Best Foot Forward

by Joan Bauer

  Norm Lewis, the Bangor plant manager, was under investigation.

  The indictment came down on Halloween, which seemed appropriate. I watched the news on TV; Elden proclaiming his innocence through his lawyer. You don’t know who’s behind the mask until you force them to take it off.

  Elden didn’t deserve a mother like her.

  “I never much liked Halloween,” Mrs. Gladstone said, looking at the bowl of candy by the register.

  “Did they have it when you were a kid?”

  “Yes, Jenna, Halloween is actually much older than even me.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I had an Annie Oakley costume with cowboy boots and a little pistol and all this fringe on my vest. I thought I was the toughest thing going.”

  I laughed; I couldn’t picture her in that. “You are the toughest thing going, ma’am. And you don’t need a costume to show it.”

  Ken Woldman appointed Mrs. Gladstone acting general manager—she didn’t want the job permanently, but she agreed to take the reins until a suitable replacement was found. I wasn’t quite old enough to step into the job, although who knows, someday I might.

  It was so good to see Mrs. Gladstone back on the throne. She made the cover of Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal did a special feature on her called “The Old Buck Stops Here.”

  I think the trees were declaring that the old season was dying and another one was coming forward.

  Charlie sauntered into the store with a new work schedule that had a lot more white space.

  “So,” Charlie said. “We can go to a movie on Thursday, Saturday, or Monday.”

  “Wow.” I laughed. “Options.”

  “Pick two,” he said. “If you go for all three, there’s a special bonus.”

  “What’s the bonus?”

  He gave me a kiss right there.

  All the rhythms of life were changing.

  But Faith had grown so quiet these days.

  “What happened?” I asked her finally. “Are you okay?”

  Her eyes were red. “I’ve been crying about Dad. I can’t stop. I keep thinking about how he doesn’t love us, and . . .” She lowered her head. “Do you cry about it, Jenna?”

  What a question. “I don’t cry about it that way, but I think about it a lot. I’m trying to understand things more. That way the feelings won’t take over.”

  She started crying again.

  “You can come to a meeting with me,” I reminded her. She shook her head. “Did Mom say you shouldn’t go?”

  “No. Mom just said that I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to because,” she could hardly talk, “I was handling everything so well.” She buried her head in a pillow, weeping.

  “You might want to rethink that, Faith.”

  She said she would.

  But these things take time.

  Tanner kept borrowing my Al-Anon book. “I don’t know about this stuff, Jenna. I keep having trouble with how we’ve got to make amends to everyone we can. If I went back to some of those stores—you know, they’d probably have me arrested.”

  He looked at me like I should have a good answer to that.

  There are times when I really wonder if I’m cut out for management.

  Mrs. Gladstone was scheduled for surgery and this time, the doctor warned, he was coming to her house to bring her to the hospital himself.

  He didn’t have to. She had her trusty teenage sidekick.

  I walked her right up to her room, too, in case she was thinking of escape. She got prodded and poked till she’d reached her limit.

  “I can’t imagine I’ve got any blood left!”

  Mrs. Gladstone said this to the nurse who was wrapping a rubber band around her arm.

  The nurse smiled. “I’m betting I can find some.” Blood squirted into one vial, two. “They’ll be coming to take you up to surgery in about an hour.”

  “That’s what someone said an hour ago.”

  I could attest to this, having been here when the first nurse came in and made the profound mistake of asking Mrs. Gladstone, “And how are we feeling today?”

  “I can’t speak for anyone else,” Mrs. Gladstone had snarled, “but I’m finding this tiresome.”

  Two nursing assistants had asked if she wanted a sponge bath. She did not.

  Three separate nurses had asked her if she’d moved her bowels.

  “I have,” she replied. “Have you?”

  Mrs. Gladstone looked at me. “I hope this is teaching you about quality control.”

  “At a new level,” I assured her.

  I knew she got huffy instead of admitting that she was scared or hurt. She just sat there straight and strict, staring out the window, muttering that moving her bowels didn’t have a blasted thing to do with her hip. I tried to mention that my mom was a nurse and that bowel moving was a big deal in hospitals. “You could be spitting up blood and half dead, Mrs. Gladstone, but if you can move your bowels, everyone gets encouraged.”

  She sniffed, unmoved. I’d read somewhere that older people get set in their ways. Based on the available evidence, I’d say that Mrs. Gladstone had fully congealed. She was about to say something blustery to this nurse Beatrice, but Beatrice beat her to it.

  “We get behind around here. I know it’s frustrating to have to wait. I’m sorry.” She gathered up her blood box, smiling, and shared the nurses’ secret. “It’s always the doctors’ fault.”

  I laughed; Mrs. Gladstone did, too.

  It’s amazing how one person can change the atmosphere.

  Mrs. Gladstone lay back on the pillow. “Never be part of the chaos, Jenna. Always be part of the solution.”

  Finally an attendant came in pushing a gurney. “Are you ready for me?”

  “For quite some time now,” she retorted, but this man just grinned.

  “I just spoke to your doctor and he’s as ready as I’ve ever seen him.”

  Mrs. Gladstone smiled. “That’s nice to hear”—she checked the man’s badge—“Reginald. You know, I almost married a man named Reginald.”

  Reginald got her on the gurney. “Wasn’t he good enough for you?”

  “He was a good man, but not as good as the one I got.”

  “He had himself a fine name, though.” Reginald pushed her into the hallway as I followed. “Reginald means ‘strong ruler.’ ”

  Mrs. Gladstone beamed. “I think that name fits you like a good shoe.”

  We walked toward the elevator. I knew there was some risk with this surgery since she was so old. I grabbed her hand. “I’ll be waiting right here, Mrs. Gladstone.”

  “I’d much rather be waiting with you, Jenna.” She squeezed my hand and I almost hugged her, but decided against it. Reginald wheeled the gurney into the wide elevator.

  “You’re about to become a woman of titanium,” he announced.

  “She already is one,” I said.

  Chapter 24

  The titanium hip took a little time to get used to, but once she got that walk down, Mrs. Gladstone was trotting through the store like a woman on fire. Ken Woldman had moved with speed to right the wrongs for the people at our plant in Thailand. He’d flown to Thailand and met with their Minister of Labor to show we were serious in working fairly with that country and its people.

  Foot on the accelerator, we moved forward.

  Tanner was reading up on shoe brands and watching every move I made. He had more questions than a three-year-old at the zoo.

  “What’s this?” he’d ask, holding up a gel insole that was good for runners who needed more cushioning.

  “What’s this one best for?” He’d lug out a shiny dress boot for men.

  I let him help me sometimes on the floor, and women particularly warmed right up to him. He’d bring out a sling-back pump, smile deep at some female, and say in a breathy voice, “These are going to look great on you.”

  Women were melting all over the store.

  “They used to throw themselve
s at my feet, too, when I had hair,” Murray told Tanner.

  And then, one week before Christmas, the box came from Texas. It was addressed to me, but it was really for Tanner.

  I found him in the back reading shoe brochures. I slapped the shoehorn in his hand. Every official Gladstone’s salesperson got a steel one to start.

  “Okay, Tanner, let’s sell some shoes.”

  He held the shoehorn and grinned huge. “For real?”

  “Yeah, you’re ready.”

  “I’ve been ready for a long time.”

  He straightened his tie, smoothed back his hair, and grinned at himself in the little mirror he had in the back room.

  We walked together, striding purposefully, and burst into the light of the sales floor. Tanner headed to the prettiest woman in the place. “Can I help you?” he said with that earthy voice.

  She lit up. He had the sale before she’d tried on the shoes. He motioned her to sit down, got the measurer, placed her foot in it; held that foot just a shade too long.

  I cleared my throat loudly. He straightened up, got professional, headed in the back for the shoes. I followed him. “No personal foot touching,” I whispered.

  “Okay, okay.” He grinned, jumped up on the ladder, rolled to the end of the aisle, grabbed the shoes, and pushed his way back again.

  I taught him that move.

  I was waiting on a woman who looked like she had the world in her pocket—she was trying on all these black pumps and suddenly, she started to cry. I’ve been trained for all kinds of responses to shoes—surliness, crankiness, meanness—but tears hadn’t come up in training, not once.

  I knelt down in front of her. “Are they too tight, ma’am?”

  She put her hand up, shook her head. She tried to speak, couldn’t.

  I didn’t know whether to stay or go.

  “My sister died,” she finally said. “We wore the same size shoe. She’s going to be buried tomorrow and we didn’t have shoes for her . . . you know, for the casket. No one will see her feet, but . . .” She was really crying now.

  Boy, this was one for Harry Bender, who would know exactly what to say. I sure didn’t. “You must love her a lot to care that much about her shoes,” I said.

  The woman looked up at me like she was angry.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean . . .”

  “I did love her. And we’d always buy shoes together.”

  “That’s a good memory.”

  She smiled. “You know, she always wanted a pair of red high heels.”

  I walked over to the display by the front. Picked up a cherry red sling-back with a three-inch heel. “I think I’ve got it in her size,” I said, and went to the back, heart racing. I don’t know what it was about this moment, but I felt the power of caring for people so strong. I jumped on the sliding ladder, pushed it toward the eight-and-a-halfs. I took the box down; something told me to get two boxes. I carried them out to her. She sat there with the box on her lap and opened it so slowly. She just lit up when she saw those shoes.

  She tried them on, stood there smiling and crying.

  “They’re perfect,” she said. “Have you got another pair . . . for me? I’d like to wear them to the funeral.”

  I handed her the second box.

  She touched my hand.

  I watched Tanner rush back and forth on the sales floor. I knew he had the fire and if he fanned it long enough, it would turn into a torch—the thing that lights the way for every true person of sole.

  Nobody sets out to sell shoes, really. People aspire to bigger and greater things. But there’s something about feet that certain people were born to understand.

  Some people say there should be more to life—more money, more prestige. I don’t think much about that. I just try to focus in full on the person’s two feet in front of me.

  “I’m not sure why I came tonight,” said the girl seated across from me at the Al-Anon meeting. “I don’t know what to say. I’m just having a hard time. I don’t think I can talk to a whole group.”

  Ron, the counselor, nodded to me. I’d been taking new people under my wing these days. I was trying to soar a bit more in my free time, too.

  People tried to encourage the girl, but she just closed up.

  The meeting ended; she sat there. I went over to her.

  “Hi, I’m Jenna.”

  She looked down. “I’m Chloe.”

  “You were brave for coming,” I told her. “It’s not easy to do.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “There are lots of meetings where I don’t say anything.”

  Chloe looked at her hands. “Stuff at home is . . .” Her voice cracked. “Nobody understands, Jenna. . . .”

  I sat down next to her and smiled. “I do.”

  She nodded, trying not to cry.

  “Listen,” I said, “all kinds of things can turn around.”

  I looked up at the picture of St. Francis surrounded by peaceful forest animals. That picture used to bother me when I first came here; now it seemed like St. Francis was holding a woodland recovery group.

  I pointed to the picture. “Those animals were emotional wrecks before they started coming to meetings.”

  Chloe laughed through tears.

  “It’s safe here,” I told her. “I can promise you that.”