Hurricane Season, page 17
“They come back in five days,” Fig found herself saying. “Hurricane season ends then, too. I mean, there shouldn’t be another storm. But there could be, for five more days, and that’s when they come back.”
Miss Williams blinked at her. “Who, Fig?”
“CP and P. Someone came after you called them, in September. And they came back, without warning, a bunch of times, so that they could make a report on my dad. In five days, they tell us what happens next. They’ll tell us what they saw, what they think of my dad.” Fig took a deep breath and looked back at her painting. “I don’t know why I thought this would help.”
Miss Williams sighed. “Fig . . .”
“Fig!” Ava’s voice suddenly rang out, interrupting them as she appeared with Madison and Haley. “A bunch of us are having our parents drive us over to the junction for ice cream. My mom told me to invite you. Do you want to come? She said she’d drive.”
Fig hesitated, and she felt Miss Williams’s eyes on her and all her old friends. She wanted to tug at her earlobe. She folded her hands together instead.
Ava’s mom told her to invite Fig for ice cream. Just like she told Ava to invite her to her house. No one had to tell Molly to ask Fig to come over. No one had to tell Danny to help in the first place.
Fig didn’t think Ava or Haley or Madison would ever really understand. She didn’t think she would ever be able to just hang out with them like they used to, pretending everything was okay. “Thanks, but I’m gonna wait here,” Fig said. “For my dad.”
Ava shrugged, and that was that. As the girls started to walk away, Fig had to force herself not to call them back, not to tell them she had changed her mind and wanted to go with them.
“Hey.” Miss Williams wrapped an arm around Fig’s shoulders. “In five days, social services will come to your house, and they will know that your dad loves you. And they will do what they can to help so that he can always be there to love you.”
“He’s not going to come today.” Fig’s nose burned. “And if he does, what if he’s . . . not him? What if everyone laughs at him again?”
“Your dad has been doing everything he can so that doesn’t happen. And there’s still over an hour left,” Miss Williams said. “Tell you what, if your dad can’t make it, we’ll call him, and I’ll take you to get some ice cream to celebrate, okay? And you can even take the painting home right away tonight to show him.”
“Or you and I can get ice cream together?”
Fig turned to find Danny beside her again, listening as he stood next to his Sunny Day painting, with his hands buried deep in his pockets.
“Really?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Danny said. “Like you said, it sucks not being your friend.”
Fig smiled her first real smile all day. But then she looked at the clock and sighed. “Thanks. Both of you. But I really don’t think my dad’s going to make it.”
“Ye of little faith!”
Fig knew that voice, with its slight accent, knew that belligerent snark that only her dad could inject so much love into. She whipped her head around and saw her father standing there, right there at her festival, in the auditorium, with a smile on his face and Mark by his side. He looked a little pale, a little sweaty, but he wasn’t sick, he wasn’t making a scene, he was just there, really there—and she didn’t even care if anyone was looking, didn’t check to see if anyone was laughing, just ran the few steps it took to jump into his arms. It was a good thing Mark was there to brace him from the impact.
“You’re okay,” Fig said. “You’re here.”
“I had to endure Van Gogh for months. Had to come see this painting I’ve heard so much about.”
He put Fig back onto her feet, and she finally got to introduce him to her best friend. “Dad, this is Danny—Danny, this is my dad.”
Her dad held out his hand toward Danny. “I hear you’ve been trying to help sort out my brain. I wanted to thank you properly for that.”
Danny shook her dad’s hand. “I don’t think I actually helped much.”
“I hear you helped plenty,” her dad said. Danny blushed.
“Wow, you painted that?” Mark interrupted to ask, and Fig remembered why they were all there.
She grabbed her dad’s hand and pulled him so that he was standing right in front of her painting. “It’s supposed to be us, Dad,” she told him, and then waited.
He was there, with her, but she still very much needed him to understand.
She couldn’t find the nerve to look at him, but she heard him take a deep breath. His hand was slightly trembling in hers, but the rest of him grew still. “Yeah,” he finally said, exhaling, and Fig found herself exhaling, too. “Yeah, Fig. That’s us.”
It was a piano. A black grand piano like the ones she saw him playing in photographs, like the one she knew he used to have in that apartment where she spent the first year of her life, with the view of New York City. The piano was him, everything that made him tick, with its black keys and white keys that made music that could so easily, without care, go out of tune. If Fig listened hard enough, she could almost hear one of her dad’s songs coming from the piano. And out of the top, growing tall from the center, was a tree.
A fig tree.
Thanksgiving came. Fig’s dad overcooked the turkey, and he and Mark argued when her dad left a burner on and accidentally scorched his apron.
Mark balled up the singed apron and threw it into the sink.
“I didn’t mean to,” Fig’s dad said.
“You never mean to, Tim,” Mark barked back. Her dad cringed, and Fig tried to keep her eyes on the potatoes she was overstirring. Mark wiped a hand across his face. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I didn’t mean—”
“Yeah, you did,” Fig’s dad said with a shrug.
“Every day I wake up hoping I don’t walk into chaos,” Mark admitted. “Sometimes it scares me a little.”
Fig’s dad glanced at Fig before turning back to Mark. “You and Fig probably feel the same about that. I hate that I make you both feel that way.”
Mark nodded and wrapped an arm around Fig’s dad. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s finish this meal.”
When dinner was ready, and they sat down at their small, three-chair table, Fig noticed that Mark’s eyes were shining as he stared at the small turkey in front of them. “This is my first time actually having a real Thanksgiving dinner since Kate died,” he confided.
“The cranberry sauce is from a can,” her dad said, the familiar blush crawling up his neck to his ears. “The green beans were frozen, and I’d bet good money the turkey is dry. I’m English. I’m no good at this.”
Mark laughed, scooting his chair closer to Fig’s dad as he wiped at his eyes. “That doesn’t matter, Tim. That’s not the point.”
They smiled at each other. And then they kissed.
Fig looked away, down at the food covering the table. Truth was, most years her dad picked up a rotisserie chicken. They watched the Macy’s parade together, but it was just the two of them, so they didn’t go through all the trouble of a big meal. This year, he tried. Maybe the turkey was dry and maybe the mashed potatoes were defrosted in the microwave, but he tried. For Mark, for her.
When Fig looked back up, Mark’s eyes were on hers. Lately Fig wondered if her dad was right, and she and Mark had more in common than she was willing to concede. They both loved a man who sometimes hurt them. Not because he wanted to but because his mind sometimes failed him, and he needed help that wasn’t always a perfect fix. They both wanted him to be okay.
What had Mark done in the years between his wife’s death and this Thanksgiving? Did he go out to eat? Did he sit alone at his table?
“Do you want to carve the turkey?” Fig asked him.
“Me?” Mark said.
“We all know I’ll make a mess of it,” Fig’s dad added.
Mark laughed. “Okay, okay.” He took the carving knife from Fig’s dad and leaned over the table. He brought the knife gently to the turkey, as carefully as he had brought the razor to her dad’s face months ago.
With an artist’s precision, he made the first cut.
Four days later, the woman from CP&P knocked on the front door. “Good afternoon, Finola. It’s good to see you again,” she said. Fig didn’t even remember her name.
All the November dates were crossed off the calendar, up to the last square, with the number 30, where CP&P was written and circled in the center. That morning, Fig was the one obsessively watching the Weather Channel for the extended forecast. It was the very last day of hurricane season. A cold front was coming, but the skies were blue. There was no forecast of rain at all that week.
Two big storms in one year had been more than enough. The sporadic CP&P visits throughout those three months had been more than enough. Fig didn’t know what would happen when the lady left; she didn’t know what would happen by the end of the day or the next morning, when she’d cross off the last day of November, and December would begin.
But it was time to find out.
The woman, who reintroduced herself as Linda, sat next to Fig on the couch. Fig tugged at her earlobe, and her dad pulled her hand away, holding it in both of his own.
“So, we’ve compiled a report the past few months, and I have to say, you should be proud of yourself, Mr. Arnold. It seems like you’ve worked very hard.”
“I have,” her dad said. “Fig’s too important not to.”
Linda smiled at Fig. “I’ve heard these past few months have been stressful for you,” she said. “Do you want to tell me about that?”
Fig looked over at her dad, who nodded. She also looked over at Mark. “I was scared,” she said. “Of losing my dad. But also . . .” Fig stopped short.
“Also what?” Linda prompted.
Fig tugged her ear. She couldn’t help it. “I want him better. I don’t want it to be like it was anymore. It’s too hard, and I hate it.” She turned again to her dad, her eyes blurry. “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry. Is that okay?”
Her dad sat on the other side of her, bringing his hand to her cheek before pushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear, one that had slipped out of the braid he did for her that morning. “Of course that’s okay, darling. That’s . . . God, that’s why we’re here. That’s why your teacher called in the first place. It was too much, and you didn’t deserve that. I know you’ve hated all of this, and I’m sorry. And I’m going to keep working to get better for you.”
Fig took a deep breath, but her tears fell anyway. Her dad wiped them away.
“What happens now?” Fig asked.
Linda smiled. “That’s what I’m here to discuss.”
Fig sat on the softest couch she had ever sat on, surrounded by equally soft throw pillows that matched the lamp on the desk of the woman who patiently sat across from her, waiting for Fig to speak.
It was her first appointment, and her dad was having a bad day, so Mark had driven her. He was waiting right outside the door in case Fig needed anything.
She supposed she could talk about that, about her dad’s bad day and about how Mark filled the broken bits of them like glue, like he fixed houses and helped fix her dad. She could talk about how Danny was her best friend even though he still liked her as more than a friend, and how she was nervous (and excited) to go over to Molly’s house for the first time in two days. She could talk about how she was starting to blush around Molly the same way Danny sometimes still blushed around her, and how she hadn’t yet gone back to the library because of her feelings for Hannah.
She could talk about how she’d counted down to November 30 because she thought that day would be the end, only to realize it was just the beginning. CP&P would still check in; her dad still had work to do. But Fig knew that he was trying—trying new medicine, new doctors, new relationships—and Fig wanted to try, too.
So she and her dad would talk, and they would listen. To each other, to Mark. And for Fig, to her new therapist, who was patiently waiting for her to make the first move.
But Fig didn’t know how.
Instead, she glanced about the room at the therapist’s diplomas, surrounded by paintings, on the walls. Fig looked at the artwork but didn’t recognize any of it. She liked the beachy paintings, though, images of the ocean crashing on the shore, of umbrellas stuck in sand and towels laid out to sunbathe on. “Do you know who painted those?” Fig asked.
Her therapist smiled. “I have no idea, actually, but I can find out. Do you like art, Finola?”
Fig nodded.
“Why don’t you tell me about the kind of art you like?”
Fig smiled. She didn’t know how she and her dad and Mark would always deal with CP&P check-ins, or her dad’s bad days, or the next hurricane season. She didn’t know how she could make sure her dad kept making music, didn’t know how she could make sure Mark wouldn’t leave. She didn’t know how she could get the three of them to a point that meant they wouldn’t have to worry about any of it.
But this? This she could do.
“What do you know about Vincent van Gogh?”
Coda
September, Again
The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too.
—Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, November 1876
18
Finola
“You gotta stay still.”
“I can’t. I can’t.”
“You can. Just try and breathe.”
Mark was tying her father’s tie. Or at least attempting to. Her father was sweaty and practically vibrating, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, fidgeting with the cuffs and buttons of his dress shirt. He was nervous. He was making Fig nervous, too.
The weather reporter on the TV was talking about Hurricane Reese making its way to the coast, expected to hit landfall on Long Island sometime in the next few days.
But today was all sunshine, feeling like summer, with the scent of salt water from the ocean in the air. Fig turned off the TV. No one was paying any attention to it anyway.
What a difference a year made.
“Tim, I can’t do this if you don’t stay still,” Mark said.
Her dad had a clean-shaven face and neatly trimmed hair. His black trousers were pressed, his shirt crisp and ironed. His jacket hung over one of the kitchen chairs. His hands were jittery—they played familiar notes in the air, on Mark’s arms—but they weren’t trembling. He looked good. He was ready. Fig and Mark just had to get him there.
Fig was still in her pajama pants and a tank top, and Mark in a sweatshirt and gym shorts. They would get ready together later. For now, everything was about her dad.
She watched as Mark finally got her father to stay still long enough for him to finish tying his tie and to smooth out the collar of his shirt with a gentleness that seemed to calm her dad. “You look nice in a suit,” Mark said, breaking into the smile he reserved for the two of them.
Her father couldn’t help himself, and he raised his eyebrows with an, “Aye, aye?”
Mark laughed. “Everyone in that room tonight is going to see what I’ve always seen.”
Her father’s grin grew sheepish. “And if I mess it all up?”
“I’ll still see it anyway,” Mark said.
That made Fig smile.
Her dad was writing music again. Not every day, not always very good. But he was writing music and had sold a new piece, and now someone wanted him to perform. It wasn’t a huge music hall in London or New York City, but the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey, was still a grand theater, with more than a thousand seats—enough to set her father on edge.
It set Fig on edge, too. The moments throughout the week when her dad sat with her and Mark on the couch watching TV before bed, with his fingers practicing their well-trained dances on her or Mark’s legs or arms or shoulders—or the moments when he sat unmoving at his piano bench, staring at the sheet music . . . Well, they worried her.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you over?” Mark asked.
“No. No, I’m good. You two get yourselves ready and just . . . just be front and center once they turn those bloody lights on me, yeah?” He glanced around the room. “Where’s my Fig?”
She pushed off the wall she had been leaning against while watching the two of them. She had his jacket in her arms. “I’m right here.”
He smiled, and she held up the jacket for him. Once he had pulled it on, she brushed the back of it smooth, and then she wrapped her arms around him in a big hug that would probably leave wrinkles. She hoped he wouldn’t care, because she sure didn’t.
Fig didn’t tell him he’d be great, and he didn’t ask her to say that he would be. Instead, she confessed to him a long-kept secret: “I’ve always wanted to see you play like this.”
“Well then,” he said, with a slightly wonky smile, “in that case, I better make this the best gig of my life.”
Mark was quiet on the ride to the theater. “You’re nervous,” Fig said.
“I know he can do this,” Mark said, his hands gripping the steering wheel of his truck more tightly. “I just want him to know he can, too.”
Fig, in her new dress and shoes, stayed close to Mark as they navigated the crowd waiting to see her father. Mark offered her his arm, and she laced hers through it. She glanced at everyone standing around the waiting area and wondered if anyone had seen her father play in his past—in that different part of his life that sometimes seemed to belong to someone else. Mark looked as lost as she felt as they found a spot along a wall to wait for the ushers to let them go in.
Fig spotted Molly, standing in the center of the crowd with her parents, wearing a dress that matched her pale blue glasses. When Molly saw Fig, she made her way across the room, squeezing through the maze of the crowd to join her. “Hey! You look really pretty,” she said.
