By Joanna Campbell Slan for Femmes Fatales
My uncle was a shoe salesman and a good son to his mother, my grandmother. When he married a girl from Boston and moved there, it nearly broke Grandma Marge’s heart. She lived for his infrequent phone calls. His gold-framed photo held a prominent place on the maple side table in her living room. There it was close enough that she could grab it from her recliner and look him in the eyes. The few times he flew her out there to Massachusetts, he treated her like a queen. She would come back to Indiana and brag about the fine restaurants where they ate, the important people he introduced her to, the gorgeous house that he owned, and how successful he was. Even though Uncle Dick lived hundreds of miles away from his mother’s house in Indiana, he was still a constant presence, even in his absence.
Because he traveled the world attending shoe shows, he’d often pick up a pair or two of shoes and send them to Grandma Marge. Most of them were unremarkable, but one gift in particular sticks out in my mind. A pair of black suede snow booties with faux sheep skin lining and a zipper up the front. The soles have just enough tread to grip slick surfaces securely, but not so much as to make them look like they belong in Herman Munster’s closet.
Uncle Dick died of a misdiagnosed case of peritonitis shortly after I graduated from college. He was only in his forties. After the funeral, his widow quit calling Grandma Marge. I’ll never know why or what happened. All I know is that the estrangement broke Grandma’s heart and turned her bitter. We had all moved away from Indiana by then. Grandma seemed to close in on herself, the way a roly poly bug does when you touched it.
Now she lived for my visits, infrequent as they were. I’d pack my young son in the car. Then I would drive the three-and-a-half hours from a western suburb of St. Louis, across Illinois, and over the Wabash River into Indiana. This trek of mine caused her no end of agitation. “I want you to be careful when you drive, honey. Watch out for those damn deer. It’s rutting season. You don’t want to hit one with your car. Why they can’t rut on their own damn side of the road, I’ll never know.”
“I’ll be careful, Grandma.”
And I was. The drive was long and boring, but I owed her that. She’d been a good grandparent and she was the only grandparent I had left. Visiting her took on a sense of ritual. My son enjoyed seeing his great-grandmother. The full day away from my regular life was a mini-vacation. I was happy to spend time with her. I knew my presence meant a lot. She’d greet me with a hug and those watery blue eyes. She’d offer to feed me. Bologna sandwiches with thick slices of Velveeta. Butter mints. Sara Lee frozen brownies. Food with absolutely no nutritional value, but still… It was the thought that counted. I knew the offer of “a little something to eat” was her attempt to take care of me, to be my grandma once again, and that’s what counted.
One brisk autumn day, she reached down from her recliner and hauled up a plastic grocery bag. “This is for you.”
I peeped inside. “Your black boots?”
“Uh-huh. I’ve got no use for them. I don’t get out much anymore.” She didn’t go out, because she couldn’t go out. She was dying from lung cancer, although she still insisted on smoking her cigarettes. Why not? What the hell difference did it make anyway? Besides the nicotine addiction, there was this whole persona she’d cultivated. There was this jaunty way that she held her plastic cigarette holder with her wrist cocked just so. In silhouette, her pose was a tangible reminder of the glamour girl she’d once been. A looker. A bombshell. A seducer of married men. A girl who’d won a beauty contest, after being put up for it by a group of local boys, only to get disqualified after the judges learned she was seriously underage. With her lush breasts and her heart-shaped behind, her dimpled chin and blazing blue eyes, her wavy blonde hair and her high-cheekbones, my grandmother had been quite the siren. A man who had known her in her prime once told me, “Your grandma, Marge…man, she was something.” The lust in his voice turned us both bright red with embarrassment.
“If you can use them, take them.” She urged me to take the boots.
I set the bag down on the old beige carpet, halfway between us. “You sure, Grandma? What if it snows?” I didn’t want to take her boots, but I understood that Grandma liked the idea of giving me something, a small gift, each time I visited. This was her way of showing her love. Taking the boots was my way of saying, “You are still my grandmother. You can still take care of me.”
It was also a way we could both pretend that she wasn’t destitute and facing the end of her life. We both knew she’d never get up out of that recliner and go outside for a walk, especially not in the snow. The farthest she walked these days was from her front door to her kitchen, and only then when the mailman delivered a package. Grandma Marge no longer went out into the world; the world came to her. She took it as her due.
So I kissed her, thanked her, and took the boots home with me.
That was twenty years ago.
Yesterday it snowed in Northern Virginia. A wet, slippery, slushy snow.
My dog had to go out.
I wore my grandmother’s boots.