Elin Hilderbrand - Barefoot - A Novel

“Because it’s too much,” Brenda said. “I wouldn’t have cal ed you, but . . .”

“Oh, God, darling, of course you were right to cal me. Half the reason why I’m not healing as I should is because of the stress of your sister. I’m distracted.” El en Lyndon lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling. “This used to be Aunt Liv’s room.”

“I know. I remember.”

“Liv was a strong woman. Stronger than your grandmother, even. She was a great role model for you and your sister.”

“Yes,” Brenda said. And if she’s been watching me the past year, she’s dumbfounded.

“I know they think Vicki might have a brain tumor,” El en said. “Nobody said that to me, but I know that’s what the doctors think.”

“I guess it’s a possibility.”

El en took a deep breath. “You know, as a mother, you’re never ready to hear that your child is sick. It is . . . the worst news.” She gazed at Brenda. “There’s no way for you to understand. Not yet. Not until you have your own children. And even then, I hope you never experience it.” El en Lyndon relaxed into the bed a little and closed her eyes. “But you know, it feels good just to be here. In this room, especial y. This was the nursery for your grandmother and Aunt Liv. The cradle of strong women. I can feel their strength, can’t you?”

“Sort of,” Brenda lied. In truth, Brenda felt weak and tired. The conversation with Walsh hurt, like a scrape on her knee, every time she thought about it.

El en Lyndon shifted her knee a little, and in another moment, she was breathing steadily, asleep. Brenda slipped out of bed and pul ed the sheet up over her mother’s shoulders.

Buzz Lyndon was in the kitchen with Ted, Blaine, and Porter, but no move had been made on breakfast. They were waiting for a woman to do it, Brenda supposed. El en Lyndon and Vicki had created these monsters themselves, but since El en was asleep and Vicki was gone, that left Brenda. Brenda hoped they liked cold cereal. She pul ed out the Cheerios and started pouring.

“Hel o, Daddy,” she said, kissing her father’s unshaven cheek. Unlike his wife, Buzz Lyndon looked like he had gotten five hours of sleep in a roadside motel. He looked like a long-haul trucker three years past retirement.

“Oh, honey,” Buzz said. “How are you?”

“Fine,” Brenda said. “Mom’s asleep.”

“Yes, she’s tired,” Buzz said. “When can we go see your sister?”

“Her MRI is at nine,” Ted said. “Which means I have to get going. She’l be finished by eleven. They should know more by then.”

Brenda fixed four bowls of Cheerios, she poured coffee and made a second pot, and she even managed to get Porter his mush. Melanie emerged and, after greeting Buzz Lyndon, made a plate of toast. A little while later, El en Lyndon shambled out to the kitchen, where she sat at the table, cutting up a fruit salad. The boys were bouncing off the wal s, thril ed by the unexpected presence of their grandparents. Here was a new audience!

“Wil you come to the beach with us?” Blaine said.

“Grandpa wil take you,” El en Lyndon said. “After we see your mommy.”

Brenda escaped to the back deck with her coffee. The kitchen was crowded and noisy, and although the arrival of her parents gave the day a festive air, it also felt strangely like a funeral. Everyone there except Vicki.

Please, please, please, please, please, please, she prayed. The backyard fluttered and chirped in response: butterflies, bees, rosebushes, a picket fence, green grass, blue sky, robins, wrens, sunshine. If God was anywhere, He was in this backyard, but there was no way to tel if He was listening!

Hands landed on Brenda’s shoulders. Firm, male hands. Her father. Buzz Lyndon dealt only in tangibles: Is there anything your mother can do?

Does anybody need money? Wel , yes, Brenda needed money, but what she realized now was that she wasn’t wil ing to ask anyone for it, not even her father. She would finance her debt, get a job, pay it off. She had spent enough nights in the cradle of strong women to know this was the right thing.

There was a voice in her ear. “Brindah.” The voice was a whisper; it was too intimate for her father. The hands on Brenda’s shoulders were not her father’s hands. Their touch was different. And then there was the voice. Brindah. Brenda was confused; she whipped around.

Brenda set her coffee down, afraid she would spil it. Her hands were shaking. Walsh was here! Not here in her mind, but here in person: His dark hair was close-cropped, his olive skin bronzed from the sun, and he wore a white polo shirt that she had never seen before. He smiled at her, and her stomach dropped away. It was him. Him! The only “him” that mattered: Walsh, her student, her Australian lover. I couldn’t have waited.

Walsh had come! He must have left New York as soon as he hung up the phone. Brenda wanted to know everything: how he got here, why he’d decided to come, how long he would stay, but she made herself stop thinking. Stop! He was here. The one person here just for her.

She put her hand over her mouth. She started to cry. He took her in. Brenda dissolved against his chest. Touching him, holding him, hugging him felt il icit. It had always felt sneaky, like she was getting away with something. Romantic or sexual relationships are forbidden between a faculty member and a student. But none of that mattered anymore.

We didn’t choose love; it chose us, right or wrong—and realizing this, for Brenda, was a kind of answered prayer.

Love was al that mattered.

As Josh got out of the water at Nobadeer Beach, shaking his hair like a dog, he wondered how he would ever write about what had happened to him this summer. He had been wounded so badly he deserved a Purple Heart, but the upside was that he had learned some things (hadn’t he?). He now understood the tragic hero.

You’ll sense the story like an approaching storm, Chas Gorda had said. The hair on your arms will stand up.

These words rang out distinctly—maybe because it looked like there was a storm approaching—dark, bil owy clouds were blowing in from offshore. It had been beautiful al day—clear, sunny, and windless—but this had only served to annoy Josh. He was hungover from his night out with Zach, and now that he was essential y unemployed, he felt aimless and without purpose. He’d spent al day trying to write his feelings down in his journal—but what this had turned into was a lot of sitting on his unmade bed, thinking of Number Eleven Shel Street, and then admonishing himself for thinking of it. His cel phone had rung incessantly—but three times it was Zach (cal ing to apologize?) and Josh let the cal s go to voice mail, and twice the display said Robert Patalka, and there was sure as hel no way Josh was going to take that cal .

He was relieved when five o’clock rol ed around. He was hot and discouraged—he hadn’t managed to get any worthwhile thoughts on paper ( Avoid being self-referential. Be wary of your own story ). There was cleaning and packing and laundry to do before he left for school, but those tasks were too heinous to even consider undertaking in his fractious state of mind. The only thing he had to look forward to was his swim at Nobadeer; however, he made himself wait until he was sure most of the families and otherwise jol y beachgoers would be gone. He couldn’t stand to see other children at the beach, or other parents; he didn’t want to have to witness everyone else’s happy end-of-summer. He decided, bravely, on the way to the beach that he wouldn’t cook dinner for his father tonight. He would pick up a pizza on the way home, and if his father wanted an iceberg salad, he could make it himself.