Barefoot (21 page)

“How is she?”

Brenda couldn’t help being maddening in return. “How are
you?
Still with the cane? Is there Nantucket sand in your knee brace?”

“Very funny, sweetheart. How’s your sister?”

“She’s fine, Mom.”

“Her blood count?”

“Red cells steady. White cells down, but not by much.”

“Has she lost . . .”

“Half a pound.”

“Since Tuesday?”

“Yes.”

“Has she been vomiting? What does her hair look like?”

“No vomiting. Hair looks the same.”

“Your father and I should be there.”

“How’s your leg, really?” Brenda asked.

“When all was said and done, it would have been easier to amputate. But I’m finally off my painkillers.”

“Good,” Brenda said.

“How are the kids?” Ellen said. “And Melanie, poor thing. How is she doing?”

Brenda was in no mood to comment on poor Melanie. “Why not ask how I’m doing? You have two daughters, you know.”

“Oh, darling, I know. You’re such an angel to be there for your sister. If you weren’t there . . .”

“But I am here. And everything’s fine. Vicki is fine.”

“You’ll have her call me as soon as . . .”

“I’ll have her call you,” Brenda said. “I always have her call you.”

“I worry so. You don’t know how I worry. And your father, although he doesn’t say it as much, worries just as much as I do.”

“Everything’s fine, Mom. I’ll have Vicki call you.”

“Everything’s fine,” Ellen Lyndon said. “You’ll have Vicki call me.”

“There you go. You got it.”

“Oh, Brenda,” Ellen Lyndon said. “You have no idea what this is like, sitting here a million miles away, unable to help. God forbid you ever have to go through something like this.”

“I am going through it, Mom,” Brenda said. “She’s my sister.”
Repentance,
Brenda thought.
Atonement.
“Good-bye.”

“Have Vicki call me!”

“Good-bye, Mom.”

N
eedlepoint Christmas stockings, flossing, the score of the Red Sox game, corn silks clogging the kitchen sink, corn silk hair, clumps of it, clogging the bathtub drain, poison ivy, the weather, the outlandish price of gasoline, Homeland Security, money, erections, sex.

At first, the chemo was no more painful or inconvenient than a trip to the dentist. The Oncology Unit at the Nantucket Cottage Hospital was small, with a close-knit staff—or, as they liked to call themselves, “the team.” (They all played summer league softball and had been champions three years running.
When you see what we see, day in and day out,
the head nurse, Mamie, said,
you need an outlet for your aggression.
)

The team consisted of Mamie, a woman about ten years older than Vicki who was single-handedly raising four boys, and two other nurses: a young black man named Ben and a heavyset girl with a pierced lower lip who was just out of nursing school named Amelia—and the oncologist, Dr. Alcott. Dr. Alcott, by happy coincidence, was an acquaintance of Dr. Garcia’s back at Fairfield Hospital through years of tireless conference-attending.

We have a few drinks together now and then, Joe and I,
Dr. Alcott said when Vicki first met him.
I promised him I’d take good care of you.

Dr. Alcott was probably fifty but he looked about thirty. He was blond and tan, with very white teeth and expensively tailored clothes underneath his white jacket. He told Vicki he liked to fish, loved to fish, actually, and that was what had brought him to Nantucket from Mass General in Boston—the potential for late-night and absurdly early morning trips to Great Point in his yellow Jeep Wrangler. Three or four times a summer he chartered a boat with Bobby D. to hunt down shark or bluefin tuna, but at heart he was a solitary catch-and-release man—a bluefish was good; a striped bass, false albacore, or bonito even better. Dr. Alcott was the softball team’s secret weapon, an ace pitcher whom no one in the league could hit. Vicki was half in love with Dr. Alcott, but she supposed everybody was.

When Vicki got to the hospital, either Ben or Amelia weighed her, took her blood pressure, and drew a blood sample to check her white count. Then Vicki waited for Dr. Alcott to appear.

Just checking in,
he said.
How are you? How do you feel? You’re okay? You’re hanging in there? You’re a trouper. Joe told me you were going to be a star patient, a real fighter. The blood counts look okay, they look fine. You’re okay. I’m proud of you, Vicki. You’re doing a great job.

These words of encouragement were ridiculously important to Vicki. She was used to excelling at things, though never once had she considered chemo something that a person might be good or bad at. It was random, the luck of the draw, how a body reacted to the chemicals. But she appreciated the cheerleading from Dr. Alcott nonetheless. He was going to save her.

The chemo room was small and pleasant, with three recliners and two partial walls for privacy. Vicki chose what she hoped was a lucky chair—it looked like the chair her father had relaxed in all his life—and waited as Mamie hooked her up to the poison. There was one TV, always tuned in to ESPN’s
SportsCenter
because the oncology team took the Red Sox scores very seriously.

For the first week, then two, Vicki thought,
This is okay. I can do this.
It wasn’t great—of all the places on Nantucket that Vicki wanted to be, this was a notch above the island’s one jail cell and the Lewis Funeral Home—however, it was better than the horror stories she had heard from people in her support group about the units at bigger hospitals where chemo was unscheduled and a person might sit around for three or four hours waiting for a chair to open up. Vicki looked forward to her time with Dr. Alcott, she listened to Mamie tell Ben about her sons’ escapades and mishaps (her fourteen-year-old got caught at three o’clock in the morning driving a car he had “borrowed” from the Grand Union parking lot), she listened to Ben tell Amelia about the crazy, drunk girls that he encountered in his second job as a bouncer at the Chicken Box. There was a lot of animated chatter on mornings after their softball games. In short, the Oncology Unit was its own universe where Vicki was a visitor. She could contribute as much or as little as she liked; nobody asked her about her cancer. Why would they? It was a matter of fact, a given, her cells were like rotten teeth the team had to extract. No judgments were made; it was just business.

Vicki was almost embarrassed when the side effects kicked in. It happened gradually; there was a noticeable decline during the second week, and each day things got a little worse. Vicki’s appetite died; she had to make herself eat the way other people made themselves exercise. Her skin dried out and started to flake, she became confused (she repeated herself, she thought she was talking to Brenda but it was Melanie, she lost her train of thought in the middle of a sentence). She dropped ten pounds despite the fact that she was eating diligently, she became too weak to walk to the beach or even the market, she spent whole afternoons and then whole days—beautiful, sunny, perfect days—in bed. Brenda brought home sand from the beach and sprinkled it in every pair of Vicki’s shoes. Melanie bought Vicki all the books on the paperback bestseller list, but Vicki couldn’t concentrate for more than a few pages. The only good times of the day were the mornings, when she had enough energy to make breakfast, and at one o’clock, when Porter snuggled in next to her for his nap. She inhaled the scent of his hair, she stroked his satiny cheek, she watched his mouth work the pacifier. When Porter woke up, Blaine often came in with a jar of freshly cut flowers and a pile of picture books for Vicki to read to him. Vicki usually made it through one or two before her attention gave out.

That’s enough for now,
Vicki would say.
Auntie Brenda will finish. Mommy’s tired.

Vicki tried to store up her energy for the weekends, when Ted was around. When he appeared on Friday afternoons, she was always sitting up in bed, pretending to read, pretending everything was fine, she was okay—but the expression on his face told her that he knew otherwise. He would sit on the edge of the bed, his face an inch away from raw fear.
What are they doing to you?
he whispered.

I don’t know,
Vicki thought. Dr. Garcia had said the chemo would be brutal, but Vicki hadn’t understood what that meant at the time. Now, of course, she did. She was weak, her finger bones as crushable as pieces of chalk, her lungs as brittle as honeycomb. Her breasts, because of the chemo and the normal shrinkage after nursing, didn’t even fill a training bra. Her nipples were like two old raisins. Gone were her curves, her smooth skin, her silky blond hair. Now her body was twigs and leaves. Her hair was frayed thread. She was ugly, hideous, a carcass. Her sex drive had vanished, and yet in her mind, she didn’t want to let that part of her life go. She was terrified Ted would seek out sex elsewhere—there were millions of women in the city, there were prostitutes, escort services, expensive ones that men on Wall Street knew about and utilized for clients. There were women in Ted’s office, in his building; there might be a woman wearing a certain perfume on the elevator. It happened all the time, cheating. It had happened to Vicki’s best friend! And so, Vicki pursued sex with Ted like she hadn’t in all the years they’d been married, and he, clearly, thought she was nuts.

“I want this,” she said, pulling him into bed. It was Sunday afternoon, and Brenda had agreed to keep the kids at the beach for an extra hour. “Let’s take a shower together.”

“Outside?”

“I want to be close to you.”

“Vicki, Vicki, Vicki. You don’t have to do this for me.”

“For us,” she said. “It will make me feel better.”

“Okay,” Ted said, and he kissed her hair. “Okay.”

Vicki got up and pulled the shades; she wanted it dark. She went to her husband and slid his bathing trunks off his body. She took him in her mouth. Nothing. Ted lay back, pale, sweating, flaccid, his eyes squeezed shut, a pained look on his face. He was trying to block her out, probably. He was trying to remember the woman she’d been before, or he was thinking of some other woman.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You’re not attracted to me,” Vicki said. She slumped on the floor. “You think I’m ugly.”

“You’re not ugly, Vick. You could never be ugly.”

“What is it, then?”

“I don’t know. It’s a mind game. The cancer. I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you.”

“I’ll tell you what hurts,” she said. “And that is not being able to excite my husband. Do you get an erection at home? When you wake up in the morning? Does it work then?”

“Vicki, please don’t.”

“Do you jerk off when I’m not there?”

“Stop it, Vick.”

“I want to know.”

“No.”

“You don’t? I don’t believe you.”

“Yeah? Well, why don’t you come home and find out for yourself.”

“Ohhhh,” she said. “Okay, I see.” There was going to be a fight, which was the last thing she wanted, but she was powerless to stop herself. “You’re punishing me for leaving Connecticut? You won’t have sex with me until I agree to come home?”

“That’s not it, Vick. That has nothing to do with it.”

“Well, what’s wrong with you, then?” she said. She wanted to stand up, but she was too tired, so she remained on the floor, staring at Ted’s knees. Their sex life had always been healthy; before Vicki got sick, Ted had asked for her every night. That was how it worked—Ted asked, Vicki gave in. Never once had Ted failed to show up like this. It was so unusual, they didn’t even have the words to talk about it.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said.

“You’ve slept with someone else,” Vicki said. “I know it.”

Ted sat up. He pointed a finger at her. “Don’t you ever say that again. Don’t say it and don’t think it. It’s insulting to me and to our marriage and to our family.” He pulled on his swim trunks and started pacing the room. “Do you honestly think I would do that to you?” he said. “After ten years of being my wife, do you honestly give me
so little credit?
”

Vicki started to cry. “I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m afraid of what’s happening to my body. I’m ugly. I left you by yourself at home and I know you’re angry about that and I just have these awful thoughts about you screwing somebody else, of you falling in love with somebody else and the two of you waiting for me to die so that you can be together and raise the boys. . . .”

Ted knelt down. He held her face and she fell into him. She was overreacting, she knew it, but she was glad she had spoken because those
were
her fears. Sexually, she felt like a failure. Having cancer felt like a failure, and what Vicki realized was that she wasn’t used to failing at anything. Things had always come easily to her; that was part of who she was.

Ted was due to leave at five o’clock, giving Vicki another five days to fret about trying again.

“Will you hold me?” Vicki asked.

Ted squeezed her tighter. “What do you think about trading in the Yukon?” he said.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“We could buy a Volvo. It’s safer.”

Vicki shook her head. It was such a non sequitur she wasn’t even sure she’d heard him correctly. Could Ted really be concerned about the car? She forced herself to acknowledge the monstrous anger eating away at her. She couldn’t
believe
the things that mattered to other people! A safer car? Mixed in with her anger was envy. Vicki envied everybody everything: Melanie’s pregnancy, Brenda’s screenplay, Josh’s strong arms—he could carry the pack ’n’ play, the umbrella, the towels, the cooler, and the baby and make it all the way to the beach without stopping or dropping anything. She envied Mamie her sons, all of them safely into teenagerhood; she envied Dr. Alcott the thirty-eight-inch striped bass that he decided to take home and grill for his family for dinner; she envied the tattoo on Amelia’s lower back (her
tramp stamp,
Ben called it); she envied chatter about a missed fly ball. She envied Porter his pacifier—she wanted a pacifier! She envied Ted’s career, its demands and rewards; he would fly back to New York and consume himself with making money. That was his job! Vicki wanted her job back—housewife, mother. She wanted a normal life, a life filled with things other than chemo treatments and a darkened bedroom and a wistful, impotent husband. She wanted a life busy with things other than cancer.