Barefoot: A Novel

by Elin Hilderbrand

  At first, the doctors thought she had walking pneumonia, but the X-ray looked suspicious. An MRI revealed a mass in Vicki’s left lung the size of an apple. Subsequent tests—a PET/CT scan and a fine-needle aspiration—confirmed that this mass was malignant, and it showed suspicious cel s in her hilar lymph nodes. She had robust stage-two lung cancer. She heard the oncologist, Dr. Garcia, say the words “lung cancer,” she saw his melancholy brown eyes swimming behind the lenses of his thick glasses—and yet Vicki assumed it was some kind of joke, or a mistake.

  “Mistake?” she’d said, shaking her head, unable to come up with enough oxygen to say anything more.

  “I’m afraid not,” Dr. Garcia said. “You have a four-centimeter tumor in your left lung that is hugging the chest wal , which makes it difficult to remove. It looks like the cancer may have also spread to your hilar lymph nodes, but the MRI didn’t detect any additional metastases. A lot of times when the cancer is this far along it wil turn up elsewhere—in the brain or the liver, for example. But your cancer is contained in your lungs and this is good news.” Here, he pounded his desk.

  Good news? Was the man stupid, or just insensitive?

  “You’re wrong,” Vicki said. It sounded like she meant that he was wrong about the “good news,” but what she meant was that he was wrong about the cancer. There was no way she had cancer. When you had cancer, when you had an apple-sized tumor in your lung, you knew it. Al Vicki had was a little shortness of breath, an infection of some sort. She needed antibiotics. Ted was sitting in the leather armchair next to Vicki, and Vicki turned to him with a little laugh. Ted was a powerful man, big and handsome, with a crushing handshake. Tell the doctor he’s wrong, Ted! Vicki thought. But Ted looked like he had taken a kick to the genitals. He was hunched over, and his mouth formed a smal O. Tell the doctor he’s wrong, Ted! Vicki did not have cancer, technical y or otherwise. Who was this man, anyway? She didn’t know him and he didn’t know her. Strangers should not be al owed to tel you you have cancer, and yet that was what had just happened.

  “I have children,” Vicki said. Her voice was flat and scary. “I have two boys, a four-year-old and a baby, seven months. You would have a hard time convincing them or anybody else that their mother having lung cancer is good news.”

  “Let me tel you something, Victoria,” Dr. Garcia said. “I’m a pulmonary oncologist. Lung cancer is my field, it’s what I do. And if you take al the patients I’ve seen in the past fourteen years—let’s say, for the sake of argument, a thousand patients—I would put you smack in the middle. It’s a chal enging case, yes. To give you the best shot at long-term remission, we’l try to shrink the tumor with chemo first and then we’l go in surgical y and hope we can get it al out. But ful remission is a viable outcome, and that, Vicki, is good news.”

  “I don’t want to be a case,” Vicki said. “I don’t want you to treat me like your nine hundred and ninety-nine other patients. I want you to treat me like the mother of two little boys.” She started to cry.

  “Many of my other patients had children,” Dr. Garcia said.

  “But they’re not me. My life is valuable. It’s real y fucking valuable. My children are young. They’re babies.” Vicki looked to Ted for confirmation of this, but he was stil incapacitated. Vicki wiped at her eyes. “Am I going to die?” she asked.

  “We’re al going to die,” Dr. Garcia said.

  Just as Vicki was about to tel him to stuff his existential bul shit, he smiled. “The best thing you can do for yourself,” he said, “is to keep a positive attitude.”

  Positive attitude? But that, in the end, was how he had won Vicki over. Dr. Garcia was the kind of oncologist who used phrases like good news and positive attitude.

  She went for a second opinion at Mount Sinai right after the initial diagnosis, at Ted’s insistence. That appointment was with a female oncologist named Dr. Doone, whom Vicki had immediately renamed Dr. Doom because she wasn’t nearly as upbeat about Vicki’s chances of recovery as Dr. Garcia. Dr. Doone basical y told Vicki that IF chemo shrank the tumor in her left lung such that it receded from the chest wal (which, tone of voice conveyed, was doubtful), then POSSIBLY a pneumonectomy would solve the problem IF THERE WERE NO ADDITIONAL METASTASES.

  It’s not the tumor in your lungs that’s the problem, Dr. Doone had said . It’s where that tumor came from. It’s where that tumor is going. She made a comment about Vicki being FOOLISH to pursue treatment in the BOONDOCKS. Dr. Doone felt Vicki should be treated at Mount Sinai—but since Dr. Doone herself had enough cancer patients to fil ten city buses, Vicki should accept as a HUGE FAVOR a referral to Dr. Martine, an oncologist at Sloan-Kettering who also happened to have been Dr. Doone’s roommate at Columbia Physicians and Surgeons.

  No, thank you, Vicki had said. I’m sticking with Dr. Garcia.

  And Vicki understood at that point that Dr. Doom wrote her off. As good as dead.

  Vicki had two days until her chemo started. Two days until the doctors cut into her chest to instal a port through which they would pump her ful of poison twice a week for the next two months. It was, Dr. Garcia assured her, nothing to get frantic about. The problem was, the chemo wouldn’t cure her cancer. It would merely discipline it. Vicki could feel the mean-ass, dumb-shit little cel s throwing a beer bash, doing the bump and grind and drunkenly copulating and reproducing as she lay in bed trying to breathe, with Porter hiccupping at her side . I have a malignant tumor in my lungs.

  Lung cancer. She could say it in her mind and out loud, but it didn’t seem true. It wasn’t even a kind of cancer that made any sense. Breast cancer made sense, and Vicki irrational y wished she had breast cancer. She was a thirty-one-year-old nonsmoking mother of two. Give me breast cancer! Lung cancer was for old men, two packs a day for twenty years; it was for John Wayne. Vicki laughed joylessly. Listen to yourself.

  The traffic on I-95, a sale on beef tenderloin at Stew Leonard’s, the United States’ involvement in Iraq. Powder-post beetles in the attic. Swim lesson sign-ups. Collecting pinecones for Christmas wreaths. Chapped lips. Uncut toenails. Pollution in the Hudson. Duke, once again, in the men’s NCAA basketball finals.

  The chemo regimen consisted of two drugs: gemcitabine and carboplatin. Vicki could barely pronounce the names, but she was wel versed in the possible side effects: weight loss, diarrhea, constipation, nausea and vomiting, fatigue, confusion—and she would, most likely, lose her hair.

  She had to stop nursing and she might become sterile. It was enough to bring her to tears—she had cried many silent hours when Ted and the kids were asleep, when the dark house seemed as terrifying as death itself—but the chemo was nothing compared to the pneumonectomy. The surgery blocked Vicki’s path; she couldn’t see over, around, or beyond it. If the chemo worked as it was supposed to, they would operate at Fairfield Hospital in early September. Dr. Emery, thoracic surgeon, Dr. Garcia attending. Two resident surgeons, five OR nurses, six hours, the removal of her left lung and the hilar lymph nodes. Who survived a surgery like that?

  Oh, lots of people, Dr. Garcia said. Every day. And it has to be done, obviously. If you want to live.

  But it was as though he were asking Vicki to pass through a tunnel of solid granite, or travel into outer space and back. Impossible to come to grips with. Terrifying.

  Vicki could have lain in bed al day, obsessing about her cancer, dissecting it until it was in ten or twelve comprehendible pieces, but the curse and the blessing of her present situation was that there was no time. She was in Nantucket with two children to look after, a household to run—and a sister and a best friend who were, after being together for less than twenty-four hours, arguing.

  Vicki heard them in the kitchen—strained pleasantries that quickly turned bitter. By the time Vicki wrapped herself in her seersucker robe, col ected Porter, and made it out to the kitchen, she had pieced together the gist of the argument: Peter had cal ed the night before, but Brenda had neglected to give Melanie the message.

  “You w
ere asleep,” Brenda said. “You’d been asleep for hours.”

  “You could have left a note,” Melanie said. “Slipped it under my door. Because now he won’t answer his cel phone. He’s furious with me.”

  “He’s furious with you? ” Brenda said. “That’s rich. You’l pardon me for saying so, but I don’t understand why you care. The man is cheating on you.”

  “You know nothing about it,” Melanie said.

  Brenda sliced a fig in half and tried to feed it to Blaine, who “yucked” and clamped a hand over his mouth.

  “I know nothing about it,” Brenda agreed. “I didn’t write a note because I was busy with the kids. We were on our way out to buy groceries. You were asleep. Vicki was asleep. I was left to captain the ship by myself and I . . . just forgot. Honestly, it flew out of my mind.”

  “I hope you didn’t tel him I was pregnant,” Melanie said.

  “Oh my God, of course not.”

  “Or even hint at it. I don’t want him to know. And I mean that.”

  “I didn’t hint at anything. I was very vague. I didn’t even tel him you were asleep. Al I said was that you were unavailable. You should be thanking me. I did a great job.”

  “Except you didn’t tel me he cal ed.”

  “I had my hands ful !”

  “Bren,” Vicki said.

  Brenda whipped her head around. When she did that, her hair was a weapon. “Are you taking sides?”

  There can’t be any sides this summer, Vicki thought. I am too sick for sides. But she knew it would be fruitless. There was Brenda, her sister.

  There was Melanie, her friend. They didn’t have a single thing in common except for Vicki. Already Vicki felt herself splitting down the middle, a crack right between her diseased lungs.

  “No,” she said.

  Vicki had come to Nantucket with the hope of re-creating the idyl ic summers of her youth. Had those long-ago summers real y been idyl ic? Vicki remembered a summer with one hundred mosquito bites, and another summer, or maybe the same summer, when she had a gnat trapped in her ear overnight, and one year Vicki fought with her father about long-distance phone cal s to her boyfriend Simon. But for the most part, yes, they had been idyl ic. Vicki and Brenda left school and friends behind in Pennsylvania, so the summers had starred only them and, in a hazy, paral el adult world, their parents, Buzz and El en, and Aunt Liv. The sand castles with moats, the smel of a real charcoal barbecue—it had al been real. And so, even as Melanie pouted on the living room sofa and Brenda huffed around the kitchen—they were like boxers back in their corners—Vicki peeled a banana, eyed the sunlight pouring through the cottage windows like honey, and thought: It’s a beach day.

  This sounded like a simple idea, but it took forever to get ready to leave. The children had to be changed into bathing suits and slathered with lotion. (Skin cancer!) Brenda found plastic sand toys, bleached white by the sun, in a net bag in the shed. The toys were covered with years of dust and cobwebs and had to be rinsed with the hose. Then, lunch. Vicki suggested, for the sake of ease, picking up sandwiches at Claudette’s, but Brenda insisted on a picnic hodgepodged together from the bizarre ingredients she had brought home from the market: bread and goat cheese, figs and strawberries. At the mention of these provisions, Melanie gagged and ran for the bathroom. Vicki and Brenda listened to her throwing up as they folded the beach towels.

  “Try not to upset her,” Vicki said.

  “She’s pretty sensitive,” Brenda said.

  “She’s going through a lot,” Vicki said.

  “You’re going through a lot,” Brenda said. She stuffed the towels into a mildewed canvas tote that had belonged to Aunt Liv. “What are we going to do on Tuesday, when I take you for your port instal ation? The doctors said it would take al morning. There is no way she can handle both kids by herself al morning.”

  “Sure she can.”

  “She cannot. I could barely do it myself. And, I hate to bring this up, I mean, I’m happy to help with the kids and al , that is why I’m here, but I was hoping to get some work done this summer. On my screenplay.”

  Vicki took a breath. Brenda was so predictable, but maybe only to Vicki. Vicki heard Ted’s words: Your sister says she wants to help, but she won’t help. She’ll be too busy reading to help. That was how it always went. When Vicki and Brenda were children, Brenda had been excused from al kinds of chores—setting the table, folding laundry, cleaning her room—because she was too busy reading. Even if it was only the newspaper, when Brenda was reading, it had been considered sacrilegious to ask her to stop. Buzz and El en Lyndon had done a thorough (if unintentional) job of labeling their girls: Vicki was the go-getter, organized and hardworking, whereas Brenda had been blessed with the kind of rarefied genius that had to be coddled. Although Brenda was only sixteen months younger than Vicki, nothing was expected of her. She and her “great mind” were tiptoed around like a sleeping baby.

  Melanie came out of the bathroom, wiping at her lips. “Sorry,” she said. “Can I just have a piece of bread, please? With nothing on it?”

  “Sure,” Brenda said. “My pleasure.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Okay, Vicki thought . Okay?

  The morning sparkled. Vicki, Brenda, and Melanie rambled down the streets of ’Sconset toward the town beach. Vicki was carrying Porter, who kept sticking his hand into her bikini top and pinching her nipple. She had tried to give him a bottle that morning, but he threw it defiantly to the floor.

  Then he lunged for Vicki, fel out of the high chair, and bumped his head on the table. Tears. The subsequent fussing over Porter made Blaine irate

  —he proceeded to march out the front door and urinate on the flagstone walk. Lovely.

  Vicki removed Porter’s hand from her breast. “Sorry, buddy.” Brenda was up ahead schlepping the beach bag with towels and lotion, the net bag of plastic sand toys, the cooler with lunch and drinks, two beach chairs, and the umbrel a. Melanie was wearing her wide-brimmed straw hat and carrying a leather purse. Brenda had caught Vicki’s eye when Melanie emerged with the purse as if to say, Who the hell takes a purse to the beach? As if to say, I’m loaded down like a camel traveling across the Sahara and she’s got a little something from Coach? Vicki almost suggested Melanie leave the purse behind—there was nothing to buy—but she was afraid she’d scare Melanie away. Melanie hadn’t even wanted to come to the beach; she’d wanted to stay in the cottage in case Peter cal ed.

  Melanie was also attempting to hold Blaine’s hand. She grasped it for five seconds, but then he raced ahead, into the road, around the corner, out of sight. Vicki cal ed after him and removed Porter’s hand from her breast. So much of parenting was just this mind-numbing repetition.

  They al fol owed Brenda on a shortcut: between two houses, along a path, over the dunes. They popped out a hundred yards down from the parking lot, away from the clusters of other people and the lifeguard stand. Brenda dropped al her stuff with a great big martyrish sigh.

  “I hope this is okay,” she said.

  “Fine,” Vicki said. “Melanie?”

  “Fine,” Melanie said.

  Brenda set up the umbrel as and the chairs, she stuck Porter in the shade next to the cooler, she spread out the blanket and towels and handed Blaine a shovel, a bucket, and a dump truck. He dashed for the water. Melanie pul ed one of the chairs into the shade and took off her hat. Porter crawled over to the hat and put it in his mouth. Melanie made a sour face. Vicki snatched the hat from Porter and he started to cry. Vicki dug through the beach bag and handed Porter a spare pair of sunglasses. Immediately, he snapped off one of the arms.

  “Great,” Brenda said. “Those were mine.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Vicki said. “I thought they were an extra pair.”

  “They were my extra pair,” Brenda said.

  “I’m sorry,” Vicki said again. “He was eating Melanie’s hat. He’s like a goat.”

  “Wel , we can’t ha
ve him eating Melanie’s hat, ” Brenda said. “It’s such a beautiful hat! Better he should break my sunglasses. Look at them, they’re useless.”

  “Were they expensive?” Vicki asked. “I’l replace them.”

  “No, no,” Brenda said. “I don’t want you to worry about it. They’re just sunglasses.”

  Vicki took a deep breath and turned to Melanie.

  “What do you think about the beach?” Vicki said. She wanted Melanie to be happy; she wanted Melanie to love Nantucket. She did not want Melanie to think, even for a second, that she had made a mistake in coming along.

  “Do you think Peter’s trying to cal ?” Melanie said. She checked her watch, a Cartier tank watch that Peter had given her after the first failed round of in vitro. “Should I cal him at work? He goes in sometimes on Sundays.”

  He doesn’t go to the office on Sundays, Vicki thought. He’s just been telling you he goes to the office when really he spends Sundays with Frances Digitt making love, eating bagels, reading the Times, and making love again. That was what a man who was having an affair did on Sundays; that was where Peter was this very second. But Vicki said nothing. She shrugged.

  Brenda cleared her throat. “Vick, are you taking the other chair?”

  Vicki looked at the chair. Brenda had hauled it; she should sit on it.

  “No. You take it.”

  “Wel , do you want it?”

  “That’s okay.”

  Brenda huffed. “Please take it. I’l lie on my stomach.”

  “Are you sure?” Vicki said.

  “Sure.”

  “Should I cal Peter at work?” Melanie said.