Everything in Its Place

Character Sketch


         After a satisfying dinner, lovingly prepared for him by his wife of 23 years, Charles moves into the living room to continue his evening routine. He kicks off his shoes, removes his blue, oil-stained shirt, revealing an equally stained grey t-shirt, and tosses it on the couch. He unbuckles the belt that was hidden by a beer gut and unbuttons his pants; allowing him to breathe a little easier than he had for the previous 10 hours.

         But then, Charles stopped suddenly. He begins looking around for something. He did not move from his position in front of the couch, but his eyes search the surrounding furniture frantically. It wasn’t on the loveseat to his right. It wasn’t on the coffee table either; all that was there were a few magazines: Autoweek, Road & Track, Sports Illustrated and his wife’s copy of Martha Stewart Living. It most certainly wasn’t on the end table, his end table, where it was supposed to be.

         “Judy! Where’s my paper?”

         “How should I know?” his wife answers from the kitchen above the noise of running water and clanging dishes. “Maybe Eddy has it! He’s upstairs!”

         “Eddy! Have you seen my paper?”

         “I’ve got it, Dad!” answers the male voice from upstairs. “I’ll bring it right down!”

         Charles stood there until Eddy galloped down the eight or nine stairs that lead up to the second floor of the house. He hands his father a jumble of newsprint that has obviously been well read. The paper is unfolded, a few corners are turned down and have disappeared among the mess. The usually well defined center crease seems to have been lost in the chaos and none of the pages seem to be the same size anymore.

         “What’s this?” Charles asks.

         “It’s your paper.”

         “It doesn’t look like my paper. It looks like a god damn mess.”

         “Sorry,” Eddy says. “I had to use it for my homework. It’s not that bad.” Eddy walks over to the bookcase and starts perusing the shelves.

         “Not that bad? You call this not that bad? I work hard all day so that you have a roof over your head, food to eat and clothes to wear. And all that I ask for in return is that I can come home, have a nice meal with my family and then read my newspaper. That’s all.” Charles pauses after his tirade, expecting some kind of a response from his son, but Eddy has tuned him out. So instead Charles sits down slowly, settling himself into the worn, compressed cushion that sits opposite the one where his work shirt rests.

         This particular cushion doesn’t look like the other two on the couch. It’s poor condition makes it obvious that of all the others this one gets the most use. It’s Charles’ cushion. He sits on it, night after night, to read his newspaper. He won’t sit anywhere else. For example, there was the time when the lamp, the brass one that sits just over his left shoulder, simply burned out for good. But rather than move to the other end of the couch where a similar floor lamp stood, he moved the working lamp over behind his cushion so he was able to read his newspaper without further disruption.

         Of course tonight was not a night without disruption. Upon sinking down into his soft worn refuge, Charles begins to sort through the remains of his newspaper. He starts by pulling each individual section, making sure that each page follows its proper sequential order, unfolding the dog ears created by his son, and recreating that perfect center crease once again. He is so focused on the task before him that he doesn’t notice his son removing a book from the shelf.

         After taking care of each section, caring for it as if it were a delicate infant, he places his newspaper back into alphabetical order: A section, B section, C section and so on. Upon finishing the surgery on his newspaper, giving it the appearance it once had when it was delivered to his doorstep this morning, and looks up just in time to see his son putting the book back on the shelf.

         Eddy shrugs his shoulders and returns to his bedroom upstairs without uttering a word. Charles, however, get up off the couch and walks over to the bookshelf. He removes the very same book that Eddy has just returned and moves it, past two novels about the Civil War, and places it at the beginning of his World War I collection.

         He sits back down on the couch, separates the A section from the rest of the newspaper, spreads it out over his lap and begins to read. “Why is it,” he says out loud without a single soul in the room to listen, “That no one can put things back the way they found them? Is it really too much to ask?”