Unfinished Sonata
Alison was annoyed. At any rate, that was the word that she used for the type of nervous agitation that she often felt. As always, dinner was about to finish and she would be clearing the table; then she would have to face the battle with Mary about doing the dishes.
It was a never-ending argument; Alison had to renew it every day. Mary would eat her dinner quickly, paying no attention to the oldest, Ned Jr., telling them everything about his day at school, and would be the first to leave the table. She would go straight into her bedroom, in which they had put her high upright piano, and begin practicing. She would use that as an excuse for not doing the dishes.
Alison was so annoyed that she ceased listening attentively to Ned. "Mom!" he said, raising his voice. The younger kids, Rich and Betty, fidgeted at his tone and kept eating, noses in their plates. "I said, what do you think? Should I go to YSU and switch from offense to defense? Coach Hoffer says I'm ready to tackle, and the YSU coach is ready to take me on."
"Yes, of course, if that's what you want to do," Alison replied, half mechanically. She glanced at her husband, Ned Sr., who was taking slurps of coffee between mouthfuls of overboiled potatoes. She knew that he wouldn't give an opinion.
She also knew that he wouldn't help her in her fight with Mary. As it was, he was the one who had given in when she insisted that they move the piano out of the family room and into her bedroom, making Alison's attempts at getting the dishes done - or any other thing - more difficult.
Ned never was much help with the kids because he felt that it was a woman's job. And anyway, he could never do things right. He either gave in or hit, and never at the right moment. It's always up to me to take care of these things, Alison thought, and what thanks do I get for it?
The children went off to do their homework, and she cleared the table as Ned Sr. went into the family room to watch the news. But she did nothing more than put water and some dish-washing liquid in the baking pan so that the burnt meatloaf could be scraped off later. In her agitation she didn't wait for the water to heat. Then she went into the hallway that led to her bedroom and Mary's. She could hear Mary playing quietly as she approached.
The piano was right by the doorway. That was another source of annoyance for Alison; she had wanted to put it against the other wall, where the desk was. With the piano right at the doorway, Alison couldn't charge in and make her point. Mary could bark at her to make her back away, then slam the door in her face. Then Alison was always too indignant to open the door again and start her arguments over.
But Mary wouldn't always bark. If Alison came in while she was playing, Mary wouldn't stop until Alison yelled loud enough to make her stop. Alison hated Mary's way of pretending she hadn't noticed Alison come in.
Alison walked up to Mary's door. Mary stopped playing just as Alison opened it. Alison thought with annoyance about the yelling that Mary was about to do.
Alison had prepared a strong reprimand. Instead she said quietly, "It's time to come out and do the dishes."
Mary didn't yell. She was not playing, but she was ignoring Alison anyway. She was holding each set of fingers in the other, turn by turn, looking at the music on her music stand, and doing a sort of "pa-pa-pa-puh-puh-pa-pa-pa" under her breath.
Alison spent the brief silence glancing around the room. As always, she found it messy. She decided not to mention it. Anyway, she knew what Mary would say. Mary was a broken record. She would say, "It's not messy, it's cluttered because of all my material." And she had a lot of that. Piles and piles of piano music were on top of the piano. On the desk were scores, sheets of handwritten music paper, and three separate stacks of books - "one for the school libe, one for the city libe, and one for what my teachers lend me," Mary would explain in what Alison felt was a threateningly quiet voice. Alison couldn't see them from there, but she knew that Mary's record albums were lined up on the floor between the desk and the little table that held her small plastic stereo and headphones. That was another of Mary's tricks; she would pretend that she was "studying" an album, and since she always used the headphones, you could never tell if she was wearing them to hear the music or to have an excuse for not doing something.
The small single bed was made, and had a load of books plopped onto it. Mary always did her homework on the bed. That was what Alison especially found messy; the desk was just for holding up the piles of stuff, and Mary would sprawl or sit Indian-style to work. Her talk about avoiding sciatica was obviously just junk; Mary's 16, for God's sake, why would sciatica be a problem for her?
Mary was still ignoring her. "Come on, get to those dishes," Alison said, a little more loudly.
"Just leave the dishes there, I can do them when I'm done practicing. They're not going to melt because they're dirty." She did not look once at Alison while she said this, concentrating on the music before her.
"But what if someone comes to see us?"
Mary breathed a strong sigh. "No one ever comes to see us on a weeknight. Just leave them." And she placed her fingers on the keyboard.
Alison always thought, "But they could come," but never said it because Mary would never take into consideration Alison's ideas of things.
"Just come out here and do 'em," she added half-heartedly, and closed the door.
As she walked back down the hallway, Alison asked herself yet again why she never got any appreciation from her children. No matter how much she asked and insisted, they never gave her any.
She went into the family room and stood by a window, staring into the gathering autumn darkness.
Alison remembered how Mary had been affectionate and appreciative when she had been little. Alison would put her to bed, and give her a little hug, and Mary would say, "I love you," and Alison would answer, "I love you." In those days, Mary liked having her mother's arm around her when they were in the car and Ned was driving, or her hand in hers when they were shopping. Alison had seen this second child as the answer to her lifelong wish for affection. Ned was a good boy, but he was a boy, so she couldn't expect him to do the same thing. She let him be energetic and try new things and kept Mary by her side to get her affection.
But Mary had always been restless, and it was hard to make her sit still. She would pout when she was told she couldn't go to the playground, or even chase butterflies in the front yard. When she was pouting she wouldn't want to be held. It seemed to Alison that those were the moments when she began to feel annoyed.
And Mary had always had all kinds of weird ideas. She would draw a person with the eyes facing the wrong way, or try to walk through the family room without touching the floor, only walking on the furniture. Alison could never get Mary to understand how crazy such things were.
It was because of these things that Alison stopped receiving affection from Mary. One day, in one of her fits of restlessness, Mary had the weird idea of thumping her fists on a table in the family room. She wasn't even doing it with any kind of normal beat, like you could find in a pop song. It was rapid and uneven, and got softer and louder at different times. Alison had already interrupted her magazine reading a few times to tell her to stop, but Mary kept going. Suddenly she gave a harder thump, and a small statuette that Alison had kept on the table fell off the edge and broke, sending up a small cloud of dust from the floor.
That was the first time that Alison remembered getting really annoyed. She grabbed Mary's hand, pulled her into her bedroom, and thrust her onto her bed, all the time muttering to her that she had bad kids and that she didn't deserve them. Mary was saying something as well, about how she hadn't meant to and how she could glue the broken piece back on, but Alison only half-listened, gave her a last piece of her mind, and walked back to the doorway.
Just as she got there, Mary said, "I love you." Alison, without turning around, snapped back, "Well, I don't love you!" and banged the door shut behind her. Then Alison went into the family room and picked up the statuette and the piece of base that had broken off and dumped them in the garbage pail in disgust at having such a clumsy child.
That was the last time that Mary had said "I love you." And she had never even seemed grateful to Alison for not spanking her.
It was about that time that Mary started doing what Alison called her "music thing". She had had piano lessons for a few years by then. It had seemed a good thing to Alison during those first years, because piano lessons were a thing for girls to do, and because Mary would sit still to practice, at least. But after the first few years things changed. It seemed to Alison that it was after this problem with the statuette that Mary started spending a lot of time at the piano. Alison could never get her even to go out and play in the front yard most of the time. She would play and play, and it would be the same thing each time.
Alison also remembered the piano recital that Mary was in at around that time. The piano teacher - a different one than the one May had now - had brought Alison away from the kitchen table around which the parents and children were having refreshments and talked to her about sending Mary to another teacher, pretending that Mary had a "gift" and that the other one could train her better. Alison had felt that if the teacher was too lazy or unhappy with Mary to keep teaching her, she could have said so. And Alison remembered the looks she got from the other parents when she went back to the table, some kind of knowing look that made Alison annoyed.
She certainly hadn't seen any "gift" in Mary's playing. Alison tried to correct her in the car on the way home after the recital.
"Mary, why did you insist on showing off when you were playing? That's really tacky."
"What do you mean, 'showing off'?" Mary asked, sounding pouty.
"You know what I mean. You were throwing your hands up in the air instead of keeping them on the keys."
"It's called 'phrasing', mom, and that's how you make music. And for piano music, you want your hands to be like springs a little because that helps the phrasing, and because, later on, I'll have pieces that'll make me have to move my hands farther."
"That's just excuses. You were just being a show-off. Why couldn't you play piano like the other girls did? They were good girls and played normally and quietly."
Mary didn't answer. And it seemed now to Alison that it was from that point on that Mary would refuse to answer when Alison asked these kinds of questions or tried to talk to her about how she should do things. It was only lately that Mary began to be angry or sarcastic, and to bark at Alison.
Alison knew Mary had never listened to her complaints about her way of playing the piano because it was from that day that she started looking in on Mary playing in the family room more often. Sometimes Mary played without waving her hands around so much, but at other times she would play the way she did at the recital, even though no one was there to see her show off.
Alison had hoped that the new piano teacher would fix that, but she didn't see a difference once Mary had changed to the new one. What she did see was that Mary was spending more and more time at that damn piano. She also saw that up until then, if Alison had something to say to Mary while she was playing, Mary would stop. But since then Mary began to insist that Alison wait until she stopped playing the piece, then later that Alison wait until she stopped the whole "practice session".
This was how things had been going for the few past years or so. In spite of Alison's complaints, Mary had continued insisting on using the piano as an excuse to refuse to do things for Alison or for the house. She had also begun doing musical things at school, and once she got to high school she would stay after at least three times a week to play music with the other students. At least that's what she would say she was doing. And she would always be at that piano when she was home.
It wouldn't even have been so bad if it wasn't all such racket. Alison didn't know which piece of junk was worse. Mary would always start with that "tiddle-tuddle-tiddle-tuddle" stuff that never seemed to end, never seemed to change, always did the same thing over and over. Unless of course it was just Mary playing it over and over. The last time Mary had practiced in the family room, a year ago last summer, she had done that. Alison had taken a glance in while she was doing it. She was only using her left hand, but she was making enough noise just with that. She was making it jump up the keyboard. "Ta-TUM, TUM, TUM, TA-TA ta-TUM, TUM, TUM, TUM, ta-TUM, ta-TUM, ta-TUM, ta-TUM-TUM ta-TUM, TUM, TUM, TUM . . . " Then she would stop, sit a moment, and begin again. Alison's annoyance had once again become too much for her that day. "Oh, give it up!" she had barked out sharply. The shout interrupted Mary; she sat for a moment with her left hand raised. Then she began the passage again. Alison got even more annoyed then, too annoyed to talk straight. "Gonna drive me to drink," she half-shouted as the pounding on the keyboard continued.
At least the closed door of the bedroom muffled some of the "tiddle-tuddle". It also masked that other thing that Mary did, which Alison was sure was no playing at all; Mary was definitely just pretending to play to get out of doing the dishes. It was just a slow, quiet meandering down the keyboard, lingering on some chords: "(ta)-taaaaaa, taaaaa, (ta) ta-ta-taaa, (ta) ta-ta-taaaa, taaaa, taaaa, (ta) ta-ta-taaa . . . " Once she got down a ways, she would go up and start down again, but interrupt it to put in more notes so that it would sound like something. Even that low rumbling part in the middle really didn't sound convincing. Mary was just taking the slow downward thing and making it a fast upward thing. Then she would come back to the slow downward thing. She was just doing it to kill time. Mary would do anything to avoid chores and to keep Alison away from her.
The only time Alison saw much of Mary was when she was on the telephone. That was in the family room, on a small table next to the easy chair that had been put in the place of the piano. Mary could usually be found there when Alison came home from her job, supposedly talking to one of her music teachers.
Alison knew that she was talking about them, even though she tried to hide it. "Retardondy" was obviously an attempt to disguise "retards", and "dim in you end oh" was just a way of talking about "dim bulbs". Alison wasn't fooled. She was only waiting to figure out what the other terms meant before making her accusation. And why Mary wanted to say bad things about Alison to her music teachers, she couldn't understand. It was just plain nastiness. How did I get such a nasty child? Alison thought.
At any rate, the conversation never lasted long, because Mary would hang up shortly after Alison's arrival and disappear into her room. She never wanted to stay in the family room once Alison was around, especially since the piano had been moved.
A new person had entered into these telephone conversations recently. Mary called him "my estrow", and it was with him that she would use the fancy words more often. They seemed concerned about a "day bew", and about "auditions" as well. Alison felt that if they wanted to know about bookkeeping, they should ask her. After all, that was her job. She refused to explain to them, until they asked, that they were "audits" and not "auditions". And what in the world they were so concerned about "the emperor" for was beyond her.
With all Mary's weird ideas and bad temper, Alison should have been glad that the high school had decided to put her in an accelerated program so that she could go to college a year earlier. Getting her and that piano out of the house would be a relief. Alison was determined to sell the thing as soon as Mary was gone. But Alison was annoyed about all this college thing as well. The constant arguing about it had also worn her out. She wasn't going to help Mary fill out and sign her college loans to pay for a music degree. She insisted that Mary get a real degree, to get a real job with, but Mary wouldn't even discuss it.
Alison knew that she had an uphill battle to get Mary to see this because of those teachers who had put her in the accelerated program. They were encouraging her, for some reason. She remembered the enthusiasm that the music teachers had shown at the high school each year during the teacher-parent meetings. They always called her a "prodigy" and talked about her "promise". Alison would say to them, "Yes, we're very proud of her," because that seemed to be what she was supposed to say. But once out of their hearing she would ask Ned what in the world they thought they were doing saying such garbage to Mary. "She'll never knuckle down if she keeps hearing that," she would say. "And what's she doing promising things to them, when she won't say she'll do anything for us?"
Alison had tried once to make Mary "knuckle down" by refusing to pay for more lessons. But she got a phone call from Mary's teacher. She talked about "promise" and "prodigy" too, and mentioned a lot of names that Alison didn't recognize. Alison suddenly remembered that she had talked about scholarships as well. So that's where Mary got that nutty idea, Alison thought. Then the teacher found some job for Mary, and she began to pay for her lessons herself.
And now they were coming to the moment when Mary would be starting to send out applications. Alison cringed at the idea that Mary's job money could be used to pay for such useless applications. How she had managed to raise a child with so little sense, with so little idea of what a dollar was worth, Alison could not understand.
And how Alison was going to get Mary to see the realities of college, she couldn't imagine. Even bringing it up had become too annoying, because Mary would simply ask Alison to tell her all about her college years. Alison didn't have any college years, but that didn't stop her from understanding a thing or two about college. A person older and wiser like her would obviously have more understanding of these things.
"I'm going to have a scholarship," Mary insisted.
"What in the world would you get a scholarship for?" Alison retorted. "Who's gonna pay you to study?"
"The music schools," Mary answered with assurance.
"You're joking! Nobody pays people to play music at college. You get scholarships for things like law and sports."
"I showed you the handbooks," Mary reminded her.
"All that artsy-fartsy stuff. Forget it, you're crazy," Alison said firmly.
Suddenly Mary burst out with, "What's it to you, anyway? You're not paying a cent for my education, you already know that. Why can't you just stay out of my way and let me do this? Why do you have to meddle all the time?"
These kinds of outbursts were becoming more frequent with Mary. Just a few weeks ago, Mary had thrown a fit because Alison had tried to refuse to let her use the car. "Are you out of your mind!?" Mary had yelled. "I'm committed to this! Who else could they get to do the continuo for the Vivaldi, or the accompanying for the singers? And at the last minute! We've arranged this, and I'm going! You're not going to wreck the evening for everybody, even if it is just the Italian-American Brothers League!" And she grabbed Alison's bag, shook the contents out on the family room floor, found the keys, and walked out the door as fast has her long black skirt would let her. Alison was too speechless with annoyance to stop her.
Alison had found no way of getting Mary to understand that these outbursts were not the way to talk to her mother. But she rarely found the right words right at the moment, because her annoyance would go really high. It was only afterwards when she found them, and the few times that she tried to tell them to Mary her daughter just looked at her as if she was dirt. "The way she treats me," Alison would say to herself. Alison would try again and again to turn any conversation to either college or Mary's attitude, and each time Mary would tell her to "drop it". When she tried to complain about it to Ned, he would slap Mary. When she tried to complain about it to Ned Jr., he would bark at Mary and speak sarcastically. When she tried to complain about it to Rich and Betty, they would lower their heads and continue their meal, their homework, or their drawings. She just got no support.
Alison's thoughts went back to the dishes, still sitting in the kitchen. No, this time she would definitely have to get Ned to help her. No matter how annoying it was to have to go through that goading, she would have to get him to do something. She could not let him get away with this lack of support for her.
As soon as the news was over, she turned to him abruptly. "Are you gonna help me get your daughter to do her chores?" she asked him.
He was playing with the television antenna again, trying to get the picture in a little more clearly.
"Can't you keep her from messin' with this television?" he snapped back crossly. "Every time she switches it to that VHF crap, we can't get Channel 30 back. Can't you keep her from changing that dial?"
"How am I supposed to know she's doing it? And what do you want to do, waste money to buy a lock for it? She's just godda learn to put everything back, like she's godda learn to do the dishes after supper. Come and help me get her out here to do her work."
"I'm tryin' to get the picture back!"
"You just can't be bothered. You don't know what I go through half the day here, and you don't care. You're the one who complains about smelling those stinking dishes when you get up for breakfast, but you can't bother doing something about it. Why should I care if you don't like the smell? Why do I bother trying to make the kitchen clean for you? It's just not worth all the effort I make to do something when you get so little appreciation for it."
Ned pushed the antenna sharply down, nearly breaking it. "Fine, you want your goddamn dishes done, I'll go whack her side the head and get her out here."
Alison followed him. Now she was feeling annoyed with him. She was asking for support and appreciation, and he hadn't said a word about how much effort she always made. And all he was going to do was hit Mary, which wouldn't make a difference.
Ned stomped down the hall to Mary's bedroom door and opened it abruptly. Mary was in the middle of one of her noisier things; her hands were bouncing from one part of the keyboard to another. "Tumm-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-TA-TA-TA-TA-TUM, TA-TA-TA, TA-TA-TA . . ." Alison could see that she was pretending they weren't there, like always.
"You stop all this racket and get out and do those dishes!" Ned shouted. Mary jumped in her place and stopped. Her eyes took a moment to focus on them.
"What do you want?" she snapped.
"You gonna do those dishes, or am I gonna tan your hide?" Ned bellowed.
Mary exploded. "Why are dishes such a big thing in this filthy house? Why can't I do my work in peace? It doesn't change a damn thing to the dishes, and I don't have to warm up all over again!"
"I'll warm you up good, if you don't get off that bench!" Ned barked in reply.
"I've got three more weeks till the concert - "
"You've got two seconds to get your butt in that kitchen!" Ned raised a hand threateningly.
Mary tilted away from her parents. Her mouth opened. She threw her hands into the air, then whacked them down on the piano's music stand and began rocking back and forth. Then she began a strange keening which was of a higher pitch than her usual voice. It was a long call, growing louder and louder. Alison began laughing and said, "Oh, stop yer play-acting!" But that did not stop Mary. She placed her hands on either side of her head and the wail turned into a scream.
Ned didn't wait for more. He began by grabbing Mary's left hand in his and slapping her over the head with his other one. The scream was cut by each slap but did not stop. He let go of her hand and began slapping her with both hands, giving blows that sent Mary rocking more than her own movements had. The scream still went on; the interruptions created by the slaps were followed by moments of breathing in to let the scream out more fully. Ned stopped using slaps and started punching with his fists, pummeling Mary on the head and back. The screams were farther between; the blows on the back seemed to keep Mary from breathing in enough. Ned finally gave one swinging right blow that sent Mary's head slamming into the piano; it bounced off with a force that tilted her sideways off balance. She fell down on the floor at the other end of the bench, between it and the wall.
She had stopped screaming, and she didn't move.
"Let that be a lesson to you," Alison said, forcing the words out through her annoyance. "I expect you up off that floor and out in the kitchen in a hurry. Come on, Ned."
Both parents walked away from the room. Ned went back to the family room, gave the antenna another fiddle, and settled back into his lounge chair in front of the TV. Alison waited in the kitchen for Mary to come out. She intended to give her some last choice words to teach her another lesson. It was the only way to get things into that thick head.
Alison waited a good five minutes, but there was no sign of movement from Mary's bedroom and no sounds. She's doing the silent thing, like always, Alison thought. Why do I have such a pouting child?
Alison remembered how Mary had stood and sulked and said nothing when Alison had asked Rev. Holbrook to come and talk to her shortly after he had begun at their church. Mary had said absolutely nothing all the time while Alison had explained to him about the problems of respect and honoring and support. Mary had just stood there, stubborn, lockjawed, arms crossed, head down.
And it hadn't helped at all that the Reverend didn't really say a word to Mary. He just talked about "adolescent identity" and Freud, and then left. So he just encouraged the silent thing. While Alison was showing him out, Mary, disappeared into her bedroom. Alison didn't hear Mary say a word for three days after that. Not even over the telephone.
Alison decided to leave the dishes for Mary all the same. She felt she could not give in, especially after seeing such a fit. She went into the family room and absent-mindedly wiped some of the dust off the television before changing the channel, then settled into her easy chair. She looked at the different programs for a couple of hours, without following any of the action. She was going through different scenes in her mind in which she engaged in appeals to Mary, sometimes eloquent, sometimes reasoned, which reduced her daughter to contrition and sometimes tears. She was taken into her repentant daughter's arms and was magnanimous in her forgiveness. "Just don't start it again," she would invariably say at the end of the imagined reconciliations.
Her gaze drifted to the pile of ironing sitting in the basket in the family room. She decided to leave it for the next night, when she would be less annoyed.
Soon Alison noticed that it was 9:30. She would have to think about getting to bed. But there were still those dishes. She really needed to get Mary to do them before she and Ned were in bed, because they didn't like hearing that noise when they were trying to get to sleep. She thought briefly of the fact that Mary had insisted on doing them after practicing; she would have her way. Then she realized that she couldn't hear the piano.
She went up to the doorway of Mary's room. Mary had not moved from her curled-up position on the floor. Alison again felt her annoyance flare up. She's really putting on her act, thought Alison.
"I don't know what you think you're accomplishing lying there," she said testily. "Those dishes will sit there until you do them. And I'm not getting you up earlier in the morning just to give you time to do them. I'd like to get a little extra sleep, too." She went back out and closed the door.
All during her preparation for bed and the hours before she finally fell asleep, Alison continued to pass through cycles of annoyance. Each cycle brought her back to the pile of dirty dishes still sitting by the sink, and especially to the baking pan.
Why have I got a child who's so stubborn? She kept thinking.
She found it hard to get up to fix Ned Sr.'s breakfast and lunch the next morning, she was so tired. But then she saw the dirty dishes still by the sink and the annoyance woke her up some. When Ned came in from the bathroom she began to grumble about it because she knew that if she didn't Ned would start in, and she didn't want to hear him.
"That damn kid'll drive me to drink, "Alison mumbled. "I ought to make her stay home from school an' get these done."
"You coulda done 'em yourself insteada watchin' television," Ned growled as he sat down at the table. Alison decided not to answer, but felt hurt at the lack of sympathy.
Later, when Ned had gone and Alison was having a second cup of coffee, she heard Mary's alarm ring. She anticipated the scene that she would make when Mary came out into the kitchen and she could show her the piled-up dishes and reproach her with having left them.
After a few replays of that scene in her head she realized that the alarm was still buzzing. It was like Mary to turn off the alarm and fall back to sleep; it was not like her to allow the alarm to continue to buzz. She always complained about the ugly sound, and Alison felt again her annoyance at Mary's arguments with her about buying a clock-radio. If she thinks this is a ploy to get me to buy her one . . . Alison thought, moving from one source of tension to another.
Slamming her coffee cup down and slopping coffee on the table, Alison got up and marched to the door of Mary's room. She knocked sharply.
"Come on, get a move on!" she shouted, then scuttled back to her coffee. She didn't want to hear Mary's answer.
Alison finished her coffee and added her cup to the pile of dishes, leaving the spilled coffee to coagulate on the table. As she did this she heard Ned Jr.'s alarm go off, then stop. Then his heavy feet could be heard walking from his bedroom overhead to the upstairs bathroom. After a few more minutes, she realized that she would have no time to give Mary a good telling-to before she left for work if she didn't get her up. She decided to go in, get her up, and shout the rest of her scolding to Mary from her bedroom while she got dressed.
She walked back to Mary's room, opened the door, and got out the first syllable of her reproach - "You - " - before noticing the empty bed. She looked around the room and found Mary still curled up on the floor. She could not believe she was still acting up like that.
"Oh, come ON!" she barked.
She reached down and shook Mary's shoulder. But when she felt the coldness of the body, she jumped back with a shriek.
Jennifer says: I found this story too melodramatic. Lots of parents underestimate their children's gifts. And lots of children underestimate the challenges of parenting and keeping a house together. I found it unbelievable that a child so musically gifted and talented couldn't figure out that if she did a modicum of housework she could get her way in everything else.
Plot - 18
Characters - 17
Mechanics - 20
Enjoyment - 17
TOTAL - 72
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