Part 3: Unicorn Toes
Not loudly. Not sobbing. Just quiet tears sliding down his red face. He wiped them away with the back of his hand as if he were angry at them.
He caught me looking.
He glanced away quickly.
“What,” he said. Gruffly. “Come to finish the job? Paint the other foot?”
“No,” I said.
I didn’t know what else to say.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He laughed. Bitterly. “Do I look okay?”
I didn’t answer.
He looked down at his loafers. At his feet inside them. At the glitter he knew was under there.
“I’m meeting my daughter,” he said.
I said nothing.
“At baggage claim,” he said. “In Seattle. She’s eight. Her name’s Maddie. I haven’t seen her in four months.” He swallowed. “Her mom moved out here with her in June. After the divorce. This is my first visit.”
My stomach dropped.
“I haven’t slept in two days,” he said. “I’ve been so nervous. I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t know if she’s going to be mad at me. I don’t know if she even wants to see me.” He looked out the window. “I was going to make a good impression. I bought a new outfit. I got a haircut. I was going to be the cool dad from Boston.”
He laughed again. Wet and broken.
“And now I’m going to walk off this plane,” he said, “and the whole flight’s going to be laughing at me, and my kid’s going to see me with pink glitter toenails and a unicorn on my foot.”
I sat there.
I didn’t know what to do.
All the anger I’d carried toward him, every bit of it, drained away. Like water out of a sink.
He wasn’t a monster. He was a tired, nervous, divorced dad who hadn’t slept in two days. Who took up too much space because maybe he never learned how not to. Who was flying across the country to see his little girl and was terrified she wouldn’t want him.
He was rude. He was gross. He was selfish.
But he was also somebody’s somebody.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He looked at me.
“I’m sorry about the nail polish,” I said. “That wasn’t okay. I shouldn’t have touched you without asking. That was wrong.”
He stared at me for a long moment.
“You’re apologizing to me?”
“I’m apologizing for the part that was wrong,” I said. “Not for the rest of it. The rest of it, you earned.”
He was quiet.
Then, slowly, he nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I did.”
He rubbed his face.
“I’m sorry about my foot,” he said. “On your armrest. That was disgusting. You asked me nicely like four times. I was being a jerk.”
“You were,” Bernie said from the window seat. Without looking up from her phone.
He actually laughed. A real one this time.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was.”
He looked at me.
“My ex-wife used to say I take up too much space,” he said. “In everything. In the bed. On the couch. In conversations. She said I never noticed anybody else was in the room.” He shook his head. “I thought she was being dramatic. I thought it was just an excuse. For leaving.”
I said nothing.
“Maybe she wasn’t,” he said quietly.
His name was Grant.
Grant Whitley. Forty-six. He worked in commercial real estate in Boston. He’d been married for fourteen years to a woman named Rachel. They’d divorced in April. In June, Rachel was offered a job in Seattle and took Maddie with her.
“I fought it,” Grant said. “In court. I didn’t want them to go. But the judge said Rachel had primary custody, and the job was a good opportunity, and I could have Maddie for the summers and every other Christmas.” He swallowed. “I missed the summer. Work. I couldn’t get away. I kept saying next month, next month. And then it was October.”
“So this is the first time in four months.”
“First time.”
“What’s she like?” I asked. “Maddie?”
Grant’s whole face shifted.
All the redness and anger and embarrassment melted out of it. He smiled. A real smile. Soft.
“She’s amazing,” he said. “She’s funny. She’s so funny. She does impressions. She does this impression of me on the phone with clients that’s honestly devastating.” He laughed. “She loves horses. And slime. And this cartoon about a unicorn who’s a detective.”
I froze.
“A unicorn,” I said.
“Sparkle something. Sparkle Paws? Sparkle Detective? I don’t know. She’s obsessed with it.”
He stopped.
He looked down at his loafers.
“She paints her nails,” he said slowly. “Every day. Rachel lets her use this little kid polish that peels off. And every time I saw her, she’d beg me. Daddy, let me paint your nails. Please, Daddy. Just one. And I always said no.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought it was silly. I thought… I’m a guy. I have client meetings. I can’t walk around with pink fingernails.” He looked down. “She cried once. When I said no. She said, ‘You never let me do anything fun with you.’”
The cabin had gone very quiet.
Grant gazed down at his feet.
“She’s going to lose her mind,” he said softly.
I said nothing.
Bernie said nothing.
Grant just sat there, looking down at his loafers. At the feet he knew were glittering pink underneath.
Then he began to laugh.
Quietly at first. Then louder. Until his shoulders shook and his eyes watered.
“She’s going to lose her mind,” he said again.
The plane touched down at Sea-Tac at 7:42 p.m.
When the seatbelt sign switched off, everyone stood. Grant stood too. He hauled his carry-on from the overhead bin.
The teenage boy in the Mariners cap was standing in the aisle right beside him. He looked at Grant. Then at his loafers.
“Dude,” he said. “No offense. But that was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Grant looked at him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I bet it was.”
“Can I take a picture of your feet?”
“No,” Grant said.
The kid shrugged. “Fair.”
I pulled my backpack from the overhead bin. I picked up the purple gift bag from under the seat.
As we filed off the plane, Kiara stood at the door, saying goodbye to everyone.
When I reached her, she leaned in close.
“That,” she whispered, “was the best flight of my entire career.”
She squeezed my arm.
Then Grant came up behind me. Kiara looked at him. At his loafers.
“Sir,” she said. “Have a wonderful visit with your daughter.”
Grant stopped.
He looked at her.
“How did you know I’m visiting my daughter?”
Kiara smiled. “You told the whole row about forty minutes ago. You were kind of loud.”
Grant’s face went red again.
But this time, he laughed.
Bernie and I walked to baggage claim together.
She was headed to carousel five. So was I. So was Grant. Everyone from our flight was headed to carousel five.
Bernie’s granddaughter was waiting for her. A young woman in her twenties, holding a sign that read GRANDMA BERNIE, hearts all over it.
Bernie hugged her so hard she lifted her off the ground.
“Where’s the raisin?” Bernie demanded.
“In the car with Darnell,” the granddaughter said. “He’s sleeping.”
“Then what are we standing here for? Let’s go!”
Before she left, Bernie turned to me.
She took my face in both her hands. Her palms were warm and soft and smelled like butterscotch.
“You listen to me, Leah Moreno,” she said. “You take up space. You hear me? You take up all the space you need. On airplanes. On couches. In beds. In conversations. You don’t use the other armrest ever again.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
She kissed my forehead. Then she was gone.
My bag was one of the last to appear.
I was standing at carousel five, waiting, when I heard it.
A little girl’s voice. High and loud and thrilled.
“DADDY!”
I turned around.
A little girl was racing across baggage claim. Eight years old. Wild curly brown hair in two pigtails. A purple sweatshirt with a cartoon unicorn in a detective hat. Pink sneakers that lit up with every step.
She was running straight toward Grant.
Grant dropped his carry-on. He knelt on the dirty airport floor.
She crashed into him so hard they nearly toppled over.
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, you came, you’re here, you came!”
“I came, Maddie,” Grant said. His voice cracked. “I’m here. I’m so sorry it took me so long, baby. I’m so sorry.”
He held her. Right there on the floor of baggage claim. His face buried in her curly hair.
A woman walked up behind them. Late thirties. Dark hair. A tired, wary face. Rachel, I guessed. She stood a few feet away with her arms crossed. Watching.
Her face softened a little when she saw Grant crying.
Maddie pulled back. She studied her dad’s face. The tears.
“Daddy, why are you crying?”
“Because I missed you,” Grant said. “So much.”
“I missed you too.” She grabbed his hands. She looked at his fingernails. Plain. Short. Clean.
She frowned. “Daddy, can I paint your nails? Mommy let me get new polish. It’s purple. It’s got sparkles. Please?”
I watched Grant’s face.
I watched him think it over.
I watched him glance down at his loafers.
Then he looked up. Across baggage claim. At me. Standing by carousel five with my backpack and my purple gift bag.
He smiled.
“Maddie,” he said. “I’ve got something to show you.”
He sat down on the floor.
Right there in the middle of baggage claim at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In his navy golf-club quarter-zip and his expensive watch.
He took off his right loafer.
Maddie looked at his foot.
At five glittering, hot pink, Bubblegum Galaxy toenails. Sparkling under the fluorescent airport lights. With a little silver star on the second toe. A heart on the third. A star on the fourth.
And on the big toe, a tiny silver unicorn.
Maddie stopped breathing.
Her mouth dropped open. Her eyes went huge.
She pressed both hands to her cheeks.
“DADDY,” she screamed. “YOU HAVE UNICORN TOES!”
The entire carousel turned around.
Grant laughed. He laughed so hard he had to brace a hand on the floor to keep from tipping over.
“I do,” he said. “I have unicorn toes.”
“Who did it? Did you do it? Did you paint them yourself?”
“No,” Grant said. “A lady on the airplane did it.”
“Why?”
Grant looked at me again.
“Because I was being rude,” he said. “I put my stinky foot where it didn’t belong. And she taught me a lesson.”
Maddie studied the toes very seriously.
“It’s a good lesson,” she said.
“It’s a very good lesson,” Grant agreed.
Behind them, Rachel had clapped a hand over her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking. I couldn’t tell whether she was laughing or crying.
I think it was both.
Maddie looked up. She followed her dad’s gaze across baggage claim.
To me.
She pointed.
“Is that her? The lady?”
Grant nodded.
Maddie let go of her dad’s hands. She walked across baggage claim. Her light-up sneakers flashed pink with every step.
She stopped in front of me.
She looked up. Very serious.
“Did you paint my daddy’s toes?”
I knelt so I was eye level with her.
“I did,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? They’re so pretty.”
“I’m sorry because I did it while he was sleeping,” I said. “Without asking. That’s not a nice thing to do to somebody. You should always ask first.”
Maddie thought about that.
“Okay,” she said. “But he was being rude?”
“He was being rude.”
“So it was kind of fair?”
I thought of Bernie. A little line. A glittery pink line.
“Kind of,” I said. “Kind of fair. But next time, I’ll try to find a better way.”
Maddie nodded as if that made perfect sense.
Then she looked at the purple gift bag in my hand. At the tissue paper poking out the top.
“What’s in there?”
I looked at the bag.
Unicorn Sparkle Deluxe. Six little bottles. Five of them full. One of them, the pink one, a little lighter than it had been that morning.
Sophie’s birthday present.
I thought about Sophie. Ten years old. In her little blue house in Ballard. Waiting for her aunt to show up with the nail polish she’d begged for all year.
Then I looked at Maddie. Eight years old. In her unicorn detective sweatshirt. Who’d been begging her dad to let her paint his nails since she was old enough to hold a brush.
Who’d cried once, because he said no.
You never let me do anything fun with you.
I reached into the bag.
I took out the little bottle of Bubblegum Galaxy.
I held it out to her.
“This is the one I used,” I said. “On your daddy’s toes. Do you want it?”
Maddie gasped.
“For real?”
“For real.”
“But it’s in a present bag. Isn’t it for somebody?”
“It’s for my niece,” I said. “But she’s getting five other colors. I think she’ll be okay without this one.” I placed the bottle in her small hand. “Your daddy’s toes match this one. So you can touch them up when they start to chip.”
Maddie stared at the bottle. Then at me.
Then she flung her arms around my neck.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
She ran back to her dad. She held the bottle over her head like a trophy.
“Daddy! Daddy! She gave it to me! Can I paint your other foot? Can I? Please?”
Grant looked at her.
He looked at the bottle.
He looked at Rachel, standing behind him, wiping her eyes.
Then he took off his other loafer.
He held out his left foot. Bare. Unpainted.
“Go for it, kiddo,” he said.
Maddie shrieked with joy.
She plopped down cross-legged on the floor of baggage claim. She unscrewed the cap. Her tongue poked out the corner of her mouth in concentration.
And she began to paint her father’s toenails.
Badly. Messily. Way outside the lines. Glitter all over his knuckles. A big pink blob on the side of his foot.
Grant didn’t care.
He sat on the dirty airport floor with his pants rolled up and his feet in his daughter’s lap, laughing, while people stepped around them with their suitcases.
Rachel sat down beside them.
After a minute, she reached over and took Grant’s hand. Just for a second. Then she let go.
But she stayed.
I lifted my suitcase off the carousel.
I walked out through the sliding doors into the cool Seattle night. A little rain was falling. Of course it was. It’s Seattle.
My sister Gabi was pulling up to the curb in her old green Subaru. Sophie and Mateo were in the back seat. They spotted me and started waving and shrieking.
I climbed into the car.
“Aunt Leah! Aunt Leah! Did you bring it? Did you bring the nail polish?”
“I brought it,” I said. I handed Sophie the purple gift bag.
She tore through the tissue paper. She opened the box.
She frowned.
“There’s only five,” she said. “It says six on the box.”
“I know,” I said. “I gave one away.”
“Why?”
I looked out the back window of the Subaru as we pulled away from the curb. Through the glass doors of baggage claim. I could still see them. A man in an expensive watch sitting on the dirty floor. A little girl in a unicorn sweatshirt bent over his feet with a tiny brush. A woman sitting beside them, laughing.
“Because somebody needed it more than you,” I said.
I told them the whole story at dinner.
Gabi laughed so hard she cried into her lasagna. Her husband, Theo, had to leave the table. Mateo didn’t really follow, but he laughed because everyone else was laughing. Sophie wanted to know if the unicorn sticker stayed on.
“It stayed on,” I said.
“Can you put one on my toe?”
“After dinner.”
After dinner, I sat on the living room floor with Sophie’s feet in my lap. And I painted her toenails. Purple. Grape Starlight. With a tiny silver unicorn on each big toe.
Gabi watched us from the couch.
When I finished, Sophie dashed off to show her dad. Mateo trailed after her, demanding his own unicorn.
Gabi slid off the couch and sat next to me on the floor.
“You seem different,” she said.
“Different how?”
She thought about it.
“Bigger,” she said.
I looked at her.
“Not like that,” she said, laughing. “Not your body. You. You seem bigger. Like you’re taking up more room. You used to sit like this.” She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Tight. Small. “Every time I saw you. With Doug. You sat like this.”
I looked down at myself.
I was sitting cross-legged on her living room floor. Arms out. Leaning back on my hands. Taking up space.
“I didn’t notice,” I said.
“I did,” Gabi said quietly. “For eleven years, I noticed. I just didn’t know how to tell you.”
I flew home five days later.
I booked an aisle seat. I’d never booked an aisle seat before. Doug always took the aisle. I always took the middle.
I settled into 14C with both arms on both armrests.
The man in 14B looked at me. Then at my elbow on the armrest between us.
He moved his arm to his lap.
I didn’t apologize.
I smiled at him. “Thank you,” I said.
He smiled back.
That was all. That was all it took. I’d spent eleven years believing it would be a fight. It was just a smile.
A few weeks later, an email arrived.
At my school address. I don’t know how he found it. Probably Google. Leah Moreno, art teacher, Somerville. I’m on the school website.
The subject line read: Unicorn toes.
There was a photo attached.
Epilogue: Take Up Your Space
A man’s feet. On a soft blue rug. Ten toenails. All painted.
Not Bubblegum Galaxy. Each one a different color. Purple. Green. Gold. Orange. Blue. Messy. Way outside the lines. With stickers. Stars and hearts and moons. And a little silver unicorn on each big toe.
Underneath, he’d written:
Leah —
Maddie paints them every time I visit now. Every two weeks. I fly out on Fridays and she’s waiting at baggage claim with her nail polish kit. She says it’s our tradition.
I’ve had a client ask about them twice. I tell them the truth. My daughter did it. They usually laugh. One of them showed me pictures of his own kid’s handprint paintings on his office wall.
Rachel and I are doing better. Not back together. Just better. Better at sharing space, I guess. She says I’ve changed. She says I listen more. She says I notice people now.
I started taking the middle seat on flights. On purpose. To remind myself.
I keep my feet on the floor.
I wanted to say thank you. For the lesson. Even the part that crossed a line. Maybe especially that part. It was the first time in my life anybody made me feel what it’s like when somebody takes up your space without asking.
I didn’t like it.
I don’t think I’ll ever do it again.
— Grant
P.S. Maddie says to tell you the unicorn detective solved a new case. It was about a missing sparkle. She says you’ll understand.
I printed the photo.
I carried it to school.
I pinned it to the bulletin board in my art room, right beside the window, where the light pours in.
My eighth graders spotted it the next morning. They wanted to know whose feet those were.
So I told them.
All of it. The armrest. The foot. Use your other armrest. Bernie. Bubblegum Galaxy. Baggage claim. Maddie on the floor with her tongue sticking out.
They laughed so hard the principal came down the hall to check on us.
When they finally settled, a girl in the back raised her hand.
Tamika.
She’s in eighth grade now. Taller. More confident. She’d joined the art club in the spring.
“Ms. Moreno,” she said. “Was that okay? What you did? Painting his toes without asking?”
The whole room went quiet.
I considered it.
“No,” I said honestly. “Not completely. I crossed a line. A little one. A glittery pink one. But a line.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
“Because he’d crossed a bigger line first,” I said. “Over and over. And I’d spent a lot of years letting people cross my lines without ever saying anything. And I think, for the first time, I wanted somebody to know what that felt like.”
Tamika thought about that.
“So it was kind of fair,” she said.
I smiled. Maddie had said the exact same thing.
“Kind of fair,” I said. “But here’s the real lesson. The part that matters.”
I walked to the whiteboard. I picked up a marker.
I drew a long line. Like a row of airplane seats.
Then I drew two little stick figures sitting side by side.
Then, between them, an armrest.
“Everybody gets their own armrest,” I said. “Everybody. You don’t take somebody else’s. And you don’t give yours away.”
I turned around.
“Some of you take up too much space,” I said. “You talk over people. You put your stuff everywhere. You don’t notice there’s anybody else in the room. You need to learn to keep your feet on the floor.”
A couple of boys in the front traded guilty looks.
“And some of you,” I said, looking at Tamika, “don’t take up enough. You make yourselves small. You sit in the corner. You draw yourself in the bottom of the page. You let other people put their feet on your armrest because you think you’re not allowed to say anything.”
Tamika looked down at her desk.
“You’re allowed to say something,” I said quietly. “You’re allowed to say, move your foot. As many times as it takes. And if they don’t listen, you’re allowed to get creative.”
The whole class laughed.
Tamika looked up.
She was smiling.
That afternoon, Tamika turned in a new self-portrait.
It was the first project of the year. The same assignment I give every September. Draw yourself.
Last year, she’d drawn herself very, very small, in the bottom corner of a huge empty page. This is me. I don’t take up much room.
This year, she’d drawn herself huge.
Filling the whole page. Edge to edge. Arms stretched wide. Standing tall. In a purple sweatshirt.
And at the bottom, in her careful handwriting:
This is me. I take up as much room as I need.
And on her toes, colored in with pink glitter gel pen, she’d drawn tiny silver unicorns.
I still have one bottle of Bubblegum Galaxy.
I bought it at the CVS in Somerville the week I got home. Twenty-four ninety-nine for the whole kit. I gave the other five bottles to the art room for a project.
I kept the pink one.
It sits on the windowsill of my apartment, beside a little plant and a photo of Bernie holding her great-grandson Isaiah. She texts me every few weeks. Pictures of the raisin. He’s not a raisin anymore. He’s fat and bald and laughing.
Sometimes I paint my own toenails with Bubblegum Galaxy. On Sunday nights. Sitting on my couch with my feet up on the coffee table.
My couch. My coffee table. My feet.
I take up the whole couch now.
Both armrests.
And when I’m done, I stick a tiny silver unicorn sticker on my big toe.
Just to remind myself.
That there’s a difference between taking somebody else’s space and taking your own.
That you can say move your foot as many times as it takes.
And that sometimes, the person who crosses your line is just a tired, nervous dad who’s never noticed anybody else was in the room.
Until somebody makes him look down.
Note: This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. All images are for illustration purposes only.
