Barefoot (11 page)

He could hear the music from fifty yards away: Led Zeppelin. This was not a promising sign. He approached the stairs down to Didi’s basement apartment in what might be considered a stealthy way and peered into the living room window, which was at ankle level. Didi was dancing on her coffee table wearing only a red negligee, waving around a glass of white wine so that it sloshed everywhere. During their senior year in high school, Josh’s friend Zach had referred to Didi as Most Likely to Become a Pole Dancer, and although at the time Josh had been obligated to punch Zach in the gut, watching her now, he had to agree. Didi had been a better-quality person when Josh was dating her, or so it had seemed. She was a cheerleader, she was on student council, she’d had lots of girlfriends with whom she was constantly conferring—by passed notes, in the bathroom, at sleepovers on the weekends. She had been fun—not as smart as Josh, maybe, not “academically oriented,” not exactly the kind of girl Josh’s mother would have wanted for him in the long run, but perfect for high school.

They had broken up the first time a few weeks before Josh left for college. Tom Flynn had been away, in Woburn, renewing his controller’s certification, and Didi had spent the night at Josh’s house. It started out as a very pleasant playing-house fantasy—they ordered pizza, drank Tom Flynn’s beer, and rented a movie. Then they brushed their teeth and climbed into bed together. In the middle of the night, Josh awoke to find Didi sitting on the floor by the side of the bed, reading through Josh’s journal with a flashlight. They broke up that night—not because Josh was pissed at her for invading his privacy (though he was) but because Didi had either hunted for or stumbled across the pages in the journals that were dedicated to her. In these pages, Josh wrote about how needy Didi was and how he wished she would “locate her center” and “operate from a place of security.” Didi took enormous offense at these statements. She threw the journal in Josh’s face and stormed out of his bedroom, slamming the door, only to return a few seconds later, claim her overnight bag, and then slam the door again.

A little while later, Josh found her downstairs at the kitchen table, crying, with another of Tom Flynn’s beers open in front of her. He went to her and held her, marveling at how his writing about how needy she was had made her even needier. She was terrified to let him go away to college.
You’ll forget all about me,
she said, and he did not refute this, because Didi represented the things about high school that he wanted to leave behind.

That their relationship had endured three years hence—at least in its sexual aspect—was beginning to discourage him. Dealing with Didi was like Josh’s job at the airport, it was like his living on the island at all—too safe, too predictable, too familiar. And yet he had never been able to shake her. She made herself available, and Josh could never quite turn her down.

Josh knocked on the door. The music switched to Blue Öyster Cult. Didi had a drinking problem, Josh decided, in addition to a self-esteem problem. He knocked again. No response. He was about to escape when the door swung open. Didi grabbed Josh by the shirt collar and dragged him inside.

They started kissing on the couch. Didi’s mouth was hot and sloppy, she tasted like cheap wine, and Josh tried to ignore the feeling of yuck that crept over him. Lola, Didi’s vicious cat, was lurking around somewhere—Josh could smell her, and the sofa was covered with her orange fur. Josh closed his eyes and tried to lose himself.
Sex,
he thought.
This is only about sex.
He reached up inside Didi’s negligee. She had put on weight since high school, and whereas once her stomach had been smooth and taut, it was now fleshy, and her thighs were heavy and dimpled. Josh could not get excited; in fact, the longer they kissed, the more depressed he became. He tried to think of Scowling Sister, but the face that came to his mind was Melanie’s. Okay, weird. She had a pretty smile and a perfect ass, but really, was he demented? She had told him she was pregnant! Josh pulled away from Didi.

“I’m not into this,” he said.

At this announcement, she bit his neck and sucked. She was trying to mark him as her own. There had been so many hickeys in high school, his teachers had looked at him sideways. He pushed at her.

“Didi, stop.”

She persisted, in what she wanted him to believe was a playful way, her forehead boring into his jaw, her mouth like a Hoover on his neck. Josh took hold of her shoulders and pried her off. He got to his feet.

“Stop it, I said.”

“What?” Didi lay splayed across the disgusting sofa looking very much like a half-opened Christmas present in her red satin. Her makeup was smeared around her eyes, and one of the slinky shoulder straps had slid off her shoulders and threatened to expose her breast.

There was a bloodcurdling shriek. Josh jumped. Lola stood, back arched, on the top of the recliner.

“Okay, I’m out of here,” Josh said.

“Wait!” Didi said. She gathered Lola in her arms.

“Sorry,” Josh said. “This isn’t working out for me.”

Didi slugged back the rest of her wine and trailed Josh to the door. Didi draped Lola over her shoulders like a fur wrap. “We’re still friends, right?”

Josh paused. He didn’t want to say yes, but if he said no there would be a barrage of sad-sack nonsense and he would never escape. “Sure,” he said.

“So you’ll lend me the money?” she said.

This was another classic Didi trick: to refer to something completely out of the blue as if it were an already decided-upon fact.

“What money?”

“I need two hundred dollars for my car,” she said. “Or they’re going to repossess it.”

“What?”

“I’m a little behind on my bills,” Didi said. “I bought some summer clothes, my rent went up, my credit cards are maxed . . .”

“Ask your parents for the money,” Josh said.

“I did. They said no.”

“I don’t have two hundred dollars,” Josh said. “Not to spare, anyway. I have to save. College is
ex-pen-sive
.”

“I’ll pay you back at the end of the month,” Didi said. “I promise. Please? I’m in really big trouble. Would you drop it off at the hospital tomorrow? I’m there eight to four.”

“I work tomorrow.”

“What about Tuesday, then?” Didi said. “Tuesday’s your day off, right?”

Josh let his head fall forward on his neck. How did things like this happen? He should just say no and leave.

“If you lend me the money, I’ll leave you alone forever,” Didi said. “I swear it.”

This was as blatant a lie as was ever spoken, but it was too tempting to ignore.

“You’ll stop calling?” he said.

“Yes.”

“And you’ll pay me back? By the first of July?”

“With interest,” Didi said. “Ten dollars interest.”

Josh managed to get himself on the opposite side of the door. Lola scratched at the screen.

“Fine,” he said. He was absolutely certain he would never see the money again, but if he could get Didi out of his life once and for all, it was a small price to pay. “I’ll see you Tuesday.”

According to Aunt Liv, there were only three kinds of women in the world: older sisters, younger sisters, and women without sisters. Aunt Liv was a younger sister like Brenda; Aunt Liv’s older sister, Joy, had been Brenda’s grandmother. Joy was prettier, Liv always thought, and luckier. They both got jobs working at a fabric store during the Second World War, but for whatever reason, Joy was paid a nickel more per day.
The owner was sweet on her,
Liv said,
even though I was the one who made him laugh.
Joy then married a boy from Narberth named Albert Lyndon, and they had four children, the oldest of whom was Brenda’s father, Buzz. Liv, meanwhile, inherited her parents’ stone house in Gladwyne, she attended Bryn Mawr College, she taught literature there for years. She read, she lavished her nieces and nephews with attention and love and money, she kept meticulous documentation of the family history. Aunt Liv was the only person Brenda had ever confided in about Vicki because she was the only person Brenda knew who would understand.

I spent my whole growing-up thinking Joy was born a princess and I was born a scullery maid,
Liv said.
But then I realized that was my own delusion
.

Brenda had cherished those words at the time of their delivery (Brenda was ten, Vicki eleven), but there were no delusions about what was happening in Aunt Liv’s cottage this summer. Brenda was not only serving as Vicki’s scullery maid, but also as her nanny and her chauffeur.
Because Vicki had cancer!
If Brenda wanted to throw a pity party for herself, she would be the only one attending. More than once already, Brenda had sat on her bed in the old nursery, hoping to absorb some of Aunt Liv’s strength, patience, and kindness.

On Tuesday, Brenda drove Vicki to chemotherapy in the neighbors’ ancient Peugeot with the kids strapped into the backseat. Taking the kids had not been in the original plan; however, over the weekend, one thing had become clear: If the children were left in Melanie’s care, they would die in a kitchen fire or drown drinking from the garden hose. Melanie was going to stay home and “rest,” she said—and if she attempted another escape and was successful, so much the better in Brenda’s opinion.

Brenda tried not to appear martyrish in her role as servant, because she knew this was exactly what Vicki expected. They had argued about Melanie on Sunday afternoon. Brenda expressed her discontent while Vicki made what Brenda could only think of as the “she’s becoming our mother” face. Brenda couldn’t stand that facial expression, and yet she sensed she would see a lot of it this summer. In the end, however, Vicki had—surprise!—agreed with Brenda, and apologized.
Melanie probably shouldn’t have come. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but maybe we were hasty. I’m sorry. Yes, we’ll look for a babysitter, and no, you won’t get much of your screenplay written until we do.
Brenda had been impressed by Vicki’s admission of her own poor judgment. It was, in thirty years of sisterhood, unprecedented. Vicki was always right; this was a fact of her birth. She had been born right—as well as pretty, talented, intelligent, and athletic; she was a model daughter, a natural-born leader, the gold-medal/blue-ribbon winner in whatever she did, a magnet for girlfriends and boyfriends alike. She was the sister people preferred. Again and again and again while growing up, Brenda had screamed at her parents:
How could you do this to me?
They had never once asked her to define the “this”; it was understood.
How could you make me follow Vicki?
Only sixteen months apart, they were constantly compared, and Brenda constantly found herself coming up short.

People are different
. Ellen Lyndon had been telling Brenda this for thirty years. Even sisters were different. But, as Aunt Liv was quick to point out, Ellen Lyndon was a woman without sisters. Ellen Lyndon had grown up with three older brothers, and the fact that she had given birth to sisters in rather rapid succession left her perplexed, as though she had brought home not children, but rather a rare breed of chinchilla. Brenda thought her mother the loveliest of women. She was stylish, cultivated, and impeccably mannered. She was educated about art, poetry, and classical music. On the one hand, it seemed Ellen had been born into the world to be the mother of girls: to orchestrate the tea parties, buckle up the patent leather shoes, read
A Little Princess
aloud, and procure tickets to the
Nutcracker.
But on the other hand—and here was the one thing Brenda and Vicki had always agreed upon—she had no idea what it was like to have a sister. Ellen understood nothing of hand-me-downs; she didn’t know what it felt like to walk into a classroom and watch the expression of delight on a new teacher’s face when she learned that she was blessed with
another Lyndon girl this year!
Ellen, Brenda was sure, knew nothing of insidious jealousy. She would be appalled to learn that the deepest and darkest secrets in Brenda’s life all somehow related to her envy of Vicki.

Vicki teased Brenda all the time about her devotion to
The Innocent Impostor,
but that book, discovered at the tender age of fourteen when Brenda was in danger of being crushed under the toe of Vicki’s Tretorn sneaker, had served as Brenda’s life raft. It gave her a focus, an identity. Because of that book, Brenda became a reader, a critical thinker, a writer, an American literature major in college, a graduate student, a doctoral candidate, a doctor, a professor, possibly the foremost authority on Fleming Trainor in the world. And now that Brenda would never be able to teach the book again, and would never be able to write about it with any hope of being published someplace even remotely legitimate and scholarly, she was forced to commit a transgression (seen by some academics as even more egregious than the ones she’d already committed) and commercialize the novel. Take it public, as it were. She would write a screenplay for
The Innocent Impostor
. Brenda vacillated between thinking this was a brilliant idea and thinking it was completely inane. She wondered: Do all brilliant ideas seem brilliant from the very beginning, or do they seem far-fetched until they come into clearer focus? Brenda had first considered writing the screenplay for the novel (or “treating it,” as they say) back in grad school, when she was dirt poor, subsisting on green tea, saltines, and ramen noodles, but she had dismissed the idea as crass and ridiculous. She was, like every other academic worth her salt, a purist.

Now, however, Brenda tried to convince herself that the novel was perfect for Hollywood. Set in eighteenth-century Philadelphia, the book told the story of a man named Calvin Dare, whose horse kills another man, Thomas Beech, by accident. (The horse kicks Beech in the head while the two men are tying up in front of a tavern during a lightning storm.) Calvin Dare, through a series of carefully disguised coincidences, proceeds to
become
the deceased Beech. He applies for and is given Beech’s old job; he falls in love with Beech’s bereaved fiancée, Emily. He becomes a Quaker and joins Beech’s meetinghouse. The book was unsatisfying to some critics because of its blissful ending: Dare marries Emily, produces healthy and loving children, and is happy in his work. Dare suffers no qualms about how he moved into Beech’s life as though it were an abandoned house, fixed it up, and made it his own. Brenda had spent the greater part of six years parsing the book’s definition of identity and holding the implied messages of the book up against colonial, and modern, morality. If you didn’t like your life, was it okay to become someone else? What if that person was dead? Brenda had often felt like a lone traveler on the icy plateau of this topic. There was nobody else who cared. But that might change if
The Innocent Impostor
were produced. She, Dr. Brenda Lyndon, formerly Professor Brenda Lyndon, would be acknowledged for unearthing a lost classic; and more important, she would be forgiven.