Free The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken Page B

the next Friday, with a different question. I still remember: he wanted to know what an anti-Pope was.
    Maybe it was forgiveness, and maybe it was just teenage obliviousness, but the sight of James that afternoon seemed miraculous.
You came back
, I said to him as I sent him to the card catalog (“Look under Catholic Church—history”) and he said,
Sure, Peggy, where else would I go?
    I watched him read that afternoon. He sat at the table in the front room—his favored spot, ever since his first visit. Looking over his shoulders, I could see his book through the edge of his glasses. The words slid in curves as he moved his head.
    I wanted to stand there forever, see what he saw. Not possible, of course. He’d stand up and take those glasses with him. I could only see through them now, me standing and him sitting, hunched significantly over, because he needed a stronger prescription. His eyes were growing at a different rate from the rest of him and would not stay in focus.

    Caroline had an easy pregnancy. I’d expected that she would. It was as if the new stomach that swelled in front of her were something she’d expected all her life, an addition that she’d been meaning for years to install. Some women move into their bellies when they’re pregnant; it’s everything they think of, it’s what they move first and most carefully. Not Caroline. She lived in her whole easy body, barely changed her flat-footed gait.
    I myself hardly noticed my physical self, which I considered a not-too-useful appendage. Only my feet demanded my attention. When I wore a bad pair of shoes on a busy day, my feet swelled, complained. I was forced to think of them, to picture getting home and slipping off my shoes, the way a starving man will torture and comfort himself with fantasies of food. Nothing to do—I could not pad around the library stocking-footed. My mouth answered questions, but I was stuck in my throbbing feet.
    My feet were wide, wide, wide, and flat-footed, which was mostly a blessing—no arches to ache or fall. Nevertheless, by the time I was in my mid-twenties, they were an old person’s feet, bunioned and calloused and noisome and shapeless and yellowed. Blue veins ran the length; my toes, forced into tiny places for years, huddled together for comfort. I didn’t mind so much: it was as if I knew what I would look like as a senior citizen, from the ground up.
    James caught me late one Friday at the library, a week after his return. (Though he hadn’t actually been gone, I always thought of it that way,
his return
.) I’d taken off a shoe and put it on the counter, searching for the boulder I felt sure was somewhere around the toe. Probably it was just a piece of sand. This close to the ocean, you always have sand in your shoes, embedded in your carpet, even if you never go to the beach.
    â€œYour shoes bother you?” he asked.
    â€œOh,” I said. I shook out the shoe, dropped it to the floor, and stepped into it. I walked around to the front of the desk, trying to get the shoe jammed on; on top of everything, it was a little too small. “Always, I’m afraid. Usually. That’s what happens when you’re on your feet all day.”
    â€œWhat size do you wear?” he asked.
    â€œFive and a half,” I said, automatically shaving a full size off. “Women’s. Different from men’s.”
    â€œI know. I wear a man’s thirty,” he said. Then he saw the surprise on my face and laughed. “Five times bigger. More than five times.” He stood beside me and steadied himself with his hand on my head. I didn’t take it personally—he often steadied himself with the closest person; it was usually the handiest thing. Then he took his hand away.
    â€œLook,” he said. He’d lined up his foot with mine. They didn’t even look like the same part of the body, his high black shoe next to my white