Barefoot: A Novel

“But he wants you to come in,” Ted said. “He wants to take a look at you. He said it might not be a bad idea to have an MRI.”

“Why?” Vicki said.

“I don’t know.”

That was a big, fat lie. Metastasis to the brain, she thought. Dr. Alcott’s suspicions were correct; she could feel it. The cancer was a hand, fingers spreading through her brain, pressing down. The cancer was a spider, nesting in her gray matter. The pain, the pressure, the increased sensitivity to sound, to light. This was what a brain tumor felt like; she had heard someone in her cancer support group describe it, but she couldn’t remember who. Alan? No, Alan was dead. It wasn’t Alan. Vicki said, “I had too much wine last night.”

“One glass?” Ted said.

“Water,” Vicki said. “Magic words. Please. Thank you.”

The pil ow was lifted. Vicki smel ed Brenda—what was it? Noxema. Pina colada suntan lotion.

“You’re not making sense, Vick. Open your eyes.”

“I can’t.”

“Try.”

Vicki tried. The one eye opened. There was a very blurry Brenda. Behind her, a form Vicki knew to be Ted, but could just as easily have been an international thief, come to cut her open and take the jewels.

“You stole my Percocets,” Vicki said to Brenda.

“Yes,” Brenda said. “I’m sorry.”

“I need them,” Vicki said. “Now.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Ted said. “I’l take the kids.”

“I’l get you water,” Brenda said to Vicki. “Ice water with paper-thin slices of lemon, just how you like it.”

“No hospital,” Vicki said. “I’m never going back.”

Brenda and Ted left the room. The click of the door shutting was like a gunshot. Brenda said to Ted, “Her pupil was real y dilated. What do you suppose that means?”

There’s a spider on my brain, Vicki thought. Brenda was whispering, but her voice reverberated in Vicki’s head like she was back at CBGB at a B-52’s concert standing next to the chin-high speaker, which was blaring at a bazil ion decibels. Quiet!

“I have no idea,” Ted said.

The drugs helped, at least enough so that Vicki could limp along through the next few days. Dr. Alcott had prescribed only twenty Percocets, and Vicki found that by taking two pil s three times a day the pain was ratcheted down from unbearable to merely excruciating. Her left eye final y did open, though the lid was droopy, as though Vicki were a stroke victim, and both of her pupils were as big as manhole covers. Vicki wore her sunglasses whenever she could get away with it. She didn’t want Brenda or Ted to know that it felt like she was wearing a Mack truck tire around her neck, she didn’t want them to know it felt like someone was trying to pul her brain out through her eye socket, and she especial y didn’t want them to know about the hand squeezing water from the sponge of her brain or the spider nesting. She wasn’t going back to the hospital for any reason, she would not agree to an MRI, because she absolutely would not be able to handle the news of a metastasis to the brain.

And so, she carried on. They had a week left. Ted was trying to cram everything in at the last minute; he wanted to spend every waking second outside. He played tennis at the casino while Josh had the kids, and he took Vicki, Brenda, and Melanie to lunch at the Wauwinet, where Vicki spent the whole time trying to keep her head off the table. Ted wanted to go into town every night after dinner, to walk the docks and ogle the yachts

—and one evening, impulsively, he signed himself and Blaine up for a day of charter fishing, despite the fact that the captain eyed Blaine doubtful y and told Ted he would have to come prepared with a life jacket for the little guy. Ted bought a sixty-dol ar life jacket for Blaine at the Ship’s Chandlery, seconds later.

Whereas Vicki once would have staged a protest ( he’s too little, it’s not safe, a big waste of money, Ted ), now she stood mutely by. Ted didn’t ask her how she felt because he didn’t want to hear the answer. There were only seven days of summer left; surely Vicki could hang on, could act and pretend, until they got home.

Vicki cal ed Dr. Alcott, Mark, herself, for more drugs.

“Stil the headache?” he said.

“It’s not as bad as before,” she lied. “But we’re so busy, there’s so much going on, that . . .”

“Percocet is a narcotic,” Dr. Alcott said. “For extreme pain.”

“I’m in extreme pain,” Vicki said. “I qualify as a person who needs a narcotic, I promise.”

“I believe you,” Dr. Alcott said. “And that’s why I want you to come in.”

“I’m not coming in,” Vicki said.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Dr. Alcott said.

Oh, but there was. Vicki said, “Is there anything else I can take?”

Dr. Alcott sighed. Vicki felt like Blaine. Can I have a hamster when I’m six? A skateboard? Bubble gum? “I’l cal something in.”

Later, out of desperation, Vicki cal ed the pharmacy. “Yes,” the pharmacist said, in a way that could only be compared to the Angel Gabriel announcing the impending birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary, “Dr. Alcott cal ed in a prescription for Darvocet and six-hundred-mil igram Motrin.”