Ballet Slippers

"Oh, this is gonna blow up in our faces, Joan. I can feel it."

"Shut up, Ike."

That did shut him up. Ike Martindale didn't like being chided by his wife, least of all in front of their friends. It embarrassed the hell out of him. It really mortified him, petrified him. So when Joan told him to shut up, he unfailingly tucked his smallish mouth into the shade of his shaggy mustache and lowered his sad beagle eyes to his feet.

Their good friends, the Horners, hardly noticed the moment of friction. Joan had been telling Ike to shut up for years and Ike had been playing the kicked dog the whole time. It was sort of their schtick.

"Come on, Joan," Gracie Horner said, tapping one long, vermillion nail against the glass of the table. She shifted the cards in her hand. "Play something, for Chrissake."

"Hold your horses," Joan said. She knew better than to tell Gracie Horner to shut up. Those red nails were sharp and her memory was long.

Despite the pleasant sunshine on the patio, the soothing sound of a distant lawn mower, the easy gossip of the two women, Ike could not let go of thinking about the loan. It was still bothering him ten minutes later, the way Joan didn't want to talk about it. She was all gung-ho to risk losing their house just to fix up her mother's old place upstate, no matter that the market was failing.

"Really, we ought to call Mort back and ask him to put a hold on things," he murmured, not to her in particular, but more to his socks and sandals, which kept him comfortable both in the house and on the patio and never reproached him.

"What?" Joan asked, but she wasn't listening and didn't care.

Mike Horner puffed away at his cigar, which he only dared smoke because they were outside where it wouldn't give Joan a headache. He rolled it in his fingers as he studied Ike. It was hard to believe that an old navy man like Ike Martindale, thick shouldered, and now thick in the middle, would let himself be counted out the way Joan did him. Especially when it came to finances. He had always been such a cautious fellow when it came to money. He put both his boys through college without borrowing or scholarships. The last was nothing to brag about and Mike knew for a fact Joan was touchy about the boys not getting any scholarships. She was also touchy about them going to state colleges, which made Ike proud as a peacock because of the money he saved. Chalk that up to another way Ike and Joan didn't see eye to eye. Hard to do, Mike thought with a smile, when Ike was scared to look his wife straight in the face.

Maybe Ike sensed Mike's gaze. He glanced up just like a dog sensing a sympathetic hand in petting distance. Inwardly, Mike cringed. What a weakling Ike had become over the years. Outwardly, he put on one of those big smiles of his that made him popular at the office. At least, it made him popular with the guys and some of the older gals. The younger women whispered to one another about how creepy that smile was, not that Mike knew it. Most of his blind spots had to do with how charming other people found him.

Wearing that big dazzler of a smile, he said, "Ike, you ought to call Bill Sarsgaard down at First Federal. If he gives you a loan, you can bet things will work out. He doesn't give them out lightly."

"Really?"

But now Joan was staring Mike down and her dark eyes were cold enough to dim his smile. She absent-mindedly dropped a card, picked up her cigarette, which had been smoldering on the edge of the table, and said, "Mike, don't meddle in this."

To her husband, she said, "I don't even know why you're bringing this up in front of the Horners. It's embarrassing. How many times have I told you, it's tacky to argue about money in front of people."

Gracie pushed out a gusty laugh. "We aren't just people, Joan. We're your best friends. You guys have been bitching and moaning about money in front of us for twenty years. We still get a laugh out of the time you two lost it over the cost of Junie's ballet slippers."

"Uh-oh," Mike said.

This was how you got Joan Martindale to stop bickering with her husband; all Gracie had to do was bring up the ballet slippers to get the two of them at each other's throats. It was as reliable as Cronkite.

"What's with you and the slippers, Gracie?" Joan asked. She glared out through a puff of smoke, her husband forgotten for the time being. He was already cradling his head in his hands and staring out over the garden wall to where the neighbor's fruit trees were waving and bristling in the June breeze.

""What do you mean, what's with me and the slippers?"

"They were goddam dance shoes and Junie needed them on account of his back. He only ever went to dance class on account of his condition."

"They were satin and they tied on with ribbons."

"Fuck you."

Gracie laughed again. "You're so touchy about those damn slippers."

"Shoes." Now Joan was grinding out her cigarette in the ashtray. "When you say slippers, it's like you might as well hire a skywriter to fly over town and spell out 'Ike Martindale Junior's a fairy.'"

"Who cares if he is a fairy?" Gracie asked. The husbands didn't dare make eye contact. They were both squarely watching the neighbor's fruit trees.

"He's not!"

"But if he was, who cares?" Gracie asked.

"Lots of people care, you idiot."

"And that's exactly why you're so damned touchy. You think people think Gene Kelly's a fairy cause he dances?"

Mike twisted his cigar in his fingers. Against his better judgment, he heard himself say, "I've heard things."

"What have you heard?" Gracie asked. She scratched the tip of her nose with one of those thick vermillion nails, perhaps to remind her husband she was packing heat.

Joan stood up abruptly, putting down her hand of cards. Wanting an excuse for standing, she went to the bar cart and poured herself the last of the daiquiri out of the blender. It was more liquid than slush, but she didn't care. She only poured it to give her something to do that wasn't slapping Gracie in the face.

It was easy for Gracie to say Junie being a faggot wouldn't be a big deal. She and Mike were childless and didn't know how much heartache children caused. Gracie'd grown up with theater people in the city and knew the type well. She had good stories to tell at parties, but just knowing a couple fruits from New York didn't make it hard to look people in the eye at church. Having one in the family would be a whole other thing.

It didn't matter that Junie was seeing a nice girl from his office; that they'd been seeing each other for a couple of years. Every single time Gracie brought up those fucking slippers - well, anyway she could admit what they were to herself anyhow - it reminded Joan of the time she and Gracie came upon Junie by the pool one summer twilight when he was ten. Almost hidden in the long shadows of the privet hedge, her youngest boy was reciting Bette Davis lines from Jezebel, twirling about defiantly and flirtatiously, his hands held out like they were resting on a hoop skirt.

For just a second there'd been something so pretty and coquettish about him that it was almost endearing. Then Joan caught that look on Gracie's face, the pursed lips and sucked in cheeks, a mocking little expression that seemed to say she knew something.

Joan knew that look all too well. They always gave it to each other when they were silently calling bullshit. If a friend was going on about her husband's business trips but they had been finding him guilty of adultery in their secret jury of two for years, it was that quick exchange that said, "He's spending time with his other family." When someone said they had decided not to take a summer trip because they had too much to take care of at home and Gracie and Joan already knew they were having money trouble, those pursed lips and hollowed cheeks said without a sound that they were going to talk later about what was really happening.

That look had always been their code, a promise of a good chat and some laughs, but seeing it turned on her own son had left a mark. Joan wasn't proud of what it brought out in her that summer night. She'd sent Junie flying into the basement with tears on his cheeks and their mother and son bond had never quite healed from it.

Maybe that was partly why Gracie could still send her through the roof if she brought up the damned slippers. Anyway, she'd fixed that, pulled him out of dance class the very next day. She still gave the instructor cold looks all these years later when she came upon him at the super market or on the street. He just raised one eyebrow and gave her back a little smile as if to say he knew what she was thinking and it wasn't his fault.

Now Mike was saying maybe it was someone else he heard was a homosexual and not Gene Kelly. It might have been Donald O'Conner. He wasn't sure anymore, he said, and it didn't matter anyway. He rested his cigar in the ashtray, said, "You women care about that stuff more than us, I think. Back in the army, there were guys like that. They never gave me any grief and I returned the favor."

Gracie's thin eyebrows leapt up to her bright blond bangs. "You know I don't care about it. Don't I still write letters to Billie Anderson, my old friend from Brooklyn? Don't I always say it's good to get a letter from old Billie? No, sir. I'm not the one who gets bothered by it."

Now Joan was fuming so hard her face was red. So how come the sucked in cheeks and the little gathered up mouth, she wanted to know. If she was so goddamn modern about it, how come that secretive glance, like they were going to dish later about her own son?

Ike ventured a comment, "There were some fellas like that in the navy, too. I never had a problem with them. But some of the guys did. You betcha. Took this one little guy one night, skinny little Pole from Indiana, I think, or maybe Ohio. Took him right out of his bed in the middle of the night and stripped him and held his head under water until he passed out."

He shook his head, "We thought they'd killed him for a second, but then he came back."

"And what did you do while they were trying to kill him?" Joan asked. She was sure she'd never heard this story before. She didn't like it one bit. "Just let them do it, like a coward?"

"Joan," Mike said.

She stared him down until he looked away. Taking a swallow of watery daiquiri, she grimaced and put the glass down hard. "Answer me, Ike."

He was still studying the swaying trees. He shook his head. "The water came out of his mouth just like a fountain. Came right up out in a column. Then he started to cough and thrash and someone, I don't know who, came and turned him over on his side and pounded on his back."

He patted the breast pocket of his camp shirt and pulled out a flattened pack of Camels. Lighting a cigarette, he said, "I guess he was lucky he lived."

"Lucky he lived?" Joan was shooting daggers at him.

Gracie was rearranging the cards in her hand, bouncing one foot up and down vigorously. Part of her still wanted to have it out with Joan; they hadn't had a good fight in a couple of years. Still, if Ike wanted to have his say now, when a cloud blacker than her dyed hair was floating over Joan's head, she was all for letting someone else take the brunt of it. Mike got up and started fishing around on the bottom shelf of the bar cart. He found the heel of a bottle of gin and an unopened can of tonic.

"Lucky?" Joan said.

"Lucky he lived and smart not to say anything," Ike said. "Otherwise, they'd have booted him out. You know how it goes with that type. It was an ugly situation but it could have been worse."

Now Joan was looking at Gracie's swinging foot. Gracie stilled herself. She knew her friend better than Joan knew herself. She was wondering about how Junie managed to live in the city and get home from work every night without having his head held under water or his lights punched out. It didn't matter how guarded that boy had been since that night at the pool when he was ten.

He could plant his feet heavy like his father and keep his head down and walk with the squared shoulders of a career admiral. There was still something different about Ike Martindale Junior that you could sense from down the street, something that made him not like other men, maybe more like women. If Gracie had thought more than once he might get his ass whooped one day, she knew it kept Joan up at night.

It would be far better for everyone if the Martindale's just went back to fighting about the loan. Licking her lips, Gracie said, "You know what you could do, Joan, is take the wall out between the kitchen and the living room."

"Huh?" Joan's gaze was as harsh as a pot scrubber.

"At your mother's vacation house. You could take out that wall and then you'd see the bay from the kitchen."

"Where do you suppose I put that hutch of hers if there's no wall, Miss Interior Decorator?" Joan picked up her cards again, rearranged them with a creased brow. Mike slid back in his chair with his gin and tonic and took up his cigar. Studying his clever wife with a hint of a smile, he chomped at the tip, tasting the tobacco on his tongue.

"Get rid of it," Gracie said, playing her hand. "You hate it anyway."

"I do hate it," Joan said. "I'll give it to Ted and Cindy. They still don't have enough furniture."

Gracie almost said that was a good idea, that there was no way Junie would let that colonial clunker into his fancy Asian style apartment, but she bit her tongue.

Instead, she said, "You just got to get Ike to agree to the loan so you can make that place really nice."

Joan narrowed her eyes at her husband, who had sucked at his cigarette so hard the cherry was as long and red as one of Gracie's nails. "That won't be a problem."