High Heels
With a Touch of Prufrock
by
David Sheppard
*****
Copyright 2013 by David Sheppard
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1-301-84274-2
ISBN-10: 1-301-84274-5
Author Web site: https://dshep.com
Cover photo: JENEIL RED SDE by Nine West
High Heels
With a Touch of Prufrock
by
David Sheppard
[Author's Note: I wrote this short story during the summer of 1992. It helped me flesh out a couple of characters in my first novel, The Escape of Bobby Ray Hammer, which I was writing at the time. I wrote it one Saturday evening, and the next afternoon, I read it to a rather large writing class taught by a man I no longer remember by name. Two women I commuted to class with insisted I read it to the class. I was rather embarrassed by the subject matter and apologized beforehand. Our instructor loved it, and the class, mostly women, gave it a loud round of applause, something that was unheard of.]
Brenda is sitting up in bed leaning against the headboard with the white sheet and pink quilt pulled to her neck. She's naked and has her right hand down between her legs and her left hand on her right nipple squeezing hard. She's also thinking hard about Norman Todd, so hard in fact sweat is breaking out on her forehead and in her armpits. Spit is filling her mouth so fast she has to keep swallowing to keep it from running down her chin. She's thinking of the future, on a fantasy date with Norman, and he's got her where she wants to be most, pinned on her back in the seat of his brand new '57 T-Bird. She's also thinking of the past, about losing her virginity two months ago with Thomas Powers in the grassy foothills just outside of town (wondering why it happened with him, he's such a jerk), and the steamy date she had with Melvin Swensen last night. She can't believe how delicious he was. Her problem is, she can hear her mother's high heels clicking rapidly on the hardwood floor down the hall toward her bedroom. Brenda hopes she can come before her mother does. And, she's wondering why her mother is wearing high heals.
The reason Brenda's mother has hurried down the hall and is now turning the doorknob to Brenda's bedroom (Brenda is at this very second in the throes of ecstasy) has a lot to do with the reason she's wearing high heels. Her name is Ramona, and today she is forty. Just yesterday she was thinking that when she was born, her grandmother was forty, and she had always thought her grandmother was very old. Now Ramona is the same age her grandmother was then. That's bugging the shit out of her, even though she's not a grandmother, maybe in part because she is not a grandmother; maybe she could accept her age if she was a grandmother; but the fact is, she's not. She exists in this woman's no-woman's-land; she still feels young and vital, and she has never crossed over into that state of mind, that state of mental existence, that state of being old and knowing it, as she expected she would. She specifically does not mean a state of acceptance; no that is not what she means at all. When you are old, she thinks, it should be like you were always old. You shouldn't have to accept it. You're just that — old. Enough said. It is on you just like skin. You don't even have to think about it. Someone asking about your age should be like asking about your skin.
"Do you have skin?"
"Yes, I have skin, of course I have skin," you would reply. Just like that. No question about it.
"Are you old?"
"Of course I'm old. I'm forty. I've always been old. What a silly question." But it just isn't that way. That isn't the way she feels at all.
So Ramona at her advanced age, and yet still feeling very young, put on her high heels this morning just after breakfast, after she fixed a breakfast of ham, eggs and toast for her family, slicing the ham from the big leg bone with the large butcher's knife, and with skill and attentiveness as if slicing her life into years, fixed a breakfast for her husband and daughter, neither of whom said happy birthday. Brenda didn't even bother to come to breakfast. What had she been doing out so late last night anyway? And the coffee. Ramona measured out the grounds as if they were also the years of her life. The years, the years kept coming to her, all the years of her life.
And so she was pissed. None of them had wished her a happy birthday. And she ignored it too. Not really wanting to get into it, not really wanting them to get into it, not wanting to be wished a happy birthday. And in short, she was afraid, afraid that being forty meant that life was over for her. But it was more than being afraid. It was also her hostility. And she knew what lurked behind all that hostility. It was Brenda and what she suspected Brenda was doing. And she was jealous of Brenda now, jealous because of all the boys she had missed when she was Brenda's age, but she wouldn't admit it. So now, since she wouldn't admit to being afraid that life was over for her and jealous because of what Brenda was doing, she was pissed.
So she put on those high heels, not too much perfume, that white dress with the tight calf-length skirt, put it on without a bra, thinking that her arms were too white for the summer as she slipped a gold bracelet on each of her thin bare arms. Ramona put on those red high heels wondering what Brenda was doing in bed so late, she couldn't possibly be sleeping. And Ramona, pissed off as she was, went shopping.
Ramona went shopping for men's clothes. She drove down the deserted side streets with the windows down and it 108 out muttering to herself and sweat running down between her breasts. Why did she let her husband bring her, an educated woman like her, to this little hole in the heart of California in the middle of farm country anyway? She still dreamed of being back, of living along the coast, of being on the beach again, of walking barefoot through sand. Would she have the nerve to disturb their little refuge, would she dare throw it all away? And if so, where would she start? At the stop sign on main street she turned right, drove one block and parked in front of the Toggery where the only man from the coast in the entire town was hidden away. Just before exiting the car, Ramona ran her hand across her breasts to feel the tingle in her erect nipples.
Jeff Blackman saw Ramona enter his deserted men's clothing store like an answered prayer, those red high heels clicking on his linoleum floor, each click an affirmation of his need, and the gentle puff of hot air from the opened door carrying the faintest smell of her perfume toward him like the announcement of a final chance. Jeff had also seen the moment of his greatness flicker, had passed up many women, had also been afraid. So he smoothed his receding hairline to cover the slightly balding spot at the crown of his head, made the small leap from the counter he was sitting on like he meant business, and slumped, if ever so slightly, as he moved toward her.
A meeting of Romeo and Juliet this was not.
Now Jeffrey was a happy man. But he had a slight limp from a minor physical deformity that made him mildly self-conscious around women. And he adored women, particularly this woman, and she wanted him, she told him she did, to show her some men's shoes. So as he walked her to the shoe rack, he was full of questions, which he asked with articulated arms and a rhythmed gait of starting, stopping and turning unnecessarily which, through years of calculated practice, was designed to disguise his imperceptible limp.
So, as he first selected the cordovan all leather penny loafers, his breath came a little more rapidly than usual and the rich smell of leather was almost new to him and burned his nose. As they advanced from the loafers to the oxfords, so she seemed to advance on him, and just at the instant he reached for the sophisticated patent leather, as if on cue, he felt the gentle brush of her thinly covered breast against the naked part of his biceps, and they both seemed to suspend movement in that position as if a motion picture projector had malfunctioned and they could do
nothing. So they lingered in their malfunctioned state, both willingly immobilized to the point of recognizing their embarrassing paralysis, then beyond the embarrassment to the point of a purely erotic stoicism. Both knowing, and knowing the other knew. Both locked in their small moment of triumph. Then there was movement and more talk of shoes, running hands inside shoes, men's shoes, the feel of smooth leather, the bending, folding and flexing of stiff leather shoes.
And then she was gone, except for the faint remembrance of the fragrance of her blond hair which he hadn't notice while she was there, the darting presence of her dark brown eyes, and the thin vision of her walking out the door, the tight belted waist, the round buttocks pumping beneath the white swishing skirt. The calves set in tight fists by those red high heels.
And now the mother, full of disguised animosity, is turning the door knob to the daughter's bedroom, hearing the unmistakable sounds of the daughter's transport, and as the door cracks open, seeing the explosion and hearing the squawking under the covers, like she has just killed a chicken under there and is now hiding it.
"Brenda, are you okay, Honey?" says the mother with sugar sweetness.
"Sure, Mom. I'm fine," the daughter manages, with an elevated voice just short of a shriek as she emerges from under the pink quilt.
"Then get your butt out of bed," the mother says, her anger finally showing, "You've been just lying here for the last four hours. I know you heard me bang on your door before I left. Get this sty of a bedroom cleaned up. And open the windows, for god's sake. It smells like you've been cleaning chickens in here." When she gets no movement she adds, "Well?"
"Well, get out of my room first. Honestly, Mother, you've been so impossible lately." But she's thinking how tall, how dominating her mother looks in those high heels. "If I didn't know better, I would think you are going through the change." With that, a recognition, an awakening envelops her features and evolves into a smile. "Mother. Today's your birthday," she says over the top of the covers. "Happy birthday, Mother."
And she says it with such affection that her mother can't keep from smiling, so she picks up the dress her daughter wore just last night from the floor, and turning her back as if to hide the smile, hangs the dress in the closet. The daughter quickly retrieves her gown from under the covers and slips it over her head, then pounces on her mother with hugs. "Mother, you're forty today," she pampers. "Happy birthday, Mother."
"Thanks, but I'd rather not be reminded."
"Lordy, lordy. Mother's forty."
THE END