Rules of the Road (12 page)

Alice Lovett, retired shoe model, put her hands on her hips like Mrs. Gladstone was a dog who’d just messed the rug. “You haven’t got a whole lot to say about it.”

Sticking Mrs. Gladstone in a wheelchair and expecting her to cooperate was like plopping a chicken in a church pew and telling it not to squawk.

“I will walk to the elevator!” Mrs. Gladstone shouted.

Alice planted her feet in front of the elevator door and stood tough. “Madeline, you hush!”

I turned away so they wouldn’t see me laughing. Mrs. Gladstone had met her match and it was doing me a whole lot of good.

Alice looked at me. “Have you ever thought of wearing bangs, Jenna?”

I put my hand self-consciously over my forehead. “No.”

“Bangs would frame your eyes. You have very nice eyes.”

Alice studied me like I was incomplete. “And more green,” she said. “You ought to wear more green with your hair.” My grandmother used to tell me that.

“Green’s hard to find,” I muttered, feeling ugly.

The elevator door opened. “Not always,” Alice said and pushed Mrs. Gladstone inside. We rode to the main lobby in silence. When the door opened, Elden Gladstone, Shoe Rodent, was there to greet us.

“What’s all this, Mother?”

Elden glared at his mother in the wheelchair without so much as a how-are-you.

Mrs. Gladstone sat straight and proud and didn’t skip a beat. “My hip’s acting up, Elden. Nice of you to ask.”

Elden took a deep breath. “Are you all right?”

“That depends on how you define all right.”

“Does it
hurt?
” he asked impatiently.

“Not as much as other things,” she said, staring right back at him.

He looked away. “We need to talk, Mother. You need to hear me out.”

“I’m due in Kansas City,” she said, motioning to me to start pushing. Elden stood in her path.

“This conversation needs to happen!” Elden insisted. He looked at me like I was a spy with hidden recording equipment. “
Alone.
”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Mrs. Gladstone said.

Alice and I dug in our spurs and tried to look mean.

Elden knelt down by the wheelchair. I didn’t think he had it in him. He put both his hands on the wheelchair arms and smiled like a used car salesman. “Mother, you know my feelings on how business could be better.”

Mrs. Gladstone’s face got stiff.

“Not that business isn’t good. It could just be spectacular. And you know how the Shoe Warehouse, which is a highly profitable venture, Mother despite your concerns—”

Mrs. Gladstone reared up. “
Their merchandise is atrocious!
”

“
They give the public what it wants!
”

Beads of sweat were popping on Elden’s pale forehead. “Mother, Ken Woldman of the Shoe Warehouse, who is one of the hottest retail deal-makers going, wants to buy Gladstone’s for a great deal of
cash.
” He said “cash” like she was hard of hearing. “We would like your blessing to go ahead and—”

“Change the very fabric of the company.” Mrs. Gladstone stirred in the wheelchair, enraged.

“Mother, this is how business is done now. It’s not the same world you and Dad knew. The shoe business is changing and Gladstone’s has to change with it to survive. This opportunity is being handed to us on a silver platter. It will send the stock soaring. We will all make a killing!”

Mrs. Gladstone looked like she was going to crack Elden over the head with her cane.

I said, “Mrs. Gladstone, should I help you into the bathroom so you can take your medicine?”

Her jaw clenched.

“Remember what the doctor said, ma’am.” I rolled her toward the ladies’ room, a vermin-free zone.

The doctor hadn’t said anything about bathrooms, but Mrs. Gladstone got my drift. I pushed her inside. “I don’t think this is what Mr. Bender would want you to do.”

Her hand gripped the sink in anger.

“Mr. Bender said to just be polite and not give any information and not to slap a man who’s chewing tobacco.” She looked at me irritated. “It sounds better when he says it.”

“All right. All right.”

“Maybe you could smile, ma’am.”

She cracked her mouth open like she had a toothache. Alice walked in, shaking her head.

I said, “You need to work on the smile, Mrs. Gladstone. It isn’t enough to let your teeth show, you’ve got to look like you mean it.”

Alice whipped a big red lipstick from her purse and put it on. “Madeline, this child speaks the truth. If you can’t smile at what’s going on, think of something else that’ll make you happy, and smile at that. I did that through most of my second marriage.”

“I can’t think of anything that will make me happy.”

“Think about Harry Bender and how he’s going to help you,” I suggested.

She grunted. I wheeled her back out with Alice guarding the rear.

Elden was pacing, checking his gold watch.

Mrs. Gladstone said, “Well, Elden as you can see, I’m just doing poorly. We’d better postpone this until I’m stronger.”

Elden didn’t like that. “There are decisions that need to be made!”

Alice and I stared at her.
Smile.

She did, sort of. “Well, of course there are, dear. Just give me a little time. This medicine I’m on makes me so woozy.” She flopped back in the chair, closed her eyes.

“For crying out loud, Mother, you’re seventy-three years old! You’ve done fine things for this company, but it’s time to let the next generation take the reins. I’ll call you in a few days!”

Elden flipped open his portable phone and stormed out. Mrs. Gladstone watched him push through the lobby door, rush out onto the street. She was trying so hard to be brave, her face looked like it was carved from granite. She caught Alice and me looking at her.

“
I’m fine!
” she spat.

Some people just never let down.

“Madeline,” Alice announced, pushing the wheelchair forward, “you are many things right now, but fine is not one of them.”

I steered the Cadillac toward Kansas City. Mrs. Gladstone was sleeping in the backseat. Alice was humming, lost in thought. I passed a slow-moving station wagon and clicked into the freedom of driving.

My father used to talk about being on the road, selling. Every day a new city. You’ve got to smile when you meet the people. I remember him standing at the bathroom mirror shaving, getting himself pumped for a trip. There was a rhythm to it.

Shake hands.

Stay hungry.

Stay focused.

They can’t say no.

Push through till the end of the day.

Nobody buys from a loser.

Another room.

Another restaurant.

Another piece of road just like the next.

Go first class.

Deal at the top.

Never let them see you sweat.

Keep driving.

Cars were important to Dad. He got a new one each year. I remember how he’d pull up to our house, honking like mad, and I’d run out and see the new red machine. They were always red. Mustangs, Thunderbirds. Dad liked things sporty. “First thing a customer sees about me is the car I drive,” Dad always said. Dad took care of his cars, too. Waxed them each week, wiped them down, got the oil changed on time, the tune-ups. He took better care of those cars than he did his family.

I guess people take special care of the things that are important to them.

I tried my best to be important to my father. I didn’t argue with him, even when I knew he was wrong. I didn’t call him a drunk, even though he was one. I just tiptoed around his life, hoping he’d notice. He did sometimes, but he’d be gone in a heartbeat, off chasing some scheme that was going to make him rich. He’d say how all the people who didn’t believe in him would sure look stupid when he came out on top.

Dad said that money talked. And when he had it, he spread it around—buying things we didn’t need, like fur coats and fancy jewelry for Mom, leaving big tips. I realized later it was how he tried to get people to love him.

The stairway in our first house had a hand-carved rail. If you weren’t careful, you could get splinters if you slid your hand down it too fast. Faith got splinters in her rear end once; she didn’t try that again. The rail curled to a landing just before you’d get upstairs. I remember that stairway more than my room. That’s where I’d sit and watch when my father would come home drunk. I’d hear the car pull up, the door slam shut, Dad clear his throat, spit on the sidewalk. I’d climb out of bed and huddle on the landing. I don’t know why. He’d slam through the door, grab at the striped wall to keep standing. Mom would meet him or not, depending. Once he saw me watching from the landing, sitting on the hope chest in my nightgown.

“Whatch you looking at?” he shouted and then vomited on the rug.

Daddy’s home.

Kansas City. Nine-thirty
A.M.
I dropped Mrs. Gladstone off at the downtown Kansas City store. I was supposed to wait twenty minutes and then come in to snoop.

I parked the Cadillac, slipped out in spy fashion. Looked around. Typical shopping district. Kansas City didn’t seem like a big city, it was more like a community of little towns. I walked slowly down the street, whistling an undercover tune, stopped at a magazine stand searching for clues. Saw the cover of
Business Week
magazine.

“The rise of Ken Woldman, Wall Street shoe baron,” blared the headline.

Pretty good clue.

I bought the magazine (know thy enemy), sauntered out. Hit the coffee bar. Got a decaf latte, grabbed a stool, turned to the article and Ken Woldman’s tanned, rich, smiling face—a face that said: Worship me. I know about
money.

I started reading. Ken Woldman had taken Wall Street by storm in only five short years as the Shoe Warehouse broke
records for sales and profitability. “A good price is what people want today in shoes and anything else,” he was quoted. “You give them the right price, they give you their business.”

He was thirty-two years old and lived in Nebraska. He was a quiet, energetic man, who only needed three hours of sleep each night. There was a picture of him at three
A.M.
in his office, practicing golf putts in front of a huge map of the world. There was a picture of him and his wife—she had dark circles under her eyes, probably from being married to all that energy. He was tall and impossibly thin and had a computer in every room of his fourteen-room mansion, including the bathrooms. He called himself “a numbers man who can anticipate the market.” His motto: Believe in yourself, then tell the world.

I sipped my latte.

Read on about how the Shoe Warehouse had grown by buying and selling companies, making big profits. Giving the public what it wants: decent shoes at warehouse prices.

And all this time I thought the public wanted great shoes at fair prices.

I kept reading, hoping something would be said about quality, but quality was never mentioned. I guess that’s not how Wall Street measures success.

I checked my watch mysteriously.

Time to spy.

I stood in the middle of the downtown Kansas City Gladstone’s and felt like I was in an elegant house that had been decorated with cheap furniture.