In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner Page B

shoulders. Let's burn off some of those bad old calories. He handed the cake to Ella. "Okay?" She nodded, and put the cake into the microwave. Lewis sipped his tea and watched her move. Her hips looked original, he thought, and laughed at himself for noticing something like that. Adam, one of his grandsons, had told him during his last visit that he could tell just by looking whether a woman's chest was real or not, and Lewis had decided that he had the same talent for hip joints. "What are you smiling about?" He gave a small shrug. "My grandson." Her face crumpled like a paper bag. She quickly smoothed it back again, so fast he wasn't sure he'd seen what he'd seen, which was despair. He wanted to reach over and hold her hands, hold her hands and ask her to tell him what was wrong, what hurt enough to make her look that way. He actually started to move his hands
     
80 Jennifer weiner
     
across the table when he noticed she was staring down as if a roach had just crawled out of the pound cake. "What?" She pointed at the cuffs of his shirt. Lewis looked down. One cuff was missing a button, and the other one was badly frayed and slightly browned. "Did you burn that?" Ella asked. "I guess I must have," Lewis said. "I'm not so great with the iron." "Oh," said Ella. "I could ..." She closed her mouth abruptly and smoothed her hair, looking flustered. Lewis saw his chance, an inflatable raft bobbing in the waves, and grabbed for it with all his might. "Give me some lessons?" he asked humbly. Forgive me, Sharla, he thought, imagining he'd have to hide all the notes she'd left him, the boxes and bottles carefully labeled "for colors" and "for whites." Ella was wavering. "Well," she said. The microwave chirped. Lewis fetched the cake. He served Ella a slice, then cut one for himself. "I know it's an imposition," he said, "and I know how busy you are. But since my wife died, I'm kind of at loose ends. Last week I actually tried to figure out whether it would be easier to just buy new clothes every month or so . . ." "Oh, don't do that!" said Ella. "I'll help you." He could tell that her assent had come at a cost, that there was a battle going on behind her eyes, her sense of obligation and sympathy warring with her fierce desire to be alone. "Just let me get my book." Her book turned out to be a four-inch-thick marvel of scheduling, a half-illegible maze of scribbles and arrows and phone numbers and Post-it notes. "Let's see," said Ella, scrutinizing each page. "Wednesday I'm at the hospital . . ." "What's wrong?" "I rock babies," Ella said. "Thursday's the soup kitchen, then the hospice, Friday is Meals on Wheels ..."
     
In Her Shoes 8
     
"Saturday?" Lewis asked. "Not to frighten you, but I'm almost out of underwear." Ella made a noise in the back of her throat that sounded almost like laughter. "Saturday," she agreed. "Good," he told her. "Five o'clock? I'll take you to dinner once we're done." He was out the door before she could think to say anything to him, and as he whistled his way down the hall, he was unsurprised to see Mavis Gold, who claimed that she was on her way to the laundry room, in spite of the visible absence of her laundry. "How'd it go?" she whispered. He gave her a thumbs-up and smiled as she clapped her hands. Then he hurried home to spill ink on his pants and pull a few buttons off his favorite shirt.
     
NINE
     
"Okay," Rose called from her seat in front of her computer. "Name, got that. Address, you can use mine." Her fingers flew over the keyboard. "Objective?" "To get a job," said Maggie, who was sprawled on the couch with her face buried under half an inch of what she'd informed her sister was a pore-reducing clay mask. "How about if we say 'a position in retail'?" asked Rose. "Whatever," said Maggie, flicking on the TV. It was Saturday morning, five days after her ignominious audition, and MTV was introducing the winner of the VJ contest—a pretty, bubbly brunette with a pierced eyebrow. "Coming lip