Someone Else’s Nikes

 

 

Morton family relatives arrived from all over the state and country. The waiting room was packed with them. I met the parents of Mac and Tabitha’s late mother, Sandra. They’d flown in from Nebraska, I think. Howard introduced Mom and me to his brother Dennis, three of his cousins, and a bunch of aunts, uncles and in-laws.

I had to give Tabitha props. She’d kept her word about ruining me.

I spotted Tabitha whispering to different relatives, then I saw them look accusingly in my direction. Narrowed eyes. Hateful scowls. Folded arms and shaking heads. Bottom line, Tabitha was telling them I was to blame for Mac’s accident.

“Think differently,” I kept telling myself. But I could feel dark emotions rising up inside me. Morton relatives gave me phony smiles and asked me phony questions about my life, but deep down I knew they wanted to clobber me with a big stick. It’s like the waiting room was filled with dynamite, and I was the lit fuse.

Desperate not to explode, I ducked inside the bathroom and put on the sunglasses. I needed Better Bertie. And there she was, laughing at me in the big mirror.

“Wow-wee, girl, you look awful,” Better Bertie said.

“Really? You’re going there, right off?” I huffed.

Better Bertie wasn’t finished. “Seriously, look at yourself. If guilt and shame got married and they had a disaster baby, it would look exactly like you.”

“Hey Miss Congeniality, you got a point, or what?”

“Yep, quit hating yourself. It doesn’t help you, Mac, or anybody else, Bertie. It just puts pimples on your soul.”

“Is that really a thing, soul pimples?” I said.

“There’s an old saying,” Better Bertie said as she exited the mirror ghost-style. It was fantastically cool, but she played it off like it was no biggie. “To understand someone else, you have to stand in their penny loafers.”

She motioned. “Check out your new kicks.”

Looking down, I gasped. Somehow, I had on a shiny pair of men’s loafers, easily size 14. They looked so big, I might as well have been wearing the box they came in.

Then something even more bizarre happened. The mirror turned into a window––a magic one. On the other side of it, Howard talked with his brother Dennis while they sat in the hospital cafeteria. Howard was wearing the same shiny Bigfoot loafers as me.

Now things got even more bizarre. I could hear Howard’s thoughts.

They were scattered and harsh. He wasn’t listening to Dennis blathering on about the Pittsburg Pirates batting order. Howard was having his own inner argument. This is all my fault. I was stupid for thinking we could have a true family again. Mac will never forgive me, if he ever has the chance to. How did I let it get so wrong?

Listening to Howard’s tortured thoughts, I realized something. “He means me, doesn’t he?” I glanced at Better Bertie. “I’m the wrong thing, right?”

For the first time, Better Bertie looked unsure. Sad, even.

“No, Bertie, what you’re hearing isn’t Howard hating on you. Truth is, he’s hating on himself. He’s racked with guilt about Mac’s accident.”

“Why? The accident was my fault, not Howard’s. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You’re the one standing in his loafers. You tell me why he feels guilty.”

When I looked at Howard through the mirror, cold, heavy air rushed at me all at once. I felt Howard’s pain. A regret so sharp and deep my body ached. His thoughts came to me like a scroll across my mind.

“For three years he’s been a single parent running a busy optometry practice. He spent so much time at the office, he’s had no … almost no time for his kids. He wanted to be a better father. He wanted to give … give his family a fresh start after his wife passed away. But it’s too late. His beautiful little boy is dying and he can’t … he can’t stop it. And even though he truly loves my mom, he knows he has to … he has to send her away.”

Tears fell from under my glasses. They were both mine and Howard’s. It was exhausting: My mind and body were wiped out. Blowing out a long breath, I looked at Better Bertie. “Stop it. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Too bad, girlfriend, we are not done,” she said. “But you do look pretty in pink.”

She motioned to my feet once again. Peering down, I saw Howard’s loafers had been replaced by Tabitha’s pink Nikes that were a size too small. Looking into the magical window, I watched Tabitha as she sat beside Mac’s bed.

“Tell me what you hear,” Better Bertie said.

There was absolutely no way I wanted to know what was going inside Tabitha’s mind, but her thoughts came at me anyway. And they shocked me even more than Howard’s thoughts. “This is so wrong!” I said. “Tabitha thinks Mac’s accident was her fault?”

“In a way, yes.” Better Bertie nodded. “But Tabitha’s guilt is more complicated. Mostly, she regrets letting Mac chase after the soccer ball. As the older sister, she feels it was her job to have stopped him, or that she should have challenged you to fetch the ball since you were the one who kicked it. That’s why Tabitha is so determined to challenge you now.”

The words hit me like a wrecking ball.

“There’s more,” Better Bertie said. “Look.” She pointed to Tabitha in the magic window.

“You are all we have now, Mac,” Tabitha told her sleeping brother. “Dad’s been busy working, trying to take care of us the best way he can now that Mom is gone. I’ll take care of you. I’ll protect you. I won’t let anyone or anything hurt you, I promise. So please wake up so we can get on with our lives, okay?” Tabitha kissed Mac’s forehead, and stared lovingly at him.

A wave of emotions hit me—hard. Heavy truths walloped me, too.

“After their mother died, Tabitha took on the mom role for Mac,” I told Better Bertie. “Since Howard was constantly at work, Tabitha took charge. She packed their school lunches and helped Mac with his homework. She even did their laundry. She felt it was her duty to protect her brother. So she made it her life’s mission to do just that. And she’d failed, miserably. If she hadn’t failed, Mac would be running around, riding his bike, and playing with his Hot Wheels cars, not lying half-dead on a hospital bed.”

Watching Tabitha clutch Mac’s hand, I got a whole-body heartache. It took all my strength not to fly into a fit of ugly sobs. Turns out, I’m not that strong. Two breaths later, that’s exactly what I did: boogers-out-the-nose sobbing.

Tabitha. That horrible, rotten girl who swore she’d ruin me, maybe wasn’t so bad after all. I wanted to hug her. Though I knew if I got too close, she’d happily drop-kick me out the door.

The magic window flashed back to a normal mirror a second before the bathroom door opened. In it, I spied my mother’s reflection.

“Bertie, I’ve been looking all over for you,” she said.

Quickly, I set my sunglasses down, and washed my hands so Mom couldn’t see my magnificent hot mess of a booger face. Swallowing a frantic breath, I cleared my throat to sound normal. “Everything okay?” My voice cracked.

“That depends.” She held up her iPhone. “Your father wants to talk to you.”