Rules of the Road

  I was sitting at a table by the front of the Fichus Tree Restaurant, telling myself I had more than enough on the ball to pull this off, looking for Elden Gladstone. He was fifteen minutes late, which made me mad because for all he knew he was keeping his own mother waiting even though she was upstairs and I was her designated eater. The Fichus Tree had one of those breakfast buffets that’s so loaded with food it almost makes you forget how many people go to bed hungry. I was wearing my khaki suit that made me look older and my stacked leather shoes. Shoes are an important statement when you’re meeting another shoe person, since shoe people always look at someone from the ground up.

  There was a jerk of movement and Elden Gladstone sped off the elevator, pushing through the lobby like he owned it, talking angrily on a cell phone. He gave the hostess a sneer.

  “I’m meeting my mother.” He looked impatiently at the tables. Seeing him made me feel tired. “Because I can’t,” he barked into the phone. “It’s not going to fly!”

  I stood up. “Uh, Mr. Gladstone. Your mother asked me to meet you.”

  He said, “Later,” into the phone and snapped it shut. He looked at my shoes.

  “I’m Jenna Boller, her . . .assistant.” Assistant sounded better than driver.

  Elden reached for a handful of butter mints by the cash register and ate them all at once. He was wearing a beige floppy suit with the sleeves pushed up and a gold watch.

  I steeled myself.

  Smiled nice and friendly. “She’s not feeling too well, sir. She won’t be coming down for breakfast.”

  He glared at me, unsure. “What’s the matter with her?”

  “Her hip.”

  “Again?”

  I didn’t know this was an on-going problem. I nodded.

  I took a deep breath for the next part. “She said you could give me any message and—”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I didn’t either.

  “I don’t know who you are, miss, but I’d like to see my mother.”

  “I appreciate that, sir. She just can’t see anyone today. I understand how you feel.”

  Elden was six inches shorter than me and he didn’t like it. “Sit down,” he barked.

  I sat. He kept standing, telling me that he’d flown in from Dallas to see his mother and he wasn’t leaving until that happened. I smiled, explained again and again.

  “It’s such a shame,” I said. “You coming all this way. She just can’t see anyone today.”

  He looked at me like I was garbage. “I’m not going to let some overgrown teenager tell me I can’t see my mother.”

  Smile.

  Never kill in public.

  I wanted to so bad. I looked at Elden, who was gunning for a showdown, waiting for me to lose it right there. Never punch a man who’s chewing tobacco, that’s what Harry Bender said. I knew why now. They spit it out all over you. I killed him with kindness.

  “Boy, I’m sure sorry about this, sir. You’re mother’s just not able to—”

  “That’s clear!” Elden turned on his tasseled Italian loafer. “You tell my mother we’ve got to talk. No, tell her we’re going to talk.”

  I smiled. “I’ll tell her, sir.” I felt that adding “you ungrateful slimeball” would have been pushing it.

  And with that Elden Gladstone stomped off in a stinking cloud of deceit.

  Evil Retreats in the Presence of Goodness.

  What a snake.

  CHAPTER 13

  I grabbed a quick sip of my extra-thick coffee milk shake and said into the phone, “Mr. Bender, I’m from Chicago. I’m not sure what you mean about not drinking downstream from the herd.”

  I could hear Harry Bender clear his throat. I’d just told him how things had gone with Elden. Mrs. Gladstone had asked me to pass it along.

  “Oh, wait a minute.” I pictured horses relieving themselves in a pure mountain stream. I made a face. “I get it.”

  “You’re catching on,” Harry Bender said. “Got to find us a safe place in this situation. In AA we say, ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’”

  AA stands for Alcoholics Anonymous, an important organization that helps people stop drinking. “You’re in AA?”

  “Twenty-three years.”

  “Wow. I really respect that, sir.” We got my dad to go to one meeting. He stormed home saying he didn’t need to be sitting around with all those losers.

  “Saved my bacon, I’ll tell you. I was flat out in the gutter slurping slop. You tell Maddy I’m finding support for her out in the field. Lots of stockholders want the company to stay like it is, but Elden’s talking big money and people like that kind of talk.”

  “Is she going to lose the company, sir?”

  “Not while I’m breathing.”

  I smiled. “I’m looking forward to meeting you, Mr. Bender.” “We’ll have us a high old time. See you in Texas.”

  Mrs. Gladstone had her meetings in her hotel room over the next few days so she could stay in bed and nurse her bad hip. She insisted on getting completely dressed, right down to matching shoes, and then laid back down in bed. I mentioned that her hip seemed to be doing worse and she nearly bit my head off. She wouldn’t let anyone feel sorry for her and the minute anyone did, she’d just wave it off like no one had the right to care. She got away with this with me and three store managers.

  The knock on the door sounded like someone was using a brick. Mrs. Gladstone folded those skinny arms of hers and said, “Well, here we go.”

  “I’ll see who’s there, ma’am.”

  “I know who’s there. If you don’t open that door, she’s just going to knock it down.”

  The knock came louder.

  “Coming,” I said, moving quickly to the door. I opened it and looked down at a very attractive gray-haired woman in a white suit and a crisp yellow blouse and Spectator pumps. She patted down her straw hat with the navy ribbon and shook my hand hard. This woman had a grip.

  “Alice Lovett,” she announced. “Retired shoe model.”

  “Uh . . .Jenna Boller. Teen driver.”

  Alice Lovett marched into the room, took one look at Mrs. Gladstone and said, “Madeline, you look like the devil himself. I’m going to feel sorry for you whether you like it or not.”

  “I don’t like it,” Mrs. Gladstone spat.

  “Tough cahoonas,” Alice Lovett spat back, took off her hat, and sat down on the chair near the bed. I figured she was pushing seventy, which is probably the only way to approach that age. She looked like an ad for an older person’s personal product, like Depends or Metamucil, that wants everyone to believe that no matter how old a human being gets they can still live a good life even if their waste disposal system goes south.

  “Mrs. Lovett, can I get you something to drink?”

  Her face got hard. “Everyone calls me Alice! I don’t answer to anything else!”

  “Sorry . . .” I backed off to the corner.

  “Madeline, what can I do for you?” Alice demanded.

  Mrs. Gladstone sat there for the longest time without saying anything as Alice stared at her. Finally, “I suppose, Alice, you can listen.”

  Alice kicked off her size 51⁄2 white and blue Spectator pumps, stuck her feet on the bed, and listened. Mrs. Gladstone told her everything.

  “Your own son!” Alice said and studied Mrs. Gladstone’s wrinkled face. Mrs. Gladstone tried staring back at her like nothing was wrong, but Alice wouldn’t let her. She inched up close. “Madeline, I’ve known you for forty-one years and every one of them’s been a challenge. I’ve seen you go to work with a one hundred-and-four degree fever. I’ve watched you collapse from exhaustion after weeks of eighteen-hour days. I’ve seen you refuse to cry at your own husband’s funeral. But I want you to answer me the way it really is: Can you make it to Texas?”

  Mrs. Gladstone sat as straight as she could.

  “Well,
of course I can!”

  Alice yanked on her Spectators, patted down her hat. “I’d say, Madeline, that’s mostly bull. But, you know me, honey, I’ve always liked a good fight. I’m coming with you. But first Jenna and I are going to get you a wheelchair.”

  Mrs. Gladstone reared up like a wild horse. “I will not sit in one of—”

  Alice Lovett, retired shoe model, put her hands on her hips like Mrs. Gladstone was a dog who’d just messed the rug. “You haven’t got a whole lot to say about it.”

  Sticking Mrs. Gladstone in a wheelchair and expecting her to cooperate was like plopping a chicken in a church pew and telling it not to squawk.

  “I will walk to the elevator!” Mrs. Gladstone shouted.

  Alice planted her feet in front of the elevator door and stood tough. “Madeline, you hush!”

  I turned away so they wouldn’t see me laughing. Mrs. Gladstone had met her match and it was doing me a whole lot of good.

  Alice looked at me. “Have you ever thought of wearing bangs, Jenna?”

  I put my hand self-consciously over my forehead. “No.”

  “Bangs would frame your eyes. You have very nice eyes.”

  Alice studied me like I was incomplete. “And more green,” she said. “You ought to wear more green with your hair.” My grandmother used to tell me that.

  “Green’s hard to find,” I muttered, feeling ugly.

  The elevator door opened. “Not always,” Alice said and pushed Mrs. Gladstone inside. We rode to the main lobby in silence. When the door opened, Elden Gladstone, Shoe Rodent, was there to greet us.

  CHAPTER 14

  “What’s all this, Mother?”

  Elden glared at his mother in the wheelchair without so much as a how-are-you.

  Mrs. Gladstone sat straight and proud and didn’t skip a beat. “My hip’s acting up, Elden. Nice of you to ask.”

  Elden took a deep breath. “Are you all right?”

  “That depends on how you define all right.”

  “Does it hurt?” he asked impatiently.

  “Not as much as other things,” she said, staring right back at him.

  He looked away. “We need to talk, Mother. You need to hear me out.”

  “I’m due in Kansas City,” she said, motioning to me to start pushing. Elden stood in her path.

  “This conversation needs to happen!” Elden insisted. He looked at me like I was a spy with hidden recording equipment. “Alone.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Mrs. Gladstone said.

  Alice and I dug in our spurs and tried to look mean.

  Elden knelt down by the wheelchair. I didn’t think he had it in him. He put both his hands on the wheelchair arms and smiled like a used car salesman. “Mother, you know my feelings on how business could be better.”

  Mrs. Gladstone’s face got stiff.

  “Not that business isn’t good. It could just be spectacular. And you know how the Shoe Warehouse, which is a highly profitable venture, Mother despite your concerns—”

  Mrs. Gladstone reared up. “Their merchandise is atrocious!”

  “They give the public what it wants!”

  Beads of sweat were popping on Elden’s pale forehead. “Mother, Ken Woldman of the Shoe Warehouse, who is one of the hottest retail deal-makers going, wants to buy Gladstone’s for a great deal of cash.” He said “cash” like she was hard of hearing. “We would like your blessing to go ahead and—”

  “Change the very fabric of the company.” Mrs. Gladstone stirred in the wheelchair, enraged.

  “Mother, this is how business is done now. It’s not the same world you and Dad knew. The shoe business is changing and Gladstone’s has to change with it to survive. This opportunity is being handed to us on a silver platter. It will send the stock soaring. We will all make a killing!”

  Mrs. Gladstone looked like she was going to crack Elden over the head with her cane.

  I said, “Mrs. Gladstone, should I help you into the bathroom so you can take your medicine?”

  Her jaw clenched.

  “Remember what the doctor said, ma’am.” I rolled her toward the ladies’ room, a vermin-free zone.

  The doctor hadn’t said anything about bathrooms, but Mrs. Gladstone got my drift. I pushed her inside. “I don’t think this is what Mr. Bender would want you to do.”

  Her hand gripped the sink in anger.

  “Mr. Bender said to just be polite and not give any information and not to slap a man who’s chewing tobacco.” She looked at me irritated. “It sounds better when he says it.”

  “All right. All right.”

  “Maybe you could smile, ma’am.”

  She cracked her mouth open like she had a toothache. Alice walked in, shaking her head.

  I said, “You need to work on the smile, Mrs. Gladstone. It isn’t enough to let your teeth show, you’ve got to look like you mean it.”

  Alice whipped a big red lipstick from her purse and put it on. “Madeline, this child speaks the truth. If you can’t smile at what’s going on, think of something else that’ll make you happy, and smile at that. I did that through most of my second marriage.”

  “I can’t think of anything that will make me happy.”

  “Think about Harry Bender and how he’s going to help you,” I suggested.

  She grunted. I wheeled her back out with Alice guarding the rear.

  Elden was pacing, checking his gold watch.

  Mrs. Gladstone said, “Well, Elden as you can see, I’m just doing poorly. We’d better postpone this until I’m stronger.”

  Elden didn’t like that. “There are decisions that need to be made!”

  Alice and I stared at her. Smile.

  She did, sort of. “Well, of course there are, dear. Just give me a little time. This medicine I’m on makes me so woozy.” She flopped back in the chair, closed her eyes.

  “For crying out loud, Mother, you’re seventy-three years old! You’ve done fine things for this company, but it’s time to let the next generation take the reins. I’ll call you in a few days!”

  Elden flipped open his portable phone and stormed out. Mrs. Gladstone watched him push through the lobby door, rush out onto the street. She was trying so hard to be brave, her face looked like it was carved from granite. She caught Alice and me looking at her.

  “I’m fine!” she spat.

  Some people just never let down.

  “Madeline,” Alice announced, pushing the wheelchair forward, “you are many things right now, but fine is not one of them.”

  I steered the Cadillac toward Kansas City. Mrs. Gladstone was sleeping in the backseat. Alice was humming, lost in thought. I passed a slow-moving station wagon and clicked into the freedom of driving.

  My father used to talk about being on the road, selling. Every day a new city. You’ve got to smile when you meet the people. I remember him standing at the bathroom mirror shaving, getting himself pumped for a trip. There was a rhythm to it.

  Shake hands.

  Stay hungry.

  Stay focused.

  They can’t say no.

  Push through till the end of the day.

  Nobody buys from a loser.

  Another room.

  Another restaurant.

  Another piece of road just like the next.

  Go first class.

  Deal at the top.

  Never let them see you sweat.

  Keep driving.

  Cars were important to Dad. He got a new one each year. I remember how he’d pull up to our house, honking like mad, and I’d run out and see the new red machine. They were always red. Mustangs, Thunderbirds. Dad liked things sporty. “First thing a customer sees about me is the car I drive,” Dad always said. Dad took care of his cars, too. Waxed them each week, wiped them down, got the oil changed on time, the tune-ups. He took better care of those cars than he did his family.

  I guess people take special care of the things that are important to them.

  I tried my
best to be important to my father. I didn’t argue with him, even when I knew he was wrong. I didn’t call him a drunk, even though he was one. I just tiptoed around his life, hoping he’d notice. He did sometimes, but he’d be gone in a heartbeat, off chasing some scheme that was going to make him rich. He’d say how all the people who didn’t believe in him would sure look stupid when he came out on top.

  Dad said that money talked. And when he had it, he spread it around—buying things we didn’t need, like fur coats and fancy jewelry for Mom, leaving big tips. I realized later it was how he tried to get people to love him.

  The stairway in our first house had a hand-carved rail. If you weren’t careful, you could get splinters if you slid your hand down it too fast. Faith got splinters in her rear end once; she didn’t try that again. The rail curled to a landing just before you’d get upstairs. I remember that stairway more than my room. That’s where I’d sit and watch when my father would come home drunk. I’d hear the car pull up, the door slam shut, Dad clear his throat, spit on the sidewalk. I’d climb out of bed and huddle on the landing. I don’t know why. He’d slam through the door, grab at the striped wall to keep standing. Mom would meet him or not, depending. Once he saw me watching from the landing, sitting on the hope chest in my nightgown.

  “Whatch you looking at?” he shouted and then vomited on the rug.

  Daddy’s home.

  CHAPTER 15

  Kansas City. Nine-thirty A.M. I dropped Mrs. Gladstone off at the downtown Kansas City store. I was supposed to wait twenty minutes and then come in to snoop.

  I parked the Cadillac, slipped out in spy fashion. Looked around. Typical shopping district. Kansas City didn’t seem like a big city, it was more like a community of little towns. I walked slowly down the street, whistling an undercover tune, stopped at a magazine stand searching for clues. Saw the cover of Business Week magazine.

  “The rise of Ken Woldman, Wall Street shoe baron,” blared the headline.

  Pretty good clue.

  I bought the magazine (know thy enemy), sauntered out. Hit the coffee bar. Got a decaf latte, grabbed a stool, turned to the article and Ken Woldman’s tanned, rich, smiling face—a face that said: Worship me. I know about money.