Barefoot (7 page)

“She’s pretty sensitive,” Brenda said.

“She’s going through a lot,” Vicki said.

“
You’re
going through a lot,” Brenda said. She stuffed the towels into a mildewed canvas tote that had belonged to Aunt Liv. “What are we going to do on Tuesday, when I take you for your port installation? The doctors said it would take all morning. There is no way she can handle both kids by herself all morning.”

“Sure she can.”

“She cannot. I could barely do it myself. And, I hate to bring this up, I mean, I’m happy to help with the kids and all, that is why I’m here, but I was hoping to get some work done this summer. On my screenplay.”

Vicki took a breath. Brenda was so predictable, but maybe only to Vicki. Vicki heard Ted’s words:
Your sister says she wants to help, but she won’t help. She’ll be too busy reading to help.
That was how it always went. When Vicki and Brenda were children, Brenda had been excused from all kinds of chores—setting the table, folding laundry, cleaning her room—because she was
too busy reading
. Even if it was only the newspaper, when Brenda was reading, it had been considered sacrilegious to ask her to stop. Buzz and Ellen Lyndon had done a thorough (if unintentional) job of labeling their girls: Vicki was the go-getter, organized and hardworking, whereas Brenda had been blessed with the kind of rarefied genius that had to be coddled. Although Brenda was only sixteen months younger than Vicki, nothing was expected of her. She and her “great mind” were tiptoed around like a sleeping baby.

Melanie came out of the bathroom, wiping at her lips. “Sorry,” she said. “Can I just have a piece of bread, please? With nothing on it?”

“Sure,” Brenda said. “My pleasure.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Okay,
Vicki thought
. Okay?

The morning sparkled. Vicki, Brenda, and Melanie rambled down the streets of ’Sconset toward the town beach. Vicki was carrying Porter, who kept sticking his hand into her bikini top and pinching her nipple. She had tried to give him a bottle that morning, but he threw it defiantly to the floor. Then he lunged for Vicki, fell out of the high chair, and bumped his head on the table. Tears. The subsequent fussing over Porter made Blaine irate—he proceeded to march out the front door and urinate on the flagstone walk. Lovely.

Vicki removed Porter’s hand from her breast. “Sorry, buddy.” Brenda was up ahead schlepping the beach bag with towels and lotion, the net bag of plastic sand toys, the cooler with lunch and drinks, two beach chairs, and the umbrella. Melanie was wearing her wide-brimmed straw hat and carrying a leather purse. Brenda had caught Vicki’s eye when Melanie emerged with the purse as if to say,
Who the hell takes a
purse
to the beach?
As if to say,
I’m loaded down like a camel traveling across the Sahara and she’s got a little something from Coach?
Vicki almost suggested Melanie leave the purse behind—there was nothing to buy—but she was afraid she’d scare Melanie away. Melanie hadn’t even wanted to come to the beach; she’d wanted to stay in the cottage in case Peter called.

Melanie was also attempting to hold Blaine’s hand. She grasped it for five seconds, but then he raced ahead, into the road, around the corner, out of sight. Vicki called after him and removed Porter’s hand from her breast. So much of parenting was just this mind-numbing repetition.

They all followed Brenda on a shortcut: between two houses, along a path, over the dunes. They popped out a hundred yards down from the parking lot, away from the clusters of other people and the lifeguard stand. Brenda dropped all her stuff with a great big martyrish sigh.

“I hope this is okay,” she said.

“Fine,” Vicki said. “Melanie?”

“Fine,” Melanie said.

Brenda set up the umbrellas and the chairs, she stuck Porter in the shade next to the cooler, she spread out the blanket and towels and handed Blaine a shovel, a bucket, and a dump truck. He dashed for the water. Melanie pulled one of the chairs into the shade and took off her hat. Porter crawled over to the hat and put it in his mouth. Melanie made a sour face. Vicki snatched the hat from Porter and he started to cry. Vicki dug through the beach bag and handed Porter a spare pair of sunglasses. Immediately, he snapped off one of the arms.

“Great,” Brenda said. “Those were mine.”

“Oh, sorry,” Vicki said. “I thought they were an extra pair.”

“They were my extra pair,” Brenda said.

“I’m sorry,” Vicki said again. “He was eating Melanie’s hat. He’s like a goat.”

“Well, we can’t have him eating
Melanie’s hat,
” Brenda said. “It’s such a beautiful hat! Better he should break my sunglasses. Look at them, they’re useless.”

“Were they expensive?” Vicki asked. “I’ll replace them.”

“No, no,” Brenda said. “I don’t want you to worry about it. They’re just sunglasses.”

Vicki took a deep breath and turned to Melanie.

“What do you think about the beach?” Vicki said. She wanted Melanie to be happy; she wanted Melanie to love Nantucket. She did not want Melanie to think, even for a second, that she had made a mistake in coming along.

“Do you think Peter’s trying to call?” Melanie said. She checked her watch, a Cartier tank watch that Peter had given her after the first failed round of in vitro. “Should I call him at work? He goes in sometimes on Sundays.”

He doesn’t go to the office on Sundays,
Vicki thought.
He’s just been telling you he goes to the office when really he spends Sundays with Frances Digitt making love, eating bagels, reading the
Times,
and making love again.
That was what a man who was having an affair did on Sundays; that was where Peter was this very second. But Vicki said nothing. She shrugged.

Brenda cleared her throat. “Vick, are you taking the other chair?”

Vicki looked at the chair. Brenda had hauled it; she should sit on it.

“No. You take it.”

“Well, do you want it?”

“That’s okay.”

Brenda huffed. “Please take it. I’ll lie on my stomach.”

“Are you sure?” Vicki said.

“Sure.”

“Should I call Peter at work?” Melanie said.

More breathy-type noises from Brenda. She pulled out her cell phone. “Here. Be my guest.”

Melanie took the cell phone, set it in her lap, and stared at it.

Vicki heard a shout. She looked down the beach. Someone was waving at her. No, not at her, thank God. She settled in the chair.

“Will someone keep an eye on Blaine?” Vicki asked. “I’m just going to close my eyes for a minute.”

“I’d like to try and write,” Brenda said.

“I’ll watch him,” Melanie said.

“You’re not going to call Peter?”

“No,” Melanie said. “Yes. I don’t know. Not right now.”

Vicki closed her eyes and raised her face to the sun. It felt wonderful—sun on her face, her feet buried in the Nantucket sand. It was just as her mother had promised. The sound of the waves lulled Vicki into a sense of drowsy well-being. Was this what it was like when you died? Or was it completely black, a big nothing, oblivion, the way it was before you were born? She wanted to know.

“How long have you noticed this shortness of breath?” Dr. Garcia asked. They were in his office, which was bland and doctorish: medical books, diplomas, pictures of his family. Two children, Vicki noted. She liked Dr. Garcia more for the picture of his daughter dressed up as a dragonfly for Halloween.

“I’ve had tightness in my chest, a little pain for a week or two, since Easter, but I didn’t think anything of it. But now, I can’t get air in.”

“Do you smoke?”

“God, no,” Vicki said. “Well, I tried a cigarette when I was thirteen, outside the ice-skating rink. One puff. I smoked marijuana in college, three, maybe four hits altogether. And for two years I had a Cuban cigar once a week.”

Dr. Garcia laughed. “Cuban cigar?”

“It was a poker game,” Vicki said.

“The MRI shows a mass in your lung.”

“A mass?”

“It looks suspicious to me, but we’re going to have to take a cell sample to figure out what it is. It could simply be a water-filled cyst. Or it could be something more serious.”

Vicki felt her stomach rise up in revolt. She spotted a trash can next to Dr. Garcia’s desk.
Something more serious? Do not,
she implored herself,
think about the children.

“We’ll do it now,” Dr. Garcia said. “When I saw your scan, I blocked off time.”

It sounded like he expected Vicki to thank him, but it was all she could do not to spew her breakfast all over his desk.

“It could just be a water-filled cyst?” she said. She held out hope for a juicy bubble of stagnant liquid that would just pop!—and dissolve.

“Sure enough,” Dr. Garcia said. “Follow me.”

“Vicki! Vicki Stowe!”

Vicki looked up. A woman
was
waving at her. It was . . . oh dear God, Caroline Knox, an acquaintance from Darien. Caroline’s sister, Eve, had been in Vicki’s Lamaze class when Vicki was pregnant with Blaine. Eve had brought Caroline as her partner a few times, and somehow Nantucket had come up—that Vicki stayed with Aunt Liv, that Caroline owned a house and came for the summer with her husband and kids. A few weeks ago, Vicki bumped into Caroline Knox in the parking lot of Goodwives, and Caroline asked Vicki if Vicki was going to Nantucket, and Vicki, not wanting to discuss the only topic on her mind that day, which was her cancer, had, without thinking, said,
Yes, we’ll be there on June tenth.
To which Caroline had replied,
Oh, us, too! We must get together!
Vicki had agreed, though really, if she and Caroline Knox didn’t get together in Darien, why would they get together on Nantucket?

Vicki pushed herself up out of the chair. Porter had crawled off the blanket and was sitting in the sand chewing on the handle of a plastic shovel.

“Hi!” she said, trying to muster enthusiasm at the sight of Caroline Knox, who, Vicki noted, looked very matronly in her black one-piece suit. And she’d cut her hair short. Not even forty and she looked like Barbara Bush. “Hi, Caroline!”

“Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii,” Caroline squealed. “Vicki, how are you? When did you get here?”

“Yesterday.”

“We’ve been here a week already. It’s heaven on earth, don’t you think?”

Vicki smiled.

“When is Ted coming?” Caroline asked.

“Friday. He’s driving up with the car.”

“Well, we should have dinner while it’s just us girls. Are you free on Wednesday?”

“I’m free . . . ,” Vicki said.

“Oh, good!”

“But I start chemo on Tuesday, so . . .”

Caroline’s face stopped its smiling.
“What?”

“I have lung cancer,” Vicki said. She felt mean dropping it on Caroline this way, in front of Brenda, who had just scrawled two lines on her yellow legal pad, and Melanie, who was still staring at the phone in her lap. But Vicki enjoyed it, too, making Caroline Knox uncomfortable, watching her grope around for something to say.

“I had no idea,” Caroline said. “Eve didn’t tell me.” She dug her toe in the sand and the flesh of her thigh wobbled. “You know that Kit Campbell’s father had lung cancer last year, and . . .”

“Yes,” Vicki said, though she had no idea who Kit Campbell was. “I heard all about it.”

“So you’re getting chemo
here?
On the island?”

“At the hospital,” Vicki said, in a voice that ended the topic. “Caroline, I’d like you to meet my sister, Brenda Lyndon, and my friend Melanie Patchen.”

Caroline shook hands with Melanie. “Patchen, you say? Are you related to Peter?”

“He’s my husband,” Melanie said. She squinted. “Why? Do you know him?”

“He plays squash with my husband, Edgar, at the Y,” Caroline said. “I didn’t realize Peter was married. For some reason, I thought he was single.”

It’s official,
Vicki thought.
I hate Caroline Knox.

Brenda shifted on her towel, though she made no move to acknowledge Caroline’s presence. Despite their mother’s best efforts, Brenda had the manners of Attila the Hun. When Brenda spoke, she said, “Vick, where’s Blaine?”

Vicki looked at the water. Blaine had been digging a hole just beyond where the waves broke so that the hole filled with water. That was what he’d been doing when she shut her eyes. But when she looked now, she saw the shovel, the pail, the truck, and the hole—but no Blaine.

Okay, wait. Vicki checked the perimeter of where they were sitting. He was behind them—no. He was . . . where was he?

“Mel?” Vicki asked. But Melanie looked even paler and more panicked than Vicki.
You were watching him, right?
Vicki thought.
You said you’d keep an eye on him
. Melanie stood up. Her left foot crushed her straw hat, and Brenda’s cell phone fell into the sand.

“Oh, God,” Vicki said. She jogged to the shoreline. Her insides twisted up in preliminary panic, and she felt her lungs tighten. “Blaine!” she called out. She looked to the left, to the right, and then all the way back to the dunes. Was he hiding in the dunes? Brenda grabbed her arm.

“It’s okay. Do not panic. Don’t panic, Vick. He couldn’t have gone far.”

“Did he go in?” Vicki said. The surface of the water was calm; small waves broke at her feet. She waded in up to her knees, scanning the dappled surface of the water. The only thing she had to worry about was Blaine under water. “Blaine?” she called out, looking for air bubbles. “Blaine?” Blaine could swim a little bit. If he were drowning, he would have splashed and made a fuss; Melanie certainly would have noticed. If there was an undertow here, and sometimes there was, he would have called for Vicki. She would have heard him calling out.

“Blaine!” Brenda shouted. She turned back toward the beach. “Blaine Stowe! Where are you? Are there footprints? He was right here a second ago, wasn’t he?”

Was he?
Now Vicki couldn’t remember if she’d seen him digging at all. But his toys were here. She’d had her eyes closed, she’d checked on the baby, she’d been thinking about Dr. Garcia, she’d assumed Melanie was watching Blaine. But then Caroline came.