Best Foot Forward Page 3

  “And this notice here,” Murray said shrilly, “says all Gladstone stores will be having daily specials on different brands. Daily? What are we running—a grocery store?”

  Mrs. Gladstone’s cheek twitched. “I’ll talk to Ken.”

  Murray held the top of his stomach, which meant his diverticulitis was acting up.

  Throughout the day Mrs. Gladstone kept coming out of her office, muttering disturbing things.

  “I think we could use a strong pair of arms around here.”

  “The storeroom could certainly use a big cleaning.”

  Then she’d turn on her heel, go back into her office, shut the door, and start shouting at someone on the phone.

  “You don’t think she’s going to let that Tanner guy come work here, do you, Murray?”

  “Madeline gets these soft spots for people down on their luck.”

  I groaned.

  “I remember when you came in, kid. You needed work, you know, but you also needed work. I say that with respect for what you’ve done.”

  “Was I that bad?”

  “You had the guts to walk in and ask for a job, you wanted to work, but like anything new, it took you a while to get your footing.” Murray chuckled at the shoe joke. “But what you had is what everybody needs to succeed—you had heart.”

  “Thanks, Murray.”

  “I took a chance on you, kid.” I hadn’t realized I was such a big risk. “And you didn’t let me down. You know why?”

  “Because I have heart?”

  “Because you were desperate.”

  “I was?”

  He leaned against the wall next to the poster of our new Gladstone leather walking sandal that basically turned a common man into a mountain goat for just $79.95. “See, desperation is the driving force in finding work. You’ve got to know you want work, you’ve got to know you need it. And when you’ve figured that out, you’ve got to take the steps and take the chances to make it happen. A desperate person is a hungry person. You follow me?”

  I thought back to that time. I guess I was desperate for something to happen to me. I needed something that wasn’t just for kids—I needed to make money, be out of the house, learn something entirely new.

  “I’ve been managing shoe people for twenty-three years,” Murray said, “and there’s two things I look for.”

  I smiled. “Heart and desperation.”

  “No, kid.”

  This was like one of those multiple-choice literature tests where you wondered if the teacher bothered to read the book.

  “I look for character and adaptability.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “See, character always comes through and I don’t want anybody in here I can’t trust near the public’s feet or the cash register. I don’t want anybody in here who’s going to lie about shoes just to make a sale. That’ll put us out of business like that. I look for adaptability because we’re dealing with the whole of humanity, and you’ve got to be flexible because people are strange and feet are complicated.” Murray got a faraway look in his eye. “It’s not like selling ice cream, where people stop by for a cheap treat—whether they get strawberry or chocolate chip isn’t going to touch a life. But with a shoe, kid, we’re touching a person in a personal way. We hold their feet in our hands. Only a person of character and adaptability sees that as a calling.”

  I gulped. “Right.”

  Just then, Mrs. Gladstone came onto the floor, triumphant. “I think Tanner could be of use to us and that we could be of use to him.”

  “I can clean up the back room this week, ma’am. I won’t sleep until it’s done, I swear.”

  “I’ve already called his grandmother. He’ll start tomorrow.”

  “Madeline, be careful. You’ve got a soft spot that could use some hardening,” Murray cautioned.

  “You’re probably right.” Her steel gray eyes looked tired. “My father always told me that in this world we’re going to make a truckload of mistakes, but the best mistake we can ever make is to err on the side of mercy.”

  Murray put a stack of twenties in the register and locked the drawer. “My father told me the same thing, but he also said to watch your back.”

  I was thinking about the wisdom of fathers. I wished my dad had given me memorable advice on handling difficult situations. Instead he told me endless times, “When you’re making a martini, you’ve got to be careful not to bruise the gin.” He’d take out his special martini stirrer and gently stir the gin and vermouth to demonstrate. This doesn’t have far-reaching applications when you’re feeling threatened. I think Dad was easier on the gin than he ever was on me, Mom, Faith, or himself.

  Right versus wrong collided in my brain. Thanks to that semester of debate, I’m a real ace at arguing with myself. Take a subject like Tanner Cobb.

  On the one hand, he stole.

  On the other, he helped his little brother read and count.

  Then again, he stole shoes in front of Webster.

  But, he brought the shoes back and offered to make up for what he’d done.

  My mind said, Don’t trust him.

  My instincts said, He might not be all bad.

  Inconsistencies are a royal pain; the older you get, the more they multiply.

  Like blisters. My skin was being ripped to shreds. At lunch, I limped pitifully to the Thai Garden Restaurant to have lunch with my best friend, Opal.

  “It came,” she said miserably.

  “How bad is it?”

  She shook her head. “Worse than I could have imagined.”

  Opal was going to be a bridesmaid at her cousin’s wedding. She held up a picture of the bridesmaid’s dress—a poufy pink and blue atrocity with puffed sleeves, ruffles, and an enormously full skirt covered with bows. It came with a straw hat.

  “I’ll look like Little Bo-Peep on steroids,” she wailed. “What kind of shoes do you wear with something like this?”

  I bit my lip. “Wooden?”

  “I give this marriage six months, tops.” She flopped in the chair.

  She couldn’t see the humor now, but she would when it was over. I raised my chicken satay spear. Opal and I try to find the funny side of life’s dark moments. We can both takes ourselves pretty seriously. After my father showed up drunk on Parents’ Night a few years ago, Opal said it sure took the pressure off my plummeting grade in Spanish. When Opal was playing so badly at her piano recital and her father stood up in the audience and bellowed, “That’s enough!” I said, “Well, at least you didn’t have to play the whole song through. You always hated that song.”

  I told her about Tanner coming to work at the store. “Should I be worried?” I asked.

  Her face grew grim. “He sounds scary and hot, Jenna, which isn’t the best combination. My father always tells me that facing fears makes us stronger. I’m not sure how much stronger you need to get.”

  Chapter 6

  Tanner Cobb was wearing khakis and scuffed brown shoes with a blue shirt—no belt. His hair was slicked back, which made his black eyes seem even more intense. It was hard for me to look at him straight on because there was something in him, energy, maybe, that just jumped out at you. I suppose Opal would consider him dangerously cute. My grandmother, who’d been married three times and had boyfriends up till she went into the nursing home, always told me, “If you smell danger on a man, run.”

  Tanner was studying the shoes we had displayed, taking everything in. Mrs. Gladstone was telling him how a shoe store isn’t about individuals, it’s about a community of people working together to serve the customers. “Jenna has been with us for over a year and she has contributed in remarkable ways to the success of the business.”

  That felt good. I stood tall.

  “And Murray Castlebaum has seen it all,” Mrs. Gladstone offered.

  “Everything,” Murray said threateningly. As threatening as a skinny guy with three strands of hair and a chicken neck can get.

  “Tanner,” said Mrs. Gladstone, �
��I respect the fact that you came here today. I want you to understand that what you’ll be doing in the stockroom is still part of making this business run.”

  He nodded, a bit surprised. I don’t think he was expecting to work back there.

  “Jenna will show you the stockroom.”

  I glared at Mrs. Gladstone. I don’t want to go in the back with him.

  “Murray, on second thought, why don’t you show Tanner?”

  Murray looked Tanner in the eyes, searching, probably for heart, desperation, character, and adaptability. “We’ve got a lot of boxes.”

  Tanner slumped. “I’m strong.”

  “They got to be cut up just right or Nolan the recycling guy has a conniption. He lives and dies by whether the twine is tied perfect.”

  “I know how to do it.”

  Not too humble, this guy.

  Murray reached for the sole. “Okay, kid, you’re about to enter the exciting shoe world from the ground floor up, which is where I started.”

  Tanner put his hands in his pockets; Murray lifted his like an actor going into a long speech.

  “Most people walk into a shoe store and don’t think about anything except getting shod, but in the walls of this place are hidden the voices of those who have come before.” Tanner’s eyes glazed over, but he snapped to when Murray pointed to the security camera. “Just so you know, we’ve got those everywhere.”

  Mrs. Gladstone cleared her throat. Everywhere was a nice concept to introduce, even though we only had one camera.

  Tanner swaggered up to the camera and waved. “Hey, Mama.” He grinned like he was God’s gift to retail.

  I started to laugh, caught myself.

  Murray took Tanner in the back. Mrs. Gladstone smiled. “That was an auspicious start, I’d say.”

  I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t remember what auspicious meant. I dug back through vocab lessons—it either meant things went pretty well or the whole situation smelled suspicious.

  I walked upstairs to my desk that was outside Mrs. Gladstone’s office. Her big office was at corporate headquarters in Dallas, Texas, but this year she’d been spending most of her time in Chicago, so much so that she turned the second floor above the store into decent office space. Decent for her, that is.

  As desks go, mine wasn’t much—a scratched steel monster shoved against the wall. I’d been reading articles in magazines about how to turn a cramped, windowless corner into something that shouts home. I moved the fake ficus tree to the side, dusted my plastic foot model, adjusted the fringed pillow my grandma made for me when she could still sew. A little better, but not quite home.

  I was wading through Mrs. Gladstone’s report, The History of Gladstone Shoes and Our Insistence on Quality No Matter What. There aren’t too many surprises when you have a title like that—it’s like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You know the gist before you’ve even met the characters. As business stories go, it was a good one—how Mrs. Gladstone and her husband, Floyd, started the company right after World War II with a loan from the GI Bill; how they built it, shoe by shoe, with heart and quality. When Floyd died suddenly, Mrs. Gladstone took over. “I didn’t have his business experience,” she wrote, “but I knew his heart, so I started there.”

  I liked the thought of one person’s heart being so strong, it could be a foundation to build on. My grandmother’s heart was like that; Harry Bender’s heart was always open to the needs of others. In different ways, they’d both known such hard times, but it seemed to make their hearts bigger, not smaller.

  “I did the boxes.”

  Tanner Cobb stood by my desk. I only jumped a little. He couldn’t have finished that job already. It would have taken me all day.

  “What’s next?” he asked.

  Mrs. Gladstone shouted from her office, “I think you deserve a break. Jenna, show Tanner where we keep the refrigerator.”

  I tried to signal how profoundly bad an idea this was, but her phone rang and she was off. “Yes, I know we can save money by using cheaper leather, but we’re not going to do that on the Gladstone brands. Ken Woldman and I have already discussed this.”

  I gulped. “Let’s go look and see what you did first, Tanner.” And pray that I’m not making the mistake of my life.

  We headed to the back room. I wondered how Tanner would take criticism. That’s one of the signs of maturity. You can’t be in business without learning to take it on the chin.

  I opened the storeroom door and gasped.

  There were the boxes, all of them cut, tied, perfectly stacked. The knife was lying on a table, which I was glad to see. I scanned it for signs of blood—it was clean.

  Okay, I was impressed. “You did a great job, Tanner. Thanks.”

  He shrugged, half smiled. “So where’s the food?”

  Tanner had just guzzled three bottles of apple juice and was eating his second banana. He looked around the stockroom, piled floor to ceiling with shoe boxes. Was he trying to figure out how to steal them?

  “Got a lot of shoes here,” he said.

  “Well, yeah, it’s a shoe store.”

  He half laughed like the joke was on me. “So when am I gonna sell shoes?”

  “I don’t know about that, Tanner. You just got here.”

  “I can do it.”

  “Everyone thinks selling shoes is easy; it’s not.”

  “You gotta read people. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “So, I read people.” He leaned toward me, too close. “I know what they want.”

  I said, “That’ll only help you if you’re right.”

  He laughed. “I read you.”

  I don’t like this.

  “And you don’t like me. You think I’m trouble.”

  I looked at him—his dark eyes laughed at me. “I don’t like people who steal.”

  He pointed a finger at me. “See, I was right.”

  “And you,” I said, “like to make people feel uncomfortable.”

  “Not me.”

  “Sure you do. You can’t sell shoes like that.”

  That made him think. “So how do you sell ’em?”

  I’m clicking through Murray’s list—heart first, desperation, which might be a bad concept to introduce; humility, adaptability. “You go out there and want to do the best by people.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You want to really help them, Tanner. Make them comfortable, not just sell them something they don’t need.”

  Just then his phone rang. He snapped it off his belt. “Yeah? . . . Oh, hi, Baby. I can’t talk now. . . . Oh, yeah I do. . . .” He smiled, his voice got softer. “Now, Baby, you know I do. . . .” He half laughed, hung up. “She’s used to me being more available.”

  “Break’s over!” I stood to full height. He got up, left the empty glass bottles on the floor with the banana peels. “Tanner, those get washed out and put into the blue bin. The banana peels go into the trash.” I sounded pretty bossy. “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound like your mother.”

  He scooped up the peels, slam-dunked them in the trash. “My mother don’t talk to me much.”

  Chapter 7

  The official word came down from Ken Woldman on daily store specials.

  They get customers in the store.

  Every store will participate.

  The window sales signs came that afternoon.

  But which TODAY ONLY special was for today?

  We hadn’t been told that newspaper ads and coupons had been distributed.

  We didn’t have enough shoes to meet customer demand.

  Then we’d forget to take the signs down in the windows and people would expect yesterday’s specials today.

  “I can’t remember what’s on sale anymore,” Murray shouted, checking the weekly sheet. He’d ask Tanner to organize the shoes for the daily specials. But that’s hard to do when you’re not sure what’s on sale. Tanner lugged out the shoe boxes, lugged them back.

  “It’s not us
ually this crazy,” I told him.

  “Don’t matter to me.”

  “It’s a better place than what you’re seeing.”

  “I don’t see anything.” He took the list Murray handed him and walked off.

  What’s your game, Tanner?

  Other Gladstone stores were having the same problems; upset store managers were calling Mrs. Gladstone to please do something.

  “I’ve talked to Ken,” she told each one. “He’s sensitive to our growing pains, but he feels this is the best way to go. I’m not running the show anymore.”

  She stood by the window in her office; afternoon shadows played across the room. “The new shipment of shoes came in,” I said.

  “And . . . ?”

  “Well, they’re kind of flimsy.” The term Murray used was “a joke.”

  “And have we heard anything back on the quality report I requested?”

  “No.”

  I’d called Ken Woldman’s assistant, who sounded irritated that I was checking up.

  “And, Mrs. Gladstone, Helen Ruggles called from the Oakbrook store.” Helen Ruggles was a top store manager. “She said she needs to come in and talk to you about—”

  “This nonsense?” Mrs. Gladstone turned sharply from the window.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Tell her we’ll come to Oakbrook, Jenna. I need a fresh perspective.”

  Early morning, I’m behind the wheel of the Cadillac, taking the open road to Oakbrook—at least metaphorically. I was actually on I-290 West, the Eisenhower Expressway, which was bumper-to-bumper traffic. Why they call this time of day rush hour is beyond me. It’s impossible to rush anywhere.

  Mrs. Gladstone was saying how there’s power in numbers and if enough Gladstone managers were upset, we might be able to influence Ken Woldman, a numbers man through and through.

  “We must move with speed,” she said just as the traffic broke free at Harlem Avenue. I smiled, gunned the accelerator.

  “Speed of purpose, dear!”

  I applied the brake. “Sorry.”