William Cass
Tie Your Own Shoes
Tom had finally had enough of the guilt, the self-recrimination, the tortured soul that stared back at him from the mirror. He’d had enough of the deception and lies, the sneaking around, the brittle excuses. And he’d especially had enough of coming home afterwards to his wife, Marcie, and their toddler son whose warm, unconditional embraces left him grimacing with shame. He would end things with Madelyn. Today.
He didn’t have the courage to tell her face-to-face, and he knew he’d make a shambles of a phone call or even a voicemail. A text had a frigid abruptness to it that felt like a slap. So, he reluctantly decided on email as the least abhorrent choice. Tom drafted and revised his message on his work computer a half-dozen times, then waited for everyone in the office to leave for their lunch break. Alone in his work cubicle, he finally heaved a sigh, impulsively changed the message’s subject line from ‘Hey’ ‘to ‘Important’ and hit ‘Send’ before he could decide otherwise. An immediate combination of repugnance, panic, and relief overwhelmed him. Street traffic whispered twelve floors below and the workroom copier rhythmically spit papers into its tray. He rose quickly and took the elevator down to the lobby kiosk to buy a pre-packaged salad.
As if in a fog, Tom moved through his purchase’s transaction and the retracing of steps back to his desk. By then, a few of his coworkers had returned and mingled here and there chatting amiably. Mechanically, he sat and forced himself to eat. He’d just swallowed his second bite when his cell phone pinged next to the salad indicating an incoming text, and Madelyn’s name appeared on the screen. He shuddered once before dropping his plastic fork into the container and opening her text.
It was in response to a string they’d started before their affair had begun several months ago. He’d sent the most recent message after departing her apartment after their last tryst: a pair of romantic GIFs. The reply she’d fashioned a moment earlier included a photo she’d taken of her naked bottom; he’d told her she had the sexiest one he’d ever seen. Her message read: ‘Luv you, too…can’t wait until tomorrow!’ It was followed by several kiss mark emojis.
Tom felt his forehead furrow into a deep frown. He supposed it was possible she hadn’t yet seen his email, but that seemed unlikely since she received notifications of incoming messages on her own office workstation which she rarely left, even for her own lunch, and her responses were almost always instantaneous. He quickly checked his email on his desk computer and found a reply to his last message. He clicked on it and read: ‘I don’t understand?’ His wife’s familiar signature block perched underneath. It took Tom only a brief second to realize that, in his hurried anxiousness, he’d clicked on her work email address instead of Madelyn’s on his recipient dropdown bar where the two followed each other’s.
A cold sweat bloomed between his shoulder blades and spread in both directions. He found himself re-reading her reply over and over as if that might make it go away. His temples began to throb. A cluster of co-workers a few cubicles away chuckled together.
Tom squeezed his eyes shut and lowered his head onto his desk. His father’s stern image appeared to him from when he was a young boy after he’d admitted to carelessly breaking a neighbour’s window throwing rocks.
‘You’ve tied your own shoes,’ his father had told him. ‘Now walk in them.’
His father had been from an era when a few, choice words like that, hushed and harsh, could cut to your core. As they could years later when they reemerged uninvited: the last thing Tom wanted, and the precise thing he needed, to hear. AQ