The Comfortable Shoe Diaries

by Renée J. Lukas

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Something Fishy on Cape Cod”

  There’s nothing like a New England summer. The ground is an electric green, the sky a deep blue—like the front of a Claritin box. This particular June morning, Ellie and I were getting ready for a trip to a beachfront cottage on Cape Cod. Our neighbor, Greta Swanson, who already had four kids, actually volunteered to have Ellie’s kids stay with her. That’s what Ellie told me. All I could think was that the woman had to be a saint. Megan was thrilled because Greta had Playstation in the basement, so she wouldn’t be seen all weekend. Greta, who was also a cat person, agreed to look in on Cookie and even change her litter. I’d vowed to get her a nice present. Anyone who willingly scoops up your cat’s poop and pee deserves some reward.

  In the two years I’d been living with Ellie and the kids, this was our fourth visit to the Cape. It was our getaway from life. I’d found a certain groove in the family, where I could finally see where I fit in. But when everything was too stressful, it was nice to know the Cape would be waiting for us.

  We used to leave the kids with Marge, a kind lady who lived across the street, until she died. She was too kind to tell us if they’d ever pushed her over the edge, so I wondered about that. But Ellie insisted that heart disease ran in Marge’s family.

  Anyway, it had been just long enough that I couldn’t wait to return. I could just imagine listening to the lapping waves, seagulls squeaking to each other, and inhaling the salty air.

  Only this time, it was a recipe for disaster. There were so many anxiety-provoking situations awaiting me that I saw my therapist twice the week before.

  Don’t get me wrong. I know it sounded like paradise, but we weren’t staying at our regular hotel. We were meeting my sister, Joanne, my brother-in-law, Nathan, and my two nephews. Even though I loved them all, they gave me anxiety attacks. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because they’re a more fast-lane kind of family while I prefer a pace closer to an old lady driving on the shoulder.

  You can tell a lot about people by the way they drive. My sister is the kind of person who likes to ride in the far left lane and wait until she’s one inch in front of her exit to cross over four lanes of traffic. It made me nervous. But I couldn’t tell her that, or she’d get offended and not talk to me for months. She took after my mom’s side of the family. They were kind of like the Mafia—only instead of guns they’d just not speak to people for years and years. You had to pick your battles.

  Since Joanne’s husband, Nathan Hutchins, came from a wealthy family, it was his family’s cottage we were using for a couple of days. We’d be meeting them there, because they had to fly up from their home in Florida.

  Every time I tried to explain to them where we lived, they always seemed confused. Ellie and I lived in south central Massachusetts, the part no one ever talks about. It looks like Vermont, a landscape dotted with lush greenery, glassy lakes and old cemeteries dating back to the 1700s. It’s a nice mix of scenery and death everywhere. It puts everything in perspective. Just as I’m enjoying the majesty of a sprawling oak, I’ll see some old tombstones in the distance, reminding me how short life is and how I’d better get a good look at that tree, because it will be around longer than I am. Happy, happy.

  Anyway, this morning Ellie was packing a giant cooler with enough slabs of meat and seafood to keep us fed should the world come to an end.

  “It’s only two days,” I said.

  “We need to be prepared,” she insisted. “Food is expensive over there.” Ellie was still attractive underneath her stress lines and desperate need to be in control. Given the papers and family mementos strewn about the kitchen table, it was obvious that having control was as elusive for Ellie as happiness was for me. But she tried hard to gather her things each morning, inevitably leaving her phone or wallet behind. Lately, every now and then, I could still catch her blue eyes beaming at me the way she did when we first met in Mystic. But bills and kids and stress had been chipping away at the brightness in her eyes. I hadn’t seen it much in a while.

  I didn’t know what to call Ellie. She was my girlfriend, but that seemed like we just dated, so I guess she was my partner since we lived together. “Partner” sounded like we owned a paint business together, so I guess there was really no good word for what we were. Even though gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, we hadn’t considered anything like that yet. When it was mentioned on TV, she’d wave her hand dismissively and say, “You’re not ready for that yet, I know.” Maybe she wanted to be the one to say it first so I wouldn’t hurt her when I did. But honestly, it never crossed my mind, being someone who had lived much of her life in states where it wasn’t an option.

  This past winter, she made a big announcement about her divorce going through, and I was glad to hear it. I’d felt funny about living with someone who was still technically attached.

  “Isn’t that great?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sure.” I was munching on chips in front of the TV. When I saw her face fall, I knew I’d failed some test. “I’m really happy about it. But I guess I’ve always thought of us as kind of married anyway.”

  “But we’re not.” It was more black-and-white for her because she lived in a state where we could marry. Before moving to Massachusetts, I’d learned to think of marriage as more of a state of mind. It was a difference in perception, I guess, but it didn’t worry me since all that mattered to me was that we were living together.

  Ellie had most of the trunk packed. When I added a suitcase, she moved it to a better location. I didn’t know there were eggs perilously close to my suitcase. I didn’t know there was glassware near every space I thought I could move it to. Wait. Why were we packing glassware?

  “You do it,” I sighed. “You know where everything is.”

  “No, it’s okay. You can help. Really.” Ellie’s face was contorted into a painful expression that looked like she was about to have diarrhea. She’d been trying so hard to work on her control issues. I had to give her credit for that.

  The night before, I blogged about being in your forties in The Comfortable Shoe Diaries. I talked about all of the weird changes you go through during this time. It’s the decade of desire—to be something different from who you were before but fearful of any changes that will mess up your security. It’s a time when you think you’ve accrued enough wisdom to teach others, only to realize you know as little as you did in your twenties. All that can really be said about your forties is that you should now know what you’ll put up with and what you won’t. Past relationships have left you scarred and limping along, still trying to be optimistic.

  I remembered feeling that way when Ellie and I met. Though we hated to admit we met online, we had to tell people whenever they asked us.

  We’d get the same reaction: “Oh, you know lots of people are meeting that way now.” It was as if they thought they needed to make us feel better.

  The truth was, both of us were bruised from past relationships and lugging heavy chains of baggage around like Marley’s ghost. Sitting on each side of a pizza in Mystic with our invisible chains from the past, we’d made small talk and tried to present the sides of us we’d always wanted to be.

  “I like foreign films,” I’d said, though I hadn’t watched one since film school. I thought it made me sound artsy.

  “I enjoy reading,” Ellie had said, sipping her wine in that casual, sexy way she still does today. Later I’d learn that she has major Attention Deficit Disorder and can’t focus on a greeting card, let alone a book.

  That morning I carried the last heavy group of bags out to the car. My cell phone rang in my pocket, and when I reached in to try to answer it, I lost my balance. Everything was top heavy, and I fell over on the driveway.

  “You okay?” Ellie rushed to my side.

  “You packed too much!” I snapped, grabbing the phone.

  It was Joanne.

  “What? You haven’t left yet?” I looked at Ellie with alarm. “Uh-huh.
I get it. No, I understand.”

  Ellie and I got in the car but couldn’t get out of the driveway. She kept slapping her GPS because it had her going to Connecticut, and she couldn’t figure out why.

  “What did your sister say?” she asked, smacking the device over and over.

  “It’s Nathan. They missed their flight.”

  She looked quizzically at me.

  “He couldn’t go right away,” I explained, giving her a look. I’d told her about Nathan before. He had a kind of agoraphobia, so sometimes he didn’t like to go anywhere that seemed overwhelming, like a mall or airport. He never went to crowded restaurants either. But Joanne had managed to convince him that a couple of days on the Cape would be good for him and that there wouldn’t be too many people, which was a lie. It was June, after all.

  We started down the road. Ellie wasn’t good at doing more than one thing at a time. But she tried anyway. I grabbed the wheel when she grabbed her phone.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “My brother,” she answered. “I need to check if he needs a ride.”

  “Which brother?”

  “Bryan.”

  “You might’ve told me this.” It was already getting crowded and we hadn’t gotten there yet.

  “You’re seeing your sister. Why can’t I see my brother?”

  “You’re right. Sorry.” I didn’t like being the last to know about things.

  “No answer.” She put down the phone and held my hand.

  “Sure you don’t want both hands on the wheel?”

  She sighed in frustration. “You’re so romantic.”

  “Is he coming?” I asked.

  “He may show up later. I don’t know.”

  “He’s the only one I haven’t met, right? What’s he like?”

  “We think he’s gay, only he doesn’t know it yet.” She smiled.

  Bryan was her only sibling who lived in the same state. He owned a candy store in Rockport, and apparently her whole family worried about his survival. What they didn’t know was that his peanut butter dream drops were about to go national. We’d find that out later.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “P-town”

  Ellie and I fell in love with Provincetown, not only because it was the only place where we could hold hands in public without worrying about hateful stares, but because it had that feeling of history and seaside ambience and that special something that makes you want to stay a while longer. I’d cry every time we’d leave. I’m sure she wasn’t looking forward to that. I was miserable to be with in the car for seventy miles down the Mass Pike—seventy miles of sobbing, tissues, wiping my swollen, pink eyes. She’d ask if we needed to pull over, and I’d wave my hand forward, unable to talk. Ah, good times.

  Joanne and Nathan had never been to the Cape. Even though his family owned the little cottage where we were going, he hadn’t seen it. So we couldn’t wait to show them what paradise looked like.

  “So when will they get there?” Ellie asked.

  “About four o’clock.”

  “Fuck you!” Ellie screamed at the woman in the GPS who kept telling us to turn around. Finally, she threw the box in the backseat. We already knew how to get there anyway.

  Snapshots of highway flashed by my window until finally I saw the sign for Cape Cod. My eyes got misty. I could hear Patti Page singing. Then anxiety set in. Worries tumbled into my head like waves at high tide. One after another. I pictured Joanne and Nathan with stopwatches, setting out itineraries for us—snorkeling, bike riding, parasailing—all before seven in the morning.

  “Did you take your medicine?” Ellie asked.

  “Yeah,” I answered defensively. “Why?”

  “Just, you seem…I was just checking.”

  “I seem what? What do I seem?” I couldn’t let it go. It was a skipping record in my brain. I had to have the answer.

  “You seem kind of nervous.”

  “What?” I barked. “How can you tell? I didn’t say anything.”

  “I sense it. I feel your energy.”

  “Oh, stop. You sound like Ariel.”

  “When am I meeting her?” Ellie asked.

  “You won’t be until you can stand the smell of twenty packs of clove cigarettes,” I replied.

  Ellie made a face.

  The truth was, I didn’t know how to relax. I’d bought six books on how to relax. Not one of them helped me to relax. When someone told me to relax it just made me angry.

  “Just think,” Ellie said. “You’ll be seeing your sister soon.”

  I did miss Joanne since I’d left Florida. Unfortunately, every time we got together, she had schedules and blueprints for each day, which somehow made it even more impossible for me to relax.

  Then there were the rogue worries that drifted in and out, teasing my mind. I was afraid no one would be paying attention to their younger son, Tayler, and he’d drown in the sea. I was afraid Nathan would freak out and they’d have to leave before they saw Provincetown. I was afraid their older son Cabbot would blurt something out at a gay couple walking down the street. I was afraid my IBS would kick in during the trolley tour.

  Determined not to live my life in fear, I did a few breathing exercises as we looked for the cottage. Then I decided that breathing exercises were stupid and tried to shift to positive thoughts, like the shacks that lined the sides of the road. These weren’t ordinary shacks. They were homes to lobsters, clams, oysters, crabs—temples of seafood worship—where you sat in boat parts underneath massive nets strung across the walls and waited for your overflowing plate of fried goodness.

  I sighed a contented, orgasmic sigh.

  “You all right?” Ellie looked sideways at me.

  “Oh yeah.”

  I hadn’t noticed the curvy brunette sunning in a bathing suit at a resort pool we’d just passed. I was still imagining a drop of butter clinging lightly to a sweet chunk of lobster meat. I licked my lips.

  “Put your eyes back in your head, will you!” she barked at me. Did I mention Ellie’s temper?

  “Why? Can’t a girl lust after a lobster?”

  “I thought you were looking at the brunette,” she said.

  “What brunette?”

  A huge smile spread across her face, and she squeezed my hand.

  We sounded like an old couple who couldn’t hear what the other was saying anymore.

  We decided to stop and have some lunch, especially since Joanne and family would be late. We didn’t have the keys to the place, so there was no sense in sitting in the driveway for two hours.

  Sunlight flickered across the windshield when we pulled back onto the road. Suddenly we’d driven onto a movie set, and everything looked perfect—as if the ocean, the trees, even the electric blue sky, had been put there just for us. I was so content, remembering my plate of sweet fried clams.

  I sighed and held Ellie’s hand, which reminded me of our first date in Mystic, when she put her hand in my coat pocket. I snuck a smile in her direction, and it was as if she knew what I was remembering. She gave my hand another squeeze. It was nice to be alone, just the two of us.

  Sometimes she had a shy smile like a little girl looking for approval. Then she could seem so regal, like when she was instructing everyone on how to put the spoons in the dishwasher. There were many shades of Ellie, light and dark, like sun and shadows through the windows. I was so surprised at how I’d found her in this world of mazes that so often lead to nowhere. Somehow I found my way to her picture on a computer screen, and my life would never be the same.

  We rolled down the windows, letting the salt air inside. I breathed in the sunny scene with high dunes all around and almost relaxed, feeling almost light, like the thin sea grass swaying in the breeze. I could have been in one of those feminine napkin commercials.

  “Are we there yet?” I asked.

  “You’re worse than the kids,” she laughed. “It’s coming up.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Th
e Third-Year Hump”

  The cottage stood high on the dunes, overlooking the bay. It had gray, clapboard shingles and white trim with a deck in back. It was the perfect New England house.

  Then I noticed Joanne’s white SUV rental car parked in the gravel beside us.

  “I’ll beat you in!” It was Tayler, a blur of blond hair, running up behind us, darting toward the water.

  “No! You’ll wait for everyone else!” Nathan called helplessly in his Southern twang.

  And there was Joanne, already looking tired and defeated, her tumbling red curled hair scattered across her shoulders. No one knew where her red hair came from, but there was a rumor that Mom had had an affair with a plumber years ago. Go Mom.

  “You made it!” I threw my arms around her waif-like body.

  “Yeah, we managed to get another flight.”

  “You look great,” I exclaimed.

  “Thanks.” She seemed distracted, pulling out gigantic bags from the trunk. “I’m doing this new workout video. She makes you do all these awful crunches and positions that make you wish you were dead. It’s great.”

  As we carried our bags to the front door, Joanne lowered her voice so Nathan wouldn’t hear. “He freaked out in the airport, worse than ever. Made a huge scene. I pretended not to know him.”

  “Tayler!” Nathan scooped up the boy’s little seven-year-old pale body, sprayed him in a cloud of sunscreen mist, then insisted he wait on the back porch until the adults were ready to go outside. For a child, this was torture.

  Joanne exchanged hugs with Ellie.

  “You look great,” Joanne said.

  “I have an extra chin, but thanks.” Ellie never could take a compliment.

  Joanne unlocked the cottage. First we were hit with a musty smell like an old basement. But the views of water from every room quickly distracted us.

  “This is…wow,” Ellie sighed. “Just…wow.” It was an almost spiritual moment of peace, everything you come to the Cape for. That was until the back sliders opened and Tayler scream-cried, begging to go swimming.