Shoe Addicts Anonymous (21 page)

H
ow about some tea?” Sandra offered. She focused her attention on Helene. “You look like you could use a nice, soothing cup.”

“Thanks.” Helene nodded. “I’d appreciate it.” She looked at Joss and Lorna, who were sitting around her on Sandra’s big soft sofa.

“Take some deep breaths,” Lorna suggested. “You’ve had a hell of a night.”

“I’m fine,” Helene insisted.

Sandra came back in with a cup of tea and handed it to Helene before sitting on the floor in front of her. “Listen, you can stay here as long as you want to, okay?”

Helene smiled. “Thanks, but I’m going back tonight. I’m going to have to face the music sooner or later.”

“Isn’t Jim the one who needs to face the music?” Joss asked. “He’s the one who hired a detective to follow you.”

Helene shrugged. “I’d have more of a leg to stand on if the detective hadn’t been able to find out such juicy stuff about me.” She raised an eyebrow. “Now don’t pretend you’re not wondering what he was talking about.”

“You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to,” Lorna said, though she was wildly curious about what Gerald had meant when he said Helene wasn’t…well, Helene.

“You really don’t,” Sandra agreed, and Joss nodded.

“You guys are liars.” Helene gave a small laugh. “But, to tell you the truth, I think it would do me some good to get this off my chest. I’ve been hiding it for a long time.” She took a sip of tea, and everyone waited, practically holding their breath, for her to continue talking. “Gerald’s right. The name I was given when I was born was Helen. Helen Sutton.”

“That’s practically the same!” Joss argued.

“That’s not the whole story. I grew up in Charles Town, West Virginia, by the racetrack. It wasn’t…glamorous. There were a lot of times when I literally had to walk to school barefoot.”

“Ohhh.” Joss looked like she was going to cry.

Lorna felt like she might, too.

But Helene held up a hand. “No, no. No pity. I’m just telling the truth. And as you all know, I lead a privileged life now, so there is no room for you to feel sorry for me. Anyway, suffice it to say, it was a pretty ugly life. For my family, that is, not necessarily for everyone in our town. But my father was an alcoholic, and he was brutal to my mother and me. When Mama died, the doctor said it was a stroke, but I swear I think it was from being pushed too hard one too many times by my father.” Helene took another sip of tea, and Lorna noticed she held the cup with shaking hands.

“Did he ever get in trouble for it?” Sandra asked.

“Oh, hell no,” Helene said, uncharacteristically blunt. “That’s not how it worked there. And I can’t prove it was his fault, regardless. Though it was definitely his fault she had such a miserable quality of life while they were married.” She shrugged. “Then again, she chose her own hell. We all do.”

Lorna thought of her past relationships, some of which she’d stayed in way too long, just because she was too lazy or maybe too afraid to be alone. “We sure do,” she agreed.

Sandra was nodding, too, with a faraway look in her eyes.

And Joss was just watching them all.

“So that’s
it
? That’s all this guy’s got on you?” Lorna asked. “Because, I’ve got to say, I was hoping for something a lot more scandalous.”

Helene laughed. “Well, I didn’t
kill
anyone. But the thing is, I made up a whole history that wasn’t mine. I invented a fictional past growing up in the Midwest, gave myself fictional dead parents who were clean-living and supportive. I was a fictional cheerleader and first runner-up in the Homecoming court my senior year.”

“First runner-up?” Sandra questioned. “Why not go all the way and be queen?”

Helene smiled. “I had to keep it realistic. Add fictional disappointments to my fictional perfect life.”

“I think that sounds like fun!” Joss said. “We should all do that, just make up who we want to be. People would probably be a lot happier if they did that.”

“So when Jim came along, you were working in Garfinkels, right?” Lorna asked.

Helene nodded. “And going to school.”

“So it really ended up being a Cinderella story,” Lorna said. “I mean, in a way. You got your palace, if not your prince.”

“Oh, he seemed like a prince at first,” Helene said, smiling at some fond memory. “He’s not all bad, even now. He’s a good man, for the most part. He’s just not a great husband.”

Lorna wanted to yell
But he had a detective following you!
but she didn’t because if Helene had made the choice to stay with the kind of creep who would do that, it wasn’t Lorna’s place to correct her.

Lorna had stayed with plenty of creeps herself, and for a lot less money and prestige than Helene got out of the deal.

“I still think you could have come up with something more dramatic and shocking,” Lorna teased. “I wouldn’t buy a tabloid with that headline.”

“How about the fact that I got caught shoplifting at Ormond’s in July?” Helene asked, eyebrows raised.

Joss gasped.

Lorna’s mouth dropped open.

Sandra…Weirdly enough, Sandra didn’t really look surprised. “All right, forget the tea. This calls for margaritas. Everyone in?”

Everyone was in.

“Are you
serious
?” Joss asked Helene when Sandra had gotten up and moved to the kitchenette, where she banged around making the much-needed libations.

Helene nodded. “It was an incredible lapse in judgment. A moment of anger, because Jim had cut off my credit cards and I just decided the hell with him, he’s not keeping
me
barefoot, and I walked out of the store with a pair of Bruno Maglis on. I left a pair of Jimmy Choos, but apparently Ormond’s isn’t in the business of bartering.” She tried to be casual, though her face was red. “Who knew?”

“And you were
caught
?” Lorna asked, disbelieving.

Helene winced. “Oh, yeah. As I said, it was stupid from start to finish. And there”—she splayed her arms—“you know all my worst secrets. And you know why I’m in huge trouble if—
when
—Jim finds out. He’ll be publicly humiliated when everyone learns that his wife’s résumé, which is printed in countless charity catalogs and political bios, is complete horseshit.”

“Do you ever think about leaving?” Sandra asked carefully, entering the room holding three glasses. She handed one to Helene. “Not that I’m saying you
should
.” She handed drinks to Lorna and Joss as well.

“Oh, of course I should,” Helene said, waving a hand and picking up the margarita. She took a long sip before continuing. “God, if I were listening to this story, I’d be asking why the hell this dumb woman hadn’t left ages ago instead of suffering the stress of living a lie for so long.” She gave a dry laugh. “And the answer to that is just that I’m weak. Or I was. I’ve been giving the idea a lot more thought lately. Divorce isn’t so bad, politically, as it used to be. If Jim and I divorced now, he could still run for higher office in the next few terms.”

Sandra came back into the room with her drink, sat down, and had a sip.

“Sure. You’d just be his Jane Wyman,” Lorna said. “No one ever thinks about her as Ronald Reagan’s first wife. She’s just Angela from
Falcon Crest
.”

“That’s right,” Sandra said, setting her glass down. A third of the drink was already gone. “I was trying to remember what show she was on.”

“I know my
Falcon Crest,
” Lorna said, thinking maybe she should offer to go into the kitchen and make a pitcher of the drinks, since it looked like they were going to need them.

Sandra must have been thinking the same thing because she said, “We’re going to need more margaritas.” She started to get up, but Lorna stopped her.

“You relax, I’ll make them. Is everything out?”

Sandra looked grateful. “Yes, it’s all on the counter.”

“I’ll be right back.” Indeed, Sandra had an excellent bottle of tequila reposado, Rose’s lime juice, triple sec, and Grand Marnier. The girl knew how to party.

She threw the ingredients together, along with some ice from the machine on the door of Sandra’s stainless steel fridge, and took it back into the room just as Sandra was starting to tell her story.

“Since we’re opening up, I have a secret identity, too,” she said, and took another pull of her drink. “Actually several of them.”

“Okay, out on the table,” Lorna said, refilling Sandra’s glass to keep her talking. “Who are they?”

“I am,” Sandra cleared her throat and sat up straight, ticking the names off on her fingers, “Dr. Penelope, sex therapist; Britney, the naughty schoolgirl; Olga, the Swedish dominatrix—”

This was weird.

“—Aunt Henrietta, the mean old aunt who always spanked; and the ever-popular Lulu, the French maid.” She smiled. “Among others. I am a phone-sex operator.”

This was way—
way
—more shocking than Helene’s story. Sandra? A phone-sex operator? She seemed so shy! So conservative! So—so—
un
sexual.

Lorna downed half her drink.

“What does that mean?” Joss asked. “Like those ads in the back of
City Paper
where people call and pay tons of money per minute?”

“Exactly. I make a dollar forty-five a minute.”

“Wow!”
Immediately Lorna wondered if she could bring herself to talk dirty on the phone with strangers.

The money was certainly right.

“So those are the
communications
you talked about when we asked what you did for a living, eh?” Helene wagged a finger at Sandra. “Shame on you. For not telling us sooner, I mean. I
love
that. It’s so risqué!”

“It can be.” Sandra seemed completely unaffected by it. “Some of the callers want really kinky stuff, but you’d be surprised how many just want someone to talk to. Even at two ninety-nine a minute.” At Joss’s puzzled look, she said, “The company I work for gets a little more than half, and I get the rest.”

“Yes, I get that,” Joss said. The world was getting pleasantly wobbly for Lorna, but Joss still looked completely sober. “I was just trying to figure out what the revenues for the company itself are, having a team of women doing this for them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Now
that’s
the business to be in.”

Lorna couldn’t believe sweet little Joss wasn’t shocked at the job, but instead was thinking it was a good business. “You little businesswoman,” Lorna said, smiling. “Next thing we know, you’ll be a madam.”

“There’s money in it,” Joss said seriously. “Oh, my God, old Mrs. Cathell, back in Felling, made a fortune doing it. And she gave to the community, put money in the basket at church, and no one ever said a word about it being inappropriate.” Then, in response to everyone’s silent gaping, she added, “But I’m just interested in the business plan, not the business.” She looked embarrassed and added, “I took business and Web design in community college.”

Sandra agreed. “My checks come from a bank in the Cayman Islands. I wouldn’t mind sitting on a beach somewhere, letting the money roll in like that.”

“So what made you get into that line of work?” Lorna asked, fascinated.

“Agoraphobia.” Sandra gave a short laugh. “Actually, that’s true, but it’s only half the truth. I’ve always been a bit…self-conscious. I don’t like going out much in public.”

“Why?” Joss asked.

Sandra looked at her as if she was trying to figure out if Joss was kidding or not. “I’ve been the Fat Girl all of my life. In school, the other kids made fun of me. And out in the real world, grown people—people you’d like to think knew better—did the same thing. People can be so cruel.”

Helene put a hand on Sandra’s and twined her fingers with hers. “You didn’t deserve that.”

Sandra smiled. “I’m starting to realize that. Ever since I met you all, actually. I’ve gotten out more these past few weeks than in the past five years. I met Mike”—she blushed—“everything’s gotten so much better.” Her eyes grew bright. “Oh, jeez, now I’m going to cry.”

“Don’t do that—you’ll get us all going,” Lorna said. Her heart felt like it would break.

Sandra sniffed. “Okay, enough. This isn’t supposed to be a sob story. It’s a
good
thing. Shoes were always my friends. My mother had to specially order my elementary school uniforms, and I couldn’t buy trendy clothes at the mall like all the other girls, but shoes
always
fit. Off the shelf, from a catalog, it didn’t matter. No matter how heavy I got, no matter what size jeans I wore or what section of the department store I had to go to to find them, in shoes I was size seven and a half, and that was that.” She snapped her fingers. “If I was ordering shoes from a catalog, asking for a seven and a half didn’t say a thing about me. I could have been Jennifer Aniston for all they knew. Which, come to think of it, is sort of what it’s like being a phone-sex operator.”

“That’s probably not a coincidence, then,” Helene commented. “Do you enjoy your work?”

“Sometimes I do.” Sandra laughed. “I have never
ever
confessed
that
to anyone. Not even myself.”

“But that’s
good,
” Joss insisted. “It’s important to like your work. I sure wish I did.”

“I wish you did, too, sweetie,” Lorna said. “I can’t wait until you talk to Sandra’s lawyer friend.” A thought suddenly occurred to her. “Wait a minute, this lawyer…he’s not one of your…” She raised her eyebrows in question.

“So who’s next?” Sandra asked, winking at Lorna. “Lorna, got any skeletons in
your
closet?”

Okay, subject changed.

“Along with all the shoes, you mean?” Lorna nodded. “As a matter of fact, I do. Truthfully, I came pretty close to sticking a pair of Fendis under my shirt and sneaking out of Ormond’s myself last month. They were so gorgeous—” She recalled the black leather, the perfect little buckles. “—I would have bought them, but I’m broke.” A moment of silence. “Dead broke. I have more than thirty thousand dollars in credit card debt, so I saw a counselor who cut up all of my cards and put me on a budget.”