| Red Satin Heels by Liz Brodeur |
| Liz Brodeur is an R.N. who lives
in Seattle, Washington. Her short stories have appeared in several
literary magazines. She does
have a sister, but says this piece is almost entirely fictional. The last time I saw Brenda she came right out and said even though I was her sister, I was still one of the most boring people she’d even known. That was a year ago Thanksgiving when Brenda was into honesty. It was one of those times when I hadn’t been home for the holidays long enough so I couldn’t remember why anymore. And besides, my mother had sounded like having everyone sitting around the dining room table again was the only thing she really had to live for. “You should try it,” Brenda said after she unloaded on me. “You’ll get rid of all of those annoying little hang-ups of yours. Go ahead, Annie-Fannie, tell me something you’ve always wanted to but didn’t have the guts. Go ahead!” I sat there looking at her. At her beautiful face, her perfect teeth. She’d taken the best my parents had to offer, while I'd had to settle for unusually green eyes. A marvelous monologue started inside my head. Well, Bren ... to be perfectly honest I’ve always wished I was an only child. And by the way...if you ever call me Annie-Fannie again I’m going to be forced to knock out every single one of those perfect teeth. Oh, and Bren...remember the time you and Buzzy Caldwell fell asleep on the couch when you snuck him into the house after a date? And someone tied the laces on his sneakers together so when you woke up and he went to sneak out, he fell into the coffee table and broke Mom’s crystal candy dish and woke up Dad? And Dad was so mad he grounded you for a month? You blamed Andy, Bren. And I let you. But it wasn’t Andy, it was me. Me! I did it and I enjoyed every gutless minute of it! Of course I didn’t actually say any of this. The words were tumbling around inside me, but I couldn’t get my mouth to say them. I was a gutless kid. I’m a gutless adult. I had my chance and I missed it. But I also relearned a lesson. I only go home now between holidays, when my chances of running into Brenda are practically nil. She doesn’t seem to realize I’m avoiding her. She keeps in touch...letters and phone calls from one coast to the other. She keeps me abreast of the phases in her life—new American cuisine, channeling, supporting the Olympic effort. She seems to think keeping me current is necessary for my survival. Eating, breathing, knowing the IQ of her latest lover. Even when we were kids I was more involved in Brenda’s life than I was in my own. I remember her first bra and her first date. I remember the day she got her period and the day she got picked captain of the cheerleading squad. I remember her first perm and the color of her first prom dress and who gave her her first kiss. I remember the name of her sorority and the name of the English professor who wanted to have an affair with her. I remember the size of the diamond in her engagement ring and I remember how many times a week she and her first husband made love. I remember how much she wanted in alimony and how much she actually got. And I know that at least a few of these things happened to me too...but I just don’t remember. Last week she called to say she was coming for a visit because did I realize exactly how long it had been since we’d seen each other? Oh yes, I said. I realized. And then right after we hung up there was an earthquake. Well…a tremor, but it seemed appropriate. Brenda was coming and already my life was feeling unsteady on its foundation. I spent the three days before her arrival pumping myself up. I told myself I was an adult, that I had a job where I actually counseled people about developing a sense of self worth—funny as it seemed. I told myself I was reasonably attractive. No, I corrected myself, not reasonably attractive. Attractive. Damn attractive. I told myself I was going to hold my own this time. “Annie-Fannie!” Brenda disentangled herself from me and looked around. “What a fabulous apartment! How did you ever find it?” I followed her from room to room. “I’d like to know who decorated it, though.” She made a face. “No taste.” She gave me a little hug. “But you can do it over. I’ll give you some ideas before I go.” She stood back and looked at me. “Anne...you’re as pasty as a marshmallow...don’t you ever get outdoors?” “Not often during the day,” I said. “Well, it shows.” She dragged her stuff into the bedroom. “We’ll do something about that, though.” She heaved her suitcase on top of the bed, unzipped it, pulled out a flattened backpack and held it out to me. “Tomorrow we’re climbing Hyland Ridge. Isn’t it great it’s so close? We just have to be sure we get to the top by tomorrow night so we’ll be there in plenty of time.” I took the backpack. It was brand new and it smelled a little like the perfume she always wore. I set it down on the bed. If she’d bothered to ask I’d have told her I already had one. “In plenty of time for what?” She was taking folded clothes out of the suitcase, making three piles on the bed. A pile of shorts and polos. A pile of jeans and sweaters. A pile of underwear and socks. She was only staying three days, for Pete’s sake. “For Sunday,” she said, making my question seem dumb and unnecessary because what else on earth could we be doing all this for, except for Sunday. I sat down. “What’s Sunday?” She stopped piling clothes and looked at me. She was holding a violet slip in her hands. “Anne...” She shook her head. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what Sunday is!” I shook my head. I was ten years old again. Gangly and skinny, with wispy hair. My nose was running. And I had a grape juice mustache. The only person in the world who didn’t know about Sunday. “Annie...An-nie. It’s the convergence. The harmonic convergence.” “Oh.” I stood up. “That.” I walked over to the window, turned the lock and pushed it up a little. Noise from the street drifted in. There was a poster someone had put up at the clinic. Blue oaktag with orange lettering. THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT NEEDS YOUR POWER -- SHARE THE ENERGY. There was a date, a time, a place, but I hadn’t paid attention to the details. I was under the impression that the Age of Enlightenment had ended early in the nineteenth century. She carried each of her piles over to the window seat, and I wondered if the thought I might not be interested in a harmonic convergence had ever crossed her mind. “You could invite someone,” she said. “If there is someone.” She cocked her head and looked at me. “Is there someone?” As if I’d introduce her to someone after Benjamin Welby. After waiting seven months for him to ask me out so he could walk into our living room on our first date and fall in love with Brenda right in front of my fifteen-year-old eyes. “Not right now,” I said. “There was someone but it sort of ran out of steam.” Then I cracked my knuckles. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that. I didn’t even know I still knew how. Brenda’s eyes narrowed to slits. “And no wonder,” she said. “I can’t believe you still do that.” We used to lie in our twin beds on opposite sides of the room, me cracking my knuckles and Brenda screaming for dad to come and make me stop. It was a small thing, but it set us on the edge of a pit. All one of us had to do was say the wrong thing and we’d be down inside rolling around tooth and nail. “Would you like something to eat?” I asked. Her face relaxed. “Food. Yes. I’m starving. Which reminds me.” She went back to her suitcase and took out a package. “Cashews.” She held them up. “Three pounds.” It was so typical I wanted to scream. She’d brought three pounds of the only food in the world I was absolutely allergic to. But it didn’t matter. The pit was behind us. And anyway, I’d already made the choice not to jump. Brenda has great legs. Thin, like my father’s. She always wore tights and short skirts when we went ice skating, and everyone watched her because she looked so elegant, so graceful. I got my mother’s legs. Muscular. At the beach once, a boy told me I had calves like a boxer. I always skated in slacks. We had to stop a lot on the way up the Ridge. It was an easy climb, I’d done it a dozen times and never even thought about it. My well-developed calves must have made the difference, because Brenda kept making noises behind me like something losing all its air. “Annie...we have to stop again...I can’t go another step.” And I was carrying most of our stuff, too. Even the damn cashews. We slid our backpacks off for the tenth time and looked for some soft ground to sit on. Brenda rubbed her shins. “They’re killing me,” she kept saying. “Is it much farther?” I didn’t know because I didn’t know where we were supposed to be going. Neither did Brenda. She seemed to think we’d just be able to follow the hordes pouring onto the ridge. Thousands of enlightened people preparing to welcome the dawn of the new age. So far, all we’d seen was two ATVs and a coyote that might have been a dog. “I should have gone to Mt. Shasta,” Brenda said. “Everyone I talked to was going there.” “And you think this is a bad climb?” I said. I looked around. “What’s wrong with right here? We’re high. There’s a clear view to the east.” That’s what she’d said she wanted. A clear view to the east so we could experience the full energy of the rising sun. “Let’s just stay here,” I said. She shook her head. “We can’t stay here. We have to find the others. That’s a big part of it...being with the right people when it comes.” The right people? I kept hearing her say it inside my head, and I should have simply kept my mouth shut. Should have just silently added it to all the other thoughtless insulting things she’d ever said to me. But for some reason it wouldn’t fit in there. Maybe it was the altitude. Or maybe the impending harmonic convergence was already having an effect on my aura. “Which means what?” I said. “That I’m not good enough? Not one of the right people?” She looked confused for a second and then she frowned. “Oh c’mon, Annie. I didn’t say that.” “Yes you did Brenda. That’s exactly what you said.” Her mouth lost some of its fullness. “Well, to tell you the truth, Annie, I had envisioned slightly more charismatic company.” “Well then…” I pointed up-trail. “Go ahead, Brenda. Go find your charismatic company.” We looked at each other. Glared actually. And after a couple of minutes, she stood up and pulled on her backpack. I watched her until she disappeared, and then I got up and followed her. It reminded me of the time I followed her and Cecilia Weatherbee downtown. They were best friends in seventh grade, and they shaved their legs and had breasts. Brenda was in charge of me and my mother had told her... “Whatever you and Cecilia do, Annie does.” They decided to walk downtown because that’s where the boys were on a Saturday afternoon, and they promised me a cone and a comic book if I’d walk three store lengths behind them. I didn’t mind because I still loved Brenda then. That was the same year she bought the red satin heels. They were for her first formal. I sat on the floor outside the dressing room, and every time I heard my mother zip her up, I stuck my head under the bottom of the curtain. I couldn’t wait to look like that. The prom dress hung on the outside of her closet for eight days before the dance, and even at night, I could see its outline in the dark. The red satin heels were dyed to match the red ribbons at the waist and hem, and I tried them on once with my socks. When I got to seventh grade she put the box with the red heels in the top of my closet. “Now they’re yours,” she said. But I didn’t go to the seventh grade dance. I didn’t go in eighth grade or ninth grade either. They stayed in my closet, wrapped in tissue paper all through high school, and every once in a while I’d take them down and try them on. But I never wore them. About the time the sun was setting, Brenda gave up. “I can’t go another step!” She put her head back and yelled it, and that’s what must have scared the skunk. It was like a bad dream and a natural disaster both at the same time. Something inescapable that was on you before you could even begin to think about what to do. Brenda yelled. I yelled. We both ran. I wanted to get away from it even though I knew I couldn’t. It was already on my skin, in my nose, on my tongue. It was like trying to get away from the sound of my own voice, but I ran anyway and I could hear Brenda right behind me. “Stop Anne, stop.” It sounded like she was crying. We stood in a little clearing. A huge silver moon climbing the trees above us. “Shit,” she said, “shit shit shit.” I looked at her. She looked wild. It was the moonlight making shadows on her face. She had a long nose, a crooked mouth, one shaggy black eyebrow. She wasn’t pretty anymore. And she smelled like a skunk. I started laughing. I don’t know why, but all of a sudden it was hysterically funny. Brenda didn’t think it was funny. She told me to shut up. But I couldn’t. She told me again, and she sounded so angry it made it all seem even funnier. That’s when she ran at me. I wasn’t ready for her. I was already off-balance, laughing, and I wasn’t expecting Brenda to run up and shove me. I landed on my backpack. I lay there weak from laughing, looking up at the moon and the tops of the pine trees. Brenda had knocked me down. I had to keep saying it to myself to believe it. She’d knocked me down. She’d taken over a weekend of my life without even asking if it was okay. She’d told me the apartment I’d spent a year fixing up was tasteless. She’d caused a serious regression in my behavior and then reprimanded me because she believed I was still capable of cracking my knuckles in public. Worse, she’d made me almost believe it myself. And on top of all that, she’d told me I looked pasty. I rolled over onto my hands and knees. There must have been something hard in the backpack because my right shoulder blade hurt. It was a small hurt, a circle of pain under the skin. But it seemed to draw and focus all my submerged anger the way a magnifying glass focuses the rays of the sun. I reached out and grabbed for one of her skinny legs and she went over. She grunted when she hit the ground. She tried to crawl away, but I wouldn’t let go. “Stop it!,” she kept yelling. “Stop it, Anne. Stop it! Stop it now!” But I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to kill her. I wanted to show her she couldn’t do anything to me ever again and get away with it. She was stronger than I thought. Or maybe I was weaker. And all we did was roll around until we were both too tired to do it anymore. “You’re crazy,” she said, lying there, panting. “I hope you know. I hope you know you’re crazy.” “You started it,” I said. “You pushed me. You’re the one who wanted to come up here in the first place. The one who yelled and scared the skunk. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t even be here. You’re the one who’s crazy. You and your stupid harmonic convergence.” After a while I got up. I fixed my backpack, adjusted my sleeping bag. I started walking. I wasn’t sure anymore where we were, but I knew I had to keep the lights I could see below us on my left. And it was going to be a long walk. I knew that, too. I didn’t turn around to see if Brenda was behind me. I didn’t care what she did. I didn’t care what she did for the rest of her life. All the way down I thought about how every day I tried to help people solve their problems. I tried to get them to do it in positive, healing, constructive ways. And then I went and grabbed my sister by the leg and knocked her down. It didn’t make any sense. But then what did? I was in discord with Brenda. She was in discord with me. We were both in discord with the skunk. And coming down the Ridge in the dark, with the moonlight on the path, I could see well enough to know that it was never going to be any other way. We rested for a while once we were at the bottom, and by then I had a plan, although I didn’t say anything to Brenda, and she didn’t ask. She just sat on a stump with her head in her hands until I stood up. “Let’s go,” I said, and she mumbled something and fell in behind me. We had to walk a mile before we got to a pay phone we could use, one with no people around. So far, we’d avoided everyone but two teenage boys who grabbed the fronts of their faces and ran off yelling offensive things. Brenda didn’t ask who I was calling. She just sat down on the curb, her shoulders hunched. I asked for Gregory and held my breath because I didn’t know if he worked this late on Saturday nights. “Yeah?” “Gregory...it’s Anne. The one with the orange Volvo?” I waited for the connection to take place. “Oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah,” he said. He was the only person I could think of with access to twelve gallons of tomato juice who loved me enough to do anything for me on credit and not ask questions. Maybe it would have been some comfort to my fifteen-year-old self to know that in ten years a seventeen-year-old would have such a crush on me he’d drop a peck of naval oranges when he saw me coming down the produce aisle. Outside my apartment we threw our backpacks into the dumpster, and when we were sure nobody was around, we tossed in all our clothes and sprinted naked across the parking lot in the moonlight. Inside, Gregory had come through. There were four cartons of tomato juice stacked beside my apartment door. I’d promised him I’d be eternally grateful, and I realized I had no idea what that might mean to a horny seventeen-year-old. We sat at opposite ends of the tub, soaking, forty-eight empty jars of tomato juice on the floor. “It wasn’t funny,” Brenda said after a while. It was the first time we’d talked since we started back. I slid down farther in the tub. “Do you want more hot water?” She shook her head. We were risking hypothermia, but who knew how much dilution would make the tomato juice useless. My shoulder blade still hurt. I closed my eyes. “You didn’t have to knock me down.” She didn’t say anything. Then she started to jiggle. I opened my eyes. She clamped one hand across her mouth. I’d forgotten that way she had of laughing. As though she didn’t want anyone to see inside her mouth. “You looked...” she said. She couldn’t go on. “...like a turtle...lying there...” She sat up straight and grabbed her stomach. “...on its back.” She drew up her knees and doubled over them. Her tomatoey hair clung to her legs. I adopted my counseling pose and waited for her to get it all out. “Now,” she said, when she’d settled back into the juice, “now when it’s over and we’re safe...now you don’t laugh.” She put her head back against the tub. “You’re such a mystery Annie-Fannie. Such a mystery.” She sighed. It was there. A window. All I had to do was communicate. Ask a question—what do you mean, Brenda, what do you mean I’m a mystery? One little question might have started it. But I didn’t do it. Instead I began to shake. My teeth started chattering. I felt weak. “I’ve got to get out,” I said, “I’m freezing.” “Your lips are blue,” Brenda said. She seemed to have warmer blood. She made me stand under a hot shower and washed my hair. She made me a cup of hot tea, took a comforter down from my closet and spread it over me. “Remember when you got sick in the middle of the night from eating too much junk at the carnival?” she asked, “and we couldn’t tell Mom because we hadn’t asked permission to go?” I sipped my tea. I’d forgotten about that. “And then you put a hot water bottle on my stomach,” I said, “and it leaked.” We both laughed. “And you had to sleep in my bed for a week until yours dried out,” she said. “You never got in trouble,” I said. She took my empty tea mug and set it on the bureau. She got in bed. “I don’t know about that. What about the time I snuck Buzzy Caldwell into the living room. I got caught that time.” I didn’t say anything. I stared at the pattern of swirls on the ceiling. “I did it,” I said. “I tied Buzzy’s shoelaces together.” “I know,” she said. She yawned. I turned my head on the pillow. “What do you mean, you know?” “I mean I know. I knew.” “You did not. You blamed Andy.” “I might have blamed Andy,” she said, “but I knew you did it.” She yawned again. “You were jealous.” “Then why didn’t you blame me? And whoever said I was jealous? Jealous of Buzzy Caldwell?” She laughed. “Jealous because of Buzzy Caldwell. But what difference does it make now anyway.” I lifted myself up on one elbow. “Because I want to know. I want to know why you told Dad Andy did it if you thought I did it. Why?” “Because I didn’t want you to get in trouble, and Andy was always in trouble anyway, and because I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of Buzzy. And because I didn’t want to embarrass Buzzy either. I mean, having a little kid like Andy do it was almost funny, but having you do it would have made him feel like even more of a fool.” She sighed. “Want to know anything else?” I shook my head, lay down again. “Un-huh.” “Then you tell me something,” she said. “What?” “Why are my red prom heels still in your closet?” “Your red prom heels?” “I saw them when I took down the comforter,” she said. “Oh those.” I shrugged. “Well you never know when you might need a pair of red shoes.” “Size five?” she said. “I keep meaning to throw them away.” We were both quiet for a minute. “Don’t,” she said. “Okay.” There was another silence. “Brenda?” “Mmm?” I almost told her what I’d already promised myself I wouldn’t. I almost said ‘I want you to meet someone tomorrow, Bren. His name is Mark and I think I’m in love.’ I almost said it, lying there in the same bed the way we used to when we were small. But I didn’t. “Night night Brennie,” I said instead, because I needed to think about it a little more. When I wasn’t so tired, when my head was clear. She turned over and took a lot of the comforter with her. “Night night Annie-Fannie.” And then, “Oh damn.” “What’s the matter?” “The convergence,” she said, “we’re going to miss it.” Her voice trailed off. “…miss it.” It was the last thing either one of us said before we fell asleep.
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