Barefoot: A Novel Read online

  But how, real y, could Vicki leave her best friend behind in Darien—especial y with the monstrous news of Peter’s affair fol owed by an even bigger stunner (whispered, frantical y, at three in the morning over the telephone). Melanie was—after al this time, after so many costly and invasive procedures—pregnant!

  Come to Nantucket, Vicki had said immediately, and without thinking (and without consulting Ted or Brenda).

  Okay, Melanie had said just as quickly. I will.

  As the taxi pul ed up in front of Aunt Liv’s cottage, Vicki feared she’d made a mistake. The house was smal er than Vicki remembered, a lot smal er. It was a shoe box; Blaine had friends with playhouses bigger than this. Had it shrunk? Vicki wondered. Because she remembered whole summers with her parents and Brenda and Aunt Liv, and the house had seemed, if not palatial, then at least comfortable.

  “It’s darling,” Melanie said as she stepped out of the cab. “Oh, Vicki, it’s al that I imagined.”

  Vicki unhinged the front gate. The landscapers had come, thank God. Melanie loved flowers. Pale pink New Dawn roses cascaded down a trel is, and the front beds had been planted with cosmos and blue delphiniums and fat, happy-faced zinnias. There were butterflies. The postage-stamp lawn had been recently mowed.

  “Where’s the sandbox?” Blaine said. “Where’s the curly slide?”

  Vicki produced a key from her purse and opened the front door, which was made from three rough-hewn planks and sported a brass scal op-shel knocker. The doorway was low. As Vicki stepped through, she thought of her husband, Ted, a hale and hearty six foot five. He had told her from the beginning that he was vehemently against her going to Nantucket. Did she real y want to spend al summer with her sister, with whom her relationship was spotty at best? And Melanie Patchen, who would be as needy as Vicki, if not more so? And did she real y want her chemotherapy

  —the chemo that she was asking to save her life—to be administered at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital? Wasn’t that the equivalent of being treated in the Third World? What the hell are you thinking? he asked. He sounded confused and defeated. Ted was a hedge fund manager in Manhattan; he liked problems he could fel like trees, problems he could solve with brute strength and canny intel igence. The horrifying diagnosis, the wing-and-a-prayer treatment plan, and then Vicki’s wacko decision to flee for the summer left him confounded. But Vicki couldn’t believe she was being asked to explain herself.

  It was, quite possibly, the last summer of her life, and she didn’t want to spend it in stifling hot Darien under the sympathetic scrutiny of her friends and peers. Already, Vicki’s circumstances were being repeated like the Song of the Day: Did you hear? Vicki Stowe has lung cancer. They’re going to try chemo first and then they’ll decide if it’s worth operating. They don’t know if she’ll make it. A steady stream of food and flowers arrived along with the offer of playdates. Let us take Blaine. Let us take the baby. So you can rest. Vicki was the new Darien charity. She couldn’t stand the casseroles or the cal a lilies; she couldn’t stand her children being farmed out like they were orphans. The women circled like buzzards—some close friends, some friends of friends, some women she barely knew. Ted didn’t get it; he saw it as outreach by a caring community. That’s why we moved here, he said. These are our neighbors, our friends. But Vicki’s desire to get away grew every time the phone rang, every time a Volvo station wagon pul ed into the driveway.

  Vicki’s mother was the one who had suggested Nantucket; she would have joined Vicki herself but for an il -timed knee replacement. Vicki latched on to the idea, despite the fact that her mother wouldn’t be coming to help. Aunt Liv’s estate had been settled in March; the house belonged to her and Brenda now. It felt like a sign. Brenda was al for it. Even Vicki’s oncologist, Dr. Garcia, gave his okay; he assured her that chemo was chemo. The treatment would be the same on Nantucket as it would be in Connecticut, or in the city. The people in Vicki’s cancer support group, al of whom embraced holistic as wel as conventional medical treatment, understood. Enjoy yourself, they said. Relax. Play with your kids. Be outside. Talk with your sister, your friend. Look at the stars. Eat organic vegetables. Try to forget about fine-needle aspirations, CT scans, metastases. Fight the good fight, on your own terms, in your own space. Have a lovely summer.

  Vicki had held Ted hostage with her eyes. Since her diagnosis, she’d watched him constantly—tying his necktie, removing change from his suit pocket, stirring sugar into his coffee—hoping to memorize him, to take him with her wherever she went.

  I’ll miss you, she said. But I’m going.

  The cottage had been built in 1803—back, Vicki thought, when life was both busier and simpler, back when people were shorter and held lower expectations. The cottage had original y been one room with a fireplace built into the north wal , but over the years, three “warts” had been added for bedrooms. Al of the rooms were smal with low ceilings; it was like living in a dol house. That was what Aunt Liv had loved about the cottage—it was life pared down, scaled way back. There was no TV, no answering machine, no computer or microwave or stereo. It was a true summerhouse, Aunt Liv used to say, because it encouraged you to spend most of your time outside—on the back deck overlooking the yard and garden, or down the street at ’Sconset’s public beach. Back in 1803 when the woman of the house had cancer, there were no oncologists or treatment plans. A woman worked right through it—stoking the fire, preparing meals, stirring the laundry in a cauldron of boiling water—until one day she died in bed.

  These were Vicki’s thoughts as she stepped inside.

  The cottage had been cleaned and the furniture aired. Vicki had arranged for al of this by telephone; apparently, houses that sat dormant for three years were common stuff on Nantucket. The house smel ed okay, maybe a bit too optimistical y like air freshener. The living room floors were made from wide, buttery pine boards that showed every scratch from a dragged chair, every divot from a pair of high heels. The plaster-and-wood-beamed ceiling was low, and the furniture was old-ladyish, like something out of a Victorian bed-and-breakfast: Aunt Liv’s delft blue high-back sofa, the dainty coffee table with a silver-plated tea service resting on a piece of Belgian lace. There were the bookshelves bowing under the weight of Aunt Liv’s summer library, there was the fireplace with mismatched andirons. Vicki moved into the smal kitchen, appliances circa 1962, silver-threaded Formica, Aunt Liv’s china, which was painted with little Dutch girls in wooden shoes. The caretaker’s bil was secured to the refrigerator with a magnet advertising a restaurant cal ed the Elegant Dump, which had been defunct for years.

  The west bedroom was sunny. That would be Melanie’s room. Twin beds were made up with the pink-and-orange-striped sheets that Vicki remembered from her childhood. (What she remembered most vividly was staining the sheets during her first period. Aunt Liv had sensibly pul ed out the hydrogen peroxide while El en Lyndon had chirped with over-the-top sentimentality about how “Vicki is a woman now” and Brenda glowered and chewed her cuticles.) Vicki would take the largest bedroom, with the king bed, where she would sleep with the kids, and Brenda would sleep in the old nursery, a room just slightly bigger than Vicki’s walk-in closet at home. This was the room Aunt Liv had always occupied—it was cal ed the old nursery because both Aunt Liv and Vicki and Brenda’s grandmother Joy had slept in cribs in that room alongside the family’s baby nurse, Miss George, more than eighty years earlier. Once Aunt Liv had arthritis and every other old-person ailment, Vicki’s parents suggested she take the big bedroom—but that didn’t suit Liv. She stopped coming to Nantucket altogether, and then she died.

  There was a flurry of activity as everyone piled into the house, dragging luggage and boxes. The cabbie stood by the car, waiting to be paid. That was Vicki’s department. She was going to pay for everything al summer. She was summer’s sponsor. She handed the kid twenty bucks. Enough?

  He grinned. Too much. “Thanks, ma’am. Enjoy your stay.”

  As the cab pul ed away, Blaine started
to cry. Vicki worried that al the change would traumatize him; there had been a scene at breakfast when he’d said good-bye to Ted, and then he’d knocked Melanie off the airplane’s steps. He was acting out. It was three o’clock, and although he was outgrowing his nap, Vicki knew he needed some quiet time. She herself was bone weary. Just picking up her bag and walking five feet to the bedroom made her feel like she’d climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Her lungs were on fire. She hated them.

  Suddenly, Brenda made a noise even worse than Blaine’s whiny cry. She was moaning in that Oh no, oh no, no, the-world-is-ending kind of way .

  What was it? A dead animal in the old nursery? A family of dead animals? Vicki lowered her bottom onto her bed’s squishy mattress. She didn’t have the energy to move, so she cal ed out, “What’s wrong, Bren?”

  Brenda appeared in the absurdly low doorway of Vicki’s bedroom. “I can’t find my book.”

  Vicki didn’t have to ask which book. This was Brenda, her sister. There was only one book: Brenda’s two-hundred-year-old first edition of Fleming Trainor’s The Innocent Impostor. This book, a little-known novel of a mediocre Early American writer, was the foundation of Brenda’s career. Brenda had spent six years getting her master’s degree and doctorate from the University of Iowa, she had written a dissertation and had part of it published in an obscure literary journal, and she’d landed the job at Champion University—al because of this book. The first edition was an antique, worth thousands of dol ars, Brenda claimed. She had owned it since she was fourteen years old, when she bought it for fifty cents at a flea market. The book was, for al intents and purposes, Brenda’s pet. She wouldn’t consider leaving it in Manhattan, where the subletter could get at it. It had traveled with them in a special briefcase—temperature and humidity control ed, the whole nine yards. Now it was missing.

  “Are you sure?” Vicki said. “Did you check everywhere?” Despite the fact that Brenda’s missing book fel squarely onto Vicki’s List of Things That No Longer Matter, she tried to summon sympathy in the interest of getting things off to a good start. And crises of this nature were Vicki’s specialty. With the kids, her day was spent hunting for things: the other shoe, the bal that rol ed under the sofa, the pacifier!

  “Everywhere,” Brenda said. It was amazing how quickly her demeanor had changed. She had been a bitch al day, but now that her book was missing, she was turning into the cake that someone left out in the rain. Her cheeks were blotching, her hands were twitching, and Vicki sensed tears weren’t far off.

  “What if I lost the book?” Brenda said. “What if I left it at”—the next word was so awful, it stuck like a chunk of carrot in the back of her throat

  —“LaGuardia?”

  Vicki shut her eyes. She was so tired she could sleep like this, sitting up. “You carried it off the plane with you, remember? You had your little purse, and . . .”

  “The briefcase,” Brenda said. She blinked rapidly, trying to fend off the tears. Vicki felt a surge of anger. If Brenda had been the one to get cancer, she wouldn’t have been able to deal. God never gives you more than you can handle—this saying was repeated with conviction at Vicki’s cancer support group—and that is why God did not give Brenda cancer.

  Somewhere in the house, the baby was crying. A second later, Melanie appeared. “I think he’s hungry,” she said. She caught a whiff of Brenda’s desperate mien—the hands were stil twitching—and she said, “Honey, what’s wrong? What’s wrong? ”

  “Brenda lost her book,” Vicki said, trying to sound grave. “Her old book. The antique.”

  “That book is my life,” Brenda said. “I’ve had it forever, it’s priceless . . . okay, I feel sick. That book is my talisman, my good-luck charm.”

  Good-luck charm? Vicki thought. If the book real y had supernatural powers, wouldn’t it somehow have kept Brenda from sleeping with John Walsh and ruining her career?

  “Cal the airport,” Vicki said. She took Porter from Melanie and latched him onto her breast. As soon as the chemo started on Tuesday, he would have to be weaned. Bottles, formula. Even Porter, at nine months old, had a more legitimate crisis than Brenda. “I’m sure they have it.”

  “Okay,” Brenda said. “What’s the number?”

  “Cal information,” Vicki said.

  “I hate to ask this,” Melanie said. “But is there just the one bathroom?”

  “Quiet!” Brenda snapped.

  Melanie’s eyes grew wide and Vicki thought for an instant that she might start to cry. Melanie was sweet and self-effacing to a fault, and she hated confrontation. When the whole ugly thing with Peter happened, Melanie didn’t yel at him. She didn’t break his squash racquet or burn the wedding photos as Vicki herself would have. Instead, she’d let his infidelity quietly infect her. She became sick and fatigued. Then she discovered she was pregnant. The news that should have caused her the greatest joy was suddenly a source of conflict and confusion. Nobody deserved this less than Melanie. Vicki had given Brenda a direct order— Be nice to her! —but now Vicki saw she should have been more emphatic. Really nice!

  Kid gloves!

  “Sorry, Mel,” Vicki whispered.

  “I hear you,” Brenda said. Then, in a businesslike voice, she said, “Nantucket Memorial Airport, please. Nantucket, Massa-chusetts.”

  “Anyway, yes,” Vicki said. “Just the one bathroom. Sorry. I hope that’s okay.” Vicki hadn’t poked her head into the bathroom yet, though she was pretty sure it hadn’t changed. Smal hexagonal tiles on the floor, transparent shower curtain patterned with red and purple poppies, toilet with the tank high above and an old-fashioned pul chain. One bathroom for a woman about to be served up a biweekly dose of poisonous drugs, a woman in the throes of morning sickness, a four-year-old boy unreliably potty trained, and Brenda. And Ted, of course, on the weekends. Vicki took a breath. Fire. She switched Porter to her other breast. He had milk al over his chin and a deliriously happy look on his face. She should have started him on a bottle weeks ago. Months ago.

  “I’m going to unpack,” Melanie announced. She was stil wearing her straw hat. When Vicki and Brenda had arrived in the limo to pick her up that morning, she’d been in her garden, weeding. As she climbed into the Lincoln Town Car, clogs caked with mud, she said, “I should have left Peter a reminder to water. I just know he’l forget, or ignore it.”

  “Your husband is stil living with you?” Brenda had said. “You mean to say you didn’t throw him out?”

  Melanie had glanced at Vicki. “She knows about Peter?”

  At that minute, Vicki’s lungs had felt like they were fil ing with swamp water. It went without saying that Melanie’s situation was confidential, but Brenda was Vicki’s sister, and the three of them were going to be living together all summer, so . . .

  “I told her,” Vicki said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Melanie said softly. “So I guess you know I’m pregnant, too?”

  “Yeah,” Brenda said.

  “I’m sorry, Mel,” Vicki said.

  “I’m a dead end,” Brenda said. “Real y, I am. But if you want my opinion . . .”

  “She doesn’t want your opinion, Bren,” Vicki said.

  “You should tel the man to fuck off,” Brenda said. “Twenty-seven-year-old adventure girl, my sweet ass!”

  “Brenda, enough!” Vicki said.

  “Just please don’t tel anyone I’m pregnant,” Melanie said.

  “Oh, I won’t say a word,” Brenda said. “I promise.”

  A few minutes later, after enough time had passed for everyone in the limo to reflect on this exchange, Melanie had started vomiting. She claimed it was because she was sitting backward.

  Vicki propped Porter up over one shoulder, and he gave a healthy belch; then he squirmed and let out a wet, vibrating gush from his rear. The tiny bedroom smel ed funky and breadlike.

  Brenda poked her head back in. “They have the book at the airport,” she said. “Some kid found it. I told him I wouldn’t have a car un
til Friday, and he said he’d drop it by on his way home from work.” She grinned. “See? I told you the book was lucky.”

  Josh Flynn didn’t have a mystical bone in his body, but he wasn’t insensitive, either. He knew when something was meant to be, and for some reason as yet unclear to him, he was supposed to be involved with the three women and two smal children he had singled out earlier that afternoon.

  They had left behind a very important piece of luggage, and because Carlo had to leave early for a dental appointment, Josh was the one who fielded the phone cal and Josh was the person who was going to deliver the goods. A briefcase with a fancy dial next to the locks. If Josh had been writing a certain kind of novel, the briefcase would contain a bomb, or drugs, or money, but the other students in Chas Gorda’s creative-writing workshop found thril ers “amateurish” and “derivative,” and some nitpicker would point out that the briefcase never would have made it through security in New York. What was in the briefcase? The woman—and Josh could tel just from her voice that it was Scowling Sister—had sounded unnerved on the phone. Anxious and worried—and then relieved when he said that yes, he had the briefcase. Josh shifted it in his hands. Nothing moved; it was as though the briefcase were stuffed with wadded-up newspapers.

  It was four-thirty. Josh was alone in the smal , messy airport office. He could see the evening shift getting to work out the open back door, other col ege kids who had arrived on the island earlier than he did. They were waving the fluorescent wands like they’d seen it done on TV, bringing the nine-seater Cessnas on top of their marks, staying clear of the propel ers, the way they’d al been taught in training. The evening shift was the best