Drawing Home Page 18

  “You are just a font of knowledge,” Bea said.

  “I used to be a history teacher at the high school,” he said.

  “When did you retire?”

  “Ten years ago.”

  “And you miss it.”

  “Every day.”

  “Well, I suppose now you can think of yourself as teaching adults.”

  They reached a room with a long table and heavy wood cabinets. Angus made a sweeping gesture with his arm. “You have arrived.”

  Penny’s dad picked her up in a different car this time, a black convertible.

  “What a perfect day, right?” her dad said, pulling into the Coopers Beach parking lot.

  It was hot but not too hot, just enough clouds to occasionally drift over the sun. The beach was as crowded as if it were a weekend.

  Penny followed her father down the long rubber mat covering the hot sand to a spot near the ocean. She wanted to dash right into the water, but they’d picked up sandwiches from Bagel Buoy on the way over and if they didn’t eat them, they’d go bad. Her dad hadn’t thought to bring a cooler like her mom always did.

  “Thanks for giving me an excuse to get out of work,” she said.

  “Yeah, it should be against the law to work on a day like this,” he said, passing her a bottle of Poland Spring.

  Penny still didn’t fully understand what her dad did for a living. He’d said the acting thing wasn’t “panning out.” He tried to explain producing, but to her it just sounded like hunting around for money, and how did you make money by asking people for money?

  “So where are you staying?” Penny asked. That, too, had been vague during their last conversation.

  “I found a great rental just off Division Street.”

  “How long are you going to be here?”

  He smiled at her. “You sure like definitive answers, don’t you?”

  “Mom says I have a particularly low tolerance for gray areas.”

  That’s why she wasn’t looking forward to sneaking around later that night to go to the party. But she would do it. A part of her wanted to talk to her dad about the conflict she felt between trying to keep up with her friends and sticking to her mother’s rules. But talking to her father about that somehow felt even more disloyal to her mother than lying about it in the first place.

  They finished eating and headed to the ocean. Her dad waded in up to his waist while Penny stood at the edge, letting the water rush over her feet.

  Don’t think about it, she told herself. But another part of her brain, the stronger part, was already counting.

  In the distance, her father waved her in. She held up her hand, one finger. Just a sec. Back to counting.

  After a minute or so, her father made his way back to her. By that point, she was on the verge of tears.

  “Hey, you don’t want to come in?” he said.

  “I do. But I can’t!” And then the tears did come, hard and messy. She stood there sobbing like a baby. Surprised and clearly confused, her dad put his arm around her and led her back to the towels.

  “What’s going on?” he said, passing her one of the paper napkins from their lunch. She wiped her nose, realized the napkin had cream cheese on it, and started crying even harder. Her dad looked at her with alarm. She had to say something, to explain. It was hard to admit what was going on, but sitting there sobbing for the rest of the afternoon was clearly not an option.

  “I have OCD,” she said.

  Her dad seemed to consider this for a few seconds. “You mean you wash your hands all the time? That sort of thing?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. That and other stuff.”

  “What other stuff?”

  Again, she hesitated. She didn’t want to scare him off. Visiting with her was supposed to be fun. But she realized, looking down at the soggy napkin in her lap, knowing her face was red and puffy, that it was too late for that. So she told him about the counting, the checking on things, the germ phobia.

  Her dad nodded, and she could tell he was trying to play it off like this was totally not a big deal. But she could hear the urgency in his voice when he said, “What does your mother say about all this? Did you see a…therapist or something?”

  “Yeah. Dr. Wang. She helps me try to manage my thoughts. It’s a kind of therapy called CBT.”

  “But it’s not working?”

  Penny shrugged. “Maybe for a while. I felt better last year. I was drawing a lot—with the artist who left me the house. I don’t know. When I was doing that, I felt a little better. My therapist says it takes time and not to get frustrated. But I feel like it’s never going to go away. She said I could try taking Prozac.”

  “Okay, good. Sounds like a plan.”

  “Well, not exactly. Mom’s nervous about it. She wants me to wait.”

  “But a doctor recommended it. Your mother isn’t a doctor,” he said.

  Uh-oh. “It was just a suggestion,” Penny said. “It’s not a big deal. Most of the time I’m fine.”

  “Well, obviously not,” he said in an irritated tone she hadn’t heard before. He looked around the beach, then back at her. “Maybe we should get out of here. Try a different activity today. Is there somewhere else you want to go?”

  Oh, how she wished she could rewind fifteen minutes, go stand at the water and boss it back. Her dad probably wanted to leave the beach so he could drop her off at home as soon as possible. She’d totally ruined everything. What could she do to turn things around?

  “Do you want to see my new house?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Sag Harbor Whaling Museum archive room was windowless. Bea had no sense of how much time was passing, but once she found a folder of Henry’s drawings, she did not care.

  The collection included architectural plans for Windsong, dated 1989, and two sketches of a man tending bar. The American Hotel bar, clearly. His angular features looked familiar. It took her a few moments of staring at the page to realize it was the man who had been tending bar the first time she and Henry visited Sag Harbor, in the spring of 1988. Immediately, she recalled the sketch of the crowded party she’d seen in the art gallery on Washington Street; that wasn’t just any party, it was the dinner party they’d gone to that same weekend.

  The event had seemed important at the time. The host was a big art collector and on the board at the MoMA and the Guggenheim. Henry, with his typical disdain for any “scene,” had had no intention of attending even though he was the guest of honor.

  As his manager, Bea insisted they go. “Forget about the professional obligation. Look at it as an excuse to visit a new town.” This reasoning got to Henry, as she’d known it would. He prided himself on his sense of curiosity. And while they had spent time in the Hamptons, they had never ventured far enough north to experience the village of Sag Harbor.

  The American Hotel was the place to stay, people in the know assured them. Bea and Henry were not disappointed; they were immediately enchanted by the old-fashioned charm of the place. They checked into their rooms, dressed for the party, and met at the bar for a warm-up cocktail.

  “Time seems to have stood still in this place,” Henry said to the bartender, a man who looked to be in his thirties with bright green eyes and russet-colored hair.

  “That’s the idea,” said the bartender.

  Bea knew that Henry was not thrilled with the direction of the world. The 1980s had ushered in Ronald Reagan, new wave music, and, in the fine-art world, the rise of neo-expressionism.

  The bartender was too young to be nostalgic for the sixties, but he and Henry seemed to hit it off anyway. Apparently, the bartender was a prizewinning fisherman in his spare time.

  “Maybe that’s what I should do,” Henry said to Bea. “Give up painting and start fishing. Living off the sea.”

  “Ha-ha,” Bea said, not amused. After an hour of the two men’s boat talk, she told Henry that if they didn’t leave right away, they were going to be late.

  “Go without me.
”

  “Henry,” she said, fighting panic. “Don’t be absurd. The whole reason we’re here is for this party. You’re the guest of honor!” Bea was tempted to remind Henry that he was lucky that the guest of honor at this party was him and not the new art-world darling Jean-Michel Basquiat. But provoking him wouldn’t get her anywhere.

  Henry, stubborn as always, refused to leave the hotel. Bea went to the party alone. When Henry finally showed up two hours later, he was clearly drunk. The host was simply delighted that he’d arrived at all, but Bea was furious.

  In the morning, Bea handed in her room key to the front desk and was unhappy to find Henry once again seated at the bar, although this time he was drinking coffee.

  “Are you ready to go?” she asked him.

  The bartender, the same man as the night before, greeted her with a friendly smile and said, “Bloody Mary?”

  “Certainly not,” she snapped. She knew it wasn’t the bartender’s fault that Henry behaved badly last night, but she also didn’t want him encouraging a repeat performance. Best to get on the road.

  “Bea, Tom here’s had family roots in this town since the Revolutionary War.”

  “Is that so?” she said, glancing at her watch.

  “Yes,” Henry said excitedly, more animated than she’d seen him in some time. “His great-great-…well, however-many-greats-grandfather was a member of the Eastern Regiment of 1776. He fought in the Battle of Long Island. Tell her, Tom.”

  “Really, there’s no need. I’m far from a history buff,” Bea said.

  “As you probably know, it was not a successful battle,” Tom said. Henry nodded vigorously. As she probably knew? Who on earth had ever heard of the Battle of Long Island? “Morale faded pretty quickly after that loss. The British took control of the island and held it for over half a dozen years. The townspeople of Sag Harbor were forced to house and feed the British army. They had to pledge their allegiance to King George the Third or they would become prisoners of war.”

  “Can you imagine?” Henry said. “Right here!”

  “Well, I doubt they sat at this bar, Henry.”

  “Actually, they did,” said Tom. “Or at least, at this site. The British set up a naval blockade so that supplies couldn’t be sent to the American army through the Port of Sag Harbor. Officers used this very spot as their lodging and tavern. Some of the original brick is still part of the facade.”

  “Imagine that!” Henry said, slamming his palm down on the bar. “Imagine that!”

  “Henry, I’ll pull the car around. We should get on the road.”

  Henry shook his head, finished his coffee, and set the cup down with a flourish. “I’ve decided to stay a few days.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Tom is going to show me around. What am I rushing back to New York for? The banality of the now?”

  The banality of the now? How was she supposed to argue with that? No, she knew better. She had learned, over the course of two decades, to accept his sometimes infuriating artistic and impulsive temperament. And yet leaving him in that hotel bar that morning gave her a feeling of deep trepidation.

  Three days later, after not so much as a phone call from him, she finally swallowed her pride and left him a message at the front desk of the hotel. It was two more days until she heard back.

  “I’ve decided to rent a house out here for the summer,” he said.

  Fine. Let Henry have his Sag Harbor adventure. Maybe it would inspire him to get back to work. He hadn’t produced a substantial painting in months. He would return to Spring Street refreshed.

  How could she have imagined that he would never again call New York City his home?

  In the windowless archive room of the whaling museum, Bea looked up from the drawings at a mounted harpoon on the wall. Next to it, a display of maritime art. She thought of the book in the case in the front room, Moby-Dick. The greatest whaling story of all time.

  What story are you trying to tell me, Henry?

  “Now, this is the way to live!”

  Penny was in the pool, and her dad sat in the same chair where her mother had lounged just a day before. But the house felt different with her dad there. Somehow it felt more like her own. “You’ve got the pool, a view of the bay. What more could you ask for?” he said.

  When they’d first walked inside, he’d let out a low whistle. “This place has got to be worth a fortune,” he said. “Explain to me again how you knew this guy?”

  Penny told him about meeting Henry in the lobby of the hotel and how that had turned into weekly art lessons. She’d introduced Henry to the whole graphic-novel thing, and they decided to write their own. “But I haven’t worked on it at all since he died. I just can’t focus. And it doesn’t feel the same. What’s the point? There’s no one to show it to when I’m done.”

  But by that time, it was clear her dad had tuned her out. He walked from room to room, examining the art and the furniture. She stood next to him in the dining room, staring out at the pool.

  “What do you think?” she said. He’d turned very quiet.

  After a pause, he’d looked down at her and said, “I think we should go swimming.”

  So now Penny was in the cold pool, waiting to warm up like she had yesterday. Her father was busy on his phone but said he’d jump in soon. Penny floated on her back, watching a cloud drift over the sun. She closed her eyes and tried to luxuriate in the perfection of the moment, but something wasn’t right. When she let this feeling take shape, she recognized that it had something to do with her mom and the fact that her mom would not be happy to know she was at the house with her father. She didn’t know why her mother would be upset, but she felt certain she would. It was another example of her not doing something truly wrong but still wrong enough that it put herself and her mother at odds.

  “Dad,” she called out, holding on to the edge of the pool.

  “Be right there.”

  “Dad, I need to ask you something.”

  He looked up from his phone. “What’s up?”

  “Can you not tell Mom about coming here today?”

  Her dad smiled. “It will be our little secret.”

  Penny didn’t know if this made her feel better or worse. She tried to put it out of her mind, but of course she kept obsessing over it until, a short while later, her dad called out, “How’s the water temp?”

  “A little cold, but you get used to it.”

  He walked over. He didn’t get into the water like her mom, who dipped one toe in and then, wincing, slowly waded in until she was fully submerged. He just plunged right in.

  “Wow. That’ll wake you up,” he said.

  He swam a lap but climbed out right after. Penny paddled around a little more but got bored without company. The point of today was to spend time with her dad, right? She headed back to the chairs, but he was so busy texting he didn’t notice her standing right next to him until she dripped onto the seat.

  “Penny, back up. I’m trying to dry off.”

  She knew it was a reasonable request but something about it stung. She wrapped a towel around herself and settled into a chair. She watched her father bent over his phone, his jaw set, and something strange happened. That whole feeling of familiarity, of knowing him in this special and unspoken way, disappeared. It was like looking at a stranger.

  She pulled her old iPod Touch out of her bag. It was so outdated she couldn’t even get Snapchat on it, but that’s why her mom let her keep it despite the whole social media and screen ban. It still played music.

  Penny put in her earbuds and closed her eyes. She was almost asleep when her father tapped her arm.

  “Penny, who the hell is that?” her dad said, pointing toward the steps leading to the beach.

  She squinted in the distance and saw Kyle. He took off his aviator sunglasses and waved at her, then made his way quickly across the wide deck between the pool area and the slope to the shrubbery lining the beachfront.

  “Oh. That�
�s Kyle.”

  “Is he…is that your mom’s boyfriend?”

  “What? Oh—no. Remember that old lady I told you about? He works for her.”

  “Hey,” Kyle said from the other side of the pool. “How’s it going, Penny?”

  Her dad stood up and Kyle walked over to him.

  “Kyle Dunlap,” he said. “And you are?”

  “I’m Penny’s father.”

  Kyle looked at Penny. “Your mom know you’re here?”

  “I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” her dad said before she could answer. “And what are you doing on this property?”

  Kyle gave her dad a smile that seemed just a little mocking. “The same thing you are, man.”

  “This is my daughter’s house.”

  Kyle nodded. “That seems to be the case. But who knows?” He walked up to the house.

  Her dad stared after him, arms crossed, then turned to Penny, looking very pissed off. “What the hell is going on here?” he said.

  “I told you about the old woman,” she said. “He works for her.”

  “And your mother is just letting strangers live here with you?”

  “Well, we’re not living here yet. And it’s not her fault. She can’t get rid of them.”

  A strange expression crossed her father’s face, and she instantly wanted to take back her words. Nothing she said was coming out right.

  “Dry off and get dressed,” her father said. “We’re leaving.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  At nine in the morning, the hotel was coming to life, with guests filling the airy breakfast room for the complimentary continental buffet. At the bar, Chris was setting up for lunch service, and in the lobby, a couple sat playing backgammon. Outside, the sun began peeking through the clouds.