Barefoot: A Novel

by Elin Hilderbrand

  “You’re doing a great job, by the way,” Stephanie says. “The baby’s already back up to her birth weight. That’s what we like to see.”

  Melanie gazes down at Amber’s soft head, covered with dark fuzz. Stephanie leaves the room.

  Later, when the baby is asleep in her bassinet, Melanie removes the envelope from the prongs of the plastic fork sticking out of the arrangement.

  Melanie Patchen, the envelope says.

  Peter is picking up his mother at JFK; Melanie expects them at dinnertime.

  She takes out the card. It says: I know she’s beautiful.

  Melanie’s eyes flood with tears, and in an instant, she is sobbing. Stephanie had told her to expect this—sudden tears, for no apparent reason.

  Her hormones are al over the place. Melanie looks first at her baby sleeping and then out the window—the late-afternoon sky is gray and there are snow flurries. In the hal way, Melanie can hear strains of Muzak. She has just given birth to a gorgeous, healthy baby, and yet al she can do is cry, cry until she is struggling to catch her breath. She is back together with Peter; they are a couple again. Al she can do is hope; she likens her marriage to the New Dawn roses that hung on the front of Number Eleven Shel Street. If you cut them back, Melanie had told Blaine, they’ll be even lovelier next time. Melanie is fil ed with love and joy and wonder, and yet, she is empty. She has everything she ever wanted, but she longs for

  . . .

  For what?

  For summertime. For an hour on a sunny deck, for a perfect slice of tomato, for the song of the wren that perched outside her window, for the way her body felt when it was cradled by the ocean’s waves, for a perfect blue hydrangea hanging over a white picket fence, for butterflies and bumblebees, for ice-cream cones after dinner, for the passenger seat of the Jeep. How intoxicating it had felt to ride down Milestone Road with the windows open and the night air rushing in, how quickening to pul up to the beach and see the water before them and the night sky spread out like a blanket, how lucky she had felt simply to sit beside someone as extraordinary as Josh Flynn.

  Melanie wipes her tears and reads the card again. (She wil read it every day at first and then only on days when she needs a lift, when she needs a reminder of happiness.)

  I know she’s beautiful.

  The card is unsigned.

  Today, Vicki’s list runs two pages long. It’s a Thursday in early February, and it also happens to be Blaine’s fifth birthday. Vicki is throwing a party that afternoon at four o’clock at Chuck E. Cheese’s. This is the venue Blaine ardently lobbied for, and Vicki acquiesced, as it conveniently placed the chaos outside the house. Stil , there are bal oons to pick up as wel as the cake and presents. There is a Valentine’s Day charity auction on Saturday night, and Vicki had hoped to get into the city to shop for something to wear (everything she has is too big; she stil hasn’t recouped from her weight loss), but the shopping wil have to wait, as wil the hundred other things on her list. The birthday party is important, yes, but there is something else in the early part of Vicki’s day that’s even more important.

  Her cancer support group at ten-thirty.

  Vicki manages to get there on time, or almost. She slips into a seat just before Dolores begins with opening prayer. Vicki hasn’t been to the group since three days before her surgery, when she had been too tongue-tied and paralyzed with fear to even say her name. She feels guilty now, like the lapsed returning to church. She holds hands with Jeremy and another person—a woman younger than she is, dressed in a denim jumper—

  whom she’s never seen before.

  When the prayer ends, Dolores raises her head and beams at Vicki.

  “Would you like some mul ed cider?” Dolores asks her. “It’s organic.”

  Vicki notices that the rest of the group have cups, but she demurs. “Maybe after.”

  “Very wel ,” Dolores says. “Let’s start by introducing ourselves. Dana? Wil you go first, please?”

  The woman in the denim jumper speaks. “My name is Dana. Breast cancer, stage three.”

  Vicki’s throat constricts. She is relieved when they go the other way around the circle. Ed, prostate cancer, stage two, Josie, breast cancer, stage three; Francesca is stil there, as is Jeremy. There’s another woman Vicki doesn’t recognize who does not have cancer at al ; she’s there because her seven-year-old daughter has been diagnosed with leukemia.

  Vicki is so moved by this declaration that she finds herself lapsing back to her stutter.

  “Vicki?” Dolores says.

  “I’m V——icki,” she says. “Lung cancer.” She pauses, swal ows, col ects herself. “Survivor.”

  Survivor. The other people in the circle stare at her, and Vicki feels self-conscious. Dolores continues to beam. Dolores had cal ed a few days ago and asked Vicki to come back to the support group. Implored her, real y.

  “It wil be good for the others to see,” Dolores said. “Especial y at this bleak time of year. It wil deliver a message of hope.”

  Except what Vicki sees now in the others’ eyes is envy, resentment even. She recognizes it because she was in their shoes once, listening to Travis, who beat liver cancer, and Janice, who, against al odds, beat ovarian cancer. While Vicki was happy for them, she also hated them. And now here she is. She wants to tel this circle of people the whole story, every detail, but mostly she wants to convey that she is one of them. She is them, they are her, they are al in this together. She cal s herself a survivor, but the term, as they al know, is conditional, because maybe the cancer is al gone, but maybe it only went into hiding, like an evil jack-in-the-box face that wil , eventual y and to her sudden surprise, resurface. Vicki lived for thirty-one years as a confident, capable person, but now she is shackled by fear and uncertainty. Nothing wil ever come easily again.

  “Tel us,” Dolores says. “Tel us about your journey.”

  Vicki is cautious about what she says. She wants to be honest but not confessional, straightforward but not graphic. She was afraid of the surgery, she tel s the group, so afraid that she developed a stutter. She was unable to speak clearly; her tongue was a lump in her mouth. Every sentence was garbled. When she returned to Darien from Nantucket, she was unable to keep food down, and she was hospitalized for dehydration. Dr.

  Garcia referred her to a psychotherapist. The therapy worked in reverse, her stutter worsened, and Ted was forced to acknowledge that something else was wrong with her. She wrote notes on paper, but even the notes were confusing and disjointed. She couldn’t concentrate on anything except her own fear and anxiety—it was a minute-by-minute battle to keep it from escalating into ful -blown panic. The anesthesia, they’re going to kil me, I’m going to die. She dropped Blaine off at preschool, she picked him up, she shopped for diapers and Oreos and rib-eye steaks, she oiled her butcher-block countertops and did laundry, but the question was always with her: Why bother? Was this how she wanted to spend her final days?

  Wasn’t there something else she should be doing to stop the train that was speeding toward her? She couldn’t sleep, and when she did sleep, she had nightmares. Dr. Garcia prescribed Ativan. Vicki and Ted met with their attorney and signed a new wil . Vicki named her sister as guardian. She donated her organs, lungs excepted. She signed a Health Care Proxy, a DNR order, and gave Ted power of attorney. She vomited in the bathroom of the lawyer’s office. She wrote the boys each a long letter, and she wrote a long letter for Ted, and she wrote a shorter letter for everyone else that she wanted Brenda to read at her funeral. The night before her surgery, she went to church; she knelt in the empty sanctuary and prayed, then felt like a hypocrite because she didn’t know what she believed. She went home and sat on the side of the bed as Ted read to the children. She kissed them good night and thought, What if this is the last time?

  “What I’m tel ing you,” Vicki says, “is that I thought I was going to die. I was sure of it.”

  Around the circle, there are nods.

  Vicki was so terrified that pre
-op was a blur. She has vague recol ections of listening to the anesthesiologist and the head surgical nurse. She remembers changing from her clothes into the gown and wondering if she would ever wear clothes again; she remembers trembling and feeling cold. She remembers the IV stuck, after three tries, into the back of her hand. She remembers Ted wearing khaki shorts and a cheerful, red polo shirt; he was there the whole time, whispering, it seemed like. Whatever he was saying, Vicki couldn’t hear him. Both El en Lyndon and Brenda were at home with the kids. Vicki had (irrational y) insisted that she wanted them to hold Blaine and Porter the entire time she was in surgery. She remembers being wheeled down a series of hal ways, with as many tight turns as a Moroccan souk, Ted at her side, in turquoise scrubs now. He was going to stay with her until they put her to sleep. She remembers the incredible gravity of the surgical team, the meticulous professionalism, the nurses going through an inscrutable protocol—numbers, codes, her blood pressure, her temperature. It was as dramatic as the theater, and for good reason—they held Vicki’s life in their hands! But, too, it was just another day at work for these people. Hers was the body today; tomorrow it would be someone else.

  The OR was cold. Vicki’s feet were bare, sticking out from under the sheet like a TV corpse. Everyone wore scrubs and masks. Vicki couldn’t tel one person from another, man from woman; it was as if she had arrived on another planet. Ted was there at her side and then a second familiar face—those thick glasses—Dr. Garcia.

  “You’re going to be just fine,” Dr. Garcia said.

  There was a stirring, a soft commotion, then a parting of the seas. The surgeon had arrived. His name was Jason Emery, and he was a giant—

  tal er and broader than Ted, and very young. A superstar, Dr. Garcia had cal ed him, the best thoracic surgeon in Connecticut. (How many could there be? Vicki wondered.) The nurses worked as quickly as a NASCAR pit crew, pul ing on Dr. Emery’s gloves and getting him his equipment.

  When he took his spot at the helm, his mask stretched, and Vicki knew he was smiling.

  “Hi, Vicki,” he said. “It’s Jason.”

  They had met the week before in his office, where he explained every step of the surgery. Vicki had liked him. Like Dr. Garcia, Jason Emery was unshakably optimistic. But so young! How old? He would turn thirty-two on October 9, and so would Vicki. They had the same birthday, they were twins, it was a sign, he could save her.

  “Hi, Jason,” she said.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said.

  He started barking orders, al of them unintel igible. It reminded Vicki of a quarterback cal ing out plays. A rubber mask went over her face. The mask smel ed like vanil a. It was the same smel , she thought, as her mother’s kitchen when cookies were baking.

  This is it, she thought. Ted squeezed her hand. Vicki thought: Blaine! Porter! She imagined them in her mother’s arms, in Brenda’s arms. Safe and sound.

  She woke up in pain. Hideous pain, straight from the fire pits of hel . She woke up screaming.

  A nurse gave her a shot in the arm. “Morphine booster,” she said. “You have Duramorph going into your spine as wel .”

  Stil , Vicki screamed. She thought she might feel elation or at least a deep relief at finding herself alive; she had, somehow, made it through the granite tunnel. But as miraculous as that seemed to her intel ect, it was impossible to process because of the pain. With the pain, there was only one thought . And therein lay the irony: The surgery that had saved her life made her wish that she were dead.

  It lasted an eternity. There was a blur of activity: people, machines, procedures—but none of it translated. Vicki, who hated to cal attention to herself, especial y in a public place, among strangers, screamed for hours. Vicki, who liked to be in control at al times, was not only screaming and howling like an animal, but begging, too. Help me! Help me! Dear God, please help me!

  And then, quiet. Dark. A soft beeping. A dark face hovering above hers. A nurse. I’m Juanita, she said. How are you feeling?

  Vicki was sore in some places, numb in others. Her throat was kil ing her. Her mouth was dry, her lips cracked. She was thirsty. Juanita put a straw to her mouth. The water was cold, as cold as the ice water with paper-thin slices of lemon that Brenda had put by her bedside al summer.

  Vicki started to cry. The water tasted so good. The summer had been so beautiful, despite everything. She was alive.

  Vicki does not want to frighten anyone in the group, but she can’t bring herself to candy-coat things, either. The recovery was long, it was hard (Vicki means to use the word horrible, but she stops herself at hard). She had seven mil ion stitches through al the muscles she needed to get anything done. With every cough, every sneeze, every laugh or exclamation, she felt stabbing pain along the miles of her incision. She felt like she was going to break open, burst apart. If the cancer had hurt, and made breathing hard, it was nothing compared to how she hurt now, to how she labored for air. Vicki only had one lung remaining. Even feeding herself, even taking a shower, even reading a picture book wiped her out. She couldn’t stand to be awake, and so she slept for great portions of the day. Morphine gave way to Percocet and Percocet to Advil. Vicki went through fifty Advil a week. And stil , the pain. For weeks, Ted carried her up and down the stairs. Friends and neighbors brought meals, they sent cards, books, flowers; she heard them whispering, How is she? What else can we do? They took Blaine and Porter for playdates. El en Lyndon had to go back to Philadelphia at the end of the month. Brenda came two days a week, but the rest of the time she was busy working as a manager at Barnes & Noble and trying to sel her screenplay to a studio that would actual y produce it. Brenda’s life, in essence, was busy and back on track, which was great news for her, but Vicki stil needed help. Don’t leave! Vicki’s voice had returned, like magic she could speak again and she was amazed by this restoration, relieved at how the words she held in her mind flowed right out into the world—but everything she said was negative, unpleasant, confrontational. When Ted suggested hiring a live-in nanny, Vicki said, I don’t want a stranger taking care of my children. I only want Josh. To which Ted snapped, Well, I doubt Josh is available.

  After six weeks, Vicki went in for her postoperative scan. Dr. Garcia said the pictures looked “clean.” Vicki appeared to be “cancer-free.” Ted bought champagne. Vicki drank some from a Dixie cup, but that night Porter howled from his crib and the next day he broke out in red spots.

  Chicken pox, contracted on one of the playdates. Ted took the week off from work. Vicki cursed herself for not being able to deal with it. She couldn’t do anything—she couldn’t care for Porter, she couldn’t go to the grocery store, she couldn’t trick-or-treat with the kids, she couldn’t plan a baby shower for Melanie. She was stil in such pain, her faculties were compromised. Her body had been invaded. She had been sliced open and stitched back together like a rag dol . Part of her incision became infected. There was an unusual y severe soreness, a smel , redness, and an oozing pus. She ran a fever. Dr. Garcia prescribed antibiotics.

  Vicki felt empty, and she imagined her chest cavity as literal y empty. She imagined that, along with the cancer, Dr. Jason Emery had removed her capacity for getting things done, her good luck, and her happiness. She went to physical therapy; she went back to the psychotherapist.

  She was better, yes. She was cancer-free, cured, a survivor. But she wasn’t herself—and what was the point of getting better if her essential Vicki-ness had been lost? Al her life, things had come easily. Now, the only thing that came easily was lying in bed and watching TV. She became addicted to the soap opera Love Another Day and hated herself for it.

  “Recovery is a long, tough road,” Vicki tel s the group. “But in my case it was a road with an end.”

  Somehow, she pul ed herself up. In spite of her deep despair, the lingering pain, the adjusted expectations, or perhaps because of them, she got better. It might have started with something little—a note came from Dr. Alcott, Ted made a joke and she laughed without
splitting open, she had enough stamina to stand at the counter and make a sandwich. She fol owed her therapist’s advice and built on these minor successes rather than dismissing them.

  Now look at her: Five months later, she is here, in the circle, head bowed for closing prayer. She has changed. She is cancer-free, yes, but the change is something else, something more elusive, harder to pinpoint. She has been on a journey, and the place she finds herself now is the place she hopes everyone else in this circle wil arrive. It is a place of wonder. It is a place of enormous gratitude.

  You don’t believe in a greater plan? Josh had asked her.

  Vicki’s answer—stil —is I don’t know. Some people in the circle wil die, some wil live. Who’s to say which wil happen, or why?

  I want to throw her back. I want to let her live. Could it al be just that random?

  Vicki recal s the night she stood on Sankaty Bluff, with the waves pounding the beach below her and the embarrassing riches of the night sky above.

  Everything matters. Every little thing.

  “Amen,” Dolores says.

  The closing prayer is over. Vicki has missed it. Or has she?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book marks a new beginning for me. I would like to thank my agent, Michael Carlisle, for his wise counsel; he has been with me every step of the way. Also, David Forrer, for his canny suggestions, which resulted in a better book al the way around. I thank Jennifer Weis and Sal y Richardson for sticking with me through seven years and five books; they are both extraordinary women. At Little, Brown, I would like to thank Reagan Arthur and Michael Pietsch for taking me on with such enthusiasm, as wel as Oliver Haslegrave for his gal ant assistance. I feel like I have been born anew.

  Thank you to Dr. Wil iam G. Porter, who is not only a friend and a discerning reader/critic, but an oncologist. We talked extensively about lung cancer and its various treatments. Any inaccuracies in the text, however, are mine alone. Thank you to Dr. Jason Lamb, thoracic surgeon, who briefed me on the pertinent details of a pneumonectomy. And thank you to my aunt, Ruthann Hal , who is a cancer survivor. Her details of chemotherapy and its mental / emotional/physical side effects were both inspiring and helpful.