The Old Man's Shoes

THE OLD MAN’S SHOES

I can see them now if I close my eyes – my Dad’s slippers. They are pretty standard issue; brown, slip on, with red plaid flannel lining. In his case, the size was 8 1/2 EEE. You know the sort that I mean. Somewhere in the world at least a million pairs are on the feet of men even as I sit here. If I keep my eyes closed and concentrate harder, I can even smell and taste them.
Yep, I said taste them.
No, I am not weird. You’ll have to take my word on that one.
Different, perhaps. There are some damn good reasons behind that, if I chose to tell you. But not weird. Okay, maybe I am weird. But I prefer to consider myself iconoclastic chic. And it is not as if I have said that I LIKE the taste of slippers. Actually, I don’t, which should make you feel a bit more at ease. But I tasted Dad’s slippers on a moderately regular basis when I was growing up. It was one of the ways that we bonded. It was an act of love.
Dad was an Irish bachelor. He lived at home and loved the drink. He ran off and married Mom at age 35. In doing so, he left behind two broken - hearted parents who had worshipped him like the Holy Son himself, and a certificate of excommunication from the Catholic Church. Mom was a divorced protestant, with a kid. Worse even than all of that, she was not Irish. In 1957 you couldn’t rebel much worse than that, even if you didn’t get around to it until you were 35. Better late than never, as some would say. I figured all of this out with the help of this truckload interfamilial baggage at a later age. But between then and now, I took on a job in the family that put Flynnery, our Irish Setter out of work.
I would fetch my dad’s slippers for him. Not that the dog was all that smart. He fit the family profile of being good looking and just out of step with the rules. But after a hard day of flatulating, barking at air, and chasing a ball for eight solid hours, he needed reinforcements. It was part of my duty as a good little girl.
And I was meant to be a good little girl. It seemed to be ordained as my destiny. Never spoken, it was always understood that this goal above all others must be achieved. It was so much more than a job, as the commercial, blared, it was an adventure. Hell, it was an adventure just to exist in our house, with our own, privately labeled, brand of “sanity”.
Every night, when the old man came home to our seemingly respectable, middle class, suburban home, he would hit the scotch. I have acquired the skill of catching a whiff of scotch and pausing for just a moment to remember Old Michael Eagan fondly. Because, back then, I knew that if dad came home, sat down in his chair in the family room and the television was on the correct channel, then all was mostly well with the world. Somehow this was the way America operated. Homes all over the country were setting up their nightly routine in the same manner. Hell, Ward Cleaver had the Beaver fetch him his scotch when we signed off the air and let them get on with their lives in television land. That’s the way it really was, wasn’t it?
So, Dad would come home from a tough morning at the office, followed by a harsh afternoon at the blue movies, a rigorous dinner at the Elks club with mom, and plop his ovoid body down exhausted from the day’s chores. He was the dad here. It was time to begin service.
No matter what I was doing or where I was in the house, he would sit down first and then bellow, “Maura!!” (or if the Elks club scotches were beginning to do their job), “LITTLE BROAD!! Bring me a clean handkerchief!”
Sometimes it was, “LITTLE BROAD!!! Fetch me my slippers!”
What did he think I was, a retriever?
The stairs to his and Mom’s bedroom were a bit much for him by this time of the evening. The way to their bedroom would remain a mystery until about one o’clock in the morning. At that time, almost every night on the nose, he would roust his exhausted self from THE chair, turn off the thwacking tape of Tommy Dorsey or Glen Miller in the reel- to-reel tape player, and let the enlightenment from the sweet drop of the old craythur kick in. Then and only then would he find his way up the stairs with Herculean effort and flop into bed.
Somewhere in the midst of growing up with this routine, I came to understand that if I pleased my Daddy, he would be pleased. That was all that was meant to be. Ars gratia artis. Res ipse loquitor. Please Daddy. It was practically our family crest. If memory serves, I learned it by not pleasing Daddy a few times.
So, one night, alone with my thoughts and my TV dinner, I came up with the inspiration of fetching the slippers. More than that, I would create a perfect atmosphere for Daddy.
I put the appropriate Big Band tape on the player, poured the scotch just the way he liked it – straight with plenty of ice, grabbed Flynnery from his canine dreams and we waited with growing anticipation. The hum of the garage door would be my cue.
After what seemed to be an eternity, there it was!! The unmistakable hum of the garage door going up was the signal of my parents’ return. It was my call to spring into action. Flynnery hot on my heels, we raced up the stairs into Dad’s closet. I took his slippers and put them in my mouth. Flynnery looked at me as if to say, “Hey, I am a setter. This is out of my job description.”
Right on cue, “LITTLE BROAD!!!”
I was starting to drool a bit on the slippers. So I raced back down the stairs with Flynnery watching in fascination. I reached the landing an hunkered down behind his sacred throne. I took the slippers out of my mouth just long enough to swallow the collected saliva and put them back in. The flannel lining yielded a stale but powdery smell straight into my nostrils.
“LITTLE BROAD!!?” Then under his breath, “God damnit, where is she?”
Out I popped from behind the chair. Flynnery and I were a warped Normal Rockwell vision of Americana. Flynnery was happily wagging his tail as I assumed the sit up position I had been trying to teach him for months and months. The slippers rested perfectly in my mouth with nary a tooth mark on them. Dad had already fetched the pre made scotch and was halfway through consuming it. He smiled benevolently at me.
“I didn’t want my damn slippers, I need a clean handkerchief.”
In one fell swoop, he had cured me of what could have become a budding shoe fetish. I resumed respectability and wore it like a Salvation Army cloak for the rest of the time I lived under that roof. Never beg in order to appease. It is, I suppose, one of the things that I can thank him for.
I find myself wondering, thirty some odd years later, why I did this. Why I begged like Flynnery to me father in such ridiculous supplication. Because later on, when the scotch finally got to him and his feet, I certainly did not try to appease him. And, I had a custom fitted cloak of respectability that was truly my own. I came to realize that I may have been meant to be a good little girl. I ended up being a human being who was far more accepting of her own flaws and therefore came to accept everyone else’s.
Before he died, I even came to accept my father’s flaws. I learned to manage them so that his behavior in the care facility wouldn’t get out of hand. When he begged, I left. Even I couldn’t stand to see his weakness emerge so primitively. It was much better for all of us when it was just below the surface and operating behind the guise of suburban life. So what he gave me in that “Cinderella” non- moment, was probably the best lesson he would ever be able to teach me in his own inimitable way.
And in the end, I can only come to a place of forgiveness. There is forgiveness in the fact that every time I see a pair of brown men’s leather slip on slippers, I will think of my father and smile. I will envision that young girl with the slippers in her mouth, up on her haunches in supplication imitating the family dog from the movies, as ours couldn't and wouldn't fetch. Definitely the smarter of the two of us. My father is smiling benevolently down at me and the smile says what words will not – that it will never be enough. That knowledge perhaps is the greatest form of love after all: No pleasing the old man. Be free. Go and live your life. And don't ever supplicate again. Our lessons come to us in strange ways.