Someone Else's Shoes(95)

The woman leans into the window. “Just wait till you get the night sweats,” she says, her voice lowering. “They’re a bitch.”

Sam blinks.

“And those fuckers don’t help.” She gestures backward toward the squad car with her head. She stands back on the curb. She puts her notepad into her pocket. “I’m letting you off. This time. Just keep your eyes on the road and pay attention, okay?”

“Really?” says Sam.

The officer is already walking away. She stops and turns for a moment, stooping so she can wave at Andrea. “And good job. The whole . . . cancer thing,” she says. She pauses, then adds: “Maybe next time get a taxi home.”

And then she turns and walks slowly back to her squad car, muttering into her radio as she goes.



* * *



? ? ?

Kevin has crapped on the hall carpet. He sidles up to her as she opens the front door, his head low, his gait wobbly and the whites of his eyes showing, as if in apology. Phil is not there, and neither is Cat, and she doesn’t have the heart to be cross with him. He might have been left alone for hours. “Don’t worry, old man. It’s not your fault,” she says, and runs a bowl of detergent and hot water, pulling on her rubber gloves.

She is on her hands and knees when Cat lets herself in. Cat hesitates at the doorway, as if deciding whether to come or go, but perhaps it’s hard to walk out on a mother who is scrubbing dog excrement from a beige carpet, so she nods a hello and tiptoes past the affected area, as if this will somehow have an effect on what Sam is doing.

“Is Dad in?”

“No,” says Sam, through gritted teeth. She has run out of the really good carpet shampoo and is now using washing-up liquid. She rocks back on her heels, turning her head away while she tries not to gag. Dog accidents are always her job, and they never get any easier to clean up. She wonders at what point this task was allocated to her. Perhaps she was busy that day and missed the meeting.

And then she becomes aware that Cat is behind her. She twists to see her. Cat’s face is solemn.

“You okay?” says Sam, although she thinks she knows the answer.

“I’m sorry about the shoes.”

Sam puts down her sponge. “Don’t be. You weren’t to know.”

“I thought you were having an affair.”

“Did you really?”

“You and Dad seemed so unhappy. Like you never did anything together any more. Like . . . you don’t get any joy from each other’s company.” Her words are a series of little blows. Cat rubs at her nose. Doesn’t look Sam in the eye for the next sentence. “And then I saw you with that man.”

“Joel is just a friend.”

“But the sho—”

“I was wearing those shoes because . . . well, because sometimes you need to feel like a different version of yourself.”

Cat looks at her then, and Sam is unsure whether it’s incomprehension or suspicion she can detect in her daughter’s face.

“I have been unhappy, Cat. You’re right. For a long time. Your dad doesn’t see me any more. Most days I’ve felt like I don’t even exist. It’s hard for you to imagine now, while you’re young and beautiful and everyone notices every move you make. But I seem to be invisible, these days, and when even the man you love doesn’t see you it’s . . . well, it’s pretty soul-destroying. I needed to feel like a different version of myself—and the shoes, I guess, were a part of that. It’s hard to explain. I’m not even sure I can explain it to myself. But I’m sorry you’ve been caught up in it.”

“Why do you need a man to tell you who you are?”

“What?”

Cat edges around the dark stain on the carpet. “Why do you need validation from someone else? Dad is down in the dumps, yes, but that doesn’t mean you have to fall apart. You’re still you. I wouldn’t let some man dictate how I felt about myself.”

“Yeah. Well, you always did have it all worked out. I think you knew who you were from the age of three.” She looks at her daughter, whose generation seems to have this all sorted, with their talk of autonomy, of slut-shaming, allyship and body positivity. She feels the reflexive clench of sadness she has started to feel when she remembers that soon this girl will be gone, storming through her own life, no longer clumping through the door in her heavy workmen’s boots.

Cat sits down heavily on the bottom step. She reties the laces on one of her boots and waits a moment before she speaks.

“Colleen’s mum left her dad last month. She said they were ‘on different paths.’?”

Sam is not sure what to say to this, so she organizes her face into a neutral expression.

Cat’s face is suddenly vulnerable, like a child’s. “Are you and Dad going to split up?”

Do you have feelings for Joel? he had asked her, the previous evening, as she brushed her teeth. She had struggled with how to respond to him honestly, and continued brushing for an extra few seconds before she spat out the paste. Not the same as I have for you, she said. He had gazed at her reflection in the mirror for a moment, then headed off to bed.

“I don’t think so,” she says, and hugs her daughter, relishing the brief proximity. She hopes she sounded more convinced than she feels.