“Come in,” she said.

He handed her the phone. “It’s Dr. Alcott.”

So soon? But when she checked the clock, she saw it was quarter to four. “Hel o?” she said.

“Vicki? Hi, it’s Mark.”

“Hi,” she said.

“First of al , let me tel you that Dr. Garcia has scheduled your surgery for September first.”

“My surgery?” Vicki said. “So it worked? The chemo?”

Ted clapped his hands like he might have at a sporting event.

“It worked exactly the way it was supposed to,” Dr. Alcott said. “The tumor has shrunk significantly, and it has receded from the chest wal . The thoracic surgeon should be able to go in and get it al out. And . . . assuming the cancer hasn’t metastasized, your chances of remission are good.”

“You’re kidding me,” Vicki said. She thought she might laugh, or cry, but al she felt was breathless wonder. “You are kidding me.”

“Wel , there’s the surgery,” Dr. Alcott said. “Which is never risk-free. And then there’s the chance that the surgeon wil miss something or that we’ve missed something. There’s a chance the cancer wil turn up somewhere else—but this is just my ultra-cautious side talking. Overal , if the surgery works out like it should, then yes, remission.”

“Remission,” Vicki repeated.

Ted crushed Vicki in a bear hug. Vicki was afraid to feel anything resembling joy or relief, because what if it was a mistake, what if he was lying .

. . ?

“This is good news? I should feel happy?”

“It could have been a whole lot worse,” he said. “This is just one step, but it’s an important step. So, yes, be happy. Absolutely.”

Vicki hung up the phone. Ted said, “I’m going to cal your mother. I promised her.” He left the room, and Vicki sank back down on the bed. On the nightstand lay the snapshot of the boys, the one Ted had handed her at the hospital. It was of Blaine and Porter in a red vinyl booth at Friendly’s.

They had been eating clown sundaes, and Porter’s face was smeared with chocolate. Vicki had taken them for lunch one day last winter because it was cold and snowy and she had wanted to get out of the house. It had been just a random day, just one of hundreds she had al but forgotten. Just one of thousands that she had taken for granted.

Looking back, Brenda couldn’t believe she had ever been worried. Of course Vicki’s news was good, of course the tumor had shrunk, of course surgery would be successful and Vicki would beat lung cancer. The woman was the luckiest person on the planet. Her life was Teflon—mess happened, but it didn’t stick.

And why, Brenda wondered, should Vicki be the only one with luck? Why shouldn’t Brenda be able to emerge from her own morass of problems in a similarly exultant way? Why shouldn’t Brenda and Vicki be like sister superheroes, overcoming adversity in a single summer, together?

Ted had brought his laptop with him, but he only used it to send e-mail and check the market in the morning. Sure, Brenda could use it. Of course!

Because of the good news of the CT scan, the whole house was in a generous frame of mind. Brenda took advantage of this—she set herself up on the back deck with the laptop and a thermos of coffee and her stack of yel ow legal pads and she got to work typing in The Innocent Impostor, the screenplay. She was able to revise as she went along, she used an online thesaurus, she referenced a copy of The Screenwriter’s Bible that she had checked out of the Nantucket Atheneum. The movie script had started out as a lark, but it had become something real. Was this how Pol ock had felt? He’d dripped paint over a canvas in an approximation of child’s play—and somehow it became art? Brenda tried not to think about Walsh or Jackson Pol ock or one hundred and twenty-five thousand dol ars as she worked. She tried not to think: What am I going to do if I don’t sell it? Her mind flickered to the phone number she had programmed into her cel phone for Amy Feldman, her student whose father was the president of Marquee Films. To Brenda’s recol ection, Amy Feldman had liked The Innocent Impostor as much as anyone else; she had turned in a solid midterm paper comparing Calvin Dare to a character from Rick Moody’s novel The Ice Storm. Had Amy Feldman heard about what happened to Dr. Lyndon right before the end of the semester? Of course she had. The students were official y told that Dr. Lyndon resigned for personal reasons; the last two classes were cancel ed, and Dr. Atela took responsibility for grading the final papers. But the scandalous stories—

sex, grade inflation, vandalism—would have been blown up and distorted, told and told again until they reached cinematic proportions. What did Amy Feldman think of Brenda now? Would she pass the screenplay on to her father, or would she throw it into a Dumpster? Or burn it, in effigy, on Champion’s campus?

Brenda typed until her back was stiff, her butt sore from sitting.

Occasional y, the other people in the cottage checked on her. People passing to and from the outdoor shower, for example.

TED

How’s it going?

BRENDA

Fine.

BRENDA stops, looks up. She is eager to get some of her eggs out of Amy Feldman’s basket.

Hey, do you have any clients who are in the movie business?

TED

Movie business?

BRENDA

Yeah. Or made-for-TV movies?

One hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, BRENDA thinks. She can’t be picky about medium.

Or just regular TV?

TED

Mmmmmmmmm. I don’t think so.

VICKI

(touching BRENDA’s back)

How’s it going?

BRENDA

Fine.

VICKI

Can I bring you anything?

BRENDA

Yeah, how about a pile of money?

BRENDA clamps her mouth closed. She hadn’t said anything to anybody about the money and she won’t until she is desperate. She isn’t desperate now; she is working.

VICKI

(laughing, as though what BRENDA said was funny)

How about a sandwich? I can make tuna.

BRENDA

No thanks.

VICKI

You have to eat.

BRENDA

You’re right, Mom. How about a bag of Oreos?

MELANIE

How’s it going?

BRENDA

BRENDA stops typing and looks up.

Fine. How’s it going with you?

There was the outlandish assertion by DIDI-from-admitting on the day of VICKI’s CT scan—BRENDA, unbeknownst to anyone, had cal ed the hospital administration to complain—and ever since then, BRENDA had been watching MELANIE closely, especial y when JOSH was around. But she saw no interaction between them. They barely spoke. When MELANIE walked into a room, JOSH walked out.

MELANIE

(taken aback by BRENDA’s sudden interest)

I’m okay.

MELANIE’s voice is melancholy. It harkens back to their first days in the house, when MELANIE moped al the time. There had been some recent phone cal s from Peter, but MELANIE spoke in a clipped tone and ended the cal s quickly.

I’m bummed about the end of summer.

BRENDA

Wel , that makes two of us.

MELANIE

What are you doing after we leave?

BRENDA

(focusing on the computer screen, ruing her decision to engage MELANIE in this much conversation) That remains to be seen. How about you?

MELANIE

Ditto.

There is a long pause, during which BRENDA fears MELANIE is trying to read the computer screen.

MELANIE burps.

MELANIE

Sorry, I have heartburn.

BRENDA

You’re on your own there.

JOSH

How’s it going?

BRENDA

Fine.

JOSH

Do you think you’l sel it?

BRENDA

I have no idea. I hope so.

BRENDA thinks, Hell, it can’t hurt.

You don’t know anyone in the business, do you?

JOSH

Wel , there’s Chas Gorda, my creative-writing professor at Middlebury. The writer-in-residence, actual y. He had his novel, Talk, made into a film back in 1989. He might know somebody. I could ask him when I go back.

BRENDA

Would you? That would be great.

JOSH

Sure.

BRENDA

When do you go back?

JOSH

Two weeks.

BRENDA

Are you looking forward to it?

JOSH

(staring into the cottage, where—by chance?—MELANIE sits at the kitchen table reading the Boston Globe) I guess so. I don’t know.

BRENDA

(thinking, Horrible Didi was right. Something is going on between them. Something the rest of us were too self-absorbed to notice.) BRENDA smiles kindly at JOSH, remembering back to when he lent her the quarter at the hospital, remembering back to when they kissed in the front yard.

Maybe someday I’l be adapting one of your novels.

JOSH

(looking at BRENDA but diverted by something—someone?—inside the cottage)

You never know.

BLAINE

(eating a red Popsicle)

Popsicle juice drips down BLAINE’s chin in a good approximation of blood.

What are you doing?