Hurricane Season, page 6
“Man’s saved my life twice in less than twenty-four hours, now. Should have made him something better than scrambled eggs,” her dad joked. Fig wasn’t all that amused.
Neither was Mark, it seemed. He leaned in to reach for her dad’s face, taking a dish towel from where it hung over the sink and wiping at some of the mess Fig had made with the shaving cream. There was something gentle but deliberate about the way he then held the razor, and the way he looked at her dad’s cheeks and chin as if he were studying them, as if he were going to carve his face from scratch into something fresh and new.
Fig found she was envious. Where she made a mess, Mark approached the task like an artist.
Mark started, and they were all kind of stiff and uneasy and quiet, listening to the sound of the razor run through cream against skin, until her dad let out a sudden soft giggle, which Mark followed with a shake of his head and a laugh of his own. The situation was kind of awkward, maybe even odd. Fig’s closed-off dad and stranger-danger neighbor were sitting in the kitchen, so close together their noses were practically touching—and Fig unexpectedly found herself laughing, too.
And then they were all laughing a little stronger, and Mark was holding her dad’s face tight, saying, “Stay still before I nick an artery.”
Her dad tried hard to sit still and managed to hold it together long enough for Mark to finish the job. He chucked the razor in the sink and grabbed the dish towel, holding it out for Fig. “Want to do the honors?”
Fig nodded, taking the towel and wiping the excess shaving cream and leftover whiskers from her dad’s face. Once he was clean, she placed the towel on the counter and touched his cheeks, wanting to feel his smooth skin, studying the shape of his face now that he was no longer unkempt. He looked much healthier as her eyes met his.
“Better?” he asked, and she knew that he meant it, that simple question, and everything that it implied.
She threw her arms around his neck. “Love you, Dad.”
“Double it, darling.”
“Love you, love you.”
7
La Berceuse (Woman Rocking a Cradle)
Fig didn’t know much about her mother. What she did know was that her parents met when her dad moved to New York City from “across the pond.” That’s what he always called the journey from England, when he was chasing more success and more money. He got both, plus a woman and a baby, and then lost everything but that baby.
Fig and her dad lived off echoes from that time—just barely recognizable, like the accent remaining in his voice—because his mind, she knew, suffered along the way.
She tried, as she struggled to read through that same book about Vincent van Gogh, to figure out a timeline of her dad’s odd behaviors—tried to see if she could pinpoint a time in his life when things started to get blurry, like historians attempted to do with Van Gogh. There were big moments, sure, for each of them, but both the painter and her dad seemed to have traces of those intense moods always: found in Vincent’s depressed letters to his brother and the sad look always present in her dad’s eyes.
Fig read and learned what she could about the ways Van Gogh embarrassed his family, about the way his brother loved him, about how he lost faith in religion and found faith in art. She tried to understand his failures in relationships, his desire to sell his work, his erratic behavior. She was able to understand too easily the way his neighbors and the people who knew him called him mental, called him mad.
She read and read and read, the same letters over and over, skipping things that were too confusing and trying hard to learn the rest, trying to understand.
“The biggest difference,” she confessed to Danny as they sat together at the library one afternoon, “is that Van Gogh finished a whole bunch of paintings, even when he was sickest. My dad hasn’t finished anything in years.”
“Have you figured out if it’s Van-go or Van-goff yet?” Danny asked.
“What? No. I don’t know. I keep saying go, but my dad always says goff.”
“Okay. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, maybe that’s your dad’s real problem? Art was really important to Van Gogh. Like music to your dad. It was basically what Van Gogh lived for.”
“How do you know that?”
“It was in his letters, the ones he wrote to his brother.” Danny pushed the book he was reading aside and pulled out his cell phone. “This is too hard to read. I’m just gonna Google.”
Fig tried her best not to roll her eyes. “No, I know he said it in the letters. I mean how do you know about them?”
“I read about it online.” Danny turned a little pink. “I wanted to try and help.”
Fig smiled. She really liked having someone to confide in.
“I’m glad we can just text,” Danny said. “Or Snapchat. Writing letters and then having to wait for them in the mail to check in with someone seems like a lot of work. It’s bad enough when you have to wait for someone just to text you back.”
Fig wondered what she would even say in a letter to her dad. Dear Dad, she’d start. Please tell me what goes on in your head, about the music. Please write and explain to me how you feel, so I can help you—and everyone will leave us alone.
“You two good over here?” Hannah had come up behind them. Fig turned to smile at her, and her cheeks flushed as she realized that Hannah was close enough for Fig to smell vanilla perfume. Sometimes perfume gave Fig headaches, but she didn’t want Hannah to move away.
Fig, caught up in vanilla, couldn’t find the words to say, so she was grateful when Danny chimed in. “We’re okay!”
“Okay. And, hey, don’t think I forgot about that overdue book fee,” Hannah added.
Fig was about to defend herself, though by saying what she wasn’t sure. But she caught sight of the mirth on Hannah’s face, and blushed when Hannah winked. Like Fig and Danny, she must have come to the library straight from school. She was still wearing the Catholic high school uniform.
Fig liked the way Hannah rolled her skirt at the waist, and the way she wore her uniform shirt unbuttoned, displaying the light pink tank top underneath it. She liked Hannah’s frizzy hair and her chipped nail polish. She liked Hannah, liked looking at Hannah, more than she had ever liked looking at another person. Hannah made Fig feel warm and made Fig blush. Fig knew what a crush was, even though she didn’t know exactly what to do about it yet.
“Learn anything new about Mr. Gogh today?” Hannah asked.
“It’s Van Gogh,” Danny corrected her.
Fig nearly kicked him under the table.
“Well, what did we learn about Mr. Van Gogh today, then?” Hannah said, smirking.
“That he made way more art than Fig’s dad makes music.”
This time Fig did kick Danny.
Danny yelped just as Hannah said, “Your dad’s a musician? That’s so cool.”
Fig felt her chest tighten as Hannah looked at her expectantly. “Yeah, he . . . he used to be. I mean, he still is. But he used to be more. Before.”
“Before . . . ?” Hannah asked.
“Here, look,” Danny interrupted, shoving his phone into Fig’s and Hannah’s faces.
Fig had to push the phone away to get a good look, but right there on Danny’s screen, front and center, was a photo of her dad looking much younger. He was waving from a grand piano up on a stage, bathed in bright lights, with a smile even brighter on his face.
Fig had never seen him look so good.
Fig’s chest felt even tighter, and she pushed the phone away. “I thought you were Googling Van Gogh, not my dad.”
“But that’s him, your dad—right?” Danny asked as he skimmed the article the photo was attached to.
“That’s so cool,” Hannah said, reaching out to grasp Danny’s phone for a better look. “He must be awesome. This says he sold out Carnegie Hall. Have you been?”
“No,” Fig said, though she wished she had. She ignored the way her nose burned as Hannah continued scrolling. “He hasn’t played a show since I was a baby.” She’d seen photographs in old dusty albums. She knew what he was before he had her. She wanted more than anything to witness that someday. “Stop Googling my dad, Danny.”
“All right, all right,” Danny said, taking his phone back from Hannah.
Hannah kept her gaze on Fig, and Fig wanted her to stop. She didn’t want Hannah to know the things the other kids at school did.
“All right,” Hannah said. “I have, like, a mountain of books to shelve before Mrs. Gregory gets on my case. I’ll be over there if you need me.”
Danny kept scrolling through links on his phone, and Fig couldn’t tell if he was looking for information about her dad or Van Gogh. She closed the biography she was reading, eager to go home.
As Fig walked into her house, a strong smell immediately assaulted her nose, and she screwed up her face in alarm. “Dad?”
“In here!” he called from the kitchen, which didn’t ease her concern.
She dropped her backpack and library books at the door and made her way down the hallway, stopping at the doorway to the kitchen and peering in. She had the urge to laugh and scoff all at once when she saw him standing at the stove. He was wearing a ratty and ridiculous-looking floral apron he must have found buried in a drawer. The sweat on his forehead made his hair stick up in odd directions as he wiped at it with one arm.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He turned around to face her, his eyes a little wild even as he smiled and held up his spatula, twirling it in the air and getting some sort of sauce on the stove top and his apron (and the wall, really) in the process. “What’s it look like?” he asked. “I’m tired of takeout. I’m going to make us a proper meal.”
Her dad did this sometimes, but those times were few and far between because he rarely had both the energy and desire to cook. In any case, his attempts in the kitchen always ended in a mess, even if it was a delicious one. Fig figured she would try to contain some of the chaos. “Can I help? What’re you making?”
“Curry,” he said. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head and made his way past her, then opened the refrigerator and pulled out some produce. “And no worries, I’ve got it.”
The produce was fresh, and Fig was impressed and surprised. He had clearly gone shopping.
“There is something you can help me with, though,” he said, his back to her as he cut up spinach and okra on the counter. She noticed that the back of his neck and ears were pink, but that could have been from the heat of the stove top. “All this trouble for a guest I don’t even know for certain is coming.”
Fig felt her stomach drop. “What guest?” She glanced at the calendar. There was nothing written in the white square for today, but CP&P could drop in at any moment. Did he know something she didn’t? “What guest, Dad?”
He put down his knife and wiped again at his brow. “Can you dash across the street and invite Mark for dinner?”
She blinked at him. “What?”
“To, you know.” He shrugged, focusing back on the curry. “Say thank you.”
This was all for Mark, then. “We only have two chairs.”
“Darling, please.” He wiped a hand over his face, which was now clean-shaven thanks to Mark, because her dad could not do it and Fig could not do it, but Mark could. “I put us in danger and I just . . . We should thank him.”
Fig almost said no. She almost said that Mark had seen enough and inviting him back for another visit was a mistake. That Mark stayed in the first place only because he thought her dad couldn’t be left alone with her, and what, exactly, did her dad think about that?
But her dad had gone grocery shopping and was actually making dinner and was sweaty and trying, and Fig couldn’t let him down. She put her shoes back on and made her way across the street to knock on the door of the yellow house, feeling her own cheeks grow a little warm even in the cool fall breeze. Mark had somehow experienced the intimate details of Fig and her dad’s life but didn’t call the police, didn’t threaten her dad. The entire thing made her nervous.
The door opened. Mark stood there as he finished buttoning up a shirt, his hair a little damp. Fig figured he must have just washed up from work, which meant he probably hadn’t yet started his own dinner. She didn’t know if she was bummed or relieved. “Hi, Fig,” he said, and then glanced behind her to the house across the street. “Everything okay?”
She took a deep breath, trying to ignore his assumption that things weren’t okay. “We . . . I mean, my dad . . . He wondered if you’d like to come for dinner. To . . . say thanks.”
Mark blinked, and Fig suddenly worried about what would happen if her dad went through all the trouble, all the mess and sweat and energy in their kitchen, only to have Mark reject them. But then Mark slowly smiled. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Of course.”
“Cool, okay,” Fig said, and exhaled deeply. “I’ll tell Dad you’re coming.”
When, an hour later, Mark knocked on the front door, Fig was exhausted. Her dad was exhausting. Her dad cooking was exhausting. But at least, between the two of them, they managed to have dinner ready (with a couple of dad-daughter secrets about exactly how they got it ready). Fig had set the coffee table with napkins and utensils and plates for three.
“You’re early,” her dad said, basically accusing Mark while opening the door.
Mark shifted from one foot to the other. “Fig didn’t tell me what time to come over. I can come back later?”
“Dad, let him in,” Fig said from her seat on the couch.
“She’s right,” her dad said, and held the door open wider as Mark stepped aside. “Come in, come in. Just excuse the chaos, would you?”
As he walked in, Mark’s face scrunched up, and Fig knew the feeling. She found herself laughing. “Dad burned the curry,” she explained.
Her dad, still in his apron, with his hair sweat slicked, floundered a bit. “Don’t worry, though!” he said to Mark. “I saved most of it. It’s perfectly edible. I mean nice! It’s nice!” He paused to take a breath. “Look, it’s fine—I promise it doesn’t taste like it smells in here, all right?”
Mark looked over at Fig before smiling at her dad. “Okay,” he said.
Her dad ushered Mark to sit on the opposite end of the couch from Fig. “We’ve only got two chairs in the kitchen. We don’t entertain a lot. I hope you don’t mind.”
Fig watched Mark carefully for his reaction, but he simply took his seat on the couch, as if it didn’t bother him.
And then her dad was disappearing into the kitchen, leaving her and Mark alone. They both just sat there. Fig tried to avoid eye contact and wondered if it would be rude to pull over her dad’s laptop and watch Netflix—she still was using Madison’s log-in—but her dad’s desperate “Fig!” from the kitchen saved her. She bounced up from her seat and left Mark to his own devices.
Fortunately, and surprisingly, it wasn’t actually that long before dinner was served. While the smells and the state of the chef had been a little unnerving (for Mark, Fig imagined, as well as for her), her dad seemed to have pulled off dinner. They sat in the living room, plates on their laps, and Fig smiled as her dad presented their meal to Mark.
“Chicken tikka masala, saag bhaji—”
“That’s curried spinach,” Fig interrupted.
“Which is, yes, mostly spinach, and bhindi bhaji, which is okra, and honey rice.” He smiled, and Fig smiled more, because he was blushing, but he also seemed so proud. “And there’s more in the kitchen if you want seconds.”
“Wow.” Mark dug in, and Fig held her breath until he chewed and said it again, “Wow.”
Her dad dug into his own plateful. Fig couldn’t help it and started giggling, and he scowled at her a bit—because it was their secret for the moment—and then they were all eating.
Conversation was slow, and a little awkward, but then Mark finally asked the question that Fig was almost waiting for. “How’d you cook this okra so well? My mom used to serve it all the time, but I hated it then. It always ended up all slimy.”
There was a moment of complete silence. Her dad looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights, and Fig tried her best to smother a laugh in her hand. He glared at her, then slouched back in his chair and surrendered to the moment. “Oh, fine, just tell him,” he said with a put-upon look that didn’t quite cover up his smile.
“He ruined dinner,” Fig said between giggles as she let the secret out. “That’s from the restaurant around the corner. They do really good okra.”
Mark burst out laughing, even though he tamped it down as fast as he could, and her dad sighed. “My dear daughter does like to embarrass me,” he said. “I did my best.”
“I appreciate the effort,” Mark replied.
Fig felt a little bad spilling her dad’s secrets. “Dad spent practically all day cooking.”
“Thank you, darling. I don’t think Mark needs to know exactly how much of a prat I made of myself.”
“I wish you’d told me,” Mark said, setting his near-empty plate down on the coffee table. “You shouldn’t have gone spending money on all this just to feed me.”
“He swore like anything when the okra started getting all oozy.”
“I didn’t ruin everything, did I?” Her dad pouted, putting down his own plate, the food half eaten. “I had to rescue the curry—which I’ll have you know,” he said, turning to Mark, “I did make from scratch. And some of the side dishes sort of got away from me while I wasn’t paying attention.”
“So he sent me for extras,” Fig added. “Otherwise, you’d be eating your tikka masala and saag bhaji with slimy okra and uncooked rice. But the curry and the spinach is all him.”
Mark chuckled. “Well, they’re both great. You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble, though.”
