Stranger Things Happen (20 page)

"In this country you think talking about the weather is safe but
it isn't. Neither is breakfast. I gave soldiers bribes. They
brought me the shoes of the people they shot. Eventually there were
so many pits full of dead people in our country that you couldn't
lay out a vegetable garden without digging someone up. It was a
small country but dead people take up a lot of space. I had special
closets made for all the shoes.

"Sometimes I dream about those dead people. They never say
anything. They just stand there barefoot and look at me."

Under the covers, the dictator's wife looks like an arrangement
of cups and bones, knives and sticks. The visitor can't tell if
she's wearing shoes or not. Visitors don't like to think of the
dictator's wife's shoes, shiny and black as coffins, hiding under
the sheets. The visitor might not want to think of the dictator's
wife's cold bare feet either. And that bed—who knows what's under
it? Dead people, lined up in pairs like bedroom slippers.

The dictator's wife says, "When I married him I was
fifteen."

The dictator's wife says:

I was considered to be the most beautiful girl in the country
(remember, it was not a big country). My pictures were in all the
papers. My parents wanted me to marry an older man who had a large
estate. This man had bad teeth but his eyes were kind. I thought he
would make a good husband, so I said yes. My dress was so
beautiful. Nuns made the lace. The train was twelve feet long and I
had two dozen girls from good families to hold it in the air behind
me as we walked up the aisle. The dressmaker said that I looked
like a movie star or a saint.

On my wedding day, the dictator saw me riding in my father's
car. He followed me to the church and he offered me a choice.

The dictator said that he had fallen in love with me. He said
that I could marry him instead or else he would have my fianc?
shot.

The dictator had not been in power for very long. There had been
rumors. No one believed them. My fianc? said that the dictator
should go outside with him and they would talk like men, or else
they could fight. But the dictator nodded to one of his soldiers
and they dragged my fianc? outside and they shot him.

Then the dictator said that I could marry him or he would shoot
my father. My father was an influential man. I think he believed
that the dictator wouldn't dare shoot him. But they took him
outside and they shot him just outside the church door, although I
was begging them not to.

Then my mother said that he would have to shoot her as well
because she didn't plan on living any longer. She was shaking. The
dictator looked very disappointed. She was not being reasonable.
She looked at me as they led her out, but she didn't say anything.
One shoe fell off. They didn't stop to let her pick it up.

I had twin brothers, a year older than me. When the soldiers
took my mother, my brothers ran after them. The soldiers shot them
as they ran through the door. I thought that next the dictator
would have me taken outside, but my sister Effie began to sob. All
the bridesmaids were crying as well. Effie said that she didn't
want to die and that she didn't want me to die either. She was very
young. So I said I would marry the dictator.

The soldiers escorted us outside. At the door, the dictator bent
over. He picked up my mother's shoe and gave it to me, as if it
were a love token. A souvenir.

The next day Effie and I buried my parents and my brothers and
my fiance. We washed their bodies and we dressed them. We put them
in good sturdy coffins and buried them, but we buried them
barefoot. I took my parents' shoes and my fianc?'s shoes to the
dictator's house for my trousseau, but I gave Effie to an aunt to
look after.

#

Underneath the messy wig, the face of the dictator's wife looks
like the face of an evil old man and—just for a minute—the visitor
may think that it isn't the dictator's wife at all, lying there in
the old woman's bed, but the dictator himself, disguised in an old
dirty wig.

"I was too beautiful," the dictator's wife says. "I killed a lot
of men. The dictator killed anyone—men, women—who stared at me too
long. He killed women because he heard someone say that they were
more beautiful than his wife. He killed my hairdresser because I
told my hairdresser to cut off all my hair. I didn't want people to
stare at me. I thought if I had no hair, no one would stare at me
because I was beautiful."

The dictator's wife says, "My hair never grew back. I wore dead
women's hair, made into wigs by dead wigmakers. I had closets full
of dead people's shoes. I went and sat in my closets sometimes. I
tried on shoes."

She says, "I used to think all the time about killing him. But
it was difficult. There were children who sat at the table with us
and tasted his food. Every night before I went to bed, his soldiers
searched me. He slept in a bulletproof vest. He had a charm made
for him by witches. I was young. I was afraid of him.

"I never slept alone with him—I thought for a long time that
that was how a marriage was, a man and his wife in a room with a
bodyguard to watch what they did. When the dictator fell asleep,
the bodyguard stayed awake. He stood beside the bed to watch me. It
used to make me feel safe. I didn't really want to be in a room
alone with the dictator.

"I don't know why he killed people. He had bad dreams. A
fortune-teller used to come to the dictator's house to explain his
dreams to him. They would be alone for hours. Then I would go in,
to tell her my dreams. He would stand just outside the room
listening to my dreams. I could smell him standing there.

"I never dreamed about the dictator. I had the most wonderful
dreams. I was married. My husband was kind and handsome. We lived
in a little house. We fought about little things. What we would
name our children. Whose turn it was to make dinner. Whether I was
as beautiful as a movie star.

"Once we had an argument and I threw the kettle at him. I
missed. I burned my hand. After that, whenever I was dreaming, I
had a scar on my hand. A burn. In dreams my husband used to kiss
it."

The dictator's wife says, "The fortune-teller never said
anything when I told her my dreams. But she got skinnier and
skinnier. I think it was a bad diet, the dictator's dreams and his
wife's dreams, like eating stones.

"I dreamed I got fat from having children. Every night my dream
was like the most wonderful story that I was telling to myself. I
would fall asleep in the same bed as the dictator. The guard would
be looking down at us, and all night I would dream about my house
and my husband and my children.

"Here's the weird thing," the dictator's wife says. "In my
dream, all our children were shoes. I only ever gave birth to
shoes."

The visitor may agree that this is strange. In dreams the
visitor's children are always younger than they really are. You can
pick them up in one hand, all of them, like pebbles. In the rain,
or in bathwater, they become transparent, only their outlines
faintly visible.

"My life was weird," the dictator's wife says. "Why wouldn't my
dreams be? But I loved those children. They were good children.
They cried sometimes at night, just like real babies. Sometimes
they cried so hard I woke up. I would wake up and not know where I
was, until I looked up and saw the dictator's bodyguard looking
back down at me. Then I could go back to sleep."

She says, "One night, the dictator had a dream. I don't know
what. He tossed and turned all night. When he woke up, he had the
fortune-teller brought to him. It was early in the morning. The sun
wasn't up yet. I went and hid in my closets. He told the
fortune-teller something. I don't know what. Then his soldiers came
and got her and I could hear them dragging her away, down the
stairs, out into the garden. They shot her, and in a little while I
went out to the garden and pulled off her shoes. I was happy for
her."

"I never asked him why he killed her or why he killed anybody.
When we were married, I never asked him a question. I was like the
fortune-teller. I never said anything unless he asked me a
question. I never looked at his face. I used to stare at his shoes
instead. I think he thought I was staring at his shoes because they
weren't clean, or shiny enough. He would have them polished until I
could see my face in them. He wore a size eight and a half. I tried
his shoes on once but they pinched the sides of my feet. I have
peasant's feet. His shoes were narrow as coffins."

Tears slide down the dictator's wife's face and she licks at
them. She says, "I had a daughter. Did I tell you that? The night
before she was born, the dictator had another dream. He woke up
with a shout and grabbed my arm. He told me his dream. He said that
he had dreamed that our child would grow up and that she would kill
him."

She doesn't say anything for a while. Visitors may grow
uncomfortable, look away at the rows of shoes in glass boxes. The
bed and the dictator's wife are reflected in each pane of glass.
The dictator's wife says, "When my daughter was born, they put her
in a box. They threw the box in the harbor and the box sank. I
never gave her a name. She never wore any shoes. She was bald just
like me."

The dictator's wife is silent again. In the silence, the glass
boxes seem to buzz faintly. There is a smell as if someone is
standing nearby. All the people under the bed are listening. Far
away, the other old woman is humming as she dusts the cases. At
this point, the visitor asks, hesitantly, "So how did she grow up
and kill the dictator?"

The dictator's wife says, "She was dead so she couldn't. One day
the dictator was picking strawberries in his garden. He stepped on
a piece of metal. It went right though his shoe. The dictator's
foot got infected. He went to his bed, and he died there six days
later."

The dictator's wife's voice gets scratchy and small. She yawns.
"Nobody knew what to do. Some people thought I should be executed.
Other people thought that I was a heroine. They wanted to elect me
to office. I didn't want to be dead yet and I didn't want to stay
there, so I packed up the shoes. I packed up every single shoe. I
went to my aunt and she packed up Effie's things. Effie had gotten
so tall! She was walking around outside without a hat on, as if
sunlight wouldn't hurt her. We didn't recognize each other. We got
on a ship and went as far away as we could. That was here. I had
ninety-four steamer trunks and there wasn't anything in them but
shoes."

The dictator's wife stops talking. She stares greedily at the
visitor, as if the visitor is delicious. She looks as if she would
like to eat the visitor up. She looks as if she would like to eat
the visitor up in one bite, spit out the visitor's shoes like peach
stones. The visitor can hear Effie coming down the aisle, but the
dictator's wife doesn't say another word. She just lies there on
the bed with her teeth out again, in the glass beside the bed.

Effie motions for the visitor to follow her. Each case has a
name printed on a tiny card. You can't see over the top of the
stacked cases, but you can see through them. Light has collected in
the boxes and the glass is warm.

Effie says, "Here. These shoes belonged to a famous opera
singer."

The opera singer's shoes have tall green heels. They have ivory
buttons up the side. The visitor looks down at Effie's feet. She is
wearing wooden sandals—Dr. Scholl's—with thick red leather buckles.
Her toenails are red. They match the red buckles. When she sees the
visitor looking, she bends over. She turns a small key in the side
of the shoe. Red wheels pop out of the bottom of the Dr. Scholls.
She turns the key in the other shoe, and then she straightens up.
Now she's quite tall.

She rubs a glass case with the dusty dress one more time, and
then raps it sharply. It rings like a bell. "Museum's closed now,"
she says to the visitor. "There's a three o'clock matinee with a
happy ending. I want to see it." She skates off down the narrow
glass aisle, balanced precariously on her splendid shoes.

4. Happy ending.

The man and the woman are holding hands. They are getting
married soon. If you looked under the table, you'd see that they
aren't wearing any shoes. Their shoes are up on the table instead.
The fortune-teller says, "It's just luck that you found each other,
you know. Most people aren't so lucky." She is staring at the
shoes—a pair of old black boots, a pair of canvas tennis shoes—as
if she has never seen such a splendid, such an amazing pair of
shoes. No one has ever presented her with such a pair of shoes.
That's what the look on her face says.

"You're going to get a lot of nice wedding presents," she says.
"I don't want to spoil any surprises, but you'll get two coffee
makers. You should probably keep them both. You might break
one."

"What else?" says the man.

"You want to know if you'll have kids, right? Yeah, you'll have
kids, a couple of them. Smart kids. Smart grandkids too. Redheads.
Do you garden?"

The man and woman look at each other. They shrug.

"Well, I see a garden," the fortune-teller says. "Yes, a garden,
definitely. You'll grow roses. Roses and tomatoes. Moses supposes
his toeses are roses. But Moses supposes erroneously. Do you know
that song? Squashes. Is that right?"

"Cole Porter. Squash," the man says. "Squash is the plural of
squash."

"Okay," the fortune-teller says. "Squash, plural not singular,
and tomatoes and roses. That's when you get older. What else do you
want to know?"

"We get old together?" the woman says.

"Well, looks like," the fortune-teller says, "um, it looks good
to me. Yeah. You get old together. White hair and everything. You
grow things in the garden, your grandkids come over, you have
friends, they come over too. It's a party every night." She turns
the boot over and studies the heel. "Huh."