Barefoot: A Novel Read online

  Josh pitched the bal , Blaine smacked it over Josh’s head. Didi made a big show of clapping and cheering, and at that point, Blaine realized there was someone under the umbrel a with his brother. A stranger. But no, not a stranger.

  “Hey, I know you,” Blaine said. “From the hospital.” As Josh retrieved the bal , Blaine approached the umbrel a. Not too close! Josh thought. He jogged over.

  “Blaine, do you want to play with Mateo now?”

  “What about Wiffle bal ?”

  “I have to talk to Didi.”

  “Is she your girlfriend?”

  At this, Didi laughed, a forceful, one-syl able blast. “Ha!”

  “No,” Josh said. “But I have to talk to her. Wil you play with Mateo?”

  “How many minutes until lunch?”

  Josh checked his watch. “Eighteen minutes.”

  “Okay,” Blaine said. He wandered a few yards down the beach to where Mateo Sherman was burying his father’s feet in the sand. Omar Sherman looked over to Josh and said, “I’ve got him.”

  “Thanks!” Josh said. Omar would be wondering who Didi was, as would Mrs. Brooks two umbrel as down. Josh smiled at Didi, but this was purely for show. “What are you doing here, Didi?”

  “I know about her.”

  “You know about who?” Josh said wearily.

  “You’re screwing the mother’s friend,” Didi said. “And she’s pregnant. I know al about it. It’s weird, okay, Josh? It’s twis-ted.”

  “You don’t know a damn thing,” Josh said. “You are so far off base, you’re just making shit up. You sound like a crazy person.”

  “Rob saw you with a woman with curly hair. Older. And I did some further research. It’s the mother’s friend. She came to the hospital for a prenatal appointment. I know you’re sleeping with her. I know you took her to the house in Shimmo. Zach told me.”

  Stop! Josh thought. Stop and think! But if he paused, even for a second, if he faltered or showed a crack, she would get a fingerhold and pul him apart.

  “You owe me money,” Josh said. “Two hundred dol ars, plus interest. Are you here to pay me?”

  “Don’t try to change the subject,” she said.

  “You’re the one who’s trying to change the subject,” Josh said. “Because the only thing between you and me is that money.”

  “I need five hundred dol ars to get my car back,” Didi said. “Give me five hundred dol ars and I won’t tel anyone.”

  “Won’t tel anyone what?”

  “That you’re sleeping with a woman who is pregnant. I could see if you hit on the other one, the sister. She, at least, is attractive, though waaaaaaayyyyy too old for you.”

  “Stop it, Didi. You can’t blackmail me.”

  “Sure I can.”

  “No, you can’t,” Josh said. “What you’re saying is outrageous. No one wil believe you.”

  “Rob saw you, Josh. Out in Monomoy. With the woman. At midnight. How do you explain that?”

  “I don’t have to explain it because it isn’t true. Rob is untrustworthy. He’s as crazy as you are.” Josh looked over at Blaine, happily playing with Mateo Sherman. Omar gave Josh the thumbs-up. Porter’s breathing was deep and even. Everything is okay, Josh told himself. You can handle Didi.

  “Everyone wil believe it,” Didi said. “Because you’re different this summer. You never come to parties, you don’t go out. You don’t do anything except hang around with those women and the kids. Everyone’s noticed, Josh. I’m sure even your father’s noticed. Although, maybe not. Your father is pretty oblivious.”

  “Stop it, Didi.”

  “I’l have to clue him in.”

  Josh tried not to let any emotion cross his face. He felt like he was onstage. Stil , he couldn’t let Didi get anywhere near his father. That would be a complete disaster.

  “Whatever,” Josh said. “My father already thinks you’re wacko, Didi. Anything you try to tel him wil fal on deaf ears.”

  “That’s a chance I’l have to take,” Didi said. She stood up and brushed off the seat of her shorts. “Give me five hundred bucks and I’l let this go. I won’t tel your father. I won’t tel anyone.”

  “Get out of here, Didi.”

  “You’l be sorry.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Josh asked.

  “You real y want to know?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I real y want to know.”

  Didi sidled up to him and tucked herself right under his ear. “Because I love you,” she whispered.

  A few days later, the heat arrived. Real heat, and humidity—and as in the case of an unwelcome houseguest, no one knew how long it was staying.

  Josh was glad he wasn’t working at the airport. How the kids could stand on that asphalt al day without feeling like they were sausages on a griddle, Josh had no idea. Even the beach wasn’t much of a reprieve. The sand was too hot for Blaine to walk across, so Josh had to carry Blaine in addition to his usual load. The three of them abandoned their routine and spent al morning swimming in the shal ows. The water was as warm as a bathtub, and strewn with tangles of seaweed. It cooled down a little at night, but there was no breeze. The humidity hung in the air in damp sheets, and the mosquitoes hatched. Josh’s Jeep had no air-conditioning, so he and Melanie made love on the beach, where they got eaten alive. They were sticky and sweaty, and their skin became breaded with sand.

  “Yuck,” Melanie said. “This is when you want the Four Seasons.”

  Josh’s house had no air-conditioning either, so Tom Flynn set up a big square fan at one end of the table that blew on them while they ate. Josh liked the fan; its noise took the place of conversation.

  “Hot one,” Tom Flynn would say when he sat down. Josh was making cold things for dinner: Italian subs, tuna fish, sliced watermelon; the iceberg salad had never tasted so good.

  “Hot one,” Josh agreed.

  Maybe it was because of the noisy fan, but Tom Flynn did not bring up Didi’s visit at the table. Instead, he caught Josh in the morning, as Josh was getting out of the shower. It was Saturday, not a day Josh worked, and so he was in no particular hurry. Josh came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist to find Tom Flynn standing in the hal way. Waiting for him. His presence was so surprising, Josh sucked in his breath.

  “Jesus, Dad. You scared me.”

  “Do you have a minute?” Tom Flynn said. This was very much the rhetorical question, and Josh tensed. He knew what was coming, sort of.

  “Can I get dressed?”

  “By al means,” Tom Flynn said. “I’l be out on the deck.”

  “The deck” was off Josh’s parents’ bedroom. Because it was on the second floor, it caught the breeze. It was by far the most comfortable place in the house in this kind of weather, and yet Josh never used the deck, and as far as Josh knew, his father never used it, either. In fact, it had been a year, maybe two, since Josh had set foot in his father’s bedroom at al . He wasn’t exactly surprised to find that it was stil the same—same dark-patterned bedspread that Josh and his father had bought at Sears in Hyannis shortly after Josh’s mother died, same neat-as-a-pin dresser, same lineup of shoes in the closet. A picture of Josh’s mother hung on the wal , a picture of her from high school, in which she was barely identifiable as the woman Josh had known. Stil , Josh stopped and looked at the picture on his way out to the deck.

  Do you hate her? Vicki had asked.

  Tom Flynn was already outside, his arms crossed on the railing, his head focused in the direction of Miacomet Pond and the eleventh hole of the golf course in the distance. He was wearing a white undershirt and a pair of belted khakis. He was barefoot. Josh couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his father barefoot. If Tom Flynn could be described in any way, it would be as tightly laced, buttoned up. But half dressed and without shoes, Tom Flynn seemed vulnerable, human. For this reason, Josh relaxed a little.

  “Hot one,” Josh said, trying to be funny.

  Tom Flynn nodded. “Your mother l
oved summer.”

  Again, Josh tensed. His neck was so stiff, it felt like a steel column. Your mother loved summer: It was a perfectly innocuous statement, but Josh could count on one hand the number of times his mother had been mentioned in the past ten years.

  “I know,” Josh said. “I remember.”

  “Someone once suggested she had that seasonal mood disorder,” Tom Flynn said. “People suffer from it when they don’t get enough sunlight.”

  He paused. Josh thought, Wel , she did kil herself in December. He pictured her on the beach with her glass of wine. We have to enjoy it now.

  Before winter comes. “It’s probably a bunch of bul shit.”

  “Probably,” Josh murmured.

  Tom Flynn’s hair was damp and held teeth marks from his comb. He smel ed of aftershave and hair oil. The hair oil alone was enough to place Tom Flynn in a separate category of man from Josh. A different generation. Tom Flynn had been in the military in the eighties—he had been stationed near Afghanistan for two years—something about intel igence and aircraft. Josh wasn’t sure what his father had done, but Josh attributed most of his father’s behaviors—his silence, his promptness, his stiff upper lip, even his neat dresser and closet—to this time in the military.

  Although Tom Flynn was a supremely competent and dedicated air traffic control er, he made it clear to Josh that the job at Nantucket Memorial Airport, even on the most hectic summer days, was too easy; it was a walk in the park compared to what he’d done “before.” The military, then, felt like Tom Flynn’s “real job.” Nantucket was a pale replacement, time put in until retirement.

  Tom Flynn took a deep breath and stared down at his bare feet as though he were surprised to find them there, sticking out past the cuffs of his pants. Josh fol owed his father’s gaze. His father’s feet were pale and fishy-looking, the nails square-cut and yel owing. Josh looked up. As hard as it was for Josh to listen, it would be even harder for Tom Flynn to speak.

  “What is it, Dad?”

  “I don’t know if I should even bring this up,” Tom Flynn said. “You are an adult, after al .”

  “What is it?”

  “The Patalka girl stopped me in the parking lot at work,” Tom Flynn said. “Yesterday, on my way home. She told me you’ve been seeing one of the women you work for. There’s one who’s pregnant?”

  Josh nodded.

  “But it’s not your baby?”

  “No. God, no.”

  “I’ve noticed, obviously, that you’ve been leaving the house quite late and getting back in at God-knows-what hour. Every night, it seems like. So I figured there was a girl. But this . . . woman? Older than you? Pregnant with another man’s child? Do you know what you’re doing, Joshua?”

  Josh stared at the thin blue ribbon on the horizon that was Miacomet Pond. Under other circumstances he might have been supremely embarrassed. He and his father never talked like this; there hadn’t even been a sex talk when Josh was growing up. Now, however, he was relieved. He’d denied everything to Didi, but he wouldn’t be able to lie to his father. It might feel good to talk about it.

  “I thought I did at the beginning,” Josh said. “But now I’m not so sure.”

  “This woman, she has a husband?”

  “They’re separated.”

  “But the baby . . .”

  “Right. It’s complicated.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Thirty-one,” Josh said. “Although how old she is doesn’t matter.”

  “It’s unusual,” Tom Flynn said. “And the fact that she’s pregnant . . .”

  “Dad, I know, okay? It just happened, I’m not sure how, and now I’m in it. I love her.” Even as Josh spoke the words, he was surprising himself.

  Did he love Melanie? Maybe he did. One thing was for sure: He had never felt as alive—happy, self-aware, conflicted, engaged—as he did this summer, with those three women. Maybe love wasn’t the right word for it, but it was the only word he had.

  Josh thought his father might laugh at this declaration, but Tom Flynn’s expression held steady.

  “I didn’t argue when you said you wanted to quit the airport. I figured you knew what you were doing. Babysitting a couple of little kids . . . wel , you’re a people person and the money was good and I know the mother is sick and you felt invested, for some reason, in helping her out.” Here, Tom Flynn stopped and took another breath. This was a marathon of talk for him. “Now I’m wondering if there’s something else at work.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “These women . . .”

  “You mean sex?”

  “I mean, why were you drawn to working for these women? Maybe it was about sex. But they’re a lot older than you, Josh. And it crossed my mind

  —even before I was accosted by the Patalka girl—that you’re out there in ’Sconset trying to find your mother.”

  “Jesus, Dad . . .”

  “I’m the last person to deal in Freudian bul shit,” Tom Flynn said. “But I’m not blind and I’m not stupid. You lost your mother at a young age. I dealt with it the best way I knew how, but maybe not the best way there was, you know what I’m saying?”

  Josh nodded.

  “Maybe we should have talked about your mother until we were blue in the face. Maybe we should have raked ourselves over hot coals about why she did it. Was it something I said or did, was it something you said or did, was it seasonal fucking mood disorder, what? What was it? Maybe we should have cried about it, screamed, yel ed, hugged, maybe we should have punched holes in the plaster, smashed the toaster oven, ripped up the snapshots. Maybe those were better ways to deal with it, healthier ways. Instead of what we did, which was one foot in front of the other. Head up, eyes forward. There are lots of things we’l never know, never understand, and why your mother took her own life is one of them.” Tom Flynn lifted a hand—it was trembling—and put it on Josh’s shoulder. “I can tel you one thing for sure. Your mother loved you.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t have to go out and about looking for that love elsewhere, Josh. Your mother loved you, and wherever she is now, she loves you stil .”

  She loves you still. This was a huge statement, especial y considering the source. It was a gift from his father. And yet, it was too much to process on a flat, hot morning at the end of the most tumultuous summer of his life. He would have to pocket the statement and think about it later.

  “Right,” Josh said. “But I don’t think what’s happening this summer has anything to do with . . .”

  “That may be,” Tom Flynn said. “It was just a thought I had.”

  “Okay,” Josh said. “Thanks.”

  Tom Flynn stood up to his ful height and squared his shoulders. “As for being in love, I’m out of practice. I don’t have any fatherly advice other than: Be careful.”

  “Be careful,” Josh repeated. “Okay. I wil .”

  Heat and humidity were no friend to the pregnant woman. Melanie couldn’t stand to be in her own skin. She felt fat and sweaty and lethargic. The cottage was unbearable, it was a kiln, even with al of the windows open and the three oscil ating fans running on high. Melanie made two or three trips to the market per day—primarily for cold juice, Cokes, and Gatorade for herself and Vicki, but also because the market was air-conditioned.

  She went to the beach and swam, but it wasn’t unusual for Melanie to feel faint walking home, confused, fatigued, forgetful. It was less than half a mile from the beach back to Number Eleven Shel Street, but Melanie arrived home feeling like she’d been lost in the desert.

  And so, on the day that she saw Peter standing at the front door, she thought she was hal ucinating.

  She saw the cab first, an Atlantic Cab right in front of Number Eleven, and a cab, general y, meant Ted. But it was a Wednesday, not Friday, although Melanie had some vague sense that Ted was coming earlier than planned for his vacation so that he could be with Vicki for her post-treatment CT scan. But that was stil another
week away, wasn’t it? This was the kind of thing Melanie kept forgetting. Stil , when she saw the cab, she thought: Ted. Because who else could it possibly be? They never had visitors.

  It took another few seconds for Melanie to notice the man standing in the shade of the overhang, a very tal man in a suit. From the back he looked like Peter. Melanie blinked. It was always like this at the end of her walk home; her vision splotched. She was thirsty and tired. She had been out with Josh the night before, back home so late it was early.

  The man turned, or half turned, searching the street. Melanie stopped. It was Peter. Her stomach dropped in a quasi-thril ing way, like she was careening down a rol er coaster. The voice in her head screamed: Holy shit! It’s Peter! Peter is here! How was this possible? He took off from work? He flew here? He thought it would be okay to show up without asking? There had been phone cal s, three to be exact, not counting the cal that Melanie had placed from the market, not counting the cal that Vicki had answered. So five cal s in total—but not once did Peter hint that he was thinking of doing this. He asked Melanie when she was planning on coming home—and that was the correct question. That left Melanie in control.

  She would come home when she felt like it, and at that point they would deal with the detritus of their marriage. Melanie could not believe Peter was standing by the front door of the cottage. She imagined the baby inside of her doing backflips . How dare he! she thought. And simultaneously, she thought, Thank God Josh is gone for the day. Josh. A second later she realized that she was not only horrified by Peter’s arrival, she was flattered by it. Before everything happened with Josh, this was exactly what she had wished for.

  She couldn’t make herself move forward; she wanted to remain in this moment of seeing Peter but being unseen herself. The front door of Number Eleven was always unlocked. Had he tried the knob? Had he knocked? Vicki would be asleep with the kids, Brenda was probably stil out.

  Melanie stood in the shade of the neighbor’s elm tree, watching him. He looked distinctly out of place in his suit, but the suit also brought to mind the fact that Peter was an adult, a man with a job in the city—and not a col ege student.