Going Away Shoes Read Online Free Page B

wailing wall, fingertips brushing the rough surface where strips of paper —desires and pleas and blessings —are rolled and tucked and crammed and hidden, whole lives pressed into cracks and crevices, or she is stretched out on a dorm bed hours from home, thoughts of graduate school and published articles and trips to Europe and Egypt and Alaska put aside while she wraps her legs around the strong young body on top of her, the pulse of his neck against her cheek, and moves against him as if her life depends on it.
    A woman on television is crying hysterically because the baby she has pretended was hers is not. “I couldn’t have one,” she sobs. “I am so much older than I look.”
    “But I don’t understand,” the bewildered husband says, and then there is a commercial where a happy family goes to DisneyWorld and meets Cinderella. Pull it . And then there is a man talking about his erectile dysfunction and what a drag it was but now he is all better (wife grinning in the background) and others can be back in the game, too (he throws a long football pass to a man eager for the information), “Just ask your doctor.” The woman on television is still hysterical and will be for days to come until given a sedative or slapped in the face. The actor who plays the hysterical woman has a real life elsewhere. And here —in Debby’s real life —she is taking care of her mother. A woman who loved purses and parties and raised her own children exactly as she had been raised. A vibrant force to rival any of those on the soaps, reduced by time —real time —to a pale, lifeless creature.
    Sometimes, Debby wishes for the end. She thinks of packing a bag and calling up one of her sisters to say that she is going on that cruise. Bring over that money they have been promising her all these years. Pick up some Depends on the way. Depends, Ensure, talcum powder and lotions so she doesn’t get bedsores, those new little Oral B things that fit on the fingertip so they can gently clean her slowly rotting gums. She thinks of going out for her walk and never coming back. She could reach her mile and a half marker at the elementary school and instead of turning and heading back down the street just keep going. She could get in her car and be on the interstate within minutes.
    It never fails. When she gets to this point, her heart pumpingwith anticipation, a loud sigh will come or her mother will cry out, her eyes fixed on the spot where Peppy slept for seventeen years. And Debby will race to find her, this old wasted stranger, eyes open but distant —pale blue and alarmed, like the time they had the car accident and she held Debby’s hand and stroked her hair while the emergency crew worked to unpin her from the passenger seat, the way she looked one brief moment the week after Debby’s father died when she said she wished she had loved him better, or the time last year when she saw Debby packing a bag and in a wild childish way begged her please not to leave. “You’re the one I have always known I could count on,” she whispered.
Pack a bag. Pull the plug. Take your turn .
    She is Sisyphus. All day long she pushes that rock, and when she is almost to the top, something happens to distract her, and it all rolls back to the very place the journey began. Someday she will make it to the top. Some perfect day she will stand, wind in her face, and watch the rock barrel down the other side, taking anything and anybody in its path. But until then she will travel this worn and familiar road, sure-footed and steady in real time, eyes vigilantly focused on the life before her. She is the cobbler of her own heart, and this will save her soul.

SURRENDER
    The child had spent the afternoon drawing pictures of her grandmother without clothes on, and now Rose was sick and tired of it. She hadn’t wanted to keep the child to begin with but what was she to do? Who could help that her son had impregnated and then married someone who was