The Comfortable Shoe Diaries

by Renée J. Lukas

  Tonight I got comfy on the couch, curled up with Cookie softly rumbling beside me, and got ready to savor Ellie’s next entry. Reading a new email from Ellie had become the highlight of my day, or as she would say, the perfect dessert to complete the meal. I couldn’t wait. And she never disappointed.

  There it was. A new letter from Ellie. It was strangely much shorter than her usual emails. She wrote:

  “Yes, I agree The Bachelor and Bachelorette TV series should do a gay version. Their ratings would spike, probably from straight but curious viewers more than gay people! I have to admit, I’m newer to this life than you. I haven’t been out as long. Would you like to talk on the phone tonight? When you get this email, if you want to, call me at…”

  My heart pounded as I read the numbers. I hadn’t been this nervous since the time in high school when I bumped into Angie Helgenberger, my biggest crush, by my locker. I’d never spoken a word to her before that. And in that second, Angie said, “I’m sorry.” I just stood there and stared at her with my mouth half open. Only she didn’t know I was desperately trying to think of something to say. She probably thought I was a weirdo who didn’t like people touching me or someone who was planning to blow up the school. Either way, it was a memory that stuck in my mind.

  Why is it we always remember the most embarrassing, most heartbreaking, of all of our memories? Sure, the good times are scattered across your mind, fleeting thoughts. But the ones at the top of the pile that you tend to relive over and over are always the times when instead of coming across like a movie star, you most likely looked like a clumsy cartoon character whose head is screwed on backward.

  Ellie wanted to talk. Why was that suddenly so terrifying? Why did that rank up there with giving a speech in front of the student body and throwing up the morning before? I knew why. Talking to her would make her real.

  Right now Ellie Hundersson was the only light in my tunnel. Whether I’d meant to or not, I’d started to cling to the hope of something special with her, something corny that involved sunsets or at least flickering candlelight. She was a fantasy—still at a safe enough distance to not know any of her flaws, those annoying things that remind you someone is human and can hurt or disappoint you.

  Even more importantly, she couldn’t yet know about my flaws and quirks. I wasn’t ready to lose my mystery by having a screaming fit at the sight of pistachio ice cream because I can’t let it touch me. Things like that.

  Pistachio was a big one that would surely prove my weirdness. What would Ellie think?

  I stared at my phone and gulped. Then I cleared my throat. And cleared it again. No. I wouldn’t do this. I couldn’t bear to have Ellie learn the full depth of my weirdness.

  My therapist told me I’d had a traumatic episode with pistachios as a child. But just because I’d gotten an explanation didn’t make it any less weird. Then there was the chronic anxiety disorder. And the OCD. And the ADD. And the IBS. I had more acronyms than a dictionary.

  In spite of my better judgment, I dialed her number.

  “Hello?” Her voice was light and sexy, just like her photo.

  My chest rippled with excitement.

  “Is this Ellie?” I asked.

  “Yes. Sydney?”

  “Yes.” I was beaming. If we’d been Skyping, which I still didn’t know how to do, she would have seen me grinning like a giddy child.

  Ellie sounded mature and sophisticated and calm and everything that made me swoon—all in that one voice.

  “It’s great to hear what you sound like!” I blurted. Already I’d lost my mystery.

  “You too. Your voice is a little deeper.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “Oh yeah.” She laughed an easy, excited laugh.

  I think the feelings were mutual. Of course I’d been so wrong about things before, but she seemed as happy as I was.

  “So how are things in Connecticut?” she asked.

  “Pretty much the same. My friends and I went out dancing, which was kind of unfortunate since none of us can dance.”

  She laughed.

  “I danced to one of those loud songs where it doesn’t matter if you’re with anyone or not.”

  “Maybe next time I can dance with you,” she replied.

  I swallowed hard. After so many endings, something was finally beginning.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Ice Cream and Lactose Intolerance”

  Before the conversation was over, we’d arranged to meet in Mystic, a halfway point from where I was in Connecticut and her in Massachusetts. Mystic was the little seaside town where the movie Mystic Pizza was made. And the pizza really was as good as it said in the movie.

  Before I left, Maddie warned me not to move in with her too soon. I assured her that wasn’t possible. I was taking things slowly.

  “If you move up to Massachusetts,” Maddie said, “you’ll be dead to me.”

  “Will you get a hold of yourself? No one’s moving in with anyone.” Despite my attempts to reassure her, she was convinced that I’d be the cliché lesbian who starts packing boxes right after our first dinner.

  Ellie and I each booked a room at a nearby hotel so we wouldn’t have a long drive back the same night. Separate rooms were a good sign of taking things slowly. I was relieved that we were on the same page. And I couldn’t wait to tell Maddie, who had said something about how she probably just wanted to get in my pants.

  The morning I was getting ready to go, I was anxious—no, panic-stricken.

  “Have some ginger ale to settle your stomach,” Penny suggested, pushing a glass in front of me.

  “No,” I snapped. “Sorry. I’m just scared out of my mind.”

  “Of course you are,” Penny said almost cheerfully.

  “You’ve been through this. What’s it like?”

  “Well…” She thought a moment. “They never look as good as their picture. And they may have the wrong idea about how you look ’cause of your picture. It doesn’t matter if you’ve had great talks or anything. If she’s not attracted to you in person, it’s doomed. She’ll make an excuse to dump you, maybe lose you right there at the Mystic Aquarium.”

  I glared at her. Was this supposed to be a pep talk?

  “Oh, but that probably won’t happen to you.” She tried hard to take it all back, but the fear and uncertainty had already been flung in my face.

  I hit the highway, and as I drove down familiar hills, I pondered the green summer trees lining the road. They’d be barren and dead when winter came, with their beautiful days behind them and nothing more to give. I wondered if I’d still know Ellie when the trees looked like that. That train of thought led me back to myself, of course. I’d once been like these lush trees with summer light piercing through. Like it or not, I was getting older. What if my hottie days were all behind me? My best face and body had gone to Văldemort, who didn’t really appreciate them anyway. And now Ellie would get the scraps of the woman I used to be.

  I had to jump off this merry-go-round of mental misery. I had to get positive. Fast. Whatever I had left, I had to give Ellie the best me I could.

  * * *

  “You look beautiful,” she said as we met in the parking lot. I dove into her bear hug and didn’t want to let go.

  She was beautiful too, more in person than in any photo. She wore a simple black top with a maroon corduroy jacket and jeans, very like my red corduroy jacket and jeans. We almost looked like twins. Up close I could see the features of her face, with the contours in the light and shadows…bursts of heat crackled up my spine. All at once I knew she had that thing. The thing that Angie from high school had. The thing that made me forget how to speak. The thing that could hurt me.

  I fidgeted restlessly beneath the weight of her stare. Her topaz eyes danced in the gray light, and her long, blond hair blew gently off her shoulders in the breeze. She presented me with a single red carnation, remembering my profile.

  “Want to go for a walk?” I asked, my smile
giving away all my secrets.

  “You can put that in the car.” She gestured to the carnation. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to walk around with it or anything.” She looked around nervously.

  “Sure.” I placed the carnation carefully in the backseat, vowing to water it immediately, unlike all the other flowers I’d killed.

  It was a foggy, misty afternoon, the kind that you imagine a day in New England is supposed to look like. You could feel moisture in the air, as clouds gathered overhead, promising a storm. We strolled by the boats that were docked and talked about how parts of the movie were filmed there.

  I couldn’t get over Ellie’s stunningly gorgeous features, her shiny hair and her intelligent eyes looking back at me. I was nervous and sick. But that was a good thing.

  “Want some ice cream?” she asked as we made our way up the bridge.

  “Sure,” I said without thinking. And before I knew it, I was standing in line trying to read a chalk-scribbled menu of flavors. What could I possibly order that wouldn’t aggravate my IBS? What was the least likely flavor to kill me? Strawberry cheesecake? No. Chocolate? Hell no—a natural laxative. If I ordered that, I might as well shove a stick of dynamite up my ass. Panic seized me as I prayed to the ice cream gods to spare me just this one night…

  Ellie made her decision first. Not the pistachio. Don’t get pistachio.

  “Chocolate chip,” she told the cashier. Whew.

  One crisis averted. My head was spinning. Butter pecan or death…cookies ’n cream…my insides were churning more than the ice cream had been. When the cashier looked at me expectantly, I panicked and blurted out, “I’m lactose intolerant! I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome!” The words dropped into one of those silences that mysteriously fall over public places whenever I say something stupid. Startled heads lifted and turned toward me, and I wanted to kill myself. I rushed out of there as Ellie gathered some napkins. “Forget that,” I told her when she came out. “Rewind!”

  She laughed as I tried to erase the moment, smacking myself in the head.

  “I didn’t know,” she said apologetically.

  “It’s okay. It wasn’t something I intended to tell you—and half of Connecticut—on our first date, but it’s okay.” I shrugged, and she put a reassuring arm around me as we made our way back to the dock.

  We sat on a bench by the water in downtown Mystic that night. It didn’t rain, but it was cool by the water, even on a summer night. I jammed my hands in my jacket pockets to give them something to do. I watched as lights from boats flickered across Ellie’s windswept profile, outlining her nose and her cheeks, while she swirled her tongue along a lucky scoop of chocolate chip.

  “Is it good?” I asked, so grateful it wasn’t pistachio.

  “Yeah, but not that good. I don’t want you to feel bad for not being able to have it.”

  “You’re so gorgeous,” I gasped. What was the matter with me? I had violated all the rules I’d set for myself in the car on the way over. Rule number one—don’t say anything embarrassing. That ship had truly sailed.

  I saw her blush just a little. Then she slid her hand into my jacket pocket and grasped my hand. The wind battered our faces, freezing our awkward, shy smiles in place. It’s funny. Everyone thinks that being by the water at night is romantic. Instead it’s usually so windy you can’t see and you have to blink a lot. So the first time we held hands was pretty much a blur for me, except for the memory of Ellie’s hand in mine.

  As we walked over the drawbridge, we passed a family with two worn-out parents trying to keep three toddlers from running into traffic. One little girl had ice cream running down her pink sundress. Her mother looked horrified and exhausted.

  “Ashley!” The mother shouted. “I can’t buy you nice clothes if you’re going to make a mess like that!” Then she knelt down and tried to wipe the sticky mess.

  “Kids,” I sighed, shaking my head.

  “What about them?” Ellie asked.

  “Just look. You have no life once you have kids.” I’d said I didn’t want kids in my profile, so I was sure it came as no surprise. Then it dawned on me. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to say anything bad about your career.”

  “I didn’t take it that way,” she answered. “Actually, I don’t mind the kids. It’s the parents that can be annoying. If a child is falling behind in their work, the parents always blame the teacher. It never has anything to do with their home life,” she remarked sarcastically.

  “That has to be a pain.”

  “Yeah, parent-teacher conferences are my least favorite part of the job.” She thought a moment. “‘Yes, Timmy is an excellent student, except when he naps and snores in the middle of class and drools all over his desk. No, actually, your son is disgusting.’” She flashed a smile at me. “That’s a conversation I’d never have, but could have.”

  We laughed on the way back to the car—me and the dignified teacher who had a deliciously silly streak just under the surface. That night I learned that she could imitate any accent after hearing it for a few seconds. She started parroting a lady from Wisconsin just as the lady came up behind us in a store. Ellie stopped abruptly, and we ran out, holding our laughter until we reached the street.

  “I have to stop doing that,” Ellie said between laughing spasms. “Someday I’m going to get in big trouble.”

  “Yeah, she seemed kind of pissed.” We laughed harder.

  Almost to the car…she squeezed my hand in my pocket tightly. The night was black except for the occasional store windows and lights from boats at the dock. As rows of car headlights darted toward us, slicing through the darkness, I wondered who was watching us in the dark cars behind the lights—skinheads, killers, members of the Christian Coalition who protested gay rights. My anxious thoughts, as usual, took center stage, when I really wanted to think about the way Ellie’s hand felt like a silk glove, her skin giving me tingles all over. I didn’t even notice how windy it was by the dock.

  “You want to have breakfast tomorrow?” I asked shyly, pretty confident of her answer.

  “No, I think I should get back,” she replied. “I have a long drive.”

  “Oh.” My heart leapt into my throat. It was as Penny had said, only Ellie was too polite to ditch me sooner.

  Suddenly I was as humiliated as I was in department store dressing rooms, standing in front of the full-length mirror of shame. But this was even worse.

  Ellie, seeing my worried face, leaned in to kiss me, a featherlight touch of her lips to mine. “I really like you,” she said softly.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. I really do have a long drive.”

  “But you got a room. You don’t have to drive.”

  “Turns out I, uh, have somewhere I have to be tomorrow.”

  I wanted to believe her, but she sounded very secretive.

  I spent that night in my motel room wide awake and wondering what I did wrong. She did give me a kiss, I reassured myself. She didn’t have to do that. I alternated between “she hates me” and “she hates me not” until the first sign of dawn appeared through the drapes.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Et tu, Debra?”

  When I got back the next morning, Maddie, Penny and Ariel were all waiting for me in Penny’s living room.

  “How did it go!” Penny screamed.

  “Really well,” I said. “I think.”

  “You think?” I knew Maddie wouldn’t let that go.

  “Yeah, I think it did. I don’t want to get too caught up.” I glanced at Penny, whom we both knew, always got too caught up.

  “Well, you did spend the night together,” Penny said.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “She had to go home.”

  There was a collective “aww” until I glared at everybody.

  “Did she give you anything?” Ariel probed. “A gift? Something that belongs to her?”

  “A carnation.” I reached into my bag, and it was already squished. “I nee
d to get it some water.”

  “Not yet.” Ariel grabbed it and rolled it between her hands.

  “No,” I said. “Don’t do that thing where you try to sense her aura or something.”

  “Sure, be dismissive. But I can tell things.” She handed it back to me with an all-knowing expression.

  “Well?” I couldn’t stand it. “What did you get?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to know.” Ariel smirked, her eyes twinkling behind long, shaggy bangs. She reeked of cloves and patchouli.

  “Come on!” I suddenly had to know.

  “I’m getting…” Ariel was careful, thoughtful. “Some chaos, but it’s good. She’s a good person.”

  “You mean honest?” Penny asked. “Or not an ax murderer?”

  “She has a good heart, a good soul.” Ariel was looking to the heavens. Or at a crack in Penny’s leaky ceiling.

  Suddenly I felt like a high school girl who wanted to start scribbling our initials in all of my notebooks. I had a lightness in my steps as I went to the kitchen to pour some water.

  “So you’re moving to Massachusetts,” Maddie concluded sadly.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” I washed my hands and picked up Cookie.

  “How did she look in person?” Penny asked eagerly.

  “Better than her photos. She’s…stunning.” I searched for words, but Ellie was like magic; you couldn’t explain her. She had that special something, that wonderful whatever, that made me want to wrap her around me like a never-ending blanket. She also had a whole life that had happened before me, and I couldn’t wait to uncover every detail, as long as she wanted to keep seeing me.

  I caught Maddie’s eyes, and suddenly I felt like I should stop talking. My whole face probably beamed with a joy that made her sad.

  Friends should be happy for you. And Penny seemed truly excited for me. Ariel seemed stoned. But Maddie was seething beneath the surface. She’d once quoted Gore Vidal: “Every time a friend of mine succeeds, a little piece of me dies.”

  I felt the conflict radiating from her. My instincts were right.