The Lovely Shoes

by Susan Shreve

  “So now you’re going to get a million pairs of shoes like Mama?”

  “Not like Mama. But I’ll get new shoes.”

  He went over to the counter and opened the cookie jar, taking out two chocolate chips.

  “Want one?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Did you know that Mrs. Clifford died when you were in Italy?” Zeke asked.

  “No one told me,” Franny said, and although she didn’t know Mrs. Clifford well or even like her, she had a sudden weakness in her stomach that comes with bad news.

  “She died at her house and John Boy in my class got to see her carried out dead because he lives across the street.”

  He broke his cookie in several pieces, eating only the chocolate chips.

  “They carried her out of the house on a stretcher,” Zeke said, happy with his story. “John Boy told us about it in Show-and-Tell yesterday.”

  Franny took a handful of Cheerios out of the box.

  “But it isn’t so bad because I never liked Mrs. Clifford anyway. She used to yell at me when I rode my bike down Main Street because I was on the sidewalk on her side of the street, but Daddy says we can’t speak ill of the dead so I’m not allowed to tell people that.”

  “It’s strange to think of her dead when I saw her on the bus just a couple of months ago.”

  “I saw her too on Saturday when I was playing at John Boy’s and she was in her front yard picking up the paper but I didn’t say hi and I feel bad about that.”

  He leaned into Franny’s shoulder.

  “What else has happened?” she asked.

  “Aunt Estelle called from New York and Dad made me talk to her because he doesn’t like to talk on the telephone.” He pushed away the milky cereal that Franny had poured into a bowl. “I got to eat whatever I wanted while you were away. One night Daddy let me have potato chips and grape soda for dinner.”

  “Disgusting,” Franny said. “Have you seen Eleanor or Boots?”

  “Only Boots at the drugstore having a fight with her father, but I know that Mikey Houston broke up with Eleanor because Aunt Gabbie and Uncle Tom came over for dinner and they told Daddy about it and said that Eleanor is feeling terrible but they’re not sorry because Mikey’s family is poor.”

  “Poor is okay. I like Mikey’s family.”

  “Also I didn’t tell you, I got the stomach flu and Daddy was so busy with other people’s kids that I just had to lie in bed and throw up by myself.”

  “I’m sure Daddy didn’t leave you by yourself with the stomach flu,” Franny said, ruffling Zeke’s hair.

  “He did,” Zeke said. “At least he left to go to the hospital when Rufus Jones got hit in the eye with a baseball and that’s when I threw up.”

  “Well, you’re fine now, Zekey,” Franny said and got up from the table, put her cereal bowl in the sink, and dumped the cereal she’d made for Zeke back in the box. It was time for school and she hadn’t even dressed.

  Upstairs, her mother’s high heels tap, tapped across the hall.

  “Did you know Mrs. Clifford died?” Franny asked, meeting her on her way downstairs.

  “I did,” her mother said.

  “Didn’t it seem strange that she died while we were away?”

  “Mrs. Clifford was an old lady. An old, unpleasant lady.”

  “I have this crazy feeling that she might not have died if I’d been here.”

  “That is a crazy feeling, darling, and I don’t think you could have kept her alive,” Margaret Hall said and she was smiling, a conspiratorial smile.

  In her bedroom, Franny shut the door, took clothes for school out of her closet, and sat on the end of the bed.

  She pulled on her slacks, a brown turtleneck, socks, and her orthopedic shoes, brushed her hair, and went to her parents’ room to borrow makeup. She needed to look more dramatic, she thought, opening the black mascara. After all, she’d been to Italy.

  She brushed her hair back in a ponytail, changed to a yellow Peter Pan blouse and put the collar up, a sassy look, she thought. At the last minute, she spread lipstick across her lips so they looked shiny but not too red.

  “I have written Signor Ferragamo,” she said to her mother, heading downstairs. “If you could address the letter.”

  “What did you order?” Margaret Hall asked, on the phone with Estelle, her hand across the receiver.

  “Not penny loafers,” Franny called, grabbing her book bag.

  Boots met her unexpectedly at Main and Oliphant, and they walked the rest of the way to school together.

  “You’re wearing makeup!”

  “I am,” Franny said. “Cranberry Ice is the name.”

  “I’m not allowed. Ever, my mother says, until I get married,” Boots said. “So I guess you heard Mikey broke up with Eleanor.”

  “Zeke told me.”

  “He said he was tired of her. Can you believe that?”

  “I can. Boys can be very mean.”

  “And Mrs. Clifford died.” Boots slung her book bag over her shoulder.

  “Zeke told me that too. It was the high point of his week.”

  “Heart failure is what my mother said. She was eighty-four and boom, she’s dead.” “Eighty-four is pretty old.”

  They pushed open the heavy doors of the high school and headed to the lockers.

  “I’m trying out for cheerleader today. You are too, right?”

  “I’m not,” Franny said, opening her locker, hanging up her jacket.

  “You’re not? Every girl in the ninth grade is trying out,” Boots said. “Honestly, Franny, it won’t make any difference about your feet if that’s what you’re worried about. You’ll probably get elected to the squad without a problem.”

  “I’m actually not worried about my feet.”

  She took the books for English and social studies out of her book bag and closed the locker.

  “Before I left for Italy I thought I wanted to be a cheerleader and now I just don’t think I do.”

  They walked together to English class and took their seats in the back of the room.

  “Did you have a good time in Italy?”

  “I did,” Franny said. “Very nice.”

  But she was not ready to talk about it with Boots. It was her own private story and she didn’t know how to begin.

  She opened her English notebook and wrote at the top of the page.

  Dear Filippo, I’m sitting in English literature class with all of my friends from before I came to Italy and met you — Boots and also my cousin Eleanor and her old boyfriend who was also my crush (crush is a boy you dream about but don’t have for your very own), Mikey Houston, and all of the other freshmen at Easterbrook High School, and I feel as if I’m wearing one of those veils the Italian women wear to church so that what I see through my veil is washed and blurry.

  Nothing here seems real. Not high school and not these friends and their problems with boyfriends or cheerleading or their constant jealousies.

  I could move to Italy. I’d need to think of what to do about my mother and my little brother, Zeke. My father couldn’t join us because he’s a doctor and needed here in Easterbrook but he could Visit.

  What would you advise?

  Yours sincerely, Francine

  She crossed out Yours sincerely and wrote Yours truly which didn’t seem exactly right either. So she crossed out Yours truly and wrote Love.

  “So I guess you heard about Mikey,” Eleanor said, catching up with Franny after class.

  “I did.”

  “Just like Easterbrook. Everybody in the whole town knows so I walk around as if I’ve got DUMPED hanging around my neck.”

  “I’m very sorry, Eleanor.”

  “At least I don’t like him any longer, not even his dimples which I used to love. Now when I look at him, I only see pimples.”

  Boots was in the cafeteria talking to Mikey when Franny walked in.

  “I’m not sitting anywhere near them,” Eleanor said, getting into the c
afeteria line. “I hate them all, everyone in the whole high school.”

  “So did you get to see the Pope?” Mikey asked.

  “He was too busy,” Franny said, putting her tray down at the table where Boots was sitting next to Sally Ann Fergusen.

  “Well, a lot went on while you were gone. I guess you heard from Eleanor.”

  “I heard.”

  “Did you hear that my sister got together with a new boy from Cleveland? And Boots’s mom is going to let her get a new dress for the spring dance. Big deal, yeah? No more Catholic virgin outfits at the proms.”

  “True story,” Boots said. “We’re going to Cleveland on Saturday, me and my sisters and my mom.”

  “And also,” Mikey went on, “Mr. Garland in history was fired because the principal found him drunk in his car in the high school parking lot on a school day, so he’s moved to Akron to live with his mom.”

  “I saw your picture in this morning’s paper,” Franny said.

  “Yeah. My third time in the paper in a week.”

  “He was elected co-captain. Pretty amazing for a freshman,” Boots said.

  “Are you trying out for cheerleading?” Sally Ann Fergusen asked the group, passing around her plate of french fries.

  “Who isn’t?” Mikey asked.

  “Franny says she’s not,” Boots said.

  “Honest to God, you’re not?” Sally Ann asked. “How come?”

  “I decided against it,” Franny said, catching a familiar exchange of we know why pass between Sally Ann and Boots.

  “The only reason I would have tried out is because it’s the thing to do in ninth grade,” Franny said, taking a french fry from Sally Ann’s plate. “I wouldn’t exactly be a very good cheerleader.”

  On her way home after school, Franny caught up with Eleanor headed to the soda shop.

  “I don’t know what to do about the spring dance because of Mikey,” Eleanor said.

  “Just go like you used to do before Mikey.”

  “Are you going?”

  “I honestly don’t know how I feel about the dance,” Franny said. “Even if the new shoes I get are perfect, I may not want to go.”

  “Me neither,” Eleanor said, “and I don’t even need to worry about shoes.”

  Ahead on Scioto Street, Zeke was dragging his book bag, walking alone.

  “I’m glad you’re back in America,” he said when she had caught up with him.

  “I’m glad to see you,” Franny said.

  “Well, another thing I didn’t tell you happened while you were away is Joey Ferris beat me up on the playground. He squished my face into the dirt so I could hardly breathe.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “On last Thursday while you were gone,” Zeke said. “I didn’t like it that you guys were in Italy. It would have taken you days to get back if I’d been really hurt.”

  “I’m hugely sorry, Zeke.”

  She reached down and took his hand.

  “Daddy’s a little mean to me when Mama’s not here,” he said, leaning against her arm.

  On the front porch, Margaret Hall in blue jeans and a sweater was reading the paper, her feet up on the railing.

  “So how was your day?” she asked.

  “Mine was terrible,” Zeke said. “Joey Ferris beat me up on the playground and pushed my face in the dirt.”

  “Zeke,” Franny said. “I thought that happened on Thursday while we were gone.”

  “But you guys weren’t here so it feels like it happened again,” Zeke said, picking up Pickle.

  “I’ve already called Joey Ferris’s mom, and she felt terrible about it and Joey is going to be punished. Hours of punishment. He’ll probably have to stay in his room for a week,” Margaret said.

  “Good,” Zeke said.

  “I told her what Joey did was unacceptable.”

  “Unacceptable is right,” Zeke said, carrying Pickle in the house.

  Franny sat down on a wicker chair next to her mother.

  “What about you?” Margaret asked.

  “It was fine. Normal,” Franny said. “Nothing’s changed since we’ve been gone. All the conversations were the same ones we had before I left.”

  “This is a very small town, darling.”

  “I guess it is.”

  “Did you tell everyone about Italy?” Franny put her feet up on the railing next to her mother’s.

  “I had thought I would tell them. I even had conversations in my head about what I would say, but when I got to school, I wanted to keep Florence to myself,” Franny said. “It felt as if what happened belonged to me and no one would exactly understand.”

  It had started to rain, a soft early April rain, wind blowing across the porch, misting their faces with cool water.

  THE LOVELY SHOES

  The shoes arrived by ship from Italy in the middle of May, a week before the spring dance. They were on the front porch on a Friday afternoon when Franny got home with Boots, who had made the cheerleading squad, announced that afternoon.

  Franny saw the package as they walked up the front steps and she knew what it was, but she didn’t want Boots to be there when she opened the shoes for the first time, so she left them where they were by the door.

  The mail was on the table in the front hall — she checked it first thing every afternoon. There were bills for her parents, a letter from Aunt Estelle, an invitation, probably to Sally Ann’s birthday party, and a postcard from Zeke’s friend Peter in Cleveland. Nothing from Filippo. It was the eighteenth of May. She had been back in Easterbrook for almost a month and still she had not heard from Filippo.

  She had written him more than thirty letters, which she kept in a box in the second drawer of her desk, writing every night before she turned out the light. She kept the bracelet he had given her in the same drawer with the letters, telling herself she’d wear it when he wrote. Then she’d wear it if he wrote. Pretty soon she would wear it whether he wrote or not.

  But only one letter, the first one she had written, had been sent. It was a formal letter thanking Filippo for the afternoon they spent together and giving him her home address.

  “So I’m glad Sally Ann Fergusen made the squad,” Boots was saying, “although I thought Amanda would be elected and Ellen Cross, but I’m really surprised about Eleanor because she’s so pudgy. You know what I mean? She doesn’t exactly look like a cheerleader.”

  “She’s cute. Cheerleaders are supposed to be cute,” Franny said, pouring milk, searching in the cookie jar for chocolate chips among the lemon cookies.

  “And what did you think about Meg Austin? I thought she’d make it and then she didn’t and she was crying her eyes out in the girls’ room. I said I was sorry and she couldn’t even talk.” Boots flopped down on a kitchen chair. “So you must be glad you didn’t try out since it’s awful if you don’t make it.”

  Franny put an Elvis LP on the record player, turning the volume low since her mother was upstairs working on a drawing of the brain for a neurological journal.

  “It’s so crazy, Franny,” Boots said, wiggling to Elvis while she talked. “We’ve been best friends since third grade and you’re still my best friend, but ever since we started high school, I can’t tell what matters to you. Like being a cheerleader. I know you wanted to be a cheerleader earlier this year — and then POOF, it didn’t matter.”

  “That’s true. I changed my mind.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know,” Franny said, lifting Pickle onto her lap.

  Ever since she had come back from Italy, she’d felt a kind of ease come over her as if finally she fit in her own body.

  “But I’m glad for you and Eleanor and Sally Ann.”

  “Really?” Boots asked, incredulous.

  “Really,” Franny said. And it was true.

  When Margaret Hall came downstairs, Boots was bubbling over with conversation about the squad and how she had to buy new shoes and pay for the sweater and maybe her mother woul
d be willing to sew the big red E on the front of the sweater.

  “So the cheerleading squad’s been announced?” Margaret asked.

  “Boots made it,” Franny said. “And Eleanor and Sally Ann.”

  “That’s wonderful.” Margaret filled the teapot with tap water. “Who else?”

  Boots rattled off the names.

  “Only Franny didn’t try out,” she said.

  Margaret made a cup of tea and sat down at the table as Boots was putting on her coat to leave.

  “She told me she wasn’t going to,” Franny’s mother said.

  “I’m going to Cleveland tomorrow to get a new dress,” Boots said. “Do you have one for the dance?”

  “I got a periwinkle dress when we went shopping for the Valentine’s Dance,” Franny said.

  “So you’ll go to the spring dance?”

  “Maybe,” Franny said, following Boots to the front door. “Probably.”

  After Boots left, she picked up the package from Ferragamo’s on the front porch and went back into the kitchen.

  “A letter came to you today from Italy,” Margaret Hall said. “I saw the thin paper and the Italian stamp and thought it was from Signor Ferragamo for me.”

  She reached into the pocket of her trousers and handed Franny a slim blue envelope.

  “Filippo,” Franny said.

  “Filippo, yes.”

  Franny took the letter and put it in her backpack, her heart beating in her throat.

  “I’d almost given up on him,” she said. “It’s been a month.”

  “Aren’t you going to read it?”

  “Not now,” she said. “Not yet. My shoes came.”

  She put the box on the kitchen table.

  “I didn’t even notice,” Margaret said. “Open it up.”

  Franny heard her father’s footsteps coming across the front porch and he opened the front door, coming into the kitchen, kissing Franny on the top of her head as he used to do when he came home from the hospital but had not done since the summer.

  “Your shoes!” he said. “This is very exciting.”

  Franny got a knife out of the drawer and slit the box open along the line of packing tape.

  “I don’t know if you’ll like the shoes I chose, Daddy,” she said. “A lot of the Italian girls my age are wearing them. I saw a picture in one of Mama’s fashion magazines.”