Elin Hilderbrand: Barefoot: A Novel

Josh stared at the book and tried to put it together in his mind with Scowling Sister’s panicked voice. Nope, didn’t make any sense. But Josh liked that. He closed the briefcase, locked it tight.

The briefcase sat on the passenger seat of his Jeep for the ride out to ’Sconset. Josh had lived on Nantucket his entire life. Because there was a smal year-round community, everyone had an identity, and Josh’s was this: good kid, smart kid, steady kid. His mother had kil ed herself while he was stil in elementary school, but Josh hadn’t derailed or self-destructed. In high school he studied hard enough to stay at the top of his class, he lettered in three sports, he was the senior class treasurer and did such a fine job running fund-raisers that he cul ed a budget surplus large enough to send the entire senior class to Boston the week before they graduated. Everyone thought he would become a doctor or a lawyer or a Wal Street banker, but Josh wanted to do something creative, something that would endure and have meaning. But nobody got it. Even Josh’s best friend, Zach Browning, had cocked his head and said, Do something creative? Like what, man? Paint someone’s portrait? Compose a fuckingsymphony?

Josh had kept a journal for years, in a series of spiral-bound notebooks that he stashed under his bed like Playboy magazines. They contained the usual stuff—his thoughts, snippets of dreams, song lyrics, dialogue from movies, passages from novels, the scores from every footbal , basketbal , and basebal game of his high school career, riffs on friends, girlfriends, teachers, and his father, memories of his mother, pages of descriptions of Nantucket and the places farther afield that he had traveled, ideas for stories he wanted to write someday. Now, thanks to three years under the tutelage (or “hypnosis,” as some would say) of Middlebury’s writer-in-residence, Chas Gorda, Josh knew that journal keeping was not only okay for a writer, but compulsory. In high school, it had seemed a little weird. Weren’t diaries for girls? His father had caught Josh a couple of times, opening Josh’s bedroom door without knocking the way he’d been wont to do in those days and asking, “What are you doing?”

“Writing.”

“Something for English?”

“No. Just writing. For me.” It had sounded odd, and Josh had felt embarrassed. He started locking his bedroom door.

Chas Gorda warned his students against being too “self-referential.” He was constantly reminding his class that no one wanted to read a short story about a col ege kid studying to be a writer. Josh understood this, but as he rol ed into the town of ’Sconset with the mysterious briefcase next to him, anticipating interaction with people he barely knew who didn’t know him, he couldn’t help feeling that this was a moment he could someday mine.

Maybe. Or maybe it would turn out to be a big nothing. The point, Chas Gorda had effectively hammered home, was that you had to be ready .

Nantucket was the dul est place in America to grow up. There was no city, no shopping mal , no McDonald’s, no arcades, no diners, no clubs, no place to hang out unless you were into two-hundred-year-old Quaker meetinghouses. And yet, Josh had always had a soft spot for ’Sconset. It was a true vil age, with a Main Street canopied by tal , deciduous trees. The “town” of ’Sconset consisted of a post office, a package store that sold beer, wine, and used paperback books, two quaint cafes, and a market where Josh’s mother used to take him for an ice cream cone once a summer. There was an old casino that now served as a tennis club. ’Sconset was a place from another age, Josh had always thought. People said it was “old money,” but that just meant that a long, long time ago someone had the five hundred dol ars and the good sense it took to buy a piece of land and a smal house. The people who lived in ’Sconset had always lived in ’Sconset; they drove twenty-five-year-old Jeep Wagoneers, kids rode Radio Flyer tricycles down streets paved with white shel s, and on a summer afternoon, the only three sounds you could hear were the waves of the town beach, the snap of the flag at the rotary, and the thwack of tennis bal s from the club. It was like something precious from a postcard, but it was real.

The address Scowling Sister had given Josh over the phone was Eleven Shel Street. The Jeep’s tires crackled over crushed clamshel s as he pul ed up in front of the house. It was smal , cute, typical of ’Sconset; it looked like the house where the Three Bears lived. Josh picked up the briefcase. He was official y nervous. The house had a gate with a funny latch, and while he was fumbling with it, the front door swung open and out came a woman wearing a pair of denim shorts and a green bikini top that shimmered like fish scales. It was . . . wel , Josh had to admit it took him a minute to get his eyes to focus on the woman’s face, and when he did, he was confused. It was Scowling Sister, but she was smiling. She was getting closer to him, and closer, and before Josh knew it, she was wrapping her arms around his neck, and he felt the press of her breasts against his grubby airport-issued polo shirt, and he smel ed her perfume and then he felt something unsettling happening—he was losing his grip on the briefcase. Or no, wait. She was prying it from his hand. She had it now.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, thank you.”

“Uh,” Josh said. He took a few steps back. His vision was splotchy and green—green from the plot of grass in the side yard, green from the shiny material cupping Scowling Sister’s breasts. Okay, now, for sure, the hair on his arms was standing up. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m Dr. Lyndon,” Scowling Sister said, offering her hand. “Brenda.”

“Josh Flynn.”

“You’re such a dol to bring this by,” Brenda said. She hugged the briefcase to her chest. “I thought it was gone forever.”

“No problem,” Josh said, though it was more of a problem than he imagined. He was thrown into a frenzy by the sight of Scowling Sister. Her hair, which had been loose at the airport, was now held in a bun by a pencil, and little pieces fel down around her neck. She was very pretty. And pretty old, he guessed. Maybe thirty. She was barefoot and her toes were dark pink; they looked like berries. Enough! he thought, and he may have actual y spoken the word because Brenda tilted her head and looked at him strangely, as if to say, Enough what?

“Do you want to come in?” she asked.

Chas Gorda would have encouraged Josh to say yes. One way to avoid being self-referential was to open your world up, meet new people.

Listen, observe, absorb. Josh had never seen the inside of one of these little cottages. He checked his watch. Five o’clock. Normal y, after work, he went for a swim at Nobadeer Beach, and sometimes he stopped by his old girlfriend Didi’s apartment. He and Didi had dated al through high school, but then she had stayed on the island and Josh had left, and now, three years later, you could real y tel the difference. Didi worked at the admitting desk at the hospital and al she talked about was her weight and Survivor. If she had found an old book nestled in Bubble Wrap, she would have snorted and chucked it in the Dumpster.

“Oh-kay,” he said. “Sure.”

“I’l make us some tea,” Brenda said. But she was distracted by a noise, a computerized version of “Für Elise.” Brenda pul ed a cel phone out of her back pocket and checked the display.

“Oh, God,” she said. “I am not going to answer that.” She smiled lamely at Josh, and he watched the enthusiasm drain from her face. They were two steps from the door when Brenda stopped. “Actual y, everyone in the house is asleep.”