Barefoot (49 page)

“Hello, Daddy,” she said, kissing her father’s unshaven cheek. Unlike his wife, Buzz Lyndon looked like he had gotten five hours of sleep in a roadside motel. He looked like a long-haul trucker three years past retirement.

“Oh, honey,” Buzz said. “How are you?”

“Fine,” Brenda said. “Mom’s asleep.”

“Yes, she’s tired,” Buzz said. “When can we go see your sister?”

“Her MRI is at nine,” Ted said. “Which means I have to get going. She’ll be finished by eleven. They should know more by then.”

Brenda fixed four bowls of Cheerios, she poured coffee and made a second pot, and she even managed to get Porter his mush. Melanie emerged and, after greeting Buzz Lyndon, made a plate of toast. A little while later, Ellen Lyndon shambled out to the kitchen, where she sat at the table, cutting up a fruit salad. The boys were bouncing off the walls, thrilled by the unexpected presence of their grandparents. Here was a new audience!

“Will you come to the beach with us?” Blaine said.

“Grandpa will take you,” Ellen Lyndon said. “After we see your mommy.”

Brenda escaped to the back deck with her coffee. The kitchen was crowded and noisy, and although the arrival of her parents gave the day a festive air, it also felt strangely like a funeral. Everyone there except Vicki.

Please, please, please, please, please, please,
she prayed. The backyard fluttered and chirped in response: butterflies, bees, rosebushes, a picket fence, green grass, blue sky, robins, wrens, sunshine. If God was anywhere, He was in this backyard, but there was no way to tell if He was listening!

Hands landed on Brenda’s shoulders. Firm, male hands. Her father. Buzz Lyndon dealt only in tangibles:
Is there anything your mother can do? Does anybody need money?
Well, yes, Brenda needed money, but what she realized now was that she wasn’t willing 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 spill 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 illicit. 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 all 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, billowy clouds were blowing in from offshore. It had been beautiful all 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 essentially unemployed, he felt aimless and without purpose. He’d spent all 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 Shell Street, and then admonishing himself for thinking of it. His cell phone had rung incessantly—but three times it was Zach (calling to apologize?) and Josh let the calls go to voice mail, and twice the display said
Robert Patalka,
and there was sure as hell no way Josh was going to take that call.

He was relieved when five o’clock rolled 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 jolly 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 calling Number Eleven Shell 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 all 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 all 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 fall. Josh grabbed his towel and raced up the stairs to the parking lot, cursing. Naturally, 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 umbrella 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 all 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. Pills, with alcohol.”

“But not—”

“They’re pretty sure it was accidental.”

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 eventually; 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 Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin. There was a time, a long period of time actually, 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 well 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—unintentionally—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.

Still, there was loss. Still, 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 still together and hence he would be cast as the devastated lover. Or maybe everyone knew of Josh and Didi’s falling-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 spilled 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 all a Didi color, Josh thought, which made it harder for him to believe that she was actually inside. He was glad, however, that the casket was closed. He didn’t want to see Didi dead, all 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 dollars.