Barefoot: A Novel Read online

  Vicki was almost embarrassed when the side effects kicked in. It happened gradual y; there was a noticeable decline during the second week, and each day things got a little worse. Vicki’s appetite died; she had to make herself eat the way other people made themselves exercise. Her skin dried out and started to flake, she became confused (she repeated herself, she thought she was talking to Brenda but it was Melanie, she lost her train of thought in the middle of a sentence). She dropped ten pounds despite the fact that she was eating diligently, she became too weak to walk to the beach or even the market, she spent whole afternoons and then whole days—beautiful, sunny, perfect days—in bed. Brenda brought home sand from the beach and sprinkled it in every pair of Vicki’s shoes. Melanie bought Vicki al the books on the paperback bestsel er list, but Vicki couldn’t concentrate for more than a few pages. The only good times of the day were the mornings, when she had enough energy to make breakfast, and at one o’clock, when Porter snuggled in next to her for his nap. She inhaled the scent of his hair, she stroked his satiny cheek, she watched his mouth work the pacifier. When Porter woke up, Blaine often came in with a jar of freshly cut flowers and a pile of picture books for Vicki to read to him. Vicki usual y made it through one or two before her attention gave out.

  That’s enough for now, Vicki would say. Auntie Brenda will finish. Mommy’s tired.

  Vicki tried to store up her energy for the weekends, when Ted was around. When he appeared on Friday afternoons, she was always sitting up in bed, pretending to read, pretending everything was fine, she was okay—but the expression on his face told her that he knew otherwise. He would sit on the edge of the bed, his face an inch away from raw fear. What are they doing to you? he whispered.

  I don’t know, Vicki thought. Dr. Garcia had said the chemo would be brutal, but Vicki hadn’t understood what that meant at the time. Now, of course, she did. She was weak, her finger bones as crushable as pieces of chalk, her lungs as brittle as honeycomb. Her breasts, because of the chemo and the normal shrinkage after nursing, didn’t even fil a training bra. Her nipples were like two old raisins. Gone were her curves, her smooth skin, her silky blond hair. Now her body was twigs and leaves. Her hair was frayed thread. She was ugly, hideous, a carcass. Her sex drive had vanished, and yet in her mind, she didn’t want to let that part of her life go. She was terrified Ted would seek out sex elsewhere—there were mil ions of women in the city, there were prostitutes, escort services, expensive ones that men on Wal Street knew about and utilized for clients.

  There were women in Ted’s office, in his building; there might be a woman wearing a certain perfume on the elevator. It happened al the time, cheating. It had happened to Vicki’s best friend! And so, Vicki pursued sex with Ted like she hadn’t in al the years they’d been married, and he, clearly, thought she was nuts.

  “I want this,” she said, pul ing him into bed. It was Sunday afternoon, and Brenda had agreed to keep the kids at the beach for an extra hour.

  “Let’s take a shower together.”

  “Outside?”

  “I want to be close to you.”

  “Vicki, Vicki, Vicki. You don’t have to do this for me.”

  “For us,” she said. “It wil make me feel better.”

  “Okay,” Ted said, and he kissed her hair. “Okay.”

  Vicki got up and pul ed the shades; she wanted it dark. She went to her husband and slid his bathing trunks off his body. She took him in her mouth. Nothing. Ted lay back, pale, sweating, flaccid, his eyes squeezed shut, a pained look on his face. He was trying to block her out, probably.

  He was trying to remember the woman she’d been before, or he was thinking of some other woman.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You’re not attracted to me,” Vicki said. She slumped on the floor. “You think I’m ugly.”

  “You’re not ugly, Vick. You could never be ugly.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a mind game. The cancer. I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you.”

  “I’l tel you what hurts,” she said. “And that is not being able to excite my husband. Do you get an erection at home? When you wake up in the morning? Does it work then?”

  “Vicki, please don’t.”

  “Do you jerk off when I’m not there?”

  “Stop it, Vick.”

  “I want to know.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t? I don’t believe you.”

  “Yeah? Wel , why don’t you come home and find out for yourself.”

  “Ohhhh,” she said. “Okay, I see.” There was going to be a fight, which was the last thing she wanted, but she was powerless to stop herself.

  “You’re punishing me for leaving Connecticut? You won’t have sex with me until I agree to come home?”

  “That’s not it, Vick. That has nothing to do with it.”

  “Wel , what’s wrong with you, then?” she said. She wanted to stand up, but she was too tired, so she remained on the floor, staring at Ted’s knees. Their sex life had always been healthy; before Vicki got sick, Ted had asked for her every night. That was how it worked—Ted asked, Vicki gave in. Never once had Ted failed to show up like this. It was so unusual, they didn’t even have the words to talk about it.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said.

  “You’ve slept with someone else,” Vicki said. “I know it.”

  Ted sat up. He pointed a finger at her. “Don’t you ever say that again. Don’t say it and don’t think it. It’s insulting to me and to our marriage and to our family.” He pul ed on his swim trunks and started pacing the room. “Do you honestly think I would do that to you?” he said. “After ten years of being my wife, do you honestly give me so little credit? ”

  Vicki started to cry. “I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m afraid of what’s happening to my body. I’m ugly. I left you by yourself at home and I know you’re angry about that and I just have these awful thoughts about you screwing somebody else, of you fal ing in love with somebody else and the two of you waiting for me to die so that you can be together and raise the boys. . . .”

  Ted knelt down. He held her face and she fel into him. She was overreacting, she knew it, but she was glad she had spoken because those were her fears. Sexual y, she felt like a failure. Having cancer felt like a failure, and what Vicki realized was that she wasn’t used to failing at anything.

  Things had always come easily to her; that was part of who she was.

  Ted was due to leave at five o’clock, giving Vicki another five days to fret about trying again.

  “Wil you hold me?” Vicki asked.

  Ted squeezed her tighter. “What do you think about trading in the Yukon?” he said.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “We could buy a Volvo. It’s safer.”

  Vicki shook her head. It was such a non sequitur she wasn’t even sure she’d heard him correctly. Could Ted real y be concerned about the car?

  She forced herself to acknowledge the monstrous anger eating away at her. She couldn’t believe the things that mattered to other people! A safer car? Mixed in with her anger was envy. Vicki envied everybody everything: Melanie’s pregnancy, Brenda’s screenplay, Josh’s strong arms—he could carry the pack ’n’ play, the umbrel a, the towels, the cooler, and the baby and make it al the way to the beach without stopping or dropping anything. She envied Mamie her sons, al of them safely into teenagerhood; she envied Dr. Alcott the thirty-eight-inch striped bass that he decided to take home and gril for his family for dinner; she envied the tattoo on Amelia’s lower back (her tramp stamp, Ben cal ed it); she envied chatter about a missed fly bal . She envied Porter his pacifier—she wanted a pacifier! She envied Ted’s career, its demands and rewards; he would fly back to New York and consume himself with making money. That was his job! Vicki wanted her job back—housewife, mother. She wanted a normal life, a life fil ed with things other than chemo treatments and a darkened bedroom and a w
istful, impotent husband. She wanted a life busy with things other than cancer.

  Brian Delaney, Esquire, had cal ed nine times since Brenda had been on Nantucket, and Brenda had yet to return a single phone cal . She had hoped that dealing with the charges the university was slapping her with in regard to the Jackson Pol ock painting could be done via voice messages and e-mail, but Brian Delaney, Esquire, seemed intent on having a person-to-person chat on the phone at the cost of two hundred and fifty dol ars an hour. The reason, plain and simple, why Brenda didn’t want to talk to the man was that she didn’t want to pay. He must have sensed this. On the tenth cal , he said, Call me back or I’m dropping your case.

  And so, once Brenda was safely away from the house, ensconced on a stretch of deserted beach that she’d discovered north of ’Sconset Bluff, she cal ed him back.

  Brian Delaney, Esquire’s secretary, Trudi, put Brenda right through. Seconds later, Brian Delaney, Esquire’s voice boomed over the line, with as much unleashed testosterone as a linebacker from Ohio State, which was, in fact, what Brian Delaney had been in his previous life.

  “Brenda Lyndon! I thought for sure you’d fled the country!”

  She should have a snappy comeback for that, she knew. When she’d first met Brian Delaney, Esquire, she’d been ful of snappy comebacks, and that was one of the reasons he’d agreed to take her case. He liked her. It wasn’t just his Big Ten jock inferiority in the face of a near–Ivy League professor; he also liked the fact that she was young, attractive, and sassy. I can’t believe you’re a professor, he kept saying. Despite the damage done to her reputation by her relationship with Walsh, Brenda had worn a snug pencil skirt and very high heels to her initial meeting with Brian Delaney, Esquire, in the hope that he might cut her a break on his fee. No such luck—though Brenda seemed to be rewarded by his confidence.

  This case was fun for him, it was a no-brainer. He was used to dealing with criminals, he said. Thieves, rapists, drug lords. Next to these people, Brenda looked like Queen Elizabeth.

  “Nantucket is another country,” she said. “It feels like it, anyway. Sorry I haven’t cal ed you back. I told you about my sister, right? She’s going through chemotherapy? And I’m responsible for watching her kids? I’m very busy.”

  “Right,” Brian said tentatively. Brenda had also thought that mentioning Vicki’s cancer might inspire him to lower his fees, but it was clear he didn’t remember what she was talking about. “Wel , I’ve been in contact with the university’s counsel, and she’s been talking to both the head of the Art Restoration Program and the chair of the English Department—because, as you know, it’s the English Department that technical y owns the painting—and they are coming at this from two different places. The art restoration guy, Len, his name is, says that only a smal amount of damage has been done to the painting. It just needs what he cal s ‘a little work.’”

  “Thank God,” Brenda said.

  “Wel , hold your horses there, sister. ‘A little work’ is going to cost you ten thousand dol ars.”

  “What?” Brenda said. There wasn’t another soul on the beach for as far as she could see in either direction and so she felt free to shout. “What the hel ?”

  “There’s a divot in the lower left quadrant of the painting where the spine of the book hit it. The divot is three-quarters of an inch long.”

  “A divot?”

  “Would you rather I cal it a gouge? Fine, it’s a gouge. It needs to be stitched up, fil ed in, whatever it takes to restore the glory of Pol ock’s fine work. But that’s not the bad news,” Brian Delaney, Esquire, said. “The bad news is the other woman, the chair of your former department.”

  “Atela?”

  “She’s pursuing a grand larceny charge.”

  “Grand larceny?”

  “It’s art,” Brian Delaney, Esquire, said. “The value is al perceived. It doesn’t have to be taken from the room to be stolen. Atela is convinced you were trying to sabotage the painting.”

  “We went over this in the deposition. I threw the book in anger. It was the heat of the moment, which makes it second degree. Possibly even third degree because it was an accident.”

  “Listen to you with the legal jargon.”

  “I wasn’t aiming for the painting.”

  “She’s claiming that you went into that room with the intent to destroy.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me, Brian. Doesn’t that seem a bit extreme to you?”

  “A jury might believe it.”

  “So what does that mean?” Brenda said. “Is there going to be a trial?”

  “They’l threaten with a trial. But what they real y want is a settlement. Which means more money.”

  “I am not giving the English Department a single dime,” Brenda said.

  “You may not have a choice,” Brian said. “They’re asking for three hundred thousand dol ars.”

  Brenda laughed. Ha! Though the number was funny like a slap across the face. “No chance,” she said.

  “The painting’s been appraised at three mil ion,” Brian Delaney, Esquire, said. “They want a tenth of the value.”

  “Do you think I compromised one tenth of the painting’s value?” Brenda said. “The art guy said there was just a little divot.”

  “What I know about art I could write on my thumbnail and stil have room for one of Andy Warhol’s soup cans,” Brian Delaney, Esquire, said. “The point is, they feel you’ve compromised one tenth of the painting’s value. But I can get them down to a hundred and fifty.”

  “This is why I don’t take your cal s,” Brenda said. “I can’t stand to hear this.”

  “In some people’s eyes you did a bad thing,” Brian said. “You made a series of very bad judgment cal s. It’s time to own that.”

  She owned it, al right. Her fal from grace was spectacular. She felt not like Queen Elizabeth at al but rather like Monica Lewinsky, Martha Stewart, OJ Simpson. Her good name had been slandered across Champion’s campus and campuses across the country. She would never work again, not like she was meant to. And if that weren’t punishment enough, she had separated herself from Walsh. But, as with everything, there was the issue of money, of which Brenda had very little. Brenda couldn’t own her mistake to the tune of a hundred and sixty thousand dol ars plus however many mil ions Brian Delaney, Esquire, was going to charge her.

  “I don’t have that kind of money,” Brenda said. “I just flat out do not have it.”

  “How’s the screenplay coming along?” Brian asked. “Sel that baby for a mil ion dol ars and al the rest of this wil look like milk money.”

  “The screenplay is going just fine,” Brenda said. This was an out-and-out lie. In truth, she’d written one page. “I real y have to go, so . . .”

  “Time to flip over, huh?” Brian Delaney, Esquire, said. “Too much sun on your face?”

  Was she real y paying him two hundred and fifty dol ars an hour for this?

  “Good-bye,” Brenda said.

  A hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Each time Brenda thought it, it was like a medicine bal to the stomach. In other circumstances, she might have cal ed her parents and asked for a loan. Despite the inevitable comments that she was thirty years old, and a reminder that they had subsidized her income through eight years of graduate school, the money would appear from somewhere. But Brenda had to downplay her misfortunes with her family. They knew the basics: fired from Champion, a “misunderstanding” about an important painting that was making it necessary for her to retain a lawyer, but she had kept it at that. The Lyndons had always been open-minded and tolerant, but this stemmed from a sense of their own superiority. Their behavior was impeccable; they lived up to very high expectations but they understood, in their infinite wisdom, that not everybody was like them. Vicki thought this way, too—and so, for a long time, had Brenda. She couldn’t stand being numbered among the sinning masses, the moral y bankrupt, which is right where her parents would place her if they found out what she’d don
e. They might lend or flat-out give her the startling sum of money, but they would think less of her, and Brenda couldn’t abide that. And, too, she couldn’t bear to burden her parents with the details of her own idiotic scandal when Vicki was so sick. As it was, Brenda was going to have to start lying to her mother about Vicki’s condition. Because despite Brenda’s prayers, Vicki was getting worse. The chemo was taking its tol . Al the things the doctors warned might happen, happened. Vicki had lost more than ten pounds, she was chronical y tired, she had no appetite—not even for gril ed steak or corn on the cob. Her hair, which had always been like corn silk, began fal ing out in ghastly clumps; in places, Brenda could see right through to her scalp.

  Vicki had a wig in one of the suitcases she’d brought from home, though Brenda couldn’t bring herself to suggest Vicki wear it.

  One morning, a Tuesday, a chemo morning, Brenda found Vicki in her room, rocking back and forth on the bed with both of the kids in her lap, crying.

  “I don’t want to go,” she said. “Please don’t make me go. They’re trying to kil me.”

  “They’re trying to help you, Vick,” Brenda said.

  “Mom’s not going to the hospital today,” Blaine said.

  “Come on,” Brenda said. “You’re scaring the kids.”

  “I’m not going,” Vicki said.

  “Josh wil be here any second,” Brenda said. “You haven’t made him anything for breakfast.”

  “I can’t cook anymore,” Vicki said. “Just looking at food makes me sick. If Josh is hungry, Melanie wil make him something.” This had happened two or three times now: With Vicki too sick to cook, Melanie had attempted to step in and cook for Josh. There had been a platter of scrambled eggs, somehow both watery and burned, and some limp, greasy bacon—after which Josh said he would be happy with just a bowl of Cheerios.

  “You can’t skip chemo, Vick. It’s like any medicine. It’s like antibiotics. If you stop taking it, even for one day, you’l go back to being sick.”