Barefoot: A Novel

three drinks had taken custody of her sense of balance. Benny Taylor drove away; Brenda walked as steadily as she could toward Walsh, who was smiling. He was as dashing as the hero in an old Western. Strong, masculine, Australian. Brenda tried to be cool, but she found it impossible to wipe the stupid grin off her face.

“Hi,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

John Walsh became her lover. He was her lover for days, weeks, months. It was exhilarating, delicious, and a holy, guarded secret. They never spoke on university property except during class, and Walsh stopped hanging around afterward. He cal ed her cel phone—two rings then a hang-up was his signal—and they met at her apartment. If they couldn’t wait the forty-five minutes it would take to get across town, they met in Riverside Park, where they kissed behind a stand of trees. They hunkered down in Brenda’s apartment through one blizzard, eating scrambled eggs, drinking red wine, making love, watching old Australian movies, like Breaker Morant. John Walsh told Brenda things—about a girl he got pregnant in London who had an abortion, about his grandfather who worked in the interior of Western Australia shearing sheep. He told her about his travels around the world. Brenda talked about her life growing up in Pennsylvania, her parents, Vicki, summers in Nantucket with Aunt Liv, col ege, graduate school, Fleming Trainor. It was dul in comparison, but Walsh made her life seem fascinating. He asked the right questions, he listened to the answers, he was emotional y available and mature. What Brenda loved most about Walsh was his gravity. He wasn’t afraid of serious topics; he wasn’t afraid to look inside himself. Maybe that was how Australians were raised, or maybe it was because of his travels, but Brenda didn’t know another man like this. Even Erik, even Ted, even her father. Ask them to talk about their feelings and they looked at her like she was asking them to shop for tampons.

During the second blizzard that winter, Brenda and Walsh bundled up so completely that no one would ever recognize them and they went sledding in Central Park. As the days passed, they got braver. They went to the movies (Brenda wore a basebal hat and sunglasses. She did not let Walsh hold her hand until the theater went dark). They went to dinner. They had drinks out, they went dancing. They never once saw anyone they knew.

At some point along the way, Brenda stopped thinking of Walsh as her student. He was her lover. He was her friend. But then came the Monday night that changed everything. Brenda was home alone, grading the midterm papers. She had put this off for as long as possible, and the girl-women in the class had started to complain; Brenda had promised the class their papers back the fol owing morning and she had one paper yet to read. To his credit, Walsh hadn’t asked her about it. Possibly he’d forgotten it was her job to grade it. It was with great trepidation that she picked up the paper with their names typed together at the top— John Walsh / Dr. Brenda Lyndon—and read.

What was she afraid of? She was afraid the paper would be bad—poorly organized, poorly argued, with typos and misspel ings and comma splices. She was scared he would write “different than” rather than “different from.” She was scared he would regurgitate what she’d said in class rather than think for himself (as one of the Rebeccas did, earning a flat C); she was scared he would accidental y quote somebody without noting a source. The paper was a potential relationship-ender—not only because he might get angry at a lousy grade, but because Brenda would not be able to continue seeing him if she had any qualms about his intel igence.

Nearly everyone else in the class chose to compare Calvin Dare to one of the characters from the books on their reading list. Not Walsh. He picked a book that wasn’t on the reading list, a book Brenda had never read, a novel cal ed The Riders by a Western Australian named Tim Winton. Walsh’s paper targeted what he cal ed the “identity of loss”—or how losing something or someone in one’s life caused a change in that person’s identity. In The Innocent Impostor, when Calvin Dare’s horse kil s Thomas Beech, Dare loses his confidence in his life path. The event shakes him to the core and causes him to relinquish his own dreams and ambitions and take up those of Beech. In The Riders, the main character, Scul y, has lost his wife—quite literal y lost her. She flies to Ireland with their daughter, but mysteriously, only the daughter gets off the plane. The Riders was a search for Scul y’s wife but it was also a study of how one man’s identity changes because of this loss. Brenda was riveted. Walsh presented his thesis statement clearly in the first three pages, he backed it up with ten pages of textual support from both novels, and he ended, bril iantly, by citing other instances of the identity of loss across a wide scope of literature. It could be found, Walsh said, everywhere from Huckleberry Finn to Beloved.

Brenda put the paper down, stunned. For a point of reference, she reread Amrita’s paper (which she had given an A) and then she read Walsh’s paper again. Walsh’s paper was different, it was original, as fresh and sun- drenched as the country he came from, but with a depth that could only come with age and experience. She gave Walsh an A+. Then she worried. She was giving Walsh the highest grade in the class. Was that fair? His paper was the best. Could she prove it? It was a subjective judgment. Would anyone suspect? Was the A+ in any way related to the fact that John Walsh made love to his professor on this very couch, bringing her enough pleasure that she cried out?

Brenda wrote the grade at the top of the paper in very light pencil, in case she changed her mind. But in the end, she couldn’t bring herself to change the grade: He had earned it, fair and square. Stil , she worried. She worried she was fal ing in love.

By the time Brenda made it back to the oncology waiting room, her concentration was shot. Amrita’s accusations (true) blended with Didi’s accusations (untrue). You’re fucking Josh. Admit it. Brenda packed up her screenplay and decided not to tel anyone about what had transpired in the ladies’ room.

A few seconds later, Vicki came down the hal , escorted by Dr. Alcott. Brenda blinked. Was that her sister, real y? It looked like Vicki had shrunk

—she seemed to have lost height as wel as weight. She was as frail as Aunt Liv had been in the month before she died (and Aunt Liv had been petite anyway, eighty-five pounds in her wool overcoat). Vicki was wearing the Louis Vuitton scarf on her head, a pair of white shorts that sat on her hips, a pink tank top that made it seem like she had no breasts at al , and a navy cashmere zip-up hooded sweater because with a fever of 104, she was freezing. Brenda’s mind had been far away in both time and place, but in a flash she resumed her attitude of urgent, incessant prayer.

Dear Lord, please, please, please, please, please . . .

Dr. Alcott handed Vicki over. The waiting room was empty, but stil he lowered his voice. “We’ve given her a shot of Neupogen, and she’l have to be brought in tomorrow and the fol owing day for shots. That should get her counts to rise. I’m also prescribing antibiotics, and Tylenol to get her fever down. She should be feeling better in a few days. We’l try again with a reduced dose of the chemo when her counts are up.” He looked at Vicki. “Okay?”

She shivered. “Okay.”

Brenda clenched Vicki’s arm. “Is there anything else?”

“She should rest,” Dr. Alcott said. “I don’t know about any more beach picnics.”