Despite the setting, despite everything, we had to laugh.
Inside the funeral car, I told Isabel how much I liked her shoes. She smiled for the first time in days. “Yeah,” she said. “They’re totally awesome.”
17
Pilgrim’s Progress
A month after my mother died, my father’s last sibling passed away at ninety-nine. “Now I’m the only one left,” my father said. The house, which had once buzzed with my mother’s high energy, was heavy with sadness. My father spent his days sitting in his blue chair reading the newspapers, but it wasn’t the same. Though he’d always prized his solitude, it was different knowing my mother wasn’t going to pop into the room at any moment to announce she was heading off to return another pair of shoes.
My mother had been right about finding “kind” people when you needed them. My father’s home-care attendant, a lovely woman from Ghana, had recently lost her own mother. She was attentive to my father but knew when to leave him alone. There was Jack, who lived in the house that once marked the bus stop where in ninth grade I debuted my ghillies. His wife of thirty-five years had recently died of cancer, and although he was my age, he and my father bonded, two widowers from different generations but with something profound in common. He stopped by every day to say hello and trade The Boston Globe for the Eagle-Tribune. There was Klara, who headed the church’s outreach program, and who gave him communion each week and then sat and talked to him.
And then there was Joan, the nurse who’d assisted in my delivery. Joan remembered my father from his college days when he used to frequent her husband’s restaurant in Andover. Now in her mid-eighties, she was blond, blue-eyed, and radiantly beautiful, with a soothing presence. She said that when I was born, my mother treated me like a fragile little doll. “I think she was horrified when she saw the way Barbara and I were tossing you around in the hospital,” she recalled. Barbara was the other delivery nurse and Joan’s best friend.
No one fed the birds anymore and the white squirrels, looking for more hospitable backyards, disappeared. When I returned for Easter, I noticed that my mother’s garden was overgrown with weeds. The window boxes were empty. I immediately went to the garden shop and bought flowers, planting bright petunias interspersed with ivy. I filled the bird feeder, hoping the white squirrels would return, but none of it mattered to my father.
Over the years, I’d related to Jane Fonda’s struggle to have a relationship with her own distant father. Every time I watched On Golden Pond I’d dissolve into tears when Fonda’s character tries to earn her father’s approval by doing the backflip. Everyone knew that Chelsea and Norman were really stand-ins for Jane and Henry Fonda. I’d always dreamed of an On Golden Pond moment but had no idea how it would take shape, or if it would even happen. Six months before my mother died, Lee and I were were getting ready to drive back to New York when my father casually said, “Take the photo albums.” My mother wasn’t happy. “I like looking at them,” she said, although I’d noticed that she’d begun ripping out unflattering pictures of herself. “Go on, take them,” my father insisted. I raced upstairs and grabbed the five albums. I understood how much they meant to him and appreciated all the time he’d put into them. They were his “books,” a visual diary of our family, and he was entrusting them to me. Whether or not he realized it, I also think he was acknowledging that the story he’d labored over, the story of our family, was coming to a close.
Since then, we had smaller Golden Pond moments. He was fitted with new top-of-the-line hearing aids, which made a huge improvement. It allowed us to talk on the phone, though our conversations were mainly about finances. He was worried about the high cost of twenty-four-hour care and how fast he’d deplete his savings. In 1988, Shawmut Bank had acquired the Arlington Trust Company and the two entities became part of Bank of America, one of the biggest offenders in the subprime mortgage scandal. For someone who’d spent the majority of his career carefully screening people for mortgages, it was ironic that my father’s Bank of America stock would take a hit due to such irresponsible practices.
The table next to his blue reading chair was piled high with bills and bank statements, all neatly organized and wrapped in elastic bands. He kept his will and other important documents in a metal lockbox at the foot of his chair, along with a white three-ring binder in which he’d laid out in meticulous detail all the steps my mother needed to take in the event of his death. He’d assumed he’d be the first to go. He’d even written his own obituary, telling Nancy to make sure I didn’t add any unnecessary flourishes.
Once when Nancy was visiting, he brought up the idea of going into a nursing home. “But don’t you want to stay at home?” she asked.
“What’s a home?” he responded.
When he’d lost his mother as a young boy, he’d also lost his home. He’d lived in a convent, a boarding school, and a series of Army barracks. When he found my mother, he’d found a home, but without her, he felt he had none.
At the end of July, he fell in the bathroom, and when he was taken to the emergency room, he was diagnosed with pneumonia. It eventually cleared up, but he’d hurt his ankle and knees, which made walking even more difficult. In a repeat of what happened to my mother, he went from the hospital into a nursing home for rehab. This time I made sure to select a different one. It was part of a retirement complex, where people fifty-five and older can buy a condo and then transition into assisted living and the nursing home. The director of admissions turned out to be a former colleague of Nancy’s. They had a private room in the rehab section where, if he decided to stay, he could remain permanently. It was bright and cheery and on the first floor.
Before Lee and I moved him from the hospital, we stopped by the house to pick up his mail. As we drove down my old street, I commented that it would be one of the few times I’d be going into the house without one of my parents greeting me. We pulled into the driveway and there, by the front steps, was one of the white squirrels.
“I think it’s your mother,” Lee said.
“And she’s telling me to write a children’s story.”
I thought I’d feel sad entering the house, but it was a beautiful sunny day, the living room infused with light, the flowers still blooming in the window boxes. I’d called the landscapers and they’d done extensive cutting and weeding. It felt like a home, not necessarily mine anymore, and indeed, I’d left it decades ago, but a place still filled with love.
Afterward, we went to the nursing home, which is in North Andover, on thirty-seven acres of rolling hills and meadows. My father’s room has a lovely view, where he can watch the seasons change. I asked him if he wanted me to bring over a few family photographs to tack on the bulletin board or place on his bureau, but he said no. At first I was offended, but then I realized it was too painful for him. I also imagined bringing the little porcelain boy, who’d accompanied him everywhere on his journey, but I couldn’t bring the little boy without the matching little girl, and the little girl was gone. When we said good-bye, he told me, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” I cried most of the way back to New York.
With everything that had happened with both our families, Lee and I hadn’t taken time off in a year and a half, and we were both exhausted. At the end of August, we decided to go to Tuscany. Our hotel was in the tiny southern village of Palazzetto, near the slightly larger Chiusdino. The thirteenth-century stone-clad villa overlooked the Serena Valley and had once served as a stopping-off point for medieval pilgrims walking the Via Francigena, which ran from Canterbury, through France and Switzerland, and finally to Rome. The hotel’s small spa, located in a stone building, had once served as the bakery where the pilgrims would be given bread before heading to the nearby Abbey of San Galgano.
After resting for a day, we took off to the abbey, part of a ruined thirteenth-century Cistercian monastery that was named after Saint Galgano. According to legend, he’d seen a vision of J
esus, Mary, and the Apostles, who told him to renounce his materialistic ways. He replied that it would be easier to split a rock with a sword. Embedded in a stone, the sword is on display in a circular church above the abbey. For years it had been considered a hoax, but recent metal-dating tests confirmed the sword’s medieval origins. Many believe it was the inspiration for the Arthurian legends, but even if it wasn’t, the abbey and church are beautiful.
We continued to walk, creating our own pilgrim’s path. We climbed up and down cobbled medieval streets, dropping in at small churches with disappearing frescos, eating mozzarella and tomato panini in outdoor restaurants with views of clock towers and fortresses and remnants of Etruscan walls. At night, we fell into bed exhausted, only to start walking again the next day. I wore comfortable navy sneakers with heavily cushioned inserts. I was no longer thinking about shoes but about the pure joy of walking.
We ended the trip in Rome, where our hotel was preparing for a big Middle Eastern wedding. In the lobby, I encountered a group of women dressed in traditional head scarves and long black abayas. Apparently they, too, wanted to be comfortable as they walked the city streets. Peeking out from beneath their robes were identical Jimmy Choo sequined sneakers.
After we returned to New York, we went to visit my father, whose rehab period was about to end. We discussed bringing him home, but he feared that even with twenty-four-hour care he might take a bad fall, and there were too many medical complications. I think he also enjoyed the activity. He made friends with the nurses and attendants, and Jack and Joan dropped by at least once a week. One of Joan’s close friends happened to be in the room across from my father’s. Though she slept much of the day, when she woke up, she and my father waved at each other. It comforted him.
That night we stayed in the house, in the room where my mother died. It felt surprisingly peaceful. The next morning, I gathered some of my old things to bring back to New York. At the beginning of the summer, I’d spotted a pair of white oxfords that I liked but were too expensive. By July, they were half-price, so I bought them. As I walked from room to room, I heard my mother’s voice telling me, “White shoes? Are you crazy?” But white was the color of my “first love,” Mary Janes. White was the color of the squirrels. It was the color of the snow that fell during weddings and funerals and births. And now it was the color of the shoes I wore when I said good-bye to the house. Though I knew I’d be returning, it felt like the final walk-through.
The big surprise was that my mother hadn’t “pitched and chucked” everything after all. In fact, she’d been downright sentimental. She’d kept my Shirley Temple doll, with the unraveled ringlets; all my letters from London; every report card and school paper and magazine article that carried my byline. Hidden away on the top shelf of her closet was a pair of brand-new shoes. A former neighbor asked if she could have them. She’d gone with my mother to buy them, and knowing how frustrating that must have been, I happily gave them to her. I also found the gold mesh bag my mother had carried to cocktail parties fifty years earlier. Inside was a handkerchief that still smelled of My Sin. Inhaling the scent, I immediately pictured her black stilettos. Next to the purse was my baby book covered in pink satin. I slipped it into my overnight bag to bring back with me to New York.
When Lee and I left the house, the white squirrels were scampering in the backyard. “I’d like to have the bird feeder,” Lee said. “We could put it right in front of our kitchen window and look at the birds just as your mother did.”
“So we’ll become bird-watchers in our old age?”
He laughed. “At least we’ll have something in common.”
I didn’t look at the baby album for several weeks. I felt it would make me too sad. When I finally opened it, I had to smile. Glued to the first page was a birth announcement that read JUST ARRIVED TO FILL THESE SHOES. . . . There was a picture of a pair of blue baby shoes with pink laces on the front. On the opposite page, my mother had written down my birth date, the hour of my birth, my weight, and the names of the delivery nurses, including Joan, who was then Miss Hardy, and another nurse, Miss Winters.
My mother noted that I’d made my first attempt at crawling upstairs at ten months. At a year, I took four steps and “walked soon after.” Lacking my father’s focus, my mother worked on the book intermittently, and Patricia’s Baby Album contained mostly blank pages. She’d always wanted me to write a children’s story, so perhaps she’d left it up to me to finish it.
A few days later, flipping through the book again, my eye stopped at the name of the second delivery nurse. I had a hunch and called my father.
“Remember the nurse who helped deliver me?” I asked.
“Sure, Joan.”
“No, the other one. Miss Winters.”
“Oh, that’s Barbara. She’s the one across the hall. I’m waving to her now.”
What were the odds that the two women who were present at my birth would be close to my father as he neared the end of his life? It almost made me believe in angels.
When I looked at the baby album again, I noticed something else. My mother had been inconsistent about keeping up with my various childhood milestones, but in her random jottings, she’d seen the future:
“Patricia loves books.”
“She loves asking questions.”
“She loves wearing my shoes.”
Epilogue
The other day, I bumped into my friend Nancy, who lives in my building and is a 9½ narrow too. Over the years, we’ve discussed our favorite topics: shoes and mothers. Now that we’ve grown older and traded high heels for lower ones, we’ve also come to view our mothers from a different perspective. We’ve gone from complaining about them, to accepting their foibles, to outright admiration for their grit and determination. We always loved them; it took time and maturity to walk in their shoes.
Nancy told me that her mother, who is eighty-nine and lives in Florida, recently suffered a series of unexplained falls. Up until then, she’d enjoyed an active life but is now housebound. “I just got off the phone with my sister,” she said. “She was driving to the Goodwill to donate my mother’s shoes! I told her to turn the car around. ‘Take away her shoes,’ I said, ‘and you take away her hope.’”
I suddenly thought of an Emily Dickinson poem that I’d memorized in grade school. It’s about the endurance of a bird’s song through dark times. I’ve always loved the quirky opening line: “Hope is the thing with feathers.” Hope, I’ve discovered, is also the thing with bows and rhinestones and studs, with kitten heels and platforms, red soles and beige. Hope is the reason I’m back at Bergdorf Goodman in search of a pair of knee-high boots to replace the ones I wore to my mother’s funeral.
Today, the shoe department isn’t offering champagne but it’s still packed with shoppers. Women in all shapes and sizes are walking up and down in every conceivable type of shoe. I stand at the entrance and watch the colorful parade, almost expecting confetti to rain down from the ceiling. As the women gaze at their reflections in the full-length mirrors, they rotate their feet to make sure a particular style flatters their legs. If they’re wearing pants, they roll them up. If they’re wearing dresses or skirts, they sometimes twirl around to view the shoes in motion. Sometimes they just stare, as if creating stories in their heads. No matter their ages, they’re like children playing dress-up. These women are not buying shoes to please men. They’re buying shoes to please themselves.
As I try on a variety of boots, in black and gray, suede and calfskin, I see the gumball machine and the fluoroscope, the marabou mules and Beatle boots. I think of my mother, and I’d love to go back in time if only for an hour or two. I find myself getting teary, so I thank the salesman and take the bus home. A few hours later, I go online and find the perfect boots in snakeskin and suede. They have a two-inch block heel, a rounded toe, and a narrow profile. With their multiple textures, they remind me of the 1970s, which really wasn’
t my fashion decade, but maybe it will be now. Picturing myself in the boots, I hear my mother say, “Snakeskin? Are you crazy?” And then I hear the flutter of wings, and I know that hope, in 9½ narrow, is on its way.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my father for everything, my sister Nancy for her high spirits and knotted hair, and my niece Isabel for being such a joy. A special thank-you to Clarice Kestenbaum, whose shoes no one could possibly fill.
I am lucky to have kept the same incredible friends for decades. My deepest gratitude goes to Woody for being the best pal a girl could ever have, and to Warren, who’s so vain he probably thinks this book is about him. I adore you both (in equal measure). I’d also like to thank Ira Fogel and Pamela Fogel for entrusting me with Steffi’s story. I miss her every day. Thanks to Ira Resnick, Jamie and Jenny Delson, Glynnis O’Connor, James Danziger, Jack Henry, Suzanne Eagle, Richard Story, Jennifer Crandall,and Robin Sherman. A special thanks goes to Elaine Altholz, who put this book in motion, Nancy Cromer Grayson, who provided the ending, and to Marie Colantoni Pechet for her inspiring blog.
A big thank-you to my incredibly supportive editor, Lauren Marino, and to her energetic team at Gotham. I am indeed fortunate to have the wonderful Emma Sweeney as my agent.
To my mother-in-law, Dorothy Stern, all I can say is please keep your amazing pea soup coming. As for my husband, Lee, thanks for finally admitting that the mysterious steamer trunk in our storage bin contains some of the Puma sneakers I thought you’d given away. And no, I don’t believe you held on to the red patent-leather ones to commemorate our first date. Still, I love you. Thanks for walking beside me.
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