Barefoot: A Novel

Blaine would skulk off and sit under the umbrel a, surreptitiously slipping rocks and shel s of chokable sizes into his brother’s playpen. Being with Blaine, Josh decided, was like being with a jealous and possessive girlfriend.

Babysitting was harder work than he thought it would be. It wasn’t the hundreds of times Josh had to throw the Wiffle bal ; it wasn’t the half hour side by side eating the sandwiches that Vicki had packed talking about Scooby-Doo; it wasn’t the fifty-seven items on Vicki’s nonlist list, none of which could be forgotten (such as: never leave the house without a pacifier, make sure the milk stays cold, Blaine must finish his raisins before he has a pudding, sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen!, medicine for Porter’s poison ivy to be applied every ninety minutes, shake the towels out, rinse off the Boogie board, stop by the market on the way home and pick up some Fig Newtons and some Bounce sheets, here’s the money . . .). Rather, what drained Josh’s energy was the emotional load of caring for two little people. From eight until one, five days a week, Blaine and Porter depended on Josh Flynn to keep them safe. Without him, they would dehydrate, drown, die. When viewed in this way, the job was really important.

Despite the sort of flukiness of his taking this job, the oddness of it, and the suspicious nature of its beginning (his lust, plain and simple, for Brenda), Josh felt himself becoming attached to the kids. Hero worship? He loved it. At some point during the second or third week, Blaine took Josh’s hand and said, You’re my best friend. And Josh felt his heart grow three sizes, just like the Grinch in Dr. Seuss. A little kid affecting him this way? No one at the airport would have believed it.

Tom Flynn occasional y asked over dinner, How’s the new job going?

Josh answered, Good. Fine. And left it at that. There was no use explaining to his father that he was making progress—he could now tel the difference between Porter’s cries (hungry, tired, pick- me-up-please) and he was teaching Blaine to keep his eye on the bal . He would never admit that he had memorized entire pages from Horton Hatches the Egg and Burt Dow, Deep-Water Man, which Blaine liked to read upon their return to the cottage in the minutes before Josh left for the day. He couldn’t articulate the tenderness he felt for these kids who were in danger of losing their mother. If Vicki died, they would be just like him—and although Josh would say he was wel adjusted by anyone’s standards, this made him sad.

Every time Josh saw Vicki, he thought, Don’t die. Please.

So with his father, he tried to stay noncommittal. The job is good. I like it. The kids are a hoot.

At this, Tom Flynn would nod, smile. He never asked what the kids’ names were or anything else about them, and Josh, for the first time in his life, didn’t feel compel ed to explain. His job, the routine, his relationship with the kids and the Three—these were things that belonged to him.

Josh was so immersed in his new life that seeing Didi in the parking lot of Nobadeer Beach came as a very rude surprise. Josh had taken to swimming nearly every day at six o’clock, after most of the crowds had packed up and gone home, after the heat had dissipated but the sun was stil mel ow and warm. It was a fine hour of his day, and Josh usual y toweled off and sat on the beach a few extra minutes watching the waves or tossing a piece of driftwood to someone else’s dog, feeling fortunate, and smart, for taking control of his summer. So on the day that he climbed the narrow, rickety stairs from the beach and spied Didi sitting on the bumper of his Jeep, he fil ed with an old, familiar dread. There was no use pretending this was a happy coincidence; she was waiting for him. Staking him out. Josh thought back to the previous summer and the summer before that—Didi had surprised him every once in a while in this same way, and back then he had counted himself lucky. But now he felt creeped out. If her eyes hadn’t been trained on him, he would have tried to sneak away.

As it was, he barely concealed his disgust. “Hey,” he said. He whipped his damp towel into the open back of his Jeep.

She made a noise. At first he hoped for a snicker, but no such luck. She was crying. “You don’t love me anymore,” she said. “You fucking hate me.”

“Didi—”

She sniffed and swiped at her nose with the heel of her palm. She was wearing her old cutoff jean shorts from high school, the ones with white strings dangling down her thighs, and a pink T-shirt that said Baby Girl in black cursive letters. She was barefoot; her toes, painted electric blue, dug into the dirty sand of the parking lot. Josh did a quick scan; he didn’t see Didi’s Jetta.

“How did you get here?” he said.

“Someone dropped me.”

“Someone?”

“Rob.”

Rob, her brother, who cruised around in a huge Ford F-350 with a shiny tool chest on the back and a bumper sticker that said I give rides for gas, grass, and ass. Rob was a carpenter with Dimmity Brothers, where Josh’s mother used to work. The island was way too smal . So Rob had dropped Didi off, and barefoot, no less; now Josh was trapped. He would be forced to give her a ride somewhere. She knew he was too nice a guy to strand her.

“Where’s your car?” he said.

“They took it.”

“Who took it?”

“The repo man.” New tears fel ; her mascara streaked. “It’s gone forever.”

Josh took a breath. “What about the money I lent you?”

“It wasn’t enough. I’m in trouble, Josh. Big trouble. I can’t make my rent, either. I’m going to get evicted and my parents have made it perfectly clear that they do not want me back at home.”

Right. After twenty years of overindulgence, Didi’s parents had moved on to tough love. Too little, too late, but Josh couldn’t blame them for not wanting their grown daughter back in their house. She would drain their liquor cabinet and run up their phone bil .

“You have a job,” Josh said. “I don’t get it.”

“I get paid shit,” Didi said. “It’s not like I’m a nurse.”