In Her Shoes Read online

  After lunch they went walking through the mall. “Each of you can get one present,” their mother said. “Anything you want. Anything at all!” Rose asked for a Nancy Drew book. Maggie wanted a puppy. Their mother didn’t hesitate.

  “Of course a puppy!” she’d said, her voice rising. Rose noticed other shoppers staring at the three of them—two little girls in party dresses, one woman in a skirt printed with red poppies and a turquoise scarf, tall and beautiful, carrying six shopping bags and talking way too loud. “We should have gotten a puppy a long time ago!”

  “Dad’s allergic,” Rose said. Her mother either didn’t hear, or decided to ignore her. She grabbed her daughters by their hands and hurried them over to the pet shop, where Maggie picked out a small tan cocker spaniel puppy and named it Honey Bun.

  “Mom was nuts, but she was fun, wasn’t she?” Maggie asked in her underwater voice.

  “Yeah, she was,” said Rose, remembering how they’d come home, laden with shopping bags and Honey Bun’s cardboard carrying case, to their father sitting on the couch, still in his suit and tie from work, waiting.

  “Girls, go to your room,” he’d said, taking Caroline by the hand and leading her to the kitchen. Rose and Maggie, carrying Honey Bun in her box, walked quietly upstairs, but even through the closed bedroom door, they could hear their mother’s voice rising to a shriek. Michael, it was a good idea, it was a legitimate business idea, there’s no reason it won’t work, and I just bought the girls a few treats, I’m their mother, I can do what I want, I can take them out of school once in a while, it doesn’t matter, we had a nice day, Michael, a special day, a day they’ll always remember, and I’m sorry I forgot to call the school, but you shouldn’t have worried, they were with me and I’M THEIR MOTHER I’M THEIR MOTHER I AM THEIR MOTHER. . . .

  “Oh, no,” Maggie whispered, as the puppy started to whine. “Are they fighting? Is it our fault?”

  “Shh,” said Rose. She gathered the puppy into her arms. Maggie’s thumb crept into her mouth as she leaned against her sister, and they listened to their mother’s screams, now punctuated with the sound of things being thrown and things breaking, and their father’s murmur, which seemed to consist of a single word: Please.

  “How long did we have Honey Bun?” asked Maggie. Rose twisted in the armchair and struggled to remember.

  “A day, I think,” she said. It was coming back to her now. The next morning, she’d gotten up early to walk the dog. The hallway was dark; their parents’ bedroom door was closed. Their father was sitting at the kitchen table alone.

  “Your mother’s resting,” he said. “Can you take care of the dog? Can you get breakfast for yourself and Maggie?”

  “Sure,” said Rose. She gave her father a long look. “Is Mom . . . is she okay?”

  Her father sighed, and restacked the newspaper. “She’s just tired, Rose. She’s resting. Try to keep quiet, and let her rest. Take care of your sister.”

  “I will,” Rose promised. When she came home from school that afternoon, the dog was gone. Her parents’ bedroom door was still closed. And here she was, twenty-two years later, still keeping that promise, still taking care of her sister.

  “It was really good fudge, wasn’t it?” asked Maggie. In the dark, she sounded like her six-year-old self—happy and hopeful, a merry little girl who wanted to believe everything her mother told her.

  “It was delicious,” said Rose. “Good night, Maggie,” she said, in a tone she hoped would make it clear that she wasn’t interested in any more discussion.

  When Jim Danvers opened his eyes the next morning, he was alone in the bed. He stretched, scratched himself, then got to his feet, wrapped a towel around his waist, and went in search of Rose.

  The bathroom door was locked, and he could hear water running behind it. He knocked gently, sweetly, seductively, even, imagining Rose in the shower, Rose’s skin flushed and steamy, Rose’s bare chest beaded with water ...

  The door swung open, and a girl who was not Rose stalked out.

  “Hlgho,” said Jim, struggling for some combination of “hello” and “who are you?”

  The strange girl was slender, with long reddish-brown hair piled on top of her head, a delicate heart-shaped face, and full pink lips. She had painted toenails, tanned legs that stretched toward her chin, and hard nipples (he couldn’t help but notice) poking against the threadbare front of her T-shirt. She scowled at him sleepily. “Was that even English?” she asked. Her eyes were wide and brown and rimmed with layers of liner and sleep-smeared mascara—hard, watchful eyes, the color of Rose’s eyes, but somehow very different.

  Jim tried it again. “Hello,” he said. “Is, um, Rose around?”

  The strange girl cocked her thumb toward the kitchen. “In there,” she said. She leaned against the wall. Jim became aware that a towel was all he was wearing. The girl cocked one leg behind her, resting her foot flat against the wall, and eyed him slowly, up and down.

  “You’re Rose’s roommate?” he guessed, unable to remember whether Rose had mentioned a roommate.

  The girl shook her head, just as Rose rounded the corner, fully clothed, shoes and lipstick on, with two cups of coffee in her hands.

  “Oh!” she said, and stopped so quickly that coffee sloshed backward, splashing her wrists and the front of her blouse. “Oh. You guys have met?”

  Mutely, Jim shook his head. The girl said nothing . . . just kept staring at him with a small, sphinxlike grin.

  “Maggie, this is Jim,” Rose said. “Jim, this is Maggie Feller. My sister.”

  “Hello,” said Jim, and bobbed his head, clutching his towel tightly.

  Maggie gave a short nod. They stood there for an instant, the three of them, Jim feeling ridiculous in his towel, Rose, with coffee dripping from her sleeves, and Maggie staring back and forth between them.

  “She came last night,” said Rose. “She was at her high-school reunion, and ...”

  “I don’t think he needs details,” said Maggie. “He can wait for the E! True Hollywood Story like everyone else.”

  “Sorry,” said Rose.

  Maggie sniffed, turned on her heel, and stalked back to the living room. Rose sighed. “Sorry,” she said again. “It’s always a production with her.”

  Jim nodded. “Hey,” he said quietly, “I want to hear all about it. Just give me a minute ...” he said, nodding toward the bathroom.

  “Oh!” said Rose, “oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, whispering, nuzzling her cheek and the soft flesh of her neck with his stubble. She trembled, and the remaining coffee quivered in the cups.

  When Jim and Rose left a half-hour later, Maggie had returned to the couch. One bare foot and smooth, naked calf poked out from the blankets. Rose was sure she wasn’t sleeping. She was certain that this—the tanned curve of her sister’s leg, the scarlet toenails—was a calculated display. She hustled Jim out the door, thinking that this had been what she’d wanted—to perform the classic kittenish Hollywood wake-up, all smudgy and glamorous and gorgeous, with the slow fluttering of eyelashes, the contented smile. And now Maggie got to be the smudgy, sexy, glamorous one, while she was bustling around like Betty Crocker, offering people coffee.

  “Are you working today?” he asked. She nodded.

  “Work on the weekends,” he mused. “I’d forgotten what being an associate was like.” He kissed her good-bye at her front door—a brisk, businesslike peck—and looked in his wallet for his parking stub. “Huh,” he said, frowning, “I could’ve sworn there was a hundred bucks in here.”

  Maggie, Rose thought to herself, even as she reached into her wallet for a twenty. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, who always makes me pay.

  TWO

  Morning. Ella Hirsch lay alone in the center of her bed and assessed her various aches, pains, and maladies. She began with her cranky left ankle, progressed to her throbbing right hip, paused at her intestines, which felt both empty and knotted at the same time, and moved stead
ily upward, past the breasts that were shrinking each year, up over her eyes (the cataract surgery last month had been a success), and on to the hair that she wore unfashionably long and dyed a warm auburn—her one vanity.

  Not bad, not bad, thought Ella, as she swung first her left leg, then her right one, out of the bed, resting her feet lightly on the cool tiled floor. Ira, her husband, had never wanted tiles—“Too hard!” he’d said, “Too cold!” And so they’d had wall-to-wall carpeting. Beige. The day shiva was over, Ella had been on the phone, and two weeks later, the carpet was gone and she had her tile—a creamy white marble that felt smooth under her feet.

  Ella put her hands on top of her thighs, rocked back and then forth, once and then twice, and struggled, groaning slightly, out of the queen-sized bed—her second apres-Ira purchase. It was the Monday after Thanksgiving, and Golden Acres, “a retirement community for active seniors,” was unusually quiet, because most of those active seniors had spent the holiday with their children and grandchildren. Ella, too, had celebrated, in her own little way. She’d had a turkey sandwich for dinner.

  She smoothed out her quilt and considered the day—breakfast, and the poem she had to finish, then she’d take the trolley to the bus stop and take the bus to her weekly volunteer session at the pet shelter. Then she’d come home for lunch and a nap, and maybe she’d read for an hour or two—she was halfway through taping a book of Margaret Atwood short stories for the vision impaired. Dinner was early—“Four o’clock’s the late seating here,” she’d heard somebody joking, and it was funny because it was true—and then the Clubhouse had Movie Night. Another empty day, stuffed as full as she could manage.

  She’d made a mistake, moving here. Florida had been Ira’s idea. “A new start,” he’d said, fanning the brochures out over the kitchen table, with the lights glinting off his bald spot, his gold watch and wedding ring. Ella had barely glanced at the glossy photographs of sandy beaches, surf and palm trees, white buildings with elevators and wheelchair ramps and showers with built-in stainless steel grab bars. She’d thought only that Golden Acres, or any of the dozen communities just like it, would be a good place to hide. No more former friends and neighbors to stop her at the post office or the grocery store, to place well-meaning hands on her forearm and say, How are you two holding up? How long has it been now? She’d been almost happy, almost hopeful, packing up their house in Michigan.

  She hadn’t known, couldn’t have guessed, could never have figured that the whole point of a retirement community was children. They hadn’t showed that in the brochures, she thought bitterly—how every living room she’d visit would have every available surface crammed with pictures of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. How every conversation would eventually make its way back to that most precious commodity. My daughter loved that movie. My son bought a car just like that. My granddaughter’s applying to college. My grandson said that senator’s a crook.

  Ella kept herself apart from the other women. She stayed busy. Pet shelter, hospital, Meals on Wheels, shelving books at the library, pricing goods at the thrift store, the column she wrote for the Acres’s weekly newspaper.

  On that morning, she sat at her kitchen table, a cup of hot tea in front of her, with sunshine gleaming on her tiled floor, and took out her notebook and pen. She was going to finish the poem she’d started last week. Not that she was much of a poet, but Lewis Feldman, the editor of the Golden Acres Gazette, had come to her in desperation after the regular poet had broken her hip. The deadline was Wednesday, and she wanted to have Tuesday free for revisions.

  “Just Because I’m Old,” was the title she’d come up with. “Just because I’m old,” the poem began, “because my step’s a little slow, because my hair has gotten gray, because I nap most ev’ry day ...”

  And that was as far as she’d gotten. She sipped her tea, considering. Just because she was old . . . well, what?

  “I AM NOT INVISIBLE,” she wrote, in big bold capital letters. Then she crossed it out. It wasn’t true. She did feel she’d turned sixty and been erased, somehow, and had been invisible for the last eighteen years. Real people—young people—looked right through her. But “invisible” would be a very hard word to rhyme.

  She decided to come back to ‘invisible’ and wrote, beneath it, “I matter.” Matter should be easier . . . but then, what could she rhyme that with? “I can make a good cake batter?” “I can hear the trolley’s clatter?” “Even though I’ve gotten fatter?”

  Yes! Fatter was good. People at Golden Acres would identify. Especially, she thought with a smile, her almost-friend Dora, who volunteered at the thrift shop with her. Dora wore elastic-waist everything, and always ordered whipped cream with dessert. “I spent seventy years watching what I ate,” she’d say, spooning a mouthful of hot fudge or cheesecake. “My Mortie’s gone now, so why should I worry?”

  “I matter. Even thought I’ve gotten fatter, I’m still here,” Ella wrote. “I have ears to hear the sounds of life around me ...”

  Which was true, she mused. Except the sounds of life at Golden Acres were, if she was perfectly honest, the constant drone of traffic, the occasional wail of the ambulance siren, and people picking fights with each other because they’d left their clothes in the communal dryer at the end of the hall, or put plastic bottles into the “glass only” recycling bin. Not exactly the stuff of poetry.

  “The ocean’s gentle thunder,” she wrote instead. “The sound of children laughing. The music of sun and smiles.”

  There. That was good. The ocean part was even possible—Golden Acres was a mile away from the shore. The trolley went there. And “the music of sun and smiles.” Lewis would like that. In his life before Golden Acres, Lewis had run a chain of hardware stores in Utica, New York. He liked editing—“newspapering,” he called it—a lot better. Every time she saw him, he had a red grease pencil tucked behind his ear, as if he might be called upon at any minute to dash off a headline, or edit some copy.

  Ella closed her notebook and took a sip of her tea. Eight-thirty, and it was already getting hot. She rose from her seat thinking only of the full day she had before her, the full week after that. Only, as she walked, she could hear the very thing she’d written about—the sound of children’s laughter. Boys, from the sound of it. She could hear their shouts, and their sandals slapping as they ran back and forth along the corridor outside of her door, chasing the tiny, darting chameleons who sunned themselves on the ledge, most likely. They were Mavis Gold’s grandsons, she thought. Mavis had mentioned she was getting ready for a visit.

  “I got one! I got one!” called one of the boys, his voice full of excitement. Ella closed her eyes. She should go outside and tell them not to be afraid, that the chameleons had more to fear from their clumsy, sweaty boy-palms and boy-fingers than the boys had to fear from the chameleons. She should go and tell them to stop shouting before Mr. Boehr in 6-B came out and started yelling about his insomnia.

  Instead, she turned her face from the window before she let herself open the blinds and look at the boys. Children hurt . . . even though it had been more than fifty years since her daughter had been a child, and more than twenty years since she’d last seen her granddaughters.

  Ella set her lips in a tight line and walked resolutely toward the bathroom. She wouldn’t go down that road today. She wouldn’t think about the daughter-who-was-gone, or the grandchildren she would never get to know, about the life that was snatched away from her, excised as cleanly and completely as a tumor, leaving not even a scar for her to cherish, to remember it by.

  THREE

  More and more, Rose Feller was starting to think that her boss had lost his mind.

  Sure, she knew that everyone thought his or her boss was crazy. All of her friends—well, Amy—had the usual spate of complaints: the unreasonable demands, the inconsiderate treatment, the drunken ass-patting at the company picnic.

  But now, filing into the conference room for the pep rally that Don Dommel ha
d instituted as a Friday afternoon ritual, Rose was once again faced with the possibility that one of her firm’s founding partners wasn’t just eccentric or odd, or any of those polite adjectives reserved for powerful men, but he was actually honest-to-God nuts.

  “People!” the man of the hour bellowed, thwacking a PowerPoint chart of the firm’s billable hours with his fist. “We have GOT to do BETTER than THIS! THIS,” he continued, “is GOOD, but not GREAT. And with the talent we’ve got, even GREAT is NOT GOOD ENOUGH! We have to GRIND DOWN the handrail of mediocrity and OLLIE OVER to excellence!”

  “Huh?” muttered the associate on Rose’s right. He had frizzy gingery hair and his skin, pale as skim milk, was a badge of honor in this place, the sure sign that he was making his minimum billable hours and, hence, not getting out much. Simon Something, Rose thought.