by Kelly Link
Some nights when he comes home, he’s carrying the orphaned shoe in his coat pocket. It fits just fine. That’s how small, how impossibly small it is. His wife smiles at him. She never asks where he’s been. She sits in the kitchen beside the fire, with her feet tucked up under her, and he lays his head down in her lap. If only her feet weren’t so big. When he was first looking for that girl, he got to lift up a lot of skirts. Only just so high. Really, not high enough. He knelt down and he tried the shoe on every single foot. But it never fit right and he always went away again with the shoe in his pocket.
His wife wasn’t one of the eligible girls. She was a kitchen maid. When he saw her, she had her head stuck up the kitchen chimney. She was beating the broom up the chimney, shaking out the soot. Head to foot, she was covered in soot, black as a beetle. When she sneezed, the soot rose up in a cloud. She tried to curtsey when she saw him, and soot fell off her like a black cloak.
Everyone had crowded into the kitchen behind him: his footmen, the lady of the house, her daughters, the other maids. One of the footmen read the proclamation, and the sooty girl sneezed again. The eligible young ladies looked sulky and the maids looked haughty, as if they knew what was going to happen. They didn’t like it one bit, but they weren’t one bit surprised. The kitchen girl dusted off a kitchen stool and she sat her sooty self down on it, sooty arms akimbo. The long prehensile toes of her bare black feet gripped the stone floor as he knelt down beside her. Her foot was warm and gritty in his hand and her long toes wriggled as if he was tickling her. He hung the glass slipper off her toes. Soot came off on his fingers. There was soot in the long folds of her skirt. He stayed there for a minute, kneeling in the warm ashes at her feet.
“What size shoe do you wear?” he said. Her feet were so big.
“What kind of girl do you think I am?” she said. She sounded as if she were scolding him. When he looked up her face was so beautiful.
This girl sits perfectly still on the bed. There is just room enough for him to kneel down beside the bed. He lifts up her skirt, just high enough. He cups her tiny foot in his hand. How could anyone’s foot be so small? It fits into the palm of his hand like a kitten or an egg. He wishes he were that small, like a shoe. He wishes he were a small, perfect shoe, that he could be matched to her foot and hidden under her skirt forever. He takes out the slipper and he slides it onto her foot. They both look down at her foot, beautiful in the glass slipper, and the girl sighs. “It fits just fine,” she says. When he doesn’t say anything, she says, “What do we do now?”
“What kind of girl do you think I am?” that sooty girl (his wife) said.
He says to the girl on the bed, “Take the shoe off. So we can put it on again.”
2. Miss Kansas on Judgment Day.
We are sitting on our honeymoon bed in the honeymoon suite. We are in a state of honeymoon, in our honey month. These words are so sweet: honey, moon. This bed is so big, we could live on it. We have been happily marooned – honey marooned – on this bed for days. I have a pair of socks on and you’ve put your underwear on backwards. I mean, it’s my underwear, which you’ve put on backwards. This is perfectly natural. Everything I have is yours now. My underwear is your underwear. We have made vows to this effect. Our underwear looks so cute on you.
I lean towards you. Marriage has affected the laws of gravity. We will now revolve around each other. You will exert gravity on me, and I will exert gravity on you. We are one another’s moons. You are holding onto my feet with both hands, as if otherwise you might fall right off the bed. I think I might float up and hit the ceiling, splat, if you let go. Please don’t let go.
How did we meet? When did we marry? Where are we, and how did we get here? One day, we think, we will have children. They will ask us these questions. We will make things up. We will tell them about this hotel. Our room overlooks the ocean. We have a balcony, although we have not made it that far, so far.
Where are we and how did we get here? We are so far away from home. This bed might as well be a foreign country. We are both a little bit homesick, although we have not confessed this to each other. We remember cutting the cake. We poured punch for each other, we linked our arms and drank out of each others’ glasses. What was in that punch?
We are the only honeymooners in this hotel. Everyone else is a beauty pageant contestant or a beauty pageant contestant’s chaperone. We have seen the chaperones in the halls, women armed with cans of hairspray and little eggs containing emergency pantyhose, looking harassed but utterly competent. Through the walls, we have heard the beauty pageant contestants talking in their sleep. We have held water glasses up to the walls in order to hear what they were saying.
As honeymooners, we are good luck tokens. As if our happiness, our good fortune, might rub off, contestants ask us for a light: they brush up against us in the halls, pull strands of hair off our clothing. Whenever we leave our bed, our room – not often – two or three are sure to be lurking just outside our door. But today – tonight – we have the hotel to ourselves.
The television is on, or maybe we are dreaming. Now that we are married, we will have the same dreams. We are watching (dreaming) the beauty pageant.
On television, Miss Florida is walking across the stage. She’s blond and we know from eavesdropping in the hotel bar that this will count against her. Brunettes win more often. Three brunettes, Miss Hawaii, Miss Arkansas, Miss Pennsylvania, trail after her. They take big slow steps and roll their hips expertly. The colored stage lights bounce off their shiny sweetheart dresses. In television interviews, we learned that Miss Arkansas is dyslexic, or maybe it was Miss Arizona. We have hopes of Miss Arkansas, who has long straight brown hair that falls all the way down her back.
You say that if we hadn’t just gotten married, you would want to marry Miss Arkansas. Even if she can’t spell. She can sit on her hair. A lover could climb that hair like a gym rope. It’s fairy-tale hair, Rapunzel hair. We saw her practicing for the pageant in the hotel ballroom with two wild pigs, her hair braided into two lassoes. We heard her say in her interview that she hasn’t cut her hair since she was twelve years old. We can tell that she’s an old-fashioned girl. Please don’t let go of my feet.
We have to admit that we are impressed by Miss Pennsylvania ‘s dress. In her interview, we found out that she makes all of her own clothes. This dress has over forty thousand tiny sequins handstitched onto it. It took a year and a day to stitch on all those sequins, which are supposed to look from a distance like that painting by Seurat. Sunday Afternoon on the Boardwalk. It really is a work of art. Her mother and her father helped Miss Pennsylvania sort the sequins by color. She has three younger brothers, football players, and they all helped, too. We imagine the pinprick sequins glittering in the large hands of her brothers. Her brothers are in the audience tonight, looking extremely proud of their sister, Miss Pennsylvania.
We are proud of Miss Pennsylvania as well, but we are fickle. Miss Kansas comes out onto the stage, and we fall in love with her feet. Don’t let go of my feet. We would both marry Miss Kansas. You squeeze my foot so tight when she comes out on stage in her blue checked dress, the blue ribbon in her hair. She’s wearing blue ankle socks and ruby red shoes. She practically skips across the stage. She doesn’t look to the right, and she doesn’t look to the left. She looks as if she is going somewhere. When Miss Kansas leaves the stage we instantly wish that she would come back again.
I wish I had a pair of shoes like that, you say. I say your feet are too big. But if I had a pair like that, I would let you wear them. Now that we are married, our feet will be the same size.
We are proud of Miss Pennsylvania, we love Miss Kansas, and we are afraid of Miss New Jersey. Miss New Jersey ‘s red hair has been teased straight up into two horns. She has long red fingernails and she is wearing a candy red dress that comes up to her nipples. You can see that she isn’t wearing pantyhose. Miss New Jersey hasn’t even shaved her legs. What was her chaperone thinking? (We have heard rumors i
n the hall that Miss New Jersey ate her chaperone. Certainly no one has seen the chaperone in a few days.) When she smiles, you can see all her pointy teeth.
Miss New Jersey ‘s complexion is greenish. She has small pointy breasts and a big ass and she twitches it from side to side. She has a tail. She twitches her ass, she lashes her tail; we both gasp. Her tail is prehensile. She scratches her big ass with it. It is indecent and we are simultaneously dismayed and aroused. The whole audience is aghast. One judge faints and one of the other judges douses him with a pitcher of ice water. Miss New Jersey purses her lips, blows a raspberry right at the television screen, and exits stage left.
Well, well, we say, shaken. We huddle together on the enormous bed. Please don’t let go, please hold onto my feet.
Some of the other contestants: Miss Idaho wants to work with children. Miss Colorado raises sheep. She can shear a sheep in just under a minute. The dress she is wearing is of wool she cut and carded and knit herself. The pattern is her own. This wool dress is so fine, so thin, that it seems to us that Miss Colorado is not actually wearing anything at all. In fact, Miss Colorado is actually a man. We can see Miss Colorado ‘s penis. But possibly this is just a trick of the light.
Miss Nevada has been abducted by aliens on numerous occasions. The stage spotlights appear to make her extremely nervous, and occasionally she addresses her interviewer as Star Master. Miss Alabama has built her own nuclear device. She has a list of demands. Miss South Carolina wants to pursue a career in Hollywood. Miss North Carolina can kiss her own elbow. We try to kiss our own elbows, but it’s a lot harder than it looks on television. Please hold me tight, I think I’m falling.
Miss Virginia and Miss Michigan are Siamese twins. Miss Maryland wants to be in Broadway musicals. Miss Montana is an arsonist. She is in love with fire. Miss Texas is a professional hit woman. She performs exorcisms on the side. She says that she is keeping her eye on Miss New Jersey.
Miss Kansas wants to be a weather girl.
Miss Rhode Island has big hair, all tendrilly looking and slicky-sleek. The top part of her jiggles as she wheels herself on stage in an extremely battered-looking wheelchair. She just has the two arms, but she seems to have too many legs. Also too many teeth. We have seen her practicing water ballet in the hotel swimming pool. (Later, during the talent show, she will perform in a tank made of specially treated glass.) We have to admit Miss Rhode Island has talent but we have trouble saying her name. Too many sibilants. Also, at breakfast her breath smells of raw fish and at night the hoarse mutterings of spells, incantations, the names of the elder gods heard through the wall have caused us to lose sleep.
Miss Rhode Island ‘s bathing costume is designed to show off her many shapely legs, which she waves and writhes at the judges enticingly. We decide that we will never, never live in Rhode Island. Perhaps we will never leave this hotel: perhaps we will just live here.
We ogle some of the contestants in their bathing suits. We try not to look at others. We have made a sort of tent out of the bedspread and we feel perfectly safe inside our tent-bedspread. As long as you are holding onto me. Don’t let go.
There are five judges. One of them, a former Miss America herself, is wearing a tiara, all her hair tucked away under a snood. She is very regal but her mouth is not kind. In her hand is a mirror, which she consults now and then in the scoring, reapplying her lipstick vigorously. Now and then she whispers, I’ll get you, my pretty!
One of the other judges is an old drunk. We saw him down on the boardwalk outside the hotel lobby, wearing a sandwich board and preaching to the waves. He was getting his feet wet. His sandwich board says the end of the world is nigh. Beneath this someone has written in lipstick lions and tigers and bears, oh migh!
Two of the judges are holding hands under the table.
The last judge is notoriously publicity-shy, although great and powerful. A semi-transparent green curtain has been erected around his chair. We speculate that he is naked, or asleep, or possibly not there at all.
The talent show begins. There are all the usual sorts of performances, tap-dancing and mime, snake handling. Miss West Virginia speaks in tongues. Somehow we understand what she is saying. She is saying that the world will end soon, that we will have six children and all of them will have good teeth, that we will always be as happy as we are at this very moment as long as we don’t let go. Don’t let go. Miss Texas then comes out on stage and showily exorcises Miss West Virginia. The audience applauds uncertainly.
Miss Nebraska comes out on stage and does a few card tricks. Then she saws Miss Michigan and Miss Virginia in half.
Miss Montana builds her own pyre out of cinnamon and other household spices. She constructs a diving platform out of toothpicks and sugar cubes, held together with hairspray. She stands upon it for a moment, splendid and unafraid. Then she spreads her wings and jumps. Firemen stand on either side of the stage, ready to put her out. She emerges from the fire, new and pink and shining, even more beautiful than before. The firemen carry her out on their broad capable shoulders. The million-gallon tank is filled before our eyes during a musical interlude. We make out, frisky as teenagers. This way we are feeling, we will always feel this way. We will always be holding each other in just this way. When we look at the television again, Miss Oregon is walking on water. We feel sure that this is done with mirrors.
Miss Rhode Island performs her water ballet, a tribute to Esther Williams, only with more legs. She can hold her breath for a really long time. The first row of the audience has been issued raincoats and umbrellas. Miss Rhode Island douses them like candles. During the climax of her performance there is a brief unexplained rain of frogs. Miss Texas appears on stage again.
I loved you the first time I saw you. Scarecrow, my dear scarecrow, I loved you best of all. Who would have predicted that we would end up here in this hotel? It feels like the beginning of the world. This time, we tell each other, things are going to go exactly as planned. We have avoided the apple in the complimentary fruit basket. When the snake curled around the showerhead spoke to me, I called room service and Miss Ohio, the snake handler, came and took it away. When you are holding me, I don’t feel homesick at all.
Miss Alaska raises the dead. This will later prove to have serious repercussions, but the judges have made a decision and Miss Texas is not allowed on the stage again. It is felt that she has been too pushy, too eager to make a spectacle of herself. She has lost points with the judges and with the audience.
You ask me to put on my wedding dress. You make me a crown out of the champagne foil and that little paper thing that goes around the toilet seat. We sit on the edge of the huge bed, my feet in your lap, your feet dangling dangerously. If only we had a pair of magic slippers. You have your tuxedo jacket on, and my underwear. Your underwear. We should have packed more underwear. What if we never get home again? You have one arm wrapped around my neck so tight I can hardly breathe. I can smell myself on your fingers.
Where will we go from here? How will we find our way home again? We should have carried stones in our pockets. Perhaps we will live here forever, in the honey month, on the honeymoon bed. We will live like kings and queens and eat room service every night and grow old together.
On television, stagehands have replaced the water tank with a trampoline. We wouldn’t mind having a trampoline like that. Miss Kansas appears, her hair in two pigtails, her red shoes making our hearts ache. She isn’t wearing a stitch of clothing otherwise. She doesn’t need to wear anything else. She places her two hands on the frame of the trampoline and swings herself straight up so that she is standing upside down on the frame, her two braids pointing down, her shoes pointing straight up. She clicks her heels together smartly and flips onto the trampoline. As she soars through the air, plump breasts and buttocks bouncing, her arms wheeling in the air, she is starting to sing. Her strong homely voice pushes her through the air, her strong legs kicking at the tough skin of the trampoline as if she never intends to land.
We bounce on the edge of the bed experimentally. Tears run down our faces. The judges are weeping openly. That song sounds so familiar. Did they play it at our wedding? Miss Kansas rolls through the air, tucks her knees under her arms and drops like a stone, she springs up again and doesn’t come back down, the air buoying her up the same way that you are holding me – naked as a jaybird, she hangs balanced in the air, the terrible, noisy, bonecracking air: we hold on tight to each other. The wind is rising. If you were to let go – don’t let go -
3. The dictator’s wife.
The dictator’s wife lives in the shoe museum. During visiting hours she lies in bed downstairs with the rest of the exhibits. When you come in, you can’t see her but you can hear her. She is talking about her husband. “He loved to eat strawberries. I don’t care to eat strawberries. They taste like dead people to me. I’d rather drink soup made from a stone. We ate off the most beautiful plates every night. I don’t know who they belonged to. I just kept track of the shoes.”
The museum is a maze of cases. Visitors wander through narrow aisles, elbows tucked in to bodies, so they don’t brush against the glass displays. They drift towards the center of the exhibit room, towards the voice of the old lady, until they come upon a bed. Glass boxes stacked up in tall rows hedge in the bed on all sides. In the boxes are pairs of shoes. In the bed is the dictator’s wife, covers pulled up to her chin. Visitors stop and stare at the dictator’s wife.
She stares back, old and fragile and crumbly. It is disconcerting, to be stared at by this old woman. In proper museums, you go to stare at the exhibits. They do not stare back at you. The dictator’s wife is wrinkly like one of those dogs. She’s wearing a black wig that’s too small for her head. Her false teeth are in a souvenir glass beside the bed. She puts her teeth in.
