The Shoes She Served In

And she put the cooler in the back seat, and backed out of the driveway, and drove off toward the highway, and June sat there on the step in the cold with her phone in her hand at 6:30 in the morning.

When she finished telling me, she looked at me sideways like she was waiting for me to say she had done something wrong.

Like maybe she should have gone to the lake. That look about broke my heart.

“You didn’t do one thing wrong,” I said. “Do you hear me? Not one thing. You told her the truth, a long time ago, and you were polite about it. That’s all anybody can do.”

She nodded and wiped her nose on the cuff of her sweatshirt. Then she said the thing I had been dreading.

“I don’t have my shoes, Mom. I can’t play in these.” She held up one foot.

She had on her old slip-ons, the ones with the hole in the toe. “Coach is going to put somebody else in.”

I looked at the clock on the dash. It said 6:48.

I want you to understand that I am not a quick thinker. I am a steady one.

I can do a color correction on a girl who tried to go platinum in her bathtub and keep my face perfectly still. But I am not quick.

That morning I was quick. It was like somebody had turned the lights on in a room I did not know I had.

“What time does the sporting goods store open on Saturdays?” I asked her.

She stared at me. “Seven, I think? Maybe eight?”

“Seven,” I said. I had walked past it a hundred times on my way to the bank. The hours were painted on the glass. Saturday, seven to five. “We’re going shoe shopping.”

I put the truck in reverse. June put her seat belt on and then she started crying again, the other kind of crying, the kind that comes when you have been braced for something terrible and it does not happen.

On the way across town I called my eight o’clock.

She is a retired schoolteacher who has been coming to me for nine years, every five weeks, for the same cut and the same toner. She picked up on the second ring.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’ve got a family thing with June. Could you possibly come at ten instead of eight?”

“Is she all right?” she asked. She has grandkids. She knew from my voice.

“She will be,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it at ten.”

“Take your time, honey,” she said. “I’ll bring you a coffee.”

I parked in front of the sporting goods store on Main at 6:56. There was a light on in the back.

The front was still dark. We sat in the truck with the heat running and watched the door.

At 6:59 I said a little prayer. Not a big one. Just, Lord, let her be on time, and let them have a size eight.

My grandma used to say God likes a small prayer as well as a big one, as long as you mean it.