Barefoot: A Novel Read online

  Barefoot: A Novel

  Elin Hilderbrand

  ALSO BY ELIN HILDERBRAND

  The Beach Club

  Nantucket Nights

  Summer People

  The Blue Bistro

  The Love Season

  For Heather Osteen Thorpe: in honor of the dollhouse, the roller-skating shows, the Peanut Butter and Jelly Theater, the Wawa parties, and now, six kids between us. You are the best sister-friend a woman could ask for.

  PART ONE

  JUNE

  T hree women step off of a plane. It sounded like the start of a joke.

  Joshua Flynn, age twenty-two, native of Nantucket Island, senior at Middlebury Col ege, summer employee of the Nantucket Memorial Airport, where his father was an air traffic control er, noticed the women immediately. They arrived on a US Airways flight from LaGuardia. Three women, two smal children, nothing unusual about that, so what caught Josh’s eye? Josh Flynn was a creative-writing student at Middlebury, and his mentor, the writer-in-residence, Chas Gorda, liked to say that a writer smel s a good story in the air like it’s an approaching storm. The hair on your arms will stand up, Chas Gorda promised. Josh checked his forearms—nothing—and tugged at his fluorescent orange vest. He approached the plane to help Carlo unload the luggage. Josh’s father, Tom Flynn, would be at a computer terminal five stories above Josh’s head, occasional y spying out the window to make sure Josh was doing what he cal ed “a decent job.” Being under surveil ance like this provided as unsettling a work situation as Josh could imagine, and so in the two weeks he’d been at it, he’d learned to sniff for stories without giving himself away.

  Two of the women stood on the tarmac. Josh could tel they were sisters. Sister One was very thin with long light-brown hair that blew al over the place in the breeze; she had a pointy nose, blue eyes, and she was visibly unhappy. Her forehead was as scrunched and wrinkled as one of those funny Chinese dogs. Sister Two had the same blue eyes, the same sharp nose, but instead of scowling, Sister Two’s face conveyed baffled sadness. She blinked a lot, like she was about to cry. She was heavier than her sister, and her hair, cut bluntly to her shoulders, was a Scandinavian blond. She carried a floral-print bag bursting with diapers and a colorful set of plastic keys; she was taking deep, exaggerated breaths, as though the flight had just scared her to death.

  The third woman teetered at the top of the steps with a baby in her arms and a little boy of about four peeking around her legs. She had a pretty, round face and corkscrew curls that peeked out from underneath a straw hat. She was wearing jeans with muddy knees and a pair of rubber clogs.

  The sisters waited at the bottom of the stairs for this third woman to descend. Heavy-breathing Sister reached out for the baby, shaking the keys.

  “Come to Mama,” she said . “Here, Melanie, I’l take him.” In addition to the baby, Straw Hat held a package of Cheez-Its, a green plastic cup, and an air-sickness bag. She was two steps from the ground when the little boy behind her shouted, “Auntie Brenda, here I come!”

  And jumped.

  He was aiming for Scowling Sister, but in his excitement, he hurtled his forty-some pound body into the back of Straw Hat, who went sprawling onto the tarmac with the baby. Josh bolted forward—though he knew he wouldn’t be quick enough to save anyone. Straw Hat covered the baby’s head with her hands and took the brunt of the fal on her knees and her left arm. Ouch.

  “Melanie!” Heavy-breathing Sister cried. She dropped the diaper bag and raced toward Straw Hat. The baby wasn’t making any noise. Neck broken. Dead. Josh felt his spirit trickle onto the tarmac as though he’d wet his pants. But then—a cry! The baby had merely been sucking in air, released now in heroic tones. The baby was alive! Heavy-breathing Sister took the baby and studied him for obvious injury, then shushed him against her shoulder. Scowling Sister approached with the perpetrator of the crime, older brother, clinging to her legs.

  “Is the baby okay?” Scowling Sister asked. Her expression shifted from impatient to impatient and concerned.

  “He’s fine,” Heavy-breathing Sister said. “Just scared.” She reached out to Straw Hat. “Are you okay, Melanie? Are you okay? Do you feel okay?”

  Melanie dusted the tarmac grit off her face; there was a scrape on her elbow, some blood. The Cheez-Its blew off down the runway; the plastic cup rol ed to Josh’s feet. He picked it up, and the air-sickness bag as wel .

  “Would you like me to get a first-aid kit?” he asked Melanie.

  She put a hand to her cheek, and the other hand massaged her stomach. “Oh, no. Thank you, though. I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?” Heavy-breathing Sister said. “What about . . . ?”

  “I’m fine, ” Melanie said.

  “Blaine wil apologize,” Heavy-breathing Sister said. “Apologize, Blaine.”

  “Sorry,” the boy mumbled.

  “You could have hurt your brother. You could have hurt Melanie. You just can’t do things like that, sweetheart. You have to be careful.”

  “He said he was sorry, Vick,” Scowling Sister said.

  This was not joke material. The three women, col ectively, were the most miserable-looking people Josh had ever seen.

  “Welcome to Nantucket,” Josh said, hoping his words might cheer them, though Carlo was always reminding him that he was not an ambassador. He should just tend to the bags; his father would be watching.

  Scowling Sister rol ed her eyes. “Thanks a lot,” she said.

  They should have driven to the island, Brenda thought as they climbed into a cab outside the terminal. She had been coming to Nantucket her entire life and they always drove, and then put the car on the ferry. This year, because of the kids and Vicki’s cancer and a desire to get to Nantucket as expediently as possible no matter what the cost, they had flown. They shouldn’t have broken with tradition in Brenda’s opinion, because look what happened—they were off to a horrible start already. Melanie had vomited the whole flight; then she fel , giving Vicki something else to worry about.

  The whole point of the summer was to help Vicki relax, to soothe her, to ease the sickness from her body. That’s the point, Melanie! Now, Melanie was sitting behind Brenda in the cab with her eyes closed. Vicki had invited Melanie to Nantucket for the summer because Melanie had “problems.”

  She was dealing with a “complicated situation” back in Connecticut. But it was also the case that Brenda’s company alone had never been enough for Vicki. Al their lives, al through growing up—whether it was camping trips, nights at the summer carnival, or church on Sunday—Vicki had brought a friend.

  This summer it was Melanie Patchen. The news that Melanie would be joining them was sprung on Brenda at the last minute, giving her no opportunity to protest. During the limousine ride from Darien to LaGuardia, Brenda had heard about the “complicated situation”: Melanie and her husband, Peter Patchen, had been trying “forever” to get pregnant; they had, in the past calendar year, endured seven failed rounds of in vitro fertilization. Then, a few weeks ago, Peter admitted he was having an affair with a young woman from his office named Frances Digitt. Melanie was devastated. She was so upset she made herself sick—she couldn’t keep food down, she took to her bed. Then she missed her period. She was pregnant—and the “complicated” part of her “situation” was that she had left Connecticut without tel ing her husband that she was leaving, and without tel ing him she was pregnant. She was stealing away with Vicki and Brenda and the kids because she “needed time to think. Time away.”

  Brenda had taken in this information silently but skeptical y. The last thing she and Vicki needed this summer was a stowaway from a complicated situation. Vicki had lung cancer, and Brenda had problems of her own. Earlier that spring, she had been fire
d from her teaching job at Champion University for sleeping with her only male student—and, as if that weren’t catastrophic enough, there were “unrelated” criminal charges pending, concerning a valuable piece of university-owned art. Sex scandal! Criminal charges! Brenda had gone from being hot property—a celebrated young professor, the It girl of Champion University—to being the subject of rumor and gossip. Everyone on Champion’s campus had been talking about her: Dr. Brenda Lyndon, who earned top teaching marks in the English Department her very first semester, had conducted an il icit affair with one of her students. And then, for a reason nobody could discern, she had “vandalized” an original Jackson Pol ock—a bequest from a gung-ho alumnus—that hung on the wal of the English Department’s Barrington Room. In addition to the mortifying shame of her relationship with John Walsh, Brenda had been forced to hire a lawyer she couldn’t afford to deal with the vandalism charges. Best-case scenario, Brian Delaney, Esquire, said, would be the university’s art restoration team deciding they could tinker with the painting, fil in the “divot,” make the painting as good as new. Worst-case scenario would be irrevocable damage. The university was stil looking into the matter.

  Brenda had ostensibly come to Nantucket because Vicki had cancer and needed help. But Brenda was also unemployed, unemployable, and in serious need of money. Melanie wasn’t the only one who needed “time away” or “time to think”—Brenda needed it, too. Desperately. She had devoted her entire career to one narrow subject: Fleming Trainor’s novel, The Innocent Impostor. This little-known volume, published in 1790, had been the topic of Brenda’s dissertation and of the surprisingly popular seminar she taught at Champion. Since Brenda would be forever ostracized from the world of academia, the only way The Innocent Impostor could make her any money now—at least the kind of money she needed to pay a lawyer and / or a “hefty fine”—was if she used it in some unconventional, and un-academic, way. It was Brian Delaney, Esquire, who suggested Brenda write a screenplay. At first Brenda scoffed, but as Brian Delaney, Esquire, eloquently pointed out: Hollywood loves that old-time shit. Look at Vanity Fair , look at Jane Austen. The Innocent Impostor was so obscure it wasn’t even available on Amazon.com, but Brenda was desperate, not only for money, but for a project, something to work on. She batted the idea around for a while, and the more she thought about it, the less outlandish it seemed. This summer, if anyone asked her what she did for a living, she would tel them she was writing a screenplay.

  The other reason that Brenda had come to Nantucket was that John Walsh was in Manhattan, and even in a city of eight mil ion people, Brenda felt his presence as acutely as if he lived on the other side of her exposed-brick wal . She had to sever ties with John Walsh no matter how strongly she felt about him, she had to flee the city of her disgrace, she had to help her sister. A summer on Nantucket was the answer al the way around, and the cottage that had belonged to Brenda and Vicki’s great-aunt Liv was, after three years, out of probate. The two sisters owned it now, official y.

  The question wasn’t, why was she here? The question was, why wasn’t she happier she was here?

  Brenda held the baby tightly on her lap and put an arm around her four-year-old nephew, Blaine, who was buckled in next to her. The cabbie said,

  “Where to?” And Brenda said, “Shel Street, ’Sconset.”

  Shell Street, ’Sconset: These were Brenda’s three favorite words in the English language. It had not slipped Brenda’s mind that one way to access a large sum of money was to sel out her half of Aunt Liv’s house to Vicki and Ted. But Brenda couldn’t bear to relinquish the piece of this island she now owned: half of a very smal house. Brenda gazed out the window at the scrubby evergreens that bordered Milestone Road, at the acres of moors held in conservation. She inhaled the air, so rich and clean that it worked like an anesthetic; Blaine’s eyelids started to droop.

  Brenda couldn’t help thinking that Walsh would love it here. He was a man of the outdoors, being typical y Australian; he liked beaches and waves, open space, clear sky. He was at a loss in Manhattan, al that manufactured civilization baffled him, the subway suffocated him, he preferred to walk, thank you, mate. How many times had he traversed Central Park in a snowstorm to get to Brenda’s apartment? How many times had they met secretly in Riverside Park after class? Too many, apparently, and not secretly enough. One person had harbored suspicions, the wrong person, and Brenda’s career in academia was over a semester and a half after it began. She had been branded with the scarlet letter despite the fact that Walsh was thirty-one years old and Brenda herself only thirty. The situation at Champion had been such a hideous mess, the cause of such powerful shame, that Brenda had no choice but to end everything with Walsh. He wanted to come visit her here. It would be different, he said, out of the city. Maybe, Brenda thought. But not different enough.

  Brenda was relieved that Aunt Liv wasn’t alive to witness her fal from grace. Aunt Liv, a celebrated professor of Russian literature at Bryn Mawr Col ege, had cultivated Brenda for a life in academia. She had served as a mentor and a role model. How many hours had they talked about Fleming Trainor—and Isaak Babel, Tolstoy, Solzhenitzyn, Dumas, Hugo, Whitman? How many times had they agreed there was no nobler pursuit than the study of literature, no better way to spend an evening than alone with Turgenev?

  I was doing so well, Brenda thought. Until Walsh.

  When Brenda thought of Aunt Liv now, the term “rol ing over in her grave” came to mind. So in some way this summer on Nantucket was about seeking atonement. Brenda wanted others to forgive and, more saliently, forget; she wanted to find some peace for her roiling conscience. Time to think. Time away. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, having Melanie around. Misery did love company.

  Brenda checked behind her again. Now Vicki’s eyes were closed. She and Melanie were both asleep, and weirder stil , they were holding hands, like they were lovers. Brenda tightened her grip on the warm, doughy baby in her lap. She felt like a six-year-old, jealous and left out.

  Victoria Lyndon Stowe had been making lists al her life. She attributed this to the fact that she was the firstborn, a classic type-A personality, something her parents did nothing but reinforce. Vicki is so organized, she never forgets a thing. As early as the fifth grade, Vicki wrote down what she wore to school each day so that she didn’t repeat an outfit. She made lists of her favorite movies and books. She made a list of what each friend gave her for her birthday, and she always wrote the thank-you notes in order so that she could check them off, boom, boom, boom, just like that. At Duke, there had been myriad lists—she was president of the Tri-Delts, the head of the Drama Society, and a campus tour guide, so there were lists for each of those things, and a separate list for her studies. Then, out in the real world, the lists multiplied. There were “single girl living and working in the city” lists, lists for her wedding to Ted Stowe, and final y the endless lists of a mother of young children . Schedule doctor’s appointment; return library books; save milk cartons for planting radishes; money for babysitter; playdate with Carson, Wheeler, Sam; call balloon man for birthday party; buy summer pajamas; oil the tricycle; have carpets cleaned in the playroom.

  When Vicki was diagnosed with lung cancer, the lists came to a halt. This was her doctor’s suggestion, though Vicki initial y protested. Lists kept her world in order; they were a safety net that prevented important things from fal ing through. But Dr. Garcia, and then her husband, Ted, insisted.

  No more lists. Let them go. If she forgot to pick up the dry cleaning, so what? She would undergo two months of intensive chemotherapy, and if the chemo worked as it was supposed to—shrinking her tumor to a resectable size—it would be fol owed by thoracic surgery in which they would remove her left lung and her hilar lymph nodes. Chemotherapy, surgery, survival—these things were too big for any list. And so, the lists had al been thrown away, except for the one Vicki kept in her head: the List of Things That No Longer Matter.

  A brother and sister running across the street, late
for their dentist appointments. A pretty skirt worn with the wrong shoes. Peterson’s Shorebirds. (There was a group of retired women in Darien who wandered the beach with this exact volume in hand. Vicki hated these women. She hated them for being so lucky—they didn’t have cancer, thus they had the luxury of spending precious minutes of their lives tracking an oystercatcher or a blue heron.)

  Unfortunately for Brenda and Melanie, there were things about this summer on Nantucket that had initial y been placed on Vicki’s List of Things That No Longer Matter—such as whether Brenda and Melanie would get along, or whether al five of them would be comfortable in Aunt Liv’s summer cottage—but now it seemed like they might matter after al . Vicki’s so organized, she never forgets a thing. But the fact was, Vicki had forgotten the physical details of Aunt Liv’s cottage. When Vicki made the radical decision to come to Nantucket for the summer, her only thought had been of the comfort that Aunt Liv’s cottage, and Nantucket, would give her. Every summer growing up she had stayed in the cottage with her parents and Brenda and Aunt Liv. It was her favorite place, it defined summertime, and Vicki’s mother, El en Lyndon, had always sworn that any ailment in the world—physical or emotional—could be cured by a little Nantucket sand between your toes. Everyone else thought Vicki was crazy to go away for the summer, endangering herself even, but another thing that Vicki put on her List of Things That No Longer Matter was what everyone else thought.

  Inviting Brenda to come along had been the obvious choice. Vicki needed help with the kids and getting back and forth to chemo, and Brenda, fired from Champion in a blaze of scandal with attendant legal trouble, was desperate to escape the city. It was summer, salvaged for both of them.

  In the harrowing days fol owing Vicki’s diagnosis, they talked about reliving their memories from childhood: long beach days, catching fireflies, bike rides to Sesachacha Pond, corn on the cob, games of Monopoly and badminton, picking blackberries, twilight walks up to Sankaty Head Lighthouse, which spun its beacon like a cowboy with a wild lasso, picnics of bologna-and-potato-chip sandwiches, spending every day barefoot. It would be just the two of them, creating memories for Vicki’s own kids. It was a chance for Vicki to heal, for Brenda to regroup. They would fol ow their mother’s advice: Nantucket sand between the toes. It might cure anything: cancer, ruined careers, badly ended love affairs. Just the two of us, they said as they sat under the harsh hospital lights awaiting a second opinion. It would be a sister summer.