My mother once ordered a pair of shoes from Fredericks of Hollywood. They were black velvet stilettos with cut-out toes and straps that snaked up her ankles.
Filling out a form from a catalog she snitched from her gynecologist’s waiting room, she then attached a note to Frederick’s. “Please deliver the package wrapped in plain brown paper.” After that, she crumpled the catalog into a baseball-size wad and set it on fire. I come by my craziness genetically.
Mama was paranoid that Mrs. Brewer, her next-door neighbor, might drop by, find the catalog lying around and tell everybody in town. And since our mailman delivered to the entire neighborhood, well ... you do the math.
Daddy had recently become a policeman, and he and Mama planned to attend their first Policeman’s Ball at the National Guard Armory. For two weeks after she placed the shoe order, Mama went to a local department store and sifted through dressy dresses in hopes of finding a match. She was naturally plump but had recently added a few more pounds. We hadn’t seen her in anything but navy blue or black since Dr. Cone told her to go on a diet, which she didn’t do.
The Policeman’s Ball was two nights away when she found the sleek black dress of her dreams: Size 14 with silver sequins trailing down the arms and wide seams that could be let out if she kept gaining. It was love at first sight.
She primped all afternoon on the day of the Ball. At five o’clock, I went to her room. “Mama, are you gonna fix us some supper or what? My stomach is growling.”
She cocked one eye at me, the other one remaining stuck between the vise-like grip of an eyelash curler. “I’m not cooking today. Heat up some fish sticks if you’re hungry.” She squeezed the curler over her other eye.
“Fish sticks? Mama, I’m starving.”
She gave me the parent stare she had made a point of perfecting before I was born. “Eat some potato chips if you’re that hungry.”
My brother and I were feeding fish sticks to the cat when Her Majesty swooped down the stairs in a pretty good imitation of Loretta Young. There was no resemblance to the woman who had driven us to school that morning.
My brother’s eyes got big as Coke bottoms. “Holy Cow,” he exclaimed. It was a good thing he didn’t say his usual Holy something else. It would have landed us both in the bathroom trying not to swallow a mouthful of Ivory Soap.
Mama looked so glamorous that we could only stare. It was the first lesson I was to learn from my mother’s interpretation of urban renewal.
Her smile was wide and her teeth sparkled in contrast to the bright red lipstick she wore. “Do I look okay?” She was fishing for a compliment and we responded with the adulation she’d hoped for. She preened at the foot of the stairs while we gawked, and then Daddy made his entrance. One glance at him and Mama’s big smile turned into a scowl so fast it was like she’d done a magic trick.
“Harold,” she gasped. “White socks? What on earth were you thinking?”
Daddy, decked out in a black tuxedo rented for half-price at Penny’s, looked at his feet. The pants were an inch too short, but except for his poor choice of socks, he looked like a movie star.
“What’s wrong with white socks,” he asked. “They match my shirt.”
I thought Mama might swoon. Her eyes rolled and she heaved a dramatic sigh. “Go put on some black socks right now, Harold, and hurry up or we’ll be late.”
Daddy pinned an orchid corsage on her shoulder strap, and then they strolled out the door. Mama took baby steps as though walking on ice in her new shoes and Daddy’s steadying hand never left her waist. They were young and happy, like kids going to their first prom.
The next day, Mama rewrapped her shoes in plain brown paper and took pains to hide the Frederick’s logo. She then placed them up high on a shelf in her closet where they would never again dazzle the eyes of her children or dance till dawn with the love of her life.
Long after I was grown, she admitted to having blisters, bunions and swollen feet the day following that enchanted evening. She smiled at me in a secretive way and added, “If the shoe fits, it’s probably orthopedic.”