And now—surprise—there was a letter from Mike Monsky. What was he thinking, writing a letter to her? She supposed she should be grateful he sent it in care of Frekki and Frekki put it in a plain envelope and forwarded it to her. Still, what if Rusty saw it? What if Irene did?
Dear Miri,
I’m back in Los Altos and I’ve shown your photo, the one Frekki took of you in front of the Paper Mill Playhouse, to Adela and the boys. All three are anxious to meet you and hope you can visit over the summer.
Yours,
Dad (Mike Monk)
Dad? He had the guts to call himself Dad? And Adela wasn’t surprised? She didn’t get angry when she found out he had a secret child? Maybe she believed Mike Monk when he told her it was a surprise to him to learn he had a fifteen-year-old daughter. Maybe Adela believed whatever he told her. Or maybe they had a big fight over it. Maybe Adela accused him of being a liar. Liar, liar, pants on fire, the little boys would have sung, circling their father. Why did he have to go and write to her? Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? But was that what she wanted—for him to leave her alone? She didn’t know. She folded the letter into smaller and smaller squares, then shoved it into a sock. It could have been a piece of lint. Toe jam in the bottom of her sock. Rusty would never bother to unroll a pair of socks. As far as Miri knew, Rusty never snooped around in her room. She was pretty sure Rusty trusted her. She was just covering all her bases.
—
TODAY SHE HAD a morning appointment with Dr. O and Rusty was going with her. “I need a pair of shoes,” Rusty said. “And Dr. Osner said he’d fix my chipped tooth at the end of your appointment. Two birds with one stone.”
The shoe store, Kolber Sladkus, was next to Three Brothers Luncheonette on the street level of the Martin Building, where Dr. O had his office. While Rusty was trying on shoes, black suede pumps with three inch heels and a peep toe, on sale to make room for the spring line, Miri slipped her feet into the fluoroscope machine, where she peered into the viewfinder to see her bones, eerily green inside her shoes. Seeing her bones that way made her think of something from outer space. The boys at school were all walking around like zombies with their arms outstretched, making the girls scream. Winky Herkovitz said a flying saucer was causing the planes to crash. You couldn’t see it. It was hovering above Elizabeth and when it wanted to cause a plane to crash, it did. What was it with the boys in her class? Was it that they liked the idea of spaceships and zombies? Was it too scary to think about what really made the planes crash?
Rusty paraded around the shoe store in her peep-toe heels, admiring them in the mirror. “What do you think?” she asked Miri.
“Nice,” Miri said.
“They’re for dress, not work. I might leave them at the office for special occasions.”
How often did Rusty wear dress shoes? Maybe to the theater. Maybe to a holiday party.
Miri wasn’t listening as Rusty went on about the shoes, until Rusty surprised her by asking, “How about it, honey? Would you like a new pair of shoes for Passover?”
“Passover? That’s not until April this year.”
“I know…but look at these patent-leather slingbacks. Aren’t they cute?”
Rusty was acting strange today, but if she was offering new shoes, Miri wasn’t going to argue.
Mrs. Kolber, who had fitted Miri for shoes as long as she could remember, brought out the slingbacks for Miri to try. “They’re expensive,” Miri said, eyeing the price on the box.
“You know what Nana says,” Rusty told her. “They’re your feet. You’ll need them for the rest of your life. Treat them well.”
Irene was proud of her pretty, well-shaped, well-cared-for feet. She massaged them with Pond’s cold cream every night. No bunions for her from wearing shoes that didn’t fit. Mrs. Kolber didn’t have to pad Irene’s shoes, like she did with some of her friends, to make sure she’d be comfortable in her everyday oxfords and her black pumps.
“You only live once,” Mrs. Kolber sang. That was probably how she got customers to shell out money for expensive new shoes.
Miri got out of her saddle shoes, pulled off her thick white socks and pulled on the peds Mrs. Kolber offered. When she slipped her feet into the new shoes and stood up, Mrs. Kolber pressed on her toes to see how close they came to the toe box, then told her to walk around to make sure she wasn’t slipping out of the slingback. She’d never had slingback shoes. They made her feel like dancing.
While the shoes were being wrapped, Rusty wrote a check to pay for them. Instead of biting her lip the way she usually did when it came to parting with money, she was humming to herself. She hummed in the elevator all the way to Dr. O’s office on the third floor. Miri wasn’t sure about this happy-go-lucky Rusty. It made her nervous. On the way down the hall they passed the medical lab and Miri poked her head in the way she always did, to see the fat white rabbits in their cages. Natalie told her they had something to do with finding out if you were pregnant. Something about urine was involved. But neither of them understood how it worked. Once, Miri had a blood test at the lab to see if she was anemic. She wasn’t.
In the waiting room of Dr. O’s office, a little boy played with a small dog on the floor while his mother sat on the sofa and leafed through a magazine. As soon as Miri entered, the dog ran to her. “Fred!” Miri picked him up. “What are you doing here?”
“You know Fred?” the mother asked. Her English was heavily accented and she was good-looking, with big blue eyes, blond baloney curls hanging down her back, big breasts and just plump enough to make the boys whistle.
“Fred belongs to my friend Mason,” Miri said, trying to talk slowly, pronouncing every syllable in every word, in case she didn’t understand.
“Very nice boy, Mason. I know from Janet. Always making us laugh. I’m Polina and this, my son, Stash.”
Oh. Polina. Miri got a pang, thinking that Mason was friends with her.
Rusty looked up from the magazine she’d been flipping through. “I’m Rusty Ammerman, and this is my daughter, Miri.”
“Very nice meeting,” Polina said.
“Mason told me you live…” Miri began. “I mean lived in one of the houses that was hit but you were lucky because you weren’t home.”
“Very lucky. And lucky Miss Daisy took us home to stay. Miss Daisy so wonderful. Like mother to us. But we need find new place to live.”
“Maybe we can help,” Rusty said. “We have a family friend who owns apartment buildings.”
Miri looked over at Rusty. Was she talking about Ben Sapphire?
“Would be so good,” Polina said.
“How did Fred get here?” Miri asked.
“Fred!” Stash said, clapping his hands. Fred barked.
The door to the inside office opened and Christina stepped out. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but we can’t allow pets in the office, not even in the waiting area.”
“Fred!” Stash said again, but Fred didn’t bark this time.
“I know it’s Fred,” Christina said. “But even Fred can’t be in the waiting room. It’s against the rules.”
Polina stood up. “Come, Stash. We take Fred for walk now.” She turned to Christina. “Please tell Miss Daisy we come back later, for ride home.” To Rusty she said, “Very nice meet you.” And to Miri, “Very nice meet you, too.”
Before Miri could say anything else Christina ushered her into the office. “We’re ready for you, Miri.”
Christina was professional around her. She clipped on the white towel over the cape, and prepared the little pleated paper cup. How did they get the pleats into the paper? Miri wondered. Was it someone’s job or was there a machine that did it? How come she’d never seen pleated cups anywhere but at Dr. O’s office? She supposed other dentists also used them. But she’d never been to any other dentist. Christina poured a small amount of Lavoris mouthwash into the cup. Miri rinsed and spit before Dr. O came in, asking, “How’s my favorite patient?” He probably said that to everyone but Miri liked hearing it anyway.
He began to poke around in her mouth, with Christina assisting. “What music would you like to hear today, Miss Mirabelle?”
Dr. O could whistle any tune, from the Top 40 to classical. Miri thought he’d surely win if he went on Arthur Godfrey’s talent show. “Surprise me,” Miri told him. And he did, whistling “How High the Moon.” Miri relaxed, closed her eyes and thought of Mason. She cringed a couple of times during the drilling of the small cavity but it wasn’t that bad. Just as Dr. O promised, she didn’t need Novocain.
When the tooth was filled and Miri had rinsed, Dr. O said, “So how are you doing, Mirabelle?”
“Okay.”
“Not worried about anything?”
“What would I worry about?” Only everything. Was he going to ask her about Natalie, and if so, what would she tell him?
“Does your jaw ever ache in the morning?”
“Sometimes.” How did he know? Please don’t tell my mother if I have a terrible disease.
“Looks like you’re grinding your teeth.”