The Comfortable Shoe Diaries

by Renée J. Lukas

  “She’s in the bathroom,” Mom answered. “Getting ready. Looks like you should too. You don’t want to be all sweaty at your wedding.”

  “We’ll be outside!”

  “But still.” She made a face. “And we’re all…dressed. Are you sure you want everyone to be so casual?”

  “It’s at the beach!” I stormed toward the kitchen, looking for the bar that Bryan had surely set up by now.

  I noticed everyone in white shorts and nice tops. Then Bryan joined me in his flip-flops.

  “Hey there, pretty,” he said. “Do you have something borrowed and something blue?”

  “I haven’t even thought of that.” I cried for Joanne. “See? I’m not ready! I don’t have something borrowed or blue!” I downed a shot of vodka. Then another.

  “Oh, Lord,” Penny said. “She’s comin’ apart.”

  In the corner I could see Aunt Rita wiping some sunblock off Mr. Hutchins’s nose. “Sun’s gone down,” she giggled.

  Oh God. What if those two were becoming an item? I wondered, then tried to shake off the mental picture.

  “Just calm down.” Joanne grabbed my arms. “You can wear this.” She took off her necklace and strung it around my neck. She fought with the clasp. “It’s just so damn tiny.”

  “Here.” Bryan was able to click it in place.

  They both stared at me.

  “It works,” Bryan decided. “Very Rita Hayworth.”

  “Yeah,” Joanne agreed. “Just don’t lose it because Nathan got it for me.”

  I touched the gold thing lying on my chest. Who was I? Whose life was I living? I’d begun asking myself all kinds of strange questions.

  “What about something blue?” I was panicking. I took another straight shot of vodka. It warmed my internal organs. I poured another.

  “The blue,” Bryan replied as if he were reciting poetry, “is the water.” He gestured out to the nighttime sea.

  “Looks more black to me,” I muttered. My head had begun to feel lighter.

  Then came the final straw. Nathan opened the back door with spatula in hand.

  “Hey,” he exclaimed. “I heard you ladies like seafood!”

  “What!” I shouted.

  Fran, Morgan and Penny turned around, concerned, as they viewed the train wreck that was suddenly me.

  “That’s so typical!” I exploded.

  “Sydney…” Joanne tried to stop me, but it was too late. The runaway train was now off the tracks.

  “Us ladies? Seafood?” I sneered. “Really, Nathan? Such class. Oh yes, we all know lesbians like fish!” I grabbed my crotch.

  “I need my inhaler,” Aunt Rita squeaked.

  Morgan and Fran cleared their throats. If they were trying to tell me something, I wasn’t listening.

  “Why don’t you just call us beavers, too? Oh yeah, we like us some beaver!” I strutted like a bowlegged cowboy.

  Morgan chuckled, and Fran slapped her.

  Mom stared at me, her jaw dropped so low you could see her dental work.

  “What else do you call us?” I persisted.

  Before I could storm out in a grand exit, Nathan held up a shrimp kabob. “I meant the seafood buffet was ready,” he said weakly.

  That was the last thing I heard as I slammed the door behind me. It was just as well, I rationalized. If I was ever going to consider something as serious as marriage, it would have to be legal in all states and not shared with some who could barely swallow their contempt for the whole thing.

  I took the shuttle from Truro into Provincetown. Through the dark window, I pictured Mr. Hutchins’s patronizing smile and his “little lady” attitude. I loathed them all. I’d become Godzilla that night. Everything was ugly and wrong. Then there was Aunt Rita, who pretended to be happy for us, but God forbid we talk too much about it or kiss in front of her. I knew they’d all be much more comfortable in Yuppieville with my sister and Nathan hosting them. So I wished everyone would leave. And even more I wished Ellie would never bring it up again. Ellie. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be with her anymore.

  * * *

  The harsh morning light hit me in the face. I woke up under a dune at Head of the Meadow Beach with sand caked all over my legs and in my underwear. There was an empty thermos beside me of what smelled like strong rum. Then I remembered. I was throwing back rum runners with a gay guy named Joel, and we were talking about how unnatural it was to commit to one person for the rest of your life. At first I thought he was calling me “unnatural” for being gay, and I told him to suck it. Then he took a seat and explained what he meant, and we became fast friends for a few hours.

  Then it really hit me. I’d abandoned Ellie, who had probably been standing there at sunset with everyone…waiting. The white lights lining the cottage, the non-gender specific minister from the nondenominational church presiding over a non-ceremony…

  It was all my fault! There was no place to put all the guilt welling up inside of me.

  “Sydney! Sydney!” The shrieking came from over the hill.

  I stood up and saw Mom braving the windy, uphill sand path. She wore a zip-up sweatshirt with a pointed hood and dark sunglasses. She sort of looked like an alien.

  I held up my hands in surrender. “Please, don’t! I can’t handle it.”

  “I don’t care what you can handle! You’re going to listen to me!” She took a few more breathless steps, grabbed my shoulders and shook me like a rag doll. “I finally see you with someone who isn’t crazy, and you leave her standing at the altar?”

  “There was no church.”

  “You’re darn right there wasn’t. I raised you to be a good Catholic girl and you couldn’t even find a decent church to marry your lesbian lover! How is Jesus going to hear you outside with all that ocean noise?”

  “He didn’t hear anything anyway.”

  “Darn right he didn’t. Ellie sent Carlissa home.” She kept putting her hands on her hips.

  “Carlissa?”

  “The woman minister. At least I think she was a woman.”

  “How bad was it? Was Ellie standing alone on the sand?” I couldn’t bear the image of her lonely silhouette at sunset. I wanted to shoot myself.

  “No,” Mom answered, taking a seat beside me in the fluffy dune.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She didn’t even get dressed up. She must’ve known you weren’t coming back.”

  “Wow.” I stared at the tiny grains of sand between my toes. “Really?”

  “Yeah, all she had on was this Cape Cod tourist T-shirt.”

  The lump in my throat settled into my stomach. That was the plan. We were going to wear matching souvenir T-shirts to solve the clothing problem. She was dressed. I didn’t think I could feel any lower.

  “No one understood all the fish references,” Mom said.

  “Sometimes gay men call us, women, fish. It pisses me off.”

  “Nathan’s not gay.”

  “I know.”

  “He had shrimp kabobs.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “I almost called the police,” Mom continued. “But Ellie told me you weren’t missing. She told me this was your favorite beach.” Moments passed. “Ellie said you’d never get past Marc. I hate to ask, but is Marc an old boyfriend of yours?”

  After all these years, I could see Mom still had hope in her eyes, the hope of me getting impregnated by a masculine manly man.

  “Her ex-husband,” I corrected.

  “Oh, right.” A long pause followed. “What’s the problem?”

  “It’s complicated. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Mom leaned closer. “It doesn’t make sense that your aunt Rita is still alive, but there it is. Life doesn’t make sense. So tell me. I deserve to know the truth after driving around this island for hours, finding only sculptures of naked women.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “You can’t just get rid of the kids,” Mom said. “They’re part of the package.” />
  “Not the kids! Her and me and her ex-husband. It’s a little too crowded. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t I?” Mom responded. “When I first met your father he was still pining for his ex-girlfriend from college. Lorraine was her name. Lorraine and her double D’s.”

  “Eew.” That mental picture was worth at least five weeks of therapy right there.

  “Oh yeah, I had to hear all about Lorraine this and Lorraine that for the first two years of our marriage.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I almost walked out. If we’d had Facebook back then, he would’ve looked her up. So…Ellie still has the hots for Marc?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, he does for her.”

  “No.”

  She eyed me curiously. “So what’s the problem?”

  “He existed.” There, I said it. I slumped back into the sand.

  “I did raise a couple of crazies, didn’t I?” She sighed.

  “I know it’s stupid and irrational.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Those are the worst kind of problems, because there’s no fixing them. Kind of like voices in your head.”

  “I know it’s irrational,” I whined.

  “I’ll just get my oracle from the car and change the past for you,” she teased.

  “Ha ha.”

  Mom faced me squarely. “You have to stop this. You’re forty-one years old! You’re not a child. Stop pouting because things haven’t gone exactly as you planned. Welcome to the real world.”

  I wouldn’t correct my age for her. I liked being forty-one again. I tried to sit up a little, but she held me down.

  “Sydney,” she continued, “you can’t just run away whenever things get to be too much for you. Sometimes you have to stay and face it. It’s time to stop running away. Now you go back there.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing! You can’t change the past,” she said. “All you can do is the now. Who is Ellie here for now?”

  I hung my head. “I’m sorry I wasted everyone’s time.”

  “No you didn’t. Joanne and Nathan used the minister to renew their vows on the beach. It was quite romantic. Then everyone had cake. It was strange, though. There were two little women dolls on top of it.”

  “So Ellie’s still waiting for me?” I asked.

  Mom thought a moment. “Actually, no. She took the kids and left. Come on back. We have waffles.” She waddled back to her car.

  I rolled over, face down in the sand. My insides were on fire. What had I done? How stupid could I be? I told Mom I needed some time by myself. I just traced doodles in the sand, feeling numb. Certain the guilt would kill me anyway, I decided to die right there at the beach. No food. No water. Just lie there and die, face down. Then I saw a bike beside me, half buried in the sand, slowly being uncovered like a fossil in the wind. I must have ridden it last night, though I didn’t remember.

  When I looked up, I saw something farther down the beach. Too afraid of death to kill myself, I got up and went to see what was going on. It looked like some kind of gathering.

  When I got closer, I saw that it was a couple of men dressed in tuxedos, sweating like crazy, getting married at sunrise. Local news crews were trying to stay a respectful distance back, but eventually the helicopters started swirling around. I doubt they could even hear their vows with the propeller noise overhead.

  Yes, I noticed the irony of helicopters swirling around when I was trying to stay out of the spotlight on this issue. Then I realized something. For so long, I’d tried to keep Ellie and me an “us” and that political issue just a far-off thing I’d heard about on the news. But with all the struggle to keep us as “us,” it didn’t work. We still found ourselves colliding with that ugly political thing. And that thing was noisy with blue lights and loud propeller noise and wind. It was like the end of the world, only worse.

  Crowds had begun to gather in the dunes, watching the couple from a distance. I was dismayed that these guys couldn’t celebrate their union in peace. I ran alongside my bicycle, right through the crowd.

  “Jellyfish alert!” I called. Watching everyone scatter, I was pleased with myself.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “Unnatural Acts”

  “She’s not here.” Joanne pulled back the bedroom door to prove it.

  I scanned our room. The closet was cleaned out, along with the giant cooler.

  “And I think Aunt Rita slept with Nathan’s dad!” Joanne whispered, like that was the most exciting news of the day.

  “Gross. And they call us unnatural.” I rubbed my head and slumped on the bed. “When did she go?” I asked.

  “While Nathan and I were having cake. I tried to tell her you were just insecure and it was nothing personal, but I may have sounded a tad drunk.”

  The skies opened up. Lightning and blackness and Charlton Heston in a beard appeared overhead. It was over. The world as I’d known it was over.

  “I’m such an idiot! I blew it!” I crumpled up on the bed with my hands over my face. “No, wait.” I shot back up. “You’re the one who always says everything happens for a reason.”

  Joanne replied, “That’s only what I tell myself to keep from feeling like shit.”

  “It’s for the best.”

  “How can you say that?” she squeaked. “You guys were perfect for each other.”

  “What the hell happened?” Morgan burst in and assumed her usual aggressively inquisitive stance. Were we at war?

  “She needs her space,” Joanne said, dripping with irritation and sunblock.

  “No, she needs to talk about it,” Morgan argued. “I’ve been taking a class on ‘opening up.’ At first I thought it was something sexual, but it’s about communication, and I kinda like it.”

  “I’m her sister and I know what she needs!” Joanne pushed Morgan backward. It was definitely war.

  “Please stop!” I cried. “Morgan, you’re a wonderful, loyal friend, but I need my sister right now.”

  “Fine. Fran and I got the truck packed up. You want us to haul it out or hang around?”

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “Well, let me tell you something,” Morgan shouted. “You guys were my rock couple. If you can’t make it there’s no hope for me and Fran.”

  “What’re you talking about? You’ve been together nine years!”

  “She’s been talking about couples counseling.” I hadn’t seen Morgan look this frightened since she had to wear a lacy pink dress in her sister’s wedding. She’d looked like a bad drag queen named Peppi Bismol.

  “Really?” I sat there with my mouth hanging open.

  “Yeah.” Morgan’s voice was unsteady. “You all know ‘couples counseling’ is just the first exit on the breakup highway.”

  “Not necessarily,” I lied. “You might try easing up on the ‘shut up, Fran’ stuff. You kinda say it a lot.”

  “I’m going to take advice from someone who walked out on her wedding?” Morgan closed her eyes. “Sorry. I’m working on my impulsiveness issues, too.” She left.

  “These people are your friends?” Joanne sat at the edge of the bed.

  “She’s in a bad place,” I replied. “And you’re one to talk, living in Republicanville.”

  “Not all of them are homophobes. You’d be surprised. Some are liberal on social issues but believe in different ways to fix the economy.”

  “Wow, did somebody just turn on CNN?”

  Joanne rolled her eyes. “What’s with you? Why did you go off on Nathan last night? He was staring at that kabob for hours, wondering if it was a phallic thing. Wait. Don’t tell me. I think you really didn’t want to get married, so you were just looking for an excuse.”

  “Right, Sherlock. But I did kind of misunderstand him.”

  “So what about the wedding? Ellie can never get on with her life just because she married a man once?”

  Tears rushed to my eyes. “Mom’s right. You
’re right. But it’s not as easy as it seems, Jo. It’s every day. When he’s on the road, he calls the kids. His voice, his presence, is always there. They even got the house together. So I’m living in a haunted house with a ghost who won’t go away. Even the master bedroom is painted this awful tan color that he picked out! Now that he’ll be around more, we’ll have to see him at school concerts, everything. He’ll always be in our lives!”

  Joanne considered the situation thoughtfully. “It’s a good point. I can see how that could drive you nuts.”

  “If I wanted a guy in my life forever, I’d be straight.”

  Joanne smiled. “The question is, do you love her enough to deal with it?” She stared at me intensely.

  “I do,” I said softly.

  “Well, don’t say it to me, say it to her! You were supposed to say it last night!”

  When I came out of the bedroom, everyone was looking at me like I was the victim of an accident. It was an odd mixture of encouragement and pity.

  “So you don’t like the ladies anymore?” Aunt Rita swung her arm around my shoulders and put a drink in my hand. “As that Kinsey said, ‘Sexuality is fluid.’”

  Mom was surprised at her sister’s knowledge.

  “She still loves Ellie,” Mom told her.

  “Is Ellie that sad little girl who was standing in the ocean last night?” Mr. Hutchins asked.

  “She’s a woman,” I corrected. Something about him brought out my claws.

  “Then why the hell didn’t you marry her?” Aunt Rita exclaimed, then laughed. “Wait, right. Two chicks can’t get married.”

  “Yes, we can…in Massachusetts,” I replied.

  “So, let me get this straight, so to speak,” Aunt Rita continued. “Say you get married here. Then one of you gets a job in Florida or Texas. Not married anymore?”

  “It’s dumb, isn’t it?” I flopped on the couch. “I’m wondering if it is just a big joke.”

  “Telling someone you love them and want to commit to them for life is never a joke!” Joanne cried.

  “But it doesn’t fully count,” I said. “Not like you and Nathan. We’re still second-class citizens.”

  Nathan said, “Nah, you’re second-class citizens because you’re women.” He looked around to see how many of us he’d offended. “It’s a joke! I thought we could lighten it up a little!”