In Her Shoes

by Jennifer Weiner

  “I feel ridiculous!” Mrs. Lefkowitz called, as Ella and Lewis sat on the love seat, waiting for the fashion show to begin.

  “Just let me see it,” said Maggie.

  “Do I really have to wear the hat?” came the reply.

  “Come on out,” called Ella.

  Slowly, Mrs. Lefkowitz emerged from the bedroom. The skirt was too long. Maggie could see that right away. And the cardigan sleeves fell past Mrs. Lefkowitz’s fingertips, and the tank top gaped.

  “They’re making clothes for giants these days,” she complained, and shook one fabric-covered fist at Maggie. “Look at this!”

  Maggie stood back, assessing the look. Then she walked to Mrs. Lefkowitz and rolled the waistband up so that the skirt lifted just past Mrs. Lefkowitz’s knees. She folded the cardigan’s sleeves, pulled and tucked the tank top into some semblance of a proper fit, and plunked the hat on top of Mrs. Lefkowitz’s head. “There,” she said, and turned her toward the mirror. “Take a look.”

  Mrs. Lefkowitz opened her mouth to object, to say that the outfit was horrible and that this hadn’t been a good idea at all. Then she closed it. “Oh!” she said.

  “You see?” asked Maggie.

  Slowly, Mrs. Lefkowitz nodded. “The color,” she began.

  “Right, right!” said Maggie, who was more excited, more animated, more happy than Ella had ever seen her. “It doesn’t fit you right, but the color, I thought, with your eyes, and I know you like pink.”

  “Not bad, not bad,” said Mrs. Lefkowitz, and she didn’t sound snappish, or crabby, or anything except enraptured with this vision of herself, with her blue eyes sparkling against the pale of the pink. What was she seeing? Maggie wondered. Maybe herself as a young woman, a newlywed, standing on the steps of the synagogue, holding her new husband’s hand.

  “So that’s choice one,” said Maggie, gently pulling Mrs. Lefkowitz away from the mirror.

  “I’ll take it!” she said.

  “No, no,” said Maggie, laughing, “you have to see what else I found.”

  “But I want this!” she said, clutching the hat to the top of her head. “I don’t want to try anything else, I want this!” She looked at her bare feet. “What shoes do I need? Can you help me find shoes, too? And maybe a necklace.” She brushed her hand over her collarbones. “My first husband gave me a strand of pearls once ...”

  “Next outfit,” said Maggie, pushing Mrs. Lefkowitz back toward the bedroom. Outfit Two was a long sleeveless tube dress made of some slinky black synthetic, heavy enough to drape gracefully. She’d found it on sale at Marshalls, and paired it with a black-and-silver wrap with a black fringe on the ends.

  “Ooh la la!” called Mrs. Lefkowitz, slipping the dress over her head and sauntering out of the bedroom, waggling the ends of the wrap in a vaguely suggestive fashion. “Racy! I feel like a flapper!”

  “Hot stuff!” called Ella.

  “It’s nice,” said Maggie, studying her carefully. The dress fell in a single column, suggesting the outlines of waist and hip rather than clinging too tightly, and it gave Mrs. Lefkowitz the appearance of a figure. She’d need heels, for sure, to pull it off, and Maggie wasn’t sure that an eighty-seven-year-old woman in heels was a very good idea. Ballet slippers? she wondered.

  “What’s next?” asked Ella, clapping her hands.

  Outfit Three was Maggie’s personal favorite, probably because it had been the hardest one to find. She’d found the jacket on a back rack at a consignment store in a too-hip-for-its-own-good neighborhood in South Beach. “Hand sewn,” the salesgirl had assured her—which, Maggie supposed, was meant to justify the one-hundred-and-sixty-dollar price tag. At first, it looked like a regular hip-length black jacket—nothing special. But the sleeves were decorated with swirls of black embroidery, and the pockets—embroidered, too—were set into the jacket on an interesting angle, which served to create the illusion of a waist when there wasn’t much in the way of an actual waist there. Best of all, the jacket had a fabulous violet-colored lining, so Maggie had paired it with a long violet skirt and a black top.

  “Here,” she said, presenting the three pieces together on one hanger, so that Mrs. Lefkowitz could get the idea.

  But Mrs. Lefkowitz barely spared it a glance, just snatching it out of Maggie’s arms and hurrying back to the bedroom . . . and was it Ella’s imagination, or was she humming to herself?

  When she came out of the bedroom, she was practically skip-ping—or skipping as much as someone who’s recently suffered a stroke can skip. “You did it!” she said, and kissed Maggie carefully on the cheek, and Ella beamed from the love seat. Maggie looked at her. The skirt wasn’t great—it didn’t hang right and it wasn’t quite the same black as the jacket—and the shirt was just okay, nothing more—but the jacket was gorgeous. It made Mrs. Lefkowitz look taller, and curvier, and . . .

  “I look wonderful,” said Mrs. Lefkowitz, studying herself in the mirror, appearing not to notice the way the left corner of her mouth drooped, or the fact that her left hand was still curved around her body at an awkward angle. She considered her reflection for a moment, then grabbed the pink hat from Outfit One and plunked it on her head again.

  “No, no,” said Maggie, laughing.

  “But it suits me!” said Mrs. Lefkowitz. “I want it. Can I have it?”

  “It’s from school,” said Maggie.

  “Oh, school,” said Mrs. Lefkowitz, and made such a sad face that Ella started laughing.

  “So which one?” asked Maggie. And Mrs. Lefkowitz, still in the hand-embroidered jacket, looked at her as if she were crazy.

  “Well, all of them, of course,” she said. “I’ll wear the pink to the service, and then the long black dress to the reception, and this,” she said, looking at herself, “I’m going to wear for my next appointment with Dr. Parese.”

  Ella burst out laughing. “What?” she demanded. “Why?”

  “Because,” said Mrs. Lefkowitz, “he’s adorable!”

  “Is he single?” asked Maggie.

  “Oh, he’s about twelve,” said Mrs. Lefkowitz, waving her hand, then pausing mid-wave to admire the embroidery on her sleeve. “Thank you, Maggie. You did a wonderful job.” She walked back to the bedroom to change. Maggie started returning the clothes to their hangers.

  Ella studied her for a minute. “I’ve got an idea,” she said. “I think you should do this for other people.”

  Maggie paused as she was repositioning the pink cardigan. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, there’s lots old ladies who have a hard time getting around the malls, and an even worse time finding anything nice once they’re there. But everyone has occasions. Weddings, graduations, anniversary parties . . .”

  “Well, this was just a favor,” Maggie said. “I’m kind of busy with school and the bagel shop and all . . .”

  “I bet that people would pay,” said Ella.

  Maggie paused, mid-fold. “Really?”

  “Of course,” Ella said. “What, you want to work for free?”

  “How much do you think I could charge for this?”

  Ella put one finger on her upper lip and gazed at the ceiling. “A percentage of the cost, maybe?” she said.

  Maggie frowned. “I’m not so great with percentages,” she said.

  “Or a flat fee,” said Ella. “Which might be better anyhow, because if you charged a percentage of the cost of the outfit, the cheapskates here would think you were trying to get them to buy more expensive things. How long did it take you to get all of these things?”

  Maggie bit her lip, looking thoughtful. “Ten hours, maybe?”

  “So charge, say, fifteen dollars an hour.”

  “Really? That’s a lot more than what I’m making at the bagel place . . .”

  “This is a little harder than slicing and toasting, don’t you think?” asked Ella.

  “And believe me, the women here can pay,” said Mrs. Lefkowitz, who was back in her pink sweatshirt, looking flushed and pleas
ed. “For all the moaning they do about their fixed incomes, for a beautiful outfit like this, they’ll pay.”

  And now Ella saw her granddaughter’s eyes light up and saw that Maggie was beaming. “Could I do it?” she asked. “Do you think it would work? I’d have to advertise . . . and I’d need a car of my own . . .”

  “Start small,” said Ella. “Don’t jump in with both feet. Maybe dip one foot in the water, see how you like it.”

  “I already know I like it!” said Maggie. “I love to shop, I love picking out people’s outfits. . . . I just can’t believe—Do you really think people would pay me to do this?”

  Mrs. Lefkowitz smiled, opened her suitcase-sized purse, produced her checkbook, and, in her labored, shaky script, wrote Maggie Feller a check for the amount of one hundred and fifty dollars. “I think they would,” she said.

  FIFTY-ONE

  In retrospect, thought Rose, the mimosas had been a mistake.

  She tried saying as much to Amy, but the words “the mimosas were a mistake” came out as a champagne-sodden mumble. “Mimoshas were a mistake,” she said. Amy, who’d evidently understood her perfectly, gave a vigorous nod, and called to the bartender.

  “Two more mimosas,” she said.

  “Right away, ladies,” said the bartender. Where had it all gone so wrong? Rose wondered. Probably when she’d gotten the invitation to the shower that Sydelle Feller had decided to host weeks prior to Maggie’s letter, the revelation of the grandmother, the invitation printed on heavy, gilt-edged, cream-colored paper, in a calligraphy so ornate that it was practically illegible.

  “Who’s throwing this thing?” asked Amy. “Lord and Lady Douchebag?”

  “I don’t even want to go,” said Rose. “I want to go to Florida and meet this grandmother already.”

  “Did you call?” Amy asked.

  “Not yet,” said Rose. “Still working on the whole what-to-say thing.”

  “Well, if the grandmother answers, you say, ‘Hello,’ “said Amy. “And if Maggie answers, tell her that if she ever sleeps with your boyfriend again, you’re gonna kick her size-zero ass from here to Elizabeth, New Jersey. Just try not to get the speeches mixed up.”

  “First shower, then grandmother,” Rose said. And on the appointed day, she had gathered her courage, shaved her legs, and gotten herself to the appointed restaurant at the appointed hour, where precisely one of her friends and three dozen of Sydelle’s were waiting to toast the bride-to-be.

  “Rose,” said Sydelle grandly, rising to greet her. Any trace of the vulnerability Rose had glimpsed on her stepmother’s face was gone, buried beneath the familiar layers of makeup, Sydelle’s familiar disdain, and high fashion.

  “Come say hello to my friends,” Sydelle said, trotting Rose over to her cronies, all of them, it seemed, with identical highlighted bobs and freshly lifted eyelids. They must share a surgeon and a hairdresser, Rose thought, as Sydelle ran through the introductions. “And here’s My Marcia,” Sydelle announced, leading Rose over to her stepsister, who was sour-faced, stringy-haired, and wearing a gigantic gold-and-diamond cross. Marcia gave Rose a limp wave and went back to quizzing the waitress about whether there was processed sugar in the pancakes, while her four-year-old twins, Jason and Alexander, wrestled underneath the table.

  “How are you?” Rose asked politely.

  “I’m blessed,” My Marcia said. Sydelle winced. Rose gulped her mimosa, accepted a refill, and hurried over to where Amy was sitting. “Save me,” she whispered, as Sydelle chattered away (“I would have invited more of Rose’s friends,” she overheard her stepmother say, “but I guess she doesn’t have any!”)

  Amy handed her another drink. “Smile,” she whispered. Rose grinned. Sydelle clutched her wriggling grandsons to her negligible bosom, got to her feet, and proclaimed, “Those of us who know Rose are so thrilled that this day is here!” And, to Rose’s horror, there were two waiters wheeling in a television set. “What’s going on?” she whispered to Amy, who shrugged. Sydelle gave her a brilliant smile and pointed the remote control at the screen. And there was Rose in sixth grade, scowling at the camera, all greasy hair and glinting braces. Uncomfortable laughter rippled through the room. Rose closed her eyes.

  “We had our doubts,” Sydelle continued, smiling brightly. “We watched her go through high school and college with her hair in her eyes and her nose buried in a book.” She hit the remote again and there was Rose on her first break from college, with her Freshman Fifteen rippling beneath a pair of too-tight jeans.

  “Of course, Rose had romances . . .” She hit the remote again, and there was Rose at her high school prom, in an ill-advised pink lace sheath, and a long-forgotten junior with a gummy smile gripping her waist. “But for reasons we could never understand, nothing ever seemed to work out.” Another click. There was Rose at someone’s bar mitzvah, shoving a miniature éclair into her mouth. Rose with hamburger juice dripping down her arms. Rose in profile, in late 1980s shoulder pads, looking roughly the size of an NFL linebacker. Rose at Halloween, dressed as a Vulcan, fingers splayed in Mr. Spock’s salute.

  “Oh, God,” Rose whispered. “My ‘before’ pictures.”

  “What?” Amy whispered back.

  Rose felt hysterical laughter bubbling in her chest. “I think Sydelle’s been spending years collecting ‘before’ pictures, so if I ever went on a diet and got really thin, she’d have plenty of compare-and-contrast photos.”

  “I can’t believe she’s doing this!” Amy said, as Sydelle flicked through a series of shots of Rose looking dumpy, Rose looking sulky, Rose with a particularly splendid zit on the tip of her nose.

  “Mommy, what’s wrong with that lady?” Jason or Alexander demanded, as Marcia shushed him.

  “Kill me now,” Rose begged her best friend.

  “How ’bout I just knock you unconscious for a few hours?” Amy whispered back.

  “So let’s all raise our glasses and toast the miracle of love!” Sydelle concluded.

  More uncomfortable laughter, followed by halfhearted applause. Rose gazed at the stack of gifts, desperately hoping that one of them contained the knife set Simon had registered for, so she could kill herself in the ladies’ room.

  “Rose?” Sydelle asked, her smile still in place. Rose got to her feet and positioned herself in front of the stack of gifts, where she spent the next hour trying to act excited about salad bowls and Mixmasters, china and wineglasses, a state-of-the-art food scale from Sydelle with a note reading, “We hope you find this useful,” with the word useful underlined twice.

  “Tupperware!” said Rose, in a tone suggesting that she’d waited her whole life for someone to give her fifteen pieces of lidded plastic. “That’s wonderful!”

  “So convenient!” said Sydelle, smiling and handing Rose another box.

  “A salad spinner!” Rose cried, smiling so hard that her face hurt. I am not going to survive this, she thought.

  “Salad spinner,” Amy repeated, writing down the gift and its giver, and stuck the bow through a paper plate for the bow bonnet Rose had already decided she didn’t want to wear.

  “How lovely!” said Sydelle. Another sharp glance, another gift-wrapped box. Rose swallowed hard and kept unwrapping. After half an hour she’d amassed three cake pans, a cutting board, five place settings, two crystal vases, and had told six different women on six separate occasions that she and Simon weren’t planning to have babies any time in the immediate future.

  Finally, the last gift was unwrapped, the last bow was affixed to the plate, and the whole arrangement was tied on top of Rose’s head.

  Amy ducked into the bathroom, and came back to the table looking as if she’d seen a ghost in one of the stalls.

  “What?” Rose asked, untangling the bow hat from her hair.

  Amy grabbed Rose’s sleeve and two fresh mimosas, and dragged her friend into a corner.

  “That woman,” said Amy, “is breast-feeding.”

  “Which woman?”

 
“Marcia!”

  Rose looked at Marcia, who’d just returned from the bathroom with Jason and Alexander trailing behind her. “Are you kidding me? They’re four.”

  “I know what I saw,” said Amy.

  “What, was she squeezing it onto their Frosted Flakes?”

  “First of all, I don’t think those boys have ever been near a Frosted Flake,” said Amy. “Jesus wouldn’t approve. And secondly, I know what breast-feeding looks like. Breast. Child. Mouth.”

  Rose slurped another mouthful of orange juice and champagne. “Well, at least she knows it’s organic.”

  Which was the precise moment that Sydelle Feller swept over.

  “Thank you for arranging this,” Rose said. Sydelle had wrapped her arms around her, leaning in close.

  “You might try being grateful for a change,” she hissed.

  Rose drew back. “What?” she said.

  “I hope you get exactly the wedding you deserve,” said Sydelle, turning on her heel and heading for the door. Rose reeled toward her chair, feeling utterly defeated, and the tiniest bit scared. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “She must have heard us talking about Marcia the milk bar.”

  “Oh, no,” said Amy, “I am so sorry.”

  Rose covered her eyes with her hands. “Boy, that’s sure not the kind of thing my New Jewish Wedding said people would say to me at my shower.”

  “Just ignore her,” said Amy, picking up the food scale. “Hey,” she said, “do you know my thumb weighs four ounces?”

  They’d wound up loading a cab with Rose’s gifts, piling them in her living room, and heading to a bar down the street, where they drowned their agony in fresh mimosas and speculated on how long Sydelle had been saving up all of those atrocious pictures of her stepdaughter, and whether she might have a similar slide show prepared if Maggie ever got married. Rose came home to an empty apartment. Simon had left a note saying he was out walking Petunia and shopping for dinner. She stood in the center of the kitchen and closed her eyes.

  “I miss my mother,” she whispered. And it was true, in a nonspecific way. It wasn’t that she missed her mother; it was that she missed a mother, any mother at all. With a mother around, that fiasco of a shower wouldn’t have been nearly so bad. A mother would have enfolded Rose in her arms and sent Sydelle back to whatever sulfur-scented depths had spawned her. A mother would have tapped Rose once on her head with her magic wand, and Rose’s drab dress would have been transformed into the perfect wedding gown. A mother would have known how to handle everything.