Barefoot: A Novel

“Catch a fish, Josh,” Blaine said. “Are you going to catch a fish?”

Josh hesitated. The rod felt sleek and expensive in his hand; it was the Maserati of surf-casting rods. Ted probably thought Josh was nervous about handling such fine equipment. Josh was nervous—but only because anyone who lived here knew that you could catch a bluefish with a hickory stick and a piece of string. Josh was nervous because he didn’t want to show Ted up by catching the first fish. And so, he stood there with the rod in his hands.

“Do you need help?” Ted asked.

“Yeah,” Josh said. “This rod is like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

Ted beamed and reeled his line in. Nothing.

“Here,” he said. “Let me show you.” He took Josh’s rod. “Hey, would you like another beer?”

Brenda had promised Vicki she would tend to al the details of the picnic, but she was happy when Vicki’s old desire to be 100 percent in charge resurfaced, like something that washed up on the beach. Vicki laid the blanket down ( No sandy feet on the blanket, please! ) and unfolded chairs.

She set out the boxed dinners, plastic utensils, and a tal stack of napkins, which she weighted down with a rock. She poured a glass of wine for Brenda, a smal one for herself, and she cracked open a ginger ale for Melanie. She sank into a chair looking almost relaxed, but then she stood again, rummaged through the back of the Yukon, and returned with two citronel a tiki torches, which she stabbed into the sand and lit up. She sank into her chair again. Her chest was heaving; she was winded by just that much activity, but the chemo was clearly working, Brenda thought, because this was more than she’d done in weeks.

Brenda and Vicki and Melanie touched glasses, and as they did so, Brenda heard everything click into place. The chemo was shrinking Vicki’s tumor; she was getting better. Melanie had shed her woe-is-me attitude, she’d stopped vomiting and moaning about her marital troubles; she acted, at least half the time, like a nice, normal human being. And Brenda had written the first scene of her screenplay the previous morning, while drinking a decadent Milky Way coffee at the Even Keel Cafe. It was the scene where Calvin Dare and Thomas Beech meet up in front of the tavern, with nothing more in common than two people parking next to each other outside of a Chili’s restaurant—and lightning strikes and Calvin Dare’s horse bucks and whinnies and kicks Thomas Beech between the eyes. Men pour out of the tavern to tend to Beech—one of them a doctor, who proclaims Beech dead. The scene was five pages long, which meant, according to the Screenwriter’s Bible, it would last five minutes, and Brenda thought it was pretty good.

She tried to analyze the day’s success. Maybe she should abandon the beach and do al of her work at the Even Keel Cafe with the aid of a Milky Way coffee. Maybe it was the community nature of the cafe that had helped—there were other people sitting in the dappled shade of the cafe’s back deck who were reading the paper, sketching, breezing through paperback novels, typing on their laptops. Maybe Brenda—like Hemingway, like Dylan Thomas— would do her best work in public places. However, deep down, Brenda suspected that it was the stolen nature of those two hours that transformed them. She was supposed to be somewhere else. She was supposed to be in the waiting room of the hospital’s Oncology Unit praying for her sister’s recovery. She had set aside those two hours— three, if you counted the driving—to be of service to her sister. The fact that Vicki had unexpectedly granted her leave gave those two hours a rarefied quality. What Brenda had thought was, I’d better not waste them.

And, like magic, the words had come. The pages had fil ed.

As happy as Brenda was about writing the first pages of her screenplay, she stil felt a twinge of guilt about abandoning Vicki. True, there was no reason for Brenda to sit in the waiting room while Vicki received her treatment; however, not being there felt like she was shirking her duties.

Yesterday was the one and only time. She would never leave Vicki again.

She was proud of herself, however, for pul ing together this beach picnic. The sun hovered over the water, there was a warm breeze, the waves washed over the sand in a rhythmic, soothing way. Down the beach, Ted and Josh and Blaine, bathed in the last rays of golden sunlight, cast their lines out into the water. They were like characters from a storybook. If this only lasted an hour or two, Brenda thought, that was okay. Walsh loved to point out the way Americans rushed from one thing to another. For people like Brenda, he said, happiness was always just around the bend; he accused her of being incapable of sitting back and enjoying a moment. And he was right. Now, Brenda tried to push every thought out of her mind except: Please let Vicki enjoy this.

There was shouting from down the beach. Brenda leaned forward in her chair. Someone had caught a fish.

When Josh felt a tug on his line, his gut reaction was excitement. Then, he thought, Oh, shit. He had no choice but to reel the fish in, even though Ted and Blaine hadn’t yet realized he had a bite. Oh, wel , Josh thought. It was just a fish. It wasn’t as though God had tapped Josh on the shoulder and declared him the superior man. As Josh’s line tightened, he heard Ted shout, “Whoa! Josh has something! Look, buddy, Josh has a bite!” Ted didn’t sound angry or jealous at al ; he sounded as excited as a little kid.

Blaine jumped up and down. “Pul it in, Josh! Pul it in!”

Josh cranked the reel; the expensive rod bent like a rainbow, and Josh thought, Lord, please do not let the rod snap. No sooner had he thought this than the fish rose from the water, twisting and wriggling. Bluefish. Big one.

Ted was on top of the fish as soon as it hit the sand. He stood on the flapping tail and pul ed a tape measure from his shorts pocket. “Thirty-four inches,” he said. Josh wondered if this was the start of some sort of competition. Would Ted now try to catch a bigger fish? Would they make this about size in some pseudo-Freudian way? But then Ted held the end of the tape measure and dropped the spool end like a yo-yo. “They threw this in for free at the tackle shop,” he said. He yanked the lure from the fish’s mouth with a pair of pliers. He was deft and confident in al of this, which was a good thing because bluefish have a mean mouthful of teeth and Josh had seen plenty of people, including his father, get bitten.

“Look at that, buddy,” Ted said to Blaine. He sounded as proud as if he’d caught it himself.

Blaine watched the fish do a dance across the sand. Ted slapped Josh on the back, and Josh felt the offer of another, celebratory beer on its way.

“Are we going to keep it?” Blaine asked. “Are we going to eat it?”

“No,” Ted said. He picked the fish up by its tail. “We’re throwing her back. We’re going to let her live.”

Vicki drank her three sips of wine and poured herself three more sips. Ted, Blaine, and Josh sauntered toward