Hurricane Season, page 5
“He always goes down—”
“Down by the water, right?” he interrupted. “I’ve seen him during my runs.”
She nodded, and the rain fell harder, and Mark practically pushed her to get her to go back into the house. “I’ve got him,” he said as he took off running.
Fig didn’t know what to do. It was her job to look after her dad; she couldn’t just sit idly by. She thought she might be sick, and her ear was sore from her tugging on it, and she could barely see out the window, could no longer see Mark, would not be able to tell if he found her dad, if her dad was okay, or if the sea finally swallowed him up and for extra measure took Mark right along with him.
A gust of wind blew hard against the window, startling her away from it. She and her dad hadn’t boarded them up. They didn’t have time now to prepare. The storm was coming, was here, and would only get worse. She glanced at the calendar. September wasn’t even over yet. How on earth would they make it to the end of hurricane season?
Fig unzipped the front pocket of her backpack and pulled out her cell phone. It would be so easy to call the police. Should she call the police? They saved him last time, but the neighbors all saw, and CP&P stopped by the next morning and started a file that only made things worse when Miss Williams called them. Because they already knew Tim Arnold, already knew that he was fractured and Fig might not be safe. But she was safe, wasn’t she? He loved her and she loved him and sometimes he just . . . he just couldn’t help it.
Why did he do this? What did he see and hear out there that she couldn’t? What went on in his mind that made him do this to her?
Her fingers hovered over the phone keys as the wind blew harder and lightning lit up the sky. She sat on the floor, her knees pulled into her chest. She closed her eyes and silently counted to see how far away it struck—One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi—until thunder echoed throughout the room. Her dad knew she hated storms, he knew what he did to them last time, and she was cold, and angry, and how could he do this to her?
No wonder her mother left. Maybe CP&P should go find her. Fig hated herself for thinking it. Hated her dad more, in that moment, for making her think it.
But then the door burst open, wind and rain blowing in with Mark as he practically carried her dad over the threshold. Her dad, who was home and found but still looked lost. His eyes were foggy and searching and confused as the drops of water from his soaked hair and overly scruffy beard dripped onto the carpet. Mark was holding all her dad’s weight, his arms wrapped tightly around him. Her dad wasn’t making any attempt to help Mark support him. Her dad just leaned in to him, letting Mark carry him.
Mark, while still holding her dad, stripped off his soaked jacket and tossed it to the floor and then removed her dad’s. Her dad was shivering, trembling, and Mark stripped off his Michigan State sweatshirt and pulled it down over her dad’s head, and her dad just let him, just let this stranger move him like a rag doll, as if he weren’t quite all there to do anything about it anyway.
Fig wanted to cry and wrap her arms around him and never let go.
“His bedroom?” Mark prompted, snapping Fig out of her thoughts. She nodded fiercely and led him down the hall, opening the door to her dad’s bedroom. Mark half carried, half dragged her dad in, and Fig grabbed a towel to dry him off as Mark pulled at his wet shoes and socks and pants, leaving her dad in Mark’s mostly dry sweatshirt and his boxers.
Together, they gently helped her dad onto the bed, pushing lightly so he would lie back as Mark lifted his feet. Then Fig pushed Mark away to step in. This was her dad, her job, and she knew how to do it. She tried not to think about what Mark saw when he looked around her dad’s bedroom, if he saw the endless scattered pages of songs half composed and erased and started all over, if he noticed the empty mugs on the nightstand, the dirty laundry on the floor.
Her dad was watching her through half-lidded, unfocused eyes as she reached over to pull at his duvet to cover him with it. She tucked him in and leaned over him to place a kiss on his still too-rough and stubbly face. Even Fig had exceptions to her own rules.
He blinked at her as she moved away. Mumbled a quiet, “Love you, darling.”
She blinked back her tears. “Double it.” It was a soft challenge in the quiet room.
He closed his eyes, and for a moment she thought he’d just fallen asleep. She stepped away from his bed and moved toward the door, reaching for Mark’s hand to pull him out with her. Mark had seen enough tonight.
Fig’s hand was on the doorknob when she heard it. “Love you, love you.”
Mark followed her to the living room, sat down on the opposite side of the couch from Fig. She knew he was waiting for an explanation, and knew even more that she owed him one. He had weathered the storm for her dad—for her—and he was wet, and probably cold in only his T-shirt and jeans, and oh, she should have thought to offer him a dry sweatshirt. She had wanted to protect her dad from one more neighbor, from one more person who might be cruel or a threat. Instead, she had pulled that neighbor into the middle of something she herself sometimes wanted out of, his hair dripping water down his face and onto his shirt because of a man—her dad—who got lost out in the storm.
The wind thrashing against the window was loud, and her voice was quiet and not exactly steady as she said, “I can get you one of my dad’s sweatshirts if you want.”
“Finola . . .”
She couldn’t look at him. She didn’t know how to start this conversation; more importantly, she didn’t know how to get out of it.
The power suddenly blinked out, and even though it was only a moment before it powered back on, she found herself skidding closer to Mark, not quite close enough to touch but close enough to intrude on his personal space. He didn’t move away. It gave her the courage to look up into his eyes, and she immediately wished she hadn’t. They were soft, and sad, and reminded her of her dad’s.
“Fig,” he tried again, “what’s wrong with your dad?”
The question was so blunt and honest, it knocked the wind right out of her. “Nothing.” Her voice was cruel, even to her own ears, but Mark had too many pieces of a puzzle that could take her dad away.
“Fig.” He kept saying her name, the nickname she hadn’t yet given him permission to use.
“He doesn’t mean it,” she whispered, and then repeated the words she used with Danny earlier: “He just . . . can’t help it.”
The rain came down harder, the thunder rolling in behind it. The drops continued to pelt the window, which rattled in the wind. Fig wanted to be older, or bigger, or brave enough to have boarded the windows up by herself. The power went out again, and this time it stayed out. She started shivering. She wished her dad were the type of dad who could protect her during a storm. She wished her mom were the type of mom who never would have left her.
“Will you stay?” she asked Mark without thinking. “Please? Stay until the storm passes?”
Mark hesitated, and Fig knew she had overstepped, knew she should take it back, knew she should probably be defending her dad, making excuses for him, keeping Mark at a distance so that he wouldn’t turn around and call Fig’s school or the police or social services. They were already out of second chances. They already had one too many red flags for CP&P to ignore.
But then he slowly exhaled. “Yeah.”
The tension left Fig’s shoulders as she released the deep breath she was holding. She curled her legs underneath her, and cuddled against the couch. Mark grabbed the old tatty throw blanket draped over the back to cover her.
Together, they waited out the storm.
6
Wheat Fields after the Rain
Fig was awoken from a restless sleep by her dad’s panicked voice, his accent pronounced as it always was in moments when he was thrown for a loop. “What are you doing in my house? With my daughter?”
Her dad was bleary from sleep, his hair matted on one side and sticking out on the other from falling asleep with it wet. He was still wearing Mark’s much too large sweatshirt, and he slouched to one side, looking at them through his narrowed eyes (though from anger or tiredness, Fig wasn’t sure). Honestly, even if Mark were a neighborhood predator, her dad wasn’t exactly all that threatening.
At some point during the storm, Fig had started to use Mark as a pillow, and she could now feel him stiffen and attempt to pull away, which she figured would be the appropriate gesture if this were a typical situation. “He brought you home, Dad. You’re literally wearing the clothes off his back.”
Her dad’s eyebrows pinched together, and he looked at her as if she were daft. But then she could almost see the fog clearing from his gaze, and Fig exhaled deeply in relief. Her dad looked down, his fingers plucking at the white letters of Mark’s green sweatshirt.
The anger and confusion seemed to vanish, and her dad was left looking much smaller. Fig had seen him do a lot of things that most children didn’t witness their parents doing, but she hadn’t seen him blush very often. He stood there now with his ears turning pink. “Oh,” he mumbled. “It’s comfy.” His fingers continued playing with the letters against his chest, as if they were piano keys, and his eyes moved to the window. “How was the storm?”
Fig burst into tears.
Her dad was suddenly next to her on the couch, pulling her nearly onto his lap, holding her head against the letters of Mark’s sweatshirt. “I’m sorry, love. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say,” he murmured against her hair as he rocked her. “I love you, I love you. I’m so sorry.”
Fig wiped at her tears, reveling in the fact that her dad was here, and whole, and holding her, and she inhaled his scent, which mingled with a wood smell that came from Mark’s sweatshirt. With her face pressed against her dad’s chest, she turned slightly to look at Mark, who was still sitting with them on the couch, watching them with his soft eyes, clasping his hands together in his lap as he sat ramrod straight.
She pulled away slightly to properly look at Mark, who caught her dad’s attention, too, as they all fully realized the awkwardness of the situation. Things that had gone unexplained now needed explaining, things that could get Fig and her dad in trouble. Fig should not have asked Mark to stay, because any adult who would walk away from this, without looking back, after everything he witnessed last night, would not be a responsible one.
So she had learned from Miss Williams.
“Why don’t you go get ready for school?” her dad said. He wasn’t naïve, and Fig knew a dismissal when she heard one.
“It’s Saturday.”
“Then go shower and change, and I’ll make us breakfast.”
There was a conversation to be had, and Fig was worried about how well her dad was going to have it. She glanced warily at Mark, and her dad gave her a gentle push. Neither of them said a word as she padded away to her bedroom.
The first thing Fig noticed when she left her bedroom, her hair still wet from the shower and wearing a semiwrinkled flannel shirt that at least passed her sniff test, was that Mark was still there, and the police (or a CP&P person or an ambulance or someone with a straitjacket) weren’t.
The second thing she noticed was that the house had the faint aroma of bacon, and the voices from the kitchen weren’t shouting at each other, weren’t desperate or angry or sad but just sort of . . . conversational. As if they were actually two adults rationally discussing a situation in which she often felt out of control, despite her familiarity with it. One that Mark was new to, one that currently put the ball (the entire court, really) in his hands. She tiptoed quietly across the hallway toward the kitchen and paused outside the wall that separated it from the living room to cross yet another day off the calendar. September 21. She was ready for the month to end.
“It’s those big eyes that take up half her face. Hard to turn away from,” she heard her dad say. “I get that.”
Fig leaned in, her ear against the doorway. She wasn’t above eavesdropping.
“It’s not just . . . I mean, yes, it was her, running headfirst into a storm. But it was you, too.” That was Mark. “I had a feeling something wasn’t okay. Maybe I should have said something sooner, but . . . it’s not my place, is it? I wanted to help, is all.”
“Nearly gave me a heart attack to see you curled up with Fig, though.”
“She asked me to stay. Couldn’t say no.”
“But you could have left before now,” her dad responded.
Fig pressed herself closer to the wall, wanting to hear what Mark had to say, why Mark was still here. “I didn’t know if you . . .” Mark paused. “I wasn’t sure if I could leave her with . . .”
He didn’t know if he could leave her alone with her dad. Which was what everyone was wondering these days, wasn’t it?
She wanted her dad to respond to that. She wanted him to defend himself, or to tell Mark that he was fine, and they didn’t need more people butting in, even if Fig had invited him in the first place.
Instead, he cleared his throat to say, louder than necessary, “Fig, darling, when you’re done spying on your dear dad, come have some breakfast.”
She pushed herself off the wall and plodded into the kitchen, where her dad was standing—still wearing Mark’s sweatshirt—by the stove, poking at the pan full of bacon strips with a spatula. Mark was sitting at their small (but good enough for them) kitchen table. The table had just two chairs. Their kitchen really only had room for two people to comfortably sit and eat, and that had always suited them just fine.
Fig took the chair Mark wasn’t in, with a plate of scrambled eggs her dad prepared on the table in front of her. Across from her, Mark was nursing a cup of tea. He didn’t particularly strike Fig as the tea type, so she could only assume he was being polite about drinking it. He was making her nervous; she didn’t know what he thought of their situation, and she didn’t want to find out. She wanted him to go home, and she wanted her dad to promise there would never be another storm, just clear bright skies and sun from now on.
“Bacon?” her dad asked.
She cut him a glare, didn’t even feel bad about it when his shoulders sagged and he put the frying pan down. He went to stuff his hands in the pocket of Mark’s sweatshirt but then looked as if he just remembered he was still wearing said sweatshirt, and he lowered his hands to his sides instead. “Right. You’re angry with me.”
“You scared me, Dad.”
“I know, love. I know.” The one thing she always appreciated was that he didn’t deny; he never tried to justify. He did know. They both did. They just didn’t know what to do about it.
“You can’t keep doing this, Dad. I almost called the police! What if they saw you like that again? What if CP and P showed up? There’s still ten weeks until hurricane season is over, Dad, that’s ten weeks before they come back and decide, and what if—”
Her dad looked over at Mark, and Fig swallowed the rest of her words.
Still, he didn’t make excuses. “What can I do to make it up to you?”
Fig knew she could have asked him to get her an original Van Gogh painting, and he would have done everything in his power to make it happen. But as she looked at him, wrapped in another man’s sweatshirt, still more than half a mess from the wind and rain that had assaulted his hair, she knew exactly what she wanted. “You can shave.”
Mark barked a laugh, which startled Fig.
Her dad looked over at Mark and fought back a smile, bringing a hand up to run through his more-beard-than-stubble. Then he dropped his hand and looked down, letting his fingers dance for a moment before clasping them together. Even Fig could see that he was still a little shaky. “Probably not a good idea today. Rain check? Tomorrow?”
But Fig stood her ground. “No. Today. Right now.”
He put on a smile for show, his eyes moving to Mark’s before finding hers again. “I can’t, Fig.”
“Then I’ll do it.” She squared her jaw, daring either of them to disagree with her. Her dad opened his mouth, she was sure, to try to. She didn’t let him. “If you really want to make it up to me, this is how you can do it.”
She almost felt guilty about how easily he conceded.
“Give Mark some bacon,” she said. “I’ll go get what we need.”
Mark was still sitting there at the table when she returned, and Fig avoided eye contact with him. She wanted him to go home—didn’t he see they were fine now? But he stayed and watched, chewing on his bacon and eggs (and still nursing that cup of tea) as she sat her dad in the other chair and lathered him up. She got shaving cream on her shirt (and his pants), and he wasn’t exactly the type to sit still. But he didn’t object as she picked up his razor, even though she had never actually done this before.
How hard could it be? She wet the razor, turning on the faucet at the sink, and then reached for her dad’s chin to steady his face, her fingers slipping a bit before getting a good grip. She held her breath, and felt herself almost cringing as she went to make the first swipe, and—
“Wait, wait. Stop,” Mark said, and despite herself, Fig sighed in deep relief at the interruption. “I can’t watch this—give me the razor.”
“Oh, thank God,” her dad said, and Fig scowled at him. “I’m sorry. You know I’d do anything for you, but I rather like my face.”
The part of her that forgave her dad anything already forgave him for the storm, especially since he was willing to let her possibly cut up his face just for the sake of her forgiveness. Still, she huffed as she handed the razor over to Mark, the near stranger from the yellow house across the street, who now knew more than enough about them to gossip with the neighbors.
