Interior Design (3 page)

“Somebody must be selling them, somewhere,” Mom said, as if talking to herself.

I listened to the sucking sound of spaghetti lifting from the bowl, and when I opened my eyes I saw Mom scooping a large portion onto my plate. “Why do we have to eat this stuff all the time?” I blurted out, immediately knowing the answer.

No one replied. Molly stared at me, surprised.
She
was usually the one who made the awkward mistakes. Then Mom said quietly, “Ask your father.”

But I didn't, and she repeated, “Ask him.”

I stared at the spaghetti on my plate. I wanted it to disappear.

Mom couldn't help herself. “Go on, Sammy,” she said, “ask him why.”

“Because it's delicious!” Dad yelled at her. Then they both rose and shouted, and when Mom cried out, “You sell things people
walk on
, why shouldn't everyone walk over
you
too?” Dad held his ears and moaned, “No more!” He ran from the room and she followed.

Molly pushed away from the table, her fork and knife clattering on the floor, but I stayed and twisted the spaghetti strands around my fork, making little splatters of tomato sauce on my plate, and I forced myself to eat as a punishment for my foolishness. This was the first time my parents' disputes had spilled into dinner, and I was shocked at what I had wrought. Even now, when I think about that night, those harsh words seem solid, as if they have always existed.

The bathroom door suddenly banged open. “Sammy?” Molly peered into the kitchen. Her arms and legs were covered with Band-Aids of all sizes, and little pink circles dotted her face. She flashed a conspiratorial grin that transformed into a mock grimace of pain, and then she ran down the hallway. I rushed after her into the living room, where Dad was roaring while Mom held out her wrists and cried, “Handcuffs!”

Molly pushed between them. “I hurt,” she cried, “I hurt!”

They stopped, amazed to see us. Mom collapsed on the couch, her hands grasping at her face, and Dad crouched down to comfort Molly. “
Where
does it hurt?” he asked.

“Everywhere!” she wailed into his shoulder.

“Well,” he said, picking her up, the grim line of his mouth easing, “the Tickle Bug can fix you.” Molly squealed and struggled in his arms.

*

Dad retreated to his workshop for the rest of the evening, Mom scrubbed everything imaginable in the kitchen, and Molly and I were left to ourselves. Later that night, after Mom tucked us in and turned off the light she lingered in our room. Suddenly she was repeating, “I'm so sorry, my darlings, I'm so sorry.”

“It's okay, Mom,” I murmured. Molly said nothing.

“It's just that, how are we going to manage?” Mom said. “I mean, what can we do?” She stood so still in the middle of our dark room.

Molly turned away under her blankets.

“I only want the best for you both,” Mom kept saying, “only the best.”

“I know, Mom, I know,” I replied, hoping to draw her to my bedside for one more hug. I waited. Then she opened the door and before I could say good night she was gone.

Molly fell asleep easily with a faint, satisfied grunt. Though I was annoyed at her stubborn silence, I relished those pauses between her steady breathing, for it was only at such moments that I could pretend I had my own room. Finally I reached under the bed for my box of tennis balls.

Under the covers I held a flashlight between my chin and shoulder, and with a pen I drew on one of the balls. My pen sometimes catching on the fuzzy surface, I mapped out continents, river systems, and mountain chains, creating a strange world I could hold in my hand. It looked like none of the planets on the mechanical model of the solar system that spun so wonderfully when my science teacher cranked it up, and on my planet there was only one town, only one house. Inside lived my family, and spaghetti was our favorite treat. We ate and joked noisily at the table, and we all asked for seconds. I allowed no bitter words to escape from anyone. After our meal was done and we cleared the table and washed the dishes together, I put the tennis ball away under the bed with all the other happy versions of my family. I was careful to rest it only on an ocean, for I didn't want to crush anyone. How optimistic I was, to think our troubles could be solved, and yet how pessimistic, to think they could only be solved on another planet.

*

The next day after school I easily slipped away from Molly when she began jumping on cracks in the sidewalk, and I headed for town instead of home. I worried about Dad and his store. It had been so long since Mom had taken us there, ever since Dad had motorized his display tables to turn in circles. “To better serve my customers,” he said, but Mom claimed they just made her dizzy, especially when Molly raced around them.

I ran almost all the way, so that Mom wouldn't ask where I'd been for so long when I finally returned home. Each swift step made me feel both weaker and lighter, and to encourage myself I pretended I was closing in on somebody, though a few of the adults on the sidewalk seemed to think
I
was being chased. “Hey you, stop,” someone yelled out behind me, but I never looked back, leaving behind imagined miles as my shoes slapped on the pavement.

When I arrived, heady from all that intoxicating running, I noticed something new: a little speaker above the glass door blaring out some sort of tap dancing music. It almost seemed to accompany the steady rasp of my breath. Standing there before the storefront, for a moment I felt like Dad. I remembered one rare morning when Mom dropped him off and I watched from the car as his head turned slowly to take in all those varieties of shoes on artfully arranged pedestals in the window, and above them the neon sign—Frank's Fancy Footwork. Dad loved that shoe store; I can't recall him talking about anything else. Now I think I understand why, and I can say this because I've thought a lot about it: all that brick, the wide glass panes, and the sign with his name reflected something inside him. So when he entered the store each morning somehow he also stepped inside himself, into everything he wanted to be.

My face still flushed from running, I opened the door. One of the fluorescent bulbs was out. Another flickered erratically, and the display tables revolved for the dimly lit and empty store. Dad came out from the back room, his shirt sleeves up. He stood by the cash register. He brushed back his hair.

“What's up, Sammy?”

“Nothing …”

“Well, you look bushed. C'mere.” He whirled the rack of shoe polish on his desk counter and reached for a drawer. “Have a lollipop.” Dad's were special, in the shapes of animals. He handed me a bright green octopus.

“Thanks Dad, great,” I said, even though a few of the arms were broken and stuck to the clear plastic wrapper.

He took me to the back room, where orderly shelves filled with shoe boxes rose up to the ceiling. “Well, kiddo,” he said, straightening a few boxes, “I'm glad to see you, I'm here all by myself today. I had to fire another salesman. A real winner, that one was. No wonder sales are a little slow. Nobody cares enough about shoes, for them it's just a job.” He paused and stared at me steadily, as if I didn't believe him. I nodded.

“Y'know, Sammy”—he grinned—“I'll tell you a little secret: no shoe ever completely fits. That's why it's so important to relax your customers.” I nodded again and he gestured out—toward the stool he would sit on while serving customers, and the cool metal plate that measured foot sizes.

“If a woman wants her shoes to be a size seven,” he continued, “just sell her whatever fits and tell her it's a size seven. Y'see, you have to know how to fit with your customers, like they're shoes too. Praise a mother's child. If a man's been to college, draw him out about what he studied, compliment the college life. You have to share something, and quickly. A customer can say ‘No' easily to a stranger, but not so easily to a new pal.” He tapped his fingers against one of the shelved boxes. “It's as easy as
that,”
he said.

The front door opened. A fat man looked in, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “Hello?” he called out, and he took a few hesitant steps inside.

Dad turned and whispered to me, “Here's your chance to see how it's done. You won't find
me
trying to sell any shoe polish before I've sold the shoes!” He set off for the showroom.

Dad stood close to the fat man, who kept backing away from one display to another. I peeked out at them, and finally the customer stopped to examine a pair of heavy, official-looking shoes, near enough for me to hear Dad say, “Those will last you over twelve hundred miles, and much longer if you do most of your walking on carpets.”

“Really,” the man replied. His mouth almost wrinkled into a smile, and then he moved on.

I imagined I was a salesman and, thinking of Dad's secret, I plotted my approach: I would casually mention my favorite candy bar to the fat man and discover it was his favorite too! I saw myself seated before him, tying the laces of his new shoes, while he wriggled his toes inside and we gabbed about caramel and chocolate.

“Excuse me?” I heard Dad say.

“Maybe next time.” The man sidestepped Dad and bumped into one of the display tables, which stopped turning. Then, with a low squeal it lurched back into its circular motion and the fat man was out the door.

Dad flopped down into a chair and covered his face. I stood in the back room doorway, unsure what to do.

“Look, Sammy,” he said quietly into his hands, “let's not tell your mother about this, okay? It's our secret.”

“Dad,” I said quickly, “let me help. I can sell some shoes.”

“Sure, son,” he said. He smiled across the room at me, a weak smile that also meant No. I turned away, determined not to cry, and I noticed for the first time an odd and irritating hum coming from the revolving tables.

*

I'm sure that no more than a few weeks passed before the afternoon when Molly and I came home from school and Dad was already there, sitting on the couch. His hands were cupped on his lap as if they had just covered his face, and I immediately remembered my visit to his store. Mom sat beside him and they both looked weary. When Molly asked, “Daddy, why are you home, are you sick?” they stared at us as if we were strangers.

That evening Dad didn't talk about his store and Mom didn't complain about it. But their silence had no feeling of peace, and I worried that the words they held in were too terrible to be spoken. From then on Dad was always home when we returned from school, and during dinner I almost wished my parents' arguments would start again, their quiet disturbed me so.

Waiting on line one day in the school cafeteria, I stood quietly when one of the older boys began to push in front of me, somehow certain that he was about to turn around and say, loudly, “Hey, are you some kinda poor boy now your old man's store's closed down?” I imagined that even if he laughed and shoved me I wouldn't reply, but instead he just swaggered ahead and cut in line even closer to the chicken chow mein. I considered walking into town but I didn't have to—it was terribly easy to imagine Dad's store with the window displays gutted, the neon sign shut off, and the tables inside immobile.

Over dinner that night our parents' silence continued in every tense passed plate, and the effort of their restraint seemed to exhaust Dad. His eyes wandered, and finally he said, “The most amazing thing happened at the store today.”

We turned to him, our forks and knives motionless. He
was
still working, I thought. Mom dabbed at her lips with a napkin.

“Mrs. Mitchell came in today,” he continued. “I saw her shoes hadn't come from my store, and, I don't know, I couldn't help myself, I said, ‘Mrs. Mitchell, long time no see.' She didn't miss a beat, though, she said, ‘Happy to see you' and asked after the kids. Anyway, she wanted an ordinary pair of flats, nothing special, and I went to the back room for her size. Now you won't believe this, but all the boxes on the shelves were kind of twitching, like the shoes inside were kicking to get out, or something.”

He paused significantly. Molly sat across from me in mid-chew, her mouth open.

“I had to run back and forth with the ladder to push them all back in place, but they …”

“Frank!” Mom leaned over and shook his shoulder. Suddenly silent, he gazed at his plate and fiddled with the edge. Mom rose and took his hand and he let her lead him from the table. Molly and I were left alone with the macaroni and cheese. Mom was on the phone that night, whispering to Aunt Cissy—Dad's sister—but she fell silent whenever she heard me approach. And later, in my darkened bedroom, I created a planet where no one spoke because they were too busy thinking good thoughts.

*

Dad started grinding his teeth at night, producing a gnawing worse than any snore. It drove Mom to the living room couch, and it drove me there too. Finally Molly nestled among us, and we all crowded our legs and elbows as best we could. My own teeth ached from the grating that seemed to exude from the walls, and I pushed my face against the couch pillows and rustled my legs together, anything to drown it out.

“
Please
, stop it!” Mom whispered. “We don't need any more noise.” So we clung to her quietly in the dark and fell asleep only from sheer exhaustion, our lullaby the crackling of molars.

When we awoke the next morning Dad was already up, buttering a piece of toast at the kitchen table. How could he have slept at all, I thought, when he was the closest to the sound of his own grinding? But what seems so strange now is that none of us mentioned our grueling night, as though Dad always gnashed his teeth and the three of us always slept together on the couch. Even Molly was unusually subdued, sipping slowly through her orange juice.

That week my body ached from sleeping each night in improvised and awkward positions, and I dreaded the sight of the afternoon shadows lengthening into the evening. One night, twisted on the couch, I dreamt that my parents were muttering to each other in a darkened room. I couldn't hear what they said, but Mom's voice sounded frightened and angry. “Please, stop it,” I heard her plead. Then I was awake, afraid I had been rustling my legs again. My body was cramped against empty space, for Mom sat at the edge of the couch. Dad was bending down before her, grabbing at her feet. She kept kicking his hands away.