Barefoot: A Novel

a mentor and a role model. How many hours had they talked about Fleming Trainor—and Isaak Babel, Tolstoy, Solzhenitzyn, Dumas, Hugo, Whitman? How many times had they agreed there was no nobler pursuit than the study of literature, no better way to spend an evening than alone with Turgenev?

I was doing so well, Brenda thought. Until Walsh.

When Brenda thought of Aunt Liv now, the term “rol ing over in her grave” came to mind. So in some way this summer on Nantucket was about seeking atonement. Brenda wanted others to forgive and, more saliently, forget; she wanted to find some peace for her roiling conscience. Time to think. Time away. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, having Melanie around. Misery did love company.

Brenda checked behind her again. Now Vicki’s eyes were closed. She and Melanie were both asleep, and weirder stil , they were holding hands, like they were lovers. Brenda tightened her grip on the warm, doughy baby in her lap. She felt like a six-year-old, jealous and left out.

Victoria Lyndon Stowe had been making lists al her life. She attributed this to the fact that she was the firstborn, a classic type-A personality, something her parents did nothing but reinforce. Vicki is so organized, she never forgets a thing. As early as the fifth grade, Vicki wrote down what she wore to school each day so that she didn’t repeat an outfit. She made lists of her favorite movies and books. She made a list of what each friend gave her for her birthday, and she always wrote the thank-you notes in order so that she could check them off, boom, boom, boom, just like that. At Duke, there had been myriad lists—she was president of the Tri-Delts, the head of the Drama Society, and a campus tour guide, so there were lists for each of those things, and a separate list for her studies. Then, out in the real world, the lists multiplied. There were “single girl living and working in the city” lists, lists for her wedding to Ted Stowe, and final y the endless lists of a mother of young children . Schedule doctor’s appointment; return library books; save milk cartons for planting radishes; money for babysitter; playdate with Carson, Wheeler, Sam; call balloon man for birthday party; buy summer pajamas; oil the tricycle; have carpets cleaned in the playroom.

When Vicki was diagnosed with lung cancer, the lists came to a halt. This was her doctor’s suggestion, though Vicki initial y protested. Lists kept her world in order; they were a safety net that prevented important things from fal ing through. But Dr. Garcia, and then her husband, Ted, insisted.

No more lists. Let them go. If she forgot to pick up the dry cleaning, so what? She would undergo two months of intensive chemotherapy, and if the chemo worked as it was supposed to—shrinking her tumor to a resectable size—it would be fol owed by thoracic surgery in which they would remove her left lung and her hilar lymph nodes. Chemotherapy, surgery, survival—these things were too big for any list. And so, the lists had al been thrown away, except for the one Vicki kept in her head: the List of Things That No Longer Matter.

A brother and sister running across the street, late for their dentist appointments. A pretty skirt worn with the wrong shoes. Peterson’s Shorebirds. (There was a group of retired women in Darien who wandered the beach with this exact volume in hand. Vicki hated these women. She hated them for being so lucky—they didn’t have cancer, thus they had the luxury of spending precious minutes of their lives tracking an oystercatcher or a blue heron.)

Unfortunately for Brenda and Melanie, there were things about this summer on Nantucket that had initial y been placed on Vicki’s List of Things That No Longer Matter—such as whether Brenda and Melanie would get along, or whether al five of them would be comfortable in Aunt Liv’s summer cottage—but now it seemed like they might matter after al . Vicki’s so organized, she never forgets a thing. But the fact was, Vicki had forgotten the physical details of Aunt Liv’s cottage. When Vicki made the radical decision to come to Nantucket for the summer, her only thought had been of the comfort that Aunt Liv’s cottage, and Nantucket, would give her. Every summer growing up she had stayed in the cottage with her parents and Brenda and Aunt Liv. It was her favorite place, it defined summertime, and Vicki’s mother, El en Lyndon, had always sworn that any ailment in the world—physical or emotional—could be cured by a little Nantucket sand between your toes. Everyone else thought Vicki was crazy to go away for the summer, endangering herself even, but another thing that Vicki put on her List of Things That No Longer Matter was what everyone else thought.

Inviting Brenda to come along had been the obvious choice. Vicki needed help with the kids and getting back and forth to chemo, and Brenda, fired from Champion in a blaze of scandal with attendant legal trouble, was desperate to escape the city. It was summer, salvaged for both of them.

In the harrowing days fol owing Vicki’s diagnosis, they talked about reliving their memories from childhood: long beach days, catching fireflies, bike rides to Sesachacha Pond, corn on the cob, games of Monopoly and badminton, picking blackberries, twilight walks up to Sankaty Head Lighthouse, which spun its beacon like a cowboy with a wild lasso, picnics of bologna-and-potato-chip sandwiches, spending every day barefoot. It would be just the two of them, creating memories for Vicki’s own kids. It was a chance for Vicki to heal, for Brenda to regroup. They would fol ow their mother’s advice: Nantucket sand between the toes. It might cure anything: cancer, ruined careers, badly ended love affairs. Just the two of us, they said as they sat under the harsh hospital lights awaiting a second opinion. It would be a sister summer.

But how, real y, could Vicki leave her best friend behind in Darien—especial y with the monstrous news of Peter’s affair fol owed by an even bigger stunner (whispered, frantical y, at three in the morning over the telephone). Melanie was—after al this time, after so many costly and invasive procedures—pregnant!

Come to Nantucket, Vicki had said immediately, and without thinking (and without consulting Ted or Brenda).

Okay, Melanie had said just as quickly. I will.

As the taxi pul ed up in front of Aunt Liv’s cottage, Vicki feared she’d made a mistake. The house was smal er than Vicki remembered, a lot smal er. It was a shoe box; Blaine had friends with playhouses bigger than this. Had it shrunk? Vicki wondered. Because she remembered whole summers with her parents and Brenda and Aunt Liv, and the house had seemed, if not palatial, then at least comfortable.

“It’s darling,” Melanie said as she stepped out of the cab. “Oh, Vicki, it’s al that I imagined.”

Vicki unhinged the front gate. The landscapers had come, thank God. Melanie loved flowers. Pale pink New Dawn roses cascaded down a trel is, and the front beds had been planted with cosmos and blue delphiniums and fat, happy-faced zinnias. There were butterflies. The postage-stamp lawn had been recently mowed.

“Where’s the sandbox?” Blaine said. “Where’s the curly slide?”

Vicki produced a key from her purse and opened the front door, which was made from three rough-hewn planks and sported a brass scal op-shel knocker. The doorway was low. As Vicki stepped through, she thought of her husband, Ted, a hale and hearty six foot five. He had told her from the beginning that he was vehemently against her going to Nantucket. Did she real y want to spend al summer with her sister, with whom her relationship was spotty at best? And Melanie Patchen, who would be as needy as Vicki, if