Barefoot: A Novel

was a gifted housewife and mother. The Lyndon kitchen was, quite possibly, the happiest room in southeastern Pennsylvania—there was always classical music, fresh flowers, a bowl of ripe fruit, and something delicious about to come out of the oven. There was a blackboard in the kitchen where El en Lyndon wrote a quote each day, or a scrap of poem. Food for thought, she cal ed it. Everything had been so lovely in the Lyndon household, so cultivated, so right, that God had been easy to overlook, to take for granted.

But now, this summer, in the pearl-gray waiting room of the Oncology Unit of Nantucket Cottage Hospital, Brenda Lyndon prayed her sister would live. The irony of this did not escape her. When Brenda had prayed at al growing up in the Lyndon household—if she had prayed secretly, fervently

—then it was, without exception, that Vicki would die.

For years, Brenda and Vicki fought. There was screaming, scratching, spitting, and slamming doors. The girls fought about clothes, eyeliner, a Rick Springfield tape of Brenda’s that Vicki lent to her friend Amy, who mangled it. They fought over who sat where in the car, who got to watch which TV program, who used the telephone for how many cal s, for how many minutes. They fought over who col ected the most beach glass from their walks around the Jetties, who had more bacon on her BLT, who looked better in her hockey skirt. They fought because Brenda borrowed Vicki’s pink Fair Isle sweater without asking, and in retribution, Vicki ripped Brenda’s paper about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—

painstakingly typed on their father’s Smith Corona—in half. Brenda smacked Vicki, Vicki pul ed out a hank of Brenda’s hair. They were separated by their father, Vicki cal ed Brenda the c word from behind her bedroom door. El en Lyndon threatened boarding school. Honestly, she said, I don’t know where you girls learned such language.

They fought over grades, teachers, test scores, and boys—or, Brenda corrected herself, boy—because the only boy who had mattered to Brenda for the first thirty years of her life (until she met Walsh, real y) was Erik vanCott. Erik vanCott had been not only Brenda’s best friend, but her secret, unrequited love. However, he had always nurtured a thing for Vicki. The pain of this alone was enough to fuel Brenda’s fantasies of Vicki, dead. Car accident, botulism, heart attack, choking, stabbed in the heart on South Street by a man with a purple Mohawk.

Al through high school the girls openly claimed they hated each other, though Brenda suspected it was she who had said the words more often, because what reason would Vicki have had to hate Brenda? Brenda was, in Vicki’s opinion, pathetic. Lowly Worm, she cal ed her to be mean, a name cruel y borrowed from their favorite Richard Scarry book growing up. Lowly Worm, bookworm, nose always in a book, gobbling it up like a rotten apple.

Can I invite a friend? Vicki always asked their parents, no matter where they were going. I don’t want to be stuck with Lowly Worm.

I hate you, Brenda had thought. Then she wrote the words in her journal. Then she whispered them, then shouted them at the top of her lungs, I hate you! I wish you were dead!

Brenda shivered with guilt to think of it now. Cancer. Their relationship hadn’t been al bad. El en Lyndon, distraught by the girls’ open hostility, was constantly reminding them of how close they’d been when they were little. You two used to be such good friends. You used to fall asleep holding hands. Brenda cried the day Vicki left for kindergarten, and Vicki made Brenda a paper plate covered with foil stars. There had even been a moment or two of solidarity in high school, primarily against their parents, and, in one instance, against Erik vanCott.

When Brenda and Erik vanCott were juniors in high school, and Vicki was a senior, Erik asked Vicki to the junior prom. Vicki was entangled in an on-again / off-again relationship with her boyfriend Simon, who was a freshman at the University of Delaware. Vicki asked Simon for

“permission” to go to the junior prom with Erik “as a friend,” and Simon’s response was, Whatever floats your boat. Fine. Vicki and Erik were going to the junior prom together.

To say that Brenda was destroyed by this news would be an understatement. She had been asked to the junior prom by two boys, one decent-looking and moronic and the other just moronic. Brenda had said no to both, hoping that Erik would ask her out of pity, or a sense of duty, or for fun.

But now Brenda would be staying home while Vicki went to Brenda’s prom with Erik. Into this drama stepped El en, with her belief that al aches and pains—even romantic, sister-related ones—could be cured by a little Nantucket sand between the toes. When she got wind of the predicament and confirmed it with the sight of Brenda’s long face, she took the bottle of Nantucket sand that she kept on the windowsil and poured some into Brenda’s Bean Blucher moccasins.

“Put these on,” El en ordered. “You’l feel better.”

Brenda did as she was told, but this time, she swore to herself, she would not pretend that the sand treatment worked. She would not pretend that it was August and she was seven years old again, climbing the dunes of Great Point. Back then, the most important thing in her life had been her sea glass col ection and her Frances Hodgson Burnett books— A Little Princess, The Secret Garden.

“See?” El en said. “You feel better already. I can tel .”

“I do not.”

“Wel , you wil soon. Is the sand between your toes?”

As the night of the prom drew nearer, El en plotted a distraction. She wanted Brenda to go with her and Buzz to the country club’s annual Rites of Spring Dance, held the same night as the prom. Going to a different dance with her parents as her escorts was supposed to make Brenda feel better? Apparently so. El en asked if Brenda would prefer the salmon croquettes or the veal Oscar. When Brenda refused to answer, El en made a joke about Oscar the Grouch. The woman was a one-act in the theater of the absurd.

Brenda didn’t watch Vicki get ready and she did not get ready herself. She hid under the comforter of her bed wearing sweatpants, reading Vanity Fair (the novel). She was boycotting the country club dance, salmon croquettes, Maypole and al . She was going to stay home and read.

An hour before Erik was to arrive, Vicki knocked on Brenda’s bedroom door. Brenda, natural y, did not answer. Vicki, who had no sense of boundaries, tried the knob. The door was locked. Vicki scratched on the door with her fingernails, a noise that Brenda could not tolerate. She flung open the door.

“What the fuck?”

“I’m not going,” Vicki said. She was wearing her dress—a strapless black sheath—and her blond hair was in a