like you said, I was the one who sold you two on this particular house from the beginning, because other than some filth and a few run-down furnishings there isn’t a thing wrong with it…at least nothing we’ll be able to notice in the time we’re here. But to the point, it’s not about my ability to fix the blinds,” he paused to breathe, inhaling and exhaling deeply while staring at the pile on the floor, “it’s about the responsibility you should have taken to start the job.”
Finishing this thought, Richards turned around to glare at Priscilla once more with his best attempt at righteousness and indignation, and she met Richards’ glare with a deadpan expression, holding it briefly before breaking into hysterical laughter.
