It Was After Dinner

 

I was washing the dishes, thinking over my options for the rest of the evening, when I was suddenly struck with an appalling feeling that I didn’t like any of them. That I hadn’t really liked any of my options for a very long time.

I felt an urge to drop the sponge in the sink and walk straight out the door, not even pause to put on my hat, just grab my pocketbook and go. Head on out and take off down the road and stop at a motel when I got tired, or just sleep in a field if I felt like it. Watch the Sun rise in a strange place and watch it set in a different one, just for the pleasure of seeing it happen. I wanted that.

I really did want that. Wanted it so badly that it scared me. I could barely feel the dishes in my hands as I continued to scrub them and rinse them, the blood was coursing through my arteries so hard.

I finished the dishes, just barely. Managed to get the last of them into the drying rack without any of them falling to the floor, somehow. But what was I going to do? I knew I couldn’t stay, no matter how much I loved my husband, I just couldn’t go on living in this house, going through these same motions day after day, any longer. I needed to get out and get moving.

I walked into the living room, and was slightly surprised to find my husband there. He was usually closed up in his study at this time of the evening, at work with his papers.

He put his arms around me and said, “Teddy, what do you say we close up the house for awhile and hit the road, just the two of us?”

I guess that’s why we’ve stayed together all these years: we can read each other’s moods so well, sometimes it’s downright eerie.

 

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