Barefoot: A Novel

kissing one of your students at a bar. But that night in the Cupping Room had been nearly two months earlier, and if Bil Franklin hadn’t said anything about it to Suzanne Atela yet, he might be planning to keep it under his hat. After al , he had no reason to sting Brenda. He didn’t even know her. There were only five weeks left in the semester, anyway. The other day Walsh had told Brenda he wanted to take her back to Fremantle and introduce her to his mother, and Brenda had gone so far as to check flights from New York to Perth on the Internet. Brenda thought about their names, side by side at the top of his paper. John Walsh /Dr. Brenda Lyndon. He was a col ege sophomore. He was her student. Romantic or sexual relationships are forbidden between a faculty member and a student.

“Brindah,” he cal ed out.

Her mind was a muddy puddle.

. . . and will result in disciplinary action.

“Brindah?”

She couldn’t come up with an answer.

I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop.

I can’t stop.

Brenda didn’t stop. Her relationship with Walsh had too much momentum. And so, they continued to see each other, but only at Brenda’s apartment. Brenda was firm in this. The beautiful weather beckoned; Walsh wanted to be outside. He wanted to walk with Brenda, lie in the grass with Brenda. It was against his nature to be cooped up in her apartment, where the windows didn’t even open. But no, sorry—Brenda said no. She wouldn’t budge.

In class, Brenda was increasingly businesslike, serious, professional. She was young, but that didn’t mean she was frivolous! That didn’t mean she would fly in the face of the strictest university rule and sleep with one of her students!

Brenda was consumed with anxiety, but she had no one to talk about it with. She couldn’t tel her parents or Vicki and she hadn’t spoken to Erik vanCott since their dinner at Craft. The bad news of Erik marrying Noel seemed very minor when compared to the bad news of Brenda losing her job and watching her good name go up in flames. Besides, what would she possibly say? I’m sleeping with one of my students. When phrased like that, which was to say, bluntly, without nuance or detail, it sounded tawdry and lecherous. It was the kind of secret that Brenda would have been ashamed to tel her therapist, if she had a therapist. The only person Brenda could vent to was Walsh himself, and he was growing weary of it.

Brenda yammered on about getting caught, getting fired, what if, God forbid . . . until the words clinked like worthless coins. Relax, he said. You’re acting like such an American. Obsessing like this.

Brenda’s class read Anne Lamott’s Crooked Little Heart, which was the book Amrita the brownnoser had chosen to write her midterm paper on, and yet Amrita’s customary seat, to Brenda’s right, was vacant first on Tuesday and then again on Thursday.

“Does anyone know where Amrita is?” Brenda asked.

There was throat-clearing, a noise that sounded like a sneeze but could just as easily have been a snicker from one of the Rebeccas, a bunch of downcast eyes. Brenda got a funny vibe, but she couldn’t pinpoint it and no one in the class was going to talk. Brenda scribbled, Call Amrita! at the top of her notes.

Spring break arrived. Walsh had rugby games in Van Cortlandt Park, he wanted Brenda to come watch him, they could picnic afterward, but she refused. I can’t. Someone will see me. Someone will figure it out. Erik vanCott cal ed and left a message, asking Brenda to be the best man in his wedding. Brenda thought he was kidding, but then he left another message. Best man? she thought. Would she have to stand on the altar looking like Victor Victoria while “marriage material” Noel looked stunning in silk shantung and tul e? For her vacation, Brenda took the train up to Darien to see Vicki, Ted, and the kids. Vicki wasn’t feeling wel ; she’d been to the hospital for tests. Walking pneumonia, they thought it was. Brenda said, Ugh, are you contagious? She washed her hands, she kept a safe distance. She asked Vicki about being Erik vanCott’s best man. Tuxedo? she said. Black dress, Vicki said. But nothing too sexy. You’re not allowed to upstage the bride. One night, when Ted was out with clients, Brenda nearly confessed to Vicki about Walsh, but she held her tongue. Instead, they talked about Nantucket. Would they go, together, separately, when would they go, how long would they stay? Vicki said, I have a family, Bren. I have to plan. Brenda said, Just let me get through this semester.

After spring break, Brenda started holding class outside, in the quad, under a spindly, urban tree. She was thinking of summer, of time on Nantucket, she was thinking: Walsh wants to spend time with me outside, here it is. She also wanted to keep a low profile in the department. If she wasn’t there, she reasoned, nothing bad could happen.

She left three messages for Amrita—two on Amrita’s cel phone and one at Amrita’s apartment, where a roommate promised to pass the message along. Had Amrita dropped the class? That seemed so unlikely that Brenda figured she must have contracted mono, or had to fly back to India to bury a dead grandmother. Students like Amrita didn’t drop a class they were acing.

And then, one day, two weeks before final papers were due, two weeks before Brenda and Walsh were in the clear, Brenda found a note taped to her office door. SEE ME! S.A.

Brenda removed the note and held it in her hand. Her hand was steady. She wasn’t nervous. Suzanne Atela could want a hundred things. The semester was ending; there was next year to consider. There had been talk of Brenda picking up another section. It was either that or some other administrative thing. Brenda wasn’t nervous or worried.

Suzanne Atela wasn’t in her office. Brenda checked with Mrs. Pencaldron, who without a word uncapped her Montblanc pen and elegantly scripted a phone number on a peach-colored index card.

“She wants me to cal her?” Brenda said.

Terse nod. Mrs. Pencaldron picked up her own phone and handed the receiver to Brenda.

Suzanne Atela wanted to meet at Feed Your Head, in the student union. Brenda agreed, handed the phone back to Mrs. Pencaldron, stifled a groan. She wasn’t nervous or worried; she was merely inconvenienced. She was supposed to meet Walsh at her apartment with take-out Indian food at one. In the stairwel , she cal ed Walsh to