“Same Walk, Different Shoes” is a Substack community writing project that Ben Wakeman organized as a practical exercise in empathy. The premise is simple. A group of writers anonymously contribute a personal story of an experience that changed their life. Each participating writer is randomly assigned one of these story prompts to turn into a short story. The story you are about to read is one from this collection. You can find all the stories from the participating writers at Catch & Release. Enjoy the walk with us.
I got off the lift on the 23rd floor and searched for the apartment number I had seen on the address. All of the doors were identical, but this one had a colourful pattern drawn on standard paper and annotated with an immature scribble spelling out “The Fitzgerald Family”.
I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know any Fitzgeralds, but I would soon see some of the most important people in my life, supposedly Fitzgeralds now.
I drew my breath sharply in, sniffed as if I smelt something rotten and gathered my courage to ring the bell.
It took some time for the door to open. The young woman at the door looked at me with no recognition and said “Can I help you?”.
I am usually a good talker, but this time I had no idea how to start. When she saw how I hesitated, she started getting stressed.
“Jennie?”
“Yes… How do you know my name?”
“Jennie, I’m… I’m your father.”
I could feel her blood turn to ice instantly. The worry in her eyes disappeared and was replaced by a cold, steely gaze.
“I see… My mother…”
“I know. That’s why I wanted to see you. I’m very sorry for your loss… We had a good relation once. It sounds meaningless to say this after so many years, but it is indeed the truth.”
She grimaced. “It is a bit… difficult for me to take your word in good faith. You’ve never been around. I don’t remember you that much, frankly.”
I sighed and looked into her eyes. “You have all the right to be suspicious of my intent. However, if you give me a chance and spare me maybe half an hour, I would like to tell you a story, a real one, that might explain how and why I disappeared from your life. I think it could mean a lot to me and maybe it will fill some of the blanks in your life story.”
She hesitated, then opened the door wider. “Won’t you come in?”
I went in. It was a modestly furnished flat with a practical living room. There were some toys spread around.
“How did you find my address?” she asked.
“I asked an old friend of your mother’s and she agreed to give me the address when she heard that Joan passed away. It was much more difficult to find your whereabouts before… You should know that I tried…”
She asked whether I wanted a drink and I settled for coffee. As she went to the kitchen to make coffee, I looked around with some interest. It was a weird feeling. This woman, who was my oldest daughter, was a complete stranger to me. I did not know anything about her, her child (boy or girl), her family and anything else that is significant in her life. Of course, I deserved this, since I was the one who left and pursued my own goals. Thus no complaints to make…
We sat across each other, sipping strong coffee and sitting silently.
“Maybe you can tell me why you left us?” she said quietly. “I had asked my mother when I was young, but she usually gave me a lame answer and changed the subject quickly… I stopped asking after a while… I blamed myself initially, I must have done something wrong, causing you to leave us. I know now that this was childish, of course.”
I cleared my throat. “Jennie. I don’t know if it means anything, but I would like to apologise for my absence from your lives. It might be difficult to explain my motivation, but I would still like to try…”
“Go ahead…”
“We were living in the city. This was before any of you were born and just at the time when the government was trying to extend living areas beyond the immediate vicinity of the cities, where everyone had to relocate to during the extreme weather period in the last century. When I told your mother that I was considering to apply for a teaching job at a farming community, she was livid. She thought I lost my mind. We were city-dwellers, living outside the cities was unthinkable, until maybe a few years before that time. I told her that this was the only job I could find as an unexperienced teacher of literature.
She cast me a dirty look and stormed out of the kitchen. I knew this attitude really well, but I could not do much, especially when she was in this condition.”
“Condition?” asked Jennie.
“Well, she was pregnant at the time, I think two months. She was, of course, right to react. I thought about our first day in that house. We had moved into the neighbourhood with high hopes, two young, enthusiastic Bostonians unaware of the difficult years ahead of them. We had got married a few months before we both graduated, despite warnings from both families, but we managed to finish school, to find out that this was just the beginning. But we loved each other, wouldn’t that be good enough? ‘I adore you, darling,’ was what Joan usually said, with a mumbled ‘me too,’ from me.
The house was small, but would be good enough for us. City center was quite easy to reach with a 10-minute walk and a few minutes on the T. I found a part-time teaching job downtown, barely enough to put some food in the fridge and Joan continued the work in the public library she had started just before graduation. At least until we found out she was pregnant and her pregnancy was somewhat risky. I remember I was elated, or at least seemed to be. I’m not sure any more.
I applied to all the job adverts I could find, but it was really difficult for an inexperienced teacher to find a job in the city. The move to the rural areas had started only a few months ago, with the weather inching back to what our parents would call normal, so that people could live outside the safe zones within the borders of the big cities. This meant all resources went to the ‘city extensions to arable farmland’. I was eager to get out of the stuffed city where everything was controlled and regulated all the time to stifling precision. It would be so good to have some space after living with the crowds in the city all throughout our teenage years. One thing I forgot though: I never mentioned this wish to Joan, assuming that she would be OK with the only logical thing to do.
She was sullen the whole day. I tried to talk to her, but she told me off. It took me a few well-thought comments and a serve of chocolate & vanilla ice cream to get her to an acceptable composure. It took me a couple of hours a day later to talk her through the situation, that she would have to find a decent job anyway and could find something to do from home, that the only job they would offer an unexperienced teacher like me would be in the extensions anyway and so on.
Eventually she gave in and I applied to the teaching position a hundred miles inland. I got a phone call and an approval two months later. This was now set in stone. Joan was already looking into what she could do from home, worrying about Internet coverage so far into the farmlands, but apparently there was no issue there. The government had made sure there was enough coverage through satellite in order to make sure professionals moved to these areas and gave a boost to agricultural production.“
“Up to now,” said Jennie. “I haven’t heard anything explaining why you left my mother.”
“If you have time, I will come to that… We moved into the newly-built neighbourhood which was embedded in the middle of the farmland area to bring in the technical and professional support for farming. Teachers, craftsmen and other would make sure farming families would get all the support they needed so as to carry on efficient production in the middle of a thriving community which would get prime government resources to boost production to the pre-Crisis levels. The house we rented was almost twice as big as the one in the city, the weather was very clean, we could find all the best food to eat quite cheap. It looked like it would work.
The only crisis we had in the next five months was just… the birth itself. We could get all the medical support we needed in the new hospital complex built for the community, but the pregnancy itself was complicated and when the time came, it was more or less a crisis due to the delicate condition of the baby. But all in all, everything went well and we got you without any medical problems.
It looked like all the stones were settling in their places and we were due for a happy, calm period with our new nuclear family in the middle of nature.
Appearances could be deceiving… I was getting used to the teaching job, but something was amiss. I enjoyed the presence of high-school children and discussing literature with them, although it wasn’t clear whether they really absorbed the essence of the course naturally, or whether they were only interested in getting the required grade so as to excel in courses which would eventually enable them to go away and look for a career elsewhere. It is an irony in fact that the children living in a farming community would try to get away as soon as possible, whereas the government was trying to attract more families in the are to make sure the community as a whole thrived.
After around three months after the birth, we started to look around for child care and got babysitters for a while. However, the performance was spotty and Joan always found one or more reasons to let the sitters go after a few sessions. I could understand her sensitivity about the baby, but it was getting more and more difficult for her to do anything useful remotely while she could not trust the sitters fully. She started getting irritated and complaining all the time about her life in the middle of nowhere and the fact that she was now separated from her family and all her friends back at the city. I tried to stay calm and not be dragged into the argument, but it was getting increasingly difficult to do so.
On top of all this, I suddenly noticed that although I liked teaching in principle, I was not sure if teaching the children of a farming community was the job I saw myself spending the rest of my life… It just seemed so… insufficient to give me the energy to go through life and all its difficulties.”
“I would probably hate it too.”
“You probably would. I am sure there are very good teachers around and they like their job a lot, but I noticed - a bit late of course - that it wasn’t my passion in life.
This made the situation with your mother even more difficult to resolve. I had brought her outside the city and now I was complaining about the community life as well. She had had enough.
I had had enough as well, so I started talking to people about other opportunities. Eventually I found one. There were re-settlement projects all around the country to reclaim all the abandoned areas and make them suitable for re-settlement. They were looking for adventurous people who were flexible, could improvise and also could spend time outside the safe areas for longer periods of time.
When your mother got wind of my new target, she went ballistic and decided that she would return to the city. I must admit I did not do all I could to convince her otherwise… Guilty as charged.
But, technically, I did not abandon you and your mother, she went back to your grandma’s, taking you. But of course this was caused by my actions, so in a sense she had the right to say that I abandoned you. What I did not know at the time is that she was already pregnant to her second child. However, I did not see your sister for years.”
“But why didn’t you visit us?”
“I did, once. You were at school and your mom did not want you to see me and get confused, since you were settling in and slowly adapting to city life. I did not come back again, but I was away for long periods of time anyway. My superiors found out I was so good at surveying, planning and analysis of options and in time moved me from project to project, usually at distant places. I even stayed in Europe for 2 years for a cooperative project once…”
“Were you alone all this time?”
“For a long time… I eventually got married, having signed divorce papers with your mom a short time after I moved away. I have a son, 22 years old.”
“I have a brother?”
“Yes, you do… If you want to meet him I can give you the phone and address… Look, I’m really sorry to have been away all these years. I can not even think about all the things I’ve missed and I know there is no way for you to completely forgive me for this, but I still wanted you to know the circumstances… We may not have another chance to do this…”
“Why? What is happening?”
“Well… As I said, I was found to be a good organiser, especially in new and hostile environments, so I now joined Project New Dawn.”
“New Dawn?… Isn’t it the… Mars Settlement!!”
We stayed silent the next few minutes. It was a lot to digest on her side.
The silence was interrupted by the doorbell. Jennie opened the door and let in a young girl with freckles carrying a bag which seemed bigger than her body. Then she brought her in front of me. “This is Cybil, my daughter. Cybil, this is… Your Grandpa.”
“My Grandpa?” asked the young beauty.
“Your other Grandpa. My Father.”
Cybil moved hesitantly and put her arms around me. I was trying hard not to cry, but kept my composure.
“I am very glad to meet you, Cybil. I am sorry I did not have a chance to see you before.”
Cybil told her mother all that had happened at school. It was such a pity that I had missed and would miss this wonderful life as well, but this was a result of my own selection and the only consolation I had was that I was going to help a lot of others settle and secure the future of humanity on a distant planet. The cost to pay for this seemed to be really heavy at this time.
After Cybil went to her room to do some homework, I told Jennie a bit more about my upcoming trip. I could see she was restraining herself to appear uninterested, but I could sense that she was regretting all these years she spent without a father figure and unfortunately she would not have a chance to change it.
I told both of them goodbye and moved out of their lives… If we survived the long trip and the initial settlement, this would be a good start of a long human presence of Mars. In time we would change the planet, we would change ourselves… I remembered something out of an old book I read: “Dark they were and golden-eyed…”. I doubted if we would mutate into Martians, but I knew my daughter and grand-daughter could at least be proud of what we accomplished and maybe, maybe in the future forgive me for everything they had missed…
Afterword
This story shares some background with my previous SWDS contribution The Many, in terms of the implied ecological/climate crisis, the recovery and humanity spreading out once again to re-settle affected areas. I may come back to this world in the near future, since I’m interested in a climate change scenario that does not end with the total wipe-out of humanity but would like to look into what kind of difficulties would humanity go through and what losses they would have to incur.
Thanks for the nice comments. I had to stick to the prompt and wrap everything in a short story. I think I will visit this post-climate change world in the future to find out more about what happened during the change and how do the survivors (who have apparently centralised in the big cities, with possible population decline?) cope with all the changes.
It took me a long while to clock the post-climate apocalypse properly, because it feels as though we’re so close to that scenario in reality. It is incredibly believable. I thought the whole feel of the piece really reflected that distopia well, a kind of awkwardness as humans feel their way in a brave new world. I loved the ‘I’m off to Mars’ gut punch at the end. I like the uncomfortable ending.