Barefoot (28 page)

Vicki, realizing she had to take control of the conversation, jumped in. “And this is my sister, Brenda. My friend Melanie Patchen, and our . . . friend Josh Flynn. And my sons, Blaine and Porter.”

“Quite a group,” Dr. Alcott said.

“Yes,” Vicki said. She fingered one of the tails of her scarf.
Small talk!
she thought. Small talk might save her. “You’re fishing?”

“You bet.”

“Josh caught a fish,” Blaine said. “A big one. And Dad threw it back.”

“Good,” Dr. Alcott said. “Great. It’s a beautiful night.”

“Beautiful,” Vicki said. “We had lobsters.”

“Yum,” Dr. Alcott said. He eyed Ted’s fishing rods, poking out of the sand. “Those are some real beauties.”

“Thanks,” Ted said. He grinned. “We might try again in a little while.”

There was a beat of silence, then another beat. Vicki panicked. She was not a trouper, she was not a star patient—she was a fraud! Dr. Alcott had tracked her down, all the way out here on the far edge of the island, to call her bluff. “Okay, well,” she said. “Don’t let us keep you from your fishing.” She cast around for someone safe to look at and came up with Melanie. “Dr. Alcott loves to fish.”

Melanie widened her eyes and nodded in a good approximation of interest.

“Okay,” Dr. Alcott said. He took a breath and seemed about to add something else.
No!
Vicki thought. He smiled at her blandly, and Vicki realized then that he didn’t
know
she’d skipped chemo. Didn’t know or didn’t remember . . . or didn’t care? “Good to see you. Nice to meet all of you.”

“Likewise.” Ted shook Dr. Alcott’s hand again.

“Bye,” Vicki said. She sat back down and exhaled as Dr. Alcott strolled off down the beach. She knew she should feel relieved—she’d dodged a bullet—but instead, she felt hollow. Here she was still alive, still among them—and yet, already forgotten.

Josh had thought that once they got back to Shell Street, he would be free to go. But everything had to be taken out of the car: the cooler, the chairs, the trash bag, the sleeping kids—and Josh offered to help. It was easy work, especially since Ted Stowe insisted they do it with the aid of yet another beer, Josh’s sixth or seventh of the night. The beach picnic had been a success, or almost: There had been the fishing, the sunset, the lobsters—and later the fire and s’mores for Blaine. Melanie had made a big deal about going swimming in the dark. She’d changed into her suit behind the car and, despite protests from Vicki and Ted and Brenda, all of whom were pretty sure she would drown, charged into the water. She was gone all of thirty seconds before she returned, curled into herself, shivering and dripping. Josh handed her a towel, and he found himself gazing at her body—her breasts, the still-smooth plane of her stomach, bare in the bikini, her curly hair hanging in dark corkscrews around her face. Looking at Melanie that way had been careless, the result of too many beers too fast. The problem, Josh realized later, was that Melanie saw him looking, and that was all the confirmation she needed to move forward.

The moving forward happened after the remains of the picnic were tucked away, after the Stowes and Brenda had said good night, after Josh, too, had said
good night, thank you for inviting me, nice to meet you, Ted, see you Monday, Boss.
Josh tripped as he headed down the flagstone walk. After six or seven beers, he thought, he shouldn’t be driving, especially since the police loved to sit on Milestone Road picking off young drunk kids just like him. So he sat in his Jeep for a minute, searching through the console for his tin of Altoids, wondering if it was only his imagination or if the surprise appearance of the doctor had changed the night. Because after Dr. Whatshisface wandered away, Vicki clammed up, she burrowed into her chair and gave everyone the silent treatment. Everything had been going really well up until then, but the doctor’s visit seemed to cast a shadow over things, reminding Josh and everyone else that Vicki was sick. For whatever reason, Josh thought again about those Sundays on the beach with his parents. If Josh went to Eel Point tomorrow, there would be a different group of parents playing with their kids. His parents’ circle of friends had disbanded right after Josh’s mother died—not because of Janey Flynn’s suicide, maybe, but more likely because the kids were all older by then and asking to go to the big-surf beaches. But there was definitely a sense of loss, of an era passing.

We have to enjoy it now,
his mother said.
Before winter comes.

Those Sundays were over and done with, and hence at that moment they seemed unspeakably precious to Josh, as precious as his mother’s lost love. Josh felt this so fervently, and he’d had so much to drink, that he thought he might cry. But then there was a tap on the Jeep window, frightening Josh. He yelped and put his hand to his heart like a woman.

It was Melanie.

He rolled down the window. “Jesus,” he said. “You scared the shit out of me.”

She didn’t apologize or ask what he was still doing there. “Want to go for a walk?” she said.

“A walk?” he said, like she’d suggested a trip to outer space. It wasn’t particularly late, maybe ten o’clock, and he was, at this point, too intoxicated to drive to the end of the street, much less home. A walk wasn’t a terrible idea.

Josh looked at the house. It was dark, the door was shut tight.

“They’ve all gone to bed,” Melanie said.

He heard conspiracy in her voice and he knew right then that agreeing to a walk with Melanie meant agreeing to some whole huge other thing that he wasn’t sure he was ready for. She was ten years older than he was, she was pregnant, she was
married,
but overriding these compromising circumstances was the fact that the hair on his arms was standing up.
Listen. Observe. Absorb.
This was, he sensed, part of the story of his summer. He was supposed to walk with Melanie. He opened the car door and stepped out—and because there was no use pretending that it would happen any other way, he took Melanie’s hand and they headed down Shell Street.

She was his second choice. As Melanie and Josh meandered down the narrow streets of ’Sconset along the short picket fences, past the tiny, ancient, rose-covered cottages—many of them dark, but a few here or there with a light on and one place ablaze with the end of a party—Melanie forced herself to acknowledge this fact: Josh had wanted Brenda first. And it was only because of Brenda’s inexplicable devotion to her former student John Walsh that Melanie was now holding hands with Josh. Holding hands with Josh! The children’s babysitter! It was funny and ridiculous and impossible to comprehend now that it was actually happening—and yet this was what she had wanted. This was what she had secretly hoped for, never once allowing herself to believe that it would ever come to pass. But here they were. Josh seemed to know where they were going. He led her past the tennis club, then through an arched opening in a pruned hedge. Suddenly they were in front of . . . a church. The ’Sconset Chapel, a shingled Victorian with white trim and a bell tower.

“There’s a garden in the back,” Josh said. “With a bench. We can sit.”

“Okay,” Melanie said. It was the cutest church in the whole world—something out of a storybook—and yet, she hesitated. Churches meant weddings and weddings meant marriage and marriage led Melanie right back to thinking about Peter.

So it was that they sat on the bench in the church garden—with Josh holding Melanie from behind—while Melanie told Josh a little something about her marriage.

What she chose to tell him about was Peter’s office Christmas party the previous December. It had been in the city, all the way down on Elizabeth Street, at a restaurant called Public. Public was both hot and cool at the same time; it was so cool, they hadn’t even bothered to decorate for the holidays.

Strange place for a Christmas party,
Melanie murmured to Peter as she handed her fur wrap to a six-foot hostess.

Don’t start,
Peter had said.
I’d like to try and enjoy myself.

“Peter was good at making me feel like a shrew,” Melanie told Josh. She knew now that if she’d been even half paying attention, she would have seen the demise of her marriage at that party instead of floundering through five subsequent months and accidentally getting pregnant. She had gotten her period the day before the party, heralding failure for IVF round number five. It was another F on her body’s report card. Everyone in Peter’s office knew Peter and Melanie were trying to have children, hence Melanie expected an evening of inquiring glances and indirect questions. She didn’t want to be there and Peter knew it. Melanie went directly to the long slate bar for drinks; she ordered two glasses of champagne for herself and a Stoli and tonic for Peter. She drank one of the glasses of champagne straight down, then tried to locate Peter in the crowd. She got caught talking to Peter’s boss’s wife for a while, then she saw Vicki waving from a corner of the room. Vicki was wearing a slinky red top and gold, dangly earrings; her hair was up. She had been gorgeous before she got cancer—gorgeous and fun and kindhearted and the world’s greatest mother. She was the only person at the party, in the world, that Melanie could stand to be with. Melanie remembered excusing herself from the conversation with Cynthia Brenner and heading over to the safety of the space next to Vicki

Melanie told Vicki about failed round number five.
I’m being betrayed by my own body,
she said, and then she’d started to cry.

Vicki whisked her into the ladies’ room, where the two of them sat on a velvet divan and finished their drinks. When they emerged, they bumped into Peter. He was standing near the emergency exit—Melanie remembered his face bathed in the red light of the exit sign in an otherwise dark alcove—talking to Frances Digitt. Frances Digitt was dressed in the suit she’d worn to work, a dark suit with a short skirt—and over the suit she wore a fleece vest. She looked like an executive for
Field & Stream
.

Melanie thought nothing of the sight of Peter and Frances together. She was more concerned with having to answer Frances’s questions about the latest round of IVF. Frances showed enormous interest in the Patchens’ quest for a baby; her sister, Jojo, in California was going through the
exact same thing,
or so she claimed. And, too, Melanie felt embarrassed about being caught emerging from the ladies’ room with Vicki. This was one of the antisocial behaviors Peter always accused her of after an office party:
You snuck off to the bathroom with Vicki like the two of you were in junior high.

“Now, if I’d been paying attention,” Melanie said to Josh. “If I had seen past the end of my own nose . . .”

“He was having an affair with her?” Josh asked.

“Oh, yes,” Melanie said. “Yes, he was. He still is.”

“Still is? Even with . . .”

“He doesn’t know I’m pregnant.”

“He
doesn’t?
”

“Nope.”

“How come you haven’t told him?”

“Ugh. Because he doesn’t deserve to know.”

Josh squeezed Melanie. It was exactly what she needed—a person to console her, a young, handsome, male person. She twisted around so that she was facing him. He was looking very serious.

“What?” she said.

“This is weird,” Josh said. “Can we please just acknowledge how weird this is?”

“Why is it weird?” Melanie said. She knew why it was weird but she wanted to hear him say it.

“You’re married,” he said. “You’re pregnant. I know you’re pregnant but your own husband doesn’t even know.”

“You don’t have to worry about Peter,” she said.

“I’m not worried about Peter,” Josh said. “I’m worried about what everyone is going to think. Vicki. Ted.”

“They’re not going to think anything,” Melanie said. “Because they’re not going to know.”

“They’re not?”

“They’re not.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay.” He exhaled and seemed to relax a little bit. He was drunk, or nearly so. Whatever happened tonight happened
tonight
—and that would be the end of it.
Okay?
Melanie asked herself. Okay. She kissed him, and this seemed to catch him off-guard, though what were they doing on a bench in the church garden if they weren’t planning on kissing? It only took a second or two for Josh to get it, and then it was as if Melanie were a car he decided he wanted to drive after all. The kissing, which Melanie had intended to keep sweet and soft, turned into something faster and more urgent. Josh ran his hands up and down her back, then up and down her back inside her shirt, and Melanie, who hadn’t kissed a man other than Peter in nearly ten years, couldn’t keep herself from wondering if this utterly intoxicating foreignness was what Peter experienced when he was with Frances Digitt.

Josh’s youth was apparent in many ways. He was strong, forceful, intense. (With Peter, at the end, physical contact had been like work, like a duty—he complained of this and she’d felt it, too.) Josh fondled her tender breasts, he chewed on her earlobe and whispered into her ear, “God, you are so amazing.”
Amazing?
Melanie thought.
Me?

But when Josh moved his hands down over her stomach, he pulled back, like he was afraid he might burn himself. Melanie took hold of his hands and tried to place them on her midsection, but he resisted.

“It’s okay,” she whispered.

“It is?” he said. He allowed her to press his hands to her belly, but still she sensed reluctance. What was she doing, forcing a drunk college student to acknowledge her budding pregnancy?

“Relax,” she said. “It’s okay.” She should just let it go, she realized. Let him take what parts of her he wanted and choose to ignore the parts that lay outside his comfort zone—but if they were to go any further, Melanie wanted him to accept her as she was. Thirty-one years old. And pregnant.

It occurred to Melanie for a second that maybe Josh wasn’t mature enough to handle this, maybe he didn’t
want
to handle a woman like her, with baggage, emotional and physical. She was his second choice for a reason. How could she blame him for wanting Brenda, who was not only beautiful but also unencumbered? How could she blame him for wanting some easy girl his own age that he met at a bar or a bonfire instead?