by Joan Bauer
Mrs. Gladstone’s smile broke wide open. “I think they would greatly add to the depth of your characterization.”
Tanner put his best foot forward and stood on Wabash Street outside Gladstone Shoes and almost caused a riot. He was bowing to people, blowing kisses to women, patting little kids on the head, and handing out the coupons.
20% OFF
STOREWIDE EXTRAVAGANZA SALE
THE SHOE WAREHOUSE COMPANIES
PUTTING OUR BEST FOOT FORWARD FOR YOU
“What are you, man?” a teenage guy asked Tanner.
“I’m a foot fetish,” Tanner explained.
“No!” I shouted. “He’s just kidding.” I glared at Tanner’s face poking from the head hole; saw myself mirrored back. I hate mirrored sunglasses.
“I’m the Best Foot Forward,” Tanner said obediently and handed the guy a coupon. “And this is your lucky day.”
“Are you a right foot or a left foot?” a little girl asked him.
Tanner looked at the toes protruding out from his knees. “I’m a right foot.”
She squeezed his puffy big toe. “Do you feel stupid?”
“Yeah, I sure do!”
“Do you know Ronald McDonald?” another kid asked.
We hadn’t covered these questions in training. “Are you kidding?” Tanner replied. “Ron lives next door to me. We hang out.”
“You know Mickey Mouse?”
A crowd was gathering.
“I know him. I’m the Foot, you understand? They all come to me.” Tanner gave a coupon to every person and this mass of humanity headed into the store. I followed them. A sea of customers clutching coupons rifled through the sales shelves, trying on shoes, leaving boxes piled on the floor. The line at the register was curling through the store and Mrs. Gladstone was ringing people up like a machine.
I’ve been through enough sales at this store—the Spring Fling, the Holiday Magic, the End of the Year Closeout—but I’d never seen numbers like this.
It was hard to keep an eye on everything, hard to help when people didn’t know what they wanted themselves. Customers were leaning against the wall to try shoes on. There was no place left to sit. Tanner moved among his fans like a rock star and walked a few inside.
Then a rustle in the back. Tanner shouted, “Stop it, man!”
A panicked guy started pushing toward the front door, holding a box.
Tanner lunged after him, puffy toes swinging. “Hold it!”
I was by the door. The guy ran close to me, I stuck out my right foot, and he went crashing down.
“I was going to pay for it!”
“Yeah? When? ”
The guy kicked him; Tanner pinned him down and shoved his knee with the protruding toes into the guy’s chest as Murray called the police. But Gladstone customers are tough and dedicated. They kept shopping, clutching their coupons, keeping a wide berth around Tanner and the shoplifter. The police came and walked the guy off.
“Only in America,” Murray said afterward, shaking his head.
I looked at Tanner, saw that scar running down his face; his glasses were off, his dark eyes burning. If there was any doubt about whether he was one of us, that doubt was gone now. He was a sole man through and through.
The day after Labor Day, to celebrate the great Best Foot Forward campaign that was hugely successful across the country, and to show the unity and spirit alive in the newly merged Shoe Warehouse Corporation, Ken Woldman laid off 304 people nationwide. “We will continue to combine operations and to pass that cost savings onto our customers,” he said as if he’d just done something to help mankind. Mrs. Gladstone was furious at the news.
“What is that man thinking?” she shouted, shut herself in her office, and called him.
Murray was having nightmares that he was going to be the 305th to go. I tried to tell him Mrs. Gladstone would protect him, but Murray said the company was changing too fast.
“I’m a dead man, kid.”
I couldn’t imagine the store without Murray.
I couldn’t imagine the store without me, but Gladstone’s was going to have to get used to me being gone, at least part-time. Murray was interviewing for part-time help. He faced a young woman and threw out his make-or-break question:
“Okay, say six customers come into the store at once; they all want to be waited on pronto; they start getting surly. What do you do?”
She looked at him. “I’d tell them to wait their turn and if they didn’t like it, tough.”
That’s the wrong answer.
Murray had asked me that question at my interview, too. I’d said, “I’d tell them help was on the way, and come and find you.” His face went soft when I said it.
“We’ll call you,” Murray said to the young woman.
Just then the UPS man lugged in an enormous box and laid it down. “What’s in this thing?”
Murray and I opened the box. Inside was a large gong-shaped bell with the Shoe Warehouse emblem.
Murray looked at it with hunted eyes. “Who knows for whom the bell tolls, kid. It tolls for me.” He bonged the bell in grief.
Tanner ran onto the sales floor. “What was that?”
“The future,” Murray said miserably.
Chapter 13
School was starting tomorrow. One day left of freedom.
Opal and I were standing at Belmont Harbor, watching the sailboats. A long sailboat moved slowly out to the lake; three people manned it. There are some things you can’t do yourself—you need other people to help you.
This was one of those times for me. “I’ve been reading in my Al-Anon book,” I began, “and I’m learning how sometimes it’s hard for kids with alcoholic parents to have”—I winced—“fun.” I stood there desperately trying to appear fun-loving.
Opal examined me. “You could definitely use more fun in your life, Jenna.”
A kid glided by effortlessly on a skateboard. “So, how do I do that?”
“You want to skateboard?”
“No, I mean, general fun. How do I enter into that?”
Opal started laughing. “You start by smiling.”
I laughed, kind of.
“And you stop taking yourself so seriously.”
That stopped me laughing. All my life people have told me I’m too serious. I was a serious baby, a serious toddler, a serious preschooler.
“What do you think is fun?” she asked.
I looked around. This was the difficult part. “Don’t laugh,” I said. “Promise.”
Hand over her heart.
“I think selling shoes is a lot of fun.”
She cracked up.
“Okay, Opal. Brace yourself. I think that washing my car is fun. And I think driving is fun and it’s more fun when the car is clean.”
She was guffawing now.
“I thought you liked my car!”
“Jenna, this is serious. Do you ever do things on the spur of the moment?”
“Sure.” My mind stretched trying to think of them. I mentioned renting a movie on the absolute spur of the moment and cooking.
She took my arm and yanked me deeper into the park.
“Okay, Jenna, stand on that rock and scream.”
“Why?”
“Because it frees your inhibitions.”
“I like my inhibitions.”
“Just try it.”
I stood on the rock and gave a short, soft shout.
“How did that feel?”
“Boring.”
Opal stood on the rock, threw back her head, and bellowed. Birds flew out of the trees, squirrels ran for cover. Her face looked peaceful when she was through.
I threw back my head and shouted louder. I let my hands go up and down and the shout grew within me. I shrieked.
But honestly, it didn’t do much for me.
I liked to work. I liked to be purposeful.
Opal shook her head. “Jenna, you’re probably going to be one of the top businesspeople in America.”
I grinned. Now that would be fun.
The first day of school came down hard like a big boot from above.
The best part of the day was how many people came up and told me I looked good. I tossed my head and felt my new wispy bangs play across my face. I was wearing green, the color of new life.
It was amazing how much I’d changed over the summer and how my classmates had not. Matt Wicks, who I’d had a crush on all sophomore year, seemed childish and boring. I felt like I was living out one of those fantasy movies where the sharp adult gets zapped back into childhood and has to go back to school and relive what was not worth reliving.
Journalism with Mr. Haloran was worth the experience, though, because Mr. Haloran had the deepest, bluest eyes in all of education.
I held the sheet he passed out with the four questions we always had to ask before turning in a paper to him:
Are the facts confirmed?
Is the writing clear?
Is the piece informative?
Will Mr. Haloran unconditionally love this?
I had my own questions for the school year:
Can I . . .
Maintain a B average?
Have a balanced life?
Survive?
I raced into Gladstone’s and paused for a moment of silence at Harry Bender’s memorial.
If life were close to fair, Harry would have been my father. He would have driven my mother up the wall, and it’s safe to say that Faith wouldn’t have turned out nearly as pretty, but that’s a small price to pay for all the insight he would have shared.
Then the sound of jingling keys.
Burt Odder thumped into the store and plopped his damp body into a chair.
He was rubbing his calf, not surprising, looking at those old shoes he was wearing. He got up and I could see a gentle limp when he walked over to the men’s loafers.
Everything within me wanted to ignore him, but I thought, okay.
This one’s for you, Harry.
Harry always said you had to treat each customer like a friend.
I marched over to him, smiling. “I bet you’re on your feet a lot during the day,” I said.
“You got that right.” He didn’t look at me when he said it.
I picked up an excellent shoe that was dirt cheap on special because we only had wide sizes left. He had a wide foot. I told him about the depth of the cushioning and the ease of the walk and how the insoles massage the foot.
“You got it in twelve wide?”
“Let’s just measure you to be sure.”
He sat down and took off his shoe, and instantly I regretted this whole thing, because this man had foot odor that could knock you senseless. Murray always told me to move to the side of a person to avoid the direct fumes. My eyes were tearing, but I got him up on the measurer. “I think you’re a twelve and a half, actually.” I looked at his shoes that were almost bursting out at the little toe from the pressure. “Let me see what I’ve got.”
I went in the back, grabbed the twelve and a half wides, did some deep breathing to fill my lungs with clean air, and hurried back on the floor. He was waiting there, kind of docile. It’s amazing how people respond to having someone address their foot issues. I put the shoes on him.
He stood up and almost smiled. “Are these too loose? I can wiggle my toes.”
“You’re supposed to be able to do that.”
“Really.” He walked around a little bit. “How much?”
I told him the super sale price.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll take them.”
Just then, Tanner walked out. Tanner stopped short when he saw him. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just kept going with the transaction. Did he want to pay cash or credit?
I took his Visa card, rang it up.
Burt Odder signed the receipt. I said, “You’re going to love those shoes. They were made for you.”
He looked right past me to Tanner. “Give me a little tour.”
“There’s nothing to see.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Murray came out on the floor. “I’ll take you back there.”
“I want to see where he works.”
Murray led the way. Tanner and I followed into the storage room.
“Empty your pockets, Cobbie boy.”
Tanner didn’t move.
“Empty them.”
Tanner took out keys, some coins, a battered wallet. Burt Odder moved forward, patted the side of Tanner’s pants. “What you got in there?”
“Nuthin’.”
“Let’s see that nuthin’.”
Tanner shook his head, put his hand in the side pocket, and pulled out a Snickers bar.
Odder picked up Tanner’s torn book bag. “This yours?”
Tanner looked like he was going to punch his fist through a wall.
“I asked you a question.”
“It’s mine.”
“Everything out.”
How humiliating.
Tanner took out paper, pens, a bag of chips.
Burt Odder grabbed the bag, turned it upside down. Out fell an expensive pair of men’s snakeskin boots.
My breath caught in my throat.
“Well, now.” Burt Odder picked up a boot. “Very nice. This yours, Cobbie?”
Tanner looked down.
I turned around and saw Mrs. Gladstone leaning on her cane, watching in steely silence.
“You got a receipt for these?” Odder picked up the other boot.
Tanner said nothing.
“I told you, ma’am, this kid was no good.”
“Yes, you told me.”
“Well, we’re just going to take him off your hands and put him right back where he belongs.”
“But, you see,” Mrs. Gladstone said matter-of-factly, “I gave those to Tanner.”
What did she say?
“I gave the boots to him,” she repeated.
Tanner looked as shocked as anyone.
“There was no crime here,” she added.
Burt Odder sputtered, “Lady, do you know what you’re doing?”
She stood defiantly. “Is there anything else you’d like to see, Mr. Odder?”
Odder’s face flamed fire red. He gave a disgusted grunt and stormed out.
Mrs. Gladstone said, “Jenna, I’d like to speak to Tanner alone, please.”
I backed out of the room.
“It was wrong what I did.”
Tanner said it from behind me. I didn’t turn around.
“I don’t know why I did it.”
“I don’t either, Tanner.”
“What should I do next?”
“I have no idea.”
“Mrs. G said you’d tell me what to do next!”
I turned around, saw his face caved in with what? Guilt? Shock that he got away with it again?
“I don’t know what you and Mrs. Gladstone talked about, Tanner. Maybe you should just go home.”
He forced a smile. “Your eyes look great when you get—”
“Don’t!”
I turned away as he ran out the door.
Chapter 14
“I owe you an explanation, Jenna.” Mrs. Gladstone stood before me, lips pursed tight.
“No, you don’t.”
“I gave Tanner a second chance because I didn’t think justice would be served through that reprehensible Odder person.”
Justice? “He stole from us after everything you did for him. What makes you think he won’t do it again? He tricked all of us!”
“Did he trick us, Jenna, or did he fall into his old patterns? He was like a sponge in this place, soaking everything up. This job has been crucial to him.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Gladstone. That doesn’t excuse it.”
I was sick of excuses. My dad had all the excuses in the world.
“You’re right,” she agreed, “but Tanner did not come here with your discipline.”
I sighed. “You’ve sure got a nicer view
of humanity than me.”
“I’ve just lived longer. If Tanner does come back, I’m hoping we can all meet him halfway.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“I’m asking a lot of you. I know that.” Her face got faraway. “My father always said that to me. I chafed at being a preacher’s kid. I watched him practice grace every day with people I thought were unworthy of his efforts.”
I wasn’t in the mood to debate. “You’re the boss, Mrs. Gladstone.”
“Yes, but my authority does not extend to the heart.”
I bet she could order hearts around if she set her mind to it.
“Jenna, I don’t know if we’ll ever see Tanner Cobb again, but I’m betting that if he comes back, he won’t steal.”
“What if you’re wrong, Mrs. Gladstone? What do we do then? ”
She just stood there, all spine—a short monument to women of steel.
The problem with the heart is how it can have so many opposite feelings coursing through it at the same time. It’s really an inconsistent thing—appreciating something one minute, hating it the next. Tanner had left the store two days ago and we’d not seen or heard from him since. I was so glad when he left. Now I was thinking about what Yaley had said.
Tanner’s not bad like some people say, Jenna.
Promise me you’ll remember it.
When Yaley called and asked what happened, I told her.
Mattie came in the store, saying she was as sorry as she’d ever been for what Tanner did.
You can’t fix it for him, I wanted to shout.
I was trying to handle homework, trying to be strong. I wrote out a schedule for myself. If every single moment went perfectly, if I cut back on sleep and never missed a green light, I’d be fine.
I was answering the phone, taking messages from anxious store managers. Two more called saying that Elden was due in town tomorrow to talk about changes in their stores, and what were they supposed to do?
Mutiny?
Saturday, 8:47 A.M. I pulled into the parking lot behind the Oak Park Gladstone’s store. Mrs. Gladstone had brought her cane for the occasion—not just for emphasis; her hip was getting worse. Elden’s meeting was due to start in thirteen minutes. He didn’t know we were coming, but, hey, we’re all one big happy family. Right?
