Barefoot: A Novel Read online

  Brenda wrote the grade at the top of the paper in very light pencil, in case she changed her mind. But in the end, she couldn’t bring herself to change the grade: He had earned it, fair and square. Stil , she worried. She worried she was fal ing in love.

  By the time Brenda made it back to the oncology waiting room, her concentration was shot. Amrita’s accusations (true) blended with Didi’s accusations (untrue). You’re fucking Josh. Admit it. Brenda packed up her screenplay and decided not to tel anyone about what had transpired in the ladies’ room.

  A few seconds later, Vicki came down the hal , escorted by Dr. Alcott. Brenda blinked. Was that her sister, real y? It looked like Vicki had shrunk

  —she seemed to have lost height as wel as weight. She was as frail as Aunt Liv had been in the month before she died (and Aunt Liv had been petite anyway, eighty-five pounds in her wool overcoat). Vicki was wearing the Louis Vuitton scarf on her head, a pair of white shorts that sat on her hips, a pink tank top that made it seem like she had no breasts at al , and a navy cashmere zip-up hooded sweater because with a fever of 104, she was freezing. Brenda’s mind had been far away in both time and place, but in a flash she resumed her attitude of urgent, incessant prayer.

  Dear Lord, please, please, please, please, please . . .

  Dr. Alcott handed Vicki over. The waiting room was empty, but stil he lowered his voice. “We’ve given her a shot of Neupogen, and she’l have to be brought in tomorrow and the fol owing day for shots. That should get her counts to rise. I’m also prescribing antibiotics, and Tylenol to get her fever down. She should be feeling better in a few days. We’l try again with a reduced dose of the chemo when her counts are up.” He looked at Vicki. “Okay?”

  She shivered. “Okay.”

  Brenda clenched Vicki’s arm. “Is there anything else?”

  “She should rest,” Dr. Alcott said. “I don’t know about any more beach picnics.”

  “Okay,” Brenda said quickly. She was already so racked with guilt (about Walsh, about kissing Josh, about writing instead of praying) and regret (about the goddamned A+, about the Jackson Pol ock painting, about not tel ing Didi to fuck right off)—what did it matter if Dr. Alcott placed blame for the beach picnic at her feet as wel ? I was trying to make her feel better, Brenda might have said. I was taking a holistic approach. But instead, she bleated, “I’m sorry.”

  Out in the car, Vicki pul ed a fleece blanket around her legs and melted into the seat.

  “I got what I deserved,” Vicki said.

  “What do you mean?” Brenda said.

  “I wanted to be done with chemo,” Vicki said. “And now chemo’s done with me. Once a week, a low dosage. It wouldn’t kil a one-winged fly.”

  “You don’t think?”

  “The cancer’s going to ral y,” Vicki said. “It’s going to spread.”

  “Stop it, Vick. You’ve got to keep a positive attitude.”

  “And I wil have brought it on myself.”

  “I don’t see how you can say that,” Brenda said. “It’s not your fault you’re sick.”

  “It’s my fault I’m not getting better,” Vicki said. “I suck at getting better.” She leaned her head against the window. “God, the guilt.”

  Brenda started the car. “Amen to that,” she said.

  T he heart wants what it wants, Melanie thought. And so, on the morning after her first prenatal appointment, she cal ed Peter at the office.

  Melanie was lying in bed, listening to the wren that habitual y sang from its perch on the fence outside her window, with her eyes closed. She was tired because she and Josh had been out again the night before—to Quidnet Pond—and she hadn’t gotten home until after midnight. Earlier that day, Melanie had gone with Vicki to the hospital. While Vicki was getting a shot to bring her blood counts back up, Melanie had an appointment with a surly GP, a white-haired doctor perhaps a month or two shy of retirement. The man had zero bedside manner, but Melanie didn’t care. She had heard her baby’s heartbeat. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. What she hadn’t anticipated was the enormous chasm between imagining the sound of the heartbeat and actual y hearing it. The pregnancy was real. It was healthy and viable. She was ten weeks along; the baby was the size of a plum.

  Now, she placed a hand on her abdomen. “Hel o,” she whispered. “Good morning.”

  She had been waiting for a sign. It had been easy to keep the news from Peter because, although Melanie had been sick and so, so tired, there had been no visible manifestation of the pregnancy. She didn’t even look pregnant. But that heartbeat had been real, it had been undeniable, and that was her cue. It wasn’t that she felt she had to tel Peter. She wanted to tel Peter.

  And so, once Josh and the kids left the house and once Brenda headed out to write, and once Vicki’s bedroom door was securely closed, Melanie scuffed down to the ’Sconset Market and cal ed Peter from the pay phone outside.

  Melanie took a deep drink of ’Sconset morning: the blue, blooming hydrangeas, the freshly mown grass of the rotary, the smel of the clay tennis courts across the street at the casino, the scent of coffee and rol s and fresh newsprint coming from the market itself. And then there was the smel of Josh on her skin. Even if Peter was mean to her, even if he refused to believe her, he would not be able to ruin her day.

  “Good morning,” the receptionist said. “Rutter, Higgens.”

  Even if he said he didn’t care.

  “Peter Patchen, please,” Melanie said, trying to sound business-like.

  “One moment, please.”

  There was a pause, a click, then ringing. Melanie was overcome with fear, anxiety, the same old negative Peter-feelings that she thought she’d buried. Shit! she thought. Hang up! But before there was time to orchestrate a hang up, Melanie heard Peter’s voice. “Hel o? Peter Patchen.”

  His voice. Amazing, but she had forgotten it, or half forgotten it, so that now these three words shocked her.

  “Peter?” she said. “It’s me.” Then she worried he would mistake her “me” for Frances Digitt’s “me,” and so she added, “Melanie.”

  “Melanie?” He sounded surprised, and if she wasn’t deluding herself, happily surprised. But no, this wasn’t possible. It was a trick of long distance, of the rusty old pay phone.

  “Yes,” she said, trying to keep her voice clipped and cool.

  “How are you?” Peter said. “Where are you?”

  “Nantucket,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said. Did she sense disappointment in his voice? Not possible. “How is it?”

  “Great,” she said. “Beautiful. Warm, sunny, breezy, beachy. How’s New York?”

  “Hot,” he said. “Sticky. A cauldron.”

  “How’s work?” she said.

  “Oh, you know. The same.”

  Melanie pressed her lips together. The same, meaning he was stil screwing the girl down the hal ? Melanie wouldn’t ask; she didn’t care. She did care about the state of her garden, however—her poor perennial beds!—but she wouldn’t ask about that either.

  “Okay, wel , I’m just cal ing to let you know . . .” God, was she real y going to say it? “I’m pregnant.”

  “What?”

  “I’m pregnant.” The words seemed smal er when she spoke them than they did in her mind. “Pregnant with a baby. Due in February.”

  There was silence on Peter’s end. Of course. Melanie focused on a nine- or ten-year-old girl walking into the market with her father. Bubble Gum Princess, the girl’s T-shirt said. She had long, thin legs like a stork.

  “You’re kidding me,” Peter said. “This is a joke.”

  “It is not,” Melanie said. Though wasn’t it just like Peter to think so. “I would never joke about something like this.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” he said. “You’re right, you wouldn’t. But how? When?”

  “That time,” she said. “You remember.”

  “During the thunderstorm?”

  “Yes.” She knew he remembered, of course he re
membered. Even if he’d had sex with Frances Digitt a hundred times that very week, he would remember. Melanie had been out in the garden cutting lilies. She ran into the house because it had started to pour. In the mudroom, she peeled off her soaked clothes and announced to Peter that she was al done with IVF. The disappointment was kil ing her, she told him. She wanted to get on with life. Melanie’s face had been wet with raindrops and tears, natural y. Peter cried a little, too—mostly out of relief, she suspected—and then they made love, right there in the mudroom, up against the porcelain front of her gardening sink. Outside, it rained harder and harder; there was a sharp thunderclap that sounded like a very large bone breaking. Peter and Melanie made love like they hadn’t in years—she hungrily, he grateful y—while the stamens of the lilies bled a deep orange into the sink.

  Afterward, Peter said, We could never have done that if we had children.

  The stains from the lily stamens remained in the sink, a lingering reminder of their coupling, which made Melanie wistful before she learned about Frances Digitt and bitterly angry afterward. She had been able to forget those stains now that there was something even more permanent. A heartbeat. A baby.

  “You’re sure, Mel?”

  “I went to the doctor,” she said. “I’m ten weeks along. I heard the heartbeat.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus,” he whispered. And then he was silent again. What was he thinking? Melanie was pleased to discover that she didn’t particularly care.

  “So, anyway,” Melanie said. “I just thought you should know.”

  “Know? Of course I should know. I am the father.” His tone was approaching that of an accusation, but Melanie would not be bul ied. He had given up the right to the secrets her body contained when he slept with Frances Digitt. Melanie could close her eyes and picture Frances rounding the bases of the softbal field, pumping her fist in the air.

  “I wanted to wait until I’d been to the doctor before I told you. I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

  “How do you feel?” he said.

  “I’ve been pretty sick,” she said. “I’m tired a lot, but otherwise, I feel fine.”

  “You sound great,” Peter said. “You sound real y great.” He paused, cleared his throat. Melanie listened for the sound of his fingers on the computer keyboard. It would be just like him to check the market or play Snood while he was on the phone with her. But what she heard was silence; he didn’t even seem to be breathing. “God, I can’t believe this. Can you? After al we went through?”

  “I know,” she said. “Pretty ironic.”

  “You do sound great, Mel.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Okay, wel , I’m on a pay phone so I should probably hang up. I’l see you . . .”

  “When?” Peter said. “I mean, when are you coming home?”

  Melanie laughed. “Oh, geez,” she said. “I have no idea.” She felt wonderful saying this. She was 100 percent in control. When she got back to the house, she would kiss Vicki and thank her again for letting her come to Nantucket. Tonight, she would kiss Josh, and then some.

  “I’l be in touch, Peter,” Melanie said.

  “Um, okay, I’l —”

  Melanie hung up.

  Every morning when Josh walked into Number Eleven Shel Street, he asked himself what he was doing. What am I doing? What the fuck am I doing? The answer was: He was sleeping with Melanie Patchen, a woman both married and pregnant, he was having an affair with her, and he was keeping it a secret not only from Brenda and Vicki and his father, but from Blaine and Porter. He felt the guiltiest, perhaps, when he looked at the two kids, because he wanted to set a good example for them. They were going to emulate him any which way, a fact that would be easier to accept had he not been screwing their mother’s best friend. It was always first thing in the morning, when he saw their round, wide-eyed faces at the breakfast table, that his remorse was the keenest. By ten o’clock at night—which was when he met Melanie at the town beach—it had dissipated enough for him to carry on with his treachery.

  How long would it be until they got caught? Josh asked himself this a hundred times a day, though he never put the question to Melanie because she had enough to worry about as it was. And they were very, very careful. Melanie went so far as to climb out her window into the garden rather than leave the house by the front door; she went so far as to straddle the picket fence rather than use the gate. She built a body out of spare pil ows in her bed, and she padded along the side of the road in the grass rather than crunch on the shel s. She arrived at the parking lot of the town beach between ten and ten-thirty; she climbed into Josh’s Jeep, and he whisked her away to one of a dozen secluded spots where they made love either in his car or, if they were feeling brave, on the beach. Twice, Josh had gotten the feeling that they were being fol owed. One time, he had turned down a dirt road that led them deep into the moors, and the other time he pul ed into an empty driveway. Those incidents made Melanie squeal with nervous excitement, and Josh had to admit, his adrenaline surged in a way that was not unpleasant. They were living a movie script—the secret, forbidden relationship complete with dramatic escapes, and the explosive sex that fol owed.

  The sex was, in fact, astonishing. It became abundantly clear to Josh that having sex with a girl was one thing and having sex with a woman was quite another. Josh had thought Melanie’s pregnancy would make things weird, or uncomfortable, but it was just the opposite. Melanie was completely in tune with her body, her hormones were flowing, she was always ready for Josh, she craved him. She complimented him, she encouraged him to be creative. Yeah, the sex was a fantasy, Josh couldn’t deny it, but if the relationship with Melanie had been only about sex, Josh would have tired of it. The problem was that the relationship quickly became about more than just sex. Melanie talked to him, she told him things—

  real, adult things; she trusted him with details. It was different from the dreck Josh usual y got from girls. When Josh thought about the stupid drivel he was used to hearing from girls his age ( My hair goes frizz-city in this humidity. . . . Ohmygod, look how many grams of fat! . . . Who’s going to be there? That bitch? . . . I downloaded it for free on . . . ), he was amazed his brain hadn’t turned to tapioca. At first, Josh wasn’t sure that hearing about Melanie’s shattered marriage or her quest for a child would be any better, but he was wrong. It was a story that sucked him right in.

  A marriage, as you’ll no doubt discover one day, is a pact you make with another person. It’s a vow you take, it’s sacred, or so you believe on the altar. It’s a promise that you’ll never be alone, you’re part of a team, a unit, a couple, a married couple. That’s the dream, anyway, and I believed it. The baby thing was another dream. For most couples, it’s a given. They don’t even think about it and—bam!—pregnant. I thought it would be that way with Peter and me. I always wanted lots of kids. And then we tried and it didn’t happen and people said, Give it time, because what else can they say? And so we kept trying and kept trying, but the more I thought of it as “trying” the more stressful it became and I got sad and Peter got angry because there was nothing either of us could do. So then we went to see a doctor, and I was, of course, thinking there was something wrong with Peter, and Peter was thinking there was something wrong with me. But the frustrating thing was that there was nothing wrong with either of us. We were both perfectly healthy, we just weren’t connecting. So I took fertility drugs, which had unpleasant side effects, and they didn’t seem to be working anyway, so I stopped those, and we tried the holistic approach—powder from rhinoceros horn and making love upside down at midnight during a full moon—and then we just threw in the towel and admitted it wasn’t working. So what were our options? In vitro. But in vitro is tricky—there’s a timetable, they harvest eggs, they take Peter’s sperm, they fertilize the eggs in a laboratory, then they implant the eggs and hope they take root. There’s a lot of hospital time involved, lots of other people, health professi
onals helping you along, and meanwhile you’re thinking how unromantic it all is, and you’re wondering why you couldn’t just have conceived after three martinis or a weekend in Palm Springs, like everybody else. You start to hate yourself. Seven times I went through in vitro cycles. It was over a year of my life spent holding my breath, basically, and praying—then crying when it didn’t work, blaming myself, blaming Peter. I’m not going to say I was easy to live with—I wasn’t. Peter got tired of hearing about my cycle, ovulation, fertilization, implantation, viable embryos, but that was all I could think about. The real difference between Peter and me was that I kept the faith in our marriage. I thought we were on the same team—in a tug-of-war, let’s say, against whatever forces were working to keep us childless. But then it was like I looked behind me and Peter was gone, I was tugging alone. Or worse. It was like Peter had joined the other team. He and Frances Digitt. He was my dearest love, my best friend, my safe place, my hero, Josh—and then I discovered I was nothing to him. Less than nothing. It was—it is—the betrayal of a lifetime. I thought affairs were only in soap operas. I thought they were only in Cheever. I didn’t know they really happened. I was so fucking naive. Peter is having an affair with Frances Digitt, he is involved with Frances Digitt. You can’t imagine. You just can’t imagine.

  She was wrong there. Al he could do was imagine, and when he did so, he found himself hating Peter Patchen. Because what Josh quickly learned was that Melanie was a sweet person, a genuine person, she thought of others, she was kind and vulnerable and trusting. Of course she believed in love that lasted forever, of course she wanted a house ful of children—and she deserved it. The more time Josh spent with Melanie, the more he wanted to help her, to save her. He wanted to be her hero. He realized he’d felt this way from the very beginning—when Melanie fel off the airplane’s steps and he offered her first aid, and then again when she was stranded at the airport and he gave her a ride home. Late at night, when Josh lay sleepless in bed trying to figure out what the fuck he was doing with Melanie, he wondered if there was something in him that needed to be needed—but if that were the case, he might as wel have stayed with Didi. She was the neediest person he knew. In the end, Josh would have to say that he didn’t know what he was doing with Melanie, but he was powerless to stop.