The Comfortable Shoe Diaries

by Renée J. Lukas

Cookie would run and hide under the nearest bed, and the kids would scramble to find whatever that thing was that they absolutely needed.

  “What do you need your iPod for anyway?” Ellie would yell. “We’re just going down the road.” She’d turn to me. “I don’t understand it. They can’t have one waking second without that crap.” Then she’d make an executive decision. “You know what? You kids are coming right now, and I don’t give a crap who has their iPod or who doesn’t! You can survive without it!”

  Matthew would smile teasingly at Megan, because he had his.

  “That’s so not fair!” Megan would whine.

  I’d be making the cut-throat symbol behind Ellie to warn Megan not to pursue the matter further. But she wouldn’t take the hint.

  “If he has his, why can’t I have mine?”

  “Because you can’t find yours!” Ellie thundered. “Now get in the freaking car before I get in a bad mood!”

  Everyone, including me, would scamper into the car. Sometimes the lost item would vary, but this was the typical scenario.

  For Cookie, it was an adjustment as well. She sniffed around and rubbed against walls to claim her territory. She favored Megan’s room because it smelled like lavender-scented candles. But Ellie, like me, wasn’t a big animal person, and we both screamed whenever we saw Cookie rolling around in the freshly warm, washed clothes in the laundry basket. But the little fuzz ball made her way just as I did. As long as she knew where her litter and food were, she was good to go. It was probably a bit more of an adjustment for me.

  I managed to find a job in advertising again. There was just one catch—it was an hour train ride to Boston. Every morning I’d watch this weird little culture of train riders. No one seemed happy to be there. Everyone faced straight ahead unless they sat opposite other seats. Then they’d look out the windows or at their iPhones. No one wanted to be that creepy, staring weirdo who made other people call security.

  There was the businessman complete with coffee thermos and briefcase seated beside the fidgeting young woman, also with briefcase, who was fighting with her significant other via text. You could tell because she’d huff and puff after each new ding.

  What hit me hardest was the realization that I wasn’t the youngest one on the train anymore. So many of these bright-eyed professionals in matching suits seemed to be straight out of college—base powder on young women couldn’t completely mask the traces of acne still clinging to their faces. I sometimes felt like Methuselah.

  When I first started working at Push Industries, it seemed a far cry from the places I’d worked down South. I needed an ID badge just to get off the elevator at the floor where the company was located. And my first day I was escorted to the little cubicle, not much bigger than a rat’s cage, that I’d be calling home every day. There it was—an L-shaped desk pushed against a bare partition under a fluorescent light with the wattage of a thousand suns.

  I set down my purse. With some photos, some plants, a few personal decorations…I still couldn’t make this place look any better.

  As the days slumped along…I thought of a line from a Siouxsie & the Banshees song: “The day drags by, like a wounded animal…” How fitting. Every day at Push was a wounded animal, which turned into a dead carcass by five o’clock. For a supposedly creative company, it was quieter than a library. I certainly couldn’t talk to myself as I sometimes did when writing. Even in meetings you felt like you had to whisper. In the breakroom, people didn’t talk much, but kind of nodded. The loudest thing were the notes taped to food in the fridge, which featured exclamation points as they warned others not to steal their pastrami sandwiches or whatever. The first time I’d seen one of these Post-Its, I’d thought, “At last. Some emotion.” Frankly, it was the weirdest, deadest place I ever worked. But they paid me.

  One morning, during the long, tedious train ride, I thought about Siouxsie—the most iconic of rock women—whom I deeply admired for reasons I could never explain to a record store clerk. Siouxsie would never be caught sitting in a cubicle. She was the quintessential badass, doing as she pleased and finding a way to make a living at it. Somehow she found a way to live her life on her terms and fought tooth and nail to keep it that way, in spite of record companies and all the forces that wanted her to capitulate to their demands. Not Siouxsie. Maybe I was so drawn to her because I always seemed to be doing the opposite in my own life.

  I compromised for everyone. I took the safe route because it paid the bills. I didn’t even walk out of the newspaper room when the editor talked about not doing lesbian stories. Where was my spine? In your forties, you’re supposed to have a stronger sense of who you are and what you’ll put up with. What had happened? I guess the shock of a layoff and never-before foreclosing on a house rattled my sense of security to the core. It forced me to crawl even further back into a shell of safety. I suppose moving in with Ellie and the kids was the wildest, out-of-my-comfort zone thing I ever did.

  That night, I shared these thoughts with Ellie.

  Then we settled into bed to watch another episode of HGTV. There was a show on about renovations.

  “We could really use a new toilet,” she lamented. “Have you noticed it wobbles?”

  “I’ve noticed Matthew pees on the seat.”

  I watched her in her soft, oversized Boston Bruins T-shirt, popping cookies from a ninety-calorie snack pack into her mouth. We had become an ordinary couple, I realized. And for the first time, even something as mundane as watching yet another house show didn’t seem so mundane as long as I was with Ellie. Of course, that wouldn’t make the greatest line in a poem, but the realization meant a lot to me.

  “Matthew! That better not be a video game!” Ellie suddenly yelled.

  “Mom! Come on!” he wailed pitifully in the next room.

  “You didn’t finish your paragraph!” she shouted.

  “I did most of it!”

  “Most doesn’t count! It’s one freaking paragraph! You can do it!”

  I leaned in closely. “What’s it about?”

  “Something he’s going to do over the holidays,” Ellie replied softly. “He can think of something.”

  My eyes darted; the wheels were turning in my brain.

  “Don’t help him,” she warned.

  “How should I know what I’m going to be doing?” Matthew called from his room.

  “We’re going to bond as a family, dammit!” Ellie yelled and winked at me. “Our first Christmas together.” She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me over to her on the bed. We both started giggling, something we hadn’t done in a while.

  “Thanks for putting up with me,” she whispered.

  “Hey, you put up with me.” I touched her face the same way I’d done at the awful bed-and-breakfast. I realized I could be moody, a roller coaster of emotions and ideas—some realized, some fizzled. And she rode the bumps with me without blinking an eye. It took a special person to do that.

  Yes, she sometimes had a volatile temper, but her shout wasn’t as big as her heart. And that’s why I stayed with her.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Naughty and Nice”

  Since Ellie knew so much about kids, I always listened to her advice.

  “Don’t rush the affection” was one of the first things she ever told me. “They’ll come to you when they’re ready.”

  Sometimes this was a tough rule to follow because Matthew would come out in his Buzz Lightyear pajamas and kiss Ellie goodnight, and I’d get a goodnight wave. She’d look at me, silently telling me not to worry about it. But I did. What if I waited too long until it just became too weird to ever hug me? She said that wouldn’t happen, but she could be wrong. She’d gotten the cords wrong for turning on the DVD player. So she might be wrong about this too.

  It was extra tough on me because I’m a hugger. It was all I could do to keep from squeezing Matthew’s cute little Muppet-size body. But I always remembered Ellie’s words. If I forced a hug, it would feel awkward for t
hem since I was the newbie.

  Megan, on the other hand, was at the age when her mother had to sneak a kiss because, to a teenager, it just wasn’t cool. Ellie would give her a goodbye hug before a long school field trip, and Megan wouldn’t want any of her friends to see.

  “I’m not cool,” Ellie told me, starting the car.

  It was a Saturday morning. And I remember pulling away from the school, feeling bad for her.

  “Doesn’t that bother you?” I asked.

  “Nah, but sometimes I miss my cuddly bear. That’s what I used to call her. You should have seen her before first grade.” Ellie’s face lit up, remembering. “She cried before I left her at school. She held on to me so tight.”

  For a split second, I wish I’d known Megan back then. I’d look through old photos and feel like I missed out on a huge part of their lives.

  One morning, Megan came into the kitchen while I was making my coffee, and she said, “I’m never calling you ‘Mom.’”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “I mean, I only have one mom.”

  “So do I.”

  She smiled because I seemed to get it. “Okay, cool. Just so you know, it’s not that I don’t like you or anything.”

  “I want you to call me whatever you’re comfortable with. You could just call me Sydney. That is my name.”

  We smiled at each other. I was all about not making things awkward, and I thought we had a good moment there.

  Our first Christmas was tricky. Matthew and I put ornaments on the tree, while Ellie lamented not being able to find the right Christmas jazz CD to play. We were nearly done before she found it. The tree was a blend of ornaments—mine and hers. Some had belonged to Val, or I just remembered her picking out some of them. I hadn’t unpacked any of my Christmas boxes while I was staying at Penny’s because her apartment was too small and her decorations were plenty. So this was the first Christmas I was slapped in the face with symbols of my past life. But as I watched Matthew excitedly hanging an ornament he’d made in second grade, and Ellie teasing Cookie with bubblewrap, I knew my old life was getting smaller in the rearview mirror. I didn’t just see a new beginning, I could feel it.

  Then the jazz music stopped, obliterated by the loud phone ringer that none of us could figure out how to turn down. All I heard next was Ellie pacing in the kitchen.

  “You call me the day before Christmas Eve? I don’t care what you thought! Oh, you’re so full of shit, Marc.”

  Marc Parks. The famous ex-husband I’d only seen in photos.

  “Let’s leave it up to the kids.” Ellie came out with the phone.

  Matthew first. “Hi. Uh-huh. Yeah. Sure.” He shrugged and looked questioningly at his mom.

  “Give it to Megan,” she said.

  When he was out of the living room, she said in a hushed tone, “Their father. He decides to breeze through town and wants to see them Christmas Day.”

  “Tell him no. He didn’t give you any notice.” It seemed so logical to me.

  “True, but I don’t want to rob the kids of the opportunity to see their father.”

  “You’re more noble than I am.”

  “Not really. I wanted to say no.”

  Megan came back with the phone. “It’s cool with me as long as it’s cool with you.” This was a calm and respectful Megan. I hadn’t met her before.

  “Okay.” I could see the struggle on Ellie’s face. But for me, that was another huge lesson in momdom. When you have an ex, you put the kids’ feelings first, no matter how you feel about the ex.

  So we spent Christmas Eve opening gifts, including ones from Santa. The living room was an explosion of Legos, video games, DVDs. And Ellie and I each dog-eared our favorite page from a Lands’ End catalog and got each other the same red fleece pullover. We laughed so hard. In the dim Christmas lights, her eyes sparkled. And just as I thought we were going to become an unromantic, ordinary couple, she took my hand and we danced by the tree. I don’t even think music was playing. In that moment, I could tell we still had that spark.

  So we danced.

  All of a sudden, Matthew cried, “Sandwich!” and slammed into us, putting his arms around both of us. Ellie was right. He came when he was ready.

  I don’t want to be corny and say it was one of those Hallmark movie moments when everything comes together at the end. But it seemed like it.

  On Christmas Day, Marc rode up in his very loud red sports car. There was barely enough room for two kids in there. Ellie and I both had uber practical, four-door cars in slightly differing shades of tan. They didn’t reflect our quirky, lovable personalities. Then again, good gas mileage is very lovable.

  I didn’t get a good look at Marc because I didn’t want to stand so obviously in the front window and stare at him like some sort of creep. All I could see was Ellie standing with the kids in the driveway, no doubt telling him what time she wanted them back.

  When she returned, her expression was heavy and she slumped alongside me on the couch.

  “Do you realize,” I said, “this is the first time we’ve been alone in the house in forever?” Relishing the quiet, I took both of her hands in mine.

  She was distracted; she kept looking out the window.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  But she still seemed disturbed, craning her neck as far to the window as possible, even after his engine could no longer be heard.

  “Is it Marc?” I asked.

  “No, the damn Ms. Claus!” She bolted up and went outside to fix her yard display—an animatronic Santa and Ms. Claus. Santa was moving just fine, but Ms. Claus was stuck. Apparently, as Santa moved back and forth, Ellie insisted there was a moment when it looked like Ms. Claus was giving him a blow job. I didn’t see that at all.

  In spite of what she’d said, I could tell she was distressed by Marc’s emergence on this day of all days and that she wouldn’t relax until the kids returned.

  * * *

  “Happy New Year to you too!” Penny’s voice was light and joyful on the phone. “You’re still popular with that blog, you know.”

  I laughed. “Aw, well, tell me when you figure out if anyone has ever made money from a blog.”

  “I just really don’t know.”

  “Nobody knows,” I said. It was like we’d had the same conversation before. “Can you put Maddie on?”

  “She’s uh…” Penny struggled. “I think she’s in the bathroom.”

  “It’s okay. I get it.” Maddie hadn’t talked to me or returned my calls since I moved to Massachusetts. “I hope she forgives me soon. Tell her happy New Year anyway and that I miss her.”

  “Will do,” Penny said.

  That was it. My family and Morgan and Fran had been called, and Ruth had left to join the National Guard. I was all caught up for the year.

  “Hurry up!” Ellie called from the next room. “The ball’s about to drop!”

  “Coming!”

  When I got to the family room, New Year’s Rockin’ Eve was on TV, and Cookie was nowhere to be seen. She must have heard loud noises on the TV and gone flying off the couch.

  Ellie put a glass of champagne in my hand and wrapped her arm around me. “Happy New Year,” she said softly in my ear.

  “Same to you,” I answered, gazing at her.

  Megan covered her eyes, as if we were doing something X-rated. Matthew had long since fallen asleep in his room.

  “You guys aren’t gonna do it, are you?” Megan asked.

  “Don’t talk like that,” Ellie snapped. “That’s inappropriate.”

  “We’re all adults here,” Megan said.

  “Some of us aren’t.” Ellie squeezed her cheeks.

  “Whatever.” Megan slumped off to her room and closed the door. That was where she lived most of the time.

  Then we adjourned to our room. When we came in, Ellie picked up her book about coming out stories.

  “What is lesbian ‘dead bed’?” she asked.

  “Bed death,” I
said. “It’s a myth.” A moment passed. “Okay, maybe it’s not a myth. It’s the idea that without a man to initiate sex all the time, women get comfortable in their routines and neither one initiates it, so the sex part kind of dies down.”

  “Did that happen to you?”

  “There were other reasons for…that.” I came closer to her, threw her book on the floor and began unbuttoning her pajama top. My breath quickened as more of her silky chest was revealed, more of her cleavage exposed.

  She jumped up to lock the bedroom door.

  Moments later, we were naked and writhing around, soft and sweaty skin sliding up and down each other. Our breasts pressed together, legs wrapped around the smooth skin of our hips. She felt so good. I wanted to devour every inch of her perfectly curvy body. Just when we were in the moment of hot, unbridled rapture, I started to let out a moan that was so loud Ellie had to cover my mouth. We started laughing.

  Then there was a knock on the door.

  “Mom?” It was Matthew. He was trying to open the door!

  Quickly we scrambled for our clothes. My underwear was somewhere at the foot of the bed. When we were decent, Ellie pretended to try to open the door.

  “Is it locked?” Matthew asked.

  “No, honey,” Ellie said calmly. “It sometimes gets stuck.” She tried to be serious but was hanging on the edge of a laugh. She winked at me.

  Then she opened it.

  “Happy New Year,” Matthew said. He’d just awakened and realized it was a new year. His hair tousled, his eyes sleepy, he squinted up at her.

  “Happy New Year, sweetie.” She put his arms around her neck and carried him back to bed.

  “Happy New Year!” I called from the bed.

  When Ellie returned, I stared at her in amazement. “You’re brilliant,” I whispered.

  “It’s every parent’s little secret,” she said, kissing me over and over. “We don’t have to stop.” She breathed in my ear, and my whole body tingled.

  I didn’t expect this. So many nights we’d end up watching some Nightline special like “Is the Fruit You Eat Killing You?” Then we’d fall asleep.

  But tonight was different. And when we managed to steal some time together, everything made sense.