Barefoot: A Novel Read online

  “How did you get here?” he said.

  “Someone dropped me.”

  “Someone?”

  “Rob.”

  Rob, her brother, who cruised around in a huge Ford F-350 with a shiny tool chest on the back and a bumper sticker that said I give rides for gas, grass, and ass. Rob was a carpenter with Dimmity Brothers, where Josh’s mother used to work. The island was way too smal . So Rob had dropped Didi off, and barefoot, no less; now Josh was trapped. He would be forced to give her a ride somewhere. She knew he was too nice a guy to strand her.

  “Where’s your car?” he said.

  “They took it.”

  “Who took it?”

  “The repo man.” New tears fel ; her mascara streaked. “It’s gone forever.”

  Josh took a breath. “What about the money I lent you?”

  “It wasn’t enough. I’m in trouble, Josh. Big trouble. I can’t make my rent, either. I’m going to get evicted and my parents have made it perfectly clear that they do not want me back at home.”

  Right. After twenty years of overindulgence, Didi’s parents had moved on to tough love. Too little, too late, but Josh couldn’t blame them for not wanting their grown daughter back in their house. She would drain their liquor cabinet and run up their phone bil .

  “You have a job,” Josh said. “I don’t get it.”

  “I get paid shit,” Didi said. “It’s not like I’m a nurse.”

  “Maybe you should go back to school.”

  Didi raised her face. She looked like a zombie from Night of the Living Dead. “Now you sound like them.”

  Josh kicked at the ground. He wanted to go home and shower. He was hungry; he was making quesadil as tonight for dinner. “What do you want from me, Didi?”

  “I want you to care!” She was screaming now. “You never cal me anymore. You didn’t show up at Zach’s party—”

  “I had to babysit,” he said.

  “You’re probably in love with that woman with the kids,” Didi said. “You’re probably sleeping with her!” This accusation was flung out there with such wild abandon that Josh didn’t feel the need to respond. He didn’t like having Brenda or Vicki or the kids brought into the conversation, especial y not by Didi. She knew nothing about them or about his time with them. If Brenda and Vicki, or even Melanie, could see him now, they would shake their heads. Poor girl, they’d say. Poor Josh.

  He grabbed the car door. “Get in,” he said. “I’m taking you home.”

  Didi did as she was told, making Josh believe that he was in control of the situation. But once Josh started driving, Didi started up again, bombarding him with nonsense. “You’re sleeping with her, just say it. . . . You don’t love me—you used to love me but now you’re a real hotshot, a col ege-boy hot shit, think you’re better than . . . They don’t pay me shit, and after taxes . . . They took the car with my Audioslave CD stil in it . . . My own mother won’t have me.” Tears, sobs, hiccups.

  For a second, Josh feared she was going to vomit. He drove as fast as he possibly could, saying nothing because anything he said would be twisted around and used against him. He thought of Brenda in her nightgown with her notepad, her thermos of coffee, her briefcase for her old first-edition book. Brenda was a different quality of person: older, more mature, way past al this self-generated drama. Who needed fabricated drama when they were living through the real thing? Vicki had cancer. And Melanie had some kind of husband problem. Didi didn’t even know what trouble was.

  He swung into her driveway. “Get out,” he said.

  “I need money,” she said.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “No way.”

  “Josh . . .” She put her hand on his leg.

  “I lent you money,” he said. “And you promised you’d leave me alone.” He picked up her hand and dropped it into her lap.

  “I only need—”

  “The answer is no,” he said. “And don’t forget, you stil owe me. Just because you asked me again and I said no doesn’t mean you don’t owe me from before. You owe me two hundred dol ars, Didi.”

  “I know that, but—”

  Josh got out of the car, stormed around to the passenger side, and opened her door.

  “Out,” he said.

  “You don’t love me.”

  So needy. Al the time. Nothing had changed with Didi since senior year in high school. Her T-shirt caught his eye again. Baby Girl. That’s right, he thought. He reached across Didi and unbuckled her seat belt. Then he took her arm and pried her from the car. He was gentle but firm, just as he would have been with Blaine. He knew how to handle Baby Girl; he dealt with children every day.

  “I only need five hundred dol ars,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t help you.”

  “You’re NOT sorry!” she screamed. Her nose was running and she was crying again and hiccuping like a cartoon drunk. “You’re not one bit sorry, you don’t care what happens to me!” Her voice was shril and hysterical. It was like she wanted her neighbors to peer out their windows, sense a domestic disturbance, and cal the police.

  “Hey,” he said. He looked at the house where Didi rented her apartment; he checked the yard and the woods around him. Now he wished someone would come out, ask what was going on, and help him deal with her, but there was no one around. “You just can’t scream like this, Didi.

  You have to get ahold of yourself.”

  “Oh, fuck you,” she said.

  “I’m leaving,” he said.

  “I need the money,” she said. She put her fists by her ears and shuddered until her face turned red. Josh watched her with disbelief. She was so far out of bounds that Josh thought maybe she was acting. Because hers was the kind of behavior Josh had only seen on soap operas; it was the behavior of the poverty-stricken, downtrodden, and criminal y inclined people on COPS.

  “Didi,” Josh said. “Go inside and get a glass of water. Take a shower. Calm down.”

  She looked at him in a way that was both cunning and desperate. “If you don’t help me,” she said, “I’m going to kil myself.”

  He reached out and grabbed her chin. “You forgot who you’re talking to,” he said. “That isn’t funny.” He was real y angry now, because he could hear the calculated tone of her voice. She did know who she was talking to. She was trying to use his mother’s death to her advantage. That was the kind of serpent Didi was; that was how she operated. Now Josh was the one with clenched fists. But no—in getting this angry, he was letting her win. Didi may have sensed that she’d crossed a line because her voice changed to a plea.

  “It’s just five hundred dol ars. I know you have it, Josh.”

  “No,” he said. Thinking: Consistent message. “Good-bye, Didi.”

  Nobody was more surprised by the passage of time than Melanie—the days passed, then a week, then another week. And here she was, stil on Nantucket. She couldn’t decide if she remained on the island out of sheer inertia (was she just avoiding the enormous effort it would take to get home?) or if she was starting to like it. The first days had been awful, with Vicki and Brenda fighting and then Vicki and Ted fighting and Melanie alternately vomiting, sleeping, or showering in an attempt to ameliorate the acute pain of Peter’s affair with Frances Digitt. It was pain like Melanie had broken her arm and the bone was sticking through, pain like habanero chili sauce on an open cold sore. But one morning Melanie woke up and her first thoughts weren’t about Peter and Frances, but rather about the secret that her body contained. She thought of the bud inside of her, the human being the size of a lima bean, a life that had taken root and held on in her body. This baby, unlike al the others (seven tries, eleven embryos), had recognized Melanie as its mother. She was seven weeks pregnant now, and although her body looked the same, she liked to lie in bed with her hand on her bel y and imagine she could feel the flutter of a tiny beating heart. At this same time every morning, a wren perched on the gate outside Melanie’s window and serenaded her. But the imagined soun
d of a beating heart and the wren’s song were only preludes to what Melanie was real y listening for. What she had started anticipating was the crackle of the Jeep’s tires over crushed shel s. Josh.

  Okay, Melanie thought. There is something wrong with me. He is nearly ten years my junior. He is in col ege. I am an old woman to him, an old pregnant woman. And yet—what was it Woody Al en said?—“the heart wants what it wants.” (Were her desires as moral y ambiguous as Woody Al en’s? Maybe they were; who was she to judge?) Melanie couldn’t help what she felt, and what she felt when she heard the Jeep’s tires crunch over the shel s, when she heard the car door, the lifting of the gate latch, Blaine’s delighted cry, and Josh’s voice— Hey, buddy, how’s it hanging? —

  was happy.

  Melanie’s routine, then, included climbing out of bed and making it into the kitchen for tea and toast while Josh was eating breakfast. Ideal y, she would have liked to be home from a five-mile power walk, showered and dressed; she would have liked to be eating with him, buttering a scone, reading him something funny she had seen in the Globe. Instead, it was al she could do to sip her tea, nibble her toast, and make the most basic conversation.

  She was dismayed to discover that he was a writing student—not because Melanie held anything against writing students, but because this gave him something in common with Brenda. Melanie heard them joking about writer’s block. Happens to the best of us, Josh would say. And Brenda would point at him and say, Keep telling me that. The writing linked them in a way that irked Melanie and made her dislike Brenda more than she already did. It seemed hardly worth mentioning that Melanie also appreciated literature. She read serious, literary novels as wel as trashy, commercial ones. She was a fan of Donna Tartt and Margaret Atwood— and Nora Roberts. She read the fiction in The New Yorker, maybe not every week, but often enough. Melanie understood, however, that reading was different from writing; she had no desire to write a short story or a novel. She wouldn’t even know where to start.

  Melanie searched for details she could share about herself that would resonate with Josh. She had been a history major at Sarah Lawrence. She had spent a year in Thailand teaching English: she had touched the Reclining Buddha’s golden foot; she had commuted from her apartment to the school by water taxi; she had bought a parakeet at the bird market and named him Roger. Roger stopped singing after six weeks and then he died.

  When Melanie relayed these tidbits of her personal history, Josh nodded and chewed his food and seemed interested, at least until Brenda walked into the kitchen to get her coffee. Brenda stole his attention every time. Josh looked at Brenda. It became part of Melanie’s routine to count the number of times Josh looked at Brenda and then feel jealous about it. How could Melanie blame him? Brenda was beautiful and oblivious; she lived in the house with the rest of them, but it was clear her mind was someplace else. On the lover back in New York, maybe, or on the lawyer whose phone cal s she avoided each day, or on her stupid screenplay. Brenda had been fired from Champion University in the midst of a sex scandal—

  was Josh aware of this? Did he know she was in trouble with the law? Somehow Brenda rose above the smoldering fire of her recent past and managed to maintain a grip on her life. Not only was she writing a screenplay, which Josh found fascinating, but she had acquired something of a halo, taking care of Vicki and the kids in the hours when Josh and Ted weren’t there. Melanie found herself detesting Brenda and at the same time wanting to be more like her.

  In the afternoons, while Porter was napping, Melanie enlisted Blaine’s help tending the gardens around the cottage. They weeded the front beds

  —Blaine trailing Melanie with a plastic Tupperware bowl that she fil ed and he dumped, periodical y, in the kitchen trash. When the bed was weeded and the daylilies deadheaded, they patted down dark, sweet-smel ing mulch. Melanie cut back the trel ised New Dawn roses on the front of the house as wel as the rosebushes that lined the back fence while Blaine watched. (He was afraid of thorns, and the bumblebees.) That’s the funny thing about roses, Melanie told him. If you cut them back, they’ll be even lovelier next time.

  Blaine nodded solemnly and then ran into the kitchen for a jel y jar fil ed with water. His favorite part of gardening was when Melanie cut flowers for the jar, which he then took inside and presented to Vicki.

  “Those are pretty flowers,” Josh said once, about a bunch of cosmos on the kitchen table.

  “Melanie and I grew them,” Blaine said. “Right, Melanie?”

  “Right,” Melanie said. Josh no doubt thought that gardening was a pastime for old ladies, but Melanie couldn’t deny her proclivity for flowers, for privet hedge, for closely cropped lawn. She had always loved the sight and smel of things growing.

  As the days passed, Melanie became more engaged in life on Nantucket, which meant Josh, the kids, Brenda—and Vicki. Melanie had been so consumed with her own woes that she had al but disregarded the fact that Vicki had cancer. Vicki went twice a week to chemo. Vicki was too sick

  —too weak, too exhausted and confused—to walk to the beach with Melanie, no matter how hard or gently Melanie prodded.

  “It wil be good for you to get out of the house,” Melanie said. “And good for me, too.”

  “You go,” Vicki said. “I’l wait here until the kids get back.”

  “I’l wait with you,” Melanie said. “We can sit on the deck and drink iced tea.”

  They did this a few times, though for Melanie it was as awkward as a blind date. Vicki didn’t seem to want to talk about her cancer, and the one time Melanie asked how Ted was dealing with it, Vicki said, “Ugh. I can’t get into it.” So there was something there—angst, anger, sadness—but when Melanie pushed a little harder, Vicki changed the subject to Peter, which was, for Melanie, like scratching a mosquito bite or wiggling a loose tooth. Painful, but irresistible.

  “Have you spoken to him?” Vicki asked.

  “No, not since before.”

  “So you haven’t told him about the baby?”

  “No.”

  “But you wil .”

  “Eventual y, I’l have to,” Melanie said. “Does Ted know?”

  “No. He has no idea. He’s in his own sphere.”

  “Yeah, I guess. I just don’t want Peter to find out from anyone but me.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Josh knows.”

  “He does?”

  “I told him accidental y. Did you know Josh gave me a ride home that first Sunday, when I tried to fly back to Connecticut?”

  “He did?”

  “Yeah. Isn’t that weird? I told him then, on the ride.”

  Vicki stared at Melanie in an inscrutable way. Melanie felt like she had just confessed that she and Josh had a secret history. Did Vicki disapprove? It was just a ride from the airport, nothing more, but how to explain the bizarre, nascent feelings she now harbored for Josh? She should keep them to herself. It was probably just her hormones.

  “I don’t know what to do about the baby, Vick.”

  “You’re going to keep it, though, right?”

  “Keep it, yes. But then what?”

  Vicki was silent, sipping her iced tea. “There wil be people to help you. Ted and I wil help you.”

  “The baby needs a father.”

  “Peter wil come around.”

  “You sound pretty sure about that.”

  “He must miss you.”

  Melanie scoffed. “He hasn’t cal ed once. Not once.”

  “And you haven’t cal ed him. I’m proud of you.”

  “I’m proud of myself,” Melanie said. She hadn’t cal ed Peter; she hadn’t tipped her hand. She was being patient, waiting things out. Along the back fence, the roses bloomed and the bumblebees were fat and happy. Ted had cut the grass over the weekend and it smel ed wonderful and fresh. The sun was warm on Melanie’s legs. Josh would return with the kids at one o’clock; this thought alone was enough to make Melanie glad she was here and not back in Connecticut. “Thank you for l
etting me come,” Melanie said.

  “I’m happy you’re here,” Vicki said.

  “Are you?” Melanie said. Before the tumultuous events of the spring, Vicki and Melanie had talked on the phone three or four times a day; there were no taboo subjects. They excavated everything, leaving no stone unturned. Now, here they were, living under the same smal roof, but they were each alone with their misery. Melanie worried that Vicki was angry at her for the things that happened the first week. Was she mad that Melanie had al owed Blaine to wander down the beach unnoticed, or that Melanie had fal en off the airplane steps with Porter? Was she pissed that Melanie had tried to leave Nantucket without saying good-bye? Did she resent having to hire a babysitter to take care of the children when her best friend should have been perfectly capable of doing so? Did she begrudge Melanie her pregnancy? Compared to Vicki’s, Melanie’s body was a piece of ripe fruit. And Melanie had done nothing to help Vicki with her chemo. Brenda had her role: She was the driver, the facilitator, the sister. Melanie was, and had been from the beginning, extra baggage. “Are you sure I’m not the worst friend you ever had?”

  Vicki put her hand—which shook a little, like an old person’s hand—over Melanie’s, and instantly, the negative feelings receded. That was Vicki’s gift. Kiss it and make it better. She was everybody’s mother.

  “Not even close,” she said.

  Every Tuesday and Friday when she took Vicki to chemo, Brenda sat in the waiting room pretending to read magazines and she prayed for her sister. This was secret, and strange, because Brenda had never been particularly religious. Buzz and El en Lyndon had raised the girls as lazy Protestants. Over the years, they’d attended church sporadical y, in fits and bursts, every week for three months around Easter and then not again until Christmas. They’d always said grace before dinner, and for a while El en Lyndon attended early morning Bible study and would try to tel the girls about it as she drove them to school. Both girls had been baptized at St. David’s Episcopal, then confirmed; it was their church, they considered themselves Christians, their pastor performed Vicki and Ted’s wedding, a ful service where everyone took Communion. And yet, religion had not played a central role in family life, not real y, not the way it did for the Catholics or the Baptists or the Jewish people Brenda knew.