Glint

She was sweeping the floor when she said, “This floor needs scrubbing,” and he felt guilty for not having already swept it, but he hadn’t swept it because he wanted her to tell him to do it. Now it was scrubbing, round two, and he knew he had received as direct a command as he was going to get from her, but still he didn’t say anything remotely like ‘I’m doing it this weekend.’ No, he didn’t say anything, he just sat there, he didn’t even look up.

He wanted to do things for her like the cleaning, he had told her and now she knew he wanted to do things like this for her, but he didn’t have a plan for statements about floors needing anything, so he did nothing. Perhaps this was her plan to start telling him what to do, with this statement, if so how could he ignore it, why was he ignoring it, why was he treating her this way, treating both of them this way? He already knew the answer: the statement wasn’t good enough, he wanted more: he wanted her to demand him, insist he do things for her and leave him no alternative. He wanted to see her take delight in telling him what to do; he wanted to feel the raw force of her will and see her smile; that was what he wanted.

Then he thought since he wanted her to treat him like her five year old boy, he was behaving like her five year old boy. He didn’t like this thought much so he defended himself by thinking a mother wouldn’t have just made the statement, ‘This floor needs scrubbing.’ No, even the first time she would at least ask him to do it, and she would do so with the full expectation he would do it, even when and how she told him to do it, but ‘this floor needs scrubbing’ had no expectation. A mother would be tougher the second time, and the third time she would say, ‘you, Young Man, are going to scrub this floor until I say it is clean or there will be consequences’, and that’s what he wanted her to say right now.

But he knew she was more likely to just scrub the floor herself instead, probably making a big deal of it so he could see how he failed to do what he said he would, failed to do what would have made her happy. And though he would hate that so much he would then stop her and do it himself, it would be too late by then: she’d believe he wasn’t serious about making her happy, about making himself happy by pleasing her, about doing what she told him, and he would be further back than square one, again.

Obviously he had to start somewhere; obviously they had to start somewhere. If this were her genuine attempt right here, right now, he knew he should get up and acknowledge her attempt, acknowledge her. Yet, but what if it weren’t a genuine attempt on her part? Then just doing it would have no meaning, at least not the meaning he wanted it to have: that she was really going to try insisting him to her pleasure in any and every way she wanted. Why couldn’t he know how serious she was with this statement? Why didn’t she just say what she was doing?

Even as he thought this he knew it was disingenuous; she was testing the waters, seeing how well he did, how willing he was, because if he wasn’t going to respond positively now she wasn’t about to work at changing things. Sure, commanding, forcing, insisting, demanding, wielding whatever this thing was that he wanted her to wield, was going to be work, because being in charge is always work. But if he later gave up after she put in all the work to change things around for him, she’d rather save herself the trouble and scrub the floor herself right now, and they both knew that.

He sighed; if he didn’t do something soon he would lose, they would lose, but if he did what she wanted without at least a token acknowledgement that this could be movement of their train, or at least that she was considering getting on this train with him, then he would find himself alone on the train and completely miss the glint and joy in her eye while he pleased her. He sighed again because he knew he didn’t really have much choice, he would always chose doing what she wanted over what he wanted, because the alternative was to see dissatisfaction in her eye as she just decided to do it herself, again.

Wait, ‘what she wanted over what he wanted’? Wait, he liked her wanting of things and here was a new thought: perhaps this was doing things her way; if so, could he turn it to his advantage? If what she wanted was to see this was going to be less work for her, how could he get the acknowledgment he wanted, but in her way? No, there was nothing he could say to get her to say what he wanted because she already knew what he wanted and she wasn’t going to give it without the assurance of his dedication and her lighter workload. So there was only just doing what she wanted, this process could only be done her way.

And this made him laugh, and he laughed long and hard because he realized he wasn’t really a five year old boy, and she wasn’t really his mother, he was smarter than that, they both wanted better than that, and their relationship was better than that. And so still laughing, he stood and kissed her, told her how much he loved her, told her he would scrub the floor for her right now, told her from now on he would need less prodding, and she need less work, to get him to do what she wanted him to do. And when she smiled uncertainly at him, he saw her skepticism, but beyond that he saw something else that gladdened him, it was her glint, and there was more of it than he expected.