Martha Cooney

Shoes are a good way to play pretend. You can try on a lifestyle without investing in rodeo school or Coachella tickets. I got by as an adjunct professor for a while on the power of my pilgrim-style “professional” shoes. I couldn’t explain APA format, but by God, I had my ugly, serious loafers, and they gave me power and authority. I don’t professor anymore – I’m not meant to do a job where I have to be friends with an email system or iron pants before I put them on – and after my last day of class I stopped at the thrift store on the way home to take the shoes off my feet and put them right into the donation bin, because the game was up. 

 

In college I did a study abroad semester in Ireland. Over in England one weekend, after I watched parades of British girls debuting the ballet flat, I bought a pair in an indoor market stall stacked high with shoeboxes. They were stiff and shiny vinyl, like someone had gotten creative with scissors and a pool club lounge chair, and so bright white it was suspicious. 

 

The white flats would be a good way to continue my playing that I was a European girl wearing the cool new stuff available in their fast-fashion stores before the U.S. caught on. My favorite thing I bought was a hot pink tube top that I wore to the airport when I went to meet my friend Cassie, because I wanted to make it easy for her to find me. 

 

Cassie was joining me for a week of travel before I flew home. She’d kept me updated all semester with the same-old same-old from school and I sent her detailed emails about the student pub and the Irish lingo (bathroom: “bog”; toilet paper: “bogroll.”) Cassie and I had met working at summer camp, went to the same college, and had an intense sister-like friendship where we loved hanging out but annoyed each other so much that we always bickered. She hated that I was flaky and made poor choices, and I hated that she was critical and overbearing. On the other hand, we had so much fun. 

 

“Are you sure it’s a good idea for you guys to travel together?” one of our friends asked me. She had a point, but Cassie and I already knew each other’s quirks. How bad could it be? 

 

It was exciting but strange to see each other after half a year apart. At home we had done everything together and now I’d been chumming up with strangers in another country acting like every other liberated American student saying “crisps” and “trousers.” Right away she looked sideways at my hot pink tube top and I felt on the defensive. 

 

We pretended the tension didn’t exist. In London on the first day we bought a big bar of Cadbury chocolate wrapped in shiny purple foil and shared it while we watched the boats on the Thames and gushed over our plans. Between the fifteen-euro budget airline flights, a couple of hostel stays and crashing with another study-abroad friend in Germany, we’d pieced together time in London, a stretch in Munich where our friend would tour us and translate, and a day in Paris (we’d wing it). We promised to live lean as a team. Cassie wanted to keep to her budget and I didn’t have much left over after sustaining myself during the semester with my babysitting job (Diapers: “nappies.”) 

 

By the time we got on the sleeper train to Paris at the end of the week, Cassie and I were distraught at what we’d spent, and we were sick of each other. 

 

She was practical about logistics. I was better at troubleshooting in the moment and enjoying the unexpected. She was fed up that I was flighty and didn’t pay attention to maps or details, and she thought I was impractical and too friendly with strangers and needed to shut up and focus on the task at hand. I thought she missed the point of enjoying travel and I hated that she was picky and criticized. I was fun, and she was right, and we couldn’t stand it. 

 

After a buffer of other friends during the week we now had a full twenty-four hours alone for a day we still hadn’t planned and had no money for. We were worn out and hungover and neither of us slept much on the train. 

 

I tried to get in the mindset. Before our seven a.m. arrival I pulled out my white flats. I still hadn’t worn them and they were the obvious choice for today. White flats would let me pretend I was a young woman walking around Paris, which, yes, I know, is what I was, but you know what I mean. What was more Parisian than a white ballet-style shoe? What was better for a cobblestone and a fountain dance with a pigeon; for a cup of coffee and a secondhand cigarette?

 

Next to the shoes I laid out jeans and – I was at the end of my clean laundry – an I Heart New York t-shirt. 

 

I’m not proud of it, but we’re being honest here: At the time I wore flat shoes without socks. It was sweaty and gross, but no one was going to cramp my style. We rolled into the city and I braced myself against the train window to work my bare feet into the stiff white containers. The hot vinyl stuck to my skin.

 

Cassie looked down at my shoes. “That’s what you’re wearing to walk around all day?” she said. She’d been picking at me all week about clothes. She was a practical, jeans and t-shirt girl, and rolled her eyes at my going-out tops, little skirts and choice to wear flip flops to the botanical gardens. Well, I wasn’t going to apologize for turning into a new person who wore trendy shoes and went to nightclubs. I clomped off the train. The shoes were uncomfortable, but they’d break in.

 

She followed in her Nikes, and after we left our bags at the hostel we found a cafe. All right. We were stuck with each other, but we were in Paris, having coffee with little spoons, while morning light came through green-budded spring trees. Let’s enjoy this and figure out what we’re going to do. We made a list: Notre Dame, fresh-baked bread (me), creme brulee (Cassie), the Louvre museum for Cassie if she could get a last-minute ticket (I’d stay outside and talk to the birds – a free activity), and the Eiffel Tower. 

 

We didn’t have a map – it was 2004; mobile phones were for pay-by-the-minute calls – and figured we’d pick one up somewhere. Since we could see the Eiffel Tower rising over the city, we decided to just walk toward it and improvise with the rest of the list along the way.

 

Not having a map made it hard to find a map. We had no French and couldn’t read signs. We wandered, disoriented. The sharp edges of my shoes cut into the backs of my ankles, but I didn’t say anything. I started to browse a box of black and white postcards at a market stall. A man yelled and shooed us away.

 

“Why did you have to wear your I Love New York shirt?” Cassie said, all scornful. “The French hate Americans.” 

 

I had never considered it. Even me? 

 

Along with ripping up my ankles the white shoes sliced red gashes into the tops of my feet. Every step and repeated motion of vinyl against skin made it worse. Finally I said something out loud and Cassie said she had told me so. 

 

We argued over which way was south. The million silent curly-haired statues and gold fish sculptures were too sophisticated to come to life and point the way. We found the Notre Dame cathedral – you know, from the Disney movie? – and moved inside with an assembly of tourists, where we saw some things and people clicked disposable cameras. Encouraged by sightseeing success and feeling more warm toward each other, we decided it was time for lunch and stood in a long line at a crepe shop window. 

 

I only had a few words in my pocket but could handle hello, yes, please, and thank you. Bonjour, oui, s’il vous plait, merci. I did know Spanish and Cassie studied Latin, so there were some sweater threads of clues to pull at otherwise, but it didn’t help much. “What do you think oeuf is?” she asked me. It was the cheapest crepe on the menu. “I hope it’s not egg,” she said. “I hate eggs.” She decided it was probably a vegetable or cheese, and ordered the oeuf. 

 

I paid twenty cents more for the certainty that jambon was ham. The guy at the window repeated my choice back to me. The assistant in my brain whispered Remember we’re not using English. “Si, por favor,” I said. Whoops, wrong turn. The man handed me my change. “Gracias,” I said automatically.

 

“Stop using Spanish,” Cassie said. I told her it was obviously an accident. “Then just don’t say anything!” she said. Please, God, I prayed. Take her away. 

 

We settled at a plaza table with our paper-wrapped crepes. I bit into mine and tasted ham. Cassie peeled hers open and saw the oeuf.

 

“It’s egg,” she said, furious, and threw it down. 

 

She refused to get another one. I remembered the previous night’s strudel in Munich. We were at a beer hall and decided to split one apple strudel rather than pay for two. We both dug in for a healthy bite and good scrape of vanilla sauce, but Cassie’s fork came back in right away for another scoop, so I got back in there too, to make sure I got my share. We each sensed the other’s aggression and started eating faster. The strudel was destroyed in less than a minute, and there was a shift in the air: from now on it was every man for himself.

 

I did not offer her any jambon. Cassie glared at the table, then me, then my crepe, and her face went from mad to sad. She looked over the plaza in self-pity. The sun came out and smacked us in the face. 

 

We walked on in the vague direction of the Tower. Cassie sulked over her oeuf. I shuffled behind her and my ankles bled openly and left a trail on the cobblestones. The white shoes had played me. They weren’t Parisian. They were shoes made to be worn for thirty seconds during a winky 1960s 7UP ad photo shoot where a woman in chartreuse cigarette pants does a fun leap over a curb while swinging a white plastic purse that matches her shoes. I wished for Dr. Scholl to come, lay me on a bench, absolve me and carry me the rest of the way. 

 

I couldn’t find any flip flops or cheap shoes for sale anywhere. I found a shop that sold band-aids (un pansement), put the band-aids on, and bled through them. I folded down the shoe backs to form makeshift mules like Carmela Soprano. Cassie yelled at me for slowing us down. 

 

I dreamed of being alone, where I could wander at leisure with my fried brain and stare at statues. I would enjoy a (five minutes only) gentle spring rain while I stood dry under a striped awning and watched the drops splash on grateful cobbles and roll, beautiful, down stone walls. Then I’d step out into cooled-off air with the sky romantic and gray, walk the river, spin around on a long umbrella (las parapluie), toss it to a gentleman, and dip away, all mysterious, into the mist. Also, it would be acceptable for my feet to be bare.  

 

The Louvre was too crowded and had no tickets available. 

 

We sat under a cafe awning so Cassie could get her creme brulee; it’s a sweet golden custard that gets torched on top so it comes out with brown speckles of char. I didn’t ask if she cared that the key ingredient in creme brulee was oeuf. If she didn’t know I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her. 

 

I tried not to be sad when the waiter put a glass bottle of still Vittel on the table. We hadn’t thought about being prepared with water, that the price of buying plastic bottles along the route would add up; we hadn’t thought about how we couldn’t camel up for free at cafes because you could not ask for faucet juice. The cost of hydration was out of budget. The sun shriveled our brains. 

 

It only got hotter. I sweated through my I Heart New York t-shirt as a crush of other Americans crowded us at street crossings. Do you think we brought hats or sunglasses or were willing and able to buy them? I didn’t own sunscreen; I’d been in Ireland for five months. Every Irish girl I knew kept a tube sock designated for applying self-tanner. The reason there are so many great writers from Ireland is because the weather is miserable. They stay inside and get inspired by the gloom. 

 

Apparently Paris has a lot of history and culture to take in. I wouldn’t know. I was in the seventh hell-circle battling Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, reduced so easily from a self-actualizing European traveler to a withered wretch with wrung-out body and soul and nowhere to go but through. 

 

I hobbled like a witch (la sorciere) specked with blood (sang) up the riverbank. Cassie and I blamed each other for not planning better and argued over which way to go. The Tower seemed so close, but I swear it kept moving. Now we were on some long boulevard with trees on either side. Cassie crossed over and we walked on separate sides of the street, refusing to engage but not letting the other completely out of sight. 

 

I hope you’re as mad at me as I am at my twenty-year-old self for wasting Paris. If I could go now I’d be a goddamn Girl Scout. I’d carry one of those stupid giant CrossFit water bottles and wear the ugliest shoes I could find. I’d have a hand-drawn backup map to James Baldwin’s writing cafe and wherever Zelda Fitzgerald got her hair cut. I’d look up ahead of time how to meet the Phantom of the Opera. 

 

At some point Cassie crossed back over without saying anything. We walked nearer to each other, but didn’t speak. Eventually someone suggested dinner. There was enough energy to either stay mad or go get food, but not both. We went to the nearest cafe. 

​

I felt secure with my friend jambon and got a baguette with ham and butter. I hoped it would be monster size, with surprise sides (“It’s all-you-can-eat night! Welcome to France!”) It rolled in solo and unapologetic with no entourage of greens, fries or short pickles. I sensed the sandwich was insulting me, like it was doing me a favor by letting me eat it. 

 

I put the meal receipt in my wallet for a souvenir. The harder I scraped the bottom of the pig, the less fun this routine was for me. At the start of the trip it was exciting but now every itemized list of spending was tinged with pain and regret, like an affair.

 

The Tower played hard to get until the end, making us follow false paths and walk in loops to prove ourselves worthy. Finally we reached the damn thing. Was it worth it? I’ll tell you this. There’s a big lawn in front of it and I sat down, took off my shoes and dabbed my bare feet on tender grass for a half hour. Draw from that what you will. 

 

After going to the top of the Tower, Cassie was a lot happier. The sun set, it cooled off, and we walked toward the Metro station. We were on a stone bridge with a nice view of the Tower just as it started to get dark. I dared complain again about my shoes (I know; I know.) Cassie said if I would just shut up she would switch with me, and she gave me the shoes right off her feet.

 

My flats were blood-rusty and streaked with black grime; she put them on right over her socks. They looked ridiculous on her. Had I looked like that? I took her sneakers and put them on my feet. 

 

They felt so good I almost cried. From now on I would shop only in the senior citizen shoe aisle. I would get on the Stride Rite catalog mailing list. Forget being European. I would wear a fanny pack and a sensible hat. I didn’t care. 

 

Cassie walked ahead a few steps, and then the Eiffel Tower lit up. It was the light show that happened every night at dusk. Twenty thousand lights on the tower sparkled and bounced like pinballs. We both stopped and watched.

 

I looked down and smiled at my feet. Cassie beamed at the lights. “It’s so beautiful!” she said. She had her Paris and we were on the same team again. Thank God this day was over.

​

The magic lasted just a few blocks – she insisted on switching back because my shoes had “no support!” (Now who’s complaining?!) – but the next morning we hated each other less. I wore my own sneakers to the last stop, a bakery for fresh bread. We were both sunburned bright pink, like pigs, and at a cafe table we tore apart a loaf of bread each. 

 

We skimmed the surface of the day before – it was too soon to pick the scab off completely – and laughed a little. We decided the worst part had been the walking. The best part was the Eiffel Tower. Cassie said the absolute best was when we were on the bridge and the lights came on. I agreed but didn’t elaborate. I knew she meant the lights. I meant the shoes. I didn’t want to say it out loud. 

​

​

​

​

​