In A Room of One’s Own, Virgina Woolf, who had a turbulent relationship with her sister, Vanessa Bell, wrote that women are always “thinking back” through their mothers. I’d add that we’re also “thinking back” through our sisters, examining our past through our shared history of love and hate, intimacy and rivalry. Because we speak the same “sister tongue” and can encapsulate whole decades of our lives with a grimace or catchphrase, we enjoy a relationship that’s far deeper than most. When it’s good, it’s wonderful, but when it’s not, there are few things more painful.
With sisters, you always remember the smallest details, even the ones they wished you’d forget. I remember when Emily sucked her fingers at night, insisting they tasted of butterscotch. I remember the squeaky bed. I remember her crush on Adam West, the original Batman, and on her ninth-grade English teacher. I especially remember my decapitated doll, Betty.
Over the years, the struggle to reunite Betty played out in different ways. I became a writer, fulfilling my destiny as “Betty’s head.” When I didn’t get pregnant, I was disappointed but not devastated. I was hard at work on a book. Emily, who is long-limbed and physically fit, was elated when she became pregnant. When I called to congratulate her, she cut me off, explaining that it was a private matter between her and her husband. I hung up the phone feeling as if she’d punched me in the stomach. She subsequently didn’t return my calls. When she finally emerged two weeks later, I was hurt and confused. “Why didn’t you call back?” I asked. Drawing on a lifetime of pent-up emotion, she lashed out. “It’s always about you, isn’t it?” Then she added, “You don’t know what it means to be a sister!”
Being a sister was an integral part of my identity, and over the years, I’d considered myself a good one. I’d always been there for Emily and couldn’t fathom how she could actually say that I didn’t know what it meant to be a sister. It seemed cruel and unnecessary. It also seemed totally wrong.
My mother, who had only one brother, had always been desperate for sisters, imagining a warm, wonderful Little Women scenario. She expected us to be the March girls, though if she’d looked deeper into Louisa May Alcott’s life, she would have found complications there too. “You were always so happy together,” she’d say, which was not entirely true. With three children, sibling relationships are often triangulated, and at different points of their lives, one usually feels left out. There were times when Emily was close to Nancy, other times when she was closer to me. It was just the way it went.
Once Emily got married and had a baby, however, she had her own family, which seemed to preclude her old one. It was as if the two universes couldn’t intersect. Before her wedding, when she moved out of my old apartment, she made a point of telling me that she’d left a coat behind. It happened to be one that Lee and I had given her. That said everything. She no longer needed or wanted my protection; she would soon have a husband to fill that role. I’d become dispensable, like the coat. Since that wasn’t something she could articulate to my mother—indeed, she may not have even been aware of it—she needed reasons not to talk to me and continually found them.
After we planned a vacation at the end of August that happened to coincide with my niece’s first birthday, Emily expected me to cancel the trip. When I told her it wasn’t possible due to Lee’s work schedule and suggested we celebrate the following weekend, she didn’t speak to me for a year. Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.
There were countless incidents in which I continually did something “wrong,” which gave her the freedom to stay mad so she didn’t have to actually see me. When I dropped off a present for my niece one Christmas, Emily returned the gift with a note saying that I owed her the gift of an apology. It involved something a friend’s daughter had said to my niece the previous Christmas. The daughter apologized the next day, and in any event, it had nothing to do with me. Still, I persisted in trying to fix things without knowing what was broken. I invited Emily to the opera, but she never wanted to go. I continued to send my niece birthday and Christmas presents, receiving polite but curt thank-you notes in return.
One day, I passed Emily on the opposite side of Madison Avenue. She was with my niece, who was then five or six, and a handful of mothers from her daughter’s school. I was coming from the radiologist’s office after my yearly mammogram. Though our mother didn’t have breast cancer until she was sixty-four, I—we—have always been categorized as being at high risk, and I’m always a nervous wreck before my checkups. But luckily, everything was fine and I felt like buying something to celebrate.
“Hey, I’m okay,” I wanted to tell my sister as she walked toward me. “They didn’t find anything!” I pictured us going shoe shopping together and then sitting at an outdoor café, where we’d laugh so much that the women at the next table, noting our similar voices and blue eyes, would whisper enviably, “Oh, they must be sisters!” But we didn’t go shopping or have lunch or laugh. We didn’t even say hello. Instead, we hid behind our sunglasses, passing each other as if we were strangers and continued to walk in opposite directions.
Finally, my mother, who is nothing if not persistent, convinced Emily to invite us to see her daughter dance in The Nutcracker. For the next several years, the only time I saw my niece was when she was in ballet slippers onstage. At that rate, I figured the only way I’d ever get to know her was through all the various roles, up to and beyond Sugar Plum Fairy.
My mother couldn’t understand why her daughters were “fighting.” She kept pushing me to make contact, once going so far as to convince me to call Emily on my own birthday. I felt ridiculous, and it didn’t matter anyway. Emily remained elusive. She never showed up at Thanksgiving because Nancy and I were there, visiting my parents when she knew we’d be absent. Perhaps as a middle child it was the only way she could carve out a unique identity for herself. I’d always run interference between Emily and Nancy, acting as a mediator during their frequent misunderstandings, but now that Emily and I were no longer close, the sibling ecosystem was thrown off balance. When Nancy became pregnant with her daughter Isabel, she assumed it would bring her closer to Emily, and I feared I’d be the one left behind. On more than one occasion, Emily had told me pointedly that a “book is not a child,” but Emily and Nancy didn’t bond over their children; in fact, by having a baby, Nancy had introduced another “Betty” into the family dynamic, and Emily didn’t want to hear about her.
I desperately wanted to fix the situation, because that was my designated family role, but no matter what I did, nothing worked. I discussed it so much with my therapist that even she was growing frustrated. Whenever I uttered the word sisters to my friends, I saw a look in their eyes that said, Please, not again! Finally, I told myself, “Enough!” Whenever my mother brought up the subject, which she did frequently, I begged her to let it go. “Emily is happy,” I explained. “She has a wonderful husband and a smart, talented daughter. Maybe she needed to cut ties so she could be her own person. Let it be.”
I hoped my mother would catch the Beatles reference, but she was having none of it. She prayed for reconciliation, and finally, her prayers were answered, when all of her daughters developed plantar fasciitis, the most common cause of heel pain. It happens when the thick band of tissue—the plantar fascia—that runs from the bottom of your foot to your toes becomes inflamed, due to a number of reasons, including overuse or improper footwear. “Improper” means flats and high heels, so I could no longer be self-righteous about wearing sensible shoes.
“You should talk to Emily about this,” my mother said. “She went through the same thing!” My mother was practically giddy at the notion that we might bond over our mutual sore heels. I suspect she’d have been even happier if Emily had needed an organ transplant, figuring that if I gave her one of my kidneys, she’d be obligated to call now and then.
I commiserated with Nancy, who gave me the same advice she always gives:
“
You should see my chiropractor. He’s incredible.” Since her chiropractor lives in Boston, it wasn’t the most practical recommendation. She then suggested ice and rest, neither of which she’d bothered with due to her extremely high tolerance for pain. Years ago, she taught aerobics, and her class was so difficult she received hate mail, and yet everyone kept coming back for more.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “It will go away.”
“Has yours?”
“No, but I’ve blocked it out.”
I decided to go to the podiatrist I’d seen once before. He plays flamenco guitar, which I didn’t know at the time so was left wondering why a podiatrist would have three very long glossy nails on his right hand. He must have seen me staring because he immediately explained about his guitar playing, though he probably would have done so anyway. In my experience, foot doctors seem to be unduly proud of their hobbies. I remembered my fencing podiatrist and his recommendation for my overpronation. I doubted flamenco guitar would do much for heel pain.
I made a point of wearing tie shoes with special “revolutionary” air insoles. He squeezed them between his fingers before rolling them up in a ball. “These are useless,” he said. “No support.”
He wanted to know how long I’d had the pain and I told him about two years. “You’ve been walking around in pain for two years and never thought of doing anything about it?” he asked.
I explained that at first it was a dull ache that didn’t really bother me until the pain grew intense. I blamed Vera Wang. We met in her office so I could interview her for a story, and she had on Martin Margiela’s split-toed stacked-heeled Tabi boots. I didn’t like the boots but admired Wang’s attitude. Every word out of her mouth was “fierce,” and for someone in her sixties, she was definitely that. I looked down at her chic, if slightly ridiculous, boots and then at my boring flat boots, and I realized I needed fierce. After the interview, I walked thirteen blocks to Saks, where I barely managed to reach their 10022-Shoe Salon, before I had to sit down on a banquette. The dull ache in my heel was now throbbing like mad.
After the podiatrist performed a sonogram, he told me that I had a slight tear in the fascia of my right foot and a barely imperceptible one in my left. He told me to stop walking for exercise. He told me ideally that I should stop walking entirely, but since that wasn’t possible, he told me to wear supportive sneakers. Reluctantly, I followed his advice, but my heel pain kept getting worse, especially in the mornings. He then gave me a CAM Walker boot, a strap-on orthopedic device that controls and stabilizes the foot in order to promote healing. The boot lasted a week. It threw off my normal gait and gave me lower back pain, which for a writer is worse than heel pain. On my return appointment, I knew by the look in the podiatrist’s eyes that I’d become a Problem Patient. His office walls were filled with glowing autographed testimonials from major ballet stars and sports figures. He’d fixed their valuable feet, but somehow my foot, which didn’t need to plié or pirouette or do anything more strenuous than walk at a brisk pace around Central Park, refused to cooperate. He sent me for an MRI of my foot to rule out any fractures. I had none. He said we could try “platelet-rich plasma therapy,” which involved injecting my own blood into my foot, but that sounded too weird, so his last and final suggestion was to buy a pair of MBTs.
MBT stands for Masai Barefoot Technology. The Masai, a seminomadic tribe from East Africa, are famous for their excellent posture, athletic ability, and freedom from joint pain. A Swiss engineer named Karl Müller discovered their secret: walking barefoot on soft sand and grass. MBTs, with their curved “rocker” soles, were designed to mimic that effect. Even though they sounded like a modern variant of Earth shoes, I bought them, wearing them for several weeks without any relief. And then I began to wonder if the Masai didn’t complain of joint pain because they had bigger things to complain about, such as lack of food and water. Then I saw pictures of Masai men wearing sandals made of tire rubber, so by that point I was totally confused. Out went the MBTs.
After a year, the pain in my right heel went away—and migrated to my left heel. Discouraged, I dumped all the shoes I’d probably never wear again into a canvas bag and brought them to a consignment shop. I hoped to recoup some of the money I’d foolishly spent on them. The shop, on the second floor, was packed with designer merchandise. We were then in the midst of the financial crisis and women were emptying their closets, which meant the owner could be extremely picky. I lined up behind a woman with a stack of Chanel suits, some still bearing the original price tags. The tyrannical owner stood behind a glass case, where they kept their most precious items, such as Hermès Birkin bags that cost even more than at the Hermès boutique.
After the woman carefully inspected the Chanel items, rejecting one because it had a tiny stain, she turned to my shoes. By then, there was a long line of women behind me.
“Our customers don’t like these,” she said, referring to a pair of Roger Vivier buckled pumps. “Our customers like Louboutin, Manolo, and maybe Jimmy Choo.”
“These are iconic shoes,” I said about the pumps. “Catherine Deneuve wore them in Buñuel’s Belle de Jour.”
“I’m not here to argue with you,” she said, shoving them back at me. “What else do you have?”
I dipped into my canvas bag, pulling out my Carolynes. She looked at them as if inspecting cancer cells under a microscope.
“No, too old,” she said.
“But they’re classics.”
“To some people, but not to our customers.”
She agreed to take a pair of Manolo Blahnik python pumps, which I’d bought new at the same consignment shop, along with Manolo flats that I purchased right before I developed my plantar fasciitis. They were pristine. The line of consignees was getting longer, the woman behind the glass case more impatient. Luckily, I’d saved the best for last: two pairs of Louboutin ankle boots, newly polished and soled.
“No,” the woman said.
“No? They’re Louboutins.”
“But they have black soles,” she said.
“Yes, I just redid them.”
“That was a big mistake. Our customers want the red soles.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you saying that you won’t take perfectly good Louboutin boots because the soles aren’t red?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. . . . Next.”
The woman behind me offered a piece of advice: “Take them to Leather Spa in midtown. They resole Louboutins with red rubber that’s the exact same shade.”
Another woman followed me as I headed downstairs. “What size are the Louboutins?” she whispered. After I told her, she said, “Meet me at the cash machine on the corner of Madison and 79th Street, and we can strike a deal.” I thanked her but said no. I imagined being arrested for selling counterfeit goods because even the New York police probably knew that Louboutins had red soles.
A few weeks later, I ran into Emily on Madison Avenue, not far from where her daughter attends school. I hadn’t seen my niece since she was a Nutcracker angel, but I kept the conversation upbeat and cordial, following my mother’s advice to seek advice about my sore heel. Since she and her daughter were walking home and I was doing an errand not far from where she lived, I said, “I’ll walk with you.” It was clear she wasn’t thrilled, but not wanting to risk a heel flair-up by running away, she agreed. “Do you have any ideas about what to wear?” I asked. She suggested the Arche shoes, which are made with natural latex that helps with shock absorption. She was wearing a cute pair of Arche ankle boots in teal. While I wear mostly dark colors, she tends to gravitate toward colorful ones.
We continued to walk down Madison, having a perfectly pleasant if slightly strained conversation about our feet, when she suddenly said, “Well, I’m going this way.” She’d obviously had enough “sister time” for one afternoon. “Oh, okay,” I said. “I guess I’ll see you, then.�
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I decided to walk to the Arche store, where I told the saleswoman my sister had recommended it. “We both have plantar fasciitis,” I said, as if to make up for what we didn’t have, which was a relationship. “What does you sister look like?” she asked. I described her as a tall blonde with size 8½ feet.
“I think I remember her,” she said. “Does she have a daughter?”
“Yeah, my niece.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” she added. “You must have a lot of fun together.”
“Yes, lots.”
The saleswoman looked at my feet and shook her head. “You’re very narrow. Our shoes run wide. But let me see what I have.” She returned with a pair of lace-up boots that looked like something Heidi might wear to herd sheep in the Alps.
“They also come in a pretty shade of teal,” she said.
“No, I can’t wear teal. That’s my sister’s color.”
Since they were the only ones that ran narrow, I bought them—in black. When I called my mother later that night, I told her about running into Emily, even though I knew I was opening up Pandora’s box.
“I’m so happy you’re finally talking again,” she said.
“I wouldn’t say we were exactly talking. She just told me where to get shoes.”
“I think that’s very encouraging. Telling someone where to get shoes is like . . .”
“Telling someone where to get shoes.”
“Well, that’s something.”
With my heel still inflamed, I made an appointment with a doctor known around town as “the rock star of podiatrists.” Waiting in his office, I sat next to a fashionably dressed woman who was back for a follow-up appointment. She was wearing four-inch heeled sandals. Maybe the doctor was a miracle worker after all. He started off by telling me I needed another sonogram because he didn’t trust the other podiatrist’s equipment. After I had the sonogram, the doctor gave me the good news. I didn’t need physical therapy or a CAM boot or even orthopedic shoes. What I needed were orthotics, and I didn’t just need one pair, I needed three—for sneakers, flats, and heels. They were inscribed with his name, so now I had designer orthotics that cost $2,500, which my health insurance actually covered.
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