Prompt #3 Response -- The Dancing Shoes

The stress of the last few weeks had weakened her.  Under usual circumstances, she was charitable toward her husband.  Since the night they met, and he’d asked her to dance in the crowded room, she’d admired, and eventually loved, his boyish smile and contagious glee.  Whenever she thought she heard disinterest in his voice or felt that his touch was dismissive, she made a conscious effort to reexamine her judgment of him and to assume her assessment was wrong.  Although the hardships and years they’d shared together had aged him, she still found it easy to forgive him when he smiled.  She’d avoided most arguments with him simply by thinking of him favorably.

But that evening, she was too tired.  The responsibilities that she’d been juggling and the emotional weight of the last few weeks had taken their toll.  Their upcoming cross-country move had brought domestic upheaval and extra duties at work and her ailing grandfather’s health had worsened considerably. 

So when he’d asked her, casually enough, if she had remembered to pick up more boxes on the way home, she’d been incapable of charitable thoughts.  Instead of treating it like the innocent question it probably was, she’d heard in his voice a tone of disrespect of her stress and a critique of her forgetfulness. She’d already criticized herself when she’d realized, only moments before, that she hadn’t remembered to stop at the store.  But now, she resented him for pointing out her faults.

She came to the conclusion that he was criticizing her so quickly that she’d responded, “No, I didn’t, did you get them" in a voice slathered with sarcasm, before she’d even consciously realized that she was angry with him.  He hadn’t sensed her mood before then, but her tone was so unmistakable that he quipped back, “I didn’t get them, because you’d said you would.”  It wasn’t a particularly clever remark, but the simple truth of it, spoken so cool, unnerved her.  She was shouting back at him now in a high-pitch strain, “Only because I am doing everything for this damned move.  Maybe I wouldn’t have forgotten them if you helped with anything.”  He responded, still cool.  The rhythm of the argument continued jaggedly as she shouted long-winded rants and he responded with calm staccato.

When she'd shouted as much as she wanted, she’d picked up a shoebox that she'd intended to throw with furious deliberation to punctuate her point, but he stopped her, grabbing the box.  “Are you putting on your dancing shoes?”  She was flustered and speechless until she saw the slow boyish smile spreading from his eyes, looking youthful now, to his mouth.  She was startled that he still transfixed her, as he had when he first asked her to dance, despite her anger and the heaviness of the years.  Charity swelled back into her, and she laughed, “Only if you put yours on first.”