Hurricane Season, page 13
“Yeah,” she said, and stood to head toward the door.
Her dad stood, too. She watched as he walked over to the calendar and crossed off the date. “October’s going fast,” he said.
Fig didn’t respond.
“Fig?” he called as she put on her backpack. “Mark’s going to come around for dinner. I just . . . I wanted you to know.”
She paused, fought against the sudden urge to yell, and nodded instead. She reached for the doorknob. “Make something easier than curry this time,” she said.
That got her a more believable smile. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
Fig quickly left after that, not giving him time to say I love you because she couldn’t not say it back, not when it still was true. But, in that moment, she didn’t want to.
At school that day, Fig kept to herself and her own thoughts until the bell was ringing at the end of fifth period, and Miss Williams was asking her to stay behind. “I’ll write you a late pass, just hang back a second.”
She didn’t move from her seat as the other students put away their paints, stored their paintings, and filed out of the room into the hall, with the gossip and chatter echoing throughout the art room. Miss Williams closed the door, muffling the sounds from the hall, and Fig’s stomach started to hurt. It was strange, being in the art room by herself, surrounded by other students’ drawings and paintings and sculptures. The last time she was alone with Miss Williams was the day her dad burst into the room.
Miss Williams sat in Danny’s old seat next to her, and she slid Fig’s painting closer to get a better view. “It’s coming along, Fig. You should be very proud of your work.”
Fig shrugged. “Thanks.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“The painting?”
“Or about what’s bothering you.”
Fig’s eyes shot up to Miss Williams’s eyes, which were gentle and kind as they looked back, just like always. Miss Williams had the same crinkles at the corners of her eyes that Fig’s dad’s did. It made her wonder about the things that made Miss Williams laugh, and the things that made her worry, that put those crinkles there. “You didn’t pick up your paintbrush all class,” Miss Williams said. “And I know you and Danny haven’t really been speaking.”
“It’s about my dad.”
“Your painting?”
Fig shrugged again.
Miss Williams shifted the painting to look at it even more closely. “I understand that you don’t trust me very much right now, Fig.”
Fig’s nose started to burn. “Did you know my dad braided my hair this morning?” She started speaking really quickly. “And he once wrote a song he named after me. He . . . he calls me Fig because he used to see fig trees outside the subway when he lived in London, and he wrote about them, too.”
“Is that why you painted this?” Miss Williams asked.
“No. I mean, yes, but that’s not what I mean,” Fig said. “He’s a good dad, Miss Williams. I know you don’t think so and I know it’s hard to tell because he’s sick, but he’s getting better. He’s trying, and I’m trying, and I need you to believe me.”
“I do believe you, Fig.”
“No you don’t. You want him taken away from me.”
“That’s not what I want at all.” Miss Williams placed a hand on Fig’s arm and leaned closer, her expression serious. “I’m sorry things are hard for you. I’m sorry I had to be the one to make that call. And I can ask your dad in for a conference, and the three of us can sit down and talk about it if that’s what you need. But I need you to be safe, Fig. And your dad might be a great dad, but sometimes people need help. Especially if they’re sick. That’s all I wanted to do for you.”
Fig rubbed her earlobe. Maybe that was true, but she couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if he passed all his tests, if he took all his medications and listened to his doctors, if he got better and she painted a beautiful painting but still lost him anyway.
Fig stopped by the library after school. Her book was due, and the last thing she needed was another late fee. She saw Hannah at the counter, with her skirt rolled at the waist and a bright green tank top under her unbuttoned shirt, but Fig put the book in the return bin by the library entrance and walked back out without approaching her. Everything, right now, was too confusing.
Fig went right into her bedroom to do her homework when she got home, and when there was a knock at the door a couple of hours later, she ignored it. Mark was her dad’s guest, so her dad could answer it. She would mind her own business until dinner was done, and then she’d eat, and she’d retreat to her room—and that would be that.
She heard the front door open, heard the muffled voices through her door. She wondered if they kissed each other in greeting, before immediately deciding she didn’t want to wonder that at all. Fig made a mistake on her math work, and ripped out and crumpled up the page from her notebook. She had been starting to trust Mark, and she always trusted her dad, but neither of them seemed to trust her with much of anything.
When had that changed? When had Mark figured out the pieces of her dad that she was never able to?
“Fig! Dinner!”
Fig and Mark sat at the table as her dad scooped out the stir-fry right from the pan and onto their plates, then put it back on top of the stove and pulled out his own chair. Fig suddenly hated the addition of that third chair.
“Dig in,” her dad said. “I even did the shopping today. Fresh veggies!”
He seemed so proud of himself, and Mark smiled at him, and Fig replied, in a way that dared him to think he didn’t need her: “You left the stove on.”
The goofy smile that was on his face slowly disappeared as he blinked at her, and it was Mark who was up and out of his chair to turn the stove off, moving the pan away as the rest of her dad’s stir-fry sizzled and burned from the heat.
And Fig felt bad because she had seen that look on her dad’s face before—the one that meant he tried so hard and failed anyway, and the world beat down hard on him for it—but she very rarely was the one to cause that look. Still, she didn’t feel much like eating. Especially when Mark took a big bite and said, “It’s very good, Tim.”
Fig put her fork down.
“Don’t be like that,” her dad said. “Eat.”
“No,” she said, even though she couldn’t remember the last time she was outright belligerent, and she folded her arms in front of her chest. Her dad’s gaze flickered at Mark, before squaring away with hers.
His face was stern as they stared at each other, and she was bracing for him to start yelling, when suddenly he was flicking his fork back and food was flying into her hair. “What’s wrong with you!” she squealed as she tried to duck out of the way of his stir-fry. She pulled a piece of green pepper out of her braid.
A bubble of laughter suddenly burst out of her dad, sounding a little uncertain but also uncontrollable. Fig wasn’t sure what he found so funny. She snuck a glance at Mark, who looked as baffled as she was.
Her dad was laughing so hard he had to take a couple of deep breaths to compose himself. “Your face!” he managed between spurts of laughter.
She scowled at him and picked up her own fork. “Grow up, Dad,” she said as she flung meat at his head.
“Don’t! Don’t,” he said, still laughing, reaching across to grasp her wrist and prevent an actual food fight from breaking out. A piece of chicken slid down his hair and got stuck behind his ear, and then Fig, too, began laughing.
They were the kind of giggles that she couldn’t control, and they were full of nerves and made her stomach hurt, but her dad kept laughing with her, wiping at the tears that formed in his eyes. Eventually even Mark joined in, although he didn’t seem sure he knew what they found so funny.
The laughter slowly came to a stop, and the mood seemed to sober up as they settled. It was as if they had remembered where they were, and that their food was getting cold, and that her dad made such a nice meal only because he wanted to have a dinner with his daughter and his . . . his what, Fig didn’t know. But she still didn’t like it, still felt hurt and confused and betrayed.
“We didn’t plan this, Fig,” her dad said. “Not me, not Mark. And I can’t . . . I can’t explain it. And I know you must have questions and I know you’re so angry with me, but I never went into any of this wanting to hurt you.”
That much she knew was true.
When they finished eating, her dad declared that since he cooked the meal, he was not about to also do the dishes. He disappeared before Fig could even attempt to protest, leaving her alone with Mark, which she assumed was his actual plan all along.
“I’ll wash, you dry?” Mark asked, and Fig nodded. She took her place beside him at the sink, towel in hand.
They wouldn’t have had many dishes to wash if her dad weren’t such a messy cook. Mark had a particularly hard time getting the grease out of the stir-fry pan, but at least it gave them a task to focus on. Fig didn’t feel the need to talk, just clean. The one good thing about Mark being around was that usually this was her job, all on her own. Now they’d get it done quickly, and she could go back to her room and shut out the two of them.
She especially wanted to shut out Mark, who she was hesitant about from the start, and who she eventually allowed into the life and world she and her dad shared—into her dad’s heart, apparently, too. She allowed him to bring her dad home from a storm. She went to him when her dad was spiraling. She trusted him to get them all home.
Or, wait, no. Her dad was the one who let Mark in. He was the one who let Mark understand him in ways that Fig never could, ways that she always tried to but failed at because he never opened himself up to her.
Mark was on the last dish when the first few notes rang out from the nook, and Fig nearly dropped the plate she was drying.
“Something wrong?” Mark asked.
Fig put the plate down and slowly shook her head. “No, it’s just . . . He’s playing my song,” she told him. “That’s my song.”
Mark reached over to turn off the running faucet, even though he wasn’t finished with the dish in his hands. They stood side by side, not moving, just listening, as her dad sat in another room playing notes Fig knew by heart.
“It’s beautiful,” Mark whispered.
Fig nodded, tugging at her earlobe as she blinked back tears.
Mark pulled her hand away from her ear. Maybe he already knew she couldn’t control it, even when her ear hurt, just like he already knew her dad couldn’t control his mind sometimes. She turned to look at him, and he was looking at her with soft eyes, his eyelashes gray like her dad’s, his forehead creased. She wondered if he’d heard the song, from start to finish, that her dad wrote and named after him. And if he had, she wondered if he had any idea what the music meant. If he knew what it was like to love a man who could so easily get lost in his music and his mind. If he loved her dad. If he knew—and Fig now knew so clearly—that her dad loved him.
“It’s his way of saying he loves me,” she said.
Mark frowned. “He says that all the time, though.”
“No. I mean, yes, he does. But this is different. This is more than with words. This is the part of him that he sometimes loses. This is how he lets me be a part of that. Because he wrote it, because he plays it.” She shrugged. “That’s what he told me, anyway.”
Fig looked Mark right in the eyes, daring him to understand her.
He turned away, looking instead out toward the hallway where her dad’s piano sat, pushed back in a corner of his nook.
“Just . . .” She paused. But then she squared her shoulders. “Just don’t hurt him, okay?”
Mark kept his gaze focused down the hall, and the two of them listened to her song—to “Finola”—without moving or speaking, until the final notes played out around them.
14
At Eternity’s Gate
“You remember my neighbor Mark?”
Fig didn’t expect Danny to actually respond since he hadn’t really engaged with her outside of shrugs and grunts lately, but she kept trying anyway. She missed him, missed discussing art with him and having someone to talk to about her dad.
She missed her friend, plain and simple. Maybe it would be like with the other kids at school, and if enough time passed, Danny would forget about the weirdness between them. Fig just hoped he wouldn’t move on from her if he did.
As Fig anticipated, Danny just shrugged.
“Well, he’s dating my dad.”
For the first time in weeks, Danny fully faced her, his eyes wide. “He what?”
“My neighbor Mark is dating my dad.”
They were standing by his locker, where Danny was getting his textbooks. He closed the locker door but didn’t move, just continued gaping at her instead. “But they’re both boys!”
Fig scowled. “What’s wrong with that?”
Danny had the good sense to look chastised. “Nothing! I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t know your dad was gay. You never said.”
“He’s not,” Fig started, but then stopped. “I mean, he wasn’t before. Or . . . I don’t know. He’s never been with another guy before.” She paused again. “But he’s never really been with anyone before.”
“Guess we don’t need to worry about getting him to meet Miss Williams, then.” Danny began walking down the hallway. Fig followed him. “This works, too, though,” Danny added.
Fig stopped walking. “What do you mean ‘this works’?”
Danny turned to look at her, his eyebrows pinched together. “Because it’s the same thing we were going to try to do with Miss Williams. You said so yourself. Like Vincent and Theo.”
“That’s not what I said and it’s not the same thing!” Fig said. “She . . . Mark and my dad . . .” She was finding it too hard to explain. “The point was to understand him, not change him!”
Danny was frowning at her, though she didn’t know why. The warning bell rang. “I thought the point was to make your dad happy. I thought we were trying to help him.”
“It was. We are.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Danny asked. The hallway around them was nearly empty as students filed into their classrooms. “What was the point of all those days in the library and all the books you got and the time I spent Googling?”
Fig blinked back sudden tears. “You don’t understand. You can’t.”
Danny shook his head. “No, what I can’t understand is you, Fig. I need to go to science. I’ll see you around.”
He left her standing in the middle of the vacant hallway, taking deep breaths to keep from crying. She felt so far away from Danny, so far away from her dad.
It was the confusion of it all—and maybe a smidge of desperation—that landed her at the library after school that day. She didn’t have her dad, and she didn’t have Danny. But she had Van Gogh and Hannah, and she sought solace in both of them.
“Oh, good, it’s you,” Hannah said as Fig approached the counter. The scent of vanilla, of Hannah, filled Fig’s nose. “I’ve actually got something for you, hang on.”
Fig’s stomach did flip-flops as Hannah bent down behind the counter, unzipping her backpack that she stored back there. She pulled out some papers and handed them to Fig. “My brother is taking a psych class, and he had all these articles on mental illness. I thought you might want to check them out.”
Heat spread up the back of Fig’s neck as she reached for the papers, her fingers brushing against Hannah’s as she did. Hannah had seen something and thought of her; Fig wanted to keep these articles forever. “Thanks,” Fig mumbled as she placed the Van Gogh book she had tucked under her armpit on the counter. “Can I check this out, please?”
“Haven’t you already read this, like, four times by this point?” Hannah asked.
It was the truth. Fig didn’t even know why she was taking it out again; she didn’t really want to reread it. She just liked that it was filled with the familiar letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother, filled with the familiar paintings that she knew by name and by heart and had spent months going to sleep thinking about—and she wanted to have it by her side.
“So, where’ve you been?” Hannah asked. “I feel like I haven’t seen you or your boyfriend in forever.”
Fig’s eyes went wide. “Danny isn’t my boyfriend.”
“Oh. Sorry. You’re just so cute together.” Hannah waved it off and began to check out the book.
Fig put her hand down on it, stopping Hannah from her job. “We’re not. He’s just my friend.”
Hannah held up her hands. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”
“You didn’t, I just . . .” Fig took a deep breath. “I don’t like boys like that.”
Hannah’s eyebrows shot up a bit, but she smoothed them back down and shrugged. “Oh. Cool. I get it.”
Did she? Did she understand the things Fig felt, that Fig herself sometimes didn’t know how to explain? The things she confided in her dad, even though her dad couldn’t do the same? Fig wanted to know what her dad felt, if he liked the way Mark’s face looked when they met, if Mark’s smile made him feel warm like Hannah’s smile warmed her. Fig wanted to know which one of them was brave, which one made the first move, took that first risk. Maybe they both took a risk together. Fig wanted to understand her dad’s mind—always had, and never did—and the closest she came was this moment here, with Hannah, while he was home with Mark.
She couldn’t understand her dad’s art or his music, but this . . . this maybe she could.
“I don’t like Danny,” Fig said, “because I like you.”
For a moment, Fig felt good. She felt like she finally grabbed on to something she had been reaching for.
That was, until Hannah’s smile dropped, and Fig’s good feeling was immediately replaced by regret. “Look, you’re a sweet kid, but I’m, you know, in high school and—”
