Drawing Home Page 19

  Emma set a bucket of freshly cut roses from her garden on a table in the piano room. She lined up a few silver vases, filled them with fresh water, and treated the water with a few squeezes of lemon juice, some sugar, and a touch of bleach—another little trick, courtesy of her mother, to extend flower life. She placed the roses into the vases one by one, alternating white and yellow, gently removing the leaves that would fall beneath the waterline.

  A waiter poked his head in. “Emma, someone’s at the front desk for you.”

  She set the roses she was tending to back in the bucket, pulled off her gloves, and slipped through the narrow corridor to the lobby, where she found Mark sitting on the couch.

  “What are you doing here?” she said, looking around.

  “I want to talk to you about Penny.”

  Her stomach tightened. “What’s wrong?”

  “You tell me. I took the kid to the beach and she had a meltdown. What’s with this OCD?”

  Emma sighed, partly relieved that this was his concern, but also partly irritated.

  “Come on, Mark. You scared me for a minute. I told you, years ago, about her anxiety and all of this. I’m dealing with it, okay? She has good days and bad.”

  “She said the shrink recommended meds and you said no.”

  “First of all, she sees a therapist who is helping her with cognitive-behavioral therapy. It’s important that Penny develop the tools to deal with her OCD and not just rely on pills.”

  “So you know better than a doctor?”

  “When it comes to my daughter, yes, I do.”

  “Our daughter,” he said.

  “Oh, so now it’s our daughter? Where were you the past five years when I was taking her to therapy appointments twice a week?” And where she’d be going later that day, leaving work when she shouldn’t. “Where were you the times she was sobbing at the sink after twenty minutes of hand-washing and I had to drag her away? She’s doing much better.”

  “Where were you when she rode to the beach with a bunch of older teenage boys the other day?”

  Emma felt her face flush. Boys had been there that day? What boys was Penny even friends with?

  “I was here, working! You think any of this is easy? Who are you to waltz in here and criticize me?”

  “I’m her father.”

  “How nice of you to remember. And what interesting timing.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Should she say it? “It means your daughter just inherited a house worth a fortune and suddenly you’re Father of the Year.”

  Mark shook his head. “That’s extremely cynical and unfair, Emma.”

  “Well, so is your attitude toward my parenting.”

  “But since you brought up the house, why the hell are you letting strangers live there? Penny seems to feel these people want to take the house from her. You have to be smart, Emma. This is big-league stuff here.”

  “I can’t believe you! This is about the house!”

  “No, this is about the fact that you’re obviously having problems with managing everything. That’s not a criticism, Emma. I’m trying to help.”

  “Look me in the eye and tell me you had no idea about the house when you showed up last week.”

  “I had no idea. And I think you’re deflecting because you know I’m right about things that are going on with Penny.”

  “What I think is that after all these years of hearing basically nothing from you, I don’t need your input now!” she yelled.

  “It’s not about what you need. It’s about what Penny needs. And I have a right to be in the loop.”

  Be careful what you wish for, Emma thought with a chill. How many times had she lamented being in this parenting thing alone? And now he was here. And it felt all wrong.

  “Okay, Mark,” she said evenly. “I’ll keep you in the loop.” Just please leave. Leave this lobby, and leave this town.

  He smiled in a way that set her further on edge. “I appreciate that, Emma. Let’s talk later in the week.” He headed for the door, but then he turned around and said, “You know I just want what’s best for Penny, right?”

  She nodded. But she didn’t know that. Not at all.

  Penny handed Dr. Wang her worksheet. It was a four-part chart logging triggering situations, the obsessions and compulsions that resulted, and her anxiety levels.

  “So I see that the bathroom light switches are still a problem,” Dr. Wang said. Her reading glasses were narrow rectangles framed in gold wire. Dr. Wang was such a style icon! And yet annoying.

  “Yeah,” Penny said. It was the top of her list. If she had to touch the bathroom light switch before lunch or dinner (trigger), she worried she’d get sick (obsession), and then she had to wash her hands for a full five minutes (compulsion), and her anxiety level was at 10.

  “But this is a new one,” she said, reading farther down Penny’s chart. “Tell me what happened at the beach.”

  Penny had tried to forget about the compulsive counting at the ocean the day with her friends. But when it happened again with her father, she realized it wasn’t going away.

  “I don’t know. I just had the feeling that if the water didn’t touch my feet in a certain way a specific number of times, it would be bad luck.”

  “Okay. When you were in this situation, were you able to think at all about some of our bossing-back techniques?”

  “I tried telling myself I didn’t have to listen to the OCD, that it was lying to me. That I had to trust myself. That, okay, realistically there was no connection between the water and something bad happening. But it didn’t help.” Penny burst into tears. It was so frustrating!

  Dr. Wang passed her a box of tissues. “Penny, I know it’s hard. And you’re going to have good days and bad days. I want you to also remember the floating-by strategy: Don’t overthink it when it’s too difficult. Don’t try to shut the thought down. Just let it pass over you like a cloud without acting on it.”

  Penny nodded. In her back pocket, her phone vibrated with a text. “I need to use the bathroom,” she said.

  She went in, locked the door, and leaned against it, her heart pounding. As usual, the soap was missing. Dr. Wang never forgot to hide it from her.

  Ru coming 2nite?

  The party at Mindy’s.

  Yes. Telling my mom I’m sleeping at ur place.

  Mindy’s house, with the little white pills.

  Penny slipped her phone back into one pocket, pulled out her mini–emergency bottle of hand sanitizer from another, and slathered it on until her skin burned.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Printing out the photographs of Henry’s drawings from her phone had been surprisingly easy. Well, easy after she tipped the young man at Walgreens to do it for her. It was amazing what modern technology and a little cash could accomplish. Of course, she would eventually buy all the originals. But that was a different project entirely. She had to prioritize.

  Bea spread the images out on the dining-room table. She had drawings from several places: The American Hotel, the library, the art gallery, and the whaling museum—over a dozen prints altogether. The challenge was to organize them into some sort of narrative order. But where to begin?

  She stood and paced, then stopped in front of a geometric cube in the corner of the room, one of Henry’s earliest sculptures, done that first summer in Sag Harbor. When Henry refused to go back to Manhattan with her, Bea had thought for sure he would quickly grow stir-crazy and then appear one morning at the Spring Street office as if he’d never left. But that didn’t happen.

  In response, Bea filled her calendar, hitting the smaller galleries and underground shows like she hadn’t in years. Every season brought a new crop of young artists to the city, so if Henry wanted to exile himself to the backwoods of Long Island, there were plenty of ambitious young people eager to take his place. Of course, this was no consolation. Henry Wyatt was a once-in-a-generation artist.

  When he finally called a
nd invited her to visit, her pride answered for her. “I’m busy,” she said. But Henry knew how to get to her.

  “I have some work to show you.”

  Fine. If there were paintings to see, she would go.

  Henry’s rented house had an untended lawn and was surrounded by trees. It was less a vacation house and more the abode of a budding recluse.

  “What do you do out here?”

  “I’ve started fishing,” he told her excitedly. He was tan and trim, and there was a lightness to him.

  “But this house…is this the best you could find?” she asked.

  “This is perfection! Come out back.”

  She followed him through tall grass and down a gravel path to a large shack in the backyard. The ground around it was littered with sheets of metal and blocks of wood. Her first thought was that the people he rented from really should have cleaned up the mess. She did not make the connection to Henry’s work, not even when Henry swung open the door to the shack and she saw that it was empty of furniture. It was empty of anything except for three metal, five-foot-by-five-foot hollow cubes, each with a metal pole in its center.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “I think you should get a refund on this rental.”

  “What do you think of my work?”

  Oh.

  She walked around the metal cubes, forcing herself to focus and not let the confusion about this change in medium get in the way of an honest assessment.

  “They’re interesting,” she said. “Strong. I just…I had no idea you were interested in sculpture. Why didn’t you mention it to me?”

  “I know how you feel about my painting. You hate when I turn my attention elsewhere. But Bea, I’m done with it.”

  She looked at him sharply. “I’m sure that’s not the case, Henry.”

  He laughed, a genuine merry outburst. “Oh, Bea. I wish, just for one minute, you could see things more expansively.”

  “And I wish you would stop making rash decisions!”

  “It’s not an intellectual decision,” he said. “It’s the way I feel. This is big-picture stuff, Bea. The past few weeks, spending time with Tom sailing and fishing and building fire pits for outdoor cooking, I’ve realized there’s something to be said for getting your hands dirty—and not just with paint and varnish. When you really delve into the physical world, the natural world, you realize you’re connected to everything. At this stage in my life, well, I need that. It’s important to be part of something, Bea.”

  “You are a part of something,” she said slowly. “You’re one of the most important artists of your time. Perhaps of all time. We have a gallery together. Something we’ve built over many years. That’s something, is it not?”

  He smiled and shook his head as if she were a child who was simply not getting the wisdom being bestowed on her by an elder. Heart in her throat, she tried to steer the conversation onto more solid ground. She assessed the sculptures on autopilot, putting them in context and talking about their strengths and how he might build a cohesive body of work from this point.

  “We’ll ship these to the gallery when you’re ready,” she said.

  “I’m not selling them,” he said.

  Well, that was a small relief. He couldn’t be that serious about the sculptures if he was just going to leave them lying around like rejects of a yard sale.

  They walked back outside and stood in silence for a minute, surrounded by insects humming in the grass.

  “So what’s the endgame here, Henry?”

  He shook his head. “Always so goal-oriented, my friend.” The sun was so bright, it was almost difficult to see color. Everything was washed out.

  “Since you ask, I’m going to build a house out here. I’m designing it myself. It will serve as a permanent installation space for my work.” His face flushed with excitement.

  Bea did not panic. This too shall pass.

  And yet she couldn’t bring herself to stay in Sag Harbor overnight as she’d planned. Whatever was going on with Henry, there was clearly no place for her in the process. She wanted to get back to her beloved Spring Street, even if Henry was temporarily turning away from their shared home. Was this just another of his small rebellions? Or something deeper—a fear of irrelevance? Of death? But no—she kept coming back to the undeniable joy in his countenance.

  Around Christmas, he sent for his belongings to be moved out of Spring Street. Four months later, a year since their first trip to Sag Harbor, he did an interview with the New York Times announcing his retirement.

  She heard rumors that he was designing a building, that he was painting, that the State of Texas had commissioned a sculpture for a public square. None of it was true. On the rare occasions when they spoke on the phone, they always discussed the past—it was as if the present didn’t exist and there were no plans for the future.

  Bea was trying to arrange the drawings on the dining-room table into some sort of order when the doorbell rang. Who the devil was bothering her now?

  She made her way to the foyer, recalling with a small shudder the day Victor appeared with the unthinkable news about the house. That felt like months ago, not just weeks. And so little progress had been made.

  There was no need for a peephole in the door; the entrance was framed by glass on both sides. She could see a tall man with dark, silver-tinged hair. He wore khaki pants, a polo shirt, and a pair of those obnoxious mirrored sunglasses.

  She opened the door. “What can I do for you?” she said in a tone that she hoped conveyed Please leave.

  “Hi, Ms. Winstead. I’m Mark Mapson, Penny’s father. I’d like to talk to you if you have a minute.”

  Oh, for heaven’s sake. Who was going to come out of the woodwork next?

  Mark Mapson had a slick look about him. His features were handsome, but there was just enough off about the way they all came together to prevent him from being truly attractive.

  “I do not have a minute. Your daughter has taken up enough of my time and energy, and unless you are here to tell me that all of you have decided to relinquish claim to the house and estate that clearly does not belong to you, we have nothing to discuss.”

  He nodded and removed his sunglasses. His eyes, dark and sharp, met hers.

  “I hear you, Ms. Winstead. And I assure you, we definitely have something to discuss.”

  He might be slick, but now he had her attention.

  She opened the door wider.

  “I hope you are quick to get to the point, Mr. Mapson. I am not a patient woman.”

  It took all of Emma’s willpower not to lean on the horn. Damn this summer traffic!

  Dr. Wang had spoken to Emma after Penny’s appointment, as she always did, but she’d gone on longer than usual. Emma tried to pay attention while the doctor talked, but she kept checking the time. She appreciated Dr. Wang keeping her in the loop, showing her the exercises Penny was supposed to be doing that week, but all she could think was that it was close to three, and the happy-hour crowd would be arriving soon.

  She dropped Penny off in front of the house on Mount Misery.

  “Okay if I sleep at Robin’s tonight?” Penny said.

  Distracted, in a rush, Emma said fine.

  By the time she was back behind the desk, the reservation book was covered with Post-it note messages for reservations, and the lobby was full of people waiting for spots to open up at the bar. Chris had left her a list of bottles of wine to pull from the cellar, one with the note that said ASAP.

  “The American Hotel, Emma speaking,” she said, wincing at how out of breath she sounded.

  “Emma, it’s Jack. Come see me in the office, please.”

  She knew the appointment had taken too long.

  As she walked to the back of the first floor, her mind raced with apologies. When she sat down across from Jack, she was shaking.

  “I’m sorry I took such a long break. I had to get Penny to her therapy appointment, which usually falls on my day off, but
the schedule is different because you asked me to take those days off last week, so it was just not great timing. I’ll take care of everything that needs to be done.”

  Jack squeezed the brim of his Delta Marine baseball hat with both hands and sighed deeply. His facial expression said, This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you. And that’s when she knew she was in big trouble.

  “I didn’t call you in here because you left the desk this afternoon. I’m more troubled by complaints that you got into a loud personal argument in the lobby early this morning.”

  The conversation with Mark? Had it been that noisy? She’d checked around, and the lobby had been empty. Had people heard them from their rooms? The bar?

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Jack. My ex-husband showed up. I tried to get him to leave as quickly as possible.”

  Jack shook his head. “This is a place where people come to relax. To be taken care of and to feel a sense of privacy. I work very hard to cultivate and maintain that in every detail of this hotel. Emma, I care about you as a person, but my priority has to be my business. You’re missing days at work, you’re late for work, and, as I told you before, I don’t want drama around here. And since you seem incapable of keeping the drama away, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “You mean for the day?”

  “No, Emma. I mean that the recent changes in your personal life have made it problematic for you to act as a steward of this hotel. Regretfully, I need to let you go.”

  It struck Bea that Mark Mapson was quite the operator—the flattery, the obsequiousness, the soft-selling. If she hadn’t been so interested in what he had to say, she would have gotten great pleasure in throwing him out as quickly as she’d let him in. But she was very, very interested.

  At the kitchen table, she poured herself another cup of iced green tea. Mark Mapson had declined her offer of a beverage.

  “I would be a much more effective executor of my daughter’s estate than my ex-wife, who, let’s face it, is a glorified hostess. This is serious business, and she is in way over her head. But at the same time, I’m obviously a less qualified representative for Henry Wyatt’s art than you are.”