Spiked Heart, Steadfast Shoes

They married during the Bush (Herbert Walker) years, fought through the Clinton years, and split during W’s first term. Peter called to gloat when W won reelection, to berate her when Obama won, and howled through voicemail and text when Obama won his second term. When Jeb officially declared his candidacy for 2016, Peter said they should remarry on the day he was sworn in. Instead, when the unspeakable occurred and the phone rang in the sunrise on November 9, 2016, Katie answered with a “go fuck yourself” that held more betrayal than their amicable divorce papers.

The dulcet tones of society were a Greek chorus of “I told you sos” when he moved out. If they’d had any friends left, they’d have joked the marriage was the first to be killed by a blowjob neither given nor received by either of them. Katie knew the joke was a lie they told each other, like “having an open marriage only strengthens us,” and “we’ll share the household chores equally.” They broke up because of shoes. Her shoes and Peter’s hands—which by then looked like bleeding strips of thin-cut bacon from trying to hold her heart. 

When they met, her heart was already cragged and knotty. She worried about how it might catch on his callouses, tear them off to expose the soft pads underneath. He laughed, said his callouses would smooth her rough edges, would protect both of them until each chamber showed only his fingerprints. He showed her how his pinky fit just so against her right auricle and gently pushed the deoxygenated blood along to her ventricle for replenishment. As he knew they were the right match for each other, he knew she would come to understand he had the right idea when it came to politics, too. His knowing and her doubting gave the illusion of balance. For a time, until her rough bits wore down to spikes, and then they both gasped for breath when the fang of her right superior pulmonary vein tore through the fleshy bit that connected his thumb to the rest of his hand. “A man needs his thumb,” he declared, and she agreed. 

The vibration of an enormous tire eating wet pavement under the city bus shook her. Katie took a moment to look down and enjoy the crepey shiver of her own cleavage. She looked away when the woman sitting to her right stood and shuffled to the steps to reach the back door. The woman wore an old suit stretched tight across her hips that only accentuated the swollen folds of what used to be ankles, creating a drooping hem of meat above pseudo-ballet flats. Katie resisted the urge to tell her those thin soles weren’t doing her any favors, her feet and legs would still ache at the end of the day. It wasn’t her job, not anymore. The same way it was no longer her job to tell the father across from her to take his nose out of his phone and answer his daughter. She was begging him to explain why there was wet on the inside of the windows but it was only raining on the outside. 

Katie stood when the bus reached Lexington Ave, adjusted the straps of her purse and overnight bag while others disembarked ahead of her. As the last one off, it was easier to take her time without worrying about an unintended shove from behind. With the street sounds amplified through the open doors, she could barely hear the muttering of the young professor-looking guy who just wanted the driver to move, should he have packed a picnic lunch to get across town?

She made her way to the puddled subway stairs, wiggled her toes inside her sturdy shoes. Too big, but she’d figured she’d need the extra room on the way home; a grapefruit’s worth.

At least her legs still looked pretty good, Katie smiled to herself. She used to believe she’d go to her grave wearing an excellent pair of smart, spiked pumps. There was a designer Katie had admired who used to show up at Bloomies for trunk shows. So ancient that her wrinkles embraced their own liver spots, but damned if the woman wasn’t always wearing lipstick and heels. Never mind that the designer traveled by Town Cars while Katie enjoyed the luxurious accommodations of piss and sweat soaked subways.

Two years ago she had just stopped working—from both her full time job as a first-grade teacher in a “gifted” program, and the part-time work as a Saturday shopping consultant. She’d been ready to enjoy her retirement and post-menopausal lack of desire when she had The Fall. Katie still itched with the insult of the pimpled ER doctor; the nerve to lecture her about how lucky she was not to have busted a hip, the necessity of enclosed walking shoes. A hip. Did the girl think she was 90? The almost-doctor had waved those x-rays as if they were smelling salts designed to awaken Katie’s sense of reason. Katie took the films and her leave, but not before offering advice about a good skin care regimen. Please. She knew her body and balance better than this still-in-need-of-supervision resident. Her body’d been serving her—and quite a few others—for longer than seemed possible anymore.

As it turned out, she was right. Her shoes had nothing to do with The Fall, she’d had a mini-stroke. This was the assumption, anyway, when she had what was clearly a second one last year.

Katie peeked into her duffel and made sure her heart was still wrapped in the silk scarf she had purchased specially for travel before swiping her Metrocard and pushing through the turnstile. Dr. Lee had warned her not to forget. One appointment. She had left it on the kitchen counter for one appointment and he acted like she had early onset Alzheimer’s. It wasn’t like she needed it at all times anymore. To be polite she had reminded him not to touch it if he wanted to keep his surgical career. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be doing this, but she hadn’t gone to the effort of arranging cat-sitting in order to be turned away. 

She sidestepped a nanny preparing to carry a stroller complete with a wailing baby coming up the steps she was about to descend. Katie had expected to miss the power that came from those authoritative clicks up her spine, the surge of feet and ankles arched just so, but as it turned out there was an unexpected pleasure from security. A different, quieter power that came from soles that gripped and an un-arched back.

Oh, but Peter had been smug the first time they met for drinks and the top of her head was lower than his chin. “Didn’t I tell you? Now you can get rid of all those ridiculous shoes in the back bedroom. I’ll help you. I could even move back in.”

“I’m not getting rid of my shoes. And you’re never moving back in,” she said.

“Why do you say it like that? We were always a post-modern couple, why not?”

“We’re a post-divorce non-couple.”

“Don’t be like that. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Friends. Were they friends? They were something. He gave her the same look of expectation he had always given her, and in the moment, as she wedged her casted arm under the table, afraid he’d get a whiff of the rotting flesh beneath, she gave in. 

“Yes, we’re friends. But you still aren’t moving in, and you will never, ever touch my shoes.”

“You’re being ridiculous. You’ve got to have a hundred and fifty pairs.”

One hundred-and-forty-three.

Despite the stereotypical refrain, Katie believed most scenarios didn’t require understanding—maybe it wasn’t even wanted. Acceptance, though. That was a different thing altogether. She didn’t need him to understand her shoes, just accept them. Her memories were inside.

“I bet that women’s organization you like so much would love to get the windfall. Think of how many women you’d be helping get ready for job interviews.

“My God, Katie, the tax write-off alone!”

She sipped her martini and waited out the rest, studied the scars on his hands. They knew each other’s talking points too well. If he too had carried his anything on the outside he might have understood what would come and how it happened. It didn’t have to be his heart; it could have been his lungs, his fears—hell, even his anger. Anything would have made his Republican-New Yorker tagline of fiscally-conservative-but-socially-liberal a possible truth. 

He would have seen the way indecency growing parasitically in the roots of conservatism shaped the branches of hearts into thorns. He would have marched beside her as she carried her placard, “Get Bush Out of my Bush!” He would have stopped kneading her graying muscle before his hands became as desensitized as oven mitts. He would have felt it, too, when her heart shattered after the towers fell, known exactly why she had to keep it wrapped in its silk shantung scarf to maintain an approximation of the shape it was supposed to hold. And maybe she would have pushed him out the door earlier, given them both an opportunity to heal. But he didn’t, his organs and feelings tucked safely behind muscles and bone.

When she asked him to stay and cat-sit for a few days, she’d worried about it, if he wouldn’t take it upon himself to chuck her past—albeit unknowingly—while she was gone. If there was even a hint of truth to theirs being a mature friendship, he wouldn’t. But she wasn’t sure. Despite the lack of children, Peter was very attached to his image of himself as Father Knows Best. It had gotten worse over the past year, since he received his official in-remission test results from his prostate cancer. From was his word, like the cancer was a colleague he resented, and so he limited their interactions to written communications only. Katie wondered if this was therapeutic, and tried it herself. 

Dear Stage Three,

Now that a few weeks have passed since our initial meeting, I want to thank you for the opportunity to look over your work. I regret to inform you I’m going to have to pass on this. I didn’t quite connect with your mission, and I do not believe you will be an asset to my future endeavors. I’m sure another woman will feel differently, but please fuck off. 

Best, 

Katie Brown. 

It didn’t work for her. 

On the train she settled herself into a seat offered by a man in a classic camel hair coat and a lovely smile. Nice teeth, great European monk strap loafers, exactly what she would have flirted with ten years ago. 

Peter had broached the concept of an open marriage as he did everything, with research, earnestness, and a limited imagination. He later termed it his Great Mistake. He thought an open marriage would result in freedom for him to play while keeping the comfort of til-death-do-us-part. Maybe a threesome with Katie and some hot redhead here and there. Maybe he pictured post-coital relaxing in a beige hotel room, watching the news without battles about injustice.

Katie wouldn’t have thought of it on her own. But once they agreed, it turned out her weekdays with six-year-olds and weekends serving the rich and fabulous had left her with a vivid imagination—coupled with a clear understanding of where and how to place boundaries. She approached the open part of their marriage as she did her lesson plans, with aims, goals, and plenty of open-ended materials for exploration. Both of them had hoped it would save a splintering relationship, but much like floundering couples who decide to have a baby, it only prolonged the inevitable. 

She arrived at the hospital and went straight to the desk of Patient Financial Services to take care of her co-pay. Why she had to give money above and beyond her insurance for them to cut off her left tit escaped her, but she signed and signed, yes, she understood her rights and responsibilities.

Katie catalogued her best memories as she changed out of her clothes.

Her taupe double platform pumps, they held her first unsure excursion into a single’s bar with her wedding band that flashed mixed signals and ended in the back of a limo with a stockbroker from Jersey City. The silver granny-boots, they held the tattooed curve of the blonde waitress’s shoulder against the heel. The bright red stilettos, they held an overnight with an artist from Williamsburg; his man-bun pushed out of shape by the pointed toes. The black leather slouch boots that held their one fruitless excursion to a bar designed for people in polyamorous relationships; they hadn’t liked the word or the vibe, but they laughed for hours afterwards. The chunky blue heels, they held the night she didn’t connect with anyone, but got up at the karaoke bar and croaked maudlin love songs from the Great American Songbook. The boots that held the manager of the bridal salon down the street from the school, whose spiky hair matched the smoke-gray of the suede. The lavender sandals. Those held the pain of Gore’s winning popular vote tangled into the straps. And in the corner of the closet, lined up snug against the wall so the memories wouldn’t leak from the peep-toes, their threesomes: erotic, ridiculous, outlandish, and abject failure.

She’d told him she was going to get her boobs done. No specifics, so it wasn’t quite a lie. Married or not, they had an inviolate no-lying rule. Probably the same reason they couldn’t preserve their marriage, she thought as she tied the ridiculous strings of the hospital gown.

She lied on the stretcher and cradled her heart into the curve above her hip, below the IV.

“Just count backwards from 100. Don’t worry, you won’t get to one before you’re out. I’ll start you off. 100, 99…”

She was cold. And unsteady. So unreasonable to be in a strange place with no shoes on. Katie stroked the rough sheet on top of her, where were her kitties? They’d keep her warm, wouldn’t let her fall off this horrid bed. What happened to her memory foam?

“It’s taking her a while, increase the drip.”

A strange moon loomed over her. “Don’t fight it, Mrs. Brown.”

It must be nap time at school, that’s why she was on this mat.

The cats were playing; she could hear their thumps just out of her line of vision, her eyes so heavy. But her memories called out, forgotten and remembered, compressed into toe boxes.

Anne Perez is a lifelong New Yorker and word lover who explores the extraordinary of the ordinary through fiction and blogging.