The Real Price of Shoes

He didn’t like the shoes. They were too small in some places and too big in others. He wasn’t even sure how that was possible, but there he was with shoes that were somehow both too big and too small. Glaring at them, he ran his hand down the sole, right leg propped on his left knee. It was mocking him. No shoe should be that uncomfortable. It was like being tortured, but slowly and so cunningly, in a way that the world couldn’t see. 

“So, what do you think?” she asked. She had this way of entering rooms that was all but silent. With his head tilted down, trying to win a staring contest with a shoe, he could almost picture her, standing there, leaning against the doorframe, her head tilted into the wood, most of her outside of the room but that mass of curly hair and the one hand keeping her from falling. 

“They’re…. nice.” Oh, what words could describe the torture of trying to walk on the nubs of his ankles once his feet had gone numb in the torture chamber that someone dared to call a ‘shoe’? That… well, he couldn’t say that to her. No, that would be a fate worse than death right there, telling her her choice in men’s shoes, an area in which she was clearly well versed, was, let’s call it ‘lacking’. 

“I saw them when I was looking for a nice dress to wear to your cousin’s wedding- no, don’t give me that look, we’re going to that,” he wasn’t sure what he look he was giving her, he wasn’t making any face. All but floating, she checked her hair in the bedroom mirror. He couldn’t see what was wrong with it, but she clearly could. The little line between her eyebrows appeared as she noted something that only she could see. If it had been only her in the room, she would have attacked it, removing the problem before it had the chance to cause her any more distress, but it was not just her and so she had to resign herself to living with it. Smothering her distaste in a fake smile, she turned her back to the mirror, all her attention on her husband, still rubbing at his foot trapped in a meat grinder of a shoe. “Anyway, I saw them and I thought that you would look just lovely in them. You do! Look at you. Let me see.”

Casually stretching his legs out, he resembled a shamed dog, trying to do the most to appease the higher power in the room without confessing the truth. The first sign that this gesture had failed was the muted tap tap tapping of her little shoe on the carpet. Incessantly, it thudded, a reminder of an objective failed. 

The tapping grew faster. They watched each other, someone waiting for the other to make a first move. A part of him wanted to see just how fast that foot could go before it… what? Caught on fire? Flew off? In a battle of wills, he wasn’t the weaker party. That was a well known fact around all of his frequent haunts. Maintaining eye contact, he folded his legs up underneath him and there, in that second, he made a fatal mistake: he released an audible wince as the leather met the comforter. 

“You hate them,” she said, not missing a beat. 

“No!” It sounded fake, even to him. He was always quick to reassure, but she was always the first to jump to whatever doubt was plaguing her mind. Knowing this made it easier not to blame her, but this time was one too many. This jump was too fast. The denial fell flat. The hurt in her eyes sparkled, heavy and piercing.

“You do,” she said in a flat voice. All traces of emotion had been drained from it, a strange contrast from the scene playing on her face.  “It’s fine. You don’t have to like everything that I get for you. You just have to tell me when you don’t like it so that I don’t order stuff like that anymore. Otherwise, how will I know what you like? It’s not like you talk to me much anymore.” Looking at the floor, he tried not to feel the waves of hurt that were radiating off of her. He hadn’t thought that he had been that distant. He just didn’t want to be together all the time. Or talk all that much. Or do all the together-y things. 

“Really. I like them.” It was probably best to just suck it up and pretend that he liked them. Maybe the tongue thrashing and guilt tripping would stop. He hated the look on her face. He realized it then. It wasn’t that he felt bad, she had made the jump in conclusions, not him, but he had seen it too often. It lit something up inside of him that he didn’t want to tamp down anymore. 

“You don’t.” She sounded so sullen, like a child. How had he never heard it before? This was just shoes. He hadn’t even wanted the shoes. He was just given shoes. Why was he being punished for not liking them?

“No, you’re right. I don’t. I don’t like the shoes,” he said, pushing past the shocked look on her face. “I don’t like the shoes. I don’t like the way you keep harping on them. And for that matter, I don’t like that dinner you cooked last night. I don’t like the way the front room looks. I don’t like your sister. I don’t like it. I don’t like the shoes. I hate them in fact. They’re the worst shoes to ever have existed. They’re not good shoes. They don’t even look good. If this is what I reminds you of, then I don’t like the way that you think of me.” 

Silence. A piece of hair was curled around her finger and absently, she spun it around and around, occasionally touching it to her lips, staring into the void in front of her. He was sitting on the bed, running his hands through his sweaty hair and trying his best not to yell more, to plug up the bottle that he had shattered open so rashly. He had hurt her. Why didn’t that make him feel bad? Why didn’t that make him feel anything?

“This isn’t working, is it?” she asked, breaking the silence with a broken voice. “And to think, this fight started over a pair of shoes.” They both knew it was more than the shoes, though. It was the way that they didn’t talk. It was the way that they didn’t laugh or touch when no one was watching. It was the way that they just existed in the spheres of each others lives rather than actually lived in them. 

“A funny story to tell later, when we have new lives,” he said, not looking up at her. He couldn’t bear to. He knew that she had that look on her face. It was the reason that he had started talking to her in the first place. It was the one that was deep and full and heartbreakingly sad. He never learned why she had worn that look then, he’d just wanted to get it off. It was worse this time, knowing that he was the cause. 

 “A terrible story to experience now, when have to salvage our lives,” she countered. There was nothing that he could say to that.