Rules of the Road

  I started reading. Ken Woldman had taken Wall Street by storm in only five short years as the Shoe Warehouse broke records for sales and profitability. “A good price is what people want today in shoes and anything else,” he was quoted. “You give them the right price, they give you their business.”

  He was thirty-two years old and lived in Nebraska. He was a quiet, energetic man, who only needed three hours of sleep each night. There was a picture of him at three A.M. in his office, practicing golf putts in front of a huge map of the world. There was a picture of him and his wife—she had dark circles under her eyes, probably from being married to all that energy. He was tall and impossibly thin and had a computer in every room of his fourteen-room mansion, including the bathrooms. He called himself “a numbers man who can anticipate the market.” His motto: Believe in yourself, then tell the world.

  I sipped my latte.

  Read on about how the Shoe Warehouse had grown by buying and selling companies, making big profits. Giving the public what it wants: decent shoes at warehouse prices.

  And all this time I thought the public wanted great shoes at fair prices.

  I kept reading, hoping something would be said about quality, but quality was never mentioned. I guess that’s not how Wall Street measures success.

  I checked my watch mysteriously.

  Time to spy.

  I stood in the middle of the downtown Kansas City Gladstone’s and felt like I was in an elegant house that had been decorated with cheap furniture.

  The ceiling of the store arched upward like a church, but below it were rows of tall metal display cases with so-so shoes on sale. The Gladstone’s sign looked out of place and the Texas Lone Star on the wall seemed embarrassed. Lots of shoppers were trying on shoes, but there wasn’t any energy in the place. I tried on a pair of leather tie-ons that looked promising; wiggled my toes. Passable, but not great. I took them off. Murray would never settle for passable.

  WE’RE NOT JUST SELLING SHOES, WE’RE SELLING QUALITY the sign proclaimed.

  Two women went to the small sitting area where a salesperson could help them. Only the manager was on the floor and she was busy at the register. I looked at Mrs. Gladstone. When you’ve driven 600 miles with a person, you can communicate across a room.

  “Jenna’s with me, Cynthia,” Mrs. Gladstone said to the manager. “She can help those customers.”

  Cynthia looked at me unsure.

  I took my initialed shoehorn out of my pocket, walked to the women. “How can I help you today?”

  They looked at me gratefully. I smiled back. Trust moved between us.

  The blonde woman’s problem was basic—she wore too tight shoes and they were causing corns on the tops of her toes. Some people are so used to feeling bad they think it’s normal.

  “I can help you with that,” I told her, “but you need to try a new look, something that won’t pinch so much.”

  I got her into low-heeled leather walkers that would take the punishment of everyday use but still look nice; found her a lower-cut, squared toe pump that didn’t rub against her skinny ankles. Then I showed the gray-haired woman a Stride-Rite pump that she could almost jog in, a supershoe for business-women on the go. She took three of those in black, camel, and blush vino. Told her nonjudgmentally to think about clipping her big toenail so it wouldn’t push against the shoe and ruin the fit.

  “Fit is everything, ma’am,” I said as I walked them to the cash register, having sold five pairs of quality shoes in under ten minutes. They danced out of the store with happy feet.

  I blew on my shoehorn to cool it down, tossed it in the air in a little twirl, and put it back in my pocket.

  The days blended together.

  Kansas City.

  Topeka.

  Wichita.

  Oklahoma City.

  Fort Smith.

  Little Rock.

  So many stores to see, so many miles to cover. After a while, everything started looking alike. Thirty-five South looked like 40 East. Arkansas looked like Kansas.

  Keep pushing.

  Eat, sleep, drive, spy.

  I learned great road truths that teenagers aren’t always exposed to.

  Never go into a restaurant with a sign that says GOOD EATS.

  Never eat at a place called MOM’S, because it’s a safe bet Mom’s been dead for years and whoever’s in the kitchen didn’t have a working relationship with her.

  If you see four or more pickups in front of a diner, chances are you’ll get a good meal.

  I got Mrs. Gladstone and Alice to start slumming it more and we found some excellent down-and-dirty restaurants—but the corn beef hash, fried eggs, and mile-high cinnamon rolls at the Road to Nowhere Truck Stop redefined breakfast as we know it. An old trucker fell in love with Alice and kept sending her love notes at our table. She blushed and grinned and kept every one. “That man,” she’d say, rereading the notes, “if he knew how old I was!”

  We’d pull off the road to read historical markers and then Mrs. Gladstone would talk about some piece of shoe history that nobody ever heard of like how the first saddle shoes were made in 1906 for tennis and squash players; how the earliest known shoes were sandals and archaeologists found a pair in Egypt made of papyrus braiding that are 4,000 years old.

  I learned that every driver on the road thinks they drive well, but like Alice said, thinking and doing are two different animals.

  I saw that kindness is still alive and well in America when an old woman paid our fifty-cent bridge toll and waved to us as she drove by.

  I realized that helping a family put the mattress back on the roof of their car after it blew off in the wind looks a whole lot easier than it is.

  We hit every rest stop known to man, checked in and out of too many hotels, and found the best deep dish cherry pie in America at Pearlie Mae’s Roadside Diner. You’d never think a dump like that could offer something so perfect. I saw teenagers in cars, but hadn’t talked to one for weeks. You know you’ve been with old people too long when you can pick out the subtle differences between Count Basie’s and Duke Ellington’s piano playing.

  And then there was the business.

  Harry Bender was calling stockholders and was hitting one brick wall after the other. Lots of them wanted Gladstone’s to stay like it was, but Elden’s promise of soaring stock prices with the Shoe Warehouse sale got people looking at their wallets instead of in their hearts.

  Elden kept calling Mrs. Gladstone.

  Mrs. Gladstone kept hedging, telling Elden she couldn’t talk. Every time she did, she sounded tougher and Alice would shout, “Welcome back, tiger. You’re sounding like your old self.”

  We pushed on. It was August now. The summer heat could slap you unconscious with its strength. We hit awful construction on 40 East in Arkansas that makes you hate the whole world—cars sat backed up for miles while some guy with a cement truck tried to maneuver around a line of angry, honking motorists who were shouting and swearing like Chicago cab drivers. Then the funniest thing happened.

  Mrs. Gladstone started getting stronger.

  You couldn’t tell at first, her being so gruff and all, but after we left Little Rock where the manager gave her the biggest hug you’ve ever seen and told her how much working for her had meant to him, told her how he’d learned more at Gladstone’s than anyplace else, told her how, as a stockholder, he wasn’t going to vote for the sale to go through and he knew plenty of other people who felt the same way. The more stores we saw, the stronger Mrs. Gladstone got. Store owners were telling her they loved her, and halfway to Shreveport Mrs. Gladstone started walking on her own, and when I asked what I should do with the wheelchair she got a spark in her eye and said she didn’t give a “blasted bloody rip.”

  Mrs. Gladstone and Alice started talking about how senior citizens were getting pushed aside in America and how older people had to start fighting back. By the time we’d crossed Mississippi into Louisiana, I thought I had a revolution on my hands
because they were shouting about all their combined wisdom and experience not being appreciated and what this world needed was to bring some seniors out of retirement to whip everyone into shape.

  We headed for the Shreveport store and Mrs. Gladstone and Alice weren’t going to take any guff. Alice had a coupon for free stewed prunes at Buster’s Breakfast Café and Laundromat and when she tried to redeem it after she’d eaten the prunes the waitress said she could only use it in Arkansas, which caused Alice to shoot up like a firecracker, shouting that old people were getting harassed and pushed out in America and she wasn’t going to take it anymore. Alice shoved her prune coupon in the waitress’s face.

  “In China a person doesn’t become respected for their wisdom until they reach seventy years of age and I guarantee you, I qualify!”

  The waitress stepped back and said Alice could have the prunes and Alice said good, she wasn’t giving them back except the hard way.

  I pushed on to Shreveport, being extra careful not to get any old people irritated.

  At the Shreveport store, Alice and Mrs. Gladstone surrounded the manager, Big Bob Capshaw, who was telling Mrs. Gladstone how Elden’s new merchandise was the best thing going and it was a privilege to sell it.

  “You think my brain’s turned to mush?” Mrs. Gladstone asked him.

  “No . . .no, ma’am.”

  “Darn straight,” Alice added, stomping her size 51⁄2 pumps.

  “You’re standing in the presence of fifty golden years of shoe selling expertise,” Mrs. Gladstone informed him.

  Big Bob Capshaw wiped his brow. “I don’t want any trouble, ma’am. I’ve lost three jobs in four years. I just try to sell what gets sent to me.”

  “You getting any complaints on those shoes?” Mrs. Gladstone demanded.

  “I’ve . . .well, we’ve had a few more than usual.”

  “How many more?”

  He gulped. “You want me to get the exact numbers?”

  Mrs. Gladstone rammed her cane on the counter. “I want every sale, return, and profit and loss figure you’ve got in this store.”

  Big Bob hurried off.

  Alice did a little jig. “Madeline, I swear, I feel fifty!”

  Big Bob came back with the books. Mrs. Gladstone pored over them, asking him a hundred questions.

  “What’s the P and L on this brand?”

  “What’s your monthly return ratio?”

  “What’s your damaged goods number for the quarter?”

  She took notes in her blue leather book; slammed it shut. “You’ve got quite a system going here, don’t you? Buying low-end merchandise, selling it cheaper than our regular prices, but higher than it’s worth. No returns for cash. And all in this quarter, too. You’ve made a lot of money, Bob.” She leaned forward, her gray eyes on fire. “Now what in the blue blazes can we make of that?”

  “Mrs. Gladstone,” he began—

  She wasn’t having any. “Isn’t this a fine way to make Gladstone’s look more profitable for that fancy takeover?” She reared up. “How many customers who count on our quality have been snookered?”

  Big Bob was looking smaller. “Mrs. Gladstone, this isn’t illegal, it’s just . . .business.”

  “It’s immoral! Shame on you! Shame on you all!”

  She grabbed her cane, whacked the counter, and stormed out the door.

  Big Bob was shaking in his boots.

  Alice grabbed his shiny lapel. “We’ll be watching, junior.”

  By the time we zoomed onto Interstate 20 heading west to Dallas, we had more horsepower in the backseat than we did under the hood. And that sleazy man pumping gas at the Mobil rest stop rued the day he was born when he tried to cheat Mrs. Gladstone out of the change she had coming, telling her she’d given him thirty dollars not forty. Mrs. Gladstone sprung out of the car swinging her cane.

  “I gave you two twenties!” she shouted. “You can give me my proper change now or when the police come.”

  She got her change, but she still wasn’t satisfied. She shoved her cane right under his chin. “Don’t mess with seniors,” she growled at him. I burned a little rubber out of the station and leaned on the horn just to make sure he got the message.

  Finally I passed a road sign that read, WELCOME TO TEXAS—DRIVE FRIENDLY. If I’d been wearing a hat I would have taken it off and thrown it in the air. Alice yelled, “Yeeehaaa!” Mrs. Gladstone rolled down her window to breathe in the Texas oxygen.

  Was it my imagination, or did everyone on the road suddenly start driving faster?

  CHAPTER 16

  It wasn’t my imagination.

  Pickups raced past me. The right hand mirror with the little sign, “Objects you see are closer than they appear,” was making me nervous because a large Chevy Suburban was barrelling very close in that mirror like a lion hunting down an injured gazelle. Drive like everyone around you is crazy, Mom always said.

  They were crazy. I gripped the wheel and tried a driving trick my grandmother used to use. When she was stressed behind the wheel, she’d make the other drivers around her seem real. She’d ask herself what they did for a living, what kind of lives did they lead?

  A vicious truck vroomed ahead of me—“Don’t Mess with Texas” the bumper sticker read.

  How could this gentleman support himself?

  Gun runner?

  Prison guard?

  It was a hundred miles to Dallas. I got in the far right lane that was only going fourteen miles over the speed limit. I did my best to stay legal.

  One twenty to the LBJ Freeway.

  US 175 to 130.

  Cars with bumper stickers zoomed by:

  “Native Texan.”

  “Naturalized Texan.”

  “Purebread Texan.”

  “Texan by Choice.”

  Mrs. Gladstone was saying how just being on Texas soil always got her blood pumping. It seemed to have this effect on other people, too.

  “I thought people in Texas were laid back,” I shouted as two mega-trucks thundered by.

  “They are,” Mrs. Gladstone said happily, “except on the road.”

  I sat tall and drove; the Cadillac’s wheels were eating up the pavement.

  And then Dallas signs and street names hit from left to right, and there in front of me was the Emerald City, except it wasn’t green. It was gold and shiny. Huge skyscrapers (not as big as Chicago, but I wasn’t complaining) pushed to the big sky.

  I shook off tiredness and took it all in. Mrs. Gladstone and Alice were trying to find Pegasus, the flying red horse on top of the Magnolia Building. They were pointing out the Nations Bank Plaza that was seventy-two floors high, the Trinity River that flowed underneath the freeways.

  I drove on, yielding to hordes of speeding drivers.

  Alice said she’d read an article that said men were three times as likely to be in an accident than women, which didn’t surprise any of us. A male-driven convertible appeared out of nowhere and cut in front of me without signaling. I gave him acres of room. Have your accident somewhere else, sir.

  Finally, I pulled onto the tree-lined streets of Highland Park, a rich Dallas suburb with big-time houses. Minutes later I turned into Mrs. Gladstone’s long, curling driveway.

  Her huge white ranch house hugged the driveway with an attached greenhouse that my mother would have loved. A wide porch wrapped around the front with hanging plants and rocking chairs. All the windows were tall and glistening. The house stretched before us like it had been there forever, like nothing could ever knock it down. A gardener was watering cascading roses that hung over a trestle. He smiled and waved; his gold front tooth gleamed in the sun. I pulled to a stop. Alice was saying, “Oh, Madeline, you’ve done so much with the garden.”

  That’s when Elden drove up behind us in his green Mercedes.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Gladstone. “Looks like things are going to get interesting.”

  Elden stood at his mother’s side of the car. She pressed a button. Her window rolled down. br />
  “Mother, we have to talk.” He eyed me coldly.

  He was a real ace at killing a mood. The gardener stopped smiling. I wondered what it was like to never have anyone happy to see you.

  “I’d like to take a look around the house first, Elden. Then we can talk.”

  “I’m sick of these games, Mother.” He opened the car door.

  “What a coincidence,” she said, pushing him aside with her cane. “So am I.”

  He watched her get out of the car. “What happened to the wheelchair?”

  “Oh, that old thing,” said Mrs. Gladstone, walking off with her cane.

  I said, “Hello, sir,” and got the luggage from the trunk. I’d driven 1,532 miles and didn’t feel like being greeted in the Promised Land by a retail turncoat. Alice got out, too, said, “Well . . .Elden,” and caught up with Mrs. Gladstone who was talking to the gardener, telling him what a fine job he had done with the flowers. The gardener was so proud and was pointing out the new plantings as she and Alice walked around the grounds. Elden was ready to pop, but Mrs. Gladstone took her time hobbling, admiring nature’s blessings. Elden’s blood pressure hit full boil. I grinned happily.

  A woman in a maid’s uniform opened the front door. I carried the luggage inside the house and gasped. Floor-to-ceiling windows, big overstuffed beige sofas, cream-colored walls, huge paintings of flowers, horse sculptures.

  Elden and Mrs. Gladstone followed me inside. He said, “Mother, sit down.”

  She did and motioned me to sit next to her.

  “Mother, this is a confidential business discussion. I hardly think that your driver can add anything noteworthy.”

  I could kick you in the stomach, I thought, moving toward the couch. I could drag you across Texas by your pointy ears.

  Mrs. Gladstone smiled at me. “She’s my assistant, Elden.”

  I sucked in my stomach proudly. Jenna Boller, assistant to the president. Had a nice ring to it. Maybe more money.

  Mrs. Gladstone folded her arms. “Now what did you want to say?”

  “Mother, I insist on this being a private conversation.”