Rose shrugged at him, and slumped in her seat. How many law firms had pep rallies, anyhow? she thought. How many associates had received custom-made skateboards with the words “DOMMEL LAW” painted on the top, instead of the customary cash, for their holiday bonuses last year? How many managing partners delivered weekly speeches couched almost exclusively in sports metaphors, followed by an overamplified rendition of “I Believe I Can Fly”? How many law firms had theme music at all? Not many, Rose thought sourly.
“Is an Ollie a person or a thing?” Simon Something persisted. Rose gave another shrug, hoping, as she did each week, that Dommel’s Xtreme gaze wouldn’t fall on her. Don Dommel had always been a jock, Rose knew. He’d jogged through the seventies, felt the burn during the eighties, even finished a few triathalons before plunging headlong into the brave new world of extreme sports and taking his law firm along with him. At some point past his fiftieth birthday he’d decided that conventional exercise, no matter how strenuous, just wasn’t enough. Don Dommel didn’t just want to be fit, he wanted to be edgy and hip, radical and cool. Don Dommel wanted to be a fifty-three-year-old lawyer on a skateboard. Don Dommel, apparently, saw no contradiction between those two things.
He bought two specially-made skateboards and found a semi-homeless kid who seemed to live in Love Park to coach him (technically, the kid worked in the mail room, but nobody’d ever seen so much as the tip of his dreadlocks down there). He constructed a wooden ramp inside of the law firm’s parking garage, spent every lunch hour on it, even after he’d broken his wrist, bruised his tail-bone, and developed a limp that had him lurching through the firm’s halls like an imperfectly rehearsed drag queen.
And it wasn’t enough that he himself wanted to become an urban warrior. Don Dommel had to extend his vision to the entirety of the firm. One Friday, Rose had come into work and found a nylon jersey shoved into her mail slot, with her last name on the back above the words I Can Fly! “Please,” Rose had said to her secretary. “I can barely walk before I’ve had my coffee.” But the jerseys weren’t optional. A firm-wide e-mail said that all associates should wear them every Friday. The week after that, once she’d reluctantly tugged the jersey over her shoulders, Rose had put her mug under the coffee dispenser only to find that it, plus all of the firm’s water-coolers and soda machines, were dispensing only Gatorade. Which, the last time Rose had checked, wasn’t caffeinated. Which meant it was going to do her no good at all.
So now she sat miserably in a seat in the center of the third row with her fly jersey pulled over her suit jacket, sipping warm sports beverage and wishing desperately that she had coffee. “This is getting ridiculous,” she murmured to herself, as Dommel once again dispensed with the afternoon’s advertised topic (“Effective Depositions,” Rose remembered) in favor of a video of Tony Hawk highlights.
“Psst,” said Simon, out of the corner of his mouth, as Dommel tore into a cringing first-year. (“YOU! DO YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN SOAR?”)
Rose glanced at him. “Psst? Did you actually just say ‘psst’? Are we in a detective novel?”
Simon raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated sneaky manner and opened a brown paper bag. Rose’s nose twitched at the scent of coffee. Her mouth watered. “Want some?” he whispered.
She hesitated, looked around, considered the breaches of etiquette involved in sipping someone else’s coffee, then decided that if she didn’t get some caffeine, she’d be a jittery, worthless mess for the rest of the day. She ducked her head and gulped.
“Thanks,” she whispered. He nodded, just as Don Dommel’s white-hot gaze fell upon him.
“YOU!” roared Dommel. “WHAT’S YOUR DREAM?”
“To be six foot ten,” Simon answered without hesitation. A ripple of laughter started in the back of the room. “And to play for the Sixers.” The laughter swelled. Don Dommel stood on the stage looking bewildered, as if his audience of loyal associates had suddenly turned into donkeys. “Maybe not as a center. I’d be happy to play guard,” Simon continued. “But if that’s not going to happen . . .” He paused, and looked up at Don Dommel. “I’d settle for being a good lawyer.”
Rose giggled. Don Dommel opened his mouth, then shut it, then lurched across the stage. “THAT!” he finally announced, “THAT is the SPIRIT I’m looking for. I want EACH and EVERY ONE OF YOU to go BACK and THINK about that kind of WINNING ATTITUDE!” Dommel concluded. Rose had pulled her jersey off over her suit jacket and wadded it into her purse before his mouth was shut.
“Here,” Simon said, offering her his cup of coffee. “I’ve got more in my office, if you want this one.”
“Oh, thanks,” Rose said, taking the cup, still scanning the sea of departing bodies for Jim’s. She caught up with him by the receptionist’s desk.
“What in God’s name was that about?” she asked.
“Why don’t you come into my office, and we can discuss it,” he said, for the benefit of anyone within earshot, smiling a wicked smile, for her benefit alone. He closed the door and whirled her into his arms.
“Umm, do I detect dark roast?” he asked, kissing her.
“Don’t rat me out,” said Rose, kissing him back.
“Never,” he growled, lifting her hips (Oh, God, thought Rose, don’t let him hurt himself!) and settling her on his desk. “Your secrets,” he said, kissing her neck, “are safe,” and now his lips were sliding down her cleavage and his hands were busy with her buttons, “with me.”
FOUR
At eleven o’clock the following Monday morning, Maggie Feller opened her eyes and stretched her arms over her head. Rose was gone. Maggie walked to the bathroom, where she drank thirty-two ounces of water and continued with her in-depth examination of her habitat, starting with the medicine cabinet, where the shelves were so well-stocked it seemed as if her sister expected a dire medical emergency to befall Philadelphia, and that she alone would be called upon to play Florence Nightingale to the city’s entire population.
There were bottles of painkillers, boxes of antacids, a jumbo-sized jug of Pepto-Bismol, a family-sized box of Band-Aid bandages, and a Red Cross–approved first-aid kit. There was Midol and Advil and Nuprin, NyQuil and DayQuil, cough syrup and cold tablets and tampons. Here was a girl who made good use of the coupons at CVS, Maggie thought, as she sorted through Ace bandages and multivitamins, calcium tablets and dental floss, rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide, prescription-strength benzoyl peroxide and four unopened toothbrushes. Where was the eyeliner? Where were the blush and the concealer that her sister so desperately needed? Maggie hadn’t found anything cosmetic except for a single half-used lipstick. There was makeup remover—a tub of Pond’s cold cream—but no makeup. What did Rose think? That somebody was going to sneak into her apartment in the dead of night, tie her up, put makeup on her face, and then leave?
Plus, there wasn’t so much as a single condom or tube of spermicide, although there was an unopened package of Monistat—so just in case her celibate sister somehow managed to get a yeast infection from a toilet seat or something, she’d be ready. It was probably on sale, Maggie snorted, helping herself to a bottle of Midol.
The bathroom was also minus a scale. Which wasn’t a surprise, given Rose’s history with bathroom scales. When they were teenagers, Sydelle had taped a laminated chart on the girls’ bathroom wall. Each Saturday morning, Rose would stand on the scale, her eyes shut and her face impassive, as Sydelle recorded the number and then sat on the toilet seat, quizzing Rose about what she’d eaten during the week. Even now, Maggie could hear her step-mother’s too-sweet voice. You had a salad? Well, what kind of dressing was on it? Was it fat free? Are you sure? Rose, I’m only doing this to help you. I’ve got your best interests at heart.
Yeah, right, Maggie thought. As if Sydelle was ever interested in anyone but herself, and her own daughter. In the bedroom, Maggie pulled on a pair of her sister’s sweatpants and continued her inventory, gathering what she called Information.
“You’re a very smart girl,�
�� her old teacher Mrs. Fried used to tell her, back in elementary school. Mrs. Fried, with her gray curls and impressive shelf of a bosom, with her beaded eyeglass chain and knitted sweater vests, had taught Maggie what was euphemistically called “enrichment” (and what was known to the students as “special ed”) from second grade through sixth. She was a kind, grandmotherly woman who’d become Maggie’s ally, especially during her first months in a new school, in a new state. “Part of what makes you so smart is that you can always think of another way to get the job done. So if you don’t know what a word means, what do you do?”
“Guess?” guessed Maggie.
Mrs. Fried smiled. “Figure it out through context, is how I’d put it. It’s all about finding solutions. Solutions that work for you.” Maggie had nodded, feeling pleased and flattered, which were not normally ways she felt during class. “So imagine you are on your way to the Vet, for a concert, but there’s a big traffic jam. Would you go home? Skip the concert? No,” Mrs. Fried had said, before Maggie’d had a chance to ask her who was playing at this theoretical concert so she could figure out how much effort it was worth. “You’d just find another way to get there. And you’re smart enough to do it really well.” In addition to figuring out a word’s meaning from context, Mrs. Fried’s alternative strategies taught Maggie to add numbers if she couldn’t multiply them, to chart out a paragraph’s meaning, circling the subject, underlining the verbs. In the years since school, Maggie had come up with a few new strategies of her own, like Information, which could be defined as knowing things about people that they didn’t want or expect you to know. Information was always useful, and it was usually easy to come by. Through the years Maggie secretly perused credit-card bills and diaries, bank statements and old photographs. In high school, she’d located a battered copy of Forever between Rose’s mattress and box spring. Rose had turned over her allowance for almost an entire school year before deciding that she didn’t care if Maggie told her father how she’d dog-eared the pages with sex scenes.
Maggie snooped over to her sister’s desk. There were gas bill, electric bill, phone bill, and cable bill, all neatly paper-clipped together, the return envelopes already bearing stamps and address labels. Here was a receipt from Tower Records, which told her that Rose had purchased (and worse, paid full price for) a copy of George Michael’s greatest hits. Maggie pocketed it, sure that it would be useful, even if she wasn’t sure how. A receipt from Saks for a pair of shoes. Three hundred and twelve dollars. Very nice. A schedule of classes at the gym, six months out of date. No surprise there. Maggie closed the drawer and moved on to what was sure to be the depressing terrain of Rose’s closet.
She flipped through the hangers, shaking her head at the clothes that ranged in shade from black to brown, with the occasional gray sweater thrown in for fun. Drab, drab, drab. Boring suits all in a row, and dowdy sweater sets, a half-dozen skirts designed to hit Rose in the dead center of her calves, as if she’d picked them out to give her legs the illusion of maximum thickness. Maggie could have helped her. But Rose didn’t want help. Rose thought her life was fine. Rose thought it was everyone else who had the problems.
There was a time, when they were little girls, that people thought they were twins, with their matching pigtails and identical brown eyes and the defiant way their jaws poked forward. Well, not anymore. Rose was maybe an inch or two taller, and at least fifty pounds heavier, maybe more—Maggie could make out a faint slackening under her jawline, the beginning of the dread double chin. She had shirts in her closet from Lane Bryant, which Maggie didn’t even want to touch, although she knew that fat wasn’t contagious. And Rose just didn’t care. Her hair, shoulder-length, was usually shoved into an untidy bun or ponytail or, worse, done up in one of those plastic clips that everyone else in the world had tacitly agreed to stop wearing five years ago. Maggie wasn’t even sure where Rose was still finding them—dollar stores, probably—but somehow she had an endless supply, even though Maggie made it a point to toss a few in the trash whenever she visited.
Maggie took a deep breath, pushing the last jacket aside, and began with the thing she’d been saving for dessert—her sister’s shoes. As always, what she saw dazzled her and made her feel sick, like a little kid who’d gorged on too much Halloween candy. Rose, fat, lazy, unfashionable Rose, Rose who couldn’t be bothered to exfoliate or moisturize or polish her fingernails, had somehow managed to acquire dozens of pairs of the absolutely most perfect shoes in the world. There were flats and stilettos and high-heeled Mary Janes, suede loafers so buttery soft you wanted to rub them against your cheek, a pair of Chanel sandals that were little more than a slim leather sole and wisps of gold wire and ribbon. There were knee-high Gucci boots in glossy black, ankle-high Stephane Kelian boots in cinnamon, a pair of crimson cowgirl boots with hand-stitched jalapeño peppers winding up the sides. There were lace-up Hush Puppies in raspberry and lime; there were Sigerson Morrison flats and Manolo Blahnik mules. There were Steve Madden loafers and, still in their Saks box, a pair of Prada kitten heels, white, with white-and-yellow daisies appliquéd over the toes. Maggie held her breath and eased them on. As always—as all of Rose’s shoes did—they fit her perfectly.
It wasn’t fair, she thought, stalking into the kitchen in the Pradas. Where was Rose going to wear a pair of shoes like these, anyhow? What was the point? She scowled and opened a cabinet. Whole Wheat Total. All-Bran. Golden raisins and brown rice. Jesus Christ, she thought, wrinkling her nose. Was it National Healthy Colon week? And there were no Fritos, no Cheetos, no Doritos . . . nothing at all from the all-important Ito food group. She rummaged through the freezer, past the veggie burgers and pints of whole fruit all-natural sorbet sitting in a row until she hit pay dirt—a pint of Ben and Jerry’s New York Superfudge Chunk, still in its brown paper bag. Ice cream had always been her sister’s go-to comfort food, Maggie thought, grabbing a spoon and proceeding back to the couch, where a section of newspaper sat at the center of the coffee table, with a red pen laid beside it. Maggie picked it up. Today’s classified ads, thoughtfully provided by big sister Rose. Of course.
Well, she thought, this was a pretty pass. That was one of the things Mrs. Fried used to say. Whenever something would go wrong in the classroom—a spilled can of paint, a lost book—Mrs. Fried would clasp her hands across her chest and shake her head until her eyeglass chain rattled and say, “Well, this is a pretty pass!”
But even Mrs. Fried couldn’t have predicted this, thought Maggie, eating ice cream with one hand and circling classified ads with the other. Not even Mrs. Fried could have seen Maggie Feller’s downfall coming as swiftly as it had, so that Maggie still felt as if somewhere between the ages of fourteen and sixteen she’d walked off the edge of a cliff and had been falling ever since.
Elementary school and junior high had been fine, she remembered, spooning the cool creaminess even faster past her lips (and not noticing when she accidentally dropped a chocolate-covered walnut on the shoe). She’d had to go to “enrichment” during recess three days a week, but not even that had mattered much, because she was still the prettiest, most fun girl in her class, the girl with the cutest outfits, the best Halloween costumes that she’d make herself, the most interesting ideas of what to do during recess. And after her mother died and they’d moved to New Jersey, when her father would be at work in the afternoons and Sydelle would be off at some volunteer committee thing and Rose, of course, would be busy with the chess club or debate team, she’d been the girl with access to an empty house and an unlocked liquor cabinet. She’d been popular. It was Rose who’d been the nerd, the geek, the loser, Rose who’d skulked around with her thick glasses hiding half her face and dandruff silting her shoulders, Rose who’d been the one the girls had laughed at.
She could close her eyes and still remember one afternoon at recess. She’d been in fourth grade and Rose was in sixth. Maggie was heading to play hopscotch with Marissa Nussbaum and Kim Pratt when Rose had strolled right through a game of dodgeb
all, oblivious, holding a book up to her eyes.
“Hey, move it!” one of the older boys, a sixth-grader, shouted, and Rose raised her head and looked puzzled. Move, Rose, Maggie thought as hard as she could, as Kim and Marissa tittered. Rose kept walking, not picking up the pace, when another one of the big boys picked up the ball and threw it at her, as hard as he could, grunting with the effort. He’d been aiming for her body, but his aim wasn’t good, and he hit Rose in the back of her head. Rose’s glasses went flying. Her books flew out of her arms as she staggered forward, got her feet tangled, and fell flat on her face.
Maggie’s heart stopped beating. She stood as if she’d been frozen, stood as still as the circle of sixth-grade boys, who’d looked at each other uneasily, as if they were trying to decide whether this was still funny, or whether they’d really hurt this girl and could get in trouble. And then one of them—Sean Perigini, most likely, the tallest boy in sixth grade—started laughing. And then they were all laughing, all the sixth-grade boys, and then all the kids who’d been watching, as Rose, of course, started to cry, and then wiped the snot off her face with a palm that was bleeding from her fall and started groping around for her glasses.
Maggie had stood there, part of her knowing she shouldn’t let them do that, and part of her thinking, cruelly, Let Rose figure it out. She’s the one who’s such a loser. She brought this on herself. Plus, Maggie wasn’t the one who fixed things. Rose was. So she’d stood, watching, for what felt like an unbearably long time, until Rose found her glasses. One of the lenses was cracked, Maggie saw, as Rose lurched to her feet, gathering her books, and . . . oh, no. Her sister’s pants had split right down the back and Maggie and everyone else could see her underwear, her Holly Hobbie underwear, which raised the pointing and laughing to a hysterical pitch. Oh, God, thought Maggie, feeling sick, why did Rose have to wear those today?
In Her Shoes Page 5