Once I passed the rest area, it was closer to continue to mom's place than to turn around and go home. On most trips I hit the gas at that spot and speed past, outracing the desire to turn back. But I'd had too little sleep and too much coffee and I had to pee. As I signaled my turn, I caught sight of the hideous green and orange platform shoes lying on the passenger side floor. Six-inch heels, high tops, with green laces and a side zipper. "Oh, fuck. I'll hold it." I hit the gas and swerved back onto the highway.
The home health aide had called last night saying mom had been cursing all day about me taking these shoes. And by the way, she says, I quit. That's the second home health aide this month, at least a dozen since Mom entered hospice care. Her doctors had solemnly recommended hospice, saying she only had a few weeks left. That was ten months ago.
When I arrive, Mom is sitting on the couch, walker planted in front of her as if she has somewhere to go. Her cat Pumpkin, eighteen pounds of pure rage, hisses at me from Mom's lap.
"You better have brought my shoes back," she says, while petting Pumpkin. The beast closes its eyes and purrs.
I drop the shoes on the floor at her feet, startling the cat. "Glad to see you, too."
"You had no right to take them."
"The last time you wore them you ended up in the ER with a broken hip."
"It wasn't the shoes that broke my hip; I tripped over Pumpkin." She kisses the top of the cat's head. "He felt bad about it, so we let you think it was the shoes."
If I left now I could be home by dinner time. Maybe call Jeff, have a few drinks ...
"Put them on me."
"Mom--"
"None of my clothes fit me anymore, just shoes. Put them on me."
I study her then, as I might study a stranger. I finally notice how her clothes pool around her, as if she's melting, her eyes huge in her gaunt face, her fingers bony and trembling. Only her personality is still larger than life.
"Ralph died last week."
"Ralph?"
"My senior prom date. I wore these shoes. We showed up on his Harley and danced all night. He was the best dancer I've ever known."
"I'm sorry about Ralph."
"They buried him without shoes."
I struggle with the zipper on the left shoe. "Well, Mom, maybe they--,"
"His sister, the stupid one who dances like her hips don't bend, said he wouldn't need shoes, said the undertaker draped the blanket so no one would know, but I looked under that blanket and there he was in his stocking feet. No matter where Ralph lands in the afterlife, he's still going to need dancing shoes."
"Mom, grief makes people do strange things."
The zipper finally slides up, snugging the shoe against her bony calf.
"Did you know I took these shoes with me to college? I was wearing them the night I met your father. It was at a disco. The place is torn down now; they built a CVS. I won't go there."
"I never knew that about Dad. Or why you hate CVS." The second shoe is more difficult to get on than the first. I start to sweat. Pumpkin is batting at my hair, or perhaps trying to claw my eyes out.
"So I need you to promise me that you'll bury me in these shoes."
When they're in hospice, you've moved past the point of pretending that there is still a lot of time left. Still, it's one thing to know something in your head, but another thing to admit it with your heart. The zipper slides under my fingers, and if I squint a little I can see how my mother looked when she was younger than I am now, a dancing teenager, wearing shoes that I have always been afraid to wear.
"Well, Mom--" I swallow and try again. "Mom. Is there any dress that goes with these?"
Beth Moulton earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Rosemont College in Rosemont, PA, where she was fiction editor for the Rathalla Review. Her work has appeared in Affinity CoLab, The Drabble, Milk Candy Review and other journals. She lives near Valley Forge, PA with her cats, Lucy and Ethel.