Richard checked his watch for the third time. Then he looked past my shoulder toward the restaurant window.
He was clearly nervous.
I just couldn’t tell whether it was because of me or because of something outside.
“Are you expecting someone, Richie?” I asked.
His fingers stopped on his watchband.
“No,” he said. “I’m just enjoying the evening.”
“You seem a lot more interested in the street than in your dinner.”
He gave me a quick smile and reached for his water glass. The ice had melted a long time ago, but he stirred it anyway with the little black straw. Around and around.
Something about the way he kept watching that window bothered me.
I told myself it was first-date nerves.
At seventy-four, after twelve years without anything you could call romance, I was nervous too.
My name is Marilyn Hughes. I’m seventy-four years old, and I’m six feet eight inches tall.
I’ve been six feet eight since I was nineteen. Before that, I was six-four at fifteen, six-six at seventeen, and six-seven at my high school graduation, where I had to duck under the archway of balloons at the end of the stage and everyone laughed.
I’ve heard every joke there is.
How’s the weather up there? That’s the most popular one. I’ve heard it probably ten thousand times. I’ve heard it from cashiers and bus drivers and doctors and a priest at a funeral.
Do you play basketball? That’s the second most popular. I don’t. I never have. I’m terrible at it. In ninth grade, the gym teacher made me try out for the girls’ team, and I tripped over my own feet and broke my wrist in the first ten minutes.
Can you get that for me? Strangers in the grocery store, pointing at the top shelf. I always get it for them. My mother raised me to be polite.
People see my height before they see anything else about me.
It’s not cruel, usually. People are just surprised. They look up, and up, and their eyes go wide, and then they say something. They always say something. I don’t think I’ve walked into a single room in fifty-five years without somebody saying something.
When I was young, it made me want to disappear.
I slouched. My mother used to poke me between the shoulder blades with her finger. Stand up straight, Marilyn. But standing up straight made it worse. So I slouched more. I wore flat shoes, always. Ballet flats, loafers, sneakers. I never once wore heels in high school. I never went to a dance.
When I was twenty-two, a young man I’d been seeing for three weeks asked me to sit down for a photograph with his friends at a party. Not because everyone else was sitting. Because he didn’t want to look short next to me in the picture.
When I was twenty-four, another man asked me to wear flats to his sister’s wedding. I was already wearing flats. He meant flatter flats.
I stopped seeing both of them.
I didn’t stop feeling like the tallest, most awkward thing in every room.
Then I met Thomas.
It was at the public library downtown. I was twenty-six. He was twenty-eight. He was standing in front of the mystery section trying to reach an Agatha Christie novel on the top shelf, stretching up on his tiptoes, and his fingertips kept missing it by about two inches.
I walked over and took it down for him.
He looked at the book. Then he looked up at me. And up.
I waited for him to say it. How’s the weather up there?
Instead, he said, “Oh, Murder on the Orient Express. Have you read it?”
“Twice,” I said.
“Don’t tell me who did it.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.
He grinned. “That’s the most dangerous thing you could have said. Now I’ll suspect everybody.”
Thomas was five feet ten. He was entirely unimpressed by the difference.
He never once asked me to sit down for a photograph. He never once asked me to wear flats. On our third date, he took me to a dance hall, and when the band played a slow song, he put his arms around me and rested his cheek against my shoulder.
“You know what the best part is?” he said into my collarbone.
“What?”
“You’ve got the best view of my thinning hair in the whole room.”
I laughed so hard I stepped on his foot.
We were married a year later. We had forty-one years together. Two children, a son and a daughter, both tall, though neither as tall as me. Four grandchildren. A little brick house with a garden full of roses that I tended and he admired.
He never stopped resting his cheek against my shoulder when we danced.
Thomas died twelve years ago, of a heart attack, at seventy.
He was sitting in his reading chair with an Agatha Christie novel open on his lap. Murder on the Orient Express, the same one from the library, the copy I’d given him for our first anniversary. He’d read it eleven times.
After he died, I assumed that part of my life had ended with him.
The dancing. The cheek on my shoulder. The man who looked up at me and saw a person instead of a punchline.
I was sixty-two. I’d had my great love. I didn’t expect another one. I didn’t want another one.
I had my garden and my detective novels and my church friends and my grandchildren. That was plenty.
My granddaughter disagreed.
Her name is Tess. She’s twenty-nine, the oldest of my grandchildren. She’s six feet one, which she complains about constantly, and she works in marketing in a glass building downtown. She came over for Sunday dinner in February, sat down across from me at the kitchen table, and held out her hand.
“Grandma,” she announced, “you need to meet people.”
“I meet people,” I said. “At the grocery store. The butcher gave me a free chicken last month.”
“Geez, Grandma,” Tess said. “I mean someone who might buy you dinner. Give me your phone.”
“What for?”
“Just give it to me.”
I gave it to her. I thought she was going to fix my email again.
Twenty minutes later, I had a dating profile.
Marilyn, 74. Loves detective novels, gardening, and men who don’t ask whether she plays basketball.
“Tess,” I said. “Take that off. Right now.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I’m seventy-four years old.”
“So? There are men out there who are seventy-four. Seventy-six. Eighty. Lonely men who like detective novels and gardening.”
“Lonely men who are going to look at me and run screaming.”
Tess looked at me.
Then she reached over and typed one more line onto the profile.
Height: 6’8″.
“Tess!” I said.
She insisted on listing it. She wouldn’t budge.
“Why frighten them before they meet me?” I said.
“Because anyone frightened by you,” Tess said, “isn’t worth meeting, Grandma.”
She pressed save.
Three days later, I matched with Richard.
He was seventy-six, a widower, a retired high school chemistry teacher. In his profile picture, he was standing in a garden full of hydrangeas, smiling, holding a pair of pruning shears. He had silver hair and wire-rimmed glasses and a red cardigan.
Height: 5’5″.
I almost didn’t answer him. Five-five. I’d be fifteen inches taller. When he stood next to me, the top of his head would come up to my chin.
But his first message wasn’t wow, you’re tall. It wasn’t how’s the weather up there.
It said: Do you prefer solving the mystery before the detective does, or being surprised at the end?
I read it four times.
Then I typed: Surprised. Provided the author hasn’t cheated.
He answered in three minutes.
A woman of principle. I like that.
For two weeks, we sent each other messages.
Every evening, around seven, after dinner. He told me about his garden, which was mostly hydrangeas and tomatoes. He told me about his late wife, Joan, who’d died four years ago of cancer. He told me about his daughter, Eleanor, who lived across town and worried about him too much. He told me about the books he was reading. He liked Dorothy Sayers better than Agatha Christie, which we argued about for three days.
He sent me little things.
Did I tell you the neighborhood cat has started sleeping under my hydrangeas? Orange tabby. I’ve named him Inspector Morse.
No! I wrote back. That’s lovely!
He remembered small things.
When I mentioned that my roses were struggling, that something was eating the leaves on my climbing Eden, he asked about them four days later. Did you figure out what was eating the Eden? Was it Japanese beetles? Joan used to pick them off by hand into a jar of soapy water.
When I told him about Thomas, he didn’t give me advice about moving on. He didn’t tell me it was time to get back out there. He didn’t say Thomas would want me to be happy.
He just wrote: I miss my wife too. Every day. It doesn’t really get smaller, does it? You just get bigger around it.
I sat at my kitchen table and cried for the first time in a long time.
Then he invited me to dinner.
A restaurant downtown called Bellamy’s. Friday at seven. Italian. White tablecloths.
I said yes before I could talk myself out of it.
The night before our date, a peculiar message appeared on my phone.
Would you mind wearing your tallest heels?
I stared at it.
I thought it was weird. It was weird.
I typed back right away.
Richie, I’m already six foot eight. In heels, I’ll be over seven feet tall. I’ll have to duck going through the door.
His answer came almost immediately.
Please, Marilyn. It’s important to me.
I almost canceled.
I sat on the edge of my bed with my phone in my lap for a long time.
Men before Thomas had asked me to sit down for photographs. They’d asked me to wear flats to weddings. They’d asked me to slouch, to sit, to shrink. One had asked me, very seriously, whether I’d ever “considered” not standing next to him at his office Christmas party.
Richard was the first man in my entire life who’d ever asked me to be taller.
I didn’t know what to think about that.
Maybe he liked it, I thought. Some men do. Maybe he liked tall women. Maybe Joan had been tall.
Maybe he wanted me to feel beautiful. To stop hiding. To stand up straight, the way my mother always told me to.
Maybe, after fifty-five years of men wishing I were shorter, here was finally one who wanted me exactly the size I was. And then some.
I wanted that to be true so badly.
I got up and went to my closet.
At the very back, behind my winter boots and a box of Thomas’s old sweaters I couldn’t bring myself to give away, I found a pair of navy blue heels. Four inches. Ankle straps. A little silver buckle.
I’d bought them for Tess’s wedding two years ago. Tess had begged me.
“Please, Grandma,” she’d said. “Just for one day. I want you to stand up tall next to me in the pictures. I want everybody to see how gorgeous you are.”
I’d worn them for exactly four hours. My feet had hurt for three days afterward. But in every single wedding picture, I’m standing up straight. And smiling.
I took them out of the box and held them up.
They’d go perfectly with the navy dress I’d planned to wear.
I took a picture of the shoes on my bed and sent it to Richard.
All right, Richie. But don’t complain if I block the restaurant lighting.
He replied with three smiling emojis.
Then: Perfect. Thank you, Marilyn. You won’t regret it.
The next evening, Tess came over to help me get ready.
She stood in my bedroom doorway with her arms crossed while I sat on the edge of my bed and fastened the ankle straps on the navy heels. My fingers were shaking a little. The little silver buckles were hard to work.
“You look gorgeous, Grandma,” Tess said.
“I look qualified to dust ceiling fans,” I said.
She laughed. She pulled out her phone and took a photograph anyway.
“Stand up,” she said. “Let me get a real one.”
I stood up. In the heels, I was seven feet tall. My head was about four inches from the ceiling light in my bedroom.
Tess took the picture. Then she showed it to me.
I was smiling. More broadly than I’d realized. My shoulders were back. I wasn’t slouching at all.
I looked happy.
The navy dress had been Thomas’s favorite.
It was simple, knee-length, with three-quarter sleeves and a little white collar. I’d bought it for our fortieth anniversary dinner. He’d said I looked like a movie star. A very tall movie star.
I hadn’t worn it since his funeral.
Choosing it that night didn’t feel like replacing him. I want to be clear about that. It didn’t feel like I was putting him away.
It felt like I was carrying the life we’d shared into a room I’d been afraid to walk into by myself.
Tess drove me downtown.
Richard was waiting beneath the restaurant’s brass awning.
He was smaller than his profile pictures had suggested. Even smaller than five-five, somehow. He had his silver hair carefully combed and a gray sport coat with a red pocket square that was sitting slightly crooked in the pocket. He’d clearly fussed with it.
When I stepped out of Tess’s car and stood up to my full seven feet, he looked up at me.
And up.
And then he smiled so broadly that I laughed out loud, right there on the sidewalk.
“Perfect,” he murmured.
“Well, you certainly got your wish, Richie,” I said.
He took my hand and kissed the back of it. His lips were dry and warm. It was old-fashioned and a little silly and I loved it.
Then his gaze slipped past me, toward the street. Toward the traffic going by.
Just for a second.
I didn’t think anything of it then.
Inside, Bellamy’s was warm and dim and smelled like garlic and candles. There were white tablecloths and dark wood booths and a fireplace crackling at the back of the room.
People looked up when I walked in. Of course they did. In those heels, I had to duck slightly under the light fixture by the hostess stand.
The hostess, a young woman with a bright smile, offered us a quiet corner table near the fireplace.
“It’s our coziest spot,” she said.
Richard pointed toward the front of the restaurant instead.
“Could we have the one by the window?” he said. “That one, right there.”
The hostess hesitated.
“That table’s pretty exposed to the sidewalk, sir,” she said. “It gets a little drafty when the door opens. And people walking by can see right in.”
“That’s all right,” Richard said. “The view’s better.”
I thought he meant the city lights. The street was beautiful at night, with the old brick buildings and the lamplights and the trees wrapped in tiny white bulbs.
So now my navy heels rested under a little table right beside the restaurant’s big front window.
Exactly where Richard had insisted we sit.
A few minutes after we sat down, a black sedan slowed outside on the street.
It crept past the window. Slowly.
Richard stopped stirring his water.
His whole body went still. His eyes followed the car.
The sedan kept going down the street and turned the corner.
His shoulders dropped.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said quickly. “Sorry. I’m just a little nervous. First date in forty-six years.”
That answer might have satisfied me.
If he hadn’t checked his watch again right afterward.
Our appetizers arrived. Fried calamari for him, a little Caprese salad for me.
Richard asked about my garden. He asked about my climbing Eden and the Japanese beetles. He asked about the roses Thomas had planted by the front porch forty years ago.
But his eyes kept going back to that window.
Every car that went by. Every set of headlights. Every person walking past on the sidewalk.
I tried to find the easy, funny man from our messages. The man who’d named a cat Inspector Morse. The one who’d written, You just get bigger around it.
I told him about the beetles. I told him about the jar of soapy water.
He nodded and said, “Mm-hmm.”
He hadn’t heard a word.
Then he put down his fork.
“Marilyn,” he said. “Would you mind standing up?”
I stared at him.
“Standing up?”
“Just for a moment,” he said. “I’d love to see how tall you look. In those heels.”
I glanced around at the tables near us. A couple in their fifties sharing a bottle of wine. A family with a little boy. Two businessmen in suits.
“Right here?” I said. “In the middle of the restaurant?”
“Please.”
There was no admiration in his voice now. None.
The word came out too fast. Too urgent. Like we were running late for a train.
But refusing felt like turning a strange request into a scene.
I’d spent fifty-five years trying not to make scenes. Trying not to draw attention. Trying to fold myself up small.
And here was a man asking me to stand up tall. Wasn’t that what I’d wanted my whole life? For someone to want me to stand up?
I pushed back my chair.
“All right,” I said. “But if someone asks me to change a light bulb, you’re explaining.”
In those heels, I stood up to almost exactly seven feet.
People noticed immediately.
The couple with the wine stopped talking. The businessmen looked up from their steaks. A little boy at the table near the entrance, maybe six years old, stopped chewing his garlic bread completely and stared up at me with his mouth hanging open. His mother gently turned his head back toward his plate.
I stood there beside the window, feeling ridiculous. Feeling seven feet tall and every inch of it.
I looked down at Richard, waiting for him to say something. You look wonderful. There. Perfect.
Richard didn’t look at me.
He was staring through the window.
A black SUV had stopped across the street.
It was big and dark, with tinted windows. It was double-parked with its hazard lights blinking.
Two men stepped out onto the sidewalk.
One was wearing a dark jacket. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with short dark hair.
The other one stood by the open driver’s door, looking right at the restaurant entrance.
Looking at the window.
Looking at me.
Richard’s hand closed around my wrist.
“Sit down,” he said. “Now.”
His grip hurt. He was squeezing my wrist so hard I could feel the bones.
“Richie,” I said. “Let go of me.”
He loosened his fingers a little. But he didn’t let go.
With his other hand, he pulled his wallet out of his jacket and dropped several twenty-dollar bills on the table beside his untouched calamari.
“We need to leave,” he said.
“Who are those men?”
“I’ll explain outside.”
“Richard, who are they?”
“Outside, Marilyn.”
He stood up. He pulled me, by the wrist, away from the window. Not toward the front door. The other way. Toward a swinging door next to the kitchen at the back of the restaurant.
My heels hit the tile floor sharply. Click. Click. Click. Every step reminded me how impossible it would be to run in them. How easily I’d fall. A seventy-four-year-old woman, seven feet tall, in four-inch heels, being pulled across a restaurant by a man fifteen inches shorter than me.
My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it.
I couldn’t tell whether Richard was afraid of those men.
Or whether he was taking me out the back of the building to hand me over to somebody waiting there.
The restaurant manager stepped into our path.
He was a tall man in his forties with a gray vest and a black tie. He moved fast. He’d been watching.
