He
hid the scissors. The only explanation. They were never in the drawer or on the
kitchen counter or even on his desk. She’d found them on the TV, under the bed,
between two cushions on the sofa and, once, in the bathtub in an inch of water.
“Put
them away,” she said. “Put them in their final resting place.”
“I
don’t know where they go,” he said.
“I’ll
show you,” she said. “They go in the scissors’ drawer.” She knew he hated that
answer, but she did it anyway. Where’s
the masking tape? he would
say. In the masking tape drawer, she
said.
The wine puller?
In
the wine puller drawer.
That
little flashlight I bought last week?
In
the flashlight drawer.
On
and on.
So,
when she’d been looking for the scissors, any scissors, for twenty minutes, she
confronted him.
He
straightened up from the workbench where he was clamping strips of wood he’d
glued together—another model boat or airplane or helicopter to hang from the
ceiling.
“I
don’t know,” he said. “Have you looked in the scissors’ drawer?”
“Not
there.”
He
shrugged, went back to tightening the tiny screw on the C clamp, a mockery of
concentration.
The
first projectile—a wad of paper—missed him, but the wet rag she’d found on the
floor hit him in the back of the neck.
He
didn’t turn to face her, but his big hand went to the cloth, caught it before
it fell to the floor, and in one grand and graceful gesture he flung it back.
She caught it, threw it, he ducked this time, so it slammed the peg board of
tools, tangled in a row of screw drivers, and hung limply.
He
tightened the next clamp.
“This
is serious,” she said. “They’re really lost this time.”
“What?”
“The
scissors.”
“In
their final resting place at last,” he said and crossed himself before going on
to the next clamp.
© 2013 Kathleen Coskran
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