Maggie ignored the phone and cranked up the stereo—Axl Rose wailing “Welcome to the Jungle.” “Do you know where you are?” he squealed. She shoved her feet into Rose’s newest acquisition, a pair of knee-high black leather boots that hugged her calves. Two hundred and sixty-eight dollar boots, and her sister could buy them without a second thought, because nothing ever went wrong for Rose. Oh, no. Rose wouldn’t get tripped up by a TelePrompTer, Rose would never park on the wrong side of the street, Rose wouldn’t have assholes groping at her in parking lots, and Rose certainly never would have to take a job that involved squeezing dogs’ asses just to make ends meet. Rose had everything, and Maggie had nothing. Nothing at all, except for the little dog who’d been dumped at the Elegant Paw for months until Maggie had rescued her and taken her home.
Naked except for the boots, she paced back and forth from the bedroom to the living room to the kitchen and back again, hearing the squeak of the soles against the hardwood floors, smelling the leather and the soap and sweat from her body, seeing a red fog. Seeing the knife. Seeing herself flashing in the mirror as she stalked past the bathroom, flushed and wet and lovely—a clever disguise, a flower with creamy petals on long-stemmed legs. Nobody looking at her would ever suspect what she really was.
The intercom buzzed. The dog whined. “Don’t worry,” Maggie said, and yanked a T-shirt over her head. She thought about panties for a minute, then figured, why bother? It was eight o’clock—too early for Rose to be home and start lecturing her again. It was probably only the asshole next door telling her to turn her music down.
She turned out the lights and flung the door open, eyes blazing, prepared to give someone a piece of her mind, and saw Rose’s boyfriend standing before her.
“Rose?” he said, squinting at her through the darkness. And Maggie laughed—a brief giggle at first, but the laughter kept rolling up her throat like poison, like throwing up in reverse. She wasn’t Rose. She would never be Rose. She lacked her sister’s abilities, her sister’s easy successes. She’d never be the one to offer advice, to poke and prod and scold and lay down rules and offer cheesy sympathy laced with impatience. Rose. Hah! She threw back her head and let the laughter come. “Not hardly,” she finally said.
He looked her up and down, his eyes lingering on her boots, on the span of bare thigh, on her breasts. “Is Rose home?” he asked.
Maggie shook her head and gave him a slow, saucy smile. A plan was forming in her brain. Revenge, she thought, the blood pounding in her temples. Revenge. “Would you like to come in and wait for her?” she asked. Jim stared at her, his eyes licking her up and down, and Maggie could practically read his mind. She was Rose, only improved, amplified, digitally perfected; Rose, only a thousand times better.
He shook his head. Maggie leaned against the doorframe insolently.
“Let me guess,” she said in a rich, taunting voice. “You’re looking to upgrade from ground chuck to filet.”
Jim shook his head again, still staring at her.
“Or maybe,” Maggie continued, “you want both of us. Is that it? A sister sandwich?”
He stared at her, trying to look outraged, but she could tell from the expression that had flickered across his face just how appealing he found that idea.
“Well, you’ll have to wait,” said Maggie. “Nobody home but little old me.” She reached down, grabbed the hem of her T-shirt, pulled it up over her head, arching her back so that her breasts almost brushed his chest. He groaned. She took a short step forward, closing the distance between them. His hands closed over her breasts, and she was sucking at his neck with her hot, avid mouth.
“No,” he whispered, even as his arms were wrapping around her.
“Don’t,” she said, and wrapped one naked leg around him, pressing herself against him.
“Don’t what?”
And now she lifted her other leg so that she was twined around him like a snake, and he moaned as he lifted her and carried her inside. “Don’t tell me no.”
By the time she made it back to her apartment building, it was almost nine o’clock, and the elevator was crowded. Rose wedged herself into the last available bit of space and tried to ignore the suffocating perfume of the woman next to her.
“I swear, either I’m going crazy, or there’s a dog in this building,” the woman announced to the elevator at large.
Rose stared at her feet.
“I don’t know who’d be inconsiderate enough to have a pet here,” the woman continued. “There are people with terrible allergies.”
Rose glanced up desperately at the floor indicator. Third floor. Thirteen to go.
“People are unbelievable,” the woman continued. “They just don’t care! Tell them what the rules are, and they say, ‘Oh, well, those are rules for other people. Not for me. Because I’m special.’”
Finally, the scent-drenched lady got off the elevator, and Rose arrived at her floor. Walking down the hallway, she hoped that her sister would be home, and began rehearsing her speech. Maggie, we need to discuss things. The dog has to go. The calls have to stop. I need my apartment back. I need my shoes back. I need my life back.
She turned her key, opened the door, and walked into pitch darkness. She heard voices, a giggle, the little dog’s whine.
“Maggie?” she called. There was a tie flung over the sofa. Oh, great, she thought bleakly. Now she’s bringing guys home to my apartment. And doing God knows what with them on my bed. “Maggie!” she yelled, and walked into the bedroom. And there was her sister, on the bed, absolutely naked except for Rose’s new Via Spiga boots, below a naked Jim Danvers.
“Oh, no,” said Rose. She stood, staring, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. “No,” she whispered. Maggie rolled out from beneath Jim and stretched languidly, giving her sister a long look at her slender back, her perfect little butt, her long, smooth legs rising from the black leather boots, before plucking Jim’s T-shirt off the floor, pulling it over her head, and strutting out of the room, into the hall, as if it were a catwalk, as if there were an audience of thousands, with flashbulbs and notepads, all of them waiting for her. Jim shot Rose a desperately shamed look and yanked up the blankets.
Rose clapped her hand over her mouth, turned and ran to the bathroom, where she threw up into the sink. She ran water until she’d washed the remains of her lunch down the drain. Then she splashed her face, scrubbed her hair back with wet, shaking hands, and went back to the bedroom. Jim had his boxer shorts on, and was scrambling to pull on the rest of his clothes. Rose saw his retainer glinting on her bedside table.
“Get out,” she said.
“Rose,” he said, and reached for her hands.
“Get out and take her with you. I don’t want to see either one of you ever again.”
“Rose,” he said.
“Get out! Get out! Get out!” She could hear her voice, spiraling up into a shriek. She reached for something to throw at him—a lamp, a candle, a book. Her hand wrapped around a bottle of massage oil, scented with sandalwood. Open. Capless. Recently used, no doubt, and bought with Maggie’s credit card, another bill her sister would never pay. She threw it as hard as she could, wishing that it were glass, that it would break up and cut him. Instead, it bounced harmlessly off his shoulder and rolled on the floor, dribbling oil as it rolled beneath her bed.
“I’m sorry,” Jim muttered, without meeting her eyes.
“I’m SAW-REE,” Rose parroted. “Oh, you’re sorry, huh? And so that makes it okay?” She stared at him, shaking. “How could you? How could you?”
She ran through the living room, where Maggie sat on the couch, channel surfing, and into the kitchen. She pulled out a trash bag and started filling it with everything she could find that belonged to either one of them. She snatched Maggie’s lighter and cigarettes from the coffee table and threw them in. She picked up Jim’s briefcase and hurled it against the wall as hard as she could, hearing a satisfying crack as something inside of it broke. She went to th
e bathroom and gathered up Maggie’s stockings and bras, wisps of black and cream-colored synthetic satin, lined up on the shower curtain rack, and shoved them into the garbage bag, too. Back in the bedroom, Jim was pulling on his pants. Rose ignored him, grabbing Maggie’s Fifty Great Résumés workbook. Maggie’s nail polish and nail polish remover, her tubes and tins and pots of blush, foundation, mascara, hair mousse, her tiny tank tops and skintight jeans and knockoff Doc Martens from Payless. “Get out, get out, get out,” she muttered under her breath, dragging the garbage bag behind her.
“Talking to yourself, Rosie Posey?” Maggie called. The words were ice-cold, but Maggie’s voice was shaking. “You shouldn’t do that. It makes you sound crazy.”
Rose picked up a sneaker and threw it at her sister’s head. Maggie ducked. The shoe bounced off the wall. “Get out of my house,” Rose said. “You aren’t welcome.”
Maggie hooted. “Not welcome? Well, isn’t that too bad.”
She strolled into the bathroom. Breathing hard, sweating, Rose pulled the bag into her bedroom. Jim had gotten into his clothes, but his feet were still bare.
“I don’t suppose it would do any good to say that I am sorry.” He had gone from looking stricken to just plain sheepish.
“Save it for someone who cares,” Rose snarled.
“Well, I want to say it anyhow.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Rose. You deserve better.”
“Asshole,” she said, in a dead voice that surprised her, and scared her, and reminded her of someone else, from years and years ago. She felt as if this were all happening at a great distance, or to somebody else. “With my sister,” she said. “My sister.”
“I’m sorry,” Jim said again. Maggie, who was now standing hip-sprung in the hallway, and who’d gotten herself dressed in painted-on jeans and spaghetti-strapped top, said nothing.
“You know the really pathetic part? I could have loved you. And Maggie won’t even remember your name,” she said to Jim. She felt the words, hateful forbidden words, words she’d never spoken before, bubbling up in her chest. She thought that maybe she should try to stop them, and then she thought, why? Had the two of them tried to stop themselves? “See, Maggie’s very pretty, but she’s not very bright.” She turned, slowly, tucking her hair behind her ears. “In fact, Jim, if I were a betting woman, I’d say that she can’t even spell it right now. Three letters long,” she said, stabbing three fingers into the air. “And she can’t do it. Want to ask her? Huh? Hey, Maggie, you want to give it a try?”
From behind her, she heard Maggie gasp.
“You’re an asshole,” she continued steadily, turning back to Jim, pinning him with her eyes. “And you,” she said, turning to face her sister. Maggie’s face was pale, her eyes were enormous. “I always knew you didn’t have a brain. Now I know you don’t have a heart.”
“Fat pig,” Maggie muttered.
Rose laughed. She dropped the bag and laughed. She rocked back on her heels and laughed until tears spurted out of the corners of her eyes.
“She’s crazy,” Maggie said loudly.
“Fat . . . pig . . .” Rose gasped. “My God,” she said, pointing at Jim. “You’re a cheater, and you . . .” She pointed at Maggie, groping for the right word. “You’re my sister,” she finally said. “My sister. And the worst thing you can say about me is ‘fat pig’?”
She lifted the bag, twirled it, tied the top into a knot, and heaved it as hard as she could at the door. “Get out,” she said. “I never want to see either one of you again.”
Rose spent most of the night on her hands and knees, scrubbing, trying to remove every trace of Maggie and Jim from her apartment. She yanked the sheets and pillow-cases and comforters off her bed, dragged them to the laundry room, and doused them in two cups of detergent. She washed her kitchen and bathroom floors with Pine-Sol and warm water. She mopped the hardwood floors in her living room and bedroom and hall. She scrubbed the bathtub with Lysol, then scrubbed the tile shower walls with an antibacterial antimildew spray. The little dog watched for a while, following her from room to room, as if Rose were the new cleaning lady and the dog were a distrustful matron, then yawned and resumed its nap on the sofa. By four in the morning, Rose’s mind was still whirling, and the one thing she could see clearly when she closed her eyes was a picture of her sister, in Rose’s own new boots, churning her body up and down above Jim, who lay in the bed with a glazed, blissful look in his eyes.
She pulled on a clean nightgown, got into bed, and yanked the clean sheets up to her chin with an angry jerk of her wrists. Then she shut her eyes, breathing hard. She thought that she’d managed to tire herself out. She thought she might sleep.
Instead, she closed her eyes and fell headlong into the memory she knew was there, hiding, crouched and waiting for her. The memory of the worst night of her life, which had also starred Maggie.
It was an early day, a teachers’ in-service, and it was just after noon on a late-May day when school let out. Rose had collected her books from her locker and met Maggie outside the first-grade classroom, checking to make sure that her sister had her own backpack. Maggie did. She also had a familiar-looking piece of pink paper in one hand.
“Again?” asked Rose, and held out her hand for the note from Maggie’s teacher. She read it while Maggie walked ahead of her, toward the path behind the elementary school that would lead them home.
“Maggie, you can’t bite people,” Rose said.
“She started it,” her sister called back sullenly.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Rose. “Remember what Mom said? You have to learn to use your words.”
She hurried to catch up with her sister, huffing slightly beneath the weight of her backpack. “Did it bleed?” she asked Maggie.
Maggie nodded. “I could have bitten it off,” she bragged, “if Miss Burdick wasn’t looking.”
“Why would you want to bite off someone’s nose?”
Maggie pursed her lips even tighter. “She made me mad.”
Rose shook her head. “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie,” she said, the way she’d heard her mother saying it. “What are we going to do with you?”
Maggie rolled her eyes, then looked at her sister. “Will I be on punishment?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Rose.
Maggie pursed her lips. “It’s Megan Sullivan’s sleep-over party.”
Rose shrugged. She knew all about the sleep-over party. Maggie had had her pink Barbie suitcase packed for days.
“Did you get any library books?” Rose asked, and Maggie nodded, and pulled Goodnight Moon from her backpack.
“That’s a little kid book,” Rose said.
Maggie glared at her sister. It was true, but she didn’t care. “Good night, mittens on the chair. Good night, people, everywhere,” she whispered, and started skipping down the path.
The path ended behind the McIlheneys’ yard. Rose and Maggie skirted the swimming pool and the deck, crossed the McIlheneys’ front yard, then crossed the street to their house, which was a twin of the McIlheneys’—a twin, really, of every house on the street. Two stories, three bedrooms, red brick, and black shutters, and square green lawns, like houses in a little kid’s coloring book.
“Wait up!” Rose yelled, as Maggie skipped across the street and dashed up their gravel driveway toward the front door. “You’re not supposed to cross the street yourself! You’re supposed to hold my hand!”
Maggie ignored her, hurrying ahead, pretending she couldn’t hear. “Mom!” she called, setting her key down on the counter and sniffing to see what was for lunch. “Hey, Mom! We’re home!”
Rose walked through the front door and set the backpack down. The house was silent, and she could tell even before Maggie told her that their mother wasn’t home.
“Her car’s not here!” Maggie reported breathlessly. “And I looked under the apple magnet, and there’s no note.”
“Maybe she forgot it was an early day,” Rose said. Except she’d re
minded her mother that morning, sneaking into the gloomy bedroom, whispering Mom? Hey, Mom? Her mother had nodded when Rose said they’d be home early, but she hadn’t opened her eyes. Be a good girl, Rose, she’d said. Take care of your sister. It was the same thing she said every morning—when she said anything at all.
“Don’t worry,” said Rose. “She’ll be back by three.” Maggie looked worried. Rose took her hand. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll make you lunch.”
Rose made eggs, which was nice, even though she wasn’t supposed to, because they weren’t allowed to turn on the stove. “Don’t worry,” Rose told Maggie. “You can double check me to make sure I turned it off.”
Then it was one-thirty. Maggie wanted to cut through the backyard to play at her friend Natalie’s house, but Rose thought it would be better if they stayed and waited for their Mom to come home. So they sat in front of the television and watched Heckle and Jeckle cartoons for half an hour (Maggie’s choice), then educational Sesame Street (Rose’s).
At three o’clock their mother still hadn’t come home. “She probably just forgot,” said Rose, but now she was starting to worry, too. The day before she’d heard her mother on the telephone. “Yes!” she was shouting at someone. “Yes!” Rose had edged right up to the closed bedroom door and pressed her ear against it. It had been months since she’d heard her mother speak in anything more than a drowsy, distracted mumble. But now she was yelling, each word hard and distinct as a pane of glass. “I. Am. Taking. My. Medication,” her mother said. “For God’s sake, let it go! Let me be! I’m fine! Fine!”
Rose closed her eyes. Her mother wasn’t fine. She knew it, and her father did, too, and probably whoever her mother was screaming at knew it, too.
“It’s okay,” she told her sister again. “Can you find Mom’s red phone book? We have to call Dad.”
“Why?”
“Just find it, okay?”
Maggie came running with the book. Rose found her father’s office number and dialed carefully. “Yes, may I speak to Mr. Feller, please?” she asked, in a voice at least an octave higher than her normal husky one. “This is his daughter Rose Feller calling.” She waited, her face still, the telephone pressed to her ear, her little sister standing beside her. “Oh. I see. All right. No. Just tell him we’ll see him later. Thank you. Okay. Good-bye.”
In Her Shoes Page 17