Elin Hilderbrand - Barefoot - A Novel

She had lain facedown on the bed and waited until the banjo clock chiming in the living room announced two o’clock. Melanie had left her own cel phone in Connecticut specifical y so Peter couldn’t reach her and so she would be less tempted to cal him. Ha. She cal ed back. Peter, please call me. My numbers, once again, are . . .

She had cal ed four other times at half-hour intervals, and on the quarter hour, she cal ed him at their house, where her own voice greeted her.

“You have reached the Patchen residence. We are unable to take your cal . Please leave a message and your phone number and we wil cal you back.” Melanie left no message. She cal ed Peter’s cel phone and was shuttled immediately to voice mail.

Peter, it’s me. And then, in case he didn’t recognize her voice, she said, Melanie. Please call me at 508-555-6101. Or you can call me on this phone at . . . She cal ed the cel phone three more times and hung up each time.

Surprise! The phone rang. Melanie’s heart leapt. She studied the number on the display. It was an unfamiliar Manhattan number. The display said Walsh, J.

“Hel o?” Melanie said.

“Brindah?”

Deflation. Disappointment. Not Peter.

“No, I’m sorry. This isn’t Brenda.”

“Vicki?”

“No,” Melanie said. “This is Melanie. I’m a friend of Vicki’s.”

“Oar right.” The voice was beefily Australian. “Is Brindah available?”

Melanie listened. Out in the living room, the fight continued. Never met such a selfish . . . the world doesn’t revolve around . . . “She’s not available this very second.”

“No worries. Would you tel her Walsh cal ed?”

“I wil ,” Melanie said. She paused. Was this the student? He sounded rather old to be the student, but then again, Melanie knew nothing about the student except that he was, in fact, Brenda’s student. “Do you want to leave your number?”

“She has the number. Leaving it again would be pointless.”

Pointless, Melanie thought. She had left her number again and again, as though it were the lack of a number that was Peter’s problem.

“I’l have her cal you,” Melanie said in an authoritative voice, as though she had the power to make Brenda do a single thing. “I promise she wil cal you. You can count on me.”

Walsh laughed. “Wel , I thank you, Melanie.”

“You’re welcome,” Melanie said.

Walsh hung up. Melanie hung up. The cal had only lasted a minute and three seconds, but Melanie felt better. She felt less isolated somehow, knowing that this person Walsh was in New York City trying to reach Brenda. But she also felt pointlessly jealous. Men loved Brenda. Even the young stud policeman had been unable to take his eyes off of her. Melanie sucked in the stale air of her room. She should open the window. But instead she dialed Frances Digitt’s apartment. She didn’t even need to check her book for the number; she had it memorized. Frances Digitt answered on the second ring.

“Hel o?”

Melanie wasn’t worried about cal er ID since she was using Brenda’s phone. She hung on for a minute, listening for Peter. Was he there? What she heard was a dog barking (Frances Digitt had a chocolate Lab) and what sounded like the basebal game on TV. Dog, basebal . Of course. The irony of the situation was that Frances Digitt was not a woman who had ever threatened Melanie, or any of the other wives at Rutter, Higgens; she was the opposite of a bombshel . She was the girl who beat the boys in races in gym class, the one the boys forgot come seventh grade when al the other girls developed breasts. Frances was smal and boyish. She was, Melanie reflected, the only kind of woman who could survive the locker-room miasma of Peter’s office: She was the little sister, but smart as a whip, she knew the market, she did her research, she organized the office footbal pool and the brackets for March Madness. Everyone assumed she was a lesbian, but Melanie had seen it al along—she was too cute to be a lesbian! She had a certain recklessness that might translate to her being a dynamo in bed. It made Melanie sick just to think about it. She hung up, then pressed Brenda’s phone to her pounding heart. She dialed Frances Digitt’s number again.

“Hel o?” Now Frances Digitt sounded irked, and Melanie thought, You have no right to sound irked. If anyone should sound irked here, it’s me .

Thus prodded, she said, “Is Peter there?” It was more a question than a request for his presence on the phone, and Frances, predictably, paused. No need to ask who was cal ing, no need to play games, or so Frances ultimately decided, because she said, “Yes. He is.” She set the phone down a bit too firmly on what Melanie pictured as her cheap, shoddily assembled plastic-laminate-over-plywood side table from IKEA.

People in their twenties had no taste.

“Hel o?” Peter said, sounding wary.

“It’s me,” Melanie said. And then, in case he stil didn’t get it, she said, “Melanie.”

“Hi,” Peter said—and this was the syl able that squashed Melanie’s heart once and for al . He sounded uninspired, uninterested; he sounded caught. Melanie felt like his truant officer, his Sunday school teacher, his dentist.

“I’m on Nantucket,” she said.

“I know.”

“For the whole summer.”

“So the note said.”

“Do you want me to come home?” she asked.

“What kind of question is that?” Peter said.

It was the only question that mattered. She had left because she wanted time to think, but as it turned out, al she could think about was Peter.

She had wanted to get away, but now that she was away she wanted, more than anything, to be home. I’m pregnant, she thought. You have a child in this world and you don’t even know it. Keeping this from Peter was cruel, but was it any worse than what Peter was doing?

No! He was at Frances’s apartment. They were fucking! Melanie felt sick. She was going to . . .

“I have to hang up,” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

Melanie stared at the dead phone. She retched into the plastic-lined trash can at the side of her bed. Nothing came up. She was vomiting bad air, her own sadness, Peter’s rejection. Out in the living room, Brenda and Vicki were stil fighting. Something about a babysitter. Something about Brenda’s screenplay, a total sham, then something about their parents, that’s the way things always are with you! Then Melanie heard her name, or rather, what she heard was the absence of her name: a repeated “she,” a repeated “her.” It was Brenda in a stage whisper: You want her to take care of the kids and look what happened! I understand she has shit to deal with, but we all do. You’re sick! I refuse to spend the summer accommodating her! I just don’t get it! She’s one more person to take care of! Did you think of that before you invited her along? Did you?

Melanie staggered to her feet and began tossing her belongings into her suitcase. She was going home. It had been an impulsive decision to come, and now she realized that it was a mistake.

She tiptoed to the bathroom for her toothbrush. They were stil at it. It would be better for Brenda and Vicki to spend the summer alone, working through their issues. Melanie didn’t have a sister; she knew nothing about it, but it seemed like hard work.

Everything fit into her suitcase except for her straw hat. It was mangled from when she’d stepped on it at the beach, and she was tempted to leave it behind. It was a present from Peter last spring on her birthday; it was wide-brimmed and old-fashioned, but she loved it. It was her gardening hat. She put it on, tying the satin ribbon under her chin, then zipped her suitcase and looked around the room. This room was witness to her startling decision. She would go home and confront Peter in person. She would tel him she wanted an abortion.