Lime Green

Summer's End, 1965

The grass between the stands and the stage was littered with shoes, as if a horde of crazy-eyed Cinderellas had fled at the stroke of midnight. I’d lost both of my shoes, and it was already dark. On the scoreboard, glowing digital letters spelled out a warning: PLEASE STAY IN YOUR SEATS FOR YOUR SAFETY. The police were clearing us out. The band was gone. We’d waited all summer to see them, and in just twenty minutes, the concert was over. It was time to go. But I couldn’t go home barefoot. 

“Just take any shoes,” said my friend Sandy, who was getting impatient. She never liked to wait for anything, and we’d just spent a whole day doing just that. We’d arrived at the stadium four hours early, hoping to get a glimpse of the boys as they arrived. Then, we waited through four supporting acts before the Beatles finally came on stage. When the four of them sprinted out onto the field and took the stage, we had to wait for some deejay to tell the kids in the front row to sit down before the show could continue. 

They did not sit down. They rushed the stage, and we followed them, the stands emptying row by row like a tide racing toward the sand. I bashed my shin into the back of the hard plastic seat in front of me, a violet-black bruise forming under my skin. One girl fell face-flat in the grass while others ran over her back as if she were chunks of sod. 

A cordon of police with linked arms stretched from one side of the ballfield to the other to keep us from reaching the stage. Somebody bumped me from behind, and I felt the air knocked out of my chest. 

John gripped his microphone and said something to the crowd, but I couldn’t understand a word of it. The sound was in the PA system, all the way back in the stands. We should’ve stayed in our seats.

“My dad bought me those shoes for my confirmation,” I said to Sandy as I picked up shoes and threw them aside when they turned out not to be mine. “He’ll be so angry if I don’t come home with them.” 

“He won’t be able to tell one pair of shoes from another,” Sandy said. “He’s a man.”

I picked through the darkened grass. The screaming was still reverberating in my head. It was like the sound tires made right before a car crashed, only it didn’t end. It started the second the boys ran out to the stage and didn’t end until long after they’d been whisked away in an armored car. Throughout the whole concert, I’d strained to hear each note, but most of them were drowned out by the other girls’ screams. Why did they have to do that? Didn’t they want to hear the music too? 

A flashlight beam swept the field and hit me right in the eyes. A cop informed Sandy and me that we had to go. 

“Here,” Sandy said, thrusting a pair of shoes into my arms. “These are nicer than the ones you had. Now let’s get out of here.”

It was too dark to see what the shoes looked like, but they felt like patent leather, which is what my lost shoes were made of, so I slipped them on. Sandy grabbed my hand and we hustled out of the stadium and found Sandy’s brother leaning against his car, waiting for us. The radio was playing “Ticket to Ride,” which the band had just played during their short set. 

Sandy’s brother flashed me a crooked smile as we all crammed together on his bench seat. I smiled back, but I didn’t pay him much attention. My head was still fuzzy from the concert, from the sweat running down the lead guitarist’s face, his fingers squeezing the neck of his guitar. No one loved George more than me. I’d managed to catch a few good glimpses when the crowd around me shifted just enough to allow me to see. 

It wasn’t until I got home and stood under the buzzing electric light in the kitchen that I realized my mistake. 

“Where’d you get green shoes?” Dad asked. The shoes on my feet weren’t just green, they were bright green -- lime green. I looked down at them. The spots that weren’t scuffed were shiny, glaring under the kitchen light. 

Dad sat at the Formica table, sipping coffee even though it was almost midnight. He drank so much coffee that his body didn’t even react to it anymore. The dog’s toes clicked on the linoleum floor as he stirred from his bed in the corner. He sniffed my shoes and then stared up at me with his wet gray eyes. 

“You left here in your confirmation shoes,” Dad said. “Those were white.”

I explained what had happened -- how I’d gotten caught up in the rush toward the stage and my shoes had fallen off, how it was too dark to see, how the police made us leave. 

Dad waited in silence for me to finish and sucked down the last of his coffee. 

“Those shoes were expensive. And you cannot wear green shoes to church.”

I sighed inwardly. Other kids got to stop going to church after confirmation, but somehow, I still had to be there every Sunday, even after standing up in front of the congregation wearing that stupid white robe. 

“The way I see it, you’re going to need to pay me back for the shoes you lost,” Dad said. “And buy yourself a new pair of white ones. Looks like you’ll be looking at the Want Ads in the morning.” 

The next day, the classified pages were already on the table, folded neatly in half, with several small sections already circled. Mom cut a slice of ham-and-cheese quiche and set the pale, lukewarm pie in front of me. I ate it and chased it with a glass of orange juice and then I put on a freshly-pressed pair of slacks and my saddle shoes. 

With the newspaper in hand, I walked down the main street in our neighborhood, dropping in at the hardware store, the bakery, the laundrette and the bowling alley. They all said they’d call when they’d made a decision. 

Before heading home, I stopped in at the music shop. I knew I shouldn’t go in because I didn’t have any money to buy anything, but they had a huge poster of the Beatles there and I just wanted to visit it. 

“Hey,” said Reggie, the shop owner, “How was the concert?” I’d purchased the concert tickets from him several weeks ago. 

“Great,” I said. “I lost my shoes.” 

The framed poster stretched almost to the ceiling. In front of it, a bin containing all of the band’s singles and 45s in order of release sat neatly arranged, ready for plunder by fans like me. I only had “A Hard Day’s Night.” “I Should’ve Known Better” was the B-side. Three photos were arranged on the cover: John standing at a microphone, Paul and George sharing a microphone, Ringo on his drums. For months, I listened to that record over and over and memorized every dot of ink on that cover.

Mom paid me a nickel for every shirt that I ironed, and when I heard they were coming to town, I saved for weeks to buy the tickets. Now, I almost wished I’d bought the 45s instead.

I looked up at George who stood off to the side, grinning in a way that showed off his fang-like eyeteeth. He gripped the headstock of his guitar in his hand while the body of it rested on the floor, in front of his feet. I closed my eyes and willed my body to trade places with that guitar. 

At the concert, he’d been so far away, even after we rushed the stage. I remember the feeling of bodies crushing me from behind, causing me to ram into the people in front of me. The girl in front of me wore a white dress with a green print: little trees. As I stood in the record store, staring up at the giant poster, I realized I remembered the little trees on that girl’s dress better than I remembered George’s face, or his fingers forming the shapes of chords on the neck of his guitar. I’d wanted so badly to watch his fingers.  

The bell above the door jingled as a group of boys wandered into the store, and I slipped out. I walked home the long way, replaying my favorite daydream in my mind: George would pick me up in his fast car, and we’d drive along a narrow mountain road, where the slightest oversteer on a hairpin turn could send us plunging into the glittering topaz sea below. The wind would twist my hair into wild braids. By the time we parked on a cliff, where there was only space for both of us if he held me tight, my hair would be a tangled mess, and he’d gently comb it with his fingers.

Three days later, I started a new job at the bowling alley. My job was to keep the rental shoes neatly arranged and make sure nobody walked off with them. A jukebox played top 40 records -- almost half of them were Beatles singles -- over the thundering of bowling balls rolling on hardwood and the clatter of collapsing pins. 

Tuesdays were League nights, when the men who worked at the brewery came to bowl against the guys from the potato chip factory. My dad was on the brewery’s team. He grinned as I handed him a pair of size 13 shoes. He loudly called to his friends, imploring them to come over and say hello.

“Stop it,” I hissed, but it didn’t stop his buddies from gathering around me and holding their hands flat in the air to measure how not-tall I was the last time they saw me. 

The high school boys came on Friday nights. Sandy’s brother, Mark, was one of them. He came with four of his friends, all of whom wore red-and-white letter jackets with fuzzy football and baseball-shaped patches all down the sleeves. Mark was the only one whose jacket was just plain gray suede. I watched the way he reclined with his arm slung over the back of the seat while he watched his friends bowl. 

The biggest of them, whose frizzy overgrown crop of red hair was usually jammed under a football helmet, rolled strike after strike. The others swore as their balls hooked to the left or right, only knocking over a few pins. Mark’s ball spent most of its time in the gutter, but he didn’t seem to care.

One night, the boys stayed until closing time. As I slid their rented shoes back into the wooden cubbies behind the counter, I felt as if someone was watching me. I looked up and saw Mark lingering by the counter. He flashed me a lopsided grin and offered me a ride home. 

Mark and his friends waited while I punched out for the night. I found myself squeezed between the redheaded linebacker and the baseball team’s second baseman in the backseat of Mark’s car. They smelled like sweat and french fry grease. One by one, Mark dropped them all off until I was the only one left. He waited for me to climb up to the front seat before he put the car in drive. 

On the radio, the song that the band had played to close out their concert faded in and out of static. The guitar solo on that song was my favorite, but after the first two notes, the song disappeared into crackling static and Mark turned the sound off. 

He pulled the car over next to my house. A rectangle of fluorescent light came from the kitchen window; the rest of the house was dark. I put my hand on the door handle and looked over at Mark. I hesitated. 

“You ever get a Saturday off?” he asked. He gently squeezed my wrist. His face was half illuminated by the streetlamp. The weak light made his blue eyes look gray. 

A week later, Mark and I went on our first date. Sandy got mad for some reason, and hung up on me when I tried to talk to her on the phone. Mark told me not to worry about it -- she was just jealous because she’d never been on a date. He knew because he’d read it in her diary. 

We walked through the park and stood on a bridge overlooking the pond where the reflection of the white-domed cathedral rippled across the surface. His hand touched the small of my back as we watched a pair of ducks swim past the bridge, their rubbery orange feet fluttering behind them. Mark turned and looked into my eyes. In the September sunlight, his eyes were bright, electric blue. His kiss was warm and firm, and as I felt my knees give way, he wrapped his arms around me and held me up. 

After working at the bowling alley for several weeks, I had enough money to pay my dad back for the shoes I’d lost, and to replace them with a new pair. When I went to buy the new pair of white shoes -- which I didn’t think I needed since I’d been wearing saddle shoes to church and no one cared -- I tried on a pair of white vinyl boots that came up to my knees. They had chunky heels and zippers on the side. 

“Aren’t those great?” the saleslady asked. She wore an orange dress and her short hair was cut in a style that aped artichoke leaves. 

“Yeah, but if I buy them, my dad will have a coronary,” I sighed as I pulled the zipper down. 

I chose a plain pair of white Mary Janes. The saleslady smiled knowingly as she folded tissue paper over them and tucked them into their cardboard box. 

When I wasn’t at work or school, I was with Mark. When our dog ran away, I called Mark and stopped crying long enough to tell him what happened. Mark spent hours driving me around in his car, leaning out the window and calling the dog’s name, before we finally found him shivering in a ravine slick with decaying oak leaves and brought him home. 

On the night before Halloween, Mark parked his car on a hill that overlooked a valley of twinkling street lamps. We sat on the hood and cuddled together for warmth. I could see a row of tiny stoplights and watched them turn from red to green in unison. 

I remembered my fantasy of driving on a windy cliff with George, of his fingers in my hair. But as Mark kissed the spot behind my ear and wound his arms tightly around my waist, the old daydream faded into nothing. 

The next night, I went to Sandy’s for a Halloween party. I wore a lime green dress with a Peter Pan collar and the shoes I’d picked up at the concert. 

The party was in the basement at Sandy’s house. She had strung up red Christmas lights on the ceiling. Cigarette smoke hung in the air. The turntable spun the Beatles’ newest long-playing record. Sandy handed me a drink in a martini glass. It was Sprite with a cherry in it. She put her arm around my waist as we swayed to the music. 

“Don’t you wish we could see them again?” she asked. “Do you think they’ll ever come back to town?”

Before I could answer, a girl with long blonde hair came down the basement stairs. 

“Who’s that?” I asked. 

“That’s Jeanette,” said Sandy. “We have Home Ec together. She comes over sometimes to listen to records.”

I didn’t ask, “Since when?” I knew the answer would be, “Since you started going around with my brother.” 

Sandy called out to her, and as she walked over, I noticed that she was wearing the white vinyl boots I had tried on at the shoe store. Her dress was electric blue with tiny white squares. 

“Great boots,” I said to her over the music. 

“I like your shoes too,” she said. She glanced at me, furrowed her brow, then looked down at my shoes again. “Where did you get them?” she asked. 

“Funny story,” Sandy said, “she lost hers at the concert we went to, so she wore those home instead.”

“You found those at the concert?” Jeaneatte asked. The Christmas lights cast a scarlet glow over her face. 

“It was dark,” I said, “and Sandy didn’t want to wait for me to find my actual shoes.”

“Is there a pink sticker on the inside of the right one?” Jeanette asked. 

I exchanged glances with Sandy. “I don’t know,” I said. “Why?”

“I lost my shoes that night too,” said Jeanette. “I went home barefoot. If there’s a sticker in the right one, those are mine.” 

I looked at Sandy and then at Jeanette. I could tell they were both waiting for me to take my shoes off. I leaned on Sandy’s shoulder as I slipped the right shoe off. I couldn’t see anything inside it, other than the smudges of old, sweaty dirt. 

“There’s no sticker,” I said. 

“Look,” Jeanette said, pointing to the gooey, torn remnants of an old price sticker near the toe. It didn’t look pink in the red light. 

“You want the shoes? Fine,” I said as I slipped off the other one and handed them both to Jeanette. I glanced at Sandy, expecting a look of sympathy, but instead, she smirked. 

I told them I needed to use the bathroom and went upstairs. A poster of Sean Connery holding a pistol was pasted to Mark’s bedroom door. He opened the door when I knocked. A copy of Junkie was open, facedown, on his bedspread. 

“What happened to your shoes?” he asked as we collapsed onto his bed. He reached down and squeezed my pinkie toe between his fingers. 

“Sandy’s friend Jeanette says they were hers. She took them back.”

Mark kissed my neck. “Oh well,” he said, “they were ugly shoes, anyway.” 

Later, when Mark drove me home, the outside air was crisp and the pavement was cold. In the car, I sat with my bare feet tucked under me. On the radio, the Beach Boys faded into static. I switched it off.