Barefoot: A Novel

“Be quiet,” Melanie said. “Vicki and the kids are sleeping.”

“Okay,” Peter whispered. He fol owed Melanie into the big room. She noticed he was toting an overnight bag. “This is a cute place. Not exactly what I imagined, but cute. Old-fashioned.”

“I love it,” Melanie said defensively, as if Peter had been insulting it. “It was built in eighteen oh- three. Vicki’s family has owned it for over a hundred years.”

“Wow,” Peter said. Because of the low ceilings, he was hunched in the shoulders. Melanie watched him take in the details of the room—

fireplace, bookshelves, coffee table, sofa, kitchen table, rotary phone, silver-threaded Formica, sixty- year-old appliances, braided rugs, ceiling beams, doors with glass knobs leading to various other rooms, presumably rooms as smal and precious as this one. He stood there, nodding, waiting maybe, for Melanie to invite him into her room.

“Where are you staying?” she asked.

“Oh,” he said as if she’d startled him. “Actual y, I haven’t booked a place.”

“It’s August,” Melanie said. “It would have been smart to make a reservation.”

“I thought I would stay here,” he said. “With you. I thought . . .”

Melanie cut him off with some high-pitched laughing. Laughing because she didn’t know what to say or how to feel. She had to pee.

“You’l excuse me one second?” she said.

“Uh, sure.”

She shut the door of the bathroom and locked it for good measure. I thought I would stay here. With you. Melanie pictured Frances Digitt with her cutesy-butch haircut and her lively blue eyes. Frances had always asked about Vicki’s in vitro in a confidential sotto voce. How’s it going? My sister, Jojo, in California, the exact same thing. Must be so tough . . . For months, Melanie had thought that Frances Digitt was genuinely sympathetic, but it was clear now that Frances Digitt hadn’t wanted Melanie to conceive at al ; most likely, her sister, Jojo, in California, was fictional. Frances Digitt skied the backcountry of the Canadian Rockies; she was dropped into remote mountain terrain by helicopter. She was a person who sought out danger—so, another woman’s husband? Sure, why not? Frances Digitt’s chocolate Lab was named Baby; she was one of these women whose dog was her child. The dog probably knew Peter by now, the dog probably licked his hands and rested his head in Peter’s lap and whined to be stroked between the eyes.

I thought I would stay here. With you.

Melanie flushed the toilet. When she stood, her legs were jel y. She staggered to the brown-spotted mirror and smiled at herself. She looked okay; she looked better than okay. Her fury was empowering—and she was furious! She was about to pitch a fit like a little kid. How dare you! You bastard! You asshole! No doubt Peter expected Melanie to happily invite him back into her bed. He was, after al , her husband and the father of her child.

Melanie didn’t care!

She washed her hands and face, patted them dry with a towel, and drank from the children’s bathroom cup. Vicki could wake up at any moment, and Brenda would come home. Melanie had to figure this out, and soon.

Peter was standing right where she’d left him. A giant in the dol house. The cottage was hot, she realized. He must have been sweltering in his suit.

“Would you like a drink?” she said.

“I’d love one.”

She poured two glasses of lemonade and added ice. She sucked hers down and poured herself more. She col apsed in a kitchen chair; she couldn’t stand up another second. Peter remained standing until she nodded to the chair across from hers. He took off his suit jacket, loosened his tie, and sat.

“How do you feel?” he said. “You look great.”

“What are you doing here, Peter?”

He rol ed up his shirtsleeves. There were things about him that she’d forgotten—the muscle tone of his forearms, for example, and his brushed-chrome Tag Heuer watch, which he always kept facedown and jangled on his wrist when he was nervous. She’d forgotten how smooth his skin was, practical y hairless; he only had to shave twice a week. And the glossy pink wetness of his lips and the faint scar on his nose, a half-inch white line with hash marks (he’d gotten the cut as a child in a bus accident). Melanie had touched that scar innumerable times, she had kissed it, licked it, batted it with her eyelashes. This was her husband. Before Frances Digitt, what had that meant? At first, they’d lived in Manhattan, they rode the subway, ate take-out food, went to movies and readings, worked out at the gym, volunteered at a soup kitchen and a shelter. They tried new restaurants and met in hotel bars for drinks with people from Peter’s work, people like Ted and Vicki. They had shopped for things: a new sofa, window treatments, a birthday present for Peter’s mother, who lived in Paris. They had plenty of money, and, more important, they had plenty of time. They spent hours reading the paper on Sundays and going for long walks in Central Park. Once they moved to Connecticut, they raked leaves and mowed the lawn, painted the powder room, and worked in the garden. But something was missing, a connection, a purpose to their union beyond the acquisition of things , the completion of tasks . Children! Melanie wanted children. That was when her marriage came into focus, or so it had seemed to Melanie. She and Peter embarked on a quest; they were united by their wanting. The gifts and the trips that arrived in place of a child—the orchids, the truffles, the oceanfront suite in Cabo—were meant to console Melanie, to make her happy. But they had only served to anger her. She was, in the final months, a woman who could not be made happy, except by one thing. The lovemaking became a job; Melanie did everything short of bringing her basal thermometer, calendar, and stopwatch to bed. Was it any wonder Peter had begun an affair with someone young, someone daring and fun, someone whose idea of a child weighed a hundred pounds and was covered with brown fur?

Yes, to Melanie it was a wonder. Peter was her husband. She’d assumed that meant they owned if not each other, then at least the relationship.

The marriage was something they had agreed to value, like a Ming vase; it was something they were entrusted