I love short stories. I used to write short stories for women’s magazines when Redbook,McCall’s and Ladies’ Home Journal published at least one story every month. This is a story I wrote for a writing class more recently when I was taking a master’s degree at Johns Hopkins. We had to write based on a prompt. The prompt was “It is not what you expected.” Read it and enjoy.

My True Story

Walking down the hallway the girl from 3A stopped me. “You look nice,” she said. I did. I was wearing my black coat with the Persian lamb collar. I only get it out for special occasions.

“Where are you going?” She’s young, nosy, with pink streaks in her stringy hair. It was already getting dark. She knows I don’t go out much.

“Dinner.”

“Special occasion?” Very nosy.

“Yes,” I said and added, “My anniversary.” I knew I shouldn’t have said that.

“How many years?”

“Ha! Years and years and years.”

“So how did you meet?” she asked, getting out her key from one of those big ugly bags the young ones carry.

“You know.”

“I don’t “

“Everyone knows.” I said, very softly.

“Me? I’ve tried everything. Hinge, Match, Zoosk. Men are dogs,” she added as the door slammed behind her. No longer interested.

If she had stopped to listen, maybe, just maybe, I’d have told her the way it really was. How that damned glass slipper rubbed my heel. How both of those damn slippers hurt like hell and how it was different in so many ways from the story everyone thinks they know and how in some ways it was exactly the same.

C and me were meeting at Café 82. We went there once a year. I was looking forward to their beef brisket hot sandwich with fries, my favorite. I knew he’d have blueberry blintzes. I’d cut them up and help him eat.

Walking very slowly down Broadway in the cold — I’m afraid of falling –– it made me think of that long ago time. It had been a very cold night, too. Maybe I should tell someone the whole true story before it is too late. Not the girl with pink streaks who could never understand. Someone who would care about the details because the details were important. Details matter.

It really is annoying because the first thing everyone gets absolutely wrong is that my father was rich, and my stepmother was poor. My father, the schnorrer, was a merchant with a lousy failing business. She was the one with the money who needed a husband and Papa, going bankrupt, was glad to make the deal. He even changed his name to hers. From Goldberg to Goldman and changed my name from Esther to Ella. You get the drift. It didn’t save him.

And as for the Fairy Godmother crap, all nonsense. When we heard about the ball, a friend of my poor, dead mother, may she rest in peace, who had expected to be the second wife and was mad at my father for dumping her and hated my stepmother for catching him came to see me. She said she felt sorry I was being treated like a servant girl and deserved to have some fun, too. She’d get me a dress, arrange a way to get me to the ball that everyone was talking about. I was very pretty, that I knew, and she wanted me to show up my ugly stepsisters, piss my stepmother off. What did I have to lose? I said, okay, sure, thanks. I was planning to leave town anyway. I kind of wanted to know what they served at the Palace.

As for the night of the ball, all I really remember was how damn uncomfortable I was. It was so cold and I didn’t have a coat. Those crappy slippers hurt, and the gown was two sizes too small. I said I was a 6. She could only get a 4, half price. In truth, I was an 8. When you clean off plates at every meal, you scarf up all the leftovers.

I guess I looked good enough. C made the rounds. Poor guy, he wasn’t very tall, so half the girls towered over him. I sort of felt sorry for him, but I was mainly there for the food. As I was reaching for my third smoked salmon canape, he caught my eye. I gulped it down. He sidled over, “I like a girl who enjoys her food.” He led me onto the dance floor. I pressed against him. What the hell. I said, “You know you are very cute. I like you. I bet we could have fun together.” What was the point in being shy? He quivered. That’s one of the moments I never forgot. One of the best. His shaking a little, flushing, and the beads of sweat on his upper lips. The poor guy just needed some love.

Then the fireworks started. I mean the real fireworks. Bang! Bang! I had to go. The coach was charging overtime after 10 pm. She wouldn’t pay. I couldn’t pay. I ran and that damn slipper hurt so much I just kicked it off. When I got home and looked at my foot my heel was bloody.

It took him a week for him to find me. C wasn’t the sharpest, but he wasn’t that dumb either. Compared to others in our little kingdom, which mapmakers sometimes tucked into Greater Poland, sometimes pushed inside the Ukraine and most of the time considered non-existent, he was okay. On his rounds, he wasn’t looking for fit but blood. Blood had dried on the edge of the slipper, another important but ignored detail. When he saw my mangled heel, he knew.

We married fast. We had to. The Einsatzgruppen had cleaned up the Polish villages to the east and were looking for action. His parents had already fled to London, taking most of the treasury. We took the rest. My father begged to come along. So sorry. They shot him in a field near the palace. My stepmother and stepsisters, guilt by association, were carted off to Auschwitz. One survived. She found me after and wrote me. I didn’t reply.

I decided on New York and he agreed. From the start, C just went along with my decisions. We never fought. At first, it was hard for him, but I told him to keep looking on the sunny side. I liked that song. He had skills I told him. He certainly knew bespoke tailoring, and, after all, he was damn charming. He ended up working at Brooks Brothers for years. Had his own customers. They thought he was a prince.

And I never minded cleaning. First as a maid at the hotel on 55th and then as assistant head of housekeeping. A woman owned the hotel that looked like a palace. A real bitch. She reminded me of my stepmother. We got along just fine. But that was long ago too.

C was already sitting at a booth in the back when I, half frozen, got to Café 82. They know me there. It’s dusty, still fairly cheap and everyone is Upper West Side old. The aide who brought him was at another table, already tucking into his hot turkey and fries. I’d pay for that and for the two desserts I knew he would order. I tipped him, too, each time I went to visit, about once a month. C didn’t talk. He can’t talk any more. But he smiled when he saw me and reached out his hand. Maybe he still knew who I was. I’m not sure. I kissed him on the top of head; he still had his hair. Sipping my tea, I could tell he really enjoyed the blintzes because I had to order extra sour cream.

There’s one other thing everyone knows about besides that damn glass slipper. That we lived happily ever after.

Of course, we didn’t.

But we lived. We lived. And isn’t that’s enough?