Barefoot Girls (7 page)

“It’s about time we talked. Let’s get this thing straightened out, already,” Amy said, standing at Keeley’s elbow. She wrapped her tiny arms around Keeley as soon as she was released from Zo’s embrace, and said, “Hey, you.” Amy, doll-like in every way from her diminutive height, curly blond hair, and cornflower blue eyes, was ironically the toughest of the four, the fighter who was the last to go down. The fact that the top of her head barely reached her friends’ chins never seemed to bother her, even when they were competing at sports on Captain’s Island every summer.

Pam waved them toward the chairs set up in a circle around a small glass-topped cocktail table on the other side of the deck. On the table was a bowl of tortilla chips and another containing her famous homemade guacamole. “Chickies, grab your Means and let’s talk. Where’s that letter, Keeley?”

They sat down, sipped their drinks, and passed around the letter, each of them reading while the others chatted. They had all stopped their plans dead when they heard about their baby’s latest letter. The three of them had always been there for Keeley and Hannah. It was their pact, made long ago.

Pam had canceled her meetings for that day, all of them worth postponing in light of the emergency. Amy’s husband was able to work from home and keep an eye on their youngest, Sam, and the two older boys when they got home from school. Zo had the worst of it, her flight to Paris was scheduled for that afternoon where she’d been booked with a high-profile and in-demand designer who was going to make her a custom gown for a ball in Vienna in February. The airline had the nerve to charge her a change fee, even though she flew with them all the time and was a member of their Platinum Club, and of course, the designer wouldn’t be able to fit Zo in again until early January, which was cutting it too close for Zo’s tastes.

“Ah, it’s silly. I’m not a ball gown type of girl anyway – too stiff and fancy. I just love the idea of it. Very
Sound of Music
. Amy, you’re hogging it,” Zo said, putting her hand out and wiggling her fingers at Amy, who had been re-reading the letter for the last five minutes.

“’What’s wrong with me is repairable’?” Amy said, handing over the letter grudgingly. “What the hell does that mean?”

Pam leaned in. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. She’s in her twenties! God, my twenties were hell! And they’re even worse these days. Have you seen how these kids dance? Like they’re having sex!”

Keeley cringed a little. Her Hannah, dancing like that? It was impossible to imagine. She was always such a quiet little thing. Her thoughtful mouse-girl, her dreamer.

Amy sat back and crossed her arms. “Hannah’s not like that, though.”

“She may be different on some levels,” Pam countered. “But she’s still a kid in her twenties.”

Keeley shook her head. “An engaged kid that’s about to throw it all away,” she said and took a long appreciative gulp of her Mean Green. She put down the drink on the table; if she kept it in her hand, she’d finish it in a minute. “Daniel’s crazy about her and she’s a little puddle of sweet gooshy happiness around him. Doesn’t she know that love like that never happens? Or happens once if you’re lucky?”

“Twice to you,” Zo said, not looking up from the letter.

Keeley listened to Zo’s tone. No, it didn’t mean anything this time, no accusation. Just a statement of fact. “Yes, Michael, of course…but, well…I do love Ben, but it’s…,” Keeley said and sighed. “What are we going to do? I’m so angry I can’t talk to her right now. Can you believe she had the balls to ask us for our friendship on a platter – no, wait, an operating table! To dissect for the whole world! Isn’t that precious?”

Zo tore her eyes away from the letter to look at Keeley. “But you’re going to talk to her soon. Right?” It wasn’t a question.

Keeley saw Amy and Pam exchange glances before both looking studiously away, Pam brushing imaginary lint off of her shirt and Amy turning her head to look off at the beach while sipping her drink.

“Right?” Zo prompted.

Keeley looked away, her eyes turning to the beach and the waves curling on the shore. So peaceful here. She just wanted to rest. She was so tired of everything.

Chapter 3

Zooey looked at her friend’s beautiful face, now lightly lined with age, as it turned away from hers. Keeley’s mouth softened and her tip-tilted blue eyes became heavy lidded as she went off into her own private la-la land staring at the water.

Oh, no, not now. She would get her answer if she had to shake it out of Keeley. It was why they were here. Not because of Daniel. Because of Hannah.

“Keeley? You are going to talk to her soon?”

A flicker of irritation crossed Keeley’s face, her nose wrinkling. “Oh, come on, Zo. Give me a break,” she said and sighed, still looking off at the beach.

Zo looked to Pam and Amy for support, but Pam seemed to be engaged in cleaning something off of the t-shirt stretched over her substantial bosom, and Amy was gazing off at the beach like Keeley while sipping her drink. Poor Pam had started growing those enormous knockers when they were only ten and had been in a perpetual battle with them ever since, so maybe she was simply distracted, but Amy wasn’t the stare-off-into-space type. She was a doer and a problem solver, usually. She fought hard and she fought fair and you could count on her to have your back, no matter how much the opposition towered over her tiny frame. Where Pam was massive and muscular, Amy was small, doll-like and disarmingly innocent looking. You’d never guess there was a pit-bull underneath that sweet veneer.

Right now, Amy looked particularly wide-eyed as she took another sip of her drink, looking off at the water. Fine, don’t pitch in or anything helpful like that, Amy, just stay out of it as you usually do when it comes to me and Keeley.

Zo turned back to Keeley. “Oh, come on, nothing,” Zo said, fighting to keep her voice modulated. “You just can’t go on not-“

“Fine! I’ll talk to her, I’m sure! Just not right now!” Keeley said, turning away from the beach, still not looking at Zo, and then reached for her drink. “Don’t I have a right to be pissed off?” Sipping her drink, she finally looked at Zo over the salted rim of her glass, giving her the puppy-dog look that usually worked. But this was about Hannah, and Zo wasn’t going to back down.

Zo nodded, “Yes, be mad…at that woman who wrote the review! Not at our baby. Call her, and we’ll sort out what to do about the reviewer separately.”

“We should sue the paper for slander!” Amy said, suddenly paying attention again. “It’s the only solution.”

Zo shook her head at Amy. She didn’t want to change the subject away from Hannah. “I don’t know about that-“

Keeley put her drink down again on the table and straightened up, sitting very tall in her seat, her face closing off defensively as she stared down Zo. “What do you mean, you don’t know? It’s slander, right?”

Pam, having given up on her shirt, put her hand out and waved it in the air between them. “Hey, I don’t think a lawsuit’s the solution, either.”

Zo said, “Well, it’s just that I read it, Hannah’s book, a little of it, and it’s just so… real-seeming. The reviewer was probably fooled by it. Anyway-”

Keeley’s face went slack with surprise. “What? You read it? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What?” Pam and Amy asked in unison.

Zo had been dreading this moment since August. And now the words had just popped out of her mouth. She still didn’t know what to say. Why hadn’t she told them? She hadn’t said anything to Hannah either, and holding herself back with her had been almost physically painful.

Of course Zo had been the one to start reading the book first, the avid fiction reader of the group and the one who had spent countless hours reading stories to Hannah when she was little, the two of them curled up together like spoons. She couldn’t wait to see their baby’s - her dreamy fairy-girl’s - novel. As soon as Keeley had opened the box containing all of their copies, Zo knew she wouldn’t be happy until she sat down and devoured it. She frequently read books in one sitting, closing the book finally and awakening from the dream with regret. This was true mostly with good books, great books, and of course Hannah had to have written something amazing.

It had been in the beginning of August this year, right after they arrived for their annual month-long vacation together. Early one morning, they had all gone back to the Barefooter house after scaping crabs along the boardwalk. They had been lucky enough to catch not one, but two soft-shells - real softies that had just shed their shells and were perfectly tender. As was the custom on the island, they rushed home to cook and eat them for breakfast before they turned into “leatherbacks”, the name for crabs growing new shells. Overly chewy, islanders spurned eating leatherbacks and would rarely order soft-shell crabs in restaurants as invariably that’s what they were. Better to crack a crab or eat it as a real softie.

On their way to the Barefooter house, Keeley stopped by her and Ben’s house and picked up some strawberries and a large brown cardboard box. Over a breakfast of lightly breaded and fried soft-shelled crabs, Pam’s killer home fries, and ripe strawberries, Keeley had opened the box and distributed the books to each of the Barefooters. They had grinned at each other with pride and wiped their greasy hands thoroughly before inspecting their copies.

Zo was breathless holding her copy, staring at Hannah’s name on the cover, desperate to be alone with it. As soon as they finished breakfast, cleaned up, and left their shared house to return to their own larger abodes that fit in husbands and children and assorted summering relatives, Zo practically ran all the way to her house up-island and her favorite reading chair on the porch.

It was only a half-hour later when Zo slammed the book shut, feeling ill. Something about it really bothered her. Her lips were raw from biting them unconsciously. It was such a dark scary thing, Hannah’s book. Yet so real. This was what Hannah chose to write?

She put it down on the little table next to her reading chair and looked at it for a minute. And then, she really didn’t know why, she stood up, picked up a glossy fashion magazine from nearby table, and put it on top of Hannah’s book, covering it completely. It stayed there on the table, untouched and covered with the magazine for the rest of August. She had packed it up with the rest of their things when they left and it sat now, in a pile of other books, on her bedside table at home in Westport. She had been meaning to pick it up again.

Zo felt her face grow hot as she saw the look of shock her friends were giving her. “I don’t know why I didn’t say anything. Really! I guess…because I never got a chance to finish it?” Boy, that was pathetic.

Amy shook her head and said, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell us.”

“At least you could have told me!” Keeley said. “Especially when that review came out! I’ve been going nuts!”

“Hey!” Zo said, her embarrassment morphing into anger. “Since when it is just my responsibility to read our daughter’s book? I would think all of us would’ve read it by now. Did any of you even pick it up?”

Pam cleared her throat, nodded enthusiastically, and said, “No, and I meant to. I will! I can’t wait!”

Amy said, “I…I’m so not a fiction person. You guys know that! I’ll read it, but it’s going to take me awhile.”

Zo turned and stared down Keeley, who was still staring right back at her. “Well, have you read Hannah’s book? Any of it?”

Keeley’s face, which had that walled-off look she got in any situation where negative feelings were involved, revealed nothing. “I don’t…I’m not…we’re not here to talk about Hannah’s book. We’re here to talk about her and Daniel. The letter,” she said, and flicked her hand out at where it lay in Zo’s lap. “That’s why we’re here. I may be mad at her, I may never be able to talk to her again, but I’m not going to sit back and watch her throw away the very thing I threw away with Michael.” Her eyes welled when she said his name.

Pam reached over and put her hand on Keeley’s knee. “You were just a kid. Forgive yourself already.”

Keeley shook her head and turned to look at Pam. She said softly, “I can’t. I’ll never forgive myself.”

Zo looked at them, watched Amy reach over and rub Keeley’s arm. And you’ll never forgive me, none of you. Or have you already? Are we all always just putting ourselves in our own private prisons?

Doubt nagged once again, her shoulda-woulda-coulda nighttime companion, and she brushed it away. Daytime was for action, not for wobbling about filled with worries. She had a mission here. “Keeley. Hannah wouldn’t be talking about not getting married to Daniel if you were talking to her. Just call her. Go see her! The reviewer made a mistake in judgment. That’s what clearly happened, and she was morally and professionally wrong to put her assumptions in her review. But let’s not forget that the book is a novel. A work of fiction! A dark spooky piece of work, I admit, but a story nevertheless. Please! You owe it to…us.”

Keeley looked up at Zo again and then away, reaching for her drink. “I can’t,” she said.

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“Now, you guys,” Pam said.

“No, Zo has a point,” Amy said, sitting back in her chair, folding her arms over her chest, and looking at Keeley. “Why can’t you?”

Keeley shook her head slightly, and took a sip of her drink, licking the salt off the rim of the glass delicately. She didn’t answer.