Goody Two Shoes

Short Fiction

I could put something in his coffee. He’d never see it coming.

Rose’s husband Carl sat at the kitchen table reading the newspaper over breakfast as he had every morning for the past thirty-two years. He seemed pleased with the headline: Ronald Reagan was still leading in the polls, even though he’d been doddering and half asleep during the debate a month before. His opponent didn’t stand a chance—nobody wanted to hear a presidential candidate tell the truth about taxes. Rose was secretly disappointed. It might have been nice to have a woman vice president.

Without looking up from the paper, Carl reached for another piece of pre-buttered toast and fed it into his mouth with an open palm. About a third of Carl’s toast hit its target. Another third fell to the floor. Butter side up. There’s a blessing. The last bit spilled out of Carl’s mouth as he chewed, a tumble of crumbs and a fat glob of partially melted butter that landed on the front of his sleeveless undershirt. Well, that’s going to leave a stain. Rose made a mental note to add a bottle of Wisk to her shopping list. No, Spray & Wash—she had a coupon. Carl seemed oblivious to the chaos. He switched to the sports section.

Rose watched, but her expression never changed. She stood, tied a clean, white apron around her waist to protect her freshly ironed, pale blue housedress, and began her morning routine of clearing the dishes and sweeping up the remains of Carl’s breakfast from the kitchen floor.

“You’re going to be late, Carl,” Rose said. She maneuvered around him with the broom.

Carl didn’t answer. He continued to sit there in his boxer shorts like a nincompoop.

“Carl?” Rose’s voice remained even. She’d been through this before. Just about every morning, in fact, for the past thirty-two years. No one had warned her how much contempt you could have for someone after thirty-two years.

“What?” Carl asked. He threw the sports section down on the table. “What is it?”

“You’re going to be late for work,” Rose repeated. “You might want to get dressed.”

“I know, I know,” Carl said. “Geez, woman. I think I know how to get myself to work on time.” He picked up the funny pages and went back to reading.

I could put something on his morning newspaper. Some substance that’s absorbed through the skin. Rose had seen something like that in a movie once.

“I’ve got that reporter from The Bee coming this morning, Carl.” There. She’d gotten to the truth of it. She didn’t want Carl there when the reporter arrived. He was a downright embarrassment.

Carl gave no indication he’d heard Rose. Rose gave up and began carrying the refreshments she’d prepared into the living room. Carl would leave the kitchen sooner or later. The more she pushed, the later it would be. They’d gone over this during their one try at couples therapy. “She’s always complaining,” Carl had told the young, male therapist. Bob was his name. “Nagging at me. ‘Take out the trash, close the cupboard door, use a coaster.’ I don’t know what to do with a woman like that.”

“Take out the trash. Close the cupboard door. Use a coaster,” Bob had said. There was a whole new breed of men out there these days—men like Bob. That was their last therapy session. Carl refused to return. He seemed to feel he’d been betrayed by a fellow member of the He-Man Woman Haters Club.

When the reporter from The Bee arrived at the front door, Carl was still in the shower. Rose apologized in advance. Carl would probably come trudging through the living room in the middle of the interview. She wanted the reporter to be forewarned.

“Oh, that’s okay,” Monica Bruce said. The pretty blonde columnist from The Bee was a modern woman with a high-powered career, but even so, she was used to being accommodating. “The photographer will need a few minutes to set up anyway.” She looked around the room and frowned. “I was thinking we could do the interview outside,” she said.

Rose had spent a full day readying the living room for the occasion. She’d deep cleaned and vacuumed. She’d waxed the furniture. She’d strategically placed knick-knacks to cover up the Carl-inflicted water stains on the accent tables. She’d arranged vases of fresh flowers from her garden around the room. But Rose was used to being accommodating, too. “Of course,” she said. “Wherever you like is fine by me.” It was sunny out and unseasonably warm. She showed Monica Bruce to a seat on the patio, next to the pansies and violas, and then made several trips back and forth to carry out the white thermal coffee carafe, her special occasion bone china coffee cups, and the homemade coffee cake she had so carefully arranged on a side table in the living room.

“We could take your picture under that red dogwood tree,” Monica Bruce said. “It’s gorgeous. The bright red will look beautiful for the holidays.” A color photograph. That meant they were planning to feature Rose on the front page of the “Home and Garden” section. Rose tried not to let on how pleased she was.

Monica Bruce had come up the hill from town to interview Rose for the “Penny Pincher” feature in the Sunday paper. Rose had recently netted one hundred eighty-four dollars and thirty-seven cents worth of groceries and household products for twenty-two dollars and seventy-six cents—her best record yet—by doubling coupons, taking advantage of sales, and cashing in on rebates. Carl had gone bragging to his friends at the bar and word had spread. Now here she was, the coupon queen of Honeydew Flat, population one thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine. Rose was practically a local celebrity.

While the photographer set up under the red dogwood tree, Monica Bruce began the interview. She asked Rose questions about how to save money on groceries, and Rose had plenty of answers, having made do on a meager weekly grocery allowance for many years now.

“Well,” she told the reporter, “you have to plan ahead and be organized, and you have to make sure you pick up the exact right brands and sizes to match your coupons. If you have a coupon for ten cents off a forty-eight-ounce bottle of Palmolive dishwashing liquid, that’s what you have to get. You can’t use it on a twenty-two-ounce bottle of lemon fresh Joy.”

As she answered each question, Rose felt a rare sense of confidence. This was something she knew about. She’d taken up couponing when grocery prices started rising but her weekly grocery allowance from Carl did not. Couponing required a much higher level of skill than most people might imagine. Rose had a knack for saving money on everyday household purchases. She had a two-drawer metal file cabinet, purchased for five dollars at a yard sale, into which she carefully filed and cross-filed coupons, sorted by product type, expiration date, and store. Rebates were a whole different ballgame.

Carl took his own sweet time getting ready for work and came out of the house just as Rose was about to invite Monica to come inside and see her file cabinet. He wasn’t wearing his paint-splattered coveralls or his work boots. He had on his blue, collared, button-up dress shirt, and his hair was slicked back like some rockabilly singer.

“Perfect timing, Mr. Stewart,” Monica Bruce said. “How would you like to be in the picture with your wife?”

“Sure,” Carl said, as if he were doing somebody a favor. He shot Rose a smug grin. This had been Carl’s plan all along, to horn in on her big moment.

Maybe I should hire a hitman. She’d seen that in a movie, too. It hadn’t turned out so well. But she wasn’t a halfwit like the man in the movie.

Rose didn’t understand why they’d want Carl in the picture. Carl was the biggest cheapskate in the county—she’d give him that much. But he was not thrifty. There was a difference. Carl was more of a tightwad than a restrained spender, which was on the lazy end along the spectrum of frugality. Carl’s only contribution to their household savings was skipping things like buying Rose a birthday or anniversary present or saying no every time Rose brought up the idea of taking a vacation. Being thrifty was hard work. Rose spent hours each week researching sales, mapping out shopping trips, mending clothes, darning socks with holes in them, and repairing broken things that others would just throw away. She evaluated each household purchase with equal weight and importance, whether it was a new water heater or a five-pound sack of flour. Carl didn’t have the fortitude for a job like that.

But when Monica asked Carl whether he was proud of Rose, Rose realized that Carl considered her thriftiness his own accomplishment. It was a point of pride for him, keeping Rose on a budget. He sidestepped the question and went off on a self-serving tangent.

“Well,” Carl said, “I run a real tight ship. We don’t buy anything brand new, and we don’t pay for stuff we can do ourselves. Like haircuts. My wife cuts my hair. She cuts her own hair, too, and she doesn’t get her nails done or buy fancy clothes.” He talked about Rose as if she weren’t sitting right there.

It was true—Rose didn’t waste things. At first, Rose had cut costs out of necessity. Carl had started giving her a weekly allowance when they were first married and she was a nineteen-year-old bride. That’s how her mama and daddy had done it before her, and she hadn’t questioned it. Over time, Rose came to pride herself on not spending money on superficial things. The last time she’d bought a new dress was for her sister’s fourth wedding. She’d paid five dollars at the Goodwill for a designer dress in decent condition. It was a great find, even though it was probably twenty years old, a half size too big, and had a ripped seam under the arm. Rose had taken it in and mended it herself. Now, listening to Carl talk about her like she was some sort of refurbished sofa, she didn’t feel proud. She felt embarrassed. She hid her unmanicured hands behind her back when it came time to take the picture.

When the newspaper came on Sunday morning, Rose hardly recognized herself in the photograph. The woman in the picture looked frumpy and pale—“washed out,” Rose’s mother would have said. Rose noticed the uneven edges of the woman’s short, at-home haircut and how worn the woman’s clothes looked, how out of style. Carl was grinning like a buffoon and had one arm around the top of the woman’s shoulder like she was some kind of prize hog he was showing off. But the woman in the picture didn’t look happy. She looked beaten down and sad.

At first, Rose felt sorry for the woman standing next to Carl under the red dogwood tree. But the harder she looked, the more she began to feel angry. It was 1984, for chrissake. Women were doing things. Big things. Sally Ride had gone into outer space the previous June. Geraldine Ferraro was running for vice president. Susan Young down the street had started her own Mary Kay cosmetics business the summer before and was already making enough money to pay for her own wardrobe and a family vacation trip to Disneyland. Word had it she was in line for one of those pink Cadillacs. The world was changing. Hell, a woman president was right around the corner. And what was Rose doing? Clipping coupons for Chex cereal out of the back of Good Housekeeping magazine. Rose threw the paper into the trash and started making Sunday supper.

Frugal cooking was both an art and a science. Every week, Rose roasted a big tom turkey for Sunday night’s supper and served it with mashed potatoes and giblet gravy. There were plenty of leftovers for sandwiches for Carl’s lunch the next day and a couple of suppers during the week, too—maybe turkey and dumplings or turkey à la king. Rose methodically picked every bit of meat off the bird and boiled the carcass to make a broth for turkey noodle soup or a nice gumbo. It was a whole lot of work making the most out of everything that came her way.

Carl used to appreciate all this attention to detail, but now he just wolfed his food down without a word, not so much as a please or a thank you. After he lost his job at the candy factory, Carl either ignored Rose or criticized every little thing. Rose tried to let it go. Tried to remember it had nothing to do with her. Tried to empathize even. Carl wasn’t happy painting houses, coming home with dried paint under his fingernails every night and scrubbing his hands with paint thinner and heavy-duty soap until they were raw. He used to dream about being promoted to manager at the candy factory. Now he was low man on the totem pole again.

When Rose told Carl she didn’t know what had happened to the Sunday paper, he went down the hill into town and came back with two copies, one for himself and one to send to his mother. Over supper, in an attempt to get some conversation going, Rose sighed and said how tired she was, what a long week it had been.

Carl smirked. “You don’t know what tired is,” he said. “You sit on your ass all day watching Days of Our Lives. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you try getting up while it’s still dark outside and climbing up and down a ladder all day long in the hot sun? Then you talk to me about being tired.”

Rose finished her supper in silence. When you depend on someone else for your living, that person can say anything he wants to you, and you just have to take it.

On Monday, Rose began to spend their life savings.

It wasn’t planned. The weather had turned, and it was raining. But rain or shine, Rose took her red wagon by the handle and pulled it down the hill and into town once a week to check mail and do the shopping. She did this on Mondays for a strategic reason—Monday was junk mail day. When she arrived at the post office, Rose dropped the hood of her old brown parka and stomped the mud from the ridged soles of her bright yellow rubber rain boots. She hurried through the heavy double doors and into the warmth of the lobby. Pushing random, wet strings of graying brown hair away from her face, she strode with purpose toward the back rows of post office boxes.

Rose took the large bronze mailbox key from her coat pocket and inserted it into the lock of her post office box. As always, the tiny box was crammed with advertising circulars and a fat envelope of coupons from local stores. A couple of small packages were wedged unceremoniously in between the paper—premiums Rose sent away for with box tops. She saved the small prizes to give to her nieces and nephews as Christmas gifts. Rose pried her mail from the box and wondered whether the mailman, as he tried to stuff one more piece of mail into the too-small box, cursed Rose for refusing to pay the additional six dollars per year for the next size up. But Rose didn’t care too much. A six-dollar savings that cost her nothing more than someone else’s aggravation was a net savings of six dollars. Rose stuffed the mail into the canvas bag she carried whenever she went down the hill into town. What she couldn’t use, she would trade in at the local library’s coupon exchange. Normally, Rose would have pulled a few discarded copies of the Sunday paper out of the post office bin, too, for the coupon inserts. Today, Rose left the bin untouched.

Her post office business done, Rose pulled the hood of her parka up over her head and hurried back out into the weather. As she passed the Despedida Boutique, Rose noticed a pair of magnificent red high heels in the window display. She had never seen such pretty shoes. Each exquisite red shoe featured a satin bow at the top of the toe box, fashioned out of ruby red ribbon, with a sparkling square-cut red gem in the center. They looked like shoes Liz Taylor might wear. The delicate heels looked out of place nestled in among the more sensible shoes—chunky-heeled black knee boots and solid, chocolate-brown ankle boots. A harsh winter was well underway. But the sparkly red stilettos made Rose think about elegant holiday parties, like the one the Brickford Candy Company used to throw for its employees every year.

On an impulse, Rose made her way down to the bank. She didn’t have the passbook for the joint savings account she and Carl had opened after they were married. She’d never seen it. In fact, she’d never asked to see it. Her name on the account was a formality. Rose’s mother once confided to Rose that she didn’t know how much money Rose’s father made at his job, that she’d never so much as seen one of his paychecks during their entire fifty-year marriage. It was a brag. She seemed proud as she said it. She said it as if being oblivious to the household finances was a characteristic of an excellent wife. Rose was a good girl. She’d absorbed the implications of her mother’s voice, her smile, her diminutive behaviors, without giving them another thought. Now, she asked the bank teller for a balance.

“Would you like me to write it down on a piece of paper for you?” Sue asked. Sue had been two years behind Rose in high school. She’d gone to community college and had been working at the bank ever since.

“Yes, please,” Rose said.

Sue scribbled on a scrap of paper and handed it to Rose. Rose felt Sue’s eyes on her as she studied the number Sue had written down. She tried not to let on how shocked she was.

“I saw your picture in the paper yesterday,” Sue said. “That couponing has really paid off for you.”

“Yes,” Rose said. “Every little bit adds up.”

Thanks to Rose’s thrift, Carl had managed to squirrel away a good sum of money over the past thirty-two years. One hundred twelve thousand four hundred ninety-two dollars and thirty-seven cents to be exact. Money he thought of as belonging to him alone, Rose realized, because he was the only one earning a wage. The things Rose did didn’t count.

“I’d like to make a withdrawal please,” Rose said. She tried to sound like she did this kind of thing every day. She withdrew one thousand dollars. Then, cash in hand, she went back to the Despedida Boutique. She hesitated outside the door. Under absolutely no calculation were shoes which were meant to be worn once, maybe twice a year, a wise purchase. The shoes were frivolous. Rose pushed the thought out of her mind and pulled the boutique door open. She was delighted by the tinkling bell that alerted the shop girl to her arrival.

Twenty minutes later, Rose emerged from the boutique carrying a handled brown paper bag containing a pink shoebox. Inside the shoebox was a pair of sparkly red heels, size six, wrapped in cream tissue paper. Rose hurried home and hid the shoes on the top shelf of the kitchen utility closet, behind the trash bags.

That evening, while she started Carl’s supper, Rose began to think about getting a job outside the home. She liked the feeling of having money tucked away in her purse. She wanted more of it. The autumn after she’d graduated high school, just before she married Carl, she’d earned a typing certificate from Jefferson Secretarial Institute (eighty-seven words per minute, the highest speed in the class), which qualified her to work at any number of companies. No matter what the business, someone was always needed to type up letters and memos, to answer telephones, and to file and organize things.

Carl wouldn’t like it. It was a point of pride for him that he supported them both. He bragged often that his wife didn’t have to work, as if Rose spent her days reading magazines and lounging in the sun next to some make-believe swimming pool. In her late thirties, when she’d accepted no children were going to come, Rose had tried to entice Carl into the idea of letting her get a job by telling him how much money she could earn and what they could do with it.

“No wife of mine is going to work,” Carl had said, as if it were a negative reflection on him as a husband. “Besides, I like having you here when I get home. I like coming home to a good, hot supper on the table.”

On Tuesday, Rose went shopping for a pair of kitten heels, taupe, size six, and a new doorknob to replace the broken one on the spare bedroom door. She hid her new shoes in the utility closet with the others, and while she replaced the doorknob, she thought again about getting a job.

Up until five years ago, Carl had worked at the Brickford Candy Company in nearby Merton, the factory where they made those delicious hot cinnamon hard candies. Carl used to bring them home on occasion, when he was plant foreman. Now, Rose had to buy them. A two-pound bag of one hundred and fifty candies cost one dollar and eighty-nine cents; one dollar and sixty-nine cents if you were patient and waited for a sale; one dollar and fifty-nine cents with a manufacturer’s coupon; and only one dollar and forty-nine cents if you shopped on double coupon day, which Rose always did. That worked out to less than one cent per candy. Each candy provided twenty-seven minutes of pleasure if you sucked them, a little less if you chewed them, which Rose usually did about half-way through. Still, a bargain, so long as a person paced herself and didn’t blow through her whole stash in a month.

Two months after a big corporation bought the candy company out and moved the factory to Mexico, leaving Carl and two hundred and sixty other people out of work, and exactly three months and sixteen days before Carl began his new career painting houses, Rose had seen her chance and again brought up the idea of getting a job. On top of her desire to have a bona fide career, she didn’t know how much longer she could take being stuck at home with an out-of-work Carl. He didn’t make good use of his time, and he was no help at all around the house. He apparently believed his position as head of the household had been closely tied to his position as sole breadwinner, and to let Rose know he was still in charge, paycheck or no, he began to assert his dominance over the television remote control. If Rose happened to be taking a break to watch The Price is Right when Carl woke up midmorning, he walked into the living room, picked up the remote control without a word, pointed it at their portable television set, and started flipping through the channels. This activity continued throughout the day (except for the days he had to report to the unemployment office), all from the comfort of Carl’s recliner. As if daring Rose to say something about it, Carl turned the volume up so loud Rose had to go outside and work in the garden to escape it. It was no coincidence the garden looked so nice.

Rose had tried to make Carl feel useful by letting him cut coupons out of the Sunday paper, but Carl didn’t have the kind of attention to detail necessary for the job. He got sidetracked by The Phil Donahue Show and started clipping out coupons for things like dog food and cat litter when they didn’t have any pets, and he completely missed the weekly ad for laundry soap. As much for the sake of her sanity as anything else, Rose had seen her chance and suggested she put her typing skills to good use to supplement Carl’s unemployment check.

“Just until you find another job,” she’d said, hoping the temporary nature of her proposal would make it more palatable.

Carl hadn’t bothered to conceal his contempt. “You never think things through, Rose,” he’d said. “You can’t see the forest for the trees. We’d spend every penny you made and then some. It costs money for a woman to go to work. You’d want new clothes, fancy office clothes. You gonna wear those blue jeans to work? You’d want to go out to lunch with your fancy new friends. And how about supper? Before you know it, your boss would make you work late, or you’d come home tired, and you wouldn’t want to cook, and next thing you know, we’d be spending money on take-out. And what about transportation? Don’t get me started on that—gas, oil changes, then the brakes go out or you need new tires. You never look at the big picture, Rose. No, ma’am, a woman’s highest and best use is in the home.”

But times had changed. Maybe enough time had passed. Maybe this time Carl wouldn’t get so riled up about the idea of her getting a job. Rose wanted money of her own. When a woman doesn’t have money of her own, she doesn’t have much say-so about anything.

On Wednesday, Rose bought a pair of shiny black pumps, size six, and a pair of Mary Jane heels, cream, size six and a half (they ran small). As she put them in the utility closet with the others, she wondered when she would get the chance to wear them.

Wednesday evening, the Bakers invited Carl’s painting crew and their wives over for a holiday potluck. Rose brought a casserole and a pan of lemon bars for dessert—she normally made the lemon bars from scratch, but the boxed mix was on sale at the grocery store, and she had a coupon for twenty-five cents off, which she’d doubled. Most of the time, homemade cost less, but not always. Especially when you considered the value of a person’s time.

Except for going to the bar with his buddies, Carl rarely wanted to go out anymore. Rose sometimes felt like Rapunzel trapped in their house at the top of the hill. Rapunzel with a bad haircut.

“Why should I have to take my own wife out on a date?” Carl had once said when Rose suggested they go out to dinner and a movie down in town. “That’s why I got married, so I wouldn’t have to take women on dates anymore.” Carl had been even less sociable since the candy factory closed. He was more and more attached to relaxing in the peace and quiet of his own goddamned home. Despite her growing angst, or perhaps because of it, Rose was looking forward to the gathering. She considered it but decided against wearing her new shoes.

When they arrived, Mitch Hilligan’s wife, Ruthie, called Rose over. Mitch was Carl’s boss. He was a nice, easygoing man with a booming laugh. He’d hired Carl to paint houses shortly after the candy factory closed. Rose thought he seemed kind and generous, but Carl did nothing but complain about him every night over supper.

When Cindy Baker came around with a pitcher of iced tea, Ruthie good-naturedly waved the iced tea away. Instead, she pulled a bottle of beer from a cooler her husband had brought along, then seated herself on the carpeted floor next to the chair her husband was sitting in, tucking her legs up underneath her. Mitch was talking to Jim Lewis. Without a break in the conversation, he reached down to take the beer from Ruthie’s perfectly manicured hand, twisted the cap off, and handed it back to her, turning his head slightly to give his wife a wink. Rose was fascinated by the unspoken exchange.

Rose was fascinated by Ruthie Hilligan, too. Ruthie wasn’t a good girl, but she wasn’t a bad girl, either, and she sure did seem to have fun. Ruthie didn’t worry about social conventions, like having her beer poured into a glass. Ruthie did whatever the hell she wanted. Ruthie had her own money and a loud laugh. She owned Elite Staffing down in town, matching out-of-work people with their perfect jobs. Ruthie had once explained to Rose that it was like being in sales, only what she was selling was people’s talents. She seemed proud of what she did, especially when she helped find jobs for some of those two hundred and sixty displaced Brickford Candy Company workers.

“Would you like a beer?” Mitch asked Rose.

“Yes, please,” Rose said. Mitch retrieved another beer from his cooler, cracked it open, and handed it to Rose.

“Thank you,” Rose said. She sat down cross-legged on the floor, next to Mitch and Ruthie. It felt decadent to be sitting there, sipping ice cold beer straight from the bottle, a bottle someone else had opened for her. Ruthie complimented Rose on having her picture in the paper, and Rose asked Ruthie how things were going at Elite Staffing. Soon, the two women were engaged in conversation, with Mitch interjecting a joke here and there. Rose hadn’t laughed so much in a long time. Carl was much too busy bragging about having his picture in the paper to notice at first. When he caught Rose’s eye and looked at her with disapproval, Rose smiled at him as if she didn’t get his meaning, then turned back toward Ruthie and Mitch.

“You know, Rose,” Ruthie said, “If you’re interested, I have a couple of job openings that would be just perfect for someone with your skill set.” Skill set. Rose considered the term. She’d never heard it before, but it sounded like something good for a person to have.

On Thursday, Rose bought a pair of navy blue peep toe heels, size six, and went to the Hair Jungle beauty salon to get her hair cut by a professional. Her old stylist, Carol, was so happy to see her that she gave her a complimentary rinse to cover the gray. Rose enjoyed being pampered and catching up with Carol. She’d forgotten the pleasant, feminine ritual of the beauty salon.

Afterward, Rose stopped by the department store to price vacuum cleaners. For fifteen years, Rose had periodically replaced motors and belts and other miscellaneous parts to keep her vacuum cleaner in good working condition. But nothing lasts forever, and the vacuum cleaner was no longer worth the cost to repair it. Sometimes, getting rid of something that’s outlived its usefulness is the smartest thing a person can do.

At home that evening, Rose tied a bandana over her new hairstyle and went into the kitchen. Supper that night was a pot roast, Carl’s favorite. It had been slow roasting in the oven all day with carrots and potatoes. As she set the table and tossed a green salad in her biggest Tupperware mixing bowl, Rose mentally went over her plan to tell Carl she was getting a job. She’d decided to tell him over supper that night. This time, she wasn’t asking.

Carl was late and arrived home in a foul mood.

“What’s wrong?” Rose asked.

“Flat tire,” Carl said. He muttered to himself and went out to the garage. She could hear him throwing things around, then he came back inside. “Where’s my lug wrench?” he asked.

“I haven’t seen it,” Rose said. She was irritated her plan seemed to be falling apart, but she was determined to see it through. She regrouped. “Why don’t you come sit down for supper and worry about the tire later? You must be hungry. I made your favorite.”

“No,” he said. “Keep supper hot. I want to get this done first.”

“Can I help?” Rose asked.

Carl snorted. “Miss Fix-It,” he said. “You fix a doorknob once and now you think you’re a regular goddamn handyman.”

I could drain the brake fluid out of his truck.

Carl kept rummaging, and before Rose realized what was happening, he jerked open the door of the utility closet, pushing the broom aside, tossing the dustpan on the floor, flinging the mop bucket behind him. As if in slow motion, Rose watched five pink shoeboxes tumble from the top shelf of the utility closet and bounce off Carl’s head, one after the other, spilling their contents as they fell to the floor.

“What the hell?” Carl said. “What the hell is all this?” He gestured at the shoes which were now scattered across the kitchen linoleum. Carl’s face began to turn red as it must have dawned on him that his wife had been shopping behind his back. Rose wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him so angry. She wasn’t exactly afraid of Carl—it had been a long time since he’d hit her—but his temper gave her a stomachache. Most of the time, the desire to avoid Carl’s temper had been enough to keep her quiet.

This time, though, Rose ignored the discomfort bubbling in her stomach and drew herself up to her full five feet and two inches. “They’re shoes, Carl.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact. Carl didn’t say a word. He just glared at her. His face was going from red to purple. “They’re mine,” Rose said. “I needed new shoes. I need them because I’m going to get a job.”

“The hell you are!” Carl bellowed.

That was it. The hell you are. All the years up to now, Rose had never stopped to consider exactly why Carl didn’t want her to get a job. Somewhere deep down, she’d known all along the reasons he’d given her were excuses, but she hadn’t questioned them. She’d never questioned anything. Now, she asked him straight out: “Why not, Carl? Why don’t you want me to get a job?”

The look on Carl’s face told Rose he wasn’t sure himself. He didn’t answer her. Instead, like a petulant child, he picked up one of the red shoes from the floor and threw it as hard as he could, straight at Rose’s head. Rose ducked just in time—it barely grazed her new hairdo, still hidden under the bandana. Carl stood firm and puffed his chest out as if daring Rose to speak again. She didn’t—she felt an unfamiliar heat rising inside her that took her words away, made her afraid of what she might say or do. She took a deep breath, then stooped and began picking up her shoes. She squatted on the floor and carefully wrapped them in their tissue paper, one by one, and packed them back into their shoeboxes.

“You’re returning those shoes,” Carl said. “First thing tomorrow.” Then he went back out to the garage, slamming the door behind him.

On Friday, Rose went shopping for a hit man and a pair of black leather knee high boots, size five and a half (they ran big). The shoes were becoming easy. The hitman required more thought.

Rose was normally a do-it-yourselfer. Carl’s comment about the doorknob was meant to belittle her—she’d fixed much bigger problems. Last fall, when she discovered the toilet was leaking at its base, she didn’t call a plumber. She went to the library and checked out three books on do-it-yourself home repair, one specifically on plumbing, and diagnosed the situation herself. Worn wax seal. Rose turned the water off, drained the tank, slowly and methodically took the toilet apart, and set it piece by piece out in the backyard. Then, she went down to the hardware store and bought a new wax ring for three dollars forty-seven cents, less twenty-five cents with a coupon. She installed it at the mouth of the floor drain and put the toilet back together again. Rose liked figuring things out. There was something satisfying about doing something that, only the day before, she didn’t know she could do. It made her feel like she wasn’t defenseless against the whims of each and every household disaster. But murder was a different story. There were some things that were better left to the professionals.

Rose called her second cousin Raymond and offered to take him to breakfast at Lucky’s Diner. Raymond had served two years in the state prison system for grand theft auto and was released last summer. He wasn’t trustworthy as far as the general public was concerned, but Rose knew she could trust him. He was family. Raymond was no killer, but he’d know someone.

While she waited for Raymond, Rose brainstormed. Carl’s life insurance policy had an exclusion for suicide, so that wouldn’t work. Of course, Carl hadn’t wanted insurance at all. “Insurance is a waste of money,” he’d said. “It’s like betting against yourself. Why would I do that?” In theory, Rose agreed, but in this case, she hadn’t been betting against herself. She’d been betting against Carl, who would surely develop hypertension due to his unchecked anger and beat her to the grave. She wasn’t about to be left high and dry when that happened. Rose had worked to convince Carl that life insurance policies were a part of any smart financial plan. She reminded him that he stood to benefit if she were to go before him. That changed his mind fast. Under the terms of the policy, Rose would get zero dollars if he took his own life, so that was out. One million dollars in the event of Carl’s death by illness or natural causes. That would be tough to arrange. Double the payout if he died accidentally. That seemed the best way to go all the way around.

Raymond was twenty minutes late and smelled like a hangover. He looked like he’d slept in his clothes, and he hadn’t bothered to comb his hair. His breath preceded him when he bent down to give Rose a hug. “Just black coffee,” he said to the waitress. He grinned at Rose. “Hey cousin, how’ve you been?” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “I only have about half an hour,” he said. “I have to meet my parole officer and explain why I missed my AA meeting last night.” He laughed. Apparently, risking your freedom for a night of boozing was hilarious.

Rose had a sudden vision of herself sitting in a diner, across from a would-be fence for a would-be hitman, planning to murder her husband. What the hell am I thinking? She wasn’t putting any little piece of her fate in the hands of this moron. In fact, she wasn’t putting her future in anyone’s hands but her own from now on. Besides, Carl was an asshole, and maybe he didn’t deserve to be her husband anymore, but he didn’t deserve to die. Men, and probably people in general, only get away with what you let them get away with.

“You might want to use that half hour to take a shower and brush your teeth, Raymond,” Rose said. “You’ve got booze coming out your pores. You smell like stale Bacardi and cigarettes. And puke, if I’m honest. Next time, you might want to postpone your partying for an hour or two and go to your meeting.” She laid a five dollar bill on the table to pay for Raymond’s coffee and stood up. “I’ll see you at Thanksgiving,” she said. “If you can stay out of trouble that long.”

Rose left the diner, strode past the post office and the Despedida Boutique, and walked the six blocks to Elite Staffing. “May I speak with Ruthie Hilligan, please?”

By the time she went home that afternoon, Rose had a mentor, a manicure, and a lease on a small office space in Ruthie’s building, two hundred fifteen square feet, with a small window that looked out onto a brick alley. She didn’t want a job, she’d decided. She wanted to own her own goddamned business, like Ruthie Hilligan. She wasn’t about to trade one man bossing her around for another. Office furniture would be delivered on Monday. Nothing fancy. Something economical, at least to start. In any case, Rose’s Secretarial Service was about to be born.

Rose went to the bank and opened her own savings account, then transferred half their joint savings into it, less the one thousand dollars she’d already taken. Sue looked surprised, maybe even a little concerned, but she did as Rose asked without saying a word. Rose didn’t touch the checking account; she opened one of her own with the money she had leftover from her week-long shopping spree. On her way home, she stopped in at the Despedida Boutique to return three pair of shoes, not because Carl had told her to, but because she realized it wasn’t the shoes she wanted, it was the freedom to buy them, and if she had to sneak around behind somebody’s back to buy them and then hide them in a utility closet, that wasn’t any kind of freedom at all. She kept the black pumps for work and the red stilettos because she wanted to. She exchanged the other shoes for one pencil skirt, a matching jacket, two crisp, white, button-up blouses, three pair of stockings, and one pair of sensible brown flats. She knew that most of her wardrobe would continue to come from the thrift shop down in town—you’d be surprised the things you can find there. But when a woman works hard, she deserves a few nice things.

That left Carl to deal with. Now that she’d decided to let him live, she’d have to tell him she was moving out and had withdrawn her half of their savings to start her own business. That wasn’t going to go over well. Rose put her new things away and began cooking supper. Tomorrow. I’ll tell him tomorrow.

Saturday morning, while Carl was outside doing Lord only knew what, Rose packed a suitcase. She went out into the garage and got her red wagon and loaded it up with the few household items she would take with her. First, she wrestled her filing cabinet into the wagon and stood it up at one end—she’d have to take it slow going down the hill. Then she added the cast iron skillet her mother had given her and her great-grandmother’s rolling pin. There wasn’t much up on the hill that meant anything to her anymore. After thirty-two years, taking care of Carl had reached the point of diminishing returns. It was time for something brand new.

Rose unplugged the portable television set and loaded it into the other end of the wagon. She left the remote control behind. Good luck with that, Carl. She wedged her three pink shoeboxes in between the other items, then, as an afterthought, she pulled one shoebox from the red wagon and carefully peeled the tissue paper back, revealing the sparkling red shoes. She put them on with her blue jeans and put her tennis shoes in the wagon. She’d have to be careful going down the hill.

Once she was ready to go, Rose went looking for Carl to give him the news. She followed a loud pounding sound, metal on metal, coming from outside, and found Carl out in the front yard, next to the red dogwood tree, banging on a chainsaw with a hammer. He’d removed the blade guard.

“What are you doing?”

Carl flourished the chainsaw. “I’m trimming this goddamned tree, that’s what I’m doing.”

“Where’d you get a chainsaw?” Rose asked.

“I rented it from the hardware store, if you must know. But it won’t start,” Carl said.

“Is it out of gas?”

“I think I can handle this. I’m not an idiot.”

Well, that’s one man’s opinion. “Shouldn’t you call Tim’s Tree Service?” Rose asked. “They did it last time. Some things are better left to the professionals.”

Carl looked at her with disgust. “Miss Know-It-All,” he said. “You a tree surgeon now? Just because you figured out what was wrong with the john once, that don’t make you an expert on every sonofabitching thing.”

Rose shrugged and went back inside, leaving Carl to prove his manhood against a goddamned tree. Fuck you, Carl. She decided to write him a note instead—he was in no mood for a rational conversation—and was just about situated to set off down the hill toward town, her suitcase in one hand, the wagon handle in the other, when she heard chaos break loose outside. She heard the chainsaw’s engine roar to life, followed immediately by the thud of something solid coming in contact with the chainsaw’s teeth, then what sounded like the shriek of a wild animal. The scream was long and loud and piercing, and then there was only the sound of the chainsaw’s motor, and then there was silence.

Rose ran outside—she was pleased at how easily she re-adapted to running in heels. She found Carl laying on the ground next to the chainsaw, which had throttled off. Definitely low on gas. Clogged the carburetor. Carl’s body was convulsing. His left arm had been completely severed and lay about a foot and a half away. Rose looked away from the arm and back at Carl. He had a large gash in his neck. That chainsaw had really gotten away from him. His eyes were open and unblinking. Blood was pumping from his neck like a geyser and shooting out of the place where his arm had once been. The blood poured steadily onto the surrounding dirt. It came so fast the ground couldn’t soak it all up. It puddled at the base of the red dogwood tree, then started running downhill away from the tree’s roots in rivulets. So much blood, and it was so red. Bright, bright red. More blood than she had ever seen was quickly bridging the distance between Rose and her dead husband’s body. Rose took a step back, just in time to keep the blood from soiling her new shoes.

---

“Goody Two Shoes” first appeared in Floyd County Moonshine, Issue No. 16.2 (summer 2024). A huge thank you to my son, Robert Wren, who read this story numerous times before it was published and gave me great notes. The cinnamon hard candies were all his idea. The little red wagon Rose takes down the hill to the post office and uses to cart her things to town at the end of the story is an homage to one of my favorite short stories, “Why I Live at the P.O.,” by Eudora Welty, first published in The Atlantic in April 1941. Welty is the author who first helped me shape my own voice when I started writing again ten years ago.

---

Leanne Phillips
Writer | Book Coach | Editor
​leannephillips.com

Thank you for reading my short story. If you liked it, please share it with a friend who might enjoy it. If you no longer wish to receive my posts, you can ​unsubscribe below.