Barefoot: A Novel

“I’l go with you,” Melanie said. “To help.”

“No, that’s al right,” Josh said. “We’l be okay.”

“No, real y,” Melanie said. “I don’t mind.”

“Wel , I . . . ,” Josh nearly said “do mind,” but he already had Ted and Brenda peering at him curiously. “Okay, fine,” he said. “Whatever.”

As they ambled down Shel Street, Josh felt supremely self-conscious. He had walked this way dozens of times with Blaine and Porter—and yet with Melanie at his side, he felt like this was his family: Blaine and Porter his sons, Melanie his pregnant wife. The people they passed in front of the

’Sconset Market easily could have believed this was the case—and what was worse, Josh realized, was that a part of him wanted this to be the case. Part of him wanted to marry Melanie and have children with her. And yet, he was angry with her, he’d been hurt by her, and he resented the way she’d just insinuated herself into his routine with the boys, giving him no chance to protest or assert his control. Hence, he said very little. But that didn’t stop Melanie from blundering ahead.

“I miss you,” she said.

He met this with silence. He was happy to hear her say it, but it wasn’t enough.

“Do you miss me?” she asked.

“Melanie,” he said.

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter.”

“I’m not going to do this al morning. This ‘I miss you, do you miss me’ thing. Why did you even come with us?”

“I wanted to get out of the house. It was tense.”

Josh eyed Blaine. Blaine was in one of his rare mel ow, reflective moods—Josh could tel he wasn’t listening with his usual acuity.

“Is it serious?” Josh said. “The headache?”

“It could be, I guess.”

“Oh,” he said.

They walked in silence al the way to the beach parking lot.

“Do not run ahead,” Josh said to Blaine. “We’l al go together.”

“I know,” Blaine said.

Melanie sniffed. “I want you to meet me here tonight.”

“No.”

“It’s only for another week.”

“I know, so what does it matter?”

“It matters,” she said. “I want to be with you.”

Josh looked at Blaine. His head seemed to be cocked at the perfect angle for listening; maybe this was Josh’s imagination, but Josh didn’t care.

He shook his head at Melanie. Porter babbled in Josh’s ear.

Later, when Blaine was playing two umbrel as down with Abby Brooks and Porter was halfway through his bottle on his way to la-la land, Melanie hoisted herself up out of the chair and plopped down next to Josh on his towel. He readied himself for another onslaught, but Melanie was quiet and as stil as a statue, and yet she was most definitely there; Josh could smel her hair and her skin. They sat side by side, staring at the ocean and the people in it, and it should have been tense, but surprisingly, it was okay. Coexisting, without touching or talking. Josh found himself afraid to move, afraid to break whatever spel had been temporarily cast over them. Maybe this was what Melanie meant by closure. It wasn’t the rapture he’d experienced al summer—the night at the Shimmo house came to mind, rol ing around with Melanie on those sheets, holding her close as they stood on the deck taking in the view—but it wasn’t bad or painful, either. He felt like he was suspended directly between the best minutes with Melanie and the worst, and there was something comforting in the neither-good-nor-bad of it. Ten days from today Josh would be beside his father in their Ford Explorer, driving back to Middlebury. He would see his friends, girls, people he hadn’t thought of in three months, and they would ask him, How was your summer? And al he knew for certain as he sat, sharing his towel with Melanie, was that there was no way he would ever be able to explain.

First, there was the dream. Vicki couldn’t remember it completely. It was a surgery dream, the doctors were going to perform Vicki’s surgery right then and there and not on September first as they had planned. There was urgency, secrecy—somehow Vicki was told, or perhaps she discerned, that what they were removing from her lungs wasn’t tumors at al , but rather, precious jewels. Huge rubies, emeralds, amethysts, sapphires—the biggest in the world, right there inside Vicki’s chest, embedded in the healthy tissue of Vicki’s lungs. The doctors weren’t doctors, they were thieves of some international acclaim; they were planning on doing the surgery, she learned, without any anesthetic. Vicki would die from the pain; they were planning on kil ing her.

She woke up. Not with a start, like in the movies, not sitting straight up in bed gasping for breath, but quietly. She opened her eyes and felt tears on her cheeks. Ted was beside her, breathing like a man on vacation. With a crook of her neck, Vicki saw both her children asleep on the mattress on the floor. It hurt to breathe. Vicki wondered what the inside of her chest would look like after the surgery. Would there be a big hole where her lung used to be?

The surgery, now that it was a reality, was newly terrifying. It has to be done, obviously, Dr. Garcia had said months ago. If you want to live.