Someone Else's Shoes

by Ellen Wittlinger

  There was a long silence then, but Izzy couldn’t go back to her book. She’d been to Oliver’s house lots of times. It wasn’t large like the old monstrosity she lived in. Oliver’s room was right across the hall from his parents’ room. If he’d woken up when he heard the ambulance, he must have seen something, and Izzy’s imagination was able to come up with many possibilities. He must have seen his father wailing and sobbing in the middle of the night. He must have seen the paramedics race in with life-saving equipment they wouldn’t need. Maybe, before that neighbor hurried him away, he even saw his mother’s body with nobody left inside anymore. Imagining it made Izzy feel sick to her stomach.

  “That poor, poor baby!” Ms. Baldwin sounded like she was about to start bawling herself. “This is going to ruin his whole life!”

  What was that woman talking about? Izzy smacked her book down on the floor and stomped around the corner to confront the two women. “First of all, Oliver is not a baby!”

  “Oh, honey,” Ms. Baldwin said sadly, her eyes all soggy-looking. “Were you listening?”

  Izzy ignored the question. “Oliver’s going to be fine, isn’t he, Mom? His life isn’t ruined.”

  Her mother reached for her hand. “It’s going to take him a while to feel better, Izzy, but over time his pain will diminish, even if it never goes away completely. At the moment Oliver seems better than his father, but I’m afraid he’s trying to be a perfect kid for Henderson’s benefit. He can’t hide his emotions forever, though. He has to feel what he’s feeling.”

  That was the kind of thing her mother always said. You were supposed to “feel your feelings,” as if there were any other choice.

  Ms. Baldwin nodded her head as if she were some kind of expert on feelings and not just a high-school French teacher. “Sometimes you have to fall all the way to the bottom before you can start to pull yourself up.”

  “That’s not true!” Izzy said. “Oliver’s not like his mother. He doesn’t have to fall to the bottom of anything!” She quickly went back to pick up her book and then stormed through the screen door into the house. Behind her she heard her mother say quietly, “This has been hard on Izzy too.”

  Great. Now they’d sit there and discuss her problems. Izzy hated the way her mother acted like she understood everything about everybody just because she was a nurse. Well, yak away, ladies. Izzy was not going to listen. Instead she curled into a chair in the parlor where the two boys were busy ignoring each other, Oliver building some kind of Lego fort, and Liam slumped on the couch, staring at his video game again. Yeah, these two were going to be terrific friends.

  But as soon as Izzy started reading again, Liam threw aside his game. “How come your mom killed herself, anyway?” he grumbled at Oliver.

  Izzy slammed her book down and glared at Liam. What was this bratty kid going to say next? She glanced at her cousin to see what effect Liam’s tossed-off question had on him, but Oliver just shrugged. “I don’t know. She was depressed, I guess.”

  Liam snorted. “You guess? Was there a note? My mom said sometimes people leave notes.”

  “Mind your own business!” Izzy snapped.

  But Oliver nodded. “She left a note for my dad.”

  This was the first Izzy had heard of it. Why hadn’t anybody told her these details? A note was very important in a situation like this, wasn’t it? It told you why.

  “Really?” she said. “Have you seen it?”

  Oliver continued to press one small, colorful piece onto another. “Yeah. Dad showed it to me.”

  “Well, where is it? What did it say?” Izzy asked the questions, but Liam sat forward, eager to hear the answers too.

  “I don’t know where it is now. It said that she loved us and she was sorry.”

  “That’s all? I wish I could see it. I bet Uncle Hen kept it.”

  Liam snorted again. “If she loved you so much, why’d she kill herself?”

  “God, Liam!” Izzy said. “Stop it!”

  “I’m just asking the kid a question. If my mother killed herself, I’d want to know why.”

  Oliver snapped a flag in place on the top of his fort, then sifted through the remaining pieces as if he couldn’t hear the two of them arguing.

  “He already told you,” Izzy said. “She was depressed. You probably don’t even know what that means!”

  “I know as much about it as you do!” Liam’s lip curled up nastily, but then his eyes suddenly cut to the left and the smirk disappeared. He sat up straight and stared at the ghostly presence looming behind Izzy.

  Henderson Hook, Izzy’s uncle, had wandered into the parlor, tall and slouched in his stocking feet. He looked around the room, blinking his eyes as if he couldn’t quite focus them. Oliver stood up but didn’t go toward his father.

  “Hey, Uncle Hen,” Izzy said. “Do you need something?”

  “I think I left my coffee cup in here.” His voice was barely audible.

  Izzy looked around. “Is this it?” She picked up a mug from the table beside her.

  Uncle Henderson stared at the mug. “I guess so.”

  “It’s cold,” Izzy said. “It’s been sitting here all day.” Actually, Izzy thought, it might have been there since the day before.

  Finally her uncle’s gaze landed on her face. “What time is it?”

  “About three o’clock.”

  “In the afternoon?”

  Liam made a strangled sound in his throat.

  “Yeah.”

  “Guess I lost track.” The foggy look on her uncle’s face scared Izzy. The Uncle Henderson she’d always known—the loud, funny guy who was never without a guitar hanging from his neck—had vanished inside this shadow-man who could barely speak.

  “I’ll warm it up for you, Dad,” Oliver said, approaching his father cautiously. “Do you want me to put it in the microwave?”

  “Okay,” Uncle Henderson said. “I guess so.”

  Oliver grabbed the cup from Izzy and almost spilled the leftover coffee as he dashed from the room. His father lumbered slowly after him.

  As soon as they were both gone, Liam exploded with laughter. “Oh my God, no wonder the kid’s a psycho. His father’s crazy too! The guy doesn’t know if it’s daytime or the middle of the night!”

  Izzy looked around for something to throw at the idiot, but the only thing available was a lamp. It was an ugly lamp, but her mother would probably still be mad to have it smashed, even for a good cause. Instead Izzy stood up and made her eyes into thin slits. “You are evil, Liam Baldwin. An evil little creep.”

  “Takes one to know one,” he shot back.

  “Get out of here!” she yelled at him. She pulled off one of her ill-fitting sneakers and hurled it across the room. Liam ducked away from it, but she was glad to see a spark of fear in his dark little eyes.

  “No problem,” he said. “You’re all crazy.”

  As he headed for the door, Izzy chased him for just a second, and he ran. He ran. And she felt good about that.

  After dinner Izzy sat cross-legged on her bed, watching the movie The Heat on her computer for the third time. (It was R-rated, but mostly for language, and she’d heard worse from kids at school.) She loved it for the way her favorite comic actresses, Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock, pulled off the humor. Sandra would set up the joke in her deadpan style, and then Melissa would knock it out of the park. No stupid mime could make people laugh like that. If you laughed at a mime, it was because you were glad he was making fun of somebody else and not you.

  Before her parents got divorced, Izzy used to watch a lot of comedy with her dad. His favorite comedian was Jerry Seinfeld, but he liked Ellen DeGeneres a lot too. He always said, “I love watching people who can work a crowd like that.”

  Apparently her dad had once wanted to be a stand-up comedian himself and had gone to a few open-mic nights in New York as a young man. But then he grew up and got kind of boring, like most adults, and his love of comedy became this secret thing he didn’t talk abou
t very much, except to Izzy, who was more than happy to listen.

  “With Seinfeld, the first line of the joke is funny already,” he’d explain. “For example, he starts out, ‘What’s the deal with war?’ You’re laughing already because nobody seriously asks a question like that. It’s not a real question—it’s too big. And then the joke is about how the Swiss fight with those little Swiss Army knives—bottle openers and spoons. And then he finishes the routine with the best line of all. ‘Back off—I’ve got the toe clippers!’ You see how he builds up to the funniest line?”

  Izzy did see. And she loved that her dad thought she was smart enough to understand how the jokes worked. She loved laughing so hard that they’d fall over sideways on the couch, gasping for breath. And she loved the feeling of power she got when she said something funny and her dad laughed at her.

  But that hadn’t happened in a long time. It had been two and a half years since her parents had divorced and her dad had moved to Boston. When Izzy visited, he was never in the mood to watch stand-up anymore, or even Saturday Night Live or a funny movie. At first he was too sad, then he was too busy, then he was too in love. These days Izzy watched comedy by herself, and sometimes she worked on a routine. She thought about which jokes might make her dad laugh. Or even just make him look at her again.

  Izzy climbed off her bed and stood in front of the full-length mirror that hung on her closet door. She was wearing an old pair of pajamas that was too small for her. The legs ended halfway between her ankles and her knees, which made her legs look scrawny and her feet look big. Was it funny? She wasn’t sure. Most stand-up comedians had a certain look. They had a stage costume. Jerry always wore suits and ties, Ellen had jeans and sneakers, and Joan Rivers got decked out in jewelry and furs. You had to have an image. Could small pajamas be her look?

  She stood so that her feet fanned out sideways, and they looked bigger and sillier.

  “So, what’s the deal with…,” she began, then stopped. The deal with what? She looked around her room. “What’s the deal with shoes?” she said to the mirror. “Cavemen didn’t wear shoes. Why do we stuff our feet into little leather canoes, anyway?” Nope, wasn’t funny. What would Ellen say about shoes? Maybe there wasn’t anything funny about shoes.

  “So, what’s the deal with…school?” That was a good topic. “The first few years, sure: you learn to read, you count to a hundred, red and blue makes purple—that’s good stuff. But after that…” She thought about Jerry; how he built the joke and then sold it. “After that it’s such a hassle! Every day you have to figure out what to wear so you’ll be…inconspicuous enough not to be called on in class, but…not so invisible that nobody sits with you in the cafeteria. You gotta do well enough on the test so your parents don’t freak out, but not so good that…the teacher wants you to join the math team.”

  Not bad, she thought. What else?

  “Because if you think you’re walking that tightrope now—you know, the one between ‘I can almost see popularity from here’ and ‘maybe if I shaved my head someone would notice me’—once you become a mathlete…once you sign up for mathletics…, you might as well just go eat lunch with the school librarian, because you’ve become a complete social misfit.”

  “Ha!” The burst of laughter startled Izzy.

  “The way you tell it is funny,” Oliver said. “Mathletics!” He leaned in the doorway, critiquing her performance.

  Izzy whirled around. “God, Oliver, how long have you been watching me?”

  “Not that long. Also, I don’t see what’s so bad about eating lunch with the school librarian.”

  “Who asked you? You were spying on me!”

  “Your door was open.”

  Izzy stomped over to him. “Well, it isn’t now!” she said as she swung it closed in his face.

  But she could still hear him. “It would be funnier,” Oliver shouted, “if you really did shave your head!”

  Izzy burned for another moment over being caught, but then she remembered what Oliver had said. “The way you tell it is funny.” He’d actually laughed. Oliver, who hardly ever laughed at anything anymore, had laughed at her joke.

  “I can’t believe your mother is dating Dr. Gustino now. That’s just so weird,” Pauline said as she unrolled her sleeping bag on Izzy’s bedroom floor.

  It was the first time Pauline and Cookie had spent the night at Izzy’s all summer. Cookie was just back from seven weeks at sleepaway camp, which she could not stop talking about, and Pauline had gone to London with her family for an even longer time while her father did research for a new book.

  Usually Izzy’s mother didn’t like her to have people over while she was out for the evening, but this time she’d suggested it. She’d said, “A few more eyes can’t hurt,” which Izzy didn’t quite understand. Were the girls supposed to be babysitting Oliver? Or Uncle Henderson? Or were they all supposed to be watching each other while the one functioning adult was away for a few hours?

  “I think Dr. Gustino’s kind of cute,” Cookie said. “You know, for a dentist.” She stood in front of Izzy’s mirror, arranging her long hair, sun-bleached after the summer, into graceful waves that fell over her shoulders.

  “There’s just something about dentists, though,” Pauline said, a shudder passing through her body. “They have to put their hands in people’s mouths all day long.”

  Cookie agreed. “It’s kind of disgusting.”

  What’s the deal with dentists? Izzy thought, but no hilarious answers came to her. It was hard to concentrate when Cookie and Pauline were talking.

  “Plus,” Pauline continued, “Dr. Gustino has that awful son. You don’t have to hang out with him ever, do you?”

  Izzy was not interested in discussing Ben Gustino. She’d caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror behind her friends’ heads, and she was thinking about her disappointing hair. It was not long and flowy like Cookie’s, nor was it black and spiky like the pixie cut Pauline had returned with from England. No, Izzy’s hair was thin and brownish and straggly, and she tended to shove it behind her ears just to get it out of the way. But she’d be starting seventh grade in a few days, and she was tired of looking like her same old boring self. Maybe she should dye her hair a bright color, like some of the high-school girls did. Pink or green or turquoise.

  Pauline snapped her fingers in front of Izzy’s face. “Where are you? I asked you about Ben Gustino.”

  “I hardly even know him,” Izzy said. “Do you think he’s gonna hang around with a seventh grader? He’s in high school!”

  “You’re lucky you don’t have to see him,” Cookie said. “My brother hates him. He’s such a bully.”

  “That’s what my sister says too,” Pauline said. “She’s two years older than he is, and she’s still scared of him.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” Izzy said. “Trish is scared of her shadow. What did he do that’s so terrible?” Izzy had seen Ben twice when she’d gone with her mother to Dr. Gustino’s for dinner, but he’d never eaten with them. He didn’t bother with an excuse—he’d just walk out of the house a few minutes after their arrival. Even though she knew Ben was dissing her and her mother by leaving, there was a part of her that admired him for it. If she’d had the nerve, Izzy would have bailed on those dull dinners too. It hadn’t occurred to her that Ben was anything worse than just a normal, rude teenager. What’s the deal with teenagers, anyway? There must be something funny about them, but Izzy didn’t actually know enough about the species to pin down a joke. The only ones she was close enough to observe were her friends’ older siblings, and both of them were too dull to be amusing.

  “Trish says Ben Gustino beats people up for no reason at all,” Pauline said. “You just have to look at him sideways. He’s, like, mad all the time.”

  “Adam told me he got kicked off the baseball team for throwing a bat at somebody’s head and giving the kid a concussion,” Cookie said.

  Great. Just what they needed around here, another p
erson with problems. Not that Izzy was worried about Ben becoming an actual family member. Her mother had dated several different men since her divorce from Izzy’s father, but she hadn’t gotten serious with any of them. As soon as a man tried to talk about “the future,” she called the whole thing off, which was fine with Izzy. Her mother always said, “You’re my future, not some man.” So the likelihood that Ben Gustino would do more than pass quickly through her life was small. (Her dad, on the other hand, had apparently started the search for a new wife the minute he hit Boston, his car stuffed with clothes on hangers and cardboard boxes full of DVDs.)

  When the pizzas arrived, Izzy paid the delivery guy and called to Oliver and her uncle. She ripped the lids off the boxes while Cookie set the table with plates and napkins. Pauline poured apple cider into glasses.

  “Will your uncle want cider?” she asked quietly. Both of Izzy’s friends spoke in whispers when the subject of her uncle or cousin came up. They knew what had happened, and they’d asked the usual, unanswerable question: Why? But after that they didn’t seem to know what else to say.

  “Don’t pour him any,” Izzy said. “He’ll probably get a beer and take it up to his room.”

  She was right. Uncle Henderson appeared briefly, his long hair mashed in on one side and standing up on the other in classic bed-head style. He slapped one small slice of mushroom pizza on a plate, stopped at the fridge to pick up a bottle, and wandered back upstairs to his room without acknowledging any of them.

  “I’ve never seen anything so sad,” Cookie whispered.

  Pauline’s eyes were wide with amazement, but Oliver had appeared by then, so she didn’t say anything. Oliver pulled up a chair and reached for a slice of pepperoni. He sat with one leg bent beneath him in order to comfortably reach the table. Pauline and Cookie smiled at him, and then they all fell into a black hole of silence.

  “What movie should we watch tonight?” Izzy finally asked, just to get them talking.