The Red Boots

My mother used to read what I called "sick kid books" -- stories from parents whose children had rare diseases or crippling disabilities. Since we offspring were all healthy, I wondered at her tastes. I didn't want to have anything to o with them -- as if the suffering might be contagious.

But maybe that was in the back of my mind with this story.

Or ... and ... it could have been that my best friend's husband had just been diagnosed with cancer.

I love these characters -- how they cope, how they interact, what questions and wisdom they share. 'Tweener fiction holds a special place in my heart, because it is inevitably about becoming. There's a "part surly, part sarcastic" vibe that is liberating for those of us who have supposed to have outgrown those traits. Plus, nothing too horrible can happen in tweener literature. There's a precious veil still over the harsher realities of Life.

Or is there?

Read the story, then how I've wrestled with the writing of it below.

***

THE RED BOOTS

Ivy scanned the buffet with disgust. Fried chicken, chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes swimming in butter and scabbed with bacon bits. Just the kind of food you might expect to find in a barn.

“Is that all you’re going to eat?” Ivy’s mother asked, eyeing the two bread rolls Ivy had tonged onto her plate beside the carrot sticks.

“Country weddings apparently aren’t designed for vegetarians,” Ivy retorted, part surly, part sarcastic.

“Well, at least you’ll like the wedding cake, sweetheart.” Ivy’s mother used her free hand to brush her daughter’s bangs out of her eyes. Ivy scowled and shook her curtain of hair back into place. She strode to their table, a laminated wood plank atop antique wagon wheels. Wreaths of sunflowers entwined with twinkling lights marked it as the head table. Ivy hated having to sit there. She felt gawked at. She felt different.

As she picked at her rolls, she thought: Why would anyone want to have their wedding at a barn?

She glanced over at the newlyweds at the other end of the table, who clearly were quite blissful about being together in a barn. They gushed and giggled and fed one another bites of fried food.

Ivy absently drummed a carrot stick against her plate. The only reason she was in this country-fried place was because the groom’s best man was her mother’s …. Oh, she hated using the word boyfriend. Her friends at middle school had boyfriends. Ivy’s mother was supposed to have Ivy’s father. But she didn’t. For as long as Ivy could remember, she and her mom had just had each other.

But now her mom had Andy. Ivy hunched to scratch under her boots to avoid noticing how Andy reached across the table to hold her mom’s hand.

Andy cleared his throat as he turned to Ivy. “So, what did you think of the wedding?”

“It was okay,” she replied, while finishing the sentence in her mind: … for a wedding at a barn.

She had to admit the barn wasn’t what she had imagined when her mother told her about it. No dusty stalls or animal smells. The weathered farm building had stood empty for many years, before new owners fixed up the property to rent out for public events. The ceremony had taken place in the grassy field sloping beside the barn, with not a single cow patty in sight.

With checkered tablecloths and wildflowers arranged in old tin lanterns, Ivy conceded that the reception inside the vintage barn looked homey—though irredeemably hokey.

“I just love weddings,” Ivy’s mother said, looking at Andy. “Especially when the best man is so handsome.”

Ivy’s stomach clenched. Her chair scraped back suddenly from the table. “I really need to go somewhere and get this hay out of my boot,” she declared. “It’s been driving me crazy.”

“Just be back in time to hear Andy’s toast, okay?” her mother sounded anxious. “He worked hard at it.”

“I’ve kept it a surprise from your mother,” Andy winked.

Ivy spun off, boot heels clacking on the wooden floor.

She wasn’t lying about the hay in her boot. It happened while she sat fidgeting on her hay bale seat during the wedding, while her mother made moony eyes at Andy standing up front in his tuxedo. The intruding bits of hay had grown increasingly irritating. Ivy felt she was turning into a scarecrow.

Back home in New York, Ivy had asked her mother if she could wear boots to the wedding—after all, it was at a barn. Her mother, of course, expressed how happy she was to see Ivy finally getting into the spirit of the event.

Then that afternoon, Ivy had stepped out of the elevator into the hotel lobby, where her mother and Andy were waiting for her. She smirked at her mother’s sharp intake of breath at her first sight of Ivy’s wedding outfit: a lemon-yellow tank top, short jeans skirt, and knee-length, high-heeled red suede boots, borrowed from her best friend Ree.

Ivy’s mother started fussing at Ivy to change. But Andy said softly, “Choose your battles, remember?”

Then, more loudly, he said, “Since my brother’s making me wear this monkey suit, I figure someone might as well get to wear what they want. Why not Ivy?”

Ivy’s mother cleared her throat. “I just want this to be a special evening. For everyone.”

Ivy marched past them toward the exit doors. “Shouldn’leave for the wedding, like right now? Can’t keep the barn waiting!”

Now Ivy looked around for a sheltered place to remove her boot. The bathroom was small and old-fashioned, with only one stall and no place else to sit.

Then beside the bathroom she saw another door, slightly ajar. It opened onto a narrow staircase, dark and irresistible.

At the top she stepped out onto a wide ledge of worn wooden boards that jutted out over the barn floor. A thick railing the length of the ledge, densely decorated with garlands of fake greenery, had hidden the loft from view from below. It was a secret space in plain sight.

Up here the barn felt its age and showed its roots. The sloping wallboards were cracked and splintery, dust spun in the air and cobwebs laced every corner. Floorboards creaked as Ivy crept up to the edge, parting the garlands to peer down on the crowded reception spread out below.

From this perspective she noted the geometry of the tables, with guests threading the narrow walkways between them. She noted the glowing grid of soft yellow lights strung in cris-crossing swoops across the barn. One of the strands was almost within arm’s reach. She leaned farther over the ledge so she could see the head table.

There was her carrot-strewn plate. And there were her mother and Andy, deep in conversation, their heads nearly touching. Ivy scowled and turned away.

She spied a metal stool near the back wall, rusted but sturdy-looking. She sat down and had just begun the long process of unlacing her boot, when a voice startled her.

“Bonjour!”

She looked around but didn’t see anyone. The only other piece of furniture was a large, tottery wooden storage cabinet.

“Hola, konnichiwa, guten tag …” Ivy kept looking for the source of the friendly, nasally voice. Suddenly a hand stuck out from the other side of the cabinet and waved. “Hello!”

“Hello?” Ivy tentatively waved back.

“Welcome to the best hiding spot of any wedding I’ve ever been to.”

“You hide out at a lot of weddings?” Now Ivy was amused as well as curious.

“I’m just a good hider. The wedding part is variable. What are you doing up here?”

Ivy pointed to her foot, though she wasn’t sure whoever-it-was could see her from the other side of the cabinet. “I’m getting the hay out of my boot.”

“That’s perfect—this used to be the hay loft!” He laughed. “Probably the first hay that’s been up here in about a hundred years.”

Ivy finally loosened the boot enough to slip out her foot. She turned the boot upside down and tapped it, shaking loose several golden fragments. “There, now it’s a hay loft again.” She searched with her hand inside the boot. “So, why are you hiding?”

There was a pause, then a curly head popped out as the boy scrambled to his feet and came around the cabinet, one hand holding his place in a book, the other hand outstretched. “Hi. I’m William.”

Ivy looked up from her boot, and gasped.

The boy’s pink cheeks were enormous. Like a cartoon squirrel hoarding nuts. They were so swollen that his nose was scrunched up and his ears stuck out. She couldn’t imagine how he was able to eat or even talk normally with those massive cheeks.

Ivy stood up and forced herself to shift her gaze to his hand, which she shook. “I’m Ivy.”

It was hard to tell his age from his distorted appearance, but she judged him to be a year or two younger than her. Ivy’s gaze strayed back to his face. “You have nice eyes,” she said.

“I know! They’re my best feature.” He peered up into her face. “I can’t really see your eyes. Are they nice too?”

Ivy swiped her bangs away from her face.

“Yes! They are!” William crowed. Ivy couldn’t help it. She laughed.

“So, why are you hiding up here?” William asked.

“I told you,” she said, holding up her boot by the heel.

“No, you could have done that outside. You’re hiding.”

She considered a moment, then beckoned him to the edge of the loft, and pointed. “That’s my mom. And that’s Andy. I have this terrible feeling he’s going to ask my mom to marry him.”

“And that’s a bad thing? Is he a horrible person?”

Ivy had to stop and think about that. She tried to summon a defense of his horribleness, but what popped into her mind was Andy coming to her defense in the hotel lobby that afternoon.

“No, actually I guess he’s a decent guy,” she admitted begrudgingly.

“Does he make your mom happy?”

“See for yourself. She’s all googly when he’s around. It’s gross.”

“If you say so. It looks kind of sweet to me.”

Ivy found herself growing annoyed. “But—my mom’s name is Andie. Short for Andrea. They can’t get married and be Andie and Andy. Who marries someone with the same name?”

William laughed. With his bulging cheeks it came out as a nasally snort. “That would be so funny!”

“No, that would be—I just don’t want her to get married, okay?”

“If you say so,” the boy repeated with a shrug.

As Ivy picked up her boot again, he said cheerfully, “Do you want me to answer your question now?”

“I haven’t asked you anything.”

“But you thought it. I don’t mind. You’re wondering, Why does he look like a puffer fish?”

“I was thinking more like a squirrel, but ... Do you want to tell me?”

“Lymphoma,” he said simply. “Google it.”

“Okay,” said Ivy, tucking the word away. She slowly started to put her boot back on, thinking of how to change the subject. “So, now I bet you have a question. You’re probably wondering: Why doesn’t she want her mom getting married to a decent guy?”

“Nope, I already guessed the answer to that one,” William announced.

Ivy gave him a half-puzzled, half-skeptical look.

“You don’t like change.”

Ivy huffed. “You’ve known me for what, five minutes, and already you have me figured out?”

“No one likes change.” He held up the book he was reading. Ivy couldn’t make out the title. “That’s in just about every book. Life is happening, and then something changes. Usually the characters hate it at first, but they have to deal with it. Sometimes they even learn to like it. And life goes on.”

Ivy began lacing up her boot, tugging fiercely at the strings. She was picturing Andy on every page of her life story from now on. She didn’t want to deal with it. And she certainly didn’t want to learn to like it.

“Look!” William was pointing to the small square window near the peak of the loft. Mellow rays of early evening sun had just crossed the threshold of the windowpane. Every mote of dust floating in this golden haze lit up like fireflies.

William began dancing in the shaft of sunlight, waving his arms as if trying to catch every spark. “Watch out for the edge!” Ivy warned, but she couldn’t help grinning. He grabbed her hand and tugged her out onto the boards. Before she knew it, she too was spinning and snatching at the glowing motes.

Finally William flopped breathlessly onto the floor, and Ivy returned, a bit sheepishly, to her antique stool. There was a companionable silence.

“I get it, change is hard.” William suddenly sat up. “But life goes on, and it could turn out great. You could have this decent guy around who makes your mom happy, and I bet when she’s happy, she’s nicer to you. Right?”

Ivy nodded slowly.

“It’s all in how you look at it,” William said, his eyes on the purpling square of sky through the loft window.

How you look at it. Ivy tucked the mantra into a fold in her mind to examine later.

“What about for you …?” Ivy said hesitantly. “Will—will life go on?”

William turned his head toward her and said nothing. He just looked at her with those frank, kind, dark eyes.

Just then the clink of a fork on glass rang out clearly. It became very quiet down below. Funny, Ivy thought, she hadn’t noticed the white noise of conversation until it ceased. She thought she could hear Andy clearing his throat.

“I have to go!” she whispered to William. “They’re about to start the toasts. I should be there.”

William gave her his scrunched up smile, and once again held up his book. “Ivy, remember: You can’t avoid the hard part, but once you get through it, things might turn out better than you imagine.”

Ivy paused at the stairwell. “You remember that too, William,” she said. “Ciao.” Then her red boots clattered down the steps.

Here's why I selected this story (originally written years ago for Vocal's "story in a barn" challenge) for this challenge:

• I've never been happy with the sunset dance segment. It feels out of place, like a ballet in the middle of an action movie. But at the same time it feels like the most natural thing William would do.

• I'm not sure if the mother is too much of a stereotype. Certainly she is written through Ivy's eyes -- so she feels one-dimensional.

• Does this feel respectful to people who actually are going through William's diagnosis? (Like ... my friend and her husband? I've never had the courage to send her this story.)

• Finally, there's the nagging question to me of whether this story treads too lightly -- or flippantly -- or stompingly -- over the shadow of death. The last thing I want is to wrap up child cancer with a neat little bow tie and a Hallmark saccharine aphorism. But honestly, would tweeners deal with these issues with any more gravitas? Who are we as grownups to judge the sense that kids have to make of the world and its mysteries? What's the balance -- and does this story find it?

Thanks for reading!