Hurricane Season, page 11
Fig loved it.
Her own work was going slowly, especially since Miss Williams gave them only the very beginning or very end of class time to work on their pieces. But Danny offered insights that he learned from his art classes at the library, and Miss Williams suggested different uses of colors and showed her how to get her proportions right. Fig was dubious she would ever be a real artist, at least not like Danny or her dad, but she was starting to feel much better about her work. She wanted it to be good; she needed it to be.
The bell rang, and Fig and her fellow students began gathering their things and putting away their paints to head to their next class. Fig was the last to leave, and Danny was waiting for her in the hallway. “Is your dad okay?” he asked. The question sounded much nicer coming from Danny than it did from Jeremy.
“He’s . . . He’ll be . . . I’m sorry I had to leave you alone at the party.” She sighed. “I have to get to gym.”
“Hang on, Fig, I don’t care about that.” Danny grasped her shoulder to keep her from leaving. “Wait, I want to ask you something.”
They both just stood there silently for a long moment as Fig waited for him to do so. Fig tightened her hold on her backpack. “What is it?” she asked as students pushed around them to get where they needed to be.
“We’ve been hanging out a lot. And I really like talking about art and stuff with you,” he said. “And, well, I really like you, too.”
Fig shrugged. “I like you, too.”
He smiled, all teeth and the gap front and center. “Oh, good! Because I was wondering if you would be my girlfriend.”
The late bell rang. Fig stood still, staring at Danny.
When she said nothing, his smile started to fade. “I mean, I just . . . I thought we had fun together and stuff,” he said. “You asked me to dance.”
“We do, I did,” Fig said. “But, I mean . . . you’re my best friend.”
“Best friends can be more than best friends.”
Fig nodded. She did believe that was true. But Danny didn’t know about the way she thought about Hannah. “I think we should just be best friends.”
Danny was frowning now, in a way that looked like he couldn’t control it, even though he tried, the corners of his mouth pulling down of their own accord. “But . . . why?”
She didn’t know how to explain, but she didn’t want to lie to him, either. “I’m sorry, Danny. I can’t be your girlfriend.”
He didn’t argue with her, didn’t try to persuade her or change her mind. He nodded, once, slowly, and backed away from her, both of them already late for class and headed in opposite directions.
When Fig got home, she found her dad sitting at his piano, in the nook off the side of their living room, cast in shadows. He wasn’t playing—his hands weren’t even on the keys—and Fig walked over to flip on a light so he wasn’t draped in darkness.
He turned and blinked at her.
“Everything okay, Dad?” she asked.
He said nothing for a moment but then slowly smiled a smile that looked more like a cringe, gazing past her toward the front door. “Can you get Mark for me, love? Please?”
Fig frowned, but her dad turned back to the piano, staring at the keys. She sighed and crossed the room to glance out the window. Mark’s truck wasn’t in the driveway. “I don’t think he’s home,” she said.
“He’s not home?”
“His truck’s not there.”
Her dad nodded, but the gesture was sluggish, along with the rest of his movements, and Fig went back to him. Mark wasn’t here, but she was, and she wanted him to know that. “What’s wrong, Dad? I can help.”
To her relief, he smiled at her—a small but real smile—and patted the empty spot next to him on the bench. Fig quickly sat beside him, and when he placed his hands on the piano keys, she placed hers on top of his. “I’m feeling a little foggy today,” he said, and pressed down on the keys. Fig’s fingers moved with his to play a single chord. “I think it’s the pills the doctor’s having me try. Haven’t been able to do much all day. Can’t play a thing.”
He pressed down on the keys again, playing that same chord.
Fig frowned. “I thought the medicine was supposed to help?”
“It is,” her dad said. “It will. It’s . . . not really an exact science. It just might take some time.”
She pulled her hands off his and tugged at her earlobe. The ear ached as she touched it, but she couldn’t stop. “I wish it didn’t have to.”
“Me too.” He perked up for a moment, and Fig thought that maybe she was helping after all. “I almost forgot. I got you something,” he said, and reached under the piano bench for a box she hadn’t realized was there.
“What is it?” she asked as he handed it to her. The box was small and white, and her eyes opened wide and shot up to meet his as she realized what it was.
Her dad scratched at the back of his head. “Well, I just . . . I know you said everyone else had one. And I’m just . . . I’m so sorry that I make things so much worse for you in school.” He shrugged. “After everything, I thought you deserved it.”
She opened the box and held her new shiny and white and clean smartphone gently in her hands. She almost couldn’t believe it. She wanted to turn it on immediately, and set it up, and download all the apps that everyone else already had, and text Danny and . . .
Her chest squeezed. She almost forgot.
Her dad squinted at her. “Why do you look so morose? I thought you’d be ecstatic.”
“It’s not that. This is great, Dad. Thank you.” He waited for her to continue. “Danny asked me to be his girlfriend today.”
Her dad scowled. On another day, she might have laughed at him. “Who exactly is this Danny? What are his intentions? Eleven-year-old boy, can’t be good ones.”
“Dad, come on.”
“I’m serious!”
“I turned him down, so you have nothing to worry about.”
He hummed a soft acknowledgment. Fig set her smartphone down on the top of the piano before running her fingers along the white keys that she never wanted to play but were so important to her dad.
“Why do I think that’s not the end of this story?” he asked.
“Danny is my best friend. I feel bad.”
“If he’s your so-called best friend, I’m sure he’ll understand, then.”
She pulled her hands off the piano. “I couldn’t figure out how to tell him why.”
Her dad scoffed. “You listen here, Finola, boys do not need reasons why—they only need to hear no and that’s that, you got me?”
He meant business when he used her real name, and Fig smiled because things felt so normal for a moment. “I know, Dad. It’s just . . . I have a reason. And I want to explain it to him, but I don’t know how.” She paused, keeping her eyes downcast. She didn’t want to ruin that feeling of normal. “I don’t know how to explain it to you, either.”
“You can tell me anything. You know that, right?”
This was different, wasn’t it? This was one more thing that they wouldn’t understand about each other. It was deep and personal, and meant something to her. Even if she couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it meant yet. It was as much a part of her as his mind was a part of him. It was just Fig. She didn’t know how to admit that to her dad, the man who was ready to threaten eleven-year-old boys on her behalf.
“I like someone else,” she said, her eyes still on the piano keys. “Someone who isn’t Danny.”
“Aye, aye,” her dad said. “Go on, then. Who is he?”
Fig sighed and looked her dad in the eyes. They were gentle, and soft, and wrinkled at the corners from age and past smiles and past everythings. “Her name is Hannah. She works at the library.”
His eyes grew wider, but he otherwise didn’t move.
“Okay?” Fig asked.
“Okay? Fig, love . . .” He paused, shook his head. “I’m going to mess up this conversation—you know that, right? So just . . . bear with me, for a moment.”
She nodded, her fingers reaching again for her earlobe as she watched his eyes drift to the side for a moment before moving back to look directly into hers.
“So . . . you like girls, then?”
“I like Hannah,” Fig said. “I don’t know the rest.”
He nodded. “Okay. And what . . . what exactly do you like about this Hannah?”
“Dad . . .”
“I’m just trying to follow.”
“Well, what did you like about my mom?” she asked.
“She was drop-dead gorgeous in a dress, for starters.”
It was the most he had ever said about her mom other than her leaving, and it was simple, and sort of silly, but somehow it gave Fig the courage to say more. “I really like Hannah’s smile.”
“Then I bet,” he said, sliding an arm around her shoulders, “she has a very lovely smile.”
Fig leaned into his embrace. “So . . . okay?” she asked again.
He kissed the top of her head. “More than okay.”
12
Portrait of Theo van Gogh
Fig wasn’t used to coming home from school and finding her dad in the middle of a piano lesson, but when she walked through the front door, dropping her backpack, he was sitting in his piano nook with Molly. They were caught up in a song and didn’t hear Fig come in.
“That’s it!” her dad exclaimed as Molly played, her fingers dancing on the keys just as gracefully as his. Fig always loved watching her dad play, and she kept quiet where she stood. She enjoyed watching Molly play, too.
The song came to a stop, and Molly was the first to notice Fig standing there. “Oh! Hello again!”
Her dad smiled at Fig, and Fig smiled back at both of them. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’ll just go do my homework in my room.”
“Oh, don’t!” Molly said, turning to face Fig’s dad. “Can she stay?”
“That’s up to Fig,” he said. “By the way, Molly here is a mathlete! See, I told you. Music and math. Same part of the brain.”
Molly laughed. “It’s just math club.”
“Let me go grab a snack,” Fig said. She crossed the room to enter the kitchen and was startled by the pot on the stove top and the timer ticking away on the oven. “Dad? Are you cooking something?” she called.
“Just getting dinner started,” her dad called back, and then the music started again as he and Molly resumed their lesson.
Fig checked the pot to make sure it wasn’t boiling over and opened the oven to make sure nothing was turning black and crispy inside. But everything seemed normal, and the kitchen wasn’t even that much of a mess. There were dirty spoons and bowls in the sink, and the stove top could use a good scrubbing, but it seemed that her dad had started dinner without much chaos.
Which wasn’t really normal. At least not for them, and it almost made her nervous. He really cooked only when he was . . . What was the word the doctor used? Manic. But the kitchen wasn’t a mess, and he seemed pretty calm as he played away with Molly, and whatever he was making actually smelled pretty good.
Fig walked back out to the living room, taking a seat on the couch in view of the piano nook. Molly stopped playing and turned to her, pushing her bright blue glasses back up her freckled nose. “Do you play, Fig?”
Her dad laughed. “Finish this song, and then I’ll allow you to accost my daughter with all the questions you want.”
Fig watched them as they practiced, nearly forgetting that she had her own homework to do. Molly was good—was great—and her dad was always more capable of taming a piano than he ever was of taming himself, and together the music they made almost lulled Fig into an afternoon nap. When the lesson came to an end, the silence that settled over the house was a stark contrast, and Fig was disappointed. She almost asked her dad not to stop.
“All right, I’ll leave you with Fig while I cross-check the calendar with some of my last-minute appointments so we can make sure we’re set for your next lesson,” her dad said. He grabbed the calendar off the wall and took it with him as he headed for the kitchen. Mark had scrawled her dad’s doctor appointments on a pad of paper on the kitchen counter. Fig thought it would be easier if he just wrote them on the calendar in the first place, but no one had asked her for her opinion.
Once he was gone, Molly popped off the piano bench to join Fig in the living room, immediately asking questions. “Do you go to Bolger Middle School?” Fig nodded, and Molly continued, “I go to Thorne. What grade are you in?”
“Sixth. You?”
“Seventh.” Molly motioned at the piano keys. “So, do you play?”
Fig shook her head.
“I’m the only one in my family who does. My older sister quit, like, five years ago,” Molly said, rolling her eyes. “And then my dad is an engineer, and my mom works at the bank right around the corner from my school. Both are why I’m in the math club. They’re both also very boring.”
Fig tried to imagine what that must be like. “I think,” she softly admitted, “that boring can be pretty good.”
Her dad came back into the room carrying the calendar he pulled off the wall. “Okay,” he said. “I have an appointment next Wednesday. Ask your mom if Thursday would work instead.”
“I will,” Molly said, and then her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out to look at it. “That’s her now. Thanks again for the lesson, Mr. Arnold!”
He walked Molly to the front door. “See you next week, hopefully.”
“Bye, Fig!” Molly called as she left.
Fig’s dad closed the front door behind her, and then turned to face Fig. “Want to help me finish dinner? It’s just chicken and pasta, so it’s not exactly all that exciting.”
Fig smiled. Boring could be pretty good, indeed.
It wasn’t until Fig was in bed that night, long after Molly left—and dinner was eaten—that she realized her dad had taken the calendar off the wall, flipped through the pages, and Fig had not thought about the circled CP&P date at all. She hadn’t once thought about hurricane season.
She slept very soundly all through the night.
Mark was becoming a regular fixture in their household, just like the third chair that magically appeared one day in the kitchen when Fig got home from school.
It was easier for Fig to count the days of the week that Mark didn’t show up for dinner as she continued to cross off more and more October boxes on the calendar. Most of the nights that he did, her dad would send Fig for a shower, telling her to get into her pajamas, and when she’d come back into the living room, clean and ready for bed, Mark would still be there. He’d be on the couch with her dad, laughing as he tried to get her dad into football, and her dad tried to get Mark to understand music.
Her dad still did not care for American football, and Mark still did not understand music, but Mark did understand which pills her dad was supposed to take in the morning, which ones at night, which ones with food. Fig watched—not knowing any of it—as Mark filled her dad a glass of water at dinner to wash the pills down.
Fig wanted to be the one who knew what pills were which. She wanted to be the one who knew how to take care of her dad, but she was slowly becoming relieved that they had Mark, too, ever since he picked them up from Ava’s. November was getting closer, along with the date on the calendar with CP&P written large and circled in pen. There hadn’t been any more big storms since September, but the end of hurricane season was still over a month away. All of it was easier to worry about with Mark there.
Tonight, Fig padded barefoot back into the living room, her hair wet and pajamas comfy, and was greeted by the sounds of her dad’s piano. He played a tune she’d heard only bits of before that sounded a lot more polished now. Mark was sitting on the couch, listening with a sort of calm serenity her dad hadn’t experienced from an audience—even an audience of one—for quite some time. “Giving Mark a free concert?” she asked.
He kept playing, but his face lit up at the sound of her voice. “He does so love a free gig.”
Mark shook his head with a laugh. “How about you, Fig? You ever play?”
Fig held up her hands. “Little fingers,” she said.
“That’s an excuse,” her dad chimed in. “This one’s too stubborn to have ever practiced. She can ‘Heart-and-Soul’ with the best of them, though. Come here, let’s show him.”
Fig sighed dramatically for his benefit but joined her dad on the bench. “I want the high part,” she said, and that was the only cue he needed to start.
It was ridiculous, she thought, for this classically trained, brilliant composer to be playing such a jolly, simple tune with his eleven-year-old daughter, especially since his fingers still moved on the easy chords as if he were performing in front of a music hall audience and not just Mark. But the notes of “Heart and Soul” were quickly joined with the sound of their laughter, and Fig managed to get through almost the entire song without messing up.
Mark applauded when they stopped.
“Oh, don’t egg him on,” she said.
“Not egging,” Mark said. “That was great. You two should see yourselves when you play together.”
“You should have seen my dad back in the day.”
Her dad scoffed. “You weren’t even born yet.”
“I’ve seen pictures.”
“Pictures?” Mark inquired.
“Don’t you dare,” her dad warned, but Fig was already bouncing off the piano bench and jogging over to the cabinet in the corner of the living room. She opened a drawer to pull out an old photo album and wiped at it. The cover wasn’t dusty, not really. She had flipped through it so many times before.
“He doesn’t want to see those, Fig, stop that.”
