Title.
Donna Decker
Shoes
Estelle’s slippers are lined up beside her bed. Black terrycloth, pink suede, plaid flannel.
There are no shoes. She must own a pair, but they are notably absent among the slippers.
She does leave the nursing home on occasion when her sons take her to the Bonanza Food Bar, when one of her grandchildren gets married. She’d need shoes for such outings. But none poke from beneath her twin bed, one of three beds in the room, each separated by a pasty green curtain on a ceiling runner. Estelle’s bed, like the others, is sheathed in an orange, ribbed bedspread. One of Estelle’s roommates sits in a chair in a corner. A cane rests against her leg. Her marble-white hair is tied back into a loose bun. She wears cat-eye glasses and clutches a Bible. Visitors to the nursing home can’t recall when the white-haired woman was not in the chair in the corner.
From that corner, she smiles and smiles at babies and children and says sweet things in Polish. But Estelle is annoyed by such encroachment and tugs visitors away with a pinch on the forearm, drawing them, possessively, to her third of the room. Squeezed into the nook where Estelle lives out her old age are a vinyl chair with wooden arms, a hospital tray on wheels, a two-drawer dresser, and a wide windowsill. Every surface is littered with knickknacks. Absurd crocheted bunny ears on a glass jar. Faded FTD vases. Mugs that say mellifluous things about mothers. A clock inset with a Currier and Ives print hangs from the wall above her bed. Sheep graze beside a homestead, near purple clusters of lilacs.
The contrast between the painted and the real, one breezy and bucolic, the other stifling and sour, is bald. Distressing for the visitor who remembers that Estelle didn’t always live here. Likewise, some visitors are bothered by Estelle’s shoeless-ness. Bothered that really and truly she’s got nowhere to go. Anymore.
In earlier times, before the nursing home and the knickknacks, Estelle was a housewife and a gifted cook who delighted in fattening up her family. Perpetually skinny to near emaciation herself, she’d heap plates with spaghetti and sauce, sautéed chicken breast or simmered pork chops and urge, “Eat, eat, it’s good for you. You need to eat.”
In those days, she shared a house with her husband and grown son, watched “Wheel of Fortune,” walked downtown to the five and dime, bickered with her husband. The son, long buffeted by the bickering and din of the house, found escape in his job at the dry cleaner and his bowling league. On weekends, he found escape in a fishing boat and a six-pack or two. Sometimes three.
When Estelle’s husband died, her sons wanted the best for her. They chose the nursing home with the glassed-in sun room, the hushed chapel, and the richly wallpapered dining hall for Estelle to call home. The word “home” never-more passed her lips.
The first floor of the circular building is what looked so good to the sons. A comfortable floor, with lots of doors and windows from which the outside appeared accessible. It seemed quaint.
Sprawling, carpeted stairs rise to the second floor. At top is a heavy metal door. Behind that door the second floor is hot. Loud. Haunting.
Wheelchair-bound men and women clutch ragged teddy bears and crumpled tissues. Stringy-haired women race round in wheelchairs shouting, “Paul, Paul.” Supremely serene nurses take their arms and gently remind them that Paul died two years ago. They pay no heed, roam again.
Perhaps the visits Estelle’s sons make are too frequent, too routine, for them to notice the stark contrast between the bucolic Currier and Ives and the overwrought wasteland of the second floor. Perhaps their certainty, in their heart of hearts, that they cannot meet her needs, clouds that contrast. On Mother’s Day, they’ll bring her chocolates, a cardigan sweater, a new pair of slippers.
Gripped by the contrast, a less-frequent visitor mails a card from long distance, encloses a photo of Estelle’s great grandchildren, and wishes in her heart of hearts that she could deliver Estelle a pair of walking shoes.
