Shoe Addicts Anonymous

by Beth Harbison

She’d certainly gotten what she deserved.

  “In West Virginia,” Helene finished, hearing the melancholy in her own tone.

  “West Virginia!” Suzy looked like Helene had told her she’d gone to school in a third-world country. “My goodness, how did a nice homecoming queen from Ohio end up there?”

  Helene smiled, without a smidgen of sincerity. “That’s a really good question.”

  “I don’t want to go to West Virginia,” Lucy snarked to her mother, without so much as a hint of apology to Helene for potentially insulting her.

  That’s how people around here were about West Virginia. Stuck in the crazy trap of thinking West Virginia was filled only with toothless rednecks who married their own cousins.

  Suzy laughed at her daughter’s objection, making it painfully clear that she shared Lucy’s dismay at the idea. “Don’t worry, darling, you’re not going to.” She gave Helene an overly bright smile. “Could you write a letter of recommendation for Lucy? For Miami of Ohio, I mean.”

  “I’d be glad to.” What else could she say? Nothing. It was her job to say yes. “But,” she thought quickly, “maybe Jim’s recommendation would be more meaningful.”

  A light came into Suzy’s eye. “Do you think he’d be willing to do that for us?” Clearly this was what she’d had in mind the entire time. Helene needn’t have worried about it at all.

  “Oh, I’m sure.” Anything to get his name around. He was always signing his name to things he didn’t mean.

  Their marriage license, for example.

  “I’ll have his secretary give you a call,” Helene promised.

  “Thank you so much, Helene.” Suzy nudged her daughter’s ribs with her elbow. “Right? Isn’t that nice of Mrs. Zaharis.”

  “Thanks,” Lucy said dully.

  “Any time.” Helene gave her most polite smile.

  She watched them go, thinking about how her life was full of this kind of artificial interaction these days. People wanted to use her as a connection for clout, but that was okay, because her husband took those opportunities to increase his own clout. And Helene had long, long ago made an agreement with the universe that she’d play the game in order to get the financial peace of mind.

  So it worked out for everyone.

  Well, everyone except Helene, as it turned out.

  Ten years ago, she would never have believed it if someone had told her what her life would become. But it had changed in small, barely perceptible increments until one day she’d woken up to find she was living in some crazy cracked fairy tale.

  It was bad, but the alternative—the life she’d lived before Jim—was still horribly clear in her mind.

  Maybe it made her weak, but she couldn’t think of a price she wouldn’t pay to avoid going back. And if Jim knew the truth about that life, there wasn’t a price he wouldn’t pay to avoid it either.

  And in turn, Helene could pay any price for anything she wanted. Which was what led her here, to Ormond’s shoe department, where she ended up at least three times a week.

  The pleasure she got here was fleeting—sometimes it didn’t even outlast the drive home with her new boxes and bags—but the initial thrill of acquisition never failed her.

  She’d lived too long without it to take it for granted now.

  Now, as she sat back waiting for the dark-haired salesman—Louis?—to get the pile of shoes she’d asked for in a size 71?2, she wondered if this life was worth it.

  There was definitely something to be said for being able to buy whatever she wanted, particularly after the years of struggle she’d endured. Now it was easy. And it was a comfort.

  She wasn’t just buying stuff. Even in her current champagne-cocktail-woozy state she understood that.

  She was buying herself some good memories.

  In a life devoid of emotional warmth, she did what she could to have moments that could be remembered later as pleasant.

  As something other than a waste of the time between birth and death.

  So many times she’d been taken in by the allure of a certain perfume, a natural body lotion, an outfit that was killer on her, or—most of the time—a pair of shoes that raised her, both literally and figuratively, to exalted heights.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Zaharis,” a voice interrupted her thoughts.

  Louis. Or Luis. Or, hell, maybe she had it totally wrong. Maybe it was Bob.

  “Yes?” she asked, careful not to try to address him by any name, since the odds of being wrong were so large.

  “I’m afraid your card was declined.” He gingerly held her American Express card toward her as if he were holding a dead spider he’d found on his Caesar salad.

  Declined? That wasn’t possible. “There must be a mistake,” she said. “Try it again.”

  “I ran it three times, ma’am.” He smiled, apparently apologetically, and she noticed that one tooth toward the back of his mouth was a distinct dark gray. “The charge isn’t going through.”

  “A six-hundred-dollar charge?” she asked in disbelief. The card didn’t even have a limit!

  He confirmed with a nod. “Perhaps the card was reported lost and you aren’t using the replacement?”

  “No.” She reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet. It was stuffed with ones and fives—an old habit from the days when ones and fives made her feel rich—and credit cards. She pulled out a silver MasterCard and handed it over. “I’ll figure it out later. Try this one. It shouldn’t be a problem.” Her voice rang with a shortness she couldn’t remember adopting. As a matter of fact, her voice often rang with that impatient air, and she wasn’t sure why, though the uncomfortable theory that it reflected more her own unhappiness, as opposed to a real dissatisfaction with service, did occur to her.

  The dark-haired salesman—why didn’t they wear name tags here?—eagerly strutted off with her platinum credit card, and Helene leaned back, confident that he would be back in a moment with a small slip for her to sign and then she could leave with her purchases.

  Or rather her prey, as her therapist, Dr. Dana Kolobner, laughingly referred to it.

  It did feel like prey. She’d acknowledge that. She sought it out to satisfy an appetite. Then, a few hours later, the satisfaction ebbed, and she needed more. Well…no. Needed was an overstatement. Helene was realistic enough to know this was all about desire not need.

  Sometimes she thought she might eventually chuck it all, go off and join the Peace Corps. But maybe at thirty-eight she was too old. Maybe that was yet another opportunity that had slipped past her while she wasted years of her life with a man who didn’t love her.

  And whom she didn’t love either. Not anymore.

  The salesman came back, interrupting her thoughts. But something in his expression had changed. He’d dropped a certain veneer of cordiality. “I’m afraid this one didn’t work either,” he said, pinching the card between his index and thumb as he handed it back to her.

  “This can’t be right,” she said, a very old but familiar feeling of dread snaking into her stomach. She dug out another card, one that was a rider on Jim’s business account. It was for emergencies.

  This was clearly an emergency.

  Two minutes later the salesman was back again; this time his face communicated a distinct distaste. He handed her the card…. It was cut into four perfectly even pieces.

  “They instructed me to cut it up,” he said curtly.

  “Who did?”

  He shrugged narrow bony shoulders under an ill-fitting suit jacket. “The bank. They said the card was stolen.”

  “Stolen!”

  He nodded and arched an overly plucked brow. “That’s what they said.”

  “I think I’d know if my own card was stolen.”

  “I would think so as well, Mrs. Zaharis. Nevertheless, that is the message that was given to me, and that is the thing I must act upon.”

  She resented his condescending tone disproportionately, and tried to keep her anger in check. “You could have spok
en with me before cutting the card, you know.”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. They instructed me to dispose of the card on the spot, or else the store would be penalized.”

  Bullshit. She was absolutely sure he’d taken pleasure in cutting up the card, and especially in giving her the pieces. She’d known his type before.

  She shot him a withering look and took her cell phone out of her purse. “Excuse me, please. I need to make a call.”

  “Of course.”

  She watched him walk away, fearing he would simply count to five and come back to hover over her again, flinging judgment at her. But as he got closer to the back, a girl poked her head out the door and said, “Javier’s on the phone, Luis. He says you have a leaky pipe.”

  Luis. Helene made a mental note of the name, so she’d know exactly whom to reference in the scorching letter she planned to write to the store manager.

  She took one of the credit cards that had been rejected out of her wallet and called the number on the back, impatiently pushing buttons through menu after menu until she finally got a human being on the line.

  “This is Wendy Noelle, how may I help you?”

  “I hope you can, Wendy,” Helene said in the most gracious tone she could muster, under the circumstances. “For some reason my card was declined at the store today, and I can’t figure out why.”

  “I’d be happy to help you with that, ma’am. May I put you on hold for a moment?”

  “All right.”

  Helene waited, her heart pounding, while the hold music clashed in her head with the department store music.

  “Mrs. Zaharis?” The bank representative was back after the first half of a Barry Manilow song had warred with the Muzak version of “Love Will Keep Us Together.”

  “Yes?”

  “That card was reported stolen, ma’am.” The girl was nice. She sounded sincerely apologetic. “It’s been deactivated.”

  “But I didn’t call in and report it stolen,” Helene objected. “And I’m in the store now, but they won’t let me use it.”

  “You can’t use it if it’s been reported stolen.”

  Helene shook her head, even though the woman on the phone couldn’t see her. “This must be some sort of identity theft.” It was the only explanation that made any kind of sense. “Who called it in and reported it stolen?”

  “It was a Deme…Deme-et-tris—”

  “Demetrius?” Helene asked in disbelief.

  “Yes, Demeter’s Zaharis,” the woman fumbled. “He called to report the card was stolen.”

  “Why?” Helene asked before she could stop herself, even though she knew there wasn’t an answer to that question. At least not one that would satisfy her.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  “Is a replacement card being sent overnight?” She was beginning to feel a little panicked. “Can you just authorize my purchase with the new card number?”

  “Mr. Zaharis requested that we don’t send another card out at this time.”

  Helene hesitated, dumbfounded. She wanted to object, to say there had been a mistake or that someone impersonating Jim had called and canceled the card, but deep down something told her there was no mistake. Jim had done this to her deliberately.

  She thanked the woman, hung up the phone, and immediately dialed Jim’s private line.

  He answered on the fourth ring.

  “Why did you call my credit cards in as stolen?”

  “Who is this?”

  She could picture his smug, laughing face as he taunted her. “Why,” she repeated, her voice harder, “did you cancel all of my credit cards?”

  She heard his chair squeak as he shifted his weight. “Let me ask you something,” he said, his voice drenched with sarcasm. “Do you have anything you want to get off your chest? Maybe something you’ve been keeping from me?”

  Her stomach tightened like a slip knot.

  What had he found out?

  “What are you getting at, Jim?” Oh, God, there were so many things it could have been.

  “Oh, I think you know.”

  Too many possibilities came to mind. “No, Jim, I cannot think of anything I’ve done that was so bad it warranted you cutting me off and humiliating me in public. Did you think it would look good for you if your wife was trying to use bad credit cards?”

  “Not as good as—oh, I don’t know—a family.”

  Silence dropped between them like a Ping-Pong ball, bouncing just out of reach.

  Jim was the first to take a swat at it.

  “Does that ring any bells?” His chair squeaked again, and she could see him shifting around, agitated now. “I thought we were trying to get pregnant. Turns out we were just”—she could almost see his meant-to-look-casual-but-actually-seething-underneath shrug—“fucking.”

  She grimaced at the way he spat the word. “You didn’t seem to be having such a bad time.”

  He wasn’t so easily distracted from his point. “You lied to me, Helene.”

  “About what, exactly?”

  “As if you don’t know.”

  “You’re insane,” she said, the best defense being a good—or at least a strongly convincing—offense.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then tell me what you’re talking about.”

  She was half-ready to dismiss his accusations as smoke and mirrors when he said, “I found out about the pills.”

  Guilt and anger coursed through her veins. “What were you doing looking through my bedside table?”

  “Bedside table? I had to get a prescription filled at the G Street pharmacy today, and they asked if I was picking up your refill!”

  Oh, shit. Shit shit shit. She’d tipped her hand. She still could have lied her way out of it, said it was an old prescription or a mistake on the pharmacist’s part, but she’d offered too much information. She was caught, and there was no way out of it.

  “Wait,” she said, too late. “What pills?”

  “Birth control pills. You’ve been getting them for months, so don’t even try lying about it.”

  It was a quandary. Should she take the chance on denying it, or just come right out with the truth? “It was for medical reasons,” she said, the lie coming almost as naturally as the truth. “I needed to even out my hormone levels in order to get pregnant.”

  The laugh of his response was ugly. “If that was the truth, you would have told me before.”

  “Because you’re so warm and friendly and easy to talk to?” she asked, her voice hard.

  “You’re a liar.”

  “So you said. And so now you’re punishing me.”

  “You bet I am.”

  She shuddered at his coldness. How the hell had she ended up married to a man like this?

  “For how long?” she asked.

  “How long do you think it will take you to get pregnant?”

  “Are you kidding me? You’re going to cut me off financially until I’m pregnant?” She wasn’t going to do it. She’d get a job. She wasn’t going to ransom a child’s future for her own shopping pleasure.

  “I’ll give you an allowance,” Jim said. “For the necessities. Say, a hundred bucks a week.”

  “A hundred.”

  “I know, it’s generous.”

  It was about sixty cents an hour for being married to him.

  “You’re despicable,” she said, and flipped her phone shut.

  She looked around the store, at the rich and unassuming patrons who milled around, oblivious of the plight she’d endured these past few years, looking comfortable and rich and carefree. Though at least some of them probably shared her uncomfortable situation.

  Like that woman over there. Pretty. Too pretty to have been born rich. She’d been bought. She practically had a SKU symbol across her butt. Over the years, Helene had grown quite good at telling the real thing from the fakes. Like herself.

  The fakes always had a little shadow of uncertainty across their pretty face
s.

  Like Helene. Somehow, despite the bank account she shared with Jim, she’d never fully reached that relaxed feeling of carefree spending that so many of the Ormond’s patrons seemed to enjoy. There had always been some sort of threat hanging over her head.

  The threat of Jim’s disapproval.

  Well, forget that. She wasn’t going to live at his mercy, and prosper at his whim. And she definitely wasn’t going to hang at his command.

  As if in a dream, she bent down and put her Jimmy Choos into the Bruno Magli box and replaced the lid.

  She stood up, feeling as if she were pushing against the force of Jim’s disapproval as she made even that one small gesture. Yes, he’d knocked her down. Humiliated her, even, and then let a store clerk give her the news. But he wasn’t going to win this round. He wasn’t going to pull the leash in on her by cutting off her credit cards.

  She took a step, thinking far more about the symbolism of walking out from under Jim’s control than the fact that she was still, technically, wearing shoes she hadn’t purchased.

  But she’d be back, she told herself as she took another step. Ormond’s wouldn’t notice her leaving; she knew from her own retail experience in the suit department of Garfinkels—where she’d met Jim, incidentally—that the security sensors were at midbody level at the doors because that’s where most shoplifters carried their goods.

  Helene wasn’t a shoplifter, though. She was a regular patron, who had probably contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the Ormond’s coffers. Hell, she’d even left a perfectly good pair of Jimmy Choos back where she was trying the Maglis on.

  She needed to do this. The Bruno Maglis she had on felt so damn good. And that wasn’t true for everyone. Some people found them uncomfortable, but people with the right shaped feet loved them. So who wouldn’t want to keep walking?

  Well, maybe that was stretching it. She wasn’t walking because the shoes felt good; she was walking because the escape felt good.

  She’d pay later for the shoes, easily. As soon as she got home and either got her hands on some cash or talked some sense into crazy Jim so he’d release the credit on her cards again, she’d come back, explain that she’d accidentally left in the Maglis, and pay.

  No problem.