Hurricane Season, page 15
Fig’s shoulders tensed, and she dropped her backpack to take a seat on the steps next to Molly. “He’s not his . . .” Fig stopped. Because she supposed Mark was her dad’s boyfriend. “They wouldn’t have minded,” she said instead.
“That’s okay. I wanted to watch the sky anyway. We’re supposed to get a big storm, I wanted to see if it was starting to come.”
Fig had to put her hands on the step beside her to steady herself. She hadn’t thought about hurricane season recently. The Weather Channel was on their TV much less these days. “What? What storm?”
Molly reached up to toy with the edges of her glasses. “I’m hoping they’re wrong and it won’t actually be so bad.”
“What storm, Molly? When?”
“Tomorrow night,” Molly said, turning to look at Fig, her forehead creased. “Are you afraid of storms? I hate them.”
Fig’s exhale was shaky. “I hate them, too.” She was afraid of storms because of what they did to her dad, because he loved them and she couldn’t understand that.
Molly did not love them. For a moment, Fig wanted to ask her to stay, to brave the storm with her, so Fig would not have to brave it alone. But then Molly’s mom’s car pulled up, and Molly stood, brushing off the back of her pants. “Maybe they’ll be wrong,” Molly said. “About the storm.”
Fig slowly nodded. “Maybe.”
Molly’s mom barely had time to pull away before Fig burst through the front door. Mark and her dad were sitting on the living room couch, watching the weather broadcast on TV. Mark’s eyes met hers across the room.
She had never felt more connected to Mark than in that moment, as they held each other’s gaze before turning to face her dad. He looked delighted.
They didn’t talk about the storm during dinner. Fig kept glancing out the kitchen window at the clear blue sky, as if it could change any second—which it could. The storm could blow in and cover the town and their home in darkness and pour rain down on all of them.
For now, Fig focused on the sun as it shone through that window as Mark told them in excruciating detail about the siding he put on a house that afternoon. She played her part in the conversation, recounting every boring second of what they learned about Mesopotamia in social studies. All the while, her dad asked questions in the appropriate places, but his eyes were unfocused. He barely ate his chicken.
Medication or no medication, her dad never could resist the pull of a good storm.
They left the dishes unwashed in the sink. No one had the patience for them, least of all her dad, who pushed his unfinished plate away to stand at the window instead of eating. “Love watching a storm roll in,” he said, his face against the glass, fogging it up with his breath. “When did they say it’d be here?”
“Not until late tomorrow afternoon at the earliest,” Mark said, then turned to Fig. “There’s a chance it could go out to sea instead, though.”
“Can we go for a walk?” Fig’s dad asked.
“It’s late, Tim. Just come sit with me.”
“Just a short walk. Just to see the sky before the storm.”
“Why?” Fig found herself asking. She wanted to say more, but when she opened her mouth, she could again ask only, “Why?”
“Because it’s beautiful.”
“No, it’s not. It’s terrifying.”
Her dad squinted at her, the sun from the window in his eyes. Fig stayed in her chair, gripping the sides of it so tightly her hands hurt. “It’s all right, Fig,” he said. “I’ve been taking my meds. I’ve been . . . I’ve been taking care of myself like the doctor said. I need you to find a little faith in me.”
How could she put faith in something she couldn’t comprehend? How could she be sure he wasn’t going to be manic?
“It’s just a walk,” he said, then looked over at Mark, who had been quiet throughout the exchange. “And I swear on my mother’s eternal soul that I’ll stay home all day tomorrow.”
Fig glanced at Mark, wondering if he believed that any more than she did.
But Mark sighed, and Fig was mad at him as he conceded. “Just a short walk,” he said, and turned his attention back to Fig. “You want to come?”
She hesitated but shook her head. Her dad kissed her on the cheek as he went with Mark out the door.
On the school bus the next morning, the Ramirez siblings all had their fingers crossed that it would storm so bad they wouldn’t have school the following day. The oldest Ramirez kid had a math test he wanted to get out of. The youngest one loved lightning.
Fig held her breath until their conversation changed to something else. She imagined the youngest Ramirez brother staring out the window in his bedroom, watching storm clouds roll in and counting the time between lightning strikes and the sounds of thunder, like her dad taught her to do. She remembered being younger, and her dad hoisting her up to watch through the window as lightning lit up the sky. “Now, start counting,” he’d say, and she would.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . .
“It’s getting closer,” he’d say, cuddling her close, not realizing, even back then, she was wishing it would move farther away.
She couldn’t focus in school. It was as if her mind were flipping between channels, focusing for a moment on the ones that showcased the weather and quickly passing ones that had to do with math or science or social studies. Nothing but white noise and emergency broadcasts.
This, she realized, was what her dad meant when he sat her down and told her about the buzzing in his head. She wished he could have told her how to get it all to slow down.
Maybe neither of them would ever know.
Fig’s head got a little clearer in art class as she put the finishing touches on her painting. Her mind focused on one brushstroke at a time, following the lines of the thick black paint that completed the piece. She signed her name, small but clear along the bottom: a simple Finola. The same way that Van Gogh did with his Vincent.
“Oh, cool.” Madison leaned over her desk. “Yours came out so good, Fig.”
“Thanks,” Fig said. She wanted to tell Madison the painting was about her dad, but she couldn’t find the words. She looked over at Danny, who was nearly done with his own art. She wanted to tell him she loved his painting. She wanted him to look at hers and understand what it all meant. Neither of which happened.
She glanced back down at her painting, and for a moment, she wanted to rip it in half and forget about Van Gogh and her dad and everything.
“Okay, class, listen up,” Miss Williams said. “You’ve had plenty of time all marking period, and you should be finishing these up this week if you haven’t already. I need them dried and ready to go so that they can hang without making a mess in the auditorium, and I want to display everyone’s work, so please try and get these done.”
Miss Williams began moving from student to student, handing out a flyer. “This has all the information for your parents. It says what time you should be at the festival, and there’s a form to fill out with a parent’s signature. Make sure you return these to me by the middle of next week. There’s a box to let us know how many people will be attending, and that’s important for the PTA, so please don’t forget.”
When she got to Fig, Miss Williams didn’t immediately hand over a form. “Fig, that’s wonderful,” she said as she looked at Fig’s finished painting. “I know art has never been your favorite, but I’m proud of you.”
“Do you understand it?” Fig asked, her fingers tugging her earlobe. “Do you think anyone will?”
“I think I do, but in art, when it comes to understanding, well . . . It’s not always about what the art is supposed to mean. It’s about what it makes people feel.”
Fig thought about it. “What does my painting make you feel?”
Miss Williams smiled and handed Fig a flyer. “It makes me feel like calling my dad—even though we never really know what to say to one another—just to say hello. Just because I haven’t in a while. Make sure you get this form to your dad, okay? Don’t forget.”
The bell rang, and as usual, everyone began gathering their things, putting away paints and tossing their used brushes in the sink. Everyone who had finished their paintings put them gently on the racks to dry. Fig was the last to finish, walking slowly so as to not let a single brushstroke drip as she put away her painting.
Danny was waiting for her at the door, which he hadn’t done in weeks. He didn’t smile at her, didn’t look into her eyes, but at least he was waiting. “I wanted to say, well, be careful,” he said. “With the storm. Because I know your dad gets weird about them.”
Fig exhaled. “Thanks,” she said.
They hovered at the door for a moment. Fig shifted her backpack to her other shoulder, and Danny bounced slightly on his heels. “Well, I should go to science.”
“Okay,” Fig said, and Danny turned to leave.
The sky was dark by the time Fig got off the bus. She zipped her coat as high as she could to protect herself against the harsh wind that came as a prelude to the storm. Georgina was a category 2 hurricane. Not the worst, but still, any storm that brought lightning and thunder also brought floods. Those storms knocked down trees and power lines. They reached that part of her dad that Fig never could.
It started to rain. Large, cold drops fell down Fig’s nose and cheeks and made her shiver. The wind blew hard enough to whistle against the trees, and it was so loud she didn’t hear the music until she was standing right there at the front door.
But once she heard it, she froze, her hand on the doorknob and rain falling in her eyes. Inside, her dad was sitting at the piano. He was safe from the storm, playing in that special way that made her feel like she was standing in a music hall with thousands of people in the audience, not in their small two-person home. The music was confident, and beautiful, and undeniably her dad’s.
And it was Mark’s song. The one her dad wrote and named for the man who somehow made her dad fall in love with him. Fig noticed that the windows of their home, as well as the ones in the yellow house across the street, were boarded up. With the same wood, even. In the same way. And she knew that Mark was there. Mark was inside, probably listening to her dad, who was sitting at his piano and not wandering outside, lost and staring at the sea. She never—she could never—get him to be anywhere but lost during a storm. She couldn’t, not in years, get him to finish a piece, to sit and play it from start to finish, to stay in his head long enough to be with her and the music and not out in a storm.
Mark could. The rain was falling harder now; Fig was wet and cold. Still, she couldn’t make herself open the front door. She couldn’t make herself seek shelter. She didn’t want to go inside, to see her dad at the piano, keeping his promise, with Mark comfortable in their home.
Fig didn’t remember making the decision, but she dropped her backpack at the front door. Instead of going inside, she turned around and started walking.
Fig often wondered what her dad saw in the ocean, how he could stare at it for hours as if it held the answers to the questions in his mind, particularly during a storm, particularly when the ocean was most dangerous and she was most worried. In her research last year about hurricanes and tropical storms and weather patterns, she learned everything about how a storm starts, how it builds, how it blows in and destroys. The one thing she hadn’t learned was why her dad loved storms, what it was about them that stole his mind from her.
She tried now to see what he did. She stood on the boardwalk, staring out at that ocean, wind and rain whipping at her face. Her dad’s West Ham scarf was wrapped around her neck and mouth, but it was hardly a barrier from the weather. Behind her, all the shops were closed for the season and boarded up to protect them from storms. Everyone else was safely indoors somewhere—like her dad and Mark—and Fig stood alone, doing the very thing her dad did that she hated, wondering if a policeman would show up and drag her home.
Dark, angry purples and grays swirled in the sky as the rain poured down and met the ocean, which churned in shades of dark blue. Fig watched the waves rolling and crashing against the sand. It was like staring at a living Van Gogh painting. Fig walked to the edge of the boardwalk, squinting, wanting to see the impasto in those waves, the brushstrokes in the clouds.
Fig pulled off her shoes, leaving them with her socks at the end of the boardwalk so she could feel the cold, damp sand between her toes as she made her way to the water. The water, colder still, shocked her when the waves first hit her feet and crashed up her legs. But still, she dug her toes in and anchored herself.
She listened to the sounds: the crash of the waves, the howl of the wind, the drumming of rain against the wood of the boardwalk. Thunder rolled in the distance, vibrating up and down the beach. The cacophony was overwhelming, and it wasn’t musical, wasn’t something that she could hear and feel—something that reminded her of her dad.
The wind beat at her eyes, which started to burn from the rain and salt water, so she closed them tight. Her mind filled in the pictures. Was her dad as worried for her as she often was for him? Was he trying to understand where her thoughts would take her as she so desperately did with his?
Was he afraid for her? Was he angry with her? Was he feeling all the things he always made her feel?
Fig pictured him, young and brilliant, standing in the middle of an apartment with a spectacular view of New York City, with a baby in his arms he didn’t know what to do with. Did he have bad days then, in that apartment, when Fig was too small to take care of herself? Did he spend days in bed as she cried in her bassinet, needing clean diapers and milk, needing him?
Vincent couldn’t have been Vincent without Theo, and Fig could not be Fig without her dad. And maybe that was where she had got it wrong all along. Maybe that was why she was here, standing in a storm. Because she felt like she was losing him, and she wasn’t his Theo, but he was hers, and she needed him and didn’t know what to do now that he didn’t need her.
“The sadness will last forever,” Vincent had said to Theo, moments before he died. Fig thought maybe she could understand him now.
“Fig!”
She started thinking about curried spinach, and braids, and darlings—of piano chords and museums and starry nights. She started thinking of her father’s arms and Mark’s arms, and the comfort they gave each other that she wished they’d give her instead. She thought about the gap between Danny’s teeth that she hadn’t seen in so long because he wouldn’t give her a smile, and Miss Williams’s kind eyes and Hannah’s crooked grin, and how she loved all those things and how they hurt her anyway.
“Fig!”
Lightning lit up the sky as she thought of yellow houses, and earlobes, and art. Of cypress trees and fig trees. Of Vincent and her father, forgetting for a moment where one ended and the other began. One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . .
“Fig!”
Strong arms suddenly wrapped around her waist just as another wave came crashing down on top of her, ice-cold water hitting her in the face and making her lose her footing. She fell, shaking and shivering and cold, and she heard her father’s voice next as he held on to her tightly, falling with her. “Darling. Please, darling.”
They both hit the sand, and it was wet and hard and smacked against her chin, and for a moment, the water covered both of them and she couldn’t breathe. She fought against the waves, against the water and her father’s hands, but he held her tight, and raised her up, coughing and shouting as he lifted his own head from the water.
“Mark! Take her! Just get Fig!”
Another strong arm wrapped around her, pulling her from the crashing tide, lifting her up. She opened her eyes to see Mark also grab a fistful of her father’s sweatshirt—that Michigan State sweatshirt stolen from Mark after the last big storm. Mark yanked them both away from the shoreline, shouting, “I’ve got both of you.”
Once they were far enough away to be safe from the reach of the waves, Mark released them both, falling back into the sand, gasping for air. Her father gathered Fig tightly into his embrace, trembling against her (or maybe it was Fig who was shaking) as he murmured, “Fig. Fig, my darling, what have I done? Oh, God, Fig.”
Fig pushed against him, kicked her feet against the hard, damp sand. “Let me go, let me go!” she cried, her teeth chattering around the words.
Her dad only held her tighter.
“We need to go,” Mark was saying. “We need to get out of the storm.”
“No!” Fig kept fighting, kept shivering, kept crying. “Just leave me alone!”
“Never,” her dad said into her ear, tears falling from his eyes onto her cheeks and down her neck as he tucked her head under his chin. She was too numb to feel the tears or the rain or the wind, but she stopped pushing against him, stopped trying to make him let her go. She buried her face in his chest, trying to find his warmth, to feel that he was really there.
Fig closed her eyes and shut out the rest.
16
Fishing Boats at Sea
When Fig awoke, her back was pressed against her bedroom wall, and she was face-to-face with her dad, who was asleep next to her. His eyes were closed, and his breath was warm against her face. Sunlight shone through her curtains.
The storm was over.
She reached out, closing the small gap between them to touch one of his gray eyebrows with her finger, tracing slowly down the bridge of his nose. By the time she finished her journey, his eyes were open, looking at her. He closed them and leaned forward to press his lips against her forehead. When he opened them again, she offered him a weak smile and a cracked, “Hi.”
“Good morning.” His voice was a soft whisper but still seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet bedroom.
