Barefoot: A Novel

by Elin Hilderbrand

  Does anybody need money? Wel , yes, Brenda needed money, but what she realized now was that she wasn’t wil ing to ask anyone for it, not even her father. She would finance her debt, get a job, pay it off. She had spent enough nights in the cradle of strong women to know this was the right thing.

  There was a voice in her ear. “Brindah.” The voice was a whisper; it was too intimate for her father. The hands on Brenda’s shoulders were not her father’s hands. Their touch was different. And then there was the voice. Brindah. Brenda was confused; she whipped around.

  Brenda set her coffee down, afraid she would spil it. Her hands were shaking. Walsh was here! Not here in her mind, but here in person: His dark hair was close-cropped, his olive skin bronzed from the sun, and he wore a white polo shirt that she had never seen before. He smiled at her, and her stomach dropped away. It was him. Him! The only “him” that mattered: Walsh, her student, her Australian lover. I couldn’t have waited.

  Walsh had come! He must have left New York as soon as he hung up the phone. Brenda wanted to know everything: how he got here, why he’d decided to come, how long he would stay, but she made herself stop thinking. Stop! He was here. The one person here just for her.

  She put her hand over her mouth. She started to cry. He took her in. Brenda dissolved against his chest. Touching him, holding him, hugging him felt il icit. It had always felt sneaky, like she was getting away with something. Romantic or sexual relationships are forbidden between a faculty member and a student. But none of that mattered anymore.

  We didn’t choose love; it chose us, right or wrong—and realizing this, for Brenda, was a kind of answered prayer.

  Love was al that mattered.

  As Josh got out of the water at Nobadeer Beach, shaking his hair like a dog, he wondered how he would ever write about what had happened to him this summer. He had been wounded so badly he deserved a Purple Heart, but the upside was that he had learned some things (hadn’t he?). He now understood the tragic hero.

  You’ll sense the story like an approaching storm, Chas Gorda had said. The hair on your arms will stand up.

  These words rang out distinctly—maybe because it looked like there was a storm approaching—dark, bil owy clouds were blowing in from offshore. It had been beautiful al day—clear, sunny, and windless—but this had only served to annoy Josh. He was hungover from his night out with Zach, and now that he was essential y unemployed, he felt aimless and without purpose. He’d spent al day trying to write his feelings down in his journal—but what this had turned into was a lot of sitting on his unmade bed, thinking of Number Eleven Shel Street, and then admonishing himself for thinking of it. His cel phone had rung incessantly—but three times it was Zach (cal ing to apologize?) and Josh let the cal s go to voice mail, and twice the display said Robert Patalka, and there was sure as hel no way Josh was going to take that cal .

  He was relieved when five o’clock rol ed around. He was hot and discouraged—he hadn’t managed to get any worthwhile thoughts on paper ( Avoid being self-referential. Be wary of your own story). There was cleaning and packing and laundry to do before he left for school, but those tasks were too heinous to even consider undertaking in his fractious state of mind. The only thing he had to look forward to was his swim at Nobadeer; however, he made himself wait until he was sure most of the families and otherwise jol y beachgoers would be gone. He couldn’t stand to see other children at the beach, or other parents; he didn’t want to have to witness everyone else’s happy end-of-summer. He decided, bravely, on the way to the beach that he wouldn’t cook dinner for his father tonight. He would pick up a pizza on the way home, and if his father wanted an iceberg salad, he could make it himself.

  Josh swam for the better part of an hour, and the swimming improved his mood. He was proud of himself for not cal ing Number Eleven Shel Street—if they didn’t need or want him, then so be it, the feeling was mutual—and he was glad he’d fought his urge to stop by the hospital to see if Vicki was al right. He couldn’t concern himself with their dramas anymore. He had to let go. He did feel pangs of regret when he thought about the boys, but he had their birthdays marked down on his calendar and he would send presents—big, loud monster trucks, he decided, the kind that had flashing lights and played rock music, the kind that would drive Vicki nuts. Just thinking of it, Josh smiled for the first time al day.

  But then, as Josh climbed out of the waves, the sky grew cloudy and ominous, and Chas Gorda’s words came to him. Fat, warm raindrops started to fal . Josh grabbed his towel and raced up the stairs to the parking lot, cursing. Natural y, the top to his Jeep was down.

  You’ll sense the story like an approaching storm.

  The hair on your arms will stand up.

  Josh held his towel over his head like a canopy when the real rain arrived. The hair on his arms was standing up. There was a flash of light and, a split second later, a crack of thunder.

  “Shit!” he cried out. His Jeep was getting soaked.

  “Josh! Joshua!”

  His name.

  “Joshua!”

  He lifted his towel. There was his father’s green Ford Explorer, lights on, wipers whipping back and forth—and standing out in the rain without an umbrel a or hat, or anything, his father. They locked eyes for a moment, then Josh looked away; he looked at the ground, at his feet in flip-flops, at the dirt and sand and pebbles of the parking lot and the rushing rivulets of water and the puddles forming. No, Josh thought. No fucking way. He grew dizzy and he realized he was holding his breath. He was having an awful, horrible memory—not a picture memory so much as a feeling memory. What it had felt like when his father said—and Josh heard the exact words, though he would swear he hadn’t thought of them in more than ten years— Son, your mother is dead. Like a single blow to the gut. The rest, Josh assumed, came later; it may have been explained to him that she took her own life, that she hanged herself in the attic, or he may have been left to piece together facts from what was implied or what he overheard. Josh couldn’t remember. But he remembered the look on his father’s face. It was a look he never wanted to see again, and he hadn’t, until this very moment. Tom Flynn was standing out in the rain like he didn’t even notice it, he was here at Nobadeer Beach, instead of being in his rightful place behind his computer terminal five stories up in the airport control tower.

  Vicki is in the hospital, Ted Stowe said. She had an episode.

  Vicki.

  Son, your mother is dead. Twelve-year-old Josh had vomited, right there on the spot, without thinking or even noticing. He had vomited al over his new sneakers and the living room rug. And now, thinking, Vicki, Josh leaned over and retched.

  No, he thought. No fucking way.

  “Joshua!”

  Josh looked up. His father was motioning; he wanted Josh to get in the car. Josh would have given anything to turn away, but he was standing in the middle of a downpour—there was another crack of thunder—and Josh’s Jeep didn’t offer much in the way of refuge. Josh dashed to the Explorer and climbed inside.

  His father got in next to him, and they both sat there as if stunned, staring at the rain pummeling the windshield. Tom Flynn wiped his face with a handkerchief. His dark hair was plastered to his head. He said, “I have some bad news.”

  No, Josh thought. He put his hand up to let his father know he couldn’t stand to hear it. She had an episode.

  Tom Flynn cleared his throat and said, “The Patalka girl . . .”

  Josh jerked his head. “Didi?”

  “She’s dead.”

  Josh sucked in his breath. The truck was close and warm, but Josh’s body convulsed with cold. Didi? Not Vicki, but Didi? Didi dead?

  “What?” Josh said. “What?”

  “She’s dead. She died . . . early this morning.”

  “Why?” Josh said. “What happened?”

  “Drugs, they think. Pil s, with alcohol.”

  “But not—”

  “They’re pretty sure it was accidental.�
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  Tears sprang to Josh’s eyes. The mix of emotions that assaulted him was confusing; it was like too many keys played at once on a piano.

  Discord. Didi was dead. Didi was dead? She had, by anyone’s estimation, made a royal mess of her life—car repossessed, behind on her rent, prostitution? But Josh had assumed she would get her act together eventual y; he had thought her parents would bail her out, or she’d meet some poor soul who wanted to take her on. Didi dead seemed impossible. She was such a force, so much herself—with the jean shorts with the white strings, front and center on the cheerleading squad, with the notes she used to pass to Josh between classes, marked with X s and O s and the stamp of her lipsticked mouth. With her hickeys and her adoration of her ferocious cat and her exhaustive knowledge of classic rock, the Al man Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin. There was a time, a long period of time actual y, when Josh had used the word “love” with Didi. She had said the word more often and with greater conviction: I love you, I love you so much, you’re my true love, always and forever. Josh, being male, had responded with: Ditto. Roger that. Yep, me too.

  Now, however, he knew more about love, and looking back at what he experienced with Didi, he could see its immaturity, its imperfection. So there was guilt mixed in with his shock and disbelief. He hadn’t loved her wel enough or genuinely enough. He hadn’t given her a strong foundation on which to build future relationships. He may, in fact, have crippled her—unintentional y—because she never moved on.

  And, too, in the melee of what Josh was feeling was relief that the news wasn’t about Vicki. That was a horrible thought, and he didn’t quite know how to deal with it. He certainly wasn’t happy Didi was dead and Vicki was alive. He was just happy Vicki was alive.

  Stil , there was loss. Stil , there was a hole inside of him. The funeral for Deirdre Alison Patalka was held two days later, and Josh attended, wearing his gray interview suit. He may have been imagining it, but he thought he sensed a buzz go through the church when he walked in; he saw heads turn, and the whispering grew louder, though not loud enough for him to make out any actual words. He had no idea how much people knew—

  maybe they were whispering because they thought Josh and Didi were stil together and hence he would be cast as the devastated lover. Or maybe everyone knew of Josh and Didi’s fal ing-out, maybe they’d heard that Josh paid Didi off just so she would leave him alone, maybe they held him responsible for Didi’s demise, for her turn to drugs and alcohol, maybe they blamed him for not saving her. Josh had no way of knowing. He saw everyone he used to know—high school friends, teachers, his friends’ parents, doctors and administrators from the hospital, guys from Rob Patalka’s crew, and the actual Dimmity brothers themselves, Seth and Vegas, whom Josh hadn’t set eyes on since his mother ran their office.

  Josh’s dentist was there, the ladies who worked in the post office, the manager of the Stop & Shop, the chef and waitstaff of the Straight Wharf, where Didi used to waitress in the summer, the librarians from the Atheneum. The police had to close off Federal Street because there were so many people attending Didi’s funeral that they spil ed down the church steps onto the sidewalk and over the sidewalk onto the cobblestone street and the far sidewalk. Didi arrived in a hearse, in a closed casket that was a somber navy blue, not at al a Didi color, Josh thought, which made it harder for him to believe that she was actual y inside. He was glad, however, that the casket was closed. He didn’t want to see Didi dead, al made-up by the mortician, wearing whatever “suitable” outfit Mrs. Patalka had picked out. He didn’t want to have to gaze at Didi’s face and acknowledge its unspoken accusation: You failed me.

  After the funeral, there was an official reception at the Anglers’ Club, but Josh stayed only a few minutes, long enough to kiss Mrs. Patalka and receive, in a somber handshake, an envelope from Mr. Patalka containing two hundred dol ars.

  “There was a note on her desk,” Mr. Patalka said. “Saying she owed you this.”

  Josh tried to refuse the envelope, but Mr. Patalka insisted. Josh used some of the money to buy beer at Hatch’s; he was taking the beer to the house in Shimmo, where Zach was throwing the unofficial reception for “Didi’s real friends,” “the people who knew her best.”

  Josh set the beer down on the passenger side of his Jeep, which he tried not to think of as Melanie’s seat. He took off his suit jacket and threw it into the back; even at four o’clock, it was too hot for it. He hadn’t cal ed Melanie to tel her about Didi, not only because of his self-imposed ban on cal ing Melanie but because Melanie knew nothing about Didi, and how cumbersome would it be to explain that Josh had had this friend—not even a friend, real y, but an ex-girlfriend, a person who defied easy categorization in his life—who had died? Melanie wouldn’t get it, but because she was Melanie, so incredibly kind, she would pretend to get it, and how could Josh find that anything but patronizing? Didi and Melanie were from separate parts of Josh’s life, they weren’t connected, and trying to connect them would require stretching something that might break and end up in a mess. Stil , on his way out to Shimmo, with his tie off now as wel as his jacket and the windows open, al owing the last of summer’s warm, fresh air to rush in, Josh fondled his phone. He scrol ed through his cal s received—there were the two cal s from Rob Patalka, three cal s from Zach, al to tel him the news, he now knew—until he found the cal from Number Eleven Shel Street, from Ted, and he nearly hit the button that would dial the house, but then it was time for him to turn, which he did, abruptly, and the beer slid off Melanie’s seat and clunked to the floor, and while Josh was half bent over trying to upright the beer, he saw Tish Alexander’s car in front of him and the moment to cal Melanie was lost.

  It was another beautiful afternoon. If they hadn’t been attending a funeral, people might have come to the Shimmo house in bathing suits. They might have gone swimming right there in the harbor in front of the house. The water was very blue and calm; Josh had never seen water look more inviting. He stood for a minute in the driveway, gazing out across Nantucket Sound. He had been born and raised on this island; there was a sense that this view belonged to him and the others who grew up here. And if it belonged to them, then it belonged to Didi, too, but that fact hadn’t been enough to keep her on the straight and narrow, to keep her alive. Didi—and how many times had Josh uttered this sentence in his mind, hoping that it would start to make sense?—was dead.

  Josh entered the house and took off his shoes. He tried to push away thoughts of his night here with Melanie. Strains of Bon Jovi floated down the stairs. Josh ascended, glad for the case of beer in his arms because it gave him something to hold. There were a few people in the living room, mostly girls, al of whom Josh had known forever, but whose names he could not, at that second, summon, crying on the sofa. Josh nodded at them.

  Everyone else was out on the deck. The guys, like Josh, had their jackets and ties off, their shirts unbuttoned; they were drinking beer, talking quietly, shaking their heads, gazing off into the distance. Why? Josh heard someone say. And someone else answered, I don’t know, man.

  Zach was in the kitchen, fussing like Martha Stewart. He was dumping bags of Doritos into fancy, hand-painted ceramic bowls, he was setting out cocktail napkins, he was sponging off the countertop. He saw Josh and said, “You got beer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This fridge is ful ,” Zach said. “Can you put it in the fridge under the bar?”

  “Sure.”

  “They’re not smoking out there, are they?” Zach said. He craned his neck to spy on the activity on the deck. “There’s no smoking al owed anywhere on the property. Not even outside.”

  “No one’s smoking,” Josh said. He carried the case of beer over to the bar, which brought him into close proximity with the girls who were crying.

  Their talk stopped when he approached. It became silence studded with sniffles.

  “Hi, Josh.”

  He turned. Eleanor Shelby, Didi’s best friend, sat between Anneli
se Carter and Penelope Ross; it was the queen of sorrow and her two handmaidens. Eleanor’s voice, even in its greeting, was accusatory. Josh realized this should come as no surprise—Didi obviously shared every last thing with Eleanor, and with Annelise and Penelope as wel , probably—but he was unprepared for the blitz. He opened the door to the fridge under the bar and noted the slab of blue granite, the mirrors, the one hundred wineglasses hanging upside down. He pushed the six-packs into the fridge, he shoved them with some aggression because against his wil he was thinking of Melanie and their night here, in this house. They had made love in a bed in the next room, they had showered together, they had stood on the deck in robes, and Josh, anyway, had al owed himself the five-minute fantasy that al this was his, or could be.

  Behind him, Eleanor cleared her throat. “We haven’t seen you around much this summer, Josh,” she said. “Rumor had it you were babysitting out in ’Sconset.”

  He smiled at Eleanor in the mirror, not because he was happy or trying to be nice, but because he was freshly surprised by the difference between girls and women.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”

  Penelope Ross, whom Josh had known literal y al his life (they were born the same week at Nantucket Cottage Hospital, their mothers in adjoining rooms), said, “And there were other rumors.”

  He glared at Penelope with as much disdain as he could muster. “I’m sure there were.”

  “Like, you have a baby on the way.”

  He scoffed. There was no point getting drawn into a discussion like this one, but the day had worn on him and he felt his fists itching. Part of him wanted a fight.

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said.

  “But your girlfriend is pregnant, right?” Penelope said. “Didi told us your girlfriend is pregnant.”

  “And older,” Eleanor said. “Like, our parents’ age.”

  Josh shook his head. Didi, now that she was dead, had a new, irrefutable authority, and an air of celebrity that she would have relished had she been alive. Josh could have pul ed out his ammunition against Didi—her money problems, her drinking problem, the prostitution—but what would that accomplish? Josh eyebal ed the girls and said in a quiet, serious voice, “I don’t have a girlfriend.”