You'd think by the age of seventy she would have learned to keep her mouth shut, but no, not her.
``I was born and raised in high heels,'' she'd said. Her daughters didn't understand that yes in those days she got up in the mornings and put on her high heels and took them off when she went to bed at night. But that was fifty years ago.
Now she was moving out of the old house and there were the high heels she'd worn to a wedding fifteen years earlier still under the bed with an old phone bill, a corn cob pipe and a garnet earring. Also a mouse skeleton complete and perfect until she disturbed it.
She slipped on the high heels and her feet felt as though she'd come home. Back to the Paddington bedsitter, 1953. Before the Unfortunate Marriage that took her across the world. In the hall mirror she looked a different person. Four inches taller with those elegant ankles peeping from under her terry robe. She did a little dance. Hopped from one foot to the other. Yes. She could still run for the bus without breaking an ankle. Still walk with elegance. Not like the splay footed cripples you saw down town sometimes.
``I could run a marathon in high heels,'' she thought, and the idea would not leave her. She had been a runner all her life.
She put a personal in the local shopper. She got a lot of calls. Was this an AIDS fund raiser? There was definite interest. It was all done by phone, and nearly everyone she spoke with sounded male. It seemed there was a lot of red tape to be dealt with if they wished to organize a full fledged run. In the end they decided to plan for a Sunday morning on the bike path that circled down town. Thirty two people signed up. She'd ordered a hundred tee shirts.
The morning of the run was cool and fine. There seemed to be about thirty people there. Twenty five cross dressers, three older women like herself and two athletic young women in boots with building block heels. Not quite what she had in mind. They had agreed that the winner would be the person who got the furthest but those two looked like they could go all the way.
She started out slow. It was her secret plan to finish. To show her daughters that yes she could run all day in four inch stilettos. The first ten miles were a piece of cake. She had a fresh pair of shoes stashed off the path and at eleven miles she put them on. She handed the old pair to a homeless person rising like fog out of the long grass. She was running with a person named Mavis. He had taken off his blonde wig and tied it round his waist. He was light and lean and she envied him his effortless breathing. But Mavis was getting shaky. His feet were hurting, she could tell.
They stopped to wrap tissue round his toes. She gave him her Gatorade bottle thinking he would take a mouthful but he chugged the whole thing. She paced herself to keep him company. For all that he fell by the wayside at seventeen miles. She half walked, half ran the last five miles. The young women in clunky heels had long gone on to victory, and a man in running shorts made it all the way in Payless Shoes For Less pumps. That made her fourth and last to cross the line. Her daughter was there with her fancy digital camera to capture the moment. There was a free massage for all, and designer coffee and pastries and hugs all round and they stood among broken heels and smeared make-up and wigs awry and somehow all the tee shirts disappeared though only ten were paid for.
She looked up and caught the eye of the girl she had once been striding past Paddington Station fifty years ago. Straight black skirt, red sweater and high heels.
The girl did not recognize her.