Barefoot: A Novel

“Stop it, Didi.”

“I’l have to clue him in.”

Josh tried not to let any emotion cross his face. He felt like he was onstage. Stil , he couldn’t let Didi get anywhere near his father. That would be a complete disaster.

“Whatever,” Josh said. “My father already thinks you’re wacko, Didi. Anything you try to tel him wil fal on deaf ears.”

“That’s a chance I’l have to take,” Didi said. She stood up and brushed off the seat of her shorts. “Give me five hundred bucks and I’l let this go. I won’t tel your father. I won’t tel anyone.”

“Get out of here, Didi.”

“You’l be sorry.”

“Why are you doing this?” Josh asked.

“You real y want to know?”

“Yes,” he said. “I real y want to know.”

Didi sidled up to him and tucked herself right under his ear. “Because I love you,” she whispered.

A few days later, the heat arrived. Real heat, and humidity—and as in the case of an unwelcome houseguest, no one knew how long it was staying.

Josh was glad he wasn’t working at the airport. How the kids could stand on that asphalt al day without feeling like they were sausages on a griddle, Josh had no idea. Even the beach wasn’t much of a reprieve. The sand was too hot for Blaine to walk across, so Josh had to carry Blaine in addition to his usual load. The three of them abandoned their routine and spent al morning swimming in the shal ows. The water was as warm as a bathtub, and strewn with tangles of seaweed. It cooled down a little at night, but there was no breeze. The humidity hung in the air in damp sheets, and the mosquitoes hatched. Josh’s Jeep had no air-conditioning, so he and Melanie made love on the beach, where they got eaten alive. They were sticky and sweaty, and their skin became breaded with sand.

“Yuck,” Melanie said. “This is when you want the Four Seasons.”

Josh’s house had no air-conditioning either, so Tom Flynn set up a big square fan at one end of the table that blew on them while they ate. Josh liked the fan; its noise took the place of conversation.

“Hot one,” Tom Flynn would say when he sat down. Josh was making cold things for dinner: Italian subs, tuna fish, sliced watermelon; the iceberg salad had never tasted so good.

“Hot one,” Josh agreed.

Maybe it was because of the noisy fan, but Tom Flynn did not bring up Didi’s visit at the table. Instead, he caught Josh in the morning, as Josh was getting out of the shower. It was Saturday, not a day Josh worked, and so he was in no particular hurry. Josh came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist to find Tom Flynn standing in the hal way. Waiting for him. His presence was so surprising, Josh sucked in his breath.

“Jesus, Dad. You scared me.”

“Do you have a minute?” Tom Flynn said. This was very much the rhetorical question, and Josh tensed. He knew what was coming, sort of.

“Can I get dressed?”

“By al means,” Tom Flynn said. “I’l be out on the deck.”

“The deck” was off Josh’s parents’ bedroom. Because it was on the second floor, it caught the breeze. It was by far the most comfortable place in the house in this kind of weather, and yet Josh never used the deck, and as far as Josh knew, his father never used it, either. In fact, it had been a year, maybe two, since Josh had set foot in his father’s bedroom at al . He wasn’t exactly surprised to find that it was stil the same—same dark-patterned bedspread that Josh and his father had bought at Sears in Hyannis shortly after Josh’s mother died, same neat-as- a-pin dresser, same lineup of shoes in the closet. A picture of Josh’s mother hung on the wal , a picture of her from high school, in which she was barely identifiable as the woman Josh had known. Stil , Josh stopped and looked at the picture on his way out to the deck.

Do you hate her? Vicki had asked.

Tom Flynn was already outside, his arms crossed on the railing, his head focused in the direction of Miacomet Pond and the eleventh hole of the golf course in the distance. He was wearing a white undershirt and a pair of belted khakis. He was barefoot. Josh couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his father barefoot. If Tom Flynn could be described in any way, it would be as tightly laced, buttoned up. But half dressed and without shoes, Tom Flynn seemed vulnerable, human. For this reason, Josh relaxed a little.

“Hot one,” Josh said, trying to be funny.

Tom Flynn nodded. “Your mother loved summer.”

Again, Josh tensed. His neck was so stiff, it felt like a steel column. Your mother loved summer: It was a perfectly innocuous statement, but Josh could count on one hand the number of times his mother had been mentioned in the past ten years.

“I know,” Josh said. “I remember.”

“Someone once suggested she had that seasonal mood disorder,” Tom Flynn said. “People suffer from it when they don’t get enough sunlight.”

He paused. Josh thought, Wel , she did kil herself in December. He pictured her on the beach with her glass of wine. We have to enjoy it now.

Before winter comes. “It’s probably a bunch of bul shit.”

“Probably,” Josh murmured.

Tom Flynn’s hair was damp and held teeth marks from his comb. He smel ed of aftershave and hair oil. The hair