Eva Marie Ginsburg ~ Shoes

When they final­ly let me out of the hos­pi­tal, nobody could find my shoes. Shoes were the first thing they’d tak­en away in the emer­gency room, but now they were unac­count­ed for. My mom didn’t remem­ber bring­ing them home, but, she said, “My mem­o­ry of that whole week­end is a lit­tle blur­ry.” My own mem­o­ry was also blur­ry, and the new med­ica­tion made my mind kind of slug­gish. But I could use log­ic. I was pret­ty sure that when I returned to school, I would no longer sus­pect my English teacher was steal­ing my thoughts. Besides, since the med­ica­tion had “reset my brain,” my thoughts didn’t seem that inter­est­ing anyway.

But my shoes were def­i­nite­ly not in the plas­tic “patient belong­ings” bag they gave me. Everything else was there: my pants, t‑shirt, socks, belt, the string bracelet my lit­tle cousin made, my pock­et note­book, and the Pokémon card I use for a book­mark. The shoes didn’t seem to be in my room, or in the car, or on the mat near the door where my mom likes peo­ple to take their shoes off because it keeps the house cleaner.

It also wouldn’t have made sense for the shoes to be at my dad’s house, because at the time of the sui­cide attempt I hadn’t been there in two weeks. But my dad did come to vis­it, so it was con­ceiv­able he’d tak­en them home. My mom called him to check, and I guess to update him on my sit­u­a­tion. We were both in the kitchen, and she had my dad on speaker.

“Why would they take away his shoes?” he said, and this illus­trates an impor­tant char­ac­ter trait of my dad, which is that he’s kind of an idiot. Or at least clueless.

“The laces,” my mom said. “You’re not allowed to have any kind of string. And shoes can be tak­en off and thrown at somebody’s head.”

“Also,” I called, “it’s hard­er to run away when you haven’t got any shoes.” It was pret­ty hard to run away from the hos­pi­tal any­how, but a kid named Julio had done it. We were out in the recre­ation area and a kid named Mason appeared to be hav­ing a seizure, and while the staff were deal­ing with that Julio man­aged to scale the eleven-foot fence. But the sur­round­ing area is gen­er­al­ly flat. There aren’t that many trees, and they found him pret­ty quick­ly. He had to spend a few hours in iso­la­tion, and he lost all his priv­i­leges, and they put him back to lev­el one, which meant, of course, that it would take longer until he final­ly was allowed to get out.

Mason is okay, by the way, or at least was at the time I got dis­charged. I think Julio may have just been try­ing to prove a point, to show that it was still pos­si­ble to pull one over on them. I won­der whether I’ll ever see him around town. I won­der whether they’ll give him his shoes.

Anyhow, I was sup­posed to return to school the next day, but I had no shoes, which com­pli­cat­ed things. The flip-flops I have don’t stay on that well, and you’re not sup­posed to go to school in open-toed shoes because it’s an injury risk.

“There are plen­ty of places to buy shoes,” my mom said, “We’ll go in the morn­ing,” but at that point I start­ed to cry. I hadn’t cried before the hos­pi­tal or dur­ing the hos­pi­tal but I start­ed to cry then.

She had been chop­ping gar­lic, thump thump thump, and she set the knife down and looked up.

“They had Raymond’s draw­ing,” I said. My friend Raymond had tak­en a fine-point Sharpie and drawn a tiny pic­ture of two dogs on the side of my shoe. He drew the same pic­ture on one of his own shoes. Raymond was my best friend, maybe my only real friend, and three months before I went to the hos­pi­tal he died of an over­dose. He was only fif­teen, which seems too young to die of an over­dose, but I guess it’s bet­ter than get­ting shot, which had hap­pened to a ninth grad­er named Latrell, because at least with an over­dose you get to die high. In Latrell’s case, sus­pects were in cus­tody, but it was unclear whether they were intend­ing to rob him—of a hun­dred dol­lars, his Bluetooth speak­er, and his gun—or whether they were just argu­ing with him and decid­ed to steal the stuff afterwards.

Latrell’s case could have been worse too, because at least they’d arrest­ed the two kids who shot him. There’s anoth­er kid in town who got shot with no leads on sus­pects. He has a mom who shows up at school events and yells a lot. “Somebody here knows some­thing,” she says, mean­ing some­one knows who killed her son. Maybe she’s right.

Anyhow, the thought that Raymond died high, and not shot, gave me a lit­tle bit of com­fort, not a huge amount but a lit­tle. I thought about our shoes as I was stand­ing in the kitchen, still wear­ing those shape­less gray socks they give you in hos­pi­tals, and I start­ed to cry, and I thought about try­ing to get in touch with Raymond’s mom to ask if I could please have that pair of shoes, not to wear, because Raymond was taller than I am and had these long skin­ny feet, but just to keep in my room. But I wouldn’t want to upset her.

My mom put her arms around me and held me for a while. It was a lit­tle awk­ward because I’m get­ting too old for that, but also a relief. I asked if she thought it would be weird to call Raymond’s mom and ask for his shoes. She said she didn’t know.

She fin­ished cook­ing and we ate gar­lic bread and pas­ta, which she made because they’re my favorites. Then we watched some TV, and she unlocked my night­time med­ica­tion and made sure I took it, which is the kind of thing my dad for­gets, and I felt grate­ful to have a mom who knows what she’s sup­posed to do.

In the morn­ing, it was hard to get out of bed. I asked if I could please hold off on the show­er because I hate show­ers, not the show­er itself but feel­ing cold and wet after­wards. She said that was fine but she want­ed me to get mov­ing and eat so we could go shoe shop­ping and I could maybe still get to school in time for third period.

The shoes I picked out were a lot brighter than what I usu­al­ly wear, green, like grass green but clean­er, if that makes any sense, and they had the white swoosh. They were the kind of shoes Raymond would’ve worn, bright Nikes like that, and I decid­ed it would be a kind of trib­ute, to wear Raymond-esque shoes, even though they looked a lit­tle out of place on me because I usu­al­ly don’t wear bright col­ors. The shoes kind of made me smile, and in my mind I could imag­ine Raymond telling me I’d sur­prised him but that he was impressed.

At school the teach­ers seemed hap­py to see me. We were doing a chap­ter review in Algebra. I had missed every­thing about find­ing the foci in an ellipse and I’m pret­ty sure I’ll nev­er under­stand that, but maybe I won’t need to. My English teacher said, “Good to see you,” and smiled. I zoned out a few times dur­ing the dis­cus­sion, but it no longer felt like she was pulling thoughts out of my mind.

Even though I could’ve walked home, my mom said she’d pick me up, since she was tak­ing the day off any­way. She asked how it was to be back.

“A lit­tle weird,” I said. “It’s hard to concentrate.”

“How do those shoes feel? Do you feel like you’re get­ting a blis­ter or anything?”

“No, they feel okay.”

“Sweetie,” she said, reach­ing over and rub­bing my back. “I’m real­ly, real­ly glad you’re here.”

I looked down at my Raymond-esque shoes, wig­gling my toes inside them.

~

Eva Marie Ginsburg holds an MFA in cre­ative writ­ing from the University of Houston. Her fic­tion has appeared in a num­ber of jour­nals, includ­ing Artful Dodge, Willow Springs, and Wisconsin Review. Her sto­ry “The Kettle” is includ­ed in in the anthol­o­gy Flash Fiction Forward, pub­lished by Norton.