Rules of the Road (9 page)

I glared at the small round man who had guilty eyes. “Is that an official store policy?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have it in writing?”

He shrugged.

I said, “If you don’t have it in writing, sir, you have to honor this coupon.”

“I don’t have to do nothing,” the man said.

The woman was shaking, looking in her wallet. “But I can’t get all my kids shoes without that twenty percent,” she said.

“Store policy,” said the man.

My insides were steaming. I looked out the window. A large policeman walked by twirling his nightstick. “Stay there,” I said to the woman and ran out the door.

“Officer, we need some help.”

He put his hand on his gun—a nice touch—and stormed inside. The Law.

I showed him the coupon as the round man grew pale.

The officer walked toward him.

“Made a mistake,” the small man said, reaching for the coupon. “It’s good. We’ll take it.
Sure.
”

The policeman waited until the woman paid for and got her merchandise; he held the door for her as she walked out buried in shoe boxes and children. He held the door for me, then went back in the store, said something to the small round man who nodded wildly. The policeman walked out the door whistling, tipped his hat to us, and walked off.

Another evil retail plot foiled.

The woman looked at me over her packages. “Who are you, anyway, miss?”

I smiled mysteriously. I wished I was wearing one of those trench coats with the big collars that stand up around the neck. I put on my extra-cool driver sunglasses, touched my forehead in a tough-guy salute, and walked down the street whistling, just missing a mound of dog poop.

We stayed in Springfield for three days. I mostly poked around, took stealth walks, and wrote postcards home.

I sent Faith a completely black postcard with the words “Springfield at night,” which should give her a real yuck. I got Mom a postcard of Abraham Lincoln looking presidential and wrote “Thinking great thoughts. Keeping two-and-a-half car lengths on all major thoroughfares. How’s by you?” I mailed Grandma a postcard of a field of daisies and told her to pin it on her memory board. I found a card for Opal with an old-fashioned jail and wrote “Counting the days till you’ll be free.”

Mrs. Gladstone said I could call home whenever I wanted, but I’m not much of a phone person. I think it’s because my dad used to make me answer the phone when I was small, tell people he wasn’t home when he was standing right there. I didn’t know at the time that he owed those people money. Dad owed more money than he could ever pay back. I don’t use a phone unless I absolutely have to.

I liked being on my own. Springfield is a good town to do that in because it’s easy to get around and there’s so much history to see. I visited Lincoln’s Tomb twice, stood there on the perfect green grass and thought about all the greatness and courage of that man. I touched the white-gray wall, wondering if some of it could rub off on me.

I love travelling and meeting new people. I met a retired couple from Canada who said that talking to me made them feel good about American teenagers. I said talking to them made me feel good about Canada, although I’d never had a reason not to. New people just take you how you come. They don’t know about all the free-throws you missed in the regional basketball tournament, don’t know how you looked seventeen and a half pounds thinner.

I unwrapped an Almond Joy and told Mrs. Gladstone what I’d seen at the Shoe Warehouse. She said my “insights” were illuminating and wrote down everything I said in her blue leather book.

She was writing down other insights as well, mostly about Elden, heard mostly from Margaret Lundstrom, who had learned big and terrible things from Harry Bender, the world’s
greatest shoe salesman and manager of Gladstone’s flagship store in Dallas, Texas, that was famous for its immense size (everything is bigger in Texas) and the fact that it contained the world’s largest plastic foot. Harry Bender found out that Elden, the rat, was ready to sell Gladstone’s to the Shoe Warehouse the day after Mrs. Gladstone retired; all the meetings had taken place, the board of directors had okayed the deal without letting Mrs. Gladstone know. The Shoe Warehouse wanted to use the Gladstone’s name in all their tacky prefab stores so that people would think they were better than they were.

Mrs. Gladstone kept talking on her portable phone to Harry Bender about it all the way back to the hotel, saying, “Harry Bender, are you
sure?
” There’d be a pause and she’d say, “
Well!
You’d think blood would count for something.”

I didn’t think customers were that dumb and I said this to Mrs. Gladstone after she hung up.

“It’s called perception,” she answered softly. “Gladstone’s has built such good will over the years. People trust us to sell quality merchandise. It’s going to take the public a little while to catch on that just because there’s a Gladstone’s sign on the door doesn’t mean there’s Gladstone’s quality inside. By then the Shoe Warehouse and Elden will be rich.”

I mentioned that it didn’t seem like the Peoria store was making money with all that junky merchandise.

“That was Elden’s early experiment,” she said. “He’s gotten smarter since then.”

We got to the hotel; I let the attendant park the car. Mrs.
Gladstone was really dragging that bad leg of hers. I could see by her face that she’d about reached her limit. I tried to mention this to her gently, but coming at her that way just got her frosted.

“I need a new hip if you must know!”

A new one? I thought you had to stay with the original.

“I’m having the operation when I return to Chicago, and I don’t want to discuss it again.”

“Does it hurt bad?”

Mrs. Gladstone leaned on her cane and looked at me, trying to be tough. “This leg will make it to Texas.”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt,” I said and helped her into the lobby.

Mrs. Gladstone and I were turning in for the night. I was wondering how to add a foot to the rollaway bed so I wouldn’t have to scrunch up like a contortionist to get some rest. I was trying to put the pillow as high up on the cot as possible to gain inches in leg room.

“Harry Bender . . .” she said. “That man is one of a kind.”

I fiddled with the pillow, quick lay down to see if it helped. The pillow fell off. I said, “I’ve heard.”

Mostly I’d heard about Harry Bender from Murray Castlebaum, who said that Harry could sell sandals to Eskimos if he felt like it. The man was a shoe legend. He sold more shoes each year than the number two, three, four, and five ranking salespeople combined.

“The great Mahatma,” Murray called him. Mahatma is a title of respect that people called Gandhi, the spiritual leader of India. It means Great Soul if you’re in India. If you’re in the shoe business, it means Great
Sole.

“Mahatma Bender,” Murray would say, putting his hands together and bowing down, “once he got them in the store, he wouldn’t let them out without a sale. The man was like a magnet. People couldn’t say no. If you ever meet him, all you gotta do is stand there in his presence. Believe me, kid, you’ll learn something.”

Mrs. Gladstone’s shoulders dropped like the wind got knocked out of her.

“Is everything okay, Mrs. Gladstone?”

Mrs. Gladstone looked small and wrinkled propped up like she was in the bed. “No,” she said softly. “No, it’s not.”

My mind raced back to when I was seven years old. Mom was in the kitchen pouring bourbon down the sink so there wouldn’t be any for Dad to drink when he came home—if he came home. Whenever he left, even if it was just to buy cigarettes down the street, I always wondered if I’d see him again.

But this night was worse than the others. I was getting peanut butter from the pantry when Dad staggered home loaded. Mom called him an alcoholic; said he needed to get help. I’d never heard him get so angry, shouting that no one had faith in him; what’s the big deal about a few drinks; couldn’t a man unwind after a long day at work? He kept
yelling and Mom kept saying she wasn’t going to be a co-dependent anymore, wasn’t going to cover up for him. He kicked a big dent in the refrigerator and stormed out.

I went out to Mom. She was crying on the kitchen stool, bent over.

“Is everything okay?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “No, it’s not.”

From that day on I knew Dad would go permanently.

When Mom and Dad got divorced, Mom gathered me and Faith on her lap. “We’re not going to pretend like this hasn’t been hard,” she said, “because it’s been very hard. We’re not going to pretend that everything’s okay, because right now it’s not. What we’re going to do is talk to each other and let our feelings out and trust that in the process we will find a better life. Deal?”

Faith said, “Deal,” and held out her hand. She was smiling.

I said, “Deal,” and held out my hand. I was crying.

Mom took both our hands and put them between hers. I felt strength zooming from her hands into mine, right up to my heart.

I thought about taking Mrs. Gladstone’s hand, but she turned off the light before I got a chance. This is what Faith does when she doesn’t want to talk anymore. You could be bursting with questions and Faith yanks the light chain and leaves you sitting there in darkness, real and otherwise. Lately, with Faith, I’ve been yanking the light back on and glaring at her, but that sure wouldn’t work tonight.

I tucked my knees up in a way that wouldn’t permanently
cripple my back and said, “Sleep tight, Mrs. Gladstone. Tomorrow is another day.” My grandmother used to say that to me and Faith when she tucked us in bed. It always made me hopeful.

Mrs. Gladstone snorted through her ancient nose. “Thank you, Jenna,” she said softly. “I appreciate that.”

I waited for her heavy breathing which meant she was asleep, but it didn’t come.

When I woke up the next morning, Mrs. Gladstone couldn’t get out of bed.

“This blasted leg,” she said, struggling against the pain.

I tried to help her up, but she cried out. It hurt too much.

“I’m going to get a doctor, ma’am.”

“
No you’re not.
” She tried to get up again and flopped back down.

“Mrs. Gladstone, you need medical help and I’m going to get it for you.”

I threw on jeans, Reeboks, my yellow Barcelona T-shirt, and ran out the door.

The elevator took forever to come. When it got to my floor it was packed with bleary-eyed Markoy Electronics people who looked like they’d spent the night hanging upside down in a meat locker. I jammed in anyway, rode to the lobby, found Chuck, the assistant hotel manager, who made a few calls and finally found an orthopedist who would come to the hotel. I
went back up to the room to tell Mrs. Gladstone the doctor was coming.

She wasn’t happy to see me.

“You defied me,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am, I did.”

I looked down. I had practice defying adults. My father was always telling me he was fine when he was drunk, always telling me he didn’t need my help when the plain truth was he needed my help sometimes to just sit down. Some adults don’t always know how to take care of themselves.

She lay there looking old and miserable.

“Both Harry and Margaret feel I should attempt to stop the sale to the Shoe Warehouse,” she said quietly.

“Can you do that?”

“I don’t know. Harry Bender has begun to call investors and other store managers to get their feedback.”

Mrs. Gladstone pulled at the lace fringe of her nightgown and shivered in the warm room. She didn’t look like she could stop a paper airplane.

“I want you to call the doctor and tell him to not come,” she ordered.

I took a big breath. “Mrs. Gladstone, you can keep being the tough person you are and still have a bad hip and need some help.”

She looked away.

“Because if you don’t get some help it’s going to eventually affect your strength, and something tells me if you and Mr.
Bender are going to try to save this company, you’re going to need all the strength you can get, and I’m not just talking legs here.”

She sniffed.

“I don’t know beans about saving companies, but I know how it works in families, and believe me, you’ve got to pull everybody you trust together in one place and talk real clear and plain and let everyone else do the same because there’s power in truth. See, for too long at my house we just let Dad’s drinking go by without anyone saying anything much about it, calling it a little problem, things like that. You’ve got to call a thing by its full name and that’s what lets the truth out where it can get some fresh air.”