by Joan Bauer
The phone calls started Thursday night, three A.M.
Dad was at a bar—drunk, sappy. “Now, Jenna girl, I want you to say a big hello to Sueann, the woman who’s changed my life.”
Friday night, two-thirty.
“Now, Jenna girl, you got to understand that your mother makes it hard for me to come around. It’s not that I don’t want to.”
Saturday afternoon, 5:17.
“Now, Jenna girl, I’m coming over and we’re going to have a talk like we used to and I’m going to bring a pizza and we’re going to catch up.”
“No, Dad.”
He didn’t like that so I lied and told him I was sick and had to get some sleep and maybe we could get together when I was feeling better.
“Dad,” I said quietly, “are you all right?”
Never better, he said, and over the receiver I heard the sound of shattering glass.
Beer bottle, he explained.
After that, I stopped answering the phone.
“Did he ask about me?” Faith kept asking.
Mom was storming around, saying how Dad would push himself on us for a month or so every few years to make up for all the years he wasn’t around. She confronted him the next time he called. He asked for me; she wouldn’t put me on. He blew up, saying no one gave him a chance. He’s coming over to talk to his daughter!
Not when you’re drunk, Mom shouted back. And, by the way, you have two daughters, and let’s not forget you haven’t sent a child support payment in months!
I came into the kitchen as she slammed down the phone. She was steeling herself like she did at the hospital when a tough case came in.
Mom, please let me go.
“I need to get out of here,” I said. “I need to go to Texas.”
Mom leaned against the wall, studied my face.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Okay.”
CHAPTER 6
I had two days to pack, which was close to impossible since no one could tell me what to bring for six weeks on the road with a fussy rich person. There was so much to do, but packing wasn’t as important as seeing my grandmother.
I walked into her room at the Shady Oaks Nursing Home. She was sitting in a green vinyl chair looking out the window at nothing in particular, holding her old sewing kit in her lap that Mom brought from her shop. One side of her hair was matted like she’d been sleeping on it. She was wearing the pink sweater I gave her two Christmases ago. She never went anywhere without that sweater.
I held out the bunch of daisies I’d brought her. She smiled at the flowers. She used to have a field of them behind her house in Wisconsin; we’d pick them fresh every day when I visited. Before she got Alzheimer’s, her eyes had been a crackling blue. Now they were like looking into muddy water.
“I’m going on an adventure, Grandma. I’m driving to Texas.”
“Texas.” She said the word like it was a person she was trying to remember.
“I’m going to eat barbecue and learn the two-step and wear a cowboy hat and touch an oil rig.”
“Oh,” said Gladys, her roommate, “I been to Texas. Never seen such a place—sky so big, land so wide. You tell Texas hello for old Gladys.”
“I will. I’ll bring you back a piece of the sky.”
Gladys laughed and jiggled the plastic blue bracelets I gave her at Christmas.
“Texas,” my grandmother said flatly, but she took my hand when she said it. I sat there with her for the longest time not saying anything. I opened the quilted top of her sewing kit that had been the beginning of so many projects. Grandma touched the antique thimbles, the threads in every color, the fine scissors from France.
“Do you remember that rainbow skirt you made for me, Grandma? It had eight different fabrics, each a different color. It was my favorite thing to wear.”
I took her big scrapbook out of her dresser drawer. When she knew the disease was coming, Grandma started stockpiling memories the way people collect canned goods and batteries when a bad storm is coming. She and I went through all her pictures, got them in books. She said memories were so precious, she wasn’t going to let some infernal disorder take them from her. I opened the scrapbook to a photo of me at ten in the rainbow skirt, twirling in the park, the skirt flowing out, catching the wind.
I pointed to the photo. “That’s the one, Grandma. You used your sewing kit to make it. It was the best skirt in the world. All my friends were jealous.”
She studied the picture and held her sewing kit tight.
I walked to her memory board and put up a picture of myself with a sign I made that read, “Jenna’s gone to Texas. She’ll see you when she gets back.”
“When I come back we’re going to have that picnic,” I promised. I put the daisies in water and kept one out. I put it in her hand. “I remember how we used to pick daisies, Grandma, at your house, and Faith tried to eat them once when she was small. I loved going to your house.”
She squeezed the daisy tight like it held all her memories.
“Okay, Faith, you’re sure you know how to take the bus up to see Grandma?”
Faith was sitting on the one corner of my bed that didn’t have luggage on it. We’d been through the directions three times. She nodded. I handed her a supply of bus tokens.
“You’ve got to see her every week and go through her scrapbooks with her and put things up on her memory board and tell her about the times you remember.” I handed her a container of thumbtacks. Faith took them, unsure.
“I just feel so weird in that nursing home, Jenna. I never know what to say and I can’t wait till I leave.”
“I know. I’ll tell you my secret. I remember that Grandma can’t help it. I remember how she never left us. And I tell myself that for one hour a week, I can be strong for her.”
“I’ll try.”
“I know you will.” I didn’t say you’d better, even though I was thinking it. “And if Dad comes around, what do you do?”
Faith gulped hard. “If I think he’s drunk, I tell him I can’t see him now.”
“And?”
She bit her lip. “I tell myself he’s got a disease and it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
I handed her a pamphlet: Is someone you love an alcoholic?
Faith took it and curled up in the patchwork quilt Grandma made me. I folded my yellow bathrobe carefully. Too much was swirling in my mind.
How would Faith and Mom manage without me?
Would Dad come around drunk?
Would Grandma be all right?
And what about Mrs. Gladstone and me in that car for six whole weeks?
I wondered if I was about to make the biggest mistake of my promising young life.
CHAPTER 7
“Well,” Mom said, trying to be tough. We were standing at Mrs. Gladstone’s front door, having been through the goodbyes already. Mom cried a little at the house. Faith got hostile because I didn’t have time to do the dishes. She got over it, though. We gave each other a suffocating, rib-busting Boller good-bye hug. Opal called and said I could phone her anytime day or night and she promised not to say I told you so. I rammed the lion door knocker as thunder sounded in the distance—a warning sign from God.
Maria opened the door, grinning. She was going to have the house to herself for six weeks. Mrs. Gladstone stood in the hall, wearing a trench coat and a hat with a feather; she was leaning on a cane. I’d never seen her with a cane before. It was probably to whack me on the head if I did something wrong. She walked slower than usual to Mom and handed her an itinerary of our trip with phone numbers and addresses.
I put my suitcases in the hall and told Mom she should probably go. “I’m not going to camp,” I whispered. “I’m being paid. It’s a grown-up thing.”
Mom nodded and left, her shoulders shaking. Thunder clapped as we walked to the garage.
Mrs. Gladstone stood regally by the car door and rapped her cane on the floor. “And now, young woman, how much experience have you had driving i
n storms?”
“Not much, ma’am.” I opened the back door for her and watched her get in; her face looked pained when she sat down. “Unless you’re talking metaphorically,” I added, “and then I’m a total ace.”
I gripped the wheel and stared through the wipers that were whizzing full blast against the heavy rain. The Chicago wind picked up a garbage can lid and hurled it over the Cadillac. I turned left, keeping an eye out for arks, and headed toward Lake Shore Drive, slowly. In Driver’s Ed we spent an entire period on hydroplaning (what happens when you drive too fast in the rain)—water sticks to the tires, the tires ride up on the water, you have no control of the car. It basically means you’re doomed. I drove fifteen miles an hour in a thirty-five mph zone, which the truck driver behind me didn’t appreciate. Some people have a built-in prejudice against teenage drivers.
I looked at Mrs. Gladstone through the rearview mirror. She took a blue pillow out of her big purse and tried to place it under her right hip. She looked up, caught me staring.
“Eyes on the road,” she barked.
I drove—past Oak Street Beach, Navy Pier, Grant Park, Soldier Field. I stared straight ahead at the Stevenson Expressway sign, just visible through the downpour. I could hear Mrs. Gladstone moving around, trying to get her leg pillow in place.
“Are you okay, Mrs. Gladstone?”
“I am.”
“Did you hurt your leg?”
“This leg will make it to Texas,” she declared and rapped her cane against the door.
That was good. You hate to leave things like legs by the side of the road. I pulled onto the expressway ramp, signaling to all approaching vehicles that I was attempting to merge in a monsoon. I prayed, gripped the wheel, pushed my right foot on the accelerator, and steered the Cadillac between an old school bus and a stationwagon.
I watched the Chicago skyline move away from me, caught the last of it in the rearview mirror. I had so many plans for this summer and now everything had changed. I waved goodbye to Gladstone’s and Murray and all my regulars who would have to be fitted without me. Said good riddance to the dirty gray hallways of John F. Kennedy High, my so-so performance on the basketball team, the awful memory of Dad reeling drunk in Gladstone’s, the drunken late-night calls. My heart tugged at the thought of my grandmother in her green chair; my mother being brave; Faith trying to be strong; Opal needing to talk about things. I had a quick flash of Matt Wicks and wondered what it would have been like if he’d just noticed me once. My stomach rumbled at the loss of thick-crust Chicago pizza and Polish sausage with grilled onions.
I thought of all the places I was going where I had never been and wondered how I would manage.
But when you sell shoes, you learn first-hand about flexibility.
I embraced my motto, Cope or Die, breathed deeply, and headed for Peoria.
We made it to Peoria in southern Illinois in four hours flat due to the torrential downpour and the road construction on I 91 that kept traffic to one lane even though the construction crew had given up long ago and gone home.
I was getting pretty good at driving in the rain and so far Mrs. Gladstone had slept in the back, having taken two yellow pills. She did snore, unfortunately—loud, snuffling, Texas-sized snorts. My grandma always said that people who snored were sleeping with enthusiasm. I tried to remember this, but there’s just so much enthusiasm a person can handle in close quarters.
Mrs. Gladstone and I had lunch in a diner overlooking the Illinois River, which was about to reach flood stage. Any moment now people would begin hurling sand bags along the banks. Mrs. Gladstone pushed aside her meatloaf Wellington lunch special.
“I suppose I should call Miles and let him know we’re coming.”
She was referring to Miles Wurlitzer, manager of the Gladstone’s Shoe Store in Peoria.
“It’s better to give employees short notice,” Mrs. Gladstone said, pulling her cellular phone out of her canvas bag. “Gives you a better sense of what’s really happening at the store.”
Mrs. Gladstone pressed phone buttons. “Miles, dear, it’s Madeline Gladstone. Surprise. I’m just down the road.”
I pictured the poor man slumped in horror.
Mrs. Gladstone slapped her phone shut and watched the river, looking sad.
I thought about what it had to be like to be retiring from her business after all these years. My mother always said the best way to get to know someone was to walk around in their shoes. I didn’t think my 91⁄2S could squeeze into her size 6s, but I gave it a go.
“I bet this is a pretty complicated trip for you, Mrs. Gladstone, with you retiring and all.”
She sucked in air and stared out the window.
“I heard when my grandfather retired from the meat department at Grossinger’s, he missed it pretty bad, just spent hours opening and closing the refrigerator at home because he was so used to working in the cold slicing up all that beef.”
Nothing.
“Well, I think like anything, Mrs. Gladstone, it’s going to take some getting used to, but like my grandma always said, change is good for you. It might not seem that way in the beginning, but if you stay with it, you’ll see. My grandma knew about change, too, because she owned a tailor shop. She said all she needed was for people to gain weight or lose it, or for hemlines to shoot up or down—it didn’t matter to her.”
I told her how Grandma had been widowed three times. How when her third husband, Lars, died, she said if I saw her heading for the altar again I’d better scream bloody murder until she turned around.
“After that she just dated,” I explained.
“Your grandmother sounds like a piece of work.”
“She was that, Mrs. Gladstone. You could stick my grandma in a room full of men and in thirty minutes tops she’d find the richest one in the place.”
Mrs. Gladstone made a little noise close to laughing. “Is this a gift that runs in your family?”
“No, ma’am. We don’t hang with rich people much.”
Oops. I tried to save myself.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with rich people. I mean, personally, I like rich people.”
I needed to change the subject.
“And what do you like about them?”
Jeeze. My mind reached for something.
“Well, I like you, Mrs. Gladstone, and let’s face it, you’re not hurting. I mean, you could have had any driver money could buy probably, but you decided to give me a chance and all this responsibility, not to mention a good salary and . . .” I trailed off here.
Mrs. Gladstone leaned forward, chuckling. “Jenna, in Texas we say there’s rich and there’s Texas rich. Just so you know, I’m somewhere in between.”
Miles Wurlitzer was buzzing around the cash register with a dust cloth and very wild eyes. He hid the cloth behind his back when Mrs. Gladstone walked through the glass door.
“Mrs. Gladstone,” he croaked out, “what a wonderful surprise.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Mrs. Gladstone looked quickly in every corner, her gray eyes missed nothing. “Just exactly how are things in Peoria?” she asked.
Miles wiped his moist brow with the dust cloth. “Just great, Mrs. Gladstone. Really great.”
I looked around the store, too. Only one customer. One customer on Saturday afternoon during peak shopping time after a rain storm. Not too great in my book. A thin salesman put a black pump on a woman, who made a face.
“Much too tight,” she said, taking them off. Then she gathered her shopping bags and left. I wondered why the salesman hadn’t shown her something else. Any true shoe professional could see that woman was on a mission for black pumps and she wasn’t going to rest until she found the right ones. You’ve got to stay with a customer, even if they go through ten pairs. He just shrugged and watched her go. I sniffed the air. Something about this store didn’t feel right. A rich-looking older woman walked in. He sighed, shuffled to her side.
“Need some help, ma�
�am?”
Now, true, I wasn’t looking for shoes, but this guy didn’t know that. Mrs. Gladstone hadn’t introduced me to anyone. I, a potential customer, was getting ignored and I knew why.
I was a teenager.
“Excuse me,” I said to the salesman, “I’d like to see these loafers in a nine and a half wide.”
“I’ll be with you in a minute, miss.” He returned to the older woman.
I stood extra tall, looked down at the thin salesman, and announced, “I believe I was here first.”
Mrs. Gladstone planted her cane, watching.
Miles bit the end of the dust cloth.
The older woman smiled at me and said, “Yes, she was here first.”
This was too much for the thin salesman who got maroon and flustered and knocked over half the Nike display which was near the back by the purses, a really dumb place, since anyone who knows anything about selling shoes knows the Nike display goes up front in any store because Nikes bring customers inside. And the purses by the Nikes weren’t the nice, thick leather kind that we had in the Chicago store either. I checked the inside of one. Cowhide, the label read. I felt the grade. Not much of a cow.
The salesman scurried out with a shoe box, quickly put the loafers on my feet. I took two steps.
“They’re tight,” I said, feeling the cheap heels.
“They’ll break in,” he said, eyeing the older customer.
I told him no, I didn’t think so, not today, put my stacked leathers back on, and studied the Nike display that Miles was putting back together like he was a game show contestant and had sixty seconds to get it right or be rolled in glop. I picked up a pair of Nike cross-trainers. “Can I use these effectively for running?” I asked.