📖 Walk'out

Same Walk Different Shoes

“Same Walk, Different Shoes” is a community writing project that

Ben Wakeman

organized as a practical exercise in empathy. The premise is simple. A group of writers anonymously contribute a personal story of an experience that changed their life. Each participating writer is randomly assigned one of these story prompts to turn into a short story. The story you are about to read is one from this collection. You can find all the stories from the participating writers at Catch & Release. Enjoy the walk with us.

My mother’s grandfather was a cobbler back in the Old Country. That was what she and my father called it, the Old Country. Ignoring the fact that Sicily was, geologically, less than a million years old, compared to Australia’s 3.8 billion. Maybe they meant that Sicilians are just generally old. I was last there at age six, and everyone seemed great-grandfather old. All the younger people had left to seek work in places like Melbourne.

And now, instead of returning to university, I was to be one of those workers. At a shoe store.

My mother’s ancestor aside, shoes were not in my blood. Cigarettes and TaB and chips were in my blood. Boredom and apathy and ‘70s feminist movies were in my blood. I wallowed in a routine that established itself with disturbing ease once I dropped out after a year of not a lot of university and a lot of extra-curriculars. I moved back to my childhood bedroom to read novels and listen to music. I collected the stickers off fruit and stuck them to my door.

Returning to Uni was out of the question. Listening to my parents fight about money and my father’s drinking and especially about me was taking a toll. And I couldn’t face yet another inquisition about my future over the burble of the stovetop Moka or the gush of lavender-scented water filling the tub. So, one day, on my usual route for cigarettes, I continued south on Lygon Street and stopped at the first HELP WANTED sign.

The sign was hand-lettered in black marker on a square of cardboard by someone with no spatial sense. The HELP was fine, but greedy WANT over-stretched, bullying the E and D against the edge like skinny hostages.

People hurried and jostled behind me. I scanned the dusty jumble of shoes lined up in no discernable order on the sort of open wood shelves you’d find at a charity shop.

Thick-strapped leather sandals fit for a Roman soldier.

Shiny black Mary Janes like the ones I wore to First Communion.

Espadrilles in a beachy tan with ocean-blue stripes.

Tiny Keds a teenager could hang from his rear-view mirror.

Brown wingtips destined for a 50^th-floor office in the glassy Rialto downtown.

Pink kitten-heeled house slippers trimmed in sleek white rabbit fur like Aunt Agnes wore, as my mother said, because she could.

A man stepped out of the store. Red hair in a comb-over, black suit, white shirt open at the collar, very red face. Somehow he was both thick around the middle and gangly.

“Hullo. Interested in shoes?”

I didn’t give a good goddam about shoes and I was too floored by his voice to speak. He sounded like a seven-year-old girl.

“We have a position.” He said it in such a suggestive way, lingering on position, that my mind went to a ludicrous sex scene I’d just read in Follett’s Pillars of the Earth. This man could’ve written it.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

He barked a laugh. “I like your enthusiasm.” And there it was again. That linger. “We’ll need a chat first. Come in.” He opened the door wide and stood against it.

The store was narrow, dim, and empty. The reddish gray carpet must have been installed before I was born. Shelves lined the two long walls. Single shoes crowded together like spectators at a sports match: pumps, sandals, loafers, runners, slippers. The only boots on offer in summer were plain work boots like the ones my father wore to his job wiring new buildings downtown.

The man sat on a cracked red leatherette stools with an angled mirror at the base and gestured to a bench.

“Sit.” His tone seemed to try for inviting but came out hoarse and eager.

I sat. The wood was cool and worn. A splinter jabbed my bare thigh. He hadn’t noticed, but even I knew cut-off jeans weren’t ideal attire for a job interview.

“Experience?” he asked with the odd inflection, equal parts smarmy and cocky.

A bell tinkled. An ample Italian nonna entered on a gust of street noise and heat.

The man sprang up. “Good day, Madam. How may we assist you today?”

That we brought me to my feet, sockless in dirty white, threadbare Keds.

The woman plucked a hot pink stiletto from the shelf. “Have this in a size 12?” she asked in a dusky Dolce Vita accent that mocked her widow’s black dress.

“Of course, Madam,” he said brightly. “Please make yourself comfortable just here and I’ll be back in a jiff.”

Even I knew he should’ve measured her. On impulse, I picked up the foot-measuring thing and said, “First, let’s check your size.”

She eyed me with suspicion. “Oh.”

“Wouldn’t want your new shoes to pinch.” Not that a shoe like that could be anything but torture.

She submitted a reluctant, stocking-clad foot to the metal contraption. Drawing on pure instinct and my own limited experience as a shoe customer, I guided and slid and measured.

“Look at that,” I said. “Spot-on size 12. I’m not sure we have a . . . double-E, but Mr.”—I had no idea what his name was—“The owner will find something.”

The man emerged with a teetering stack of boxes balanced under his narrow chin. He took in the scene with a frown, then blustered on. “Here we are. Brought you a few alternatives, in case.”

The bell tinkled again and here came a young, harried mother with two boys in tow. She was a dead ringer for Sybylla Melvyn in “My Brilliant Career,” which I’d seen two nights ago at Cinema Nova in a double feature with “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” This was how Judy Davis’s Sybylla would’ve ended, if she’d given up writing to marry Sam Neill instead of finishing her novel.

This woman’s boys were maybe seven and nine, or four and six, who knew? At Uni, there were no kids. Everyone was either my age or old. Their coiled feral energy foretold trouble, so I went right to work.

“Good day, how can I help?”

The mother’s rapid hand motions and speech conveyed urgency, like if we didn’t complete a transaction within the next five minutes, she couldn’t be held responsible for the chaos that would ensue.

“Yes, we need sandals, something sturdy.”

I glanced around but saw no kiddie sandals. Anyway, no self-respecting wild boy would be caught dead in sandals. Picture a young Holden Caulfield in sandals. It’s not possible. Might as well go barefoot.

“What about a fun pair of runners?” I pulled small yellow, orange and green Keds off the shelf, handing them off to the boys like candy.

“What? No,” the woman said, but she was already weakening. “We need—”

“I want the red ones,” the shorter boy said.

“No, I want red.” The taller yanked it from his brother’s hand.

I took the disputed shoe and crouched to their level. “Good thing we have enough pairs so you can both have red.” Trying for authoritative but closer to menacing sarcasm.

They gaped. I heard the owner’s murmur and glimpsed the first woman teetering on the hot pink stilettos with surprising grace. Quick mental flash of her sashaying on a runway, blue-rinsed head held high, lips puckered, executing a perfect twist-turn.

“They wear a five and a four,” the mother said, counting down to chaos.

I had this. “Let’s check, shall we?” I placed the metal device at their feet, which initiated a jostle for who would be first.

“Is that really necessary?”

I nodded sagely. A line surfaced from deep memory of my own childhood shoe-store visits. “With young, growing feet, we must take care to size correctly.” It was pure theater, this interaction, a masterful performance. I felt powerful after months of deliberate apathy.

I sold two pairs of Keds to the woman, plus a strappy blue flat for herself, which she insisted on taking without trying on. My acting talents did not extend to the transaction, however. The incredulous owner had to step in for that.

I surveyed the aftermath. Ten open boxes, heels of varying heights and colors strewn about. The pink stilettos sat side by side on the bench in amused disdain.

“No sale?” I asked, pleased beyond all reason with my own performance.

He shook his head and huffed. “She comes in every week. Hasn’t bought a pair yet.”

I stooped to box up the rejected shoes, vowing in my head to complete that sale next time she came in.

“You start tomorrow,” he said with a sigh. “We need a woman’s touch around here.” He stood watching and did not offer to help, though there were no customers. “Come at 8:00. We’ll do a supplier pickup.”

I hadn’t risen so early since first semester’s Italian class, which I’d taken without telling my parents. They expected me to study Econ and Psych and Statistics—anything, to their minds, that would land me in a white-collar profession. I wanted to learn Italian so I could understand my aunts and uncles and cousins back in Sicily, but that was more fantasy than plan. We’d last been there for my grandmother’s funeral thirteen years earlier. My uncle paid for the tickets.

My parents were embarrassed by their accents and determined that I would be “100% Australian,” whatever that meant. They refused to speak Italian in my presence, except as a secret code between them and their friends.

Their arguments were bilingual. It didn’t matter. Yelling needed no translation. Rancor, resentment, and rage was a universal language.

My new boss Mr. Cooper drove an old Honda Civic, faded silver with an orange door on the passenger’s side that creaked when I opened it. After I got in, I tried to roll down the window. It was hot, already 28, and I was sweating through my blouse.

“That doesn’t work,” he said with no trace of apology. “No worries, we’ve got A/C.” He twisted the knob to High. Tepid, stale air blasted my feet.

Thinking I’d fare better in the back, I pulled the door latch.

“That only works from the outside,” he said, putting the car in gear and pulling into traffic. “I’ll be the chivalrous knight and release you from my carriage when we arrive.”

Chivalrous knight? His face was glistening red, his comb-over already fraying where it wasn’t plastered to his forehead.

At the supplier’s, I took charge of stacking the boxes into his trunk and backseat. He called me a genius, said I fit thirty percent more than he ever had. “You’ll go far in this business,” he said, dead serious.

I wondered what calamity would condemn me to a life selling shoes. The sudden death of a husband would do it, like Ellyn Burstyn’s Alice in the movie. It’s how she ended up slinging breakfast at a diner, dodging grabby hands, and telling everyone she was a singer. She should’ve skipped the marriage part and gone straight to the singing career.

“Breakfast,” Mr. Cooper said as we headed out. It wasn’t a question.

“I already ate.” I never ate in the morning and even if I did, facing this man over a sticky diner table in an anonymous industrial area outside Melbourne would cure any appetite.

On the freeway, out of the blue, he said, “You look nice today.”

I tried to pass it off as a simple comparison with the shorts of yesterday, but the tone gave me a chill. Which took some doing in that stuffy, cigarette-stale hotbox.

“Did you hear me?” His eyes focused on my chest, as if my answer would come from there.

 “Uh huh.” I should’ve said, I don’t hear with my boobs. Like Alice said to the asshole bar owner, “Look at my face. I don’t sing with my ass,” when he told her to turn around so he could look at her.

“I think we’re going to do well together,” Mr. Cooper said. “You’re an impressive young woman.” He reached over to pat my knee. The thick carpet of red hairs on the back of his hand—more than on his head—gleamed.

“What music do you like?” He squeezed my leg just above the knee, glanced over at me, kept the hand there.

I brushed the hand away and reached for the radio.

“That doesn’t work. There’s a tape deck. Tapes are in here.” He leaned over and reached for the stowage at my knees.

Again, I pushed him away. “I’ll do it. You drive.”

He laughed. “I like your take-charge attitude. Strong woman.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I busied myself with his crap tapes. Chicago, BeeGees, Village People, Rod Stewart.

He snatched Rod Stewart before I could choose the best of the pathetic lot and popped it in. “You know him?”

No, I’ve been living under a rock warred with Yes, and it’s why I don’t listen to him.

“Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” came on. It would’ve been pathetic if it wasn’t so awful.

“This is the best. Puts you in the mood, yeah?”

No. In no world was Rod Stewart sexy. Kris Kristofferson was sexy. Sam Neill was sexy. Rod Stewart, never.

At a stoplight, here came the hand again, this time darting up under my skirt for a furtive foray up my inner thigh. He gazed at me, open-mouthed. “Eh?” was all he said.

The same primitive fear jellied my limbs as when Sean, who I’d partied with many times at Uni, decided in my final month to force himself on me. But this time, instead of numb paralysis, I rallied. Propelled by disgust, I channeled the confident Sybylla, the feisty Alice.

“No.” I pushed his hand away and yanked on the useless door handle. How could I be so stupid?

“Relax,” he said. “Just being friendly. It’s nice to be appreciated, yeah?” The light went green and he gunned it.

I stoked my rage to a slow boil while fending off two more of his appreciations. When we arrived at the back of the store and he opened my door, I dodged past him without a word and stalked down the alley. He called after me.

“Where are you going? Help me with these boxes.”

“Lucy! Come back here, young lady.”

“Come on. I was just playing.”

And when I didn’t answer, louder—

“Bitch.”

“Slut.”

“Whore.”

I turned the corner on Grattan Street and kept going till I got to my favorite bookstore. Marsha the owner was just opening. She greeted me with her usual “Hullo,” like she didn’t care if I lived or died. I liked that. No expectations.

In five minutes, I’d chosen and bought Margaret Atwood’s newest, Cat’s Eye. I spent the day reading in Carlton Gardens in the shade of a White Poplar. It was the first time I’d quit a job, but it would not be the last.