“I hope we can do that,” my father said. “Deborah and I enjoy it when our kids introduce us to new friends.”
Eric put on his jacket and followed his parents out the door. I could see the white edge of my book sticking out of his pocket. When he had asked whether he could borrow it, I worried that he might return it at school where Elizabeth might see, but I said yes anyway. I was flattered that I owned a book Eric wanted to read.
The next morning, my mother slept in. My father and Delia left for the grocery store, and after they had been gone awhile, my mother wandered out of their room sleepily. She seemed to be in a good mood. She went into the kitchen and fixed sandwiches for us from the leftover roast, and we sat down together to eat. I watched her as she sipped her coffee: her eyes were still smudged with black from her trip to the beauty parlor, which now seemed so long ago. Her hair had given up its straightened shape and curled itself into the same cloudy frizz I had always known. She chewed sleepily; I waited for her to talk. She ate half of her sandwich and took a sip of her coffee before she spoke.
“Did you notice her shoes?” she finally said. I shook my head no.
“When we were neatening up in the kitchen, I asked her where she got them and guess what she said. Paris. Can you imagine that? He takes her to Paris to buy shoes.”
“They probably didn’t go to Paris just to buy the shoes,” I said, aware that I was sounding bratty. I couldn’t stand hearing her speak of the Biersdorfers so reverentially. “Maybe they were there for a vacation anyway.”
“Well, I’m sure they were,” my mother said. “That’s not my point.”
“She’s not very nice to Eric sometimes,” I informed her. “She yells at him when he didn’t do anything.”
“I did notice that he drinks too much,” my mother agreed. “He killed nearly a half a bottle of scotch. He’s a nice man, though. He said to me on the way out, ‘Deborah, that meal was certainly a treat. Sometime you’ll have to teach my wife how to make that cobbler. She’s no good with desserts.’”
“Really?” I asked. That must have been before Eric and I had come out to the living room.
“So I said, ‘Well, I’ll be happy to give her the recipe anytime.’ And he kissed my hand.”
“Really?” I asked again. I hadn’t seen anything like that.
She thought before speaking again.
“Well, of course, they owe us dinner now, at their house. But I did hear him saying that this is a busy time for him at NASA, though, so they might not be able to do anything for a while. Maybe we’ll see them at one of your school assemblies.”
“I don’t think we have any assemblies coming up,” I said, relieved.
“Well, maybe you and Eric will play together soon,” she said. Her voice was tinged with that nervousness she’d had the day before, and the sound of it made me tired and scared. “Has he invited you out again or anything like that?”
I sighed loudly instead of answering.
“All right, don’t get sniffy. I’m just asking. Are you and Eric in any activities together at school?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like after-school activities or anything like that?”
“No,” I said. “I never see him after school. He’s in my class but we don’t talk to each other that much. We just went to the ballet that one time but we aren’t really friends at all. Okay?”
My voice was like a voice I had heard Elizabeth use with her mother. I usually didn’t dare speak to my mother this way, but I was desperate to make clear to her that I wasn’t friends with Eric, that I wouldn’t be her go-between for this project involving the Biersdorfers. I was afraid of how angry she would be as I spoke, that she would explode and cry and that I would spend the rest of the day in my room, sorry that I had told the truth. But instead, her face took on a playful little smile as I spoke.
“Oh, I know that type of boy,” she said. “He gets all standoffish once you know he’s sweet on you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He obviously has a crush on you, baby. He asked you out to the ballet, he dressed up in his best little suit…” Her voice made my skin prickle.
“His mom made him wear the suit,” I protested. “His mom probably made him ask me to the ballet.” I felt airless and desperate.
“Okay,” she said, waving her hands in front of her face in defense. “Whatever you say.”
I felt hot tears of humiliation pushing themselves into my eyes anyway. I hated her changing Eric in this way: I’d had my own idea of him, of the complexity of his existence and of our relationship, and now he had been reduced to her crooked version of him. She had changed Eric forever into a boy with a crush, a boy interested in my body, with weird animal longings. I would never be able to talk to him normally again.
5.
I USUALLY WENT GROCERY SHOPPING WITH MY FATHER AND DELIA on Saturdays, but the following Saturday my mother had suggested a different plan: my father and Delia would go to the grocery store while she took me shopping for school shoes. As soon as the two of them left, she sprang into action, showering and laying out a nice dress and matching shoes. She took a long time putting her hair in rollers, lotioning her skin.
“Where are we going?” I asked skeptically. She was putting on mascara, leaning into the mirror over her dresser wearing only pantyhose and a bra. I knew she had heard me because her breathing quickened, but she didn’t answer.
“Come here,” she said when she was done. She held my chin in one hand and stroked mascara onto my lashes with the other.
“You don’t need it,” she observed. “You have your daddy’s long lashes.” Her voice was warm and low, and I let myself be lulled by it.
“Don’t blink,” she said, and used her fingertips to hold my eyes open until the makeup dried.
We climbed into the car. She drove too fast, weaving excitedly from lane to lane, giving me instructions all the while.
“When we get to the store,” my mother said, “I’m going to give you some money, and I want you to pick out some nice school shoes. Something nice and sturdy. Brown. Not sandals, but lace-ups.”
“Where are you going to be?” I asked. Children didn’t go into shoe stores alone to make purchases, I knew, and I felt she should know too. Fitting new shoes had always been an interaction between my mother and the shoe salesman, usually a middle-aged man. I tried to imagine talking to the shoe salesman myself as he knelt on one knee with the metal foot measurer. It seemed ridiculous.
“I have some things to do on my own,” she said. She lit a cigarette in a series of snappy gestures that told me not to ask any more questions.
She parked in front of the shoe store, got out of the car, and started to walk away briskly, as though she were alone. But then she stopped herself and came back, digging through her purse, and handed me a twenty-dollar bill.
“I’ll meet you right back here in an hour,” she said, pointing at the sidewalk.
“Okay, Mom,” I said. I had decided to be agreeable, but she had stopped paying attention to me. I watched her walk away along the row of stores, her gait quick and off-balance, wobbling slightly in her high-heeled shoes.
In the brightly lit shoe store, I picked out a shoe that I thought would please her, a simple lace-up brown leather with thick soles. The man who measured my feet didn’t seem surprised that I was there alone, so I relaxed a bit and let him slide the stiff shoes onto my feet. He had big droopy eyes and called me “honey.” When he instructed me to, I walked around the store, my feet feeling wooden and alien.
“How do they feel?” the salesman asked, and when I didn’t answer, he knelt in front of me. I heard the whistling sound of his breathing through his nose as he pressed down hard on the leather of the shoe, feeling for my big toe.
“Perfect fit,” he declared. He got up, grunting, and led me to the register to ring up the shoes. I unfolded the bill, and he gave me three dollars’ change. He wrapped up my old shoes, graying white sandals, in
the new box with tissue paper.
When I stepped back out on the sidewalk, hardly anyone was around, only a few women shopping in pairs or with small children. There was no sign of my mother. I walked slowly up and down the row of stores carrying my shoe bag, looking in the windows. I stopped at a jewelry store to look at rings sparkling in their boxes, then at a bakery where giant chocolate chip cookies were displayed in the window decorated with frosting, like cakes. Go Gators, said one, its green frosting faded by the sun. Another said Liftoff, with a crude outline of an Orbiter in white and black frosting, pink frosting flames coming out of the base. The day was hot and getting hotter; if my mother didn’t come back soon, I would have to find an air-conditioned place to wait. But then how would she find me?
I had the sudden horrible feeling that too much time had gone by, that I was supposed to be meeting my mother somewhere right that minute, that she had been waiting for me for a long time, growing angrier and angrier. If I was keeping her waiting right now, she would be steely and hurt for the rest of the day.
I wracked my brain for an exact memory of her instructions to me, where we were supposed to meet. She had said right back here, pointing at a particular square in the sidewalk, but I couldn’t remember which one. I convinced myself that she must be waiting somewhere else, somewhere she thought she had told me to be—out at the car, maybe, or in another store, in the nail shop where she sometimes had her nails slicked red by the wide chatty manicurist, or the restaurant at the end of the row of stores where we had dinner sometimes.
I walked by the nail shop first. I cupped my hands around my eyes to see in: the store was nearly empty, the only customers two teenage girls with their feet in soaking tubs. The lady who did my mother’s nails recognized me and waved from her station. I waved back before moving on, feeling panicky.
I finally ventured into the restaurant. It was dark inside and cold with air-conditioning. I spotted my mother immediately, not at one of the tables where we usually sat, but in the bar area, perched on a tall stool. She was facing my direction but didn’t seem to see me. She sat with her legs crossed off to one side, smoking, listening intently to what her companion was saying, a man with his broad white-shirted back to me. For a nonsensical moment I thought he must be my father, that somehow my father had come here instead of going to the grocery store. But even as the thought presented itself, I knew it to be wrong; this man had dark gray and silver hair, not brown like my father’s, and he pushed himself back confidently against the wood of his chair. My father would never have sat like that; he would slump forward trying to take up as little space as possible.
My mother raised a tall thin glass to her lips and drained it. When she set it down again, the smile she gave the man was slow and odd, a smile I didn’t remember seeing before. Her companion raised a short glass of amber liquid, and it was by the way he shook the glass to rattle the ice that I recognized him as Mr. Biersdorfer.
I turned around and pushed out the glass door of the restaurant. What I felt at first was relief that I hadn’t done anything wrong, that it was my mother who was late, not me, that she wouldn’t be angry when we found each other. The presence of Mr. Biersdorfer was a secondary matter. It actually made an odd kind of sense, at least on the surface—it explained my mother’s dress, her makeup, and her nervousness.
I waited for what seemed like forever, but I didn’t mind waiting now, now that I knew it wasn’t my fault. When she came out, she would be apologetic. She might even take me shopping for new clothes to make up for it, or take me out for ice cream. I sat on the curb admiring my new shoes, turning them this way and that, considering what Elizabeth Talbot would think of them when I wore them on Monday.
When my mother finally came rushing out of the restaurant, her heels clacking loudly on the sidewalk with each step, she waved at me, though I was looking right at her.
“D!” she called to me happily. The few people who were around turned to look at her. She came over to me, took my arm, and squeezed it.
“Have you been waiting long?” she asked, leading me toward the car.
“Yeah,” I said. Didn’t she know how long I had been waiting?
“Did you get some nice shoes?” she asked. I held out one of my feet in response, and she looked but she didn’t seem to see it.
“I saw you in the restaurant,” she said to my shoe. My heart stopped for a second. “Did you see who I was with?” she asked brightly. I wasn’t sure what the best answer to this question might be. I could truthfully say no, I thought; I hadn’t actually seen his face.
“Your friend Eric’s dad,” she answered herself, holding the car door open for me. She looked over her shoulder briefly, but the sidewalk was empty except for an old lady in a pink pantsuit. We climbed into the car, which was hot as an oven.
“Why did you meet him here?” I asked hesitantly. I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to know. She looked around for him again before pulling out of the parking lot.
“You can’t mention any of this to your father,” she said, ignoring my question. “He would never understand this, D. If he asks you about today, you just tell him I was helping you pick out your shoes, that we were shopping together and went to a lot of different stores, and, ah…” Her face got a faraway look as she concocted her story. I hated when she did this, when she tried to tell me what to say—she always put things too childishly for me, in simple naive words that I would never use.
“Just tell him that we were shopping the whole time and then I took you out for an ice cream.”
“He’s not going to ask,” I pointed out.
“No, you’re right,” she agreed. “It would never occur to him to ask how I spent my day.” Some train of thought caught her, and she drifted away for a minute, looking toward the sky. Then she seemed to snap awake, adjusted herself in her seat, placed her hands more firmly on the steering wheel.
“Anyway, no one could blame me,” she said in her summing-up voice, a tone that was meant to shut down any further questions or discussion.
“Blame you for what?” I asked, knowing that, whatever it was, she wouldn’t say now. But then, a few minutes later, she did answer.
“Blame me for taking things into my own hands,” she said finally. I knew she thought she was being mysterious, leaving just enough unsaid.
The phone rang while we were all watching TV. My father answered. I didn’t listen to what he was saying until he said, “Oh! Well! Dolores would really enjoy that.” My mother and Delia both looked at me when he said my name. He listened for a while.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well. It’s awfully nice of you to invite us.” He was using an oddly loud voice.
I went and stood by his elbow. He ignored me.
“Who is it?” I asked loudly. He put his finger to his lips, his eyebrows raised to say, This is serious. My mother was watching his face too.
“Well, that would be real nice,” my father said, his voice vehement and sincere. “It sure is nice of you.” He listened for a long moment, nodding uselessly. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, great. See you then. Buh-bye.”
When he hung up, he didn’t look at me but at my mother, and a weird expression played around his mouth, proud and hopeful.
“That was Bob Biersdorfer,” he said, and for just a moment I thought my mother’s face betrayed fear. But then she was smiling too.
“He wanted to invite us to the next launch,” he said, “51-D. It’s a couple of months away.”
“When?” my mother asked. She drew the word out to show her disbelief.
“April twelfth.”
“The next launch,” my mother whispered. And if she’d known this would happen, her face did not betray it.
6.
THE BIERSDORFERS’ OLDSMOBILE PULLED UP IN FRONT OF OUR house at five A.M., just as the sun was coming up. The launch had been delayed forty-five minutes, so we hadn’t had to leave at four as we’d planned. Delia and I watched out the front window while Mr. Biersdorfer walked up our front pat
h. He wore green plaid pants and a pink polo shirt stretched taut over his belly. He rang the bell, and as he waited for someone to answer the door, we watched him place his hands in his pockets and look straight up at the sky, revealing a wobbly pink neck.
“Who is that?” Delia whispered. She hadn’t been invited to the launch; my father had told her she was too young. This infuriated Delia because she had turned five a few days before. She still wore the sparkly cardboard birthday hat around the house sometimes.
“You know who that is,” I answered. “It’s Mr. Biersdorfer.”
“Eric’s father?” she whispered.
“That’s right,” I said.
I tried to picture him sitting across that little table from my mother in the dark restaurant, that broad white back, but weeks had gone by, and the scene had become vague. I tried to imagine what his reaction would be if I yanked open the door and announced, I saw you with my mother. He would look right at me, see me and consider me for the first time, his face forming an expression of shock or horror. The thought made my heart race with fear. I stood motionless.
My father emerged from the bedroom carrying his shoes. He was wearing a polo shirt too, but his was green and didn’t stretch quite as much over his stomach. Mr. Biersdorfer rang the doorbell again.
“What are you doing?” my father asked quietly, bewildered. “Why don’t you answer it?” He kept his voice down because my mother was still sleeping. Delia and I stared back at him, neither of us moving, while he struggled his shoes on and opened the door himself.
“Good morning,” my father said, and shook Mr. Biersdorfer’s hand.
After bellowing his greeting to my father, Mr. Biersdorfer shouted, “Hullo!” staring at a spot three inches above my head. After a second, I deduced that he was talking to me.
“Hi,” I answered.
My father edged us out quickly; my mother had instructed him not to let Mr. Biersdorfer in because the house was a mess. Delia watched us go.
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