Hurricane Season, page 8
Fig loved it. She loved the MoMA, loved being there with her dad.
She thought that when they finally got to the fifth floor, they would walk into the gallery and see the painting, and her dad would turn to her and she would explain everything. She would explain the scene, the technique, the story behind it, and her dad would listen and understand and see the branches that connected Vincent van Gogh to the two of them. But when they finally reached The Starry Night—surrounded by a swarm of museumgoers holding up their cell phones and tablets for photographs and bumping against one another—Fig noticed that her dad was sweaty. He was wringing his hands, his eyes were slightly unfocused, and he was scanning the room and bouncing on the soles of his feet.
Her dad, who had been hyper ever since they left Keansburg, was not okay.
Mark noticed, too. “You want to go get some air real quick?”
“No, no.” Her dad shook his head. “We’re finally here! Have a look, Fig, go on.”
Fig wasn’t ready to take her eyes off her dad.
Mark placed a hand on her dad’s back, not guiding, just suggesting, as he jutted his chin in the direction of the corner of the room. “We’ll go look from over there. Less crowded. You want to squeeze your way through and then come meet us?” he said.
She looked to her dad (who looked relieved). He nodded and said, “Yeah, just . . . have a good look and then come meet us, right over there, right away.”
This . . . wasn’t how Fig planned it, and she felt her nose starting to burn. She wanted to take him by the hand and tell Mark to stay out of it and pull her dad through the crowds of people and their smartphones and stick him front and center and tell him, Look, Dad, look at this painting that means so much to me because Vincent is so much like you, and I need to know both of you.
But she couldn’t. Not when he was standing there looking small and frail and tired, his fingers moving restlessly against his legs and a bead of sweat dripping down the side of his face. She acquiesced with a nod, and Mark patted her dad gently on the back, leading him to the less crowded space.
And then they were gone, and Fig turned to face the large crowd, alone, knowing that she was too small to see unless she managed her way to the front.
It took some patience, some clever maneuvering, and some ducking around cell phone cameras, but she finally stood—not quite front and center, but center enough—in front of Vincent van Gogh’s artwork.
This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big, read the plaque on the wall next to the painting. Van Gogh had written the words in France in a letter to Theo, and Fig felt even smaller as she gazed up at the painting, seeing the brushstrokes, the thickness of the paint, the swirls and colors. She had to stop herself from reaching out to touch it, from running her fingers over those strokes, following the movement with her eyes instead. Her mind went to what she had read about Van Gogh. He’d been sitting in a mental hospital in Saint-Rémy, the bandage around his head covering his damaged ear, as he saw something only an artist could see and put it to paper for Fig to marvel at now while her dad waited at the back of the gallery, trying to keep himself together.
Fig’s vision went blurry from tears. She blinked them away, and went to find Mark and her dad.
They were leaning up against the wall, exactly where they said they’d be, standing together, facing The Starry Night, and experiencing it without her. She pushed her way between them. “Was it special, love?” her dad asked.
“Yeah,” she breathed, rubbing her fingers on her earlobe. Her dad was still sweaty, and she could tell by the way his fingers were fluttering against the sides of his jeans that they were shaking.
“Is your ear bothering you?” he asked.
She quickly dropped her hand because she wanted, needed, him to stay focused on the painting. She needed to keep him here with her, and not shaky from the crowds and lost in his head. She needed this moment to be like she imagined it. “Did you know it was Vincent van Gogh’s brother who convinced him to use more colors in his work?”
“Oh yeah?” It was Mark who replied.
Fig tried not to frown. “Yeah. And I don’t know if you can see from here, but he used this art technique called impasto, where he painted really thickly, so you can see the brushstrokes.”
Her dad breathed a soft laugh. “Wow. All that reading is paying off, huh?”
She smiled and again blinked back tears. “And you see the tree, the dark part? That’s a cypress tree. He painted those a lot because they have them in France, near the asylum where he lived for an entire year.”
She caught Mark’s eyes as they narrowed on her, and for a moment she blushed, wondering if he’d made the connection she had made from the beginning.
But it was her dad who spoke next. “There was a subway stop I used to end up at a lot back home in London. It was right about the time I was auditioning for schools. I’d get off, and you know, it’s dark and windy and grimy in the Underground, but once I’d get up the stairs, the first thing I’d see was daylight and fig trees.”
Fig had never heard this story before.
“Anyway, I was there so often, the daylight and fig trees started to feel like home. The familiar sight after coming up from the darkness. The music I wrote looking at those fig trees got me into the Academy.”
Fig didn’t know what to say to that, and the three of them fell into silence as they stood against the back wall, watching people taking pictures, chatting with friends, admiring the artwork.
“I’d like to hear you play sometime,” Mark finally said.
Her dad let out a soft laugh. “Yeah. Sometime.”
On the train ride home, Fig didn’t say much to break the silence. She rested her head on her dad’s lap, enjoying the sounds of her companions as they spoke softly with each other. She closed her eyes to picture the swirls and colors of The Starry Night.
Fig felt something when she looked at that painting, hung on its own wall at the MoMA, surrounded by people who wanted to see it, people who made her dad sweaty and nervous because there were too many of them and it was all too much for him. She felt something, too, as she stood in the back corner with Mark and her dad. The Starry Night was too far away for them to see the brushstrokes, maybe too far for her dad to see it at all. But Fig listened as he spoke about his own art, his music—the one thing that always made sense to him, even if it didn’t always make sense to Fig. She listened as he told her about his fig trees.
And it all came to her in that moment, and she knew what she wanted to paint for the Fall Festival.
Fig closed her eyes and ignored the way her dad’s leg frantically bounced under her head. Instead, she focused on the way the pads of his fingers played invisible tunes against her arm as the sun slipped lower and lower in the sky, and September finally came to an end, lulling her to sleep.
Part Two
October
Fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient to keep them ashore.
—Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, May 1882
9
Sorrow
Fig was awoken by the sound of something shattering, and everything she had tried to ignore and avoid the night before came crashing down with it.
She climbed out of bed, yanked open her bedroom door. Her dad was in the kitchen, murmuring and shouting things, and although his words didn’t make sense, they didn’t need to. Fig heard them loud and clear. He was confused, he was angry. Something hard hit the wall with a thud before falling to the floor. Whatever it was, he had thrown it. She swallowed thickly, took a deep breath, and braced herself. She had done this before.
She walked barefoot to the kitchen but didn’t go in. She watched her dad pacing frantically, talking to himself, his eyes large and wild. Fig started tugging hard on her earlobe. “Dad? Dad, it’s me. It’s Fig.”
He turned to look at her, and she shrank back at the expression on his face, the one he never directed at her unless he didn’t know he was doing it. He wasn’t here with her right now. She didn’t know where he was. She didn’t understand what happened to him when the dad she loved got trapped in that brilliant but terrible mind of his, and she hated it.
She hated that she never felt so far away, never felt so lost and unable to find him as she did in these moments.
“Please, Dad. It’s me. You’re okay. I’m right here.”
But her words didn’t register. He slammed his hands against his forehead as he closed his eyes and let out a cry that made her stomach hurt. She thought about the books she read, about the violent outbursts that led Van Gogh to cut off his ear, that made him eat his own paint and poison himself, that eventually ended his life.
Art and music didn’t matter right now. Not to this version of her dad. She should have never let him take her to the city. She should have known better.
But that made her remember Mark, right across the street, the new neighbor-turned-something-more who shaved her dad’s face, who helped him find a quiet corner in an overwhelming museum. She still didn’t know if she could trust him. Right now, though, she didn’t have any choice but to try.
Without another thought, without shoes, without a jacket, Fig ran out the front door and across the street.
She pounded on the door at the yellow house over and over and over again as she repeated in her head, Please be home, please be home, please be home . . .
The door swung open quickly, and with force. Mark stood there gaping at her, his shirt unbuttoned over his white T-shirt, his tool belt strewn alongside the door, and his shoes on but untied. It was as if he were about to start his day, not for one second expecting this interruption, not thinking about the crazy man and his daughter across the street. “Fig, what in God’s name—”
“It’s my dad—I need your help. I knew last night was . . . Please, you have to help!”
“What’s wrong, where is he?” Mark stepped out of his home and closed the door behind him, and she wondered if he was ready to go pull her dad out of the Atlantic once again.
“Home, but he’s not him, he’s going to hurt himself. Please.”
Mark crossed his lawn, and the street, and yanked open Fig’s front door, and Fig could barely keep up with him. She stopped at the threshold of her home, not wanting to go in, wanting Mark to fix everything like he fixed porches, solve the problem as if it were as easy as finding a quiet corner in an otherwise loud and crowded room. She wanted to trust him to make things better for once, so she wouldn’t have to do it herself, so she wouldn’t have to wonder what might happen if she couldn’t.
Her dad’s hand was bleeding, blood from the side of his palm dripping down his forearm, and honestly, Fig expected worse.
But Mark wasn’t used to this. He said to her dad, “You need to sit down, let me look at that.”
Fig couldn’t hear what her dad said, or maybe he didn’t say anything that made sense anyway, but the tone was frenzied, his words hot in the thick, tense air in the room. Fig closed the front door and stood at the edge of the kitchen, watching as Mark grabbed at her dad’s shoulders and used his foot to nudge a chair from under the table. “Sit down.”
“Get off me, mate.” Her dad shoved Mark, and Fig stepped back farther. If this went bad—if this went really bad—and Mark was here, Fig knew CP&P would come and take her away. She wanted to scream. She felt the wail in her throat, pushing out from the tightness in her chest as her earlobe started throbbing.
Her dad reached for the teakettle on the stove, and Fig closed her eyes tight, not wanting to see, not wanting to know what might happen next, just wanting it to be over.
But her dad did not throw the teakettle, because Mark started yelling. “Hey! Calm down right now and take a damn seat!”
His voice was loud, and it boomed in a different way from her dad’s. Fig’s eyes popped open and she took another step back. Her whole body shuddered as she watched Mark and her dad, head to head, practically nose to nose, standing off with each other. She wished she could take back the terrible choice that she made. She wished she’d never knocked on the yellow house door, that she hadn’t dragged Mark back into this.
But her dad didn’t yell back. His shoulders slumped, and Mark guided him to the chair, and he actually sat in it. “That’s it, buddy. Sit and breathe for a minute, and I’ll put that kettle on, okay?”
Her dad’s eyes were glassy, but he nodded. Still, Fig’s stomach kept hurting.
Mark filled the kettle with water and turned on a burner, and her dad remained in his chair, even as Mark crossed the room to Fig. “You get picked up by the bus, right?”
“What?”
“The school bus. You take the bus to school, right?”
He might as well have been speaking Russian. “I can’t go to school today.”
“Yes, you can. And you will. It’s what he’d want, and he’ll be fine. I’m staying right here all day, okay?”
Fig shook her head, fiercely. “No. I’m not going. I can’t.” There was always a chance her dad could get hurt, or CP&P could stop by without warning. It was the start of a new month, a fresh page of the calendar for them to drop by. “I need to be here.”
“You got a phone?” Mark asked.
“What? Yeah.”
“Give it here,” he said, and she reached over to grab her backpack from by the door. Unzipping the front pocket, she pulled her cell phone out and handed it to him.
“I’m putting my number in,” Mark said. “You call if you need anything. Or if you want to check in. How long until the bus comes?”
She glanced at the clock. “Like ten minutes. But I’m not leaving.”
“You hurry and get dressed. I just need to make a phone call, and I’ll be free to stay here all day. He won’t be alone, okay? I’ll be right here.”
Fig didn’t move. She searched Mark’s eyes, trying to figure out what was happening. “You’re staying?”
Mark nodded. “I just need to call out from work, and I’ll stay here all day. Until you get home. Okay?”
She didn’t want to leave, she really didn’t, but she didn’t want to stay, either. Her dad was hard sometimes. And Fig wasn’t afraid, she wasn’t, but still, sometimes . . .
Mark was here, and he had broken through her dad’s fog when she couldn’t. Her dad was sitting at the kitchen table, waiting silently for the water to boil. Fig would not have been able to calm him down like that.
But, still, this was bad, wasn’t it? Mark kept seeing more and more of what went on in their house, and if anyone else knew what Mark now did . . . “Please don’t call CP and P,” Fig whispered.
Mark’s eyes shot back to hers. “What?”
“Please don’t call them,” Fig said again. “He can’t help it, and he’s never hurt me, and he wouldn’t have hurt you. He just gets confused. The CP and P people don’t understand, and they can’t see him like this before November thirtieth. Please.”
Mark looked back toward where her dad was still sitting, slumped in his chair in the kitchen, before refocusing on Fig. “I’m only going to call work,” he said. “That’s all, okay? Your dad and I will sort this out.”
The kettle started to whistle, and Mark went back to the kitchen. Fig hesitated for one last moment before going to her bedroom to change. She had two minutes to spare by the time she was ready to go. She popped her head back into the kitchen, just to look at her dad one more time, and she overheard Mark as he said softly, around sips of his tea, “We’re going to figure this out, okay, Tim? We’re going to sit here and talk and figure this out.”
At school, Fig kept biting the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. She spent every class staring at the clock, watching the seconds and minutes and hours tick by, one leg bouncing under her desk. She wanted the school day to be over so she could get home and see—hopefully—that her dad’s bad day was over, and they could just move on. New month, fresh start, blank calendar and canvas.
Across the classroom, Madison was leaning forward in her seat to whisper to Haley as Mrs. Beckett, the math teacher, began taking attendance. Early in the school year, Ava had chosen to sit in the desk next to Fig’s because Fig was good at math and Ava wasn’t. Now, Ava was writing notes in her notebook and holding it up when Mrs. Beckett wasn’t looking, for only Madison and Haley to see. Ava kept her back turned to Fig, her long, tightly braided hair swinging lightly as she tried but failed to keep her giggles quiet.
Fig had her phone on her lap, just like Ava always did, but Ava used hers only for Snapchat. Fig, meanwhile, had Mark’s number pulled up on the screen, just in case she needed it. Or in case he needed her. The girls kept laughing, and Mrs. Beckett yelled, “Settle down!” And all the while, Fig kept wondering, Should I have really left Mark alone with my dad?
“Hey! So I was thinking.” Danny’s voice was suddenly in her ear, startling Fig out of her thoughts and making her jump. He had swapped seats with Jaden Freeman. “I think we should set up your dad with Miss Williams.”
Fig stared at him for a moment, certain she wasn’t hearing correctly. “You think what?”
“Miss Williams lives alone. My mom is sometimes all ‘She’s too young and too pretty for that!’ because she’s nosy,” Danny explained. “She goes to conferences with my teachers a lot.”
“What? Why?” Fig asked.
Danny rolled his eyes. “My mom wants to make sure I’m adapting well, but she usually ends up just chatting with them anyway. Which is why I know Miss Williams is single.”
“Quiet, Mr. Carter!” Mrs. Beckett called out from the front of the room. “Do I need to move your seat?”
