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  Critical Acclaim for Iron Shoes

  “This is storytelling at its best. Molly Giles’s readers are blessed.

  Spread the word.”

  —Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

  “Prepare to be appalled. Prepare to laugh and cry and cheer.

  The story is irresistible and bewitching.”

  —Susan Trott, author of Crane Spreads Wings: A Biggamist’s Story

  “Iron Shoes is a terrifying work, terrifying because

  Giles dares to investigate the banal, the base, the hateful and

  petty parts of her characters, the places we do not wish to visit.

  Her triumph is that she makes the visit such a pleasure.”

  —Joanna Smith Rakoff, San Francisco Sunday

  Examiner & Chronicle Book Review

  “As taut as a well-turned short story … emotional

  bloodletting, as Giles shows in this subtly moving novel,

  can be as purgative as it is devastating.”

  —Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times

  “Beguiling … Ida is a tour de force of a character…. Iron Shoes

  is full of candor and humor.”

  —Pam Houston, Elle

  “While a less-gifted writer could have sugarcoated this tale of

  domestic woe and family misunderstandings,

  Giles’s mordant and mature wit shines on every page.”

  —Bay Anapol, Albuquerque Journal

  “… [a] dark and piercingly funny book …”

  —Donna Rifkind, The Baltimore Sun

  “Molly Giles proves that she can take the hard-won epiphanies

  of her short-story characters and bring them to even greater

  emotional depths in a full-length novel … polished prose and

  dialogue that rarely misses a beat.”

  —Kristen Iversen, The Denver Post

  “Molly Giles brilliantly straddles the line between comedy and tragedy.”

  —Colleen Kelly Warren, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “There are plenty of surprises in Molly Giles’s debut novel.”

  —Scott Leibs, The San Diego Union-Tribune

  “In piercing, fresh language, Giles draws the reader

  compulsively into this tale…. A first-time novelist

  who must do it again. And soon.”

  —Library Journal

  “A sparkling and witty account of one woman’s

  belated coming-of-age.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “The magic of this tale lies in Giles’s exquisite prose … her

  willingness to lay bare her characters’ warts with

  equal parts of mordant humor and affection, and in

  dialogue that sounds overheard instead of created.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “With Molly Giles’s trademark combination of wit and wisdom,

  Iron Shoes speaks to the heart. It is true, as everything that

  Giles writes is true. Read this novel.”

  —Lynn Freed, author of The Mirror and Home Ground

  “Roll over, Evelyn Waugh, here’s Molly Giles. She’s the

  authentic satiric voice—a rare bird in American letters—wicked,

  affectionate, and amused. Iron Shoes can dance.”

  —Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany

  Also by Molly Giles

  Rough Translations

  Creek Walk and Other Stories

  Molly Giles

  Iron Shoes

  a novel

  SCRIBNER PAPERBACK FICTION

  Published by Simon & Schuster

  NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY SINGAPORE

  For Hannah

  SCRIBNER PAPERBACK FICTION

  Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Rockefeller Center

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are

  products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2000 by Molly Giles

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction

  in whole or in part in any form.

  First Scribner Paperback Fiction edition 2001

  SCRIBNER PAPERBACK FICTION and design are trademarks of

  Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under

  license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

  For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases,

  please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or

  [email protected]

  Designed by Karolina Harris

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the

  Simon & Schuster edition as follows:

  Giles, Molly.

  Iron shoes : a novel / Molly Giles.

  p. cm.

  1. Women—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3557.I34465 I7 2000

  813′.54—dc21 00-021778

  ISBN 0-684-85993-9

  0-684-85992-0 (Pbk)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-684-85992-7

  eISBN-13: 978-0-743-21615-9

  Acknowledgments

  Why a book that only takes a few hours to read (less if you skip this page) took over seven years to write is beyond me, but I would be writing it still if it were not for the refuge/residencies kindly offered by Nell Altizer, the Bruemmers, the MacDowell Colony for the Arts, Villa Montalvo, Milt Wilson, and Yaddo, and for the help and support of the following readers: Sarah Baker, Paul Bendix, Toni Brown, Jo Carson, Marcia Clay, Alan Dressler, Betty Hodson, Ellen Levine, Leo Litwak, Amelia Mosley, Charlotte Painter, Kate Pelly, Paul Pruess, Bridget Shupp, Carol Houck Smith, Terese Svoboda, and Debra Turner. Thank you all and extra heartfelt thanks to my wonderful editor, Marysue Rucci.

  Forgive me.

  (Pause. Louder.)

  I said, Forgive me.

  SAMUEL BECKETT, Endgame

  One

  Kay hurried down the hospital corridor, trying to balance the bag of gifts in one arm and the bouquet of flowers in the other. Her shoulder purse banged against her hip as she half-walked, half-jogged toward her mother’s room, and her hair spilled out of its pins, wispy against her flushed face. Hastily she rehearsed the rules she had set for this visit: she would be light and charming; she would not complain about her husband nor brag about her son; she would not cry—as she had after the last operation when she saw what was left of her mother’s leg—and she would not tell a single lie unless she had to. She checked the number inked on her wrist to make sure she had the right room, tucked her bunched blouse back into her skirt, and raised a hand to knock. The bag immediately slipped, tore, and spilled out of her arms. Not fair! Kay thought. The hangover she had been fighting all day kicked in and her throat watered with savage longing for a cigarette. She gathered the things, straightened, took a deep breath, and knocked again.

  Ida, propped on pillows in a gold satin bed jacket, did not turn. She was staring out the window. “You took your sweet time,” she said.

  “Sorry.” Kay tried to think of an excuse that would work. There was none. “I left work late. There was a lot of traffic. I got lost.”

  Ida turned and looked at her over the tops of her glasses. “You got lost coming to the hospital?”

  “No. I got lost in the hospital. Don’t look at me like that. It’s a big hospital.”

  “You
’ve been lost all your life.”

  “Sorry,” Kay repeated, adding, “How are you?” which was the wrong thing to say. She braced herself, expecting to hear, “How do you think I am? I just had my last leg cut off. How would you be if you just had your last leg cut off?” But Ida only said mildly, “Fine. Except it seems I’ve caught bronchitis.”

  “Can you ‘catch’ bronchitis?”

  “I don’t know. One of the surgeons was sneezing all over me. Oh what are we talking about? Come give me a kiss. Christ! Don’t sit on the bed.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “You most certainly were. You were going to knock me off balance.”

  “No, I was …”

  “I have no balance at all. I roll around like a papoose. How would you like to be me?” Ida stared at her, glittering. How beautiful she was, Kay thought. Even now. Those huge eyes, dark as the sapphire on her clenched hand. The creamy skin. Cleft chin. Valentine mouth. The heavy diamond earrings were in place, only three days after surgery, and the surgical cotton dabbed with L’Heure Bleue was secreted somewhere inside the silk bed jacket; the whole room reeked of it.

  “I would not like to be you,” Kay said.

  “Right. Do you know what Francis calls me now? Humpty Dumpty. Can you believe it?” Ida’s eyes were full of tears and something else, some lit and sparkling secret life. Laughter, Kay thought, shocked. “I better not fall off any walls,” Ida said gaily.

  “A wall ought to fall on Dad.”

  “Oh he can’t help it. I wish he’d call though. I haven’t heard from him all day. What did you bring me?”

  “Just these.” Kay unfolded the sheath of flowers. They looked battered; not the brave flags she had seen in the florist’s window, nothing but a bunch of bent and broken stalks. She tried to smooth them straight. “Gladiolas,” she apologized. “They reminded me of you.”

  “They’re lovely, darling. What color would you call that?”

  “Orange?”

  “Let me see. No. Bring them closer. I can’t come to you. You may not have noticed, but I don’t have any legs. And not in my face! I’ll get pollen up my nose! Can you believe this? Bronchitis? Did you bring a vase?”

  “I’ll ask a nurse.”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you. The nurses here are all dykes.”

  “Maybe there’s one in the bathroom.”

  “Oh they’re all over.”

  “I meant a vase.”

  “There might well be a vase in the bathroom. I wouldn’t know. I can’t go to the bathroom, Kay. I can’t walk. Remember?”

  “Yes, well, I’ll go down the hall and find one. Here, Nicky made you a card. And I made macaroons. And here’s a new novel from work I thought you might like.”

  Ida picked up each item and studied it closely. “There’s been a mouse in the pantry,” she said, shaking the cookie bag. Kay licked a crumb from the inside of a tooth and shrugged. I’m forty, she thought. I need to eat. She watched Ida examine Nicky’s card. It was one of his nicer ones. Or was it? She leaned forward. Oh-oh. It showed a little boy with no hands running from a house on fire. “Don’t Be Scarred” was crayoned on top. “I wonder why you let him use gilt,” Ida said. “It makes such a mess.”

  Kay looked at the festive salting of gold and silver that had fallen from Nicky’s card onto her mother’s hospital sheet and let her eyes finally move past the lap to the two short lengths of thigh and then to the flat empty place where the rest of Ida’s legs ought to be. There. She had looked. A roar of pity thundered in her ears. She had loved her mother’s legs, their angles and curves, the saucy way they kicked out when Ida danced, the way they dovetailed together when she arced off the diving board. She had loved the sheen of the ivory-colored skin after shaving, the hard knees with their freckles, the strong square toes with their bright red polish. It had been hard to accept the loss of the first leg, a year ago, but this second loss was worse. Oh, what was the matter with Ida? Why couldn’t she follow the diets, quit the cigarettes, do the exercises, forgo the martinis? Why did she have to lurch out of the wheelchair, slip in the bath, fall off the commode? Every time she hurt herself she got gangrene and every time she got gangrene she had another amputation. It was endless. “Mom,” she said, “oh Mom.”

  Ida, ignoring her, picked up the novel and studied the author’s photo on the back. “She’s about my age, isn’t she? Maybe even older. And this is her first book? Well! There’s hope yet!”

  “There’s always hope.”

  “Easy for you to say.” Ida set the book down. “Do one thing for me? Bring the phone a little closer? Just in case Francis calls while you’re out finding that vase?”

  Kay moved the phone as far as the cord would stretch and escaped.

  Ida watched her leave. Then she rubbed her sapphire ring against the sheet to make it shine and rested her head back against the pillows. This morphine was stronger than the last time. She felt about six years old and it had been hard not to let Kay know that she was hallucinating. She turned her head—it felt as light and breakable as the bowl of a wine goblet—and looked out the window again. The horse was still there. Mr. Know-It-All. Bright blue. He had spent the morning advising her on flight. How it would feel, how she would do it. She would want wings, nothing fancy, the horse had said, but serviceable, strongly feathered wings; her own arms were too puny. She would have to strap the wings on, wheel herself to the window, and hoist herself out. Once out, she would fall—not far—a floor or two, and then she would rise. She would ride a wind current home. It would be hard sweaty work but she had never minded hard work and she would soon see her own house, tucked like a glass castle in the green folds of the mountain. She’d knock on the skylight and Francis would look up from his crossword puzzle and smile at her the way he used to, as if she were the most delightful creature in the universe. And then she’d settle down with Coco barking welcome and she’d float through the front door. And once I’m home, she hissed to the horse, you’ll be gone. And once you’re gone, I’ll be all right.

  Francis heard a knocking at the skylight and looked up from his crossword. Bird suicide number 241. You’d think they’d learn, but no. Birdbrains. He tapped out one cigarette, lit another, penned in a two-letter word for a three-toed sloth, and rattled the ice in his drink the way Ida did when she wanted a refill; it made a forlorn racket in the empty house. That was how Ida’s ghost would sound, when she came back to haunt him.

  Not that he needed to think of her ghost just yet. Jim Deeds said she was making record recovery this time around. Her only problem was her cough, and everyone coughed. Francis coughed a little himself, finished his drink, remembered they were low on Scotch, and rose to put it on the list. He paused for a minute in his stocking feet to feel the late afternoon sun slanting through the windows. He’d designed this house for light, forgetting that light, like everything else, is full of grit and scurf and flecks of filth. He put his hand out and watched dust motes touch and drift off his wedding ring. This must be how Greta, their so-called housekeeper, spent her day. In some Teutonic dream, batting at sunbeams. She didn’t vacuum, clean, or cook. He should have let her go the first time she served sauerkraut with cocktail weenies. Kay could come up once or twice a week and do the same work for free.

  He wrote “booze” on the notepad, then “fire Greta,” then went to check the freezer for Coco’s ground sirloin. Coco skittered to her feet as he approached but even though the door to her kitchen cage was open, it was clear she wasn’t coming out; she was having one of her “in” days; the vet called it stress and Kay called it “the vapors” and Victor probably thought it was Possession by the Devil, but poodle psychosis was what it was, plain and simple, and a sad thing to observe. “Nut case,” he said as he passed. Coco’s black eyes trembled and teared beneath her tangled curls; she whimpered and thumped her expensive stick of a tail, then howled as the telephone rang.

  And rang. Six calls in two hours. Two from Sunny-at-the-Office, one from poor Nealy Mouth
, and the rest from Ida. Ida felt better today, no doubt about it. Problem was, he did not. His back ached and he was tired, tired the way he always was when he took an afternoon off work, as if there weren’t enough time in the entire world to catch up on his rest.

  “Francis?” Ida’s voice, sounding dangerously close, recorded itself on the answering machine. “Francis, are you on your way over here, I hope? I need that round silver mirror. And could you bring some Vaseline? My lips are dry as a monkey’s. Oh I hope you’ll get here soon. What are you doing, anyway? Tell me”—she paused to cough—“are you just standing by the phone listening to me?”

  “Why would I do that?” Francis mouthed. He poked through the packages in the freezer; there was plenty of sirloin; Coco would be fine through the weekend, unless her anorexia kicked in.

  “To make me mad.” Ida coughed again. “I have enough to make me mad. I’ve been seeing that blue horse again. And Kay brought me the kind of flowers you send to an enemy’s funeral.”

  Good-o, Francis thought, padding back to his chair with the last of the Scotch in his glass, Kay’s there. Maybe she’ll make herself useful. Do something right for a change. Last week she’d shown up in baggy jeans, hair all over the place, two hours late to take Coco to the vet’s. If anyone saw her like that they’d want to know what had happened to the prodigy girl, the first prize winner at the Music Conservatory. And Francis would have to say he didn’t know. And he didn’t. One minute you had a daughter who was going places and twenty years later you looked up and there she was, still standing in front of you with that same expectant look on her face. What happened to girls? Was it sex? Did sex make them stupid? Victor had never been bright, but Victor was doing all right, still married to Stacy, holding his own at the Ford dealership. Victor was slow but he got there. Kay—smart as a whip—could read music before she was five, and look at her. Dropped out of college to run off with a Gypsy, who in turn ran off with a waitress, went on to have her heart broken by a string of other jerks too numerous to name, worked one menial job after another, never saved a cent, never learned a thing, and now here she was, stuck in a hut in the woods, working at the smallest branch of the county library for peanuts, married to a dreamer as foolish as she. All those lessons. All that talent. Thrown away.