Purple Shoes

My sister Angie has this pair of purple shoes. She bought them she says to go with a navy blue dress she has with a purple band across the chest; empire waist, she says. She tells me they match because they are exactly the right shade of purple so that you can’t exactly tell what color they are. Sometimes she wears the shoes with the navy dress. Most times though she wears them with slacks and a purple sweater, or a black skirt and green blouse. Sometimes she just wears the purple shoes.

Dad gets mad when he finds me in Angie’s room.

“What are you doing, Michael?” He only calls me Michael when he’s not happy with me, which is most of the time.

“Oh, nothing at all, Jack,” Angie answers him from in front of her mirror, wearing the shoes, black skirt and a black bra. She never calls him dad. “He’s helping me get dressed is all.”

Dad stares at her while she shuffles shirts on top of her comforter. She holds a purple silk one in her hand for a minute, her head tilted, weighing what the costs of wearing this particular shirt might be. She tosses it aside and picks up a low cut dark blue sweater, round neck line. This one she pulls on over her head and settles snugly across her breasts and down around her hips.

“Whatcha think, Mickey?”

“Yeah, Angie. I like that one.”

She tosses a smile at me briefly before going to rummage in her closet for proper jewelry. Tonight she’s going out with some new guy, someone she hasn’t talked to me about before. I don’t worry about these ones so much. I know that they probably won’t stick around long anyway. I don’t start to worry until the third time she lets them take her out. The third date she wears a too-short skirt and leaves the bra off underneath her low cut shirts. She leaves her purple shoes at home and puts on spiky black ones. On those nights, I sleep in her closet curled up in the mess of shoes and clothes she throws on the floor. She doesn’t come home until the morning.

But, tonight, it’s someone new, someone who will probably never invade our lives again.

“Where are you going?” Dad demands.

“Just out.” She slips several gold bracelets—she calls them bangles—over her right wrist and waves at me to spray the stuffy smelling perfume on her neck she tells me boys like. I don’t.

“Out where?” He stares at her bent over to fish an earring out from under her dresser. I reach up and make sure her skirt is pulled down as far as it will go.

“Oh, dinner. I don’t know.” I help her push the little bar through the hole in her ear and stick the back on it.

“And when will you be back?”

“Later.”

Angie runs back into her closet and grabs her black pea coat, allowing me to wrap her green and blue scarf around her neck.

“Okay, little man, Jack’s supposed to make you dinner and I’ll bring you some dessert back from wherever we eat.” She runs her hand through my hair. “And wash this curly mess; brush your teeth, all that jazz. Okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” I hate brushing my teeth, but Angie checks.

She gives Dad a look I never get and he puts his chin to his neck, making it look  like he has one and a half chins.

“I’ll be back later. Bye, Mickey.”

Dad and I stand together at the door and watch her climb into her dark blue car and pull backwards out of the driveway. I look up at Dad and he has a scowl on his face, but I don’t know why.

It’s been more than three dates. A lot more. She’s bringing him here tonight for dinner. Dad threw a fit, called Angie a whore and said he didn’t want some good for nothing asshole eating food off his table. Angie told him she bought the table, and the food, so Dad didn’t have a say in the matter.

I didn’t try throwing a fit, though I wanted to. I didn’t want him coming here either. Angie said she would never leave me, but I was afraid. Every time we go to a wedding she tries to hide the tears in the corners of her eyes. I see them though.

“Now, Mickey, what do you want for dessert? Brownies and ice cream or Angie’s cherry cobbler?”

“I don’t care.”

Angie turns to me away from the green beans she’s boiling on the stovetop.

“What, Mickey? I’ve never known you not to care about dessert.”

“Well, I don’t care today.”

“Mickey.”

The door bell rings loudly. Dad looks up from his chair in the living room where he has his feet stubbornly propped up with no shoes on them.

“Looks like the asshole is here.”

“Jack, please.” She stares at him with those special eyes of hers, the look that always makes me do whatever she wants. Dad clangs the foot of his recliner down and stands up sharply and the chair rocks back and forth so hard I think it might fall over. The doorbell rings again.

“Fine.”

I stand there looking in between them and the door, waiting for Angie to tell me I can go answer it.

“Daddy?” We both stare at her. I’ve never heard her call him that.

Dad sticks his hand out behind him to stop the chair from bumping into the back of his legs. For a minute, he just stands there, his hand on the back of the chair, and then he steps into the loafers sitting next to his chair and walks to the front door.

When he brings back the person invading our home he is smiling kindly, like he hasn’t been calling this guy horrible names for the past week and a half. I don’t smile at him—Flint, what a dumb name—even though Angie is raising her eyebrows so high I’m afraid they’re going to get lost in her bangs.

We sit down at the table after Angie kisses this guy on the mouth in front of us. That makes Dad unhappy too. He stops smiling.

“So, Flint, what is it you do?” Dad asks him after Angie has filled our plates. Part of me wants to warn this guy, tell him to be careful how he answers.

“Oh, a little of this, little of that. Working for Sternat and Golding right now, actually. Legal secretary, I suppose you would call it.”

“Secretary.” Dad makes a sound in his throat like an elephant choking on its trunk. “Isn’t that woman’s work?”

Flint only hesitates for a moment.

“No, sir. Just work.”

“Oh stop it, Jack. How’s everyone enjoying the pot roast?”

“Don’t tell me to stop it.” Flint and I freeze the responses on our lips about how good the pot roast is and stare down the table at Dad. Angie is glaring bullets at him, a look she never gives to me, even when I bring home a failing test grade. We wait for her to make the next move. I wonder if she’ll throw the gravy thing at him like she did last Thanksgiving.

“Mickey, why don’t you show Flint your new video game thingy? Flint likes the—“

“He will not move from this table. This one should hear all about the other ones, don’t you think?”

“Jack, don’t.”

“Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do. You are my daughter. I will tell you what can be done around here.”

I slip quietly from my chair and out the door. Last time I got gravy all over the new shirt Angie bought me from Target and I had to throw it away. Before I make it into Angie’s room I hear Dad yelling “You are mine!” over and over again.

I stand in front of Angie’s mirror and look at myself. Sometimes we’ll stand here in front of the mirror, the two of us, and look at ourselves from toes to foreheads. Angie tells me we get our looks from our mom, the gingery blonde hair, blue eyes. I never met her, and I never ask Angie where she is. We only stand in front of the mirror and talk about Mom after Dad has done something extra bad. And on Christmas. It’s one of our traditions.

If I had longer hair I could be Angie’s twin. It would be so nice to be Angie or maybe even her twin sister. People would pay attention to me then, I bet. They’d look at me and tell me how wonderful I was, give me hugs and kisses. I wouldn’t have to ask for any of those things. And then, if Angie got married, I could just get married too. We could probably marry the same person. We’re like one person anyway, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

I slip off the brown loafers Angie made me put on and start to slide up to sit on top of her bed when I notice the purple shoes lying on the ground. One of them is standing on its heel, the other on its side, its heel tucked under the arch of its partner. I wonder what it would be like to stand in them, why it is that Angie loves these shoes so much. Do they make her feel special? Nobody but Angie ever makes me feel special, and she can’t do it all the time. Could I just get a pair of purple shoes and not have to have somebody do it for me?

I put my foot into the one standing up and test it out. My toes slide down the arch and squish together at the bottom. The heel of the shoe doesn’t quite come up over the back of my foot, but I figure if I take my sock off I can make it. I sit down on the floor and pull off both my socks and then cram my feet into the shoes. They have to stretch a little. Angie probably won’t be too happy with me if I leave them on for too long and then they can’t fit her anymore.

Standing is more difficult than I thought it would be once I have the shoes on, but I make it up, clutching the bed for support. I look in the mirror again and I feel a little better. Apparently, purple shoes are what make people happy. I wobble to Angie’s closet trying to get the hang of the heel walk. Swaying your hips a little helps. Angie’s closet is full of things that make her smile. I pull on a green sweater and spray perfume in the air, running into it the way I’ve seen Angie do before.

I start to pull on one of Angie’s short skirts when the door opens and Angie is standing there with Flint.

“I’m sorry about that, Flint. Jack’s kind of—”

They both stare at me, the skirt around my knees, Flint with his mouth hanging down around where his chin is supposed to be.

“Mickey, what are you doing?”

I pull the skirt up around my hips.

“Silly, I’m not Mickey. I’m your twin sister, Ashley.” I smile at Flint the way I’ve seen Angie do it. “Nice to meet you. Are you the man we’re going to marry?”

“Mickey, seriously, that’s enough.”

I sway over to Flint and reach my arms up to wrap around his neck, preparing to push my lips against his the way Angie did earlier.

“What the fuck!” Flint’s hands push roughly against my chest and I almost topple over in the purple shoes. He looks at Angie, his eyes almost bulging out of their sockets.

“Between this bullshit and you and your dad and whatever fucking game you’re trying to play there, I’m done. You need help.”

Angie just stands there while he grabs his coat and all but sprints to the front door slamming it behind him. She waits for a minute until we hear the car start then she quietly walks over to her bed and climbs on top of it. The purple shoes start to feel very tight on my feet.

I stare at her curled up in a ball in the middle of her bed. The carpet muffles the sound of the heels while I’m walking across the room, and then I climb up into the bed with her. For a second she just lies there, breathing deeply. I wait, letting her do the breathing for us both, and then she rolls over and folds me into her chest, wrapping her arms around me, pressing her legs into the back of mine.

“Hey, little man.”

The purple shoes rub against her feet and catch on her toes. There is no sound except for the gentle pull of the heels on loose threads in the comforter and the click of the bedroom door when Dad pushes it shut.