Serendipity's Footsteps

by Suzanne Nelson

  “I told you already,” Ray snapped. “There’s no one. Asking every ten seconds won’t change the answer.” She was taking a different tack now, hoping if she was obnoxious enough, she’d scare the old lady into giving up and getting out of here.

  It didn’t work. Dalya looked as unruffled as ever. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But girls don’t fall from the sky in my backyard every day. And since it was my tree, I can’t help feeling a responsibility to find out what exactly you were doing in it.” She smiled. “Besides, it wouldn’t be polite to begrudge an old woman her curiosity.”

  “You don’t get it!” Ray cried as her panic grew. “Pinny’s out there alone. She’s…more hurt than I am. I did it to her.” She choked on a sob. “I…I lost her.”

  “Ah.” Dalya nodded. “So you weren’t alone. Now we’re beginning to get somewhere. So maybe next you’ll tell me who Pinny is?”

  Suddenly, after years of not being able to see, Ray understood the answer to that question. “Pinny…was the only friend I ever had.” She covered her face with her hand, giving into hot, shame-filled tears.

  “Hush now.” Dalya offered her a tissue. “Only one friend?” She shook her head. “Perhaps it’s time for another?”

  Ray wiped her eyes, blinking in surprise. “You don’t even know me.”

  “No, but…I believe I need to.” She said it with such sureness and honesty that Ray wondered if the woman was all there. She was talking like Pinny, like she knew something secret about the world that Ray didn’t. It was craziness, and Ray didn’t want to trust her, but what choice did she have? Dalya was the only person she knew here, and if Dalya knew the city, then she might be able to help her find Pinny. That was enough to make Ray decide to play along, at least for now.

  “You see,” Dalya went on, “I couldn’t sleep tonight. And strange as it may sound, I think it’s because I was waiting for you.”

  “Not for me,” Ray said flatly. “Pinny maybe. She was the one who wanted the shoes on your tree. I just helped her take them.”

  “Which shoes?” Dalya asked.

  “A pair of silver high-heeled sandals,” Ray said.

  Dalya thought for a minute, then nodded. “I know that pair,” she said. “I found them in a trash can on Avenue B years ago. But…what would she want with them?”

  Ray swallowed, staring at the tile floor. “That’s Pinny’s story. She should be the one to tell it. I don’t deserve to. Not when I don’t even know where she is.”

  “We’ll find her, then,” Dalya said, nodding decisively just as the doctor came in. “Simple as that. And then you’ll come home with me, the both of you, to explain everything.”

  As the doctor wrapped her arm and hand in a cast, Ray told Dalya about Pinny, careful to keep out the details of their trip. Dalya’s eyes never once narrowed in judgment, even when Ray told her how she’d screamed at Pinny, how she’d treated her so horribly, so unforgivably. Even more baffling was that, after the doctor left, when Ray explained she couldn’t pay for treatment, Dalya simply whipped out a credit card.

  “Your story is the only payment I’ll accept for now,” she said. “I used to tell stories about shoes…so many years ago.” Her eyes filled. “This will be the first time one’s been told to me.” She straightened. “Now let’s think about where Pinny could be. You mentioned that she used to live in the city. Maybe there’s someplace special she knows….”

  Ray shook her head. “She was only seven or eight. She’d never remember—” Ray stopped as a memory struck her. A story Pinny had once told her about her red Mary Janes. This time, when she reran the story in her head, she didn’t blow it off like she had before. She listened to the words, and she heard Pinny talking about city blocks, about the building she lived in with her mama, about the day her mama bought her the red shoes and got lost….

  “Pinny once told me that her mama left her in a building that had a ceiling full of stars,” Ray said. “A ceiling that was…Tiffany blue?”

  Dalya nodded with recognition. “That’s Grand Central.”

  Hope flitted through Ray’s heart.

  “That’s got to be where she is,” Ray said, and then she was scrambling out the door, with Dalya beside her.

  PINNY

  She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting on the stairs under the ceiling of stars. Maybe one time through The Wizard of Oz. Maybe two. And that movie played for loads of time. The silver sandals sat next to her, cuddled up to her side, waiting with her.

  After she’d left Ray under the tree, she’d run. She forgot about her sore feet and how tight the shoes squeezed her toes. She forgot to look where she was going. Honking cars and screeching brakes filled her ears. She bumped into one man, making him drop his briefcase. “Watch where you’re going!” he yelled, so close to her face it scared her in a JT way. How many JTs were there in a city so big? The thought made her run faster. Every street looked the same, blinding lights and people rushing by like swarms of bugs.

  She was lost. She started to cry, but the heat dried her tears before they ever fell. She tried to shake Ray’s words out of her head. They were too awful to belong. But they stuck like glue, making her cry harder. She’d thought she’d run right into Mama, that the silver sandals would lead to her. But when that hadn’t happened, she’d slowed down, thinking things over. That’s when she knew the place to go.

  Of course, she didn’t know where the place was. Not anymore. She had to ask a waitress in a diner. The waitress gave her directions, but the second Pinny left the diner, the street names muddied in her mind, and she was as lost as before. After that, she asked a boy on a bike for directions. He had a funny sort of wagon hooked up to the back of his bike. He told her it was for carrying people, and because by then she was limping badly, he offered to give her a ride in it for free.

  The boy didn’t look snaky in a JT way, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hiding his meanness somewhere she couldn’t see.

  “I sit back here?” she asked, pointing to the wagon. “And you…you stay on the bike. Right?”

  The boy kept nodding until Pinny agreed to climb in. But she took off one of her shoes and pointed its heel toward the boy, just in case. Luckily, she didn’t need to use it.

  He dropped her off in front of glass doors tucked under an enormous white building. She walked through the doors and down a long ramp. When the sky opened up over her head, she knew she was in the right place. There were the inside stars and the Tiffany sky, just as pretty as she remembered.

  She tried to remember the exact stair she’d sat on with Mama, and she thought she found it. She couldn’t be sure. She only hoped.

  Then she waited, sure that Mama would come back, from wherever she was, now that Pinny had found her shoes. People walked by. Lots of people. But they were strangers. It was okay that the first few faces weren’t Mama’s. But the more faces that came, the longer that she waited, the more the Lonelies started. Just like they had the day she’d lost Mama here before. Only there was no one to help her get rid of them.

  She didn’t know anyone here. She didn’t know this place. Not really. The only place in the whole world she really knew was…Jaynis. Smokebush. Room 305. She didn’t like it. But she wasn’t lost when she was there. Not like here.

  She ran a finger along one of the sandals, and for the first time, she saw cracks in the straps where the silver was flaking away. There was a spot where a strap was ripped clean through, hanging loose. She frowned.

  Magic shoes weren’t supposed to break, were they? Unless…unless they weren’t magic at all.

  Then she heard her name being called, and a smile broke across her face. Because her name was being called by someone who loved her.

  But when she looked up, it wasn’t Mama in front of her, crying, and laughing, and hugging her so tight.

  It was Ray.

  RAY

  Ray found Pinny sitting on a stair in the main terminal of Grand Central, her knees tucked up under her chin, a sad, bewildere
d expression on her face. For one second, Ray glimpsed what Pinny had looked like years ago, a lost little girl waiting for her mama. Then she blinked, and there was the Pinny she knew again, the Pinny she was so glad to see that she ran down the ramp to get to her.

  The words “I’m sorry” poured out of her, along with the breath she’d been holding all the way from the hospital.

  Pinny should’ve slapped her across the face. Or worse. But Ray never gave her the chance, because she grabbed her in a hug before Pinny could move.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d be here, but I thought maybe…” She sucked in air. “I’m so sorry. For everything. And what I said about your mama…” The shame of it snagged her words in her throat. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. You probably hate me. You should hate me.”

  She peered into Pinny’s face, expecting to see anger. But the expression she saw there was even worse. It was the vacant look of someone losing faith, a look she saw in her own reflection in the mirror, but one she’d never seen on Pinny’s face. And it was her fault.

  Pinny ran her hand over the silver sandals, then whispered, “Mama’s not coming back for them, is she?”

  Ray hesitated. Before, when she’d told Pinny the truth, she’d wanted to steal her hope, like hers had been stolen by Carter, by Sal and Hugh, by so many people who’d stripped her kindness, her trust. Now, seeing Pinny hugging herself against some invisible bruise, she saw the damage she’d done. She had to make it right, but not with lying.

  “I don’t think so,” she whispered, “but…I don’t know for sure.”

  Tears trickled down Pinny’s face. She laid her head on Ray’s shoulder, and Ray settled into it. It was the first time she ever remembered anyone coming to her for comfort. It was a strange feeling, frightfully full of responsibility, but she didn’t pull away.

  She gave Pinny’s shoulder a squeeze. “Hey. Your mama’s not here, but I am. And we’re sisters, right? Family.”

  “We’re not really.” The bitterness in her voice was unnerving.

  “Maybe not by blood,” Ray said firmly. “But orphans make their own families. We are whatever we believe we are.”

  She was hoping Pinny might smile, or nod, or something. Instead, she whispered dully, “I know what I’m going to be. A worker at Fricasweet’s. Living at Horizons Assist.” She shivered. “I’m going back to Jaynis.”

  “No,” Ray blurted, nearly shouting it. Why hadn’t she seen before? Pinny would waste away there. No…it could never happen. “Don’t say that. You can figure something out—”

  “Stop,” Pinny said. “I’m no good by myself. I can’t do it.”

  Ray wanted to argue. She wanted to reconstruct the rosy picture Pinny’d had of another life. But it wasn’t salvageable. Not when Pinny could see the fake it was.

  Pinny tapped the cast on Ray’s arm. “Is it broken?”

  “In three places,” Ray said.

  “Good,” Pinny snapped.

  Ray’s cheeks broiled. It was the meanest thing she’d ever heard Pinny say to anyone, and the fact that it was meant for her made it cut deeper. She deserved it, though, and much more.

  Pinny sighed. “My feet hurt…bad.”

  “I’ll take you to Dalya’s,” Ray said. “She’s the woman who made the Tree of Lost Soles. She wants to meet you. She’s outside in a cab, waiting for us.” Dalya had reluctantly agreed to wait outside so that if Ray found Pinny, she could talk to her alone.

  “But I need your word that you won’t disappear,” Dalya had said firmly before Ray stepped out of the cab. “That’s the only way I’ll let you go. Please, don’t disappoint me.”

  Ray found herself promising. Not for herself, but for Pinny. Because she knew that Pinny would want to meet Dalya, the keeper of the Tree of Lost Soles. It was a part of Pinny’s fairy tale that Ray could give back to her, and she was planning on it.

  Ray smiled at Pinny now, hoping she’d stirred some excitement over Dalya. But her deadened look remained.

  Pinny wiped her eyes, turning away. “I want to go.”

  Ray stood with Pinny, and they made their way slowly out of the terminal.

  Pinny stopped once to stare at the constellations sprinkled across the ceiling. “When Mama brought me here, I thought the stars were real. I thought they were magic.” Her head drooped. “They’re stupid white paint.”

  “Come on, Pinny.” Ray held out her hand. For one excruciating minute, Pinny didn’t move. Finally, she slipped her hand into Ray’s, letting Ray lead her out the door.

  The warmth of Pinny’s hand in her own might have been reassuring, if Pinny’s fingers hadn’t been so rigid, as if they didn’t want to be there at all. For the first time, Ray feared for her. Some people weren’t built for breaking, and Pinny, she saw now, was one of them.

  DALYA

  “Here we are.” Dalya held her breath as the two girls slunk sheepishly into the shop, wondering if they’d stay or run. Their presence, she sensed, was a delicate thing that could flit away in an instant.

  In the hospital, she’d seen right away how Ray carried anger around her like a cloak. Her very eyes glinted with it, so like the way Henry’s had. She hadn’t been able to save Henry, but maybe she could do something for Ray. She wasn’t sure what or how, but before anything else, she knew, Ray would have to stay. Right now, that seemed unlikely.

  Ray fidgeted, keeping close to the shop door, glancing at it every few seconds as if she were about to bolt right through. Pinny seemed to be the force holding her here, but for how long wasn’t certain.

  “Come in, come in.” Dalya moved past them to sit down at her worktable. She picked up one of Kathryn Rosenbak’s peacock shoes, hoping the shift in attention might encourage them away from the door. Pinny attempted a smile, but it was tremulous and sad. Her green glasses had slipped down to the tip of her nose, and she pushed them up and then gasped as she registered the walls of shoes surrounding her.

  “Such pretty shoes,” she said. “Mama named me for shoes, you know. I’m really Chopine.”

  “Is that so?” Dalya said. “Well, anyone named after such a magnificent shoe is certainly welcome in my shop, thief or no.”

  “Pinny’s no thief.” Ray’s voice lashed out protectively. “We weren’t stealing.” Ray glanced at Pinny, and her face took on a look of resolve, as if she’d just decided something important. “The shoes were Pinny’s mama’s. We came to get them back.”

  Pinny’s wilting posture straightened at Ray’s words, and she snapped her head up to stare at Ray.

  “Your mother’s?” Dalya asked Pinny. “Are you sure?”

  “I thought they were,” Pinny said quietly. “But it wasn’t true….”

  “Yes.” Ray nodded firmly at Pinny. “It was true.”

  Ray’s eyes met Pinny’s. An understanding seemed to pass between them, and whatever it was brought a spark of life to Pinny’s pale face. They both smiled.

  “In that case,” Dalya said, “the shoes do belong to you.”

  “Thank you.” Pinny hugged the silver sandals to her chest, easing into the shop as if she felt safer, now that the shoe question was settled.

  For the first time, Dalya noticed her limp, and the wince Pinny made with each step. “But…are you hurt?” She slipped off her stool to move to Pinny’s side and, as she did, brushed the rest of Kathryn’s peacock feathers off her worktable. They fluttered to the floor in a swirl of iridescence.

  “Oh, I’m such a klutz these days.” She laughed, bending to pick them up. That’s when a flash of pale pink on Pinny’s feet caught her eye, and she lost her breath.

  She knew them instantly. The fabric, once a true pink, was gray with dirt, but the tiny flowers still blossomed across the toe box, exactly as she’d made them.

  A cry escaped her lips, taking with it years of hidden heartache. And overwhelming joy took its place. She sank to her knees, her eyes streaming. “But…this is impossible,” she cried. “Impossible! It was over seventy years ago.”

&
nbsp; Pinny knelt, peering worriedly into her face. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “Those shoes.” She shook her head at Pinny’s feet. “My shoes. I left them behind…in Berlin. I was sure they were gone.”

  “You mean…those are your shoes?” Ray asked in disbelief.

  Dalya nodded, hardly able to comprehend it. It was the sweetest dream, so excessive in its happiness she had to place both hands on the floor to stay grounded to the world. “I made them. A lifetime ago.” She smiled, wiping her eyes. “They were meant to be my wedding shoes. They were lost, and then I…I never spoke about them again. To anyone.”

  “Why not?” Pinny asked.

  “Maybe I was afraid there’d be too much pain in the telling,” she said softly.

  Pinny smiled and looked knowingly at Ray. “See?” she said. “I told you these shoes needed to come with us.” With that, her tepid grayness of before disappeared, leaving a triumphant glow in its place.

  Dalya extended a trembling hand, touching the heel of one of the shoes, feeling the curve of it under her skin. Yes, it was real.

  “Pinny.” She could barely speak. “Could I…hold them?”

  “Sure. They’re too pinchy anyway.” Pinny slipped them off her feet. “But the heel’s broke. I’m sorry.”

  Dalya cradled the shoes in her arms, feeling their weight until she was finally convinced that they were here. She turned the right shoe over, examining the dangling heel, which was tacky with the remains of what looked like gum. The tiny hinge in the heel was rusted and worn. She reached inside the hollow of the heel, knowing it would be too much to ask for, but hoping nonetheless. Her finger found the tattered, water-stained slip of paper, but nothing else.

  She sighed. “Oh well,” she said. “I thought maybe they’d still be there. But that would’ve been too extraordinary.”

  “What?” Pinny asked.

  “My mother’s rings,” she said. “I hid them inside the night the Nazis came for us. They’ve probably been gone for decades now.”