In Her Shoes

by Jennifer Weiner

  Maggie pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. “Why angry?” she asked.

  “He thought I did a terrible thing to him,” the grandmother said. “He thought that I—well, my husband and I—should have told him more about Caroline. Your mother.”

  “I know what her name is,” Maggie said irritably. The subject of her mother—her mother’s name in this old woman’s mouth—flared like an old wound. She wasn’t ready for this. She didn’t want to hear about her mother; she didn’t want to think about her mother; she didn’t want to know the truth, or whatever the grand-mother’s version of the truth was. Her mother was dead, the first of her life’s losses, and that was more truth than any daughter should have to handle.

  Ella kept talking. “I should have told your father that she was . . .” Ella stumbled over the words. “Mentally ill . . .”

  “You’re lying,” said Maggie sharply. “She wasn’t crazy, she was fine, I remember.”

  “But she wasn’t always fine, right?” asked Ella. Maggie closed her eyes, hearing only snatches of what her grandmother was saying: manic episodes and clinical depression, medication, and shock treatment.

  “So if she was crazy like that, why’d you let her get married?” Maggie demanded. “Why’d you let her have kids?”

  Ella sighed. “We couldn’t stop her,” she said. “Whatever her problems were, Caroline was a grown woman. She made her own decisions.”

  “You were probably glad to get rid of her,” Maggie muttered, voicing one of her own worst fears, because it was easy for her to imagine how happy her father and Sydelle and Rose, and her father too, would be to get rid of her, to foist her off on some unsuspecting love-struck guy so that she’d be his problem, not theirs.

  Ella looked shocked. “Of course not! I was never glad to get rid of her! And when I lost her . . .” She swallowed hard. “It was the worst thing I could imagine. Because I lost her, and I lost you and Rose, too.” She looked down at her hands, folded on the table. “I lost everything,” she said. And she lifted her tear-filled eyes and stared at Maggie. “But now you’re here. And I hope . . .”

  She reached down next to the table. “Here,” she said, and pushed a box across the table. “These were in Michigan, in storage. I sent for them. I thought maybe you’d like to see.”

  Maggie reached inside the box. It was full of photo albums, old ones. She opened the one on top, and there she was—Caroline. Caroline as a teenager, in a tight black sweater and lots of black eyeliner. Caroline on her wedding day, in a fitted lace dress and a long sweep of veil. Caroline on the beach in a blue bathing suit, squinting in the sunshine, with Rose clutching her leg and baby Maggie in her arms.

  Maggie flipped through the pages faster and faster, watching her mother get older, watching herself grow up, knowing that the pictures would stop, that her mother never got older than thirty, that in this world she and Rose would be forever frozen as little girls. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Her grandmother was staring at her, her old eyes full of hope. No, Maggie thought. Not this. She couldn’t stand this. She didn’t want to be anyone’s hope. She didn’t want to stand in for anyone’s dead daughter. She didn’t want anything, she told herself sternly, not anything, not anything at all except some money and a plane ticket out of this place. She didn’t want to see the grandmother as anything but a means to an end, a pocketbook and a sad story. She didn’t want sympathy extended toward her, and she sure as hell didn’t want to feel sorry for anyone else.

  She closed the book with a snap, rubbing her palms against her shorts as if they were dirty. “I’m going for a walk,” she said, shoving past Ella’s chair, heading for the bedroom, grabbing the old-lady bathing suit she’d found in the back bedroom’s closet, her towel and sunblock, and an empty notebook and hurrying out the door.

  “Maggie, wait,” Ella called. Maggie didn’t break stride. “Maggie, please!” Ella called, but Maggie was already gone.

  Maggie walked through Golden Acres, past Crestwood and Farmington and Lawndale, past all the streets with made-up English-village-sounding names and the buildings that looked exactly identical to the ones standing next to them. Make her pay, she whispered to herself.

  People owed her—everyone who’d mocked her in high school, everyone who’d made her less than she was, who’d conspired to keep her invisible, undiscovered. She was almost thirty, for chrissake, and still without a part to her credit, and the closest she’d come to a 90210 address was when she’d watched reruns on TV.

  Make her pay, she told herself. She got to the swimming pool, which was deserted except for a handful of old people sunning themselves, reading, playing quiet games of cards. Maggie put on the old-lady swimsuit in the bathroom, then dragged one of the lounge chairs into prime tanning position, spread her towel on the chair, spread herself on top of the towel, and stared at her notebook. How much money would it take to get her out of here? Five hundred dollars for plane fare, she wrote. Another two thousand for security deposit, first and last month’s rent. That was more than she’d saved right there. Maggie groaned to herself, tore out the page, crumpled it, and laid it by the side of the chair.

  “Hey!” called an old man in a shirt unbuttoned to display a bathmat’s worth of frothing white chest hair, “no littering!”

  Maggie glared at him, shoved the crumpled piece of paper under her shorts, and resumed writing.

  “Head shots,” she wrote. How much would those cost?

  “Miss!” called a strange voice. “Oh, miss!”

  Maggie looked up. This time, it was an old woman in a fringed pink bathing cap.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, edging toward Maggie. The loose flesh of her thighs and upper arms wobbled with each step. “But you’re going to get a very bad sunburn unless you wear sunblock.”

  Maggie silently brandished her tube of Bain de Soleil at the old woman, who did not appear to be at all deterred. And was it her imagination, or were the other old people moving toward her, inching their chairs closer each time she closed her eyes, like some kind of senior-citizen Dawn of the Dead? “Oh, I see, I see,” said the woman, “SPF fifteen, that’s good, very good, of course thirty would be better, or even forty-five, and it should be waterproof, really. . . .” She paused, waiting for a response. Maggie ignored her. The woman kept talking. “And I notice that you haven’t put any on your back. Do you need some help?” she inquired, leaning toward Maggie. The thought of having some strange old saggy creature actually touching her caused Maggie to recoil, shaking her head and saying, “No, thank you, but I’ll be fine.”

  “Well, if you need me,” the old woman said cheerfully, wobbling back toward her chair, “I’m right here. My name’s Dora,” she said, in answer to the question that Maggie hadn’t asked. “What’s your name, dear?”

  Maggie sighed. “Maggie,” she said, figuring that a fake name might be too much trouble to remember. Back to Maggie, she thought grimly, and returned to her notebook, underlining the words “head shots.” She would explain to the grandmother what they were and why she needed them, how much she wanted to be an actress, how she’d always wanted to be an actress, and how, without a loving mother to make those dreams come true, she’d been forced to rely on her wits and her luck, only now . . .

  “Excuse me!”

  Oh, for chrissake, Maggie thought, and squinted through the sunlight at a pair of old guys in shorts. With sandals. And socks.

  “We were hoping you could help us settle a dispute,” the leader of the pair began. He was a tall, skinny, bald man, sunburned to the color of a salmon.

  “I’m kind of busy,” said Maggie, indicating her notebook, hoping that they’d leave her alone.

  “Don’t bother the girl, Jack,” said the other man—he was short and barrel-shaped, with a fringe of white hair and atrocious black-and-red plaid shorts.

  “It’s just a quick question,” said the man who was probably Jack. “I was just wondering—well, we were just discussing . . .” Maggie s
tared at him impatiently. “You look so familiar,” he said. “Are you an actress?”

  Maggie tossed her hair over her shoulders and favored the geezers with her most dazzling smile. “I was in a music video,” she said. “Will Smith.”

  The tall man stared at her, eyes wide. “Really? Did you meet him?”

  “Well, not exactly,” Maggie said, propping herself up on her elbows. “But I saw him at lunch. At craft services,” she said, tossing out the terminology and shaking her auburn curls. And suddenly there were four old people gathered around her, Jack and his friend, the blabbering woman Dora, and the guy who’d yelled at her about the trash. Maggie saw liver spots and sunblock, mothball-smelling shorts, wrinkles and whiskers and flyaway white hair.

  “An actress. My goodness,” said Jack.

  “Wow,” echoed the barrel-shaped guy.

  “Who do you belong to?” burbled Dora, who’d reappeared. “Oh, your grandparents must be so proud of you!”

  “Do you live in Hollywood?”

  “Do you have an agent?”

  “When you got that tattoo,” rasped Jack’s barrel-shaped friend, “did it hurt?”

  Dora shot him a sharp look. “Herman, who cares?”

  “I care,” said Herman, looking truculent.

  Jack jiggled the edge of Maggie’s chair impatiently and said what to Maggie were the magic words. “Tell us all about yourself,” he said. “We want to hear everything.”

  FORTY-SIX

  Simon set his briefcase on the floor of Rose’s apartment and held his arms open. “Bride-elect!” he called. He’d come across the term in a small-town newspaper when he had to drive out to central Pennsylvania for a deposition, and had been using it on Rose ever since.

  “Just a minute!” called Rose from the kitchen, where she was sitting at the table flipping through the folders from three different catering companies that had arrived in the mail that day. Simon wrapped his arms around her. “How serious are you about baby lamb chops?” she murmured into his neck. “Because I have to tell you, they’re expensive.”

  “Money is no object,” Simon declared grandly. “Our love must be celebrated with all the proper pomp and circumstance. And lamb chops.”

  Rose set a gift-wrapped box in front of him. “This came today, and I can’t figure out what it is.”

  “An engagement gift!” said Simon, rubbing his hands together and reading the return address. “From Aunt Melissa and Uncle Steve!” He opened the box, and together they stared at the gift inside. After a minute, Simon glanced at Rose, and cleared his throat. “I think it’s a candleholder.”

  Rose pulled the block of glass out of its nest of tissue paper and held it up toward the light. “There’s no candle.”

  “Well, but there’s a place for a candle,” said Simon, pointing out the shallow indentation on one of its sides.

  “I don’t think that’s deep enough for a candle,” said Rose. “And if it was a candleholder, wouldn’t they have sent it with a candle? So we’d know?”

  “It has to be a candleholder,” said Simon, without conviction. “What else could it be?”

  Rose stared at the glass block some more. “I was thinking maybe a serving piece?”

  “For very small meals?” asked Simon.

  “No, no, for, like, nuts or candy or something.”

  “The hole’s not big enough for nuts or candy.”

  “Oh, but it’s big enough for a candle?”

  They stared at each other for a minute. Then Simon picked up a thank-you note and started writing. “Dear Aunt Melissa and Uncle Steve. Thank you for the lovely gift. It will look . . .” He paused, staring at the ceiling. “Lovely?”

  “You just said lovely,” said Rose.

  “Wonderful!” Simon amended. “It will look wonderful in our home, and will provide hours of entertainment for years to come as we try to figure out what in God’s name it is. Thank you for thinking of us, and we look forward to seeing you soon.” Simon signed their names, capped the pen, and turned to Rose, beaming. “There!”

  “You didn’t really write that,” said Rose.

  “No,” said Simon. “I didn’t. How many left?”

  Rose consulted the list. “Fifty-one.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “It’s your fault,” Rose said. “I blame you.”

  “Just because my family buys us gifts . . .”

  “Just because my family’s not ridiculously enormous . . .”

  Simon stood up, grabbed Rose around the waist, and blew a raspberry against the side of her neck. “Take it back,” he said.

  “Ridiculously enormous!”

  “Take it back,” he whispered into her ear, “or I will force you to do my every bidding.”

  Rose twisted around to face him. “I am not,” she said breathlessly, “writing those thank-you notes myself!”

  Simon pulled her close and kissed her, running his hands through her hair. “The notes can wait,” he said.

  Later, lying in bed, warm and naked beneath the down comforter, Rose rolled onto her side and finally started talking about the thing she’d been holding off on from the moment he’d come home. “There’s something else,” she said. “My father called today. About Maggie.”

  Simon’s face was neutral. “Oh?” he asked.

  Rose flipped onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “She’s resurfaced,” she said. “All my father would tell me over the phone was that she’s fine. He wants to see me, he says. To tell me the rest.”

  “Okay,” said Simon.

  Rose shut her eyes and shook her head. “I’m not sure I want to know the rest. Whatever the rest is. I just don’t . . .” Her voice trailed off. “The thing about Maggie is, she’s horrible.”

  “What do you mean?” Simon asked.

  “She’s . . . I mean, she . . .” Rose grimaced. How was she supposed to explain to the man she loved about her sister? Her sister, who stole money and stole shoes and even stole boyfriends, and then went missing for months on end? “Just take my word for it. She’s very bad news. She has learning disabilities . . .” And then she stopped. The learning disabilities, really, were just the tip of the Maggie iceberg. And wasn’t it just like her sister to reappear as soon as Rose got engaged, as soon as there was a chance that she’d be the center of attention, for a change? “She’s going to ruin our wedding,” she said.

  “I thought Sydelle was going to ruin our wedding,” said Simon.

  Rose smiled in spite of herself. “Well, Maggie’s going to ruin it more.” God, she thought. Things had been so calm with Maggie gone off to who-knows-where. No bill collectors blasting at the morning’s silence with their phone calls, no former or potential boyfriends disrupting Rose and Simon’s sleep. Things stayed where Rose put them. None of her shoes, or her clothes, or her cash, ever went wandering. The car stayed where she parked it. “I’ll tell you one thing,” Rose continued. “She’s not going to be a bridesmaid. She’ll be lucky if she gets an invitation.”

  “Okay,” said Simon.

  “She’ll be lucky if she gets dinner,” said Rose.

  “More food for me,” said Simon.

  Rose stared at the ceiling some more. “I still think that glass thing was some kind of serving dish.”

  “I already licked the envelope,” said Simon. “Let it go.”

  “Agh,” said Rose. She closed her eyes and wished for a normal family, like Simon’s. No dead mother, no vanished little sister, no father who reserved most of his passion for the morning market reports, and certainly no Sydelle. She rested her face against the cool cotton of the pillowcase for a minute, then got up and went to the living room and picked up a thank-you note—a card of heavy cream paper that had their names, Rose and Simon, set on either side of a gigantic S, to stand for Stein, which was not going to be Rose’s last name. But even though she’d pointed that out to the Stepmonster, Sydelle had gone ahead and ordered them monogrammed thank-you cards that suggested that Rose was going to be Ro
se Stein, like it or not.

  Dear Maggie, thought Rose. How could you do what you did to me? And when are you coming home?

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Ella walked up to the fence surrounding the swimming pool and pressed her face against it. “There,” she said, giving the single word all of the sadness and disappointment she felt. “There she is.”

  Lewis stepped next to her, and Mrs. Lefkowitz zipped up in her new scooter. Together, the three of them stood at the fence, looking through the diamond-shaped holes. Looking at Maggie.

  Her granddaughter lay on a chaise lounge beside the deep end, resplendent in a brand-new pink bikini, with a silver chain, thin as a filament of hair, clinging to her belly. Her skin shone with suntan lotion. Her hair was arranged in a soft pile of loose curls on top of her head, and her eyes were hidden behind small round sunglasses. And around her were four people—an old woman in a faded pink rubber bathing cap, and three old men in shorts. As Ella watched, one of the old men leaned forward, toward Maggie, as if he was asking her a question. Her granddaughter propped herself up on one elbow, looking thoughtful. When her lips moved, her audience burst into laughter.

  “Oh,” said Lewis. “It looks like she’s made some new friends.”

  Ella felt her heart give a painful twist, as Maggie continued to amuse her new acquaintances, looking more relaxed and at ease than Ella had ever seen her, as the Water Babies aerobics class splashed energetically to a wavery tape recording of “Runaround Sue.” Every day for the past week—every day since Ella had tried to tell Maggie about her mother—this had been her granddaughter’s routine. Maggie would come home from work, dash into the back bedroom, swap her Bagel Bay uniform for her bathing suit and shorts, and come here. “I’m going swimming,” she’d say. Ella was never invited. And Ella could see where this was going. Maggie would move out—into an apartment of her own, or maybe in with one of her new friends, some pleasant old woman who’d offer all of the benefits of being a grandmother with none of the messy complications or painful history. Oh, she thought, it wasn’t fair! She’d waited for so long, she’d hoped for so much, and now, to see Maggie slipping away from her like this!