There were no crucifixes in the Lyndon house, no open Bibles, no yarmulkes or prayer shawls. They were so privileged, so lucky, that they had never needed religion, maybe that was it. Buzz Lyndon was an attorney in Philadelphia, he made plenty of money but not enough to cause trouble; El en Lyndon was a gifted housewife and mother. The Lyndon kitchen was, quite possibly, the happiest room in southeastern Pennsylvania—there was always classical music, fresh flowers, a bowl of ripe fruit, and something delicious about to come out of the oven. There was a blackboard in the kitchen where El en Lyndon wrote a quote each day, or a scrap of poem. Food for thought, she cal ed it. Everything had been so lovely in the Lyndon household, so cultivated, so right, that God had been easy to overlook, to take for granted.
But now, this summer, in the pearl-gray waiting room of the Oncology Unit of Nantucket Cottage Hospital, Brenda Lyndon prayed her sister would live. The irony of this did not escape her. When Brenda had prayed at al growing up in the Lyndon household—if she had prayed secretly, fervently
—then it was, without exception, that Vicki would die.
For years, Brenda and Vicki fought. There was screaming, scratching, spitting, and slamming doors. The girls fought about clothes, eyeliner, a Rick Springfield tape of Brenda’s that Vicki lent to her friend Amy, who mangled it. They fought over who sat where in the car, who got to watch which TV program, who used the telephone for how many cal s, for how many minutes. They fought over who col ected the most beach glass from their walks around the Jetties, who had more bacon on her BLT, who looked better in her hockey skirt. They fought because Brenda borrowed Vicki’s pink Fair Isle sweater without asking, and in retribution, Vicki ripped Brenda’s paper about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—
painstakingly typed on their father’s Smith Corona—in half. Brenda smacked Vicki, Vicki pul ed out a hank of Brenda’s hair. They were separated by their father, Vicki cal ed Brenda the c word from behind her bedroom door. El en Lyndon threatened boarding school. Honestly, she said, I don’t know where you girls learned such language.
They fought over grades, teachers, test scores, and boys—or, Brenda corrected herself, boy—because the only boy who had mattered to Brenda for the first thirty years of her life (until she met Walsh, real y) was Erik vanCott. Erik vanCott had been not only Brenda’s best friend, but her secret, unrequited love. However, he had always nurtured a thing for Vicki. The pain of this alone was enough to fuel Brenda’s fantasies of Vicki, dead. Car accident, botulism, heart attack, choking, stabbed in the heart on South Street by a man with a purple Mohawk.
Al through high school the girls openly claimed they hated each other, though Brenda suspected it was she who had said the words more often, because what reason would Vicki have had to hate Brenda? Brenda was, in Vicki’s opinion, pathetic. Lowly Worm, she cal ed her to be mean, a name cruel y borrowed from their favorite Richard Scarry book growing up. Lowly Worm, bookworm, nose always in a book, gobbling it up like a rotten apple.
Can I invite a friend? Vicki always asked their parents, no matter where they were going. I don’t want to be stuck with Lowly Worm.
I hate you, Brenda had thought. Then she wrote the words in her journal. Then she whispered them, then shouted them at the top of her lungs, I hate you! I wish you were dead!
Brenda shivered with guilt to think of it now. Cancer. Their relationship hadn’t been al bad. El en Lyndon, distraught by the girls’ open hostility, was constantly reminding them of how close they’d been when they were little. You two used to be such good friends. You used to fall asleep holding hands. Brenda cried the day Vicki left for kindergarten, and Vicki made Brenda a paper plate covered with foil stars. There had even been a moment or two of solidarity in high school, primarily against their parents, and, in one instance, against Erik vanCott.
When Brenda and Erik vanCott were juniors in high school, and Vicki was a senior, Erik asked Vicki to the junior prom. Vicki was entangled in an on-again / off-again relationship with her boyfriend Simon, who was a freshman at the University of Delaware. Vicki asked Simon for
“permission” to go to the junior prom with Erik “as a friend,” and Simon’s response was, Whatever floats your boat. Fine. Vicki and Erik were going to the junior prom together.
To say that Brenda was destroyed by this news would be an understatement. She had been asked to the junior prom by two boys, one decent-looking and moronic and the other just moronic. Brenda had said no to both, hoping that Erik would ask her out of pity, or a sense of duty, or for fun.
But now Brenda would be staying home while Vicki went to Brenda’s prom with Erik. Into this drama stepped El en, with her belief that al aches and pains—even romantic, sister-related ones—could be cured by a little Nantucket sand between the toes. When she got wind of the predicament and confirmed it with the sight of Brenda’s long face, she took the bottle of Nantucket sand that she kept on the windowsil and poured some into Brenda’s Bean Blucher moccasins.
“Put these on,” El en ordered. “You’l feel better.”
Brenda did as she was told, but this time, she swore to herself, she would not pretend that the sand treatment worked. She would not pretend that it was August and she was seven years old again, climbing the dunes of Great Point. Back then, the most important thing in her life had been her sea glass col ection and her Frances Hodgson Burnett books— A Little Princess, The Secret Garden.
“See?” El en said. “You feel better already. I can tel .”
“I do not.”
“Wel , you wil soon. Is the sand between your toes?”
As the night of the prom drew nearer, El en plotted a distraction. She wanted Brenda to go with her and Buzz to the country club’s annual Rites of Spring Dance, held the same night as the prom. Going to a different dance with her parents as her escorts was supposed to make Brenda feel better? Apparently so. El en asked if Brenda would prefer the salmon croquettes or the veal Oscar. When Brenda refused to answer, El en made a joke about Oscar the Grouch. The woman was a one-act in the theater of the absurd.
Brenda didn’t watch Vicki get ready and she did not get ready herself. She hid under the comforter of her bed wearing sweatpants, reading Vanity Fair (the novel). She was boycotting the country club dance, salmon croquettes, Maypole and al . She was going to stay home and read.
An hour before Erik was to arrive, Vicki knocked on Brenda’s bedroom door. Brenda, natural y, did not answer. Vicki, who had no sense of boundaries, tried the knob. The door was locked. Vicki scratched on the door with her fingernails, a noise that Brenda could not tolerate. She flung open the door.
“What the fuck?”
“I’m not going,” Vicki said. She was wearing her dress—a strapless black sheath—and her blond hair was in a bun. She was wearing El en’s wedding pearl on a gold chain. She was as glamorous as a soap opera star to Brenda, but this fact only served to piss Brenda off. Vicki pushed into Brenda’s room and threw herself facedown on the bed, as though she were the one with a broken heart. “He wants to meet up with al these people I don’t know at the Main Lion. Lame. And afterwards, he wants to go to a breakfast party that some kid in the marching band is having.
Lame.” She lifted her head. “I just don’t feel like making the effort.”
“You don’t feel like making the effort,” Brenda said. Now here was a classic Vicki Lyndon moment. She had a great dress and an even better date to a dance Brenda would have murdered to go to—and she was threatening to stay home . . . why? Because it wasn’t cool enough for her.
“You should go with him,” Vicki said. “He’s your friend.”
Yes, Erik was Brenda’s friend. However, in the universe of proms and prom dates, this mattered little. “He didn’t ask me,” Brenda said.
“Wel , he’s out of luck,” Vicki said. “Because I’m not going.”
“Mom wil make you go,” Brenda said. “She’l say it’s rude to stand him up. And in very poor taste.”
“She can’t make me go,” V
icki said. She eyed Brenda in her sweatpants. “She’s not making you go to Rites of Spring.”
“She hasn’t started trying yet,” Brenda said.
Vicki unzipped her dress and wriggled out of it, like a snake shedding its skin. “We’l stay home together. Rent a movie. Drink Dad’s beer.”
Brenda stared at her sister. Was she being serious? Vicki didn’t like staying home, and especial y not with Brenda. But maybe . . . wel , if nothing else, Erik would see Vicki’s true colors. He would realize he should have asked Brenda instead.
“Okay,” Brenda said.
Vicki cal ed Erik at home to spare him the indignity of showing up at the Lyndon house in his tux with a gardenia in a plastic box.
“Sorr-eee,” she said. “I don’t feeeeel wel . I have real y bad men-strooool cramps. I’d better stay home.” She paused. “Sure, she’s right here.”
Vicki passed the phone to Brenda.
“I just got dumped,” Erik said. “What are you up to tonight?”
“I’m supposed to go out,” Brenda said, though she did not tel him where or with whom. “But . . . since Vicki’s not feeling wel , I might stay home and keep her company.”
“Can I come over?” Erik asked.
“Come over?” Brenda said.
“Yeah. To hang out with you guys.”
Vicki sliced her hand across her throat.
“Sorry,” Brenda said. “Not tonight.”
In the end, Erik went to the prom by himself, and when word spread that he’d been stood up by Vicki Lyndon, his popularity swel ed. The band let him sing a Bryan Adams song. It was the best night of his life. The next day, he cal ed Vicki to say thank you. Brenda and Vicki had stayed home and made popcorn and drunk warm Michelobs and watched their favorite movie, This Time Forever, which made them both cry. They fel asleep on either end of the sofa, with their legs entwined in the middle. Brenda sat in the oncology waiting room pretending to read People magazine, but in truth she was praying fast and furiously, her lips moving while she crossed herself with her right hand. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Dear Lord, please let Vicki live. Please, Lord, please, I beg you, please: Let. Her. Live.
It became usual that, at some point during Brenda’s waiting-room vigil, her phone would ring. Brenda always checked the display with a mixture of hope (for Walsh) and dread (of Brian Delaney, Esquire)—even though it was almost always her mother. After a while the nurses who wandered in and out from behind the administrative desk knew to expect El en Lyndon’s cal . They thought it was cute—the cal from mama. Brenda vacil ated between gratitude for the cal s and annoyance. El en had had her left knee replaced just after Easter— all that skiing caught up with me—and she was stil recovering. Otherwise, she would have been right there—either living in Melanie’s room instead of Melanie, or renting Number Twelve Shel Street, where she could monitor al developments herself. El en Lyndon was more frantic about Vicki’s condition than Vicki was, and thus it was left up to Brenda to placate her mother, to assure her that yes, everything was going along as expected, Vicki’s blood count was holding steady, and the kids were fine. This gave Brenda a sense of empowerment and calm control. But Brenda became increasingly irritated by her mother’s anxiety. Twice a week it became Brenda’s responsibility to talk her mother off the ledge. Brenda found herself saying the same phrases over and over until her mother became hypnotized and repeated the phrases back to Brenda. Never once during these phone cal s did El en Lyndon ask about Brenda. Brenda tried to ignore the fact that her mother had ceased acknowledging Brenda at al , except as a messenger. Now, Brenda took the cal , saying, “Hel o, Mom.”
“How is she?”
Brenda couldn’t help being maddening in return. “How are you? Stil with the cane? Is there Nantucket sand in your knee brace?”
“Very funny, sweetheart. How’s your sister?”
“She’s fine, Mom.”
“Her blood count?”
“Red cel s steady. White cel s down, but not by much.”
“Has she lost . . .”
“Half a pound.”
“Since Tuesday?”
“Yes.”
“Has she been vomiting? What does her hair look like?”
“No vomiting. Hair looks the same.”
“Your father and I should be there.”
“How’s your leg, real y?” Brenda asked.
“When al was said and done, it would have been easier to amputate. But I’m final y off my painkil ers.”
“Good,” Brenda said.
“How are the kids?” El en said. “And Melanie, poor thing. How is she doing?”
Brenda was in no mood to comment on poor Melanie. “Why not ask how I’m doing? You have two daughters, you know.”
“Oh, darling, I know. You’re such an angel to be there for your sister. If you weren’t there . . .”
“But I am here. And everything’s fine. Vicki is fine.”
“You’l have her cal me as soon as . . .”
“I’l have her cal you,” Brenda said. “I always have her cal you.”
“I worry so. You don’t know how I worry. And your father, although he doesn’t say it as much, worries just as much as I do.”
“Everything’s fine, Mom. I’l have Vicki cal you.”
“Everything’s fine,” El en Lyndon said. “You’l have Vicki cal me.”
“There you go. You got it.”
“Oh, Brenda,” El en Lyndon said. “You have no idea what this is like, sitting here a mil ion miles away, unable to help. God forbid you ever have to go through something like this.”
“I am going through it, Mom,” Brenda said. “She’s my sister.” Repentance, Brenda thought. Atonement. “Good-bye.”
“Have Vicki cal me!”
“Good-bye, Mom.”
N eedlepoint Christmas stockings, flossing, the score of the Red Sox game, corn silks clogging the kitchen sink, corn silk hair, clumps of it, clogging the bathtub drain, poison ivy, the weather, the outlandish price of gasoline, Homeland Security, money, erections, sex.
At first, the chemo was no more painful or inconvenient than a trip to the dentist. The Oncology Unit at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital was smal , with a close-knit staff—or, as they liked to cal themselves, “the team.” (They al played summer league softbal and had been champions three years running. When you see what we see, day in and day out, the head nurse, Mamie, said, you need an outlet for your aggression. ) The team consisted of Mamie, a woman about ten years older than Vicki who was single-handedly raising four boys, and two other nurses: a young black man named Ben and a heavyset girl with a pierced lower lip who was just out of nursing school named Amelia—and the oncologist, Dr.
Alcott. Dr. Alcott, by happy coincidence, was an acquaintance of Dr. Garcia’s back at Fairfield Hospital through years of tireless conference-attending.
We have a few drinks together now and then, Joe and I, Dr. Alcott said when Vicki first met him. I promised him I’d take good care of you.
Dr. Alcott was probably fifty but he looked about thirty. He was blond and tan, with very white teeth and expensively tailored clothes underneath his white jacket. He told Vicki he liked to fish, loved to fish, actual y, and that was what had brought him to Nantucket from Mass General in Boston
—the potential for late-night and absurdly early morning trips to Great Point in his yel ow Jeep Wrangler. Three or four times a summer he chartered a boat with Bobby D. to hunt down shark or bluefin tuna, but at heart he was a solitary catch-and-release man—a bluefish was good; a striped bass, false albacore, or bonito even better. Dr. Alcott was the softbal team’s secret weapon, an ace pitcher whom no one in the league could hit. Vicki was half in love with Dr. Alcott, but she supposed everybody was.
When Vicki got to the hospital, either Ben or Amelia weighed her, took her blood pressure, and drew a blood sample to check her white count.
Then Vicki waited for Dr. Alcott to appear.
&n
bsp; Just checking in, he said. How are you? How do you feel? You’re okay? You’re hanging in there? You’re a trouper. Joe told me you were going to be a star patient, a real fighter. The blood counts look okay, they look fine. You’re okay. I’m proud of you, Vicki. You’re doing a great job.
These words of encouragement were ridiculously important to Vicki. She was used to excel ing at things, though never once had she considered chemo something that a person might be good or bad at. It was random, the luck of the draw, how a body reacted to the chemicals. But she appreciated the cheerleading from Dr. Alcott nonetheless. He was going to save her.
The chemo room was smal and pleasant, with three recliners and two partial wal s for privacy. Vicki chose what she hoped was a lucky chair—it looked like the chair her father had relaxed in al his life—and waited as Mamie hooked her up to the poison. There was one TV, always tuned in to ESPN’s SportsCenter because the oncology team took the Red Sox scores very seriously.
For the first week, then two, Vicki thought, This is okay. I can do this. It wasn’t great—of al the places on Nantucket that Vicki wanted to be, this was a notch above the island’s one jail cel and the Lewis Funeral Home—however, it was better than the horror stories she had heard from people in her support group about the units at bigger hospitals where chemo was unscheduled and a person might sit around for three or four hours waiting for a chair to open up. Vicki looked forward to her time with Dr. Alcott, she listened to Mamie tel Ben about her sons’ escapades and mishaps (her fourteen-year-old got caught at three o’clock in the morning driving a car he had “borrowed” from the Grand Union parking lot), she listened to Ben tel Amelia about the crazy, drunk girls that he encountered in his second job as a bouncer at the Chicken Box. There was a lot of animated chatter on mornings after their softbal games. In short, the Oncology Unit was its own universe where Vicki was a visitor. She could contribute as much or as little as she liked; nobody asked her about her cancer. Why would they? It was a matter of fact, a given, her cel s were like rotten teeth the team had to extract. No judgments were made; it was just business.
Barefoot: A Novel Page 16
