50th Post Celebration: The Red Shoe

This is how our Wednesday fight happened. It started Tuesday night, very sneakily. As you know, Tiffany and I were in a mad hustle this week to find new dresses and shoes for our friends' wedding. On Tuesday night after work, we planned to hit up three more stores. At the first store, we found a dress for me. Feeling empowered, we hit up another store for Tiffany. But none of the dresses we found were just right. Now it was 7:30 and we were hungry. And tired. Recklessly, we decided to try for shoes. At Macy's. On a day when they were having one of those blow-out sales.

The shoe section looked like the inside of a gigantic messy closet. I guess for security reasons, the store only puts one shoe of each marked-down pair on a rack. As we came up the escalator, I gasped. There were women and shoes as far as the eye could see. And scary women, too. Women who wanted that other matching shoe, like, five minutes ago. Women screaming for sales attendants, their weary husbands slumped on sagging couches holding purses. Tiffany urged me on.

And in the middle of that madness, Tiffany and I both found a shoe we wanted the match for. I heard her find hers first.

"Oooohh," she exclaimed. "These are perfect!"

I came around the display with my own shoe to find her walking on one barefoot and one high heel, parading back and forth between the psycho women around us: up-down-up-down-up-down. I'm sure by now you've guessed where this is going... the shoe she had on her foot was the same shoe I had in my hand. A red shoe. Very sassy and fun. In a size six. I didn't even hesitate. Clearly Tiffany loved the shoe--she already had it on. I handed her mine (it didn't help her; both were left-footed). I already had a dress, after all. For the sake of our relationship, I could live without the fun shoe.

"You take it," I said. "I'll keep looking."

I circled the floor a few times, dodging elbows. When I came back, Tiffany's face had fallen. The shoes we had found were too big--fine for clomping around the department store floor but not for dancing.

"Do you have a smaller size?" Tiffany asked an exhausted saleslady.

"No!" the woman shouted.

I slipped the shoe on my foot. And, as it became clear that my toes and heel were perfectly in line with the front and back of the shoe, I felt the slightest shift in the recirculated department store air around me. Specifically, in the air between Tiffany and me. Because now I had the shoes and the dress and Tiffany had neither. Trouble.

"You wear them!" I cried, thrusting the box at her. "Stuff something under your feet!"

"No, no," she said, "they're perfect for your dress."

We left the store. On the scooter ride home, bag-laden behind Tiffany, I braced myself.

The next morning, before work, I tried on the whole shebang, dress and shoes, in front of the mirror. Before I could take the ensemble off, Tiffany came in from the kitchen.

"Awesome, looks great," she said. But then she turned on her (bare) heel.

I slunk into the kitchen after her, and she slapped the eggs she'd scrambled for me on my plate. I knew they had been cooked with love. But I couldn't really taste that love. Or feel it.

A little bit later in the day, we resolved the issue.

"I'm sorry," Tiffany said. "I'm such a girl."

"I know," I said. "But luckily that's exactly what I want you to be."

After work Wednesday, we were back on the scooter, flying through the city on our way to our last store, a boutique. We arrived 30 minutes before closing time, and I took charge.

"Can I help you?" the greeter asked.

"Yes, you can," I said. "We have a dress emergency."

I pointed to Tiffany.

And guess what? Tiffany found two dresses that night. And, because they were on sale, she bought them both. For less than I had paid for one. The next day, she got a pair of shoes. And at the wedding, when I had to take the red shoes off to restore feeling to my feet, she kept dancing in hers.