Barefoot: A Novel

sirens or lights, no other people. It was the lack of other people that Tom Flynn chose to address first.

I told them to wait, Tom Flynn said. They’ll all pour in around suppertime.

Who? Josh said.

Josh didn’t remember any other exact words. His father got the story across somehow—he’d come home for lunch as always (this was back when he worked the six-to-three shift) and found that the stairs to the attic had been pul ed down. It was December; Tom Flynn thought his wife was up searching for Christmas decorations. He cal ed to her but got no answer. He climbed the attic stairs and found her dangling. Tom Flynn cut her down and drove her to the hospital, even though it was clear she was already dead. He’d never described to his son how his wife had looked or what she’d used to hang herself or how he’d felt as he cut her down. Was he shaking? Was he crying? These were things that Josh would never know; they were things he’d been protected from. Not knowing if his mother’s face was discolored, or if her head had hung at a funny angle because her neck had snapped, kept Josh from having to relay these details to others.

“She didn’t leave a note,” Josh said. “So I’l never know why she did it.”

“Do you hate her?” Vicki asked.

“No,” Josh said. “But if you stop going to chemo today and your cancer gets worse and you die and leave Blaine and Porter motherless, I’l hate you.”

Again, the noise, the laugh or the hiccup.

“No, you won’t,” Vicki said. But stil , she stood up.

Melanie threw open the lower-left kitchen cabinet, yanked out the only decent frying pan in the house, and slammed it against the largest burner of the electric stove. She was furious!

For the first time in nearly two months she had woken up early, feeling not only okay but good. She had energy!—and she rifled through her dresser for her exercise clothes. She power walked through the misty, deserted streets of early morning ’Sconset—al the way to the town beach and back—swinging her arms, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, feeling like she had final y, final y turned a corner. Al the pregnancy books described how healthy and vibrant and capable a woman felt while carrying a child, and now, today, Melanie understood. Gone were the sickness and the fatigue—she had blossomed.

But then she turned a literal corner—from New Street onto Shel Street. She was on her way home, her heart pumping, her blood surging in a way she had missed; she was actual y hungry, craving protein, a couple of eggs over easy on buttery toast. She was so busy thinking of breaking the bright yel ow yolks of the eggs and of the health of the fetus inside of her, grateful for exercise and nourishment, that what she saw taking place down the street inside the white picket fence of Number Eleven didn’t, at first, register. What Melanie witnessed was two people kissing, then embracing. Melanie recognized the people, of course, at least she recognized them separately, but together, as a couple, they made no sense. It was Josh and Brenda.

Melanie stopped in her tracks. She ducked down behind the neighbor’s Peugeot, which was parked in the street. She could hear Brenda’s voice, though not her actual words. Whatever Brenda said was beside the point; Melanie had seen Brenda and Josh kissing, she had watched Josh grab Brenda’s hips. It was an awful scene, worse somehow than the vision of Peter lying with Frances Digitt in Frances’s early-nineties-model Japanese futon on sheets covered with brown dog hair. At that moment, Peter and Frances seemed very far away, whereas this betrayal by Josh and Brenda was immediate; it was a betrayal in Melanie’s new life, her safe summer life.

Forget the sense of wel -being. Melanie was going to be sick. She retched by the Peugeot’s front tire. Jealousy and anger bubbled up from the pit of her stomach. It was gross, disgusting, Brenda and Josh together. It wasn’t fair, Melanie thought. She spat at the ground, her knees wobbled.

She raised her head, ready to catch them in the act, but the front yard was empty. They were gone.

Melanie took a shorter walk to the ’Sconset Market for a Gatorade, al the time talking to herself in her mind, and occasional y muttering a word or two out loud like a crazy person. Utterly revolting. Unacceptable. Josh was twenty-two. He was the babysitter. And yet there they’d been, in the front yard, like a couple of horny teen-agers, Brenda stil in her stripper’s excuse for a nightgown. Melanie gulped the Gatorade and walked slowly back to the house, nurturing her hatred of Brenda. Brenda was a . . . slut, she was easy, she was after every man she met, she targeted them for sport, like a shameless game hunter poaching elephants for ivory or tigers for rugs. She had no scruples, she’d slept with her student, the Australian who had phoned. Next thing they al knew, she’d be after Ted Stowe—that was only logical with Vicki so sick—Brenda would sleep with her own brother-in-law.

“Arrumph,” Melanie said. She walked down a side street in search of her favorite pocket garden. Brenda was as treacherous as Frances Digitt, as deficient in honor and integrity. What did she care if she slept with somebody else’s husband? Melanie gazed at the neat patch of iris and bachelor’s button. She closed her eyes and saw Brenda and Josh kissing.

Josh.

By the time Melanie got back to the house, the Yukon was gone, which meant Brenda had taken Vicki to chemo. Melanie stormed into the house, flinging open the screen door. Her body was stil craving the eggs, and thus Melanie went rip-roaring through the kitchen slamming doors and surfaces, thinking, Bitch, slut, bitch. It felt like her hair was standing on end, like her skin was going to blister and pop.

“Are you okay?”

Melanie whipped around. Josh had emerged from Vicki’s bedroom holding the baby. Blaine stood next to Josh, a mini-Josh, as he now emulated Josh’s every word and gesture; his face held the same look of baffled interest. Melanie swil ed the last of her Gatorade and pitched the empty bottle, with no smal amount of force, into the kitchen trash.

“I’m fine, ” she said, making sure the word sounded as far from its actual meaning as possible. She turned her back on them. On the stove, the empty frying pan started to smoke. She dropped a pat of butter into the pan then pul ed eggs out of the fridge, flinging the door open and shut so violently that the poor old fridge shuddered. Real y, it was impossible to hate Josh, he was infuriatingly adorable, standing there with the kids. The boys loved him, he loved the boys, it made him irresistible. Damn it! This was awful. Melanie was jealous, as jealous as she’d ever been in her life.

She wanted Josh to like her, she wanted Josh to kiss her in the front yard. She wanted Josh to look at her the way he looked at Brenda. Never mind that he was so young. He was an adult, sort of, a young man, kindhearted and wel raised, as quality a person as a woman could ask for, and with the way Melanie was feeling, she might have been only fourteen herself. I have a crush on