Drawing Home

by Jamie Brenner

  “The company didn’t help,” Penny said, hobbling to her room.

  Bea followed, and Penny tried to think what she could say to get rid of her. She tossed her crutches against the bed and dropped her bag onto the floor. Bea immediately swooped in and brushed sand off the comforter. “You should take the crutches into the bathroom and deal with the sand, Penny. Not drop them in here.”

  Bea sat on the edge of the bed. Weird! What did she want?

  “I’m really tired,” Penny said.

  Bea cleared her throat. “I read your graphic novel.”

  What? “Oh my God, were you snooping around in here?” She couldn’t believe it. Even her mother at her most annoying didn’t mess around with her stuff.

  “I think that’s an excessively negative characterization.”

  “That’s an invasion of privacy! It’s totally not okay!”

  “Penny, sit down for a moment,” Bea said. “The book is…quite brilliant.”

  Penny looked at her. “Really?”

  “I apologize for, as you said, invading your privacy. But Penny, I love art. I love art the way Henry loved it; I just never had the ability to create myself. Because of this, when I’m around artists, I have a compulsion to see what they’re doing. My role in the creative process is to nurture and facilitate great talent when I find it. And I see great talent in you.”

  Penny could only look at her in surprise. Was she for real? She had to admit, the compliment felt good. It felt like talking to Henry. “I just wish Henry were here to see it,” Penny said, her voice breaking. She started to cry.

  Bea, clearly taken aback, reached out and patted her shoulder. “I think Henry did see your talent. That was why he enjoyed spending time with you.”

  “And why he left me this house?”

  Bea pulled her hand away like she’d touched something hot. “Let’s not, Penny.”

  “When Henry died, I felt like my art went with him. I’m afraid of forgetting things he taught me, and I can’t tell if what I’m doing is any good. I mean, I can show my mom, and of course she’s going to like it because she’s my mom. But she doesn’t really get it.”

  “Penny, you’re an artist. People can’t take that away from you, not with their approval or disapproval, not with their presence or absence.”

  Penny thought about that for a minute. “But when Henry was around, I felt like drawing meant something. Like it could be my future. I know Henry liked it here, but he’d already lived in New York City and done everything he’d wanted to do.”

  “It’s hard to be patient when you’re young, waiting for life to happen. I know. I felt the same way.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. And as soon as I turned eighteen I moved to New York.”

  “That’s four more years for me.” Penny groaned. “I can’t wait that long.”

  She grabbed her crutches, made her way over to her desk, and pulled the graphic novel from under her sketch pad. Flipping through the pages, she cringed a little at some of the harsher sketches of Bea. The Bea in the novel was the way she’d seen Bea in the beginning of the summer, not now. The Bea sitting on her bed, talking about life and art and Henry, would make for an entirely different book. Maybe her next book. But first, the contest.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said, looking back at Bea.

  “You may.” Bea sat rod straight, as if steeling herself against what might come out of Penny’s mouth.

  “I’m entering a contest,” Penny said. “But I can’t send in the whole graphic novel. I just have to pick two drawings for the first round, and I can’t decide which. Maybe you can tell me the ones you think are the best?”

  Bea looked momentarily stunned before breaking into a smile. It was a completely unfamiliar expression on her face.

  “I’d be delighted,” Bea said.

  Penny handed her the manuscript.

  “It’s not finished yet, by the way. But the contest deadline is next week.”

  “And what do you win?”

  “First prize is two hundred dollars. If I win, I’m going to use the money to self-publish the book.” She’d thought it all through—she’d print a bunch of copies and ask Alexis to sell them at the bookstore.

  “And if you don’t win?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe Pauline will put it in the local/indie section in the back of the library.”

  “What’s the local/indie section?” Bea said.

  “It’s stuff that people in town write that doesn’t really get published. Like if you just wrote a book and printed up copies for your friends. Or I guess I could photocopy these pages and bind it up. That sort of thing.”

  “Stuff that people in town write that doesn’t get published?”

  Penny nodded. “Yeah, you know, like—”

  Bea stood up from the bed, grabbing one of the posts like she was suddenly unsteady on her feet. Then she left without a word, taking the manuscript with her.

  Emma had to admit, the progress on Kyle’s boat was impressive. The gunwales, stripped and refinished, gleamed in the sunlight. The floor was restored and varnished; it was hard to envision the state it had been in the last time she’d stood on the deck.

  “It looks great,” she said, taking a seat on a narrow bench near the helm.

  “Thanks. I’ve made a lot of progress but it’s not done yet.”

  “And you’re sure this thing is seaworthy?” Emma said when he started the engine, only half teasing.

  “Sean’s mechanic completely rebuilt the motor. I did some woodwork for him in return. The next major task is finding the right name.”

  “Ah, yes—the grand boating superstition.”

  “Tradition,” Kyle corrected her, casting the lines.

  “This one regular at the bar, Pete Hasting, named his boat after his wife. They had this horrendous, ugly divorce but he said he couldn’t change the name because it was bad luck.”

  Kyle laughed. “That’s a problem. But, yeah, I guess there’s a fine line between tradition and superstition on the water. But I like that about it. Rules, ritual, camaraderie. It’s like religion without all the guilt.”

  She smiled, looking up at the sky as they backed out of the slip. A gull soared overhead, and for that moment, she felt almost as free as the bird.

  It was a perfect day to be on the water, and the bay was littered with boats. She recognized a few sailboats from the marina but she was sure a lot of the traffic was day-trippers sailing in from Connecticut or Rhode Island. She had no doubt that in a few hours, a lot of people from these boats would be calling Sean to pick them up and take them to Main Street for dinner. A month earlier, she would have been the one seating them in the hotel dining room.

  Emma watched familiar landmarks pass. She breathed deeply. When they were beyond the breakwater, he picked up speed.

  “We really should be doing this at sunset,” Kyle said.

  “Sunset? Hmm. That sounds pretty romantic,” she said. “Maybe too romantic for just friends.”

  “You’d be surprised how much can fit under the heading of ‘just friends,’” he said.

  Emma smiled. “I probably shouldn’t be.”

  He reached for her hand. Her phone rang.

  “Sorry,” she said, pulling it out of her bag. “I just need to check who it is—”

  Andrew Port.

  “Emma, is this a good time to talk?” he said.

  She pressed the phone firmer against her ear, trying to hear him clearly. “Um, sure. Everything okay?” No, everything was not okay. That was why she had an attorney in the first place.

  “We have our first court date. July twenty-eighth.”

  Hearing the word court, she tensed. It suddenly felt ridiculous to be out having fun when so much was at stake. “And what happens then?”

  “This is the custody conference that I told you about when we first met. Ideally, you and Mark will come to a compromise or some kind of agreement on this date and avoid further litigation. If t
hat doesn’t happen, then we go to trial.”

  “Okay,” she said, her voice sounding strange to her own ears.

  “We’ll talk before then. But let me ask you while we’re on the phone—opposing counsel says you’re living with your new boyfriend and some other woman you just met this summer?”

  “What? No—he’s not my boyfriend,” Emma said, glancing at Kyle. Kyle, who was next to her on the deck of a boat in the middle of the afternoon. “We’re just friends. I’m allowed to have friends, aren’t I?”

  “Of course you are. Just…try to keep a low profile until the court date. Maintain normalcy. At this stage of the game, everything is fodder, you know what I mean?”

  She did.

  After she put her phone away, Kyle said, “What was that all about?”

  “It was Andrew Port. The court date is set for the end of next week.” Kyle started to say something, but she cut him off. “I’m sorry, but I need to go back.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “Now!” she snapped, instantly regretting her tone, if not the sentiment.

  “I’m trying to be supportive, Emma. Don’t keep pushing me away.”

  She shook her head. “I need some space. And I really need for you to take me home.”

  The woman at the circulation desk looked up at Bea, perplexed.

  It was the same assistant librarian as the last time, the one with the long strawberry-blond hair and heavy bangs. The one who had not allowed her to take the drawings out of the library. The one who had somehow failed to mention that there was a Henry Wyatt graphic novel in the collection!

  “Yes, ma’am. I do remember you being here last month and I do remember you asking to see the Henry Wyatt drawings. And I pulled all of the drawings for you.”

  “But you never thought to mention that he had an entire graphic novel here?”

  The woman consulted her computer screen, then looked back at Bea. “It’s actually listed here as nonfiction. It doesn’t say anything about format.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, never mind! Just show me where to find it.”

  Bea followed the librarian up the winding marble staircase to the rotunda and into the same back room where the sketches were stored.

  The woman consulted a Post-it note, then checked the spines of a row of books on one of the higher shelves. Finally, she pulled out a slim paperback volume.

  “Here you go,” she said, handing it to Bea. “Would you like to check it out?”

  Bea stared at the cover, marveling at the parallel to Penny’s. It was a drawing of the exterior of Windsong, so finely sketched, it was like she could reach out and feel the texture of the stone. At the bottom, his initials. There was no title.

  “I’m going to check it out, yes,” Bea said. “After I read it. If you’ll excuse me.”

  The rotunda was quiet. Who else would be in the library on a flawless July afternoon? Bea switched on the Tiffany lamp at one of the tables even though sunlight flooded the room. She didn’t want to miss a single detail, not even the faintest stroke of his pencil.

  Henry, why did you make it so difficult for me? I suppose you wanted us to have one last adventure.

  She turned the pages gingerly. Henry’s final work. Who would have imagined this was the form it would take? Life was a strange road, but perhaps never stranger than in the path of an artist. These were the people she’d chosen to surround herself with, and she should have learned by now to embrace their vagaries.

  The first drawings were all familiar images—their old gallery on Spring Street, his apartment on the top floor, and sketches of himself and Bea. His rendering of Bea was much more flattering than Penny’s drawings. He’d captured Bea in her prime. How many people were left who remembered her like that? Now, thanks to Henry, that era was immortalized right there, in black and white. It felt like a love letter.

  The images shifted from the industrial streets of 1980s SoHo to the two of them driving in the quiet backwoods of the South Fork of Long Island. The American Hotel’s exterior appeared in one frame. On the following page, a replica of a drawing she’d seen at the whaling museum, the one of the hotel bartender. The man Bea now knew to be Emma Mapson’s father.

  The following pages depicted Henry’s newfound love affair with country living: Henry in the woods, Henry fishing with the bartender, Henry grilling over an open flame in a backyard. In one frame, Henry meets a pigtailed little girl visiting the hotel. Emma Mapson. Emma Kirkland.

  Tom Kirkland. Emma. Penny. Three generations of a family. Maybe the embodiment of some sort of ideal Henry had in his mind? Henry made sure there was no doubt about what this period in his life meant to him. Unlike the black, white, and gray sketches in the beginning of the book, these were in color.

  Bea closed the volume. How foolish, how sappy, to have felt even for a moment that this book was any kind of tribute to their relationship. She had, in the end, been nothing more than a work partner to him. And then he’d decided midlife that work was no longer important.

  Of course he had not left the house to her. She had rejected him romantically, and it did not matter that she did it to protect their working relationship, because in the end he himself rejected the work. Ultimately, his deepest happiness had come from the life he’d made without her.

  Bea’s breath caught in her throat and she suddenly felt more alone than she’d ever felt. Had she wasted the past few decades? What was art, in the end, if it didn’t translate into something beautiful in real life?

  She wanted to hurl the book across the rotunda. Perhaps she would. But first she had to finish it, no matter how painful.

  In the last quarter of the book, Henry returned again to black-and-white images. Tom Kirkland died; his funeral was mapped out in somber, sparse panels. And then Bea’s visit to Windsong.

  Her heart began to pound. He had remembered, and rendered exactly, a Ralph Lauren dress she’d worn during the trip. The question was, had he remembered the conversation they had the night sitting by the fire? The answer, spelled out in the dialogue bubbles, was decidedly yes.

  He re-created, almost word for word the way she remembered it, their discussion about a future Henry Wyatt museum. Here was proof about his intentions for the house, for his work!

  Disappointingly, that scene was her last appearance in the book. It was followed by drawings of Henry in solitude and at the hotel bar, sketching on cocktail napkins. His work had literally become disposable to him. And then, meeting Penny: Emma’s kid. I see the resemblance. Their drawing lessons: Every blank piece of paper is just a drawing waiting to be completed.

  All she could think about was the dialogue about the museum. Impatient for more validation, she flipped impatiently to the end of the book. But instead of finding more evidence that Henry had intended Bea to act as the steward of his legacy, she was confronted with half a dozen blank pages. Well, not completely blank. They seemed to be rooms at Windsong, but without any people or furniture in them. And then a blank page.

  She sat still, her heart pounding and her stomach tight. Slowly, she flipped back a few pages to a scene of Henry with Penny bent over a drawing board. Every blank piece of paper is a drawing waiting to be completed.

  Was this book finished? Or had he left it for someone else to fill in the blanks?

  Bea packed the memoir in her bag. It felt heavy as lead. She walked slowly down the winding stairs to the checkout desk.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  With the court date looming on her calendar, Emma saw the auction planning as a welcome distraction. Really, what she wouldn’t have given for a twelve-hour shift at the hotel. But short of that, the endless details for the auction soaked up enough of her time to keep her sane. And yet, it was evident that Bea could easily have coordinated the entire event on her own. The woman’s organization and imagination were tireless. Emma had to force herself to take charge of something.

  “Fine,” Bea said, relenting. “You deal with the party yacht. I don’t care how the gues
ts get here. I’ll just make sure it all works when they arrive.”

  After wrangling over logistics with the dockmaster, Emma was finally able to hire Cole Hopkins to transport guests from the marina to Windsong in his 142-foot dinner yacht, the Great Blue. Cheryl Meister convinced the party who’d already booked him for that date to reschedule their plan for the boat, writing them a hefty check for their inconvenience. Now all Emma had to do was a quick walk-through with Cole.

  “This looks so wonderful! The guests might not want to leave for the auction,” Emma said, standing on the sundeck outside a glass-enclosed atrium. She was only half joking. She followed him down to the lower deck, which featured a swimming platform at the stern and housed the engine room and crew quarters. The main level had a sheltered exterior deck leading into the dining room and galley; the upper deck had an outdoor dining space and a sky lounge.

  “My concern is making sure I have adequate crew,” Cole said. “How many are you expecting?”

  “I think we’ll be at capacity. One hundred and fifty.”

  He nodded. “Aside from Louise, I’ll have an engineer and a few deckhands. The catering staff is your hire.”

  “I’m working on that. I’ll make sure you’re well covered.”

  He led her back up to the sky lounge, and she mapped out where the guests would have drinks and hors d’oeuvres. She pulled out her phone to calculate some budget items, signed the last of the paperwork, and disembarked feeling pretty good about everything.

  She stood on the dock for a minute, blinking against the bright sun, looking to see if Sean was around to give her a lift back to Windsong. Instead, she spotted Kyle working on someone’s boat, sanding with a giant planer, his T-shirt soaked through with sweat. Totally focused on what he was doing, he didn’t notice her until she was close enough to climb on board.

  “Hey! How’s it going?” she shouted over the grinding of the machine.

  He looked up, nodded, then went back to what he was doing.

  Okay. She pushed back her feelings of rejection. Hadn’t she told him she needed space?