last night’s fight

He: Honey, can we talk about these dishes?

Water running. He stands at sink. She walks around kitchen, finding other things to pick up and move. Anything but a dish.

She: I thought it was a collaborative effort, or lack of effort.

Silence, punctuated by running water and dish clangs. She exits kitchen.

Time passes. He is at his desk in the living room, checking emails. She is lying in bed, feeling his simmering wrath wafting up the stairs. He eventually joins her in bed. Rolls on side, with back to her.

She: Hello?

He: Hello?

She: Wait, I have to pee.

Time passes. Pee occurs. Wrath continues to smolder. She returns to bed. Still silence.

She: Hello?

He: Hello?

She: Wait, I have to put on belly balm.

She applies balm. Puts jar on nightstand. Jar falls to floor, top breaks and jar rolls away. She turns on light, he gets out of bed. Both search floor for jar. Find jar. Return to bed. More silence.

She: Hello?

He: You could apologize.

She doesn’t want to apologize. He says something about being her husband, she has to be nicer to him, blah blah blah.

She knows she’s not a good person for not doing dishes. But what about the mess he makes all over the rest of the house? She knows that is not a good place to go. She thinks about how handsome he looked when he came home from work today, how funny and charming he was at dinner, how grateful she was that he picked the apples off of two of the front yard trees tonight, right after work, enough apples to fill ten grocery bags.

Finally, it seems like she has no other option.

She: I’m sorry.

Not sounding like she means it. More silence ensues in which she sits up and tries not to cry. He looks at her and looks away. Looks at her. She looks at him. She adjusts four pillows under various body parts and curls up, with her back to him, starts to cry in earnest.

She: I’m sorry, I just feel like I can’t do anything. Can’t accomplish anything. The last two days all I could focus on was getting work done and testing my blood sugar and getting enough rest. There was a dish in the sink and I couldn’t do it and then I let the rest pile up.

She realizes she is not listing the prenatal exercise class and the mani-pedi she also managed to get in, while not doing dishes. Probably not a good time to point that out.

He comforts her until the tears subside.

He: I do the dishes a lot. And most of the time I don’t mind. But last week, I asked you to start putting dishes into the dishwasher after you use them. When you don’t do that, I feel like you’re not listening. Like you don’t care.

She: You want to be appreciated. I understand that. I appreciate you. I appreciated you tonight for the apples, and for being so handsome and funny. Up until we started fighting.

He: I was trying to be light when I brought it up. But I was really upset.

She: I’m sorry.

She really means it this time.

She: I swear, I didn’t mean anything against you when I left the dishes. I do care.

He: I know. But I needed to say something. Maybe it wasn’t very elegant.

She: Maybe you could find another way of asking for what you need?

He: Yes.

They curl up together. Wrath fumes are long gone.

She realizes now that she couldn’t answer his question because she felt guilty about the dishes, and bullied into apologizing. She also suspects that she just plain doesn’t like admitting to being wrong, and that it’s more complicated than right and wrong.

She feels proud of them both that they got to the core of the fight: he feels unappreciated, she feels overwhelmed. She makes a note to self to try to appreciate him out loud more.