Goody One Shoe (8 page)

BILLIE SCRATCHED THE POINTED
tip
of the red marker across her short story. She shifted in her metal seat,
permanently welded to the tiny desk in the middle row, and shook the pen,
urging the ink to make it through just four more paragraphs.

Serves her right for pilfering the antique writing implement
from her grandmother’s old pencil cup. So many pens, pencils, pencil crayons,
heck even a few wax crayons that looked like they’d been gathering dust since
Billie was in kindergarten and used to sit at her grandmother’s kitchen table
and draw while Billie’s mother bitched about Billie’s father to his very own
mother.

Billie’s ears rang with her grandmother’s patented “
tsk
tsk
.” She’d been right to tell her daughter-in-law that she couldn’t do
better. That Billie’s father was the best her mother would ever find. But to
Billie’s mother, better meant more money. Lots of it.

Grandmother, like Billie, didn't give a damn about money. It
corrupted people. Even people who didn’t have any, but always yearned for more.

Her father was never like that. He’d been above reproach.
Incorruptible. Incontrovertibly honest and good.

He was perfect.

Her mother would have dropped them both in a beat of her
gold-digging heart if a wealthy man had given her a second look. It wasn’t that
she wasn’t pretty. Old pictures proved she was. Billie could understand why her
father fell for her when they were so young, still in high school. But Billie’s
memories of her had faded to the smell of booze and cigarettes, the vertical
lines on her lips that blossomed from sucking on her beloved menthols, and the
pinch in her forehead every time Billie’s father opened his mouth.

How long had it taken her mother’s dreams to come crashing
to the ground? Was it when her father decided to become a cop instead of a
lawyer? Or when the recession hit a couple of years before Billie was born and
they lost their house? Billie recalled many drunken rants where her mother
droned on about mortgage rates and the damn government.

Billie finished marking her story with red ink, correcting
spelling and fixing grammar. The editing process brought a sense of peace. An
understanding that she was making things right. Righting wrongs. Or perhaps
righting writes. She glanced at the clock, pulled fresh foolscap from her binder,
and began to write out a good copy of her story in blue ink. The Rollerball
grated against the page like tinfoil against gold teeth. She shook the pen up
and down and tried again. It was as dead as a cop in an alley.

She shut her eyes and took a mental red pen to her thought.
She scratched out “cop in an alley” and wrote in “doornail.” She pitched the
dead pen into her pencil case and pulled out a brand new one. Grandmother
bought blue pens in ten-packs, Billie went through them so fast. Now if only
she’d stock up on the red ones. Or better yet, buy her a computer. They’d save
a bundle on pens.

The classroom door opened with a hollow click. The room
buzzed with whispers and chair legs screeched against linoleum. Billie looked
up to see a new kid standing at the teacher’s desk, his back to the class.
Great. Another one to add to the fold of bullies and abusers.

She sat straighter and pulled her skirt over her knee,
covered what she could of her prosthetic leg. May as well delay the onslaught
of taunts and jibes.

“Class, pay attention, please.” The teacher tapped her ruler
on her desk. “We have a new student. I expect you to make him feel welcome.”
She smiled at the boy. “This is Gregory.”

The boy turned and nodded, gave a royal wave to the room.

Billie stared at his eyes, blue like she imagined the ocean
looked at its most shallow points, with perfect white sand under the surface. A
smattering of freckles dotted his nose and his blond hair hung to his shoulders
in loose waves. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

“There’s an empty desk in the middle row.” The teacher
pointed in Billie’s direction.

Gregory followed the teacher’s pointed finger, but hesitated
when his eyes met Billie’s. He smiled at her, and meandered to the desk behind
her.

When he’d passed, Billie closed her eyes and let out the
breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. The smell of apples and Juicy
Fruit swirled about her head, and the squeak of his sneakers filled her ears.
She imagined them standing in a field, a ring of flowers in her hair, their
hands entwined. A priest pronounced them married, and Gregory leaned in to kiss
her.

“All right, everyone.”

The clap of the teacher’s hands shook Billie from one of the
best life-edits she’d imagined yet. She opened her eyes to reality. A reality
that would include a cute boyfriend when amputee pigs could fly.

“Ten more minutes, then hand in your stories.”

Billie sighed and kept transcribing her edited story. At the
bell, she gathered the pages and tapped them against the desk to tidy them into
a proper pile. The other kids streamed past her and dropped their papers on the
teacher’s desk, racing out the door as fast as possible. It was last bell on a
Friday, after all. They had places to go loiter, people to tease, beer to steal,
cancer sticks to smoke.

Gregory passed her desk. Billie wanted to take a bite out of
his Golden Delicious cheek. She watched him chat with the teacher. The woman
handed him the assignment he’d just missed, asked him to work on it over the
weekend and hand it in next week. She touched his arm, let her fingers linger
there.

Billie understood. He was perfect. Her mental red pen drew
an aura around his head. Not that he needed help to look angelic.

“Come on, Billie, move along now.”

Billie focused her red pen on the teacher and stabbed it
into her heart. “Yes, Ms. H.” Billie wanted Gregory to leave first. She wasn’t
ready for him to see her awkward escape from the too-short desk. But his eyes
were glued on her.

She slipped her good leg into the aisle, put both palms on
the desk, and dragged her prosthetic leg out from the confines. Why didn’t they
have any left-handed desks in this damn school? Not that she was left-handed.
But at least then she could make a graceful exit.

A sweat broke out on her brow and her cheeks warmed. She
gathered her books with trembling hands, picked up her assignment, and turned.
One step up the aisle under the scrutiny of his piercing gaze and she dropped
her story. The pages scattered on the floor.

He rushed toward her and gathered the papers. He plucked the
last one from the floor at her feet and stopped dead. “Whoa. You got a wooden
leg.” He stood, the mess of her story in his hands, the pages out of order,
upside down and wrong side up.

You have
, you moron. Why did the beautiful ones
always need to be left behind a grade or two?

“Technically,” she cringed at the squeak and crack in her
voice. “Titanium. Lighter than wood. Stronger too.”

She couldn’t gauge his reaction. He looked almost impressed.
Maybe even … Interested? That would be a first. But she would happily forgive
his terrible grammar and syntax if he wanted to ask her out. Or even just not
be mean to her.

He shoved her story at her. “That’s freaky.” He turned and
left the classroom.

Freaky. Yep, that was about right. Why would she expect him
to be any different than any other boy in school just because he could live the
rest of his life on his looks and never have to open his pretty, dumb, luscious
mouth?

She sighed, stared at the pages of her story, spotted a
misspelled word on one of the upside down sheets and took her mental red pen to
it. Too late to make a real correction. Dang, that was one lost mark.

It wasn’t enough that God tested her mettle by allowing her
parents to die and then strapping her with the titanium albatross where her leg
used to be. Nope, Billie had to compound the torture of her peers by being
smart. By peppering her schedule with advanced placement classes and
maintaining a perfect four-point-oh grade point average. Because nothing
screams nerd louder than perfect grades and perfect attendance and sailing
through junior high in less than two years. She would graduate high school a
full year ahead of kids her own age. Kids that knew her before the amputation.
The only group among which she thought she still had a friend or two. Now there
were none. But at least she had her books and stories. Her journals and her
imagination.

She handed the story to the teacher on the way by and walked
out.

AGATHA FRIESEN TWISTED
the
crimson cone out of its silo. She raised one eyebrow and ran the oily colour
across her lips. Every time she touched up her lipstick she imagined Jeremy’s
dick in her mouth. Except his dick wasn’t red. And it was huge.

A rush of moisture wet her underpants. If she had time she’d
masturbate right here in the courthouse bathroom. A final eff-you to the
justice system. But the cameras waited, and she’d rather let Jeremy get her
rocks off in the limo. And the pool. And the kitchen.

She squished her lips together then smacked them, ran her
tongue across her teeth. She leaned into the mirror and dabbed the tip of her
pinkie under each eye. Not bad for a broad in her fifties. Of course, regular
Botox injections didn’t hurt.

She squinted and examined her chin. Damn, she was getting
that big-pored fatty chin of her mother’s. She pitched the lipstick in her
purse, poked at the crepe-like skin of her neck, and smoothed the front of her
dress over her augmented breasts. There was only so much of God’s work she
could fix before she’d start to look like a caricature of herself. Better to
age gracefully, with only the tiniest of help from modern science. And a huge
boost of libido from her twenty-something paramour.

She swung the door wide and made a grand entrance into the
marble-floored hallway. She was met with silence, only her lawyer and Jeremy
there to appreciate her. She eyeballed Jeremy’s frame, imagined the hard muscle
under the silk suit she had custom-tailored for his tight body. More moisture
flushed from her crotch. At this rate she’d need Depends just to prevent her
love juice from staining her dress. Either that or trade her young buck in on
an older, flabby lover.

Jeremy flashed a grin at her and held out his hooked arm.
She entwined her arm in his.

Depends it was. No way was she giving up that gorgeous face.
Women half her age envied her, and not just for her money. They could all suck
it. She glanced down at the ever-present lump in Jeremy’s pants. No, she’d suck
it. The rest of them could just go straight to hell with her husband.

“Just hold your head high and ignore any questions.” Her
lawyer puffed out his barrel chest, his hand on the push bar of the exit door.
“You’re innocent. The jury said so. That’s all you need to say.”

She smirked. Even if they’d found her guilty, he’d say she
was innocent. That’s what she paid him for.

He pushed the door open and walked into the limelight in
front of Agatha.

“There she is!” The media swarmed, like wasps on a discarded
hunk of sausage. They thrust microphones in her face, dangled them overhead
from long handles. “Mrs. Friesen, what do you say to the people who believe you
killed your husband?”

She jutted out her old-lady chin and jerked her head to
flick a small strand of stray hair from her forehead. Damn wind ruined her ‘do.
“I say I am innocent. And the court agreed.”

A shrimp ball of female reporter jostled her taller peers.
“With double jeopardy attached, you can’t be retried even if you confessed. So tell
us, Agatha. Did you kill your husband?”

Jeremy reached over Agatha’s shoulder and shoved the
microphone away. Her lawyer held up his hands. “Mrs. Friesen has no other
comments. Please, let us through.”

The lawyer dove into the mosh pit of reporters with Agatha
in his considerable wake. Jeremy fell in behind to protect her from the rear.
Every few steps his pants-bulge bumped into her ass. She struggled to maintain
a straight face, but couldn’t prevent the heat from rising in her cheeks. At
the curb, a black limousine idled. The lawyer opened the door. Agatha climbed
in, then Jeremy clamoured over top of her. The lawyer put his foot in the car.

Agatha thrust her arm out and peered up at him. “Oh no you
don’t. You take a cab.” She reached for Jeremy with her other hand and cupped
his bulge. “We’ve got some private celebrating to do.” She pushed the lawyer
and yanked the door shut.

THE EYELINER PENCIL SAILED
through
the air, landed on the floor and rolled behind the toilet. Hands on hips,
Billie glared at her reflection in the mirror.

Gosh darn, dang it, damn, shit, fuck.

She plucked two Kleenex from their cheerful sunflower-clad
box, dripped baby oil onto them, and wiped her third attempt at makeup from her
eyes.

How did women do this every day? She glared at the mirror
before glancing at the reflected digits of the alarm clock on her nightstand.
Six-ten. Only fifty more minutes. Her first date.

Ever.

She closed her eyes, grasped the sink’s edge, and swallowed
a bit of vomit. No way. Not happening. She would not let herself screw this up.

Her stomach calmed and she opened her eyes. Should she tell
him it’s her first real date? Would the world’s oldest virgin scare him off?
She raised one eyebrow. Surely there were bigger losers in the world than she.
More outcasts and scaredy cats among the billions on this planet.

She glanced at the eyeliner on the floor, examined the brown
line of it on the side of her nose. She wiped it off, heaved a huge sigh, and
picked up the shadow.

She coaxed a small amount of taupe powder onto the brush and
blew on it with a gentle exhale. So far so good. She closed her eyes and pulled
up the memory of the woman at the cosmetics counter who’d sold her this glop
all those years back. Her one attempt to be pretty, an unexpected and unwelcome
desire that reached up and grabbed her by the throat. She’d never cared about
pretty before. She’d only strived for normal. But the disaster with the
kitten-heeled prosthetic the night she found Peg Leg was so disheartening, had
so effectively underscored her utter failure, that she hadn’t even opened the
bag. Hadn’t practiced what the woman with the painted lips and penciled brow
and glued-on lashes, like so many spider legs screaming for emancipation from
her purple-lined eyelids, had shown her. The makeup sat at the back of the
bathroom drawer where she’d pitched it.

She eyed the brush. Does makeup have a best-before date?

Too late to worry about that. She feathered the brush across
her right eyelid, dragged the subtle shade up toward the end of her brow. Not
too shabby. She repeated the procedure on the left side. An avowed righty, she
struggled to match the path of the shadow. Not horrible. Not perfect. But close
enough.

She picked up the dreaded eyelash curler and brought it to
her face, her hand trembling. She managed to straddle her lash line with the
open implement, then squeeze it shut. “Holy shit!” She snapped the wretched
thing open and pulled it from her face, certain it had ripped all of her lashes
out by the root. She eyed the foam between the curved metal bits. Only two
lashes sacrificed to the jaws of beauty.

She shook her head. One more time, other side. Her hand
shook when she brought the miniature torture device closer to her eye. She
fumbled, it flipped into the air, ricocheted off the mirror and crash-landed in
the sink.

Lashes would remain uncurled.

She coated her lashes with a fine layer of brown mascara.
The painted sales clerk tried to convince her to go with sparkly amethyst
shadow and blacker-than-black eyeliner and lash goo to “bring out the lovely
green flecks in her eyes.” Oh, brother. Taupe and brown were as far as Billie
was willing to go.

She picked up the lipstick tube and twisted the rocket of
greasy pink out of its faux gold case. She sniffed it and recoiled. It smelled
of her mother. The Saturday nights out, the two-in-the-morning bed checks when
her breath was sweet with too much alcohol. She’d awaken Billie, sit on the
edge of her bed, tell her how much she loved her, and kiss her with red
lipsticked lips. The smell of it, the chemical taste, the stain of it on Billie’s
own lips, brought all the feelings rushing back. Embarrassment in the privacy
of her own bedroom. Confusion at how different her mother was in the middle of
the night after too many Manhattans, too sappy, too maudlin, too stinky. Billie
preferred the Wednesday morning mother, bright and cheerful and fueled with
black coffee, flipper of flapjacks, and giver of hugs in the sunshine of the
breakfast nook. Until black coffee came with a splash of whiskey. Then all love
was lost.

Billie returned the offending pink grease to its cave,
capped it, and tossed the whole thing into the trash. A thin layer of petroleum
jelly was all she ever needed. Lips were already pink, after all.

She surveyed the result, turned her head side to side and
pursed her lips. She didn’t look like the hookers on third, nor like the old
ladies who couldn’t see just how blue and thick their eye shadow was. Billie
looked like herself. With a tiny improvement.

Baby steps.

She dragged a brush across her scalp, along the length of
her brown hair to the ends that hovered just above her waistline. Her mother
said it was like flowing gravy. The most delicious
au jus
. Billie just
saw dog shit and a river of dried muck. But when it wasn’t tethered into a high
ponytail and wrapped into a constricted bun, it did catch the light in a lovely
way.

She gathered her hair in her fist, yanked it behind her
head, and reached for the elastic next to the collection of bobby pins. She
hesitated for a second, then let the tresses go. They framed her face and
draped across her breasts. Maybe, for once, it was time to let them run free.

She slid on her glasses and eyed her look. Beige cardigan
over a black blouse tucked into a brown skirt that hung just past the knee.
Nothing clinging, nothing tight. Not much to prove she was even a woman. She
sighed. It would have to do. It was her best outfit.

Lined up on her bed were all of her prosthetics. Well, the
date-worthy ones. She certainly had no need for a running blade. She ran a
finger along the toes of each one, her fist in front of her mouth. Should she
dare the kitten heel? Stick to the flat foot her stump was already snug inside
of?

She bent over and looked at her bare feet, wiggled the toes
that would wiggle. She balanced on tiptoes of her real foot, the fake one hanging
there, ninety degrees to the carpet, like a sledgehammer. Or an anchor. Dynamic
response or not, the damn thing wasn’t real.

She imagined the heel on her prosthetic foot caught in a
sidewalk grate, Bruce to her rescue, yanking on her fake leg, his arm around
her waist, her hand on his shoulder for balance. Kind of romantic. Until her red
pen appeared and scribbled a word bubble over Bruce’s head. “If you’d just
watch where you’re going.” A word bubble appeared above hers. “Shut up and yank
it out already.” She struck out romantic and wrote in comedic.

There it was, her life in edits. Ludicrous. Farcical.
Painful.

Her hair swung in front of her face and she inhaled a strand
into her nostril. She sneezed and lost her balance, stepped flat on the floor.
The hair tickled her nose and she swiped it away. Not ready for heels. Not
ready for hair freedom. She was going to need a lot of practice.

She tied her hair into a low side ponytail, split the
difference between control and whimsy. It was out of her face, but securely
tethered. Only tickling the edge of freedom and hugging her curves. Or at
least, hugging the clothing that did a fine job of hiding those curves.

Billie pulled her best flats from the closet, the patent
black ones with a silver buckle and satin bow through them. She fit her
prosthetic foot into the right one, and slid the other shoe onto her real foot.
She hooked her purse over her shoulder, tugged her skirt straight, and smoothed
her hair.

A date. With a real man. Not one borne of her imagination.
Not one she edited into her life on the subway, or in line at the grocery
store. Not one drawn from red ink, improved by red ink, made taller, more
handsome, and wittier than is possible in real life. No, Bruce was an
honest-to-goodness man. At least, that’s what she hoped he was. Honest and
good.

Billie stood at the corner and waited for the walk light to
turn.

Bruce was on the other side of the street in front of the
theatre, his hands in his pockets. The evening sun cast him in a golden glow. He
checked his watch, wiped sweat from this brow.

Was he nervous? Or was it just the heat?

He buried his paws in the pockets again, and scanned the
street. His gaze passed right over her. On his second sweep, he passed her by
again, twitched, and snapped his head back around. His lips parted and his
teeth gleamed through. Without taking his eyes off her, he pushed the walk
button repeatedly, as if that would make the light change faster.

When the little white walking man lit up, Billie stepped
into the crosswalk with a small swarm of humanity. One guy bumped her and
rushed past, not even bothering to apologize. Strikethrough humanity with the
sweep of imaginary red ink. It was a small swarm of two-legged carbon life
forms. And one one-legged one.

Bruce grasped the arm of the bumping man on the other side
of the street and growled something in his ear. The man turned, his face
crimson, his eyes darting in all directions. “I — I’m sorry miss. Didn’t see
you there.”

Bruce let his arm go and held his hand out to Billie. “How
can you miss someone this lovely? Time to look up, sir.”

Billie’s cheeks warmed. She took Bruce’s hand and nodded at
the bumping man.

Bruce opened the door for her and ushered her inside.

“Thanks for that.” Billie urged the blood to drain from her
face. “But you don’t need to rescue me. I’ve done all right so far.”

“Don’t need to.” He put his hand inside hers without asking.
“But I want to. As long as you’re not offended by it.”

She’d never been so unoffended in her whole life.

He bought her popcorn and soda. Held the theatre door open
for her. Allowed her to go ahead of him into the aisle. He never treated her
like a cripple. Didn’t suggest they stick to the first level and avoid the
stairs. He was all the best parts of any man she’d met all rolled into one. If
only he didn’t smoke, he’d be perfect.

During the movie, he rested his arm on the back of her
chair. He never tried to kiss her, to grope her. Not that anyone else had ever
tried before. Her red pen appeared and dragged his hand onto her shoulder,
moved the popcorn bucket to his lap so she’d have to reach over and dig in. The
pen turned his head and leaned it in. A “Kiss me” word bubble popped up.

He turned and looked at her. “Everything okay?”

She glanced around, her mouth parted, her heart pounding in
her chest. She swallowed. “Yeah, fine. I was going to make a comment on the
movie, but I forget what it was.”

He leaned in. “We can dissect it over coffee.” He turned
back to the screen, picked the popcorn bucket up from her lap, took a handful,
and set it back down.

All she’d ever wanted was a gentleman. Now it appeared that
she had one. So why did she want so badly for him to be a little less gentle?

Bruce opened the door of the coffee shop. A bell jangled to
announce their arrival. A lone barista looked up and smiled. “Welcome! What can
I get you?”

Billie asked for black coffee, Bruce got some kind of
vanilla-flavoured milky girly drink. He offered for her to choose a pastry, but
she declined. He insisted they at least share one. She couldn’t decide and
wouldn’t be so bold as to choose. So he did. A thick slice of lemon loaf.

Bruce gathered up their late-evening snacks and led Billie
to a spot in the corner. He set the cups down on the table, his on the side
with his back against the wall.

Bruce made small talk, where you from, favourite colour,
what’s your sign. All the clichéd banter that Billie had assumed was more urban
legend than actual dating practice. An awkward silence descended between them.
He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, glanced out the window. Billie
mostly looked at her coffee cup.