Barefoot: A Novel

by Elin Hilderbrand

  Ted’s eyes were trained on the girl from admitting; she was approaching them with purpose. She wore a red cotton sundress that was too short and a pair of battered gold bal et slippers with ribbons that laced up her ankles. Vicki blinked—the girl’s bra straps were showing, she wore hastily applied makeup, her blond hair was uncombed. What did she want? Ted absentmindedly handed Vicki a snapshot of the kids from his wal et.

  Brenda narrowed her eyes at the girl and shook her head. “Whatever you have to say, we don’t want to hear it.”

  “I think you do want to hear it,” Didi said.

  “No, we don’t,” Brenda said.

  “What is it?” Ted asked.

  “Josh is sleeping with your friend,” Didi said. “The one who’s pregnant.”

  “Whoa-ho!” Ted said. “That’s a pretty big accusation.” He looked at Vicki first, then Brenda. His brow creased. “You’re talking about Melanie, right? Melanie? How do you know this? Did Josh tell you this?”

  “Go away,” Brenda said. “Please.”

  “My brother saw them together,” Didi said. “Out in Monomoy. In the middle of the night.”

  “Your brother?” Ted said.

  “She’s ful of shit, Ted,” Brenda said. “I don’t know what your problem is with our family, but we real y need you to leave us alone. We’re under a lot of stress here.”

  Stress, Vicki thought. There should be another word.

  “Fine,” Didi said. She crossed her arms over her chest in a way that seemed diffident. “But I’m not ful of shit. They are sleeping together.” She spun on her heels and marched away.

  Yes, Vicki thought. The girl was probably right. Josh and Melanie. Strange, nearly unbelievable, and yet Vicki had picked up on a bunch of clues that made her believe the girl was correct. Josh and Melanie together: It should have been the biggest revelation of the summer, but Vicki threw it into the basket with everything else. It didn’t matter.

  At home, the routine went to pot. Josh returned with the kids.

  “How did it go?” he asked.

  “We don’t know,” Ted said. “The doctor is going to cal later.”

  “Oh,” Josh said. He looked at Vicki quizzical y. “You okay, Boss?”

  Melanie and Josh, she thought. Possible? She couldn’t waste time wondering. Palliative care. A year, maybe two. Blaine would be six, Porter three. Blaine would remember her, Porter probably not. There would be long hospital visits and drugs that put her mind on Pluto. Vicki felt like she was going to faint. She col apsed in a chair.

  “Ted, can you take the kids out, please? I can’t deal.”

  “Take them out where? What about Porter’s nap?”

  “Drive him around until he fal s asleep. I can’t lie down. What if the phone rings?”

  Josh cleared his throat. “Okay, I’m going to go, then.”

  Blaine protested. “What about a story, Josh? What about Kiss the Cow?”

  “You’re going with Daddy,” Vicki said.

  Josh slipped out with a wave; he seemed eager to leave.

  “I don’t know about this, Vick,” Ted said. “You’re going to sit here by yourself and obsess.”

  “I’l take the kids,” Brenda said. “That way you can both sit here and obsess.”

  Vicki felt like screaming, We are talking about my health, my body, my life!

  “Go,” she said. She hid in her hot bedroom with the door closed. She opened the window; she turned on the fan. She sat on the edge of the bed.

  Al over the world mothers were dying. Pal iative care: steps that could be taken to prolong her life. There was a question she needed to ask Brenda, but they never seemed to get a minute alone so Vicki could ask her. Because Melanie was always there? Melanie, twirling outside the dressing room. Are you sure there’s not something else going on? Melanie and Josh. But when? Where? And why wouldn’t Melanie have told her? But maybe the answer to that was obvious. She thought Vicki would be mad. Would Vicki be mad? She sat on the edge of the bed with her feet on the floor. Her feet, her toes, her body. Ted tapped on the door.

  “Come in,” she said.

  He handed her the phone. “It’s Dr. Alcott.”

  So soon? But when she checked the clock, she saw it was quarter to four. “Hel o?” she said.

  “Vicki? Hi, it’s Mark.”

  “Hi,” she said.

  “First of al , let me tel you that Dr. Garcia has scheduled your surgery for September first.”

  “My surgery?” Vicki said. “So it worked? The chemo?”

  Ted clapped his hands like he might have at a sporting event.

  “It worked exactly the way it was supposed to,” Dr. Alcott said. “The tumor has shrunk significantly, and it has receded from the chest wal . The thoracic surgeon should be able to go in and get it al out. And . . . assuming the cancer hasn’t metastasized, your chances of remission are good.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Vicki said. She thought she might laugh, or cry, but al she felt was breathless wonder. “You are kidding me.”

  “Wel , there’s the surgery,” Dr. Alcott said. “Which is never risk-free. And then there’s the chance that the surgeon wil miss something or that we’ve missed something. There’s a chance the cancer wil turn up somewhere else—but this is just my ultra-cautious side talking. Overal , if the surgery works out like it should, then yes, remission.”

  “Remission,” Vicki repeated.

  Ted crushed Vicki in a bear hug. Vicki was afraid to feel anything resembling joy or relief, because what if it was a mistake, what if he was lying .

  . . ?

  “This is good news? I should feel happy?”

  “It could have been a whole lot worse,” he said. “This is just one step, but it’s an important step. So, yes, be happy. Absolutely.”

  Vicki hung up the phone. Ted said, “I’m going to cal your mother. I promised her.” He left the room, and Vicki sank back down on the bed. On the nightstand lay the snapshot of the boys, the one Ted had handed her at the hospital. It was of Blaine and Porter in a red vinyl booth at Friendly’s.

  They had been eating clown sundaes, and Porter’s face was smeared with chocolate. Vicki had taken them for lunch one day last winter because it was cold and snowy and she had wanted to get out of the house. It had been just a random day, just one of hundreds she had al but forgotten. Just one of thousands that she had taken for granted.

  Looking back, Brenda couldn’t believe she had ever been worried. Of course Vicki’s news was good, of course the tumor had shrunk, of course surgery would be successful and Vicki would beat lung cancer. The woman was the luckiest person on the planet. Her life was Teflon—mess happened, but it didn’t stick.

  And why, Brenda wondered, should Vicki be the only one with luck? Why shouldn’t Brenda be able to emerge from her own morass of problems in a similarly exultant way? Why shouldn’t Brenda and Vicki be like sister superheroes, overcoming adversity in a single summer, together?

  Ted had brought his laptop with him, but he only used it to send e-mail and check the market in the morning. Sure, Brenda could use it. Of course!

  Because of the good news of the CT scan, the whole house was in a generous frame of mind. Brenda took advantage of this—she set herself up on the back deck with the laptop and a thermos of coffee and her stack of yel ow legal pads and she got to work typing in The Innocent Impostor, the screenplay. She was able to revise as she went along, she used an online thesaurus, she referenced a copy of The Screenwriter’s Bible that she had checked out of the Nantucket Atheneum. The movie script had started out as a lark, but it had become something real. Was this how Pol ock had felt? He’d dripped paint over a canvas in an approximation of child’s play—and somehow it became art? Brenda tried not to think about Walsh or Jackson Pol ock or one hundred and twenty-five thousand dol ars as she worked. She tried not to think: What am I going to do if I don’t sell it? Her mind flickered to the phone number she had programmed into her cel phone for Amy Feldman, her student whos
e father was the president of Marquee Films. To Brenda’s recol ection, Amy Feldman had liked The Innocent Impostor as much as anyone else; she had turned in a solid midterm paper comparing Calvin Dare to a character from Rick Moody’s novel The Ice Storm. Had Amy Feldman heard about what happened to Dr. Lyndon right before the end of the semester? Of course she had. The students were official y told that Dr. Lyndon resigned for personal reasons; the last two classes were cancel ed, and Dr. Atela took responsibility for grading the final papers. But the scandalous stories—

  sex, grade inflation, vandalism—would have been blown up and distorted, told and told again until they reached cinematic proportions. What did Amy Feldman think of Brenda now? Would she pass the screenplay on to her father, or would she throw it into a Dumpster? Or burn it, in effigy, on Champion’s campus?

  Brenda typed until her back was stiff, her butt sore from sitting.

  Occasional y, the other people in the cottage checked on her. People passing to and from the outdoor shower, for example.

  TED

  How’s it going?

  BRENDA

  Fine.

  BRENDA stops, looks up. She is eager to get some of her eggs out of Amy Feldman’s basket.

  Hey, do you have any clients who are in the movie business?

  TED

  Movie business?

  BRENDA

  Yeah. Or made-for-TV movies?

  One hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, BRENDA thinks. She can’t be picky about medium.

  Or just regular TV?

  TED

  Mmmmmmmmm. I don’t think so.

  VICKI

  (touching BRENDA’s back)

  How’s it going?

  BRENDA

  Fine.

  VICKI

  Can I bring you anything?

  BRENDA

  Yeah, how about a pile of money?

  BRENDA clamps her mouth closed. She hadn’t said anything to anybody about the money and she won’t until she is desperate. She isn’t desperate now; she is working.

  VICKI

  (laughing, as though what BRENDA said was funny)

  How about a sandwich? I can make tuna.

  BRENDA

  No thanks.

  VICKI

  You have to eat.

  BRENDA

  You’re right, Mom. How about a bag of Oreos?

  MELANIE

  How’s it going?

  BRENDA

  BRENDA stops typing and looks up.

  Fine. How’s it going with you?

  There was the outlandish assertion by DIDI-from-admitting on the day of VICKI’s CT scan—BRENDA, unbeknownst to anyone, had cal ed the hospital administration to complain—and ever since then, BRENDA had been watching MELANIE closely, especial y when JOSH was around. But she saw no interaction between them. They barely spoke. When MELANIE walked into a room, JOSH walked out.

  MELANIE

  (taken aback by BRENDA’s sudden interest)

  I’m okay.

  MELANIE’s voice is melancholy. It harkens back to their first days in the house, when MELANIE moped al the time. There had been some recent phone cal s from Peter, but MELANIE spoke in a clipped tone and ended the cal s quickly.

  I’m bummed about the end of summer.

  BRENDA

  Wel , that makes two of us.

  MELANIE

  What are you doing after we leave?

  BRENDA

  (focusing on the computer screen, ruing her decision to engage MELANIE in this much conversation) That remains to be seen. How about you?

  MELANIE

  Ditto.

  There is a long pause, during which BRENDA fears MELANIE is trying to read the computer screen.

  MELANIE burps.

  MELANIE

  Sorry, I have heartburn.

  BRENDA

  You’re on your own there.

  JOSH

  How’s it going?

  BRENDA

  Fine.

  JOSH

  Do you think you’l sel it?

  BRENDA

  I have no idea. I hope so.

  BRENDA thinks, Hell, it can’t hurt.

  You don’t know anyone in the business, do you?

  JOSH

  Wel , there’s Chas Gorda, my creative-writing professor at Middlebury. The writer-in-residence, actual y. He had his novel, Talk, made into a film back in 1989. He might know somebody. I could ask him when I go back.

  BRENDA

  Would you? That would be great.

  JOSH

  Sure.

  BRENDA

  When do you go back?

  JOSH

  Two weeks.

  BRENDA

  Are you looking forward to it?

  JOSH

  (staring into the cottage, where—by chance?—MELANIE sits at the kitchen table reading the Boston Globe) I guess so. I don’t know.

  BRENDA

  (thinking, Horrible Didi was right. Something is going on between them. Something the rest of us were too self-absorbed to notice.) BRENDA smiles kindly at JOSH, remembering back to when he lent her the quarter at the hospital, remembering back to when they kissed in the front yard.

  Maybe someday I’l be adapting one of your novels.

  JOSH

  (looking at BRENDA but diverted by something—someone?—inside the cottage)

  You never know.

  BLAINE

  (eating a red Popsicle)

  Popsicle juice drips down BLAINE’s chin in a good approximation of blood.

  What are you doing?

  BRENDA

  Working.

  BLAINE

  On Dad’s computer?

  BRENDA

  Yep.

  BLAINE

  Are you working on your movie?

  BRENDA

  Mmmhmm.

  BLAINE

  Is it like Scooby Doo?

  BRENDA

  No, it’s nothing like Scooby Doo. Remember I said it’s a movie for grown-ups?

  BLAINE reaches out to touch the computer.

  Ah, ah, don’t touch. Do not touch Dad’s computer with those sticky hands. Go wash.

  BLAINE

  Wil you play Chutes and Ladders with me?

  BRENDA

  I can’t now, Blaine. I’m working.

  BLAINE

  When you take a break, wil you play?

  BRENDA

  When I take a break, yes.

  BLAINE

  When’s that—

  BRENDA

  I don’t know. Now, please . . .

  BRENDA checks the cottage. She wonders, Where’s Josh? Where’s Vicki? Where’s Ted?

  Auntie Brenda has to work.

  BLAINE

  How come?

  BRENDA

  Because. (in a whisper) I have to make money.

  Brenda finished typing in the screenplay for The Innocent Impostor on the third day, in the middle of the night. She was sitting on the sofa with Ted’s computer resting on Aunt Liv’s dainty coffee table. There was a breeze coming in through the back screen door. ’Sconset was quiet except for the crickets and an occasional dog bark. Brenda typed in the last page, the scene where Calvin Dare, as an older gentleman with his career behind him, enjoys an afternoon of quiet reflection with his wife, Emily. Dare and Emily look on as their grandchildren frolic in the yard. The scene was taken directly from the last page of the book; it was the scene that gave critics pause. Was it right for Dare to enjoy such bliss when he had al but coopted the life of the man that he had al but kil ed? Brenda meant to include some kind of questioning imagery in her cinematography notes—

  but for now, dialogue and direction were . . . DONE! She stared at the computer screen. Fade out. Rol credits. DONE!

  Brenda pushed Save and backed up the screenplay on a disc. It was twenty minutes after one, and she was wide awake. She poured herself a glass of wine and drank it sitting at the kitchen table. Her body ached from so much sitting; her eyes were tired.
She cracked her knuckles. DONE!

  Euphoria like she thought she would never feel again. This was the way she’d felt when she finished her dissertation; this was the way she’d felt when she finished grading final papers her first semester at Champion. Job completed, job wel done. Tomorrow she would worry about what to do with the damn thing; for tonight, she would just savor the euphoria.

  She finished the glass of wine and poured herself another. The house was fil ed with the sounds of people breathing, or so Brenda imagined.

  She thought about Walsh—then blocked him out. She found her cel phone on the side table and carried it and her wine out to the back deck. She scrol ed through her numbers.

  What was she doing? It was quarter to two; any normal person would be asleep. But Brenda couldn’t afford to let that matter. She was excited about her screenplay now; in the morning, when it was printed out, she might find flaws, she might question its big-screen potential.

  She dialed Amy Feldman’s number and tried, in the split second of silence before their lines connected, to remember everything she could about Amy Feldman. Brenda had now spent enough time with Blaine to know that Amy Feldman looked like Velma from Scooby-Doo. She was short and squat with a grandmotherly bosom, she had short hair, she wore square glasses with dark frames, and she kept the glasses on a chain so that, when the glasses were off, they rested on her bosom. Amy Feldman was like an intel ectual beatnik from forty years ago, and this, somehow, translated into her being cool, or if not cool, then at least accepted. The other girl-women in the class had seemed to like her; they’d listened respectful y when she spoke, though this may have been because of her father, Ron Feldman. Brenda’s class had been, she saw now, a class of aspiring actresses, playing themselves up not only for Walsh but for Amy Feldman. Amy Feldman was majoring in Japanese. What was she doing this summer? Was she traveling in Japan? Had she stayed in New York? If only Brenda had known that she would be fired, and sued, and then in the hole to the tune of a hundred and twenty-five thousand dol ars and hence dependent on the proceeds of a screenplay she had to sel , she would have paid more attention to Amy Feldman. As it was, what stuck in her mind were the glasses on a chain and the Japanese.