The Lovely Shoes by Susan Shreve

Author:Susan Shreve [Shreve, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780545388696
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2011-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

BECOMING

Franny locked the bedroom door and climbed on her bed next to Pickle who was sleeping on her pillow, stretched out on his back, his paws over his ears.

Outside it was as cold and gray and gloomy as winter. Tomorrow the usual Easter egg hunts in the houses of Easterbrook would take place in the living rooms and dining rooms, the thermostats pushed up to seventy-five degrees. The pastel dresses passing by the Halls’ house to St. James Episcopal Easter services would be covered by winter coats, some with velvet collars and leggings. The fathers would be wearing hats, the mothers gloves. Signs of spring were frozen mid-bloom on the yellow forsythia and the lavender crocuses, stunned and weepy in the front garden.

Just the day before, after school, while her mother was at the dentist with Zeke, the house empty, Franny had tried on a new pair of shoes, red leather with an open toe, which her mother had bought in Cleveland, shopping with Aunt Estelle. She sat at her mother’s dressing table, put on the shoes, crossed her legs, and opened the drawer where Margaret Hall kept her makeup, applying rouge and powder, black mascara, blue eye shadow. She had crossed her right leg over her left so the especially skinny left leg was concealed and her feet, even open-toed, looked almost normal. She put on one of her mother’s dresses with a circle skirt and tight waist. In the full-length mirror on the door, she had a sudden rush of pleasure.

There were two sheets of thin, crisp paper in the envelope from Italy, one handwritten in black ink in Italian, the second typed in English. She opened them on the quilt, pressing the paper flat.

Dear Margaret Hall,

It is my pleasure to offer to make your daughter’s shoes from a last which I will create, fitting it exactly to her feet. For this, of course, you will make the trip to Firenze to my shop. I cannot assist with the cost of travel but will make this last without a charge. The shoes of course will be at a price to be determined. If this is an agreeable solution, please write to me again.

Yours truly,

Salvatore Ferragamo

Franny refolded the letter and put it in the top dresser drawer at the bottom under her sweaters.

She had been wrong. Aunt Estelle had been wrong. Only her mother, her stubborn, determined, optimistic mother, had known that Signor Ferragamo would write back with a plan.

When Zeke came into Franny’s room with a basket of eggs to decorate for Easter, she was leaning against the quilted headboard of her bed, looking out the window at the heavy gray air, at the bare trees and the empty back porch of the Buckleys’ house next door, weighted with winter sadness.

“I have brought eggs,” Zeke said.

“So I see.”

“They are for you to decorate. I’m not good at painting.”

He took several pots of paint out of the basket.

“I have a good surprise,” Zeke said, going to the sink, filling a pot with water to clean the brushes.

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