Best Foot Forward (3 page)

I sat there in this car that had changed my life. For the first time ever, I hoped my English teacher would ask us to write an essay on What I Did on My Summer Vacation. I'd let the words and the memories spill out about Mrs. Gladstone's all-out grit, and how hanging out with old people really has its moments. It pays well, too. I'd write about meeting Harry Bender and how knowing him for just a week changed my life. Changing lives was Harry's specialty. He could have changed so many more, too, if he hadn't gotten killed.

I walked onto the street, pushed the garage door button; the door creaked down. I'll tell you what the world needs—a button to push to turn back the time.

I climbed into my red car and took the long way home.

That was on the cover of the magazine my little sister, Faith, was reading.

I gazed at my stomach that had never been flat; considered my behind that I never had to look at, so whether it was firm wasn't a consuming issue for me. I'd lost thirteen pounds this summer, but lean was a long way off.

“Hi.” I put my briefcase down heavily. “How are you doing?”

“Look, Jenna, I need your help.”

Faith stood before me in a white skirt with knee-high boots and a hot pink tank top. Faith had one goal—to be a world-famous model. She shoved a paper at me. “I've got to practice for my modeling class, so you shout these directions to me, and I'm supposed to change expressions.”

Faith changed expressions a hundred times a day; I didn't see why she needed prompts. She started walking across the room in long strides, one hand on her hip, not blinking. I looked at the sheet and called out, “Casual and free.”

She stomped her foot.
“That's what I'm doing now!”

“Okay, sorry! Be challenging. . . .”

Faith shook her head, her cheekbones got higher, her eyes looked straight ahead. She took harder steps. Not bad.

“Happy and demure . . .”

A little smile played across her face; her eyes brightened; her steps got smaller; she swung her purse as she walked.

“Exciting,” I said.

“I'm not good at this one.”

“Well, try.”

She half bit her lip, raised her eyebrows in anticipation.

“More excitement,” I shouted. “Make me thrilled!”

She stopped in her tracks. “You are so bossy, Jenna!”

“You asked me to help!”

She flounced out. Models know how to make a big exit.

I went to the kitchen; put water on to boil.

I looked at the wall calendar: TODAY IS AUGUST 21.

I stared at the date; it hadn't registered until now.

I looked up to see Faith standing there by the kitchen door. She shook out her hair. “Happy birthday, Daddy.”

“I forgot,” I said.

We always make a big deal out of birthdays in our family, but it's hard to celebrate someone when you never know quite where they are. Last year I got a cake and Faith and I sang “Happy Birthday” to an empty chair. It was so depressing—a colossal waste of devil's food and fudge frosting.

She plopped down on a stool. “What do you think he's doing? You think he's drunk by now?” she asked like a little kid.

I checked my watch—8:00 P.M. “Probably.”

My pasta boiled over. I poured the linguini into a colander, felt the hot steam rise against my face, added peppers, garlic, grated fresh cheese over it, let that melt just a moment, divided it into two bowls, and pushed one toward her.

I took a wooden spoon and bonged a pan hanging from the pot rack overhead. “Happy birthday, Dad, wherever you are.”

Faith lit the tea candles in the blue glass bowl.

“I hate Dad,” she said softly, eating her pasta.

I knew she loved him, too. We'd talked about this a lot—you can hate what someone does, but still love the person.

It's not the easiest concept to embrace. It's right up there with not making excuses for bad behavior. I spent a lot of years making excuses for Dad.

Faith twisted a tendril of her hair. “What would you say if Dad walked in here right now?”

I ate some pasta. “I'd ask him how he got the key.”

She elbowed me.
“Seriously.”

“I don't know, Faith. The last time I saw him, it didn't go too well.”

She twisted that curl tighter. “At least you saw him.”

Faith was throwing little pieces of paper into the tea light flames and watching them burn up.

“Look, Faith, do you want to come to an Al-Anon meeting with me? They can really help to—”

“Mom says I don't need to go.”

“What do
you
say?”

She shrugged.

The glow of the candles flickered through the leaded blue glass, casting an upward light on the wall calendar.

TODAY IS AUGUST 21.

Do you know where your father is?

 

I sat at the computer, looked at the screen.

 

Mom came in late from her date, looking happy. With her new boyfriend and her crazy schedule at the hospital, we didn't get to see each other much. “Hi, stranger. How are you?”

“Fine,” I said, turning off the computer.

She sat on the couch, kicked off her shoes, and looked at me hopefully. I give the best foot rub of anyone in the family. Mom starts off strong, but she gives up after only a minute. I rubbed the soft section of the balls of her feet in a circular motion, so as not to do further injury. I rubbed and massaged the arches, touching on all the pressure points.

You can't quit too soon when you're dealing with feet. You've got to stay the course. I kicked off my shoes because my blister was hurting.

I'm a real ace at handling pain, emotional and otherwise.

I was driving Mrs. Gladstone to work and she was on the phone already, fighting back the enemies of excellence who just want to cut corners here and there and think nobody will notice. “Well, the real problem,” she was saying, “is that everyone has a different definition of quality. We have to get one definition and work toward that.” She hung up and sighed. She's been sighing a lot since we got back from Texas.

She's been shouting a lot, too. As Director of Quality Control for the Shoe Warehouse Corporation, Mrs. Gladstone gets paid to find problems and shout about them until they're fixed. Finding problems around here isn't hard since Gladstone's merged with the Shoe Warehouse this summer. The early bonding phase hasn't been pretty.

To begin with, there was the big debate about how to answer the phone. Do we say, “Hello, Gladstone Shoes,” or, “Hello, Gladstone Shoes/Shoe Warehouse,” or just, “Hello, we're confused.” Then there was the fear factor—will everyone keep their jobs? Followed by the financial factor—will salaries go up, down, or stay the same? And then there was the fudge factor—how truthful were the recent reports on how well our shoes were selling?

Mrs. Gladstone was particularly interested in that. She rustled in the backseat. “Yes, Riley. . . . I want
all
the numbers you have for returns per store by brand. I want all the numbers from the factories as well. We can't find out how to make things better until we see where we are. . . . No, I need it much sooner than that. . . . Next week.”

Mrs. Gladstone was on fire to make things better, but not everyone appreciates the heat. Ken Woldman, the Chief Executive Officer of the Shoe Warehouse Corporation, keeps telling her to slow down, change takes time, that he's fine with cutting a few corners here and there. Then there's Elden Gladstone, her ungrateful son, who keeps telling her how the business has changed and people care more about price than quality. Murray calls Elden “General Manager in Charge of Always Doing the Wrong Thing.” He's very good at his job, too, at least how Murray defines it. Whenever Mrs. Gladstone has a phone call with Elden, she swallows an extra dose of pain medication because the sheer frustration of having a son like that starts her bad hip to throbbing.

I drove down Wells Street. I hated to admit this, but my shoes were hurting. I've sold shoes for over a year and I pride myself on knowing how to get a proper fit. These were a new pair, too—Gladstone's best-selling brand that bears our exclusive label:

We make them in our factory in Bangor, Maine. Mrs. Gladstone told me there wasn't a better shoe factory anywhere. “From the factory workers to the designers,” she said, “every step underscores quality.” People don't realize that over 160 steps go into making a good pair of shoes. Why these hurt was a mystery. I had the right amount of room in the toe, the cut wasn't close to my ankles. I wondered if I'd changed so much this summer that my feet changed shape to keep up with the rest of me.

When we got to the store, Murray was in a snit about the memo that had come from Ken Woldman:

 

“I don't ring bells,” Murray said. “It's in my contract.” Mrs. Gladstone looked at the memo and sighed. “Let's wait till the bell arrives and then decide.”

“And this notice here,” Murray said shrilly, “says all Gladstone stores will be having daily specials on different brands.
Daily?
What are we running—a grocery store?”

Mrs. Gladstone's cheek twitched. “I'll talk to Ken.”

Murray held the top of his stomach, which meant his diverticulitis was acting up.

Throughout the day Mrs. Gladstone kept coming out of her office, muttering disturbing things.

“I think we could use a strong pair of arms around here.”

“The storeroom could certainly use a big cleaning.”

Then she'd turn on her heel, go back into her office, shut the door, and start shouting at someone on the phone.

“You don't think she's going to let that Tanner guy come work here, do you, Murray?”

“Madeline gets these soft spots for people down on their luck.”

I groaned.

“I remember when you came in, kid. You needed work, you know, but you also needed
work.
I say that with respect for what you've done.”

“Was I that bad?”

“You had the guts to walk in and ask for a job, you wanted to work, but like anything new, it took you a while to get your footing.” Murray chuckled at the shoe joke. “But what you had is what everybody needs to succeed—you had heart.”

“Thanks, Murray.”

“I took a chance on you, kid.” I hadn't realized I was such a big risk. “And you didn't let me down. You know why?”

“Because I have heart?”

“Because you were desperate.”

“I was?”

He leaned against the wall next to the poster of our new Gladstone leather walking sandal that basically turned a common man into a mountain goat for just $79.95. “See, desperation is the driving force in finding work. You've got to know you want work, you've got to know you need it. And when you've figured that out, you've got to take the steps and take the chances to make it happen. A desperate person is a hungry person. You follow me?”

I thought back to that time. I guess I was desperate for something to happen to me. I needed something that wasn't just for kids—I needed to make money, be out of the house, learn something entirely new.

“I've been managing shoe people for twenty-three years,” Murray said, “and there's two things I look for.”

I smiled. “Heart and desperation.”

“No, kid.”

This was like one of those multiple-choice literature tests where you wondered if the teacher bothered to read the book.

“I look for character and adaptability.”

“Okay . . .”

“See, character always comes through and I don't want anybody in here I can't trust near the public's feet or the cash register. I don't want anybody in here who's going to lie about shoes just to make a sale. That'll put us out of business like that. I look for adaptability because we're dealing with the whole of humanity, and you've got to be flexible because people are strange and feet are complicated.” Murray got a faraway look in his eye. “It's not like selling ice cream, where people stop by for a cheap treat—whether they get strawberry or chocolate chip isn't going to touch a life. But with a shoe, kid, we're touching a person in a personal way. We hold their feet in our hands. Only a person of character and adaptability sees that as a calling.”