Hurricane Season, page 7
Fig smiled at Mark for the compliments, even if her dad looked quite embarrassed. Her dad deserved them, and hearing them from a stranger (was Mark still a stranger?) was new. “I don’t really cook a lot, except easy stuff for the two of us,” her dad said with a shrug. “Seemed appropriate, though. Not every day someone saves your life, so a nice bit of food from back home felt right.”
There was another moment of silence, then Fig said, “Dad, this is Indian food—you don’t come from India.”
Her dad looked up. “I’ll have you know, young lady, this food was invented to get the British eating curry, and it worked like a treat.”
Fig scoffed and argued that it still wasn’t British, and her dad asked what she knew about being British, and Fig argued that he should just accept he was more American now than British. Now her dad scoffed, and Mark laughed, shaking his head at both of them as they all finished dinner.
Done eating, Fig excused herself to wash her hands and brush her teeth—mostly to avoid being wrangled into doing the dishes. She closed the bathroom door and looked at herself in the mirror, fogging it up as she inhaled and exhaled deeply. She couldn’t remember the last time she saw her dad so . . . so happy and normal around someone that wasn’t, well, her. She couldn’t remember the last time she saw someone else so happy and normal around her dad, either.
Did that make Mark her dad’s friend now? Could they trust him to be?
When she left the bathroom, she heard her dad at the kitchen sink, splashing and clanging, but she spotted Mark in the center of their living room, looking at the photographs along the walls. Fig hung back behind the doorway, hiding as she watched Mark’s eyes move from photograph to photograph. Most of them were of Fig at various ages. Some of them included her dad—when he was young, and she was younger, and they were floundering but together.
Not a single photograph was more than eleven years old, as if time before Fig did not exist—hidden away instead in old photo albums—as if her dad wanted to pretend it never happened.
“She left,” her dad’s voice suddenly rang out, and Fig retreated a bit back down the hall to stay out of view. Her dad must have been watching Mark, too.
Mark looked over at him, his eyebrows creased together.
“See, I know what you’re thinking,” her dad said as he crossed the room to stand next to Mark. “There’s a glaring omission here, so I’m saving you the trouble of asking. She left, just as soon as they’d let her.”
It made Fig’s stomach hurt that her dad didn’t sound bitter or angry. He sounded like it was what it was, and, sometimes, even Fig believed that.
“She was just . . . done,” he said.
Mark didn’t respond, just kept looking at the wall of pictures, at Fig’s first smile and first laugh and first step. “How old was Fig?” Mark finally asked.
“Less than a day,” her dad replied. “She left Fig in the hospital, and I haven’t seen or heard from her since. Called me up and told me I was on my own, she wasn’t coming back. I got there as quick as I could, and the baby was just . . . alone, you know? And I held her and she was squirmy and waving her fists about, all angry, and I knew it would be the two of us from then on.”
Mark looked horrified. Fig didn’t blame him. There were so many unanswered questions. Why did she leave? Where was she now?
Would CP&P try to find her if they took Fig’s dad away?
But Fig didn’t want to hear the answers, and didn’t want Mark to hear any more, either. “Dad?” she called out, letting her presence be known, knowing that her dad wouldn’t continue that particular conversation with her standing there.
“You left me with the dishes,” he said, softly accusing her, before bringing a hand up to cover a yawn.
Mark took that as his cue to leave. “I should get going.”
Fig’s shoulders sagged in relief. Her dad, his hair still a mess and his eyes droopy, looked drained. Maybe preparing a curry dinner, so close after the storm, was a little too ambitious. She loved him for trying and loved him even more for succeeding, but she was ready for Mark to go home just in case they were pushing their luck.
Her dad escorted Mark to the front door. The two of them stood there awkwardly, her dad small and leaning up against the doorframe, Mark much taller as he hovered over the threshold. “Thanks,” Mark said. “It was . . . I had a fun evening.”
“Me too,” her dad said. “Thanks for coming. And thanks for, well . . .” He looked over at Fig, then back at Mark, and shrugged. Fig didn’t blame him for not knowing the words to thank a new neighbor, practically a stranger, for braving a storm, for bringing him home, for staying with his daughter through the worst of it.
Mark shook his head and waved her dad’s gratitude off as if it were nothing, even though Fig was certain they all knew it was definitely something.
They stood like that a second more, and then Mark was out the door, smiling and looking back to wave at Fig—who waved, too—and then he was walking away.
Her dad watched him go, watched until he knew Mark was safe behind the closed door of his yellow house.
8
The Starry Night
Things shifted after that thank-you dinner. Mark didn’t go back across the street to the yellow house and stay there and keep to himself as Fig hoped he would, as Fig liked about Ms. Minkle. Instead, he came around more.
Mark usually got home from work around the same time Fig got home from school. Fig often found her dad across the street, helping Mark unload his truck filled with things like wooden planks and tools and concrete blocks. Her dad’s fingers made music. Mark’s made more practical things.
The first time Fig had arrived home to find her dad helping Mark unload the truck, she had been certain he was going to hurt himself. A couple of weeks later, she still wasn’t exactly convinced he wasn’t going to, but Mark seemed to have a handle on it. More times than not, Fig would get home to see Mark laughing and quickly grabbing the blocks or toolbox out of her dad’s hands to carry them inside himself. Her dad wasn’t really helping much, but Mark didn’t seem to mind.
Which, again, was new. Which, again, made Fig wonder what Mark really thought about her dad.
Today, she walked toward her house after departing the school bus to find her dad chatting leisurely with Mark—and he never used to do anything leisurely—across the street. She hoisted the library book she was carrying higher on her hip, and picked up her step, eager to get home to join them.
Her dad’s face was bright as he spotted her. “Fig! Look!” He was gesturing wildly at Mark. “Man with a tool belt!”
As it turned out, Mark was indeed wearing a tool belt, along with a sweatshirt (Fig thought she should probably find and wash the one her dad borrowed during the storm and give it back) coated lightly with dust. He was resting against his truck, the back of which was open, with large planks of smooth wood sticking out of it. “Don’t be rude,” Fig said. “I like it.”
“Didn’t say I didn’t like it,” her dad replied. “He just finished making someone a front porch.”
“Fancy.”
“I’d like a front porch, wouldn’t you, Fig?”
Fig dramatically rolled her eyes for his benefit and turned to Mark. She didn’t know what to make of Mark—or what he thought of her—but she offered him a shy smile. “Hi.”
“Hey,” he replied, and jutted his chin in the direction of her books. “Library again?”
At some point during her slight distraction, her dad crept up behind her and pulled the book right out from under her arm. “What’s this? Mr. Van Gogh still? That art teacher of yours making you write his entire life history or something?”
“No, Dad. I told you.”
“You did?”
“We have to paint for the Fall Festival. This one’s a little hard to read. I needed to renew it so I can keep trying. We have to paint something, and Miss Williams gives us time at the end of every class to do it, and I still don’t know what to paint. I’m hoping to figure that out soon, though. You said you’d come.”
“Of course I did, darling. Of course I did.” His voice was a little fast, and a little loud, and she wondered if he actually did remember. He flipped through the biography. “No more weather books, then?”
“That reminds me, I still need to pay the library for that book. Remember? I told you about that? They’re not gonna let me take out any more books if I don’t pay soon.” Fig looked over at Mark, hesitant about bringing him into the conversation.
“Fig!” Her dad shouted her name so loudly both she and Mark jumped. “You’ve never seen Starry Night!”
“It’s literally the first painting that comes up when you Google Van Gogh, Dad.” She turned again to Mark, trying to read his expression at her dad’s burst of energy.
“I don’t mean photographs. I mean the real deal. At the MoMA! We should go.” He thrust the book back to her, and she almost tumbled over at the sudden weight of it. “Go put your school things inside and wash up. We can get to the city before dinner.”
Fig’s mouth fell open. “You mean today? Right now?”
“Why not? Just a hop, skip, and a train ride over.” He gestured wildly again at Mark. “How about you? You ever been to the Museum of Modern Art?”
Mark’s eyebrows reached his hairline. “Ah, no.”
“Good. Come with.”
“Wait,” Fig said, trying to bite back the smile that wouldn’t stay off her face, trying to understand the situation, trying to make sure she wasn’t getting this wrong. “We’re really going to go? Right now, to the city?”
“Not if you don’t hurry and change we won’t. Do you have a friend you want to drag along?” He turned to Mark: “You go get ready, too. You’re all dusty. No dust in the museum.”
Fig could not picture Ava or Madison or Haley coming to the city with their camera phones and giggles and her and her dad. She thought, for a moment, about Danny. But then she shook her head. She wanted this all to herself. She had never been to an art museum. She’d never seen a painting up close before. To go see The Starry Night, in person, to see the colors and the thickness of the dried paint, to see the very work that Van Gogh touched with his paintbrushes and fingers during a time when his mind and his life were slowly falling apart . . . to see and experience and step into that world of art with her dad?
“Give me ten minutes, Dad!” she said, turning to run inside. “And don’t you dare change your mind!”
Her dad was hyper and erratic. Fig sat with him and Mark on the train on their way to New York City to see one of Van Gogh’s most popular paintings (not one of Fig’s favorites, but the one that popped up in books and online most often) and tried to enjoy it. She was buzzing with the same nervous energy as her dad’s; they were both unable to sit still. Her dad’s leg bounced as he tapped his foot, while Fig constantly shifted in her seat to get a better view out the window. She wanted to show her dad the things she had learned, she wanted to experience this with him, and she wanted them both to understand it and each other.
Her dad wanted her to see The Starry Night, and they—and Mark—were going to.
Her dad was chatting away with Mark as if he actually had a friend in this world who wasn’t his eleven-year-old daughter. Mark laughed at the things her dad said, not with malice, not at her dad’s expense, but because he genuinely found them funny. In a short time, Mark had gone from new neighbor to almost a real friend, and Fig hoped nothing would happen between their home and the city and back again to change that.
Fig had a tight feeling in her chest. She kept thinking about how her dad could change his mind midroute and turn them around, or could get agitated and cause a scene resulting in a police escort home and a quicker follow-up visit from CP&P, or could do any number of things that could—and usually would, in Fig’s experience—go wrong.
The train came to a stop, and her dad reached his arm out toward Fig and said, “Shall we, then?”
Fig almost asked if they could turn around. Instead, she took his hand.
Fig was nearly certain that, besides that first year of her life, she had never been to New York City, and it was confirmed when they stepped off the train and made their way out of Penn Station and she saw the not-so-starry night sky. Her eyes were wide as she looked up at the bright lights of the skyscrapers and billboards. These were the very lights she could see reflected across the bay at the shoreline by her house, the lights her dad sometimes stood at the edge of the ocean to stare at.
The city was a reminder in more ways than one how small she was, especially as people in suits pushed their way past her to get into the station, as people with cameras and smartphones bumped into her for a better view of the buildings and lights and life around her. Someone walking by gave her a shove, one that knocked her off balance, but a hand was suddenly there, firm and steady on her shoulder, keeping her in place. She glanced up at Mark, who looked slightly overwhelmed, too, but smiled at her in a way she thought was meant to be comforting.
“Fig? Fig!” Her dad was temporarily separated from the pair of them by a wall of tourists. Fig reached forward to again take hold of his hand. His palm was sweaty, but he held hers tightly, and Fig gave him what she hoped was a reassuring squeeze.
He seemed to calm slightly at the feel of her hand. Her dad looked from Fig to Mark and back, and he nodded, firmly and sure, signaling he was ready to move forward. “Right. Let’s walk, shall we? Much easier than braving the transit at rush hour.”
“You know where you’re going?” Mark asked through the sounds of the city.
“Of course I do. Spent some of the best years of my life here. Only thing those years were missing was Fig.”
Once they set off, Fig had no reason to worry about the decision to follow her dad’s whims into the city. He kept his hand firmly wrapped around hers and walked them through those streets like a seasoned New Yorker, like someone who knew which streets were the less crowded ones, which sights Fig would like to see along the way. There’s Rockefeller Center. And that’s Radio City. You’ve seen the Christmas commercials. Rockettes! Fig felt safe as she marveled at the light that shone in her dad’s eyes. He looked as happy as she was that they were there together.
And then, as they turned a corner, she saw it, those big black letters against white: MoMA.
Fig held her breath.
“You ready?” her dad asked.
She thought about everything she ever read about Van Gogh. She thought about the paintings she saw in all those books, about the project that had been weighing on her mind. She thought about her dad, the musician, the man who saw and heard things she didn’t in music and art and the ocean and the clouds. She exhaled and nodded. She saw the crinkles at the corners of his eyes as he squeezed her hand.
The museum was as crowded as the city streets, and Fig stood exceptionally close to her dad, and even Mark, as they waited on line to purchase tickets. She sighed in relief when her dad pulled cash out of his wallet—she didn’t want to deal with the possibility of a denied credit card—and sighed again when Mark insisted on paying for himself. They had walked the city streets, had physical tickets in their hands, and were finally waltzing through security and up an escalator that led to the galleries.
Nothing was going to keep them away. This was real and was happening.
“Where to?” her dad asked, looking at the signs on the wall. “Where would your Vincent be?”
Fig read enough to know that Van Gogh would be on the fifth floor with, according to the signs, the other painters from the 1880s through the 1950s. They could easily take the escalators to pass the other floors and get there quickly, but Fig didn’t want anything about this trip to go by too fast.
“I want to see the other floors first,” she said, knowing that her dad would love the artwork, and there was so much to see, and she didn’t want to miss a second of it. “I want to see everything.”
So up the escalator they went, to the second, third, and fourth floors, where her dad both critiqued and adored all the artwork. Fig didn’t really understand much herself, which was frustrating, especially as her dad marveled with an artist’s eye at pieces that made no sense to her. “What do you think of this one?” he said, pointing to a brightly colored painting of what looked like jumbled, disjointed bits and shapes thrown together.
It was called Do the Dance by an artist named Elizabeth Murray.
“No one’s dancing,” Fig said. She didn’t even think any of the shapes were people, though really, she wasn’t certain.
“I think it’s a reference to a Ray Charles and Betty Carter song,” her dad said because of course he knew that. He was the musician, the artist. Fig was just Fig.
At least Mark didn’t seem to get it any more than she did, judging from the way his entire face pinched up, and as her dad went on and on about the paintings, it reminded Fig of those rare moments when he explained a musical piece. Fig greatly admired the way that part of his brain worked, but she wished she could unlock that same part in her own.
But then a painting did catch her eye, and Fig eagerly pointed to it. “It’s a bedroom!” she said. The plaque under it said the painting was by Roy Lichtenstein, Interior with Mobile. “Van Gogh has a painting of a bedroom, too. The one from his yellow house. He painted it because he really wanted to start an artists’ group where he moved to in France, and he was eager and excited to get other artists to come stay with him.”
Her dad’s eyes were bright and his smile wide as he listened to her. “You’re better than a tour guide,” he said.
Maybe Fig could do this, could understand, after all.
The rest of the journey went similarly, with her dad joking to Mark about the architecture: “Can you build me something like that?” And Mark commenting on Andy Warhol’s soup cans: “My kitchen cabinet looks like that.”
