“There was an argument when we got home from London that evening. I was supposed to be in bed, but I heard them and I crept out onto the landing and leaned over the banisters to try to listen. It was very bad. I couldn’t hear what it was about, but he was shouting and she was crying and shrieking. And then she went quiet and it was just him shouting.” Her fingernails scratched, now, at the tabletop. “She didn’t come down to breakfast the next morning. She stayed up in her room for the whole day. The birthday party was canceled. She never wore the dress or the satin slippers.”

“Do you suppose your father had discovered something?”

“Possibly. She was already changing, on our way home from London. Changing back to her usual self. We sat in the back of the Daimler together, and I watched her face closing down. It was like watching someone die.” She sipped her cognac. “Back then, there was always a lot of space and silence around my mother. A remoteness. She hardly ever played with me or talked to me. I’d play the clown, misbehave—anything—just to make her see me. There were moments when she’d really come alive. Just a scattering of moments through my whole childhood, that’s all. And that one day in London.”

She raised the glass to her lips again, but it was empty. “She’s different now. She used to hide herself in the space and silence, but now she’s afraid of it. She fills it with ceaseless, pointless wittering. She’s a bag of nerves, and she tries to calm the nerves with drink.” Suddenly she frowned and looked up at him. “But I’m getting away from the point of this. It was about the shoes. The reason shoes are important to me.”

“Your perfect Mary Janes bought on the one perfect day when your mother was happy.”

She was staring into his eyes now. His unfathomable eyes.

“Your wish didn’t come true, did it?” he said. “Your mother carried on being unhappy, and the man never came back.”

Shoes lined with silken flower petals. Shoes made out of dreams. Shoes that burst like soap bubbles when you reach out to touch them.

His hand covered hers. She flinched at his touch and pulled away, her head suddenly awash with all that “lovemaking-without-the-love.” She should have gone straight home.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t—”

“It’s quite all right.” Her hands were in her lap now, rubbing at each other.

Zachari motioned to the waiter. “It’s late. We should go.”

Go where? she thought. Home? But what she said was, “What about my shoes, Mr. Zachari?”

“Come to the shop in the morning,” he said. “At eleven.”

When, at last, Genevieve arrived home, the apartment was dark and quiet. But in the salon grate, the embers still glowed red hot.

( ten )