Drawing Home

by Jamie Brenner

  “Do you want me to unpack your bag now?” Kyle asked in the doorway of a glass-walled room with a view of the bay.

  Bea waved him off dismissively. “Tomorrow.”

  “Um, Bea, how long will we be staying here? Through the weekend?”

  How long. How long indeed! How long did it take to honor the past? How long to stop feeling like she was staring into the churning waters of her own obsolescence? Of course there was no sense trying to explain this to a thirty-two-year-old, a man who no doubt believed he had all the time in the world. Bea remembered that feeling. And it was indelibly intertwined with her memories of meeting Henry.

  “Kyle, Henry Wyatt was my oldest friend. And I was essentially his family—the only family he had.” She couldn’t change the past. She couldn’t bring Henry back. But, filled with a sense of purpose she hadn’t experienced for a very long time, she said, “I must settle his estate. I know he’d want me to take care of Windsong. We will be here indefinitely.”

  “Sorry my mom had to call you,” Penny said to Angus.

  He barely glanced at her. Angus had white hair and wore frameless round glasses. He wasn’t fat but he had broad shoulders and he was big, like a former football player. Angus was a retired high-school history teacher, and as far as Penny was concerned, he needed to go back to work. He clearly missed it, since he was constantly subjecting her to impromptu lessons about Sag Harbor. He was a nonstop trivia machine, and although her mother found this endlessly fascinating, Penny didn’t like feeling as if she should be taking notes over her breakfast cereal.

  Penny’s mother had told her that when she moved into the house on Mount Misery, shortly after Penny was born, she had immediately bonded with two of her new neighbors, Angus Sinclair and his wife, Celia. Unlike the waves of newcomers who’d been snapping up property for the past decade or so, and also very unlike the summer people, Emma Mapson had deep roots in Sag Harbor. The Sinclairs did as well; Angus’s family had been one of the first African-American families to buy a vacation house in Ninevah Beach. This was in the 1940s, a time when African-Americans weren’t allowed to buy homes in many other parts of the country.

  “I wasn’t asleep yet,” Angus said, pulling up to their house on Mount Misery Drive. “I was watching the news.” His voice was so deep, it made everything he said sound important. Tonight, maybe because she felt guilty about the party, it also made him sound angry.

  Once inside the house, Penny tried to creep up the stairs without any more conversation, but Angus wasn’t letting her off the hook.

  “I just hope you’re not getting yourself into trouble, Penelope Bay Mapson,” he said.

  Angus’s late wife, Celia, had always used Penny’s full given name when she was babysitting and got serious about something. Bay had been chosen by Penny’s father. Her parents had met when her father was in town one summer performing in a play at the Bay Street Theater. He’d long since left, but Penny was still stuck with the weird name.

  Penny went into the kitchen. “No trouble at all,” she told Angus. Lies, lies, lies.

  At the party, alcohol was everywhere and in whatever form anyone could possibly want—kegs, Jell-O shots, bottles of vodka and tequila. By the time Penny had arrived, empty red Solo cups were scattered over every surface, inside the house and out on the wide deck right on the water.

  Penny didn’t dare drink. Her mother would kill her. And unlike a lot of kids’ parents, Emma worked around drunk people all the time and would notice the slightest sign of it. So while everyone was having fun, Penny was not. No one was talking to her. No one was even looking at her. And in her mind, she could still hear those sirens outside the hotel.

  She couldn’t be sure it was Mr. Wyatt who had died. But somehow, she just knew. All she would have to do was borrow someone’s phone and Google it, but she was afraid to make it all real. At the same time, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Every ten minutes she’d gone to the bathroom and washed her hands, lathering and lathering to calm herself and then standing over the sink and letting them drip-dry. She couldn’t bring herself to touch the towel hanging on the rack. And so, when Robin finally came over to talk to her and offered her a round white pill, as innocent-looking as aspirin, she took it. Anything to escape her own thoughts. “Don’t worry, Mindy says her mother pops these like Tic Tacs,” Robin had said.

  At first, for maybe half an hour after Penny took the pill, she felt nothing. Then, out of nowhere, she was filled with a fuzzy happiness, like being wrapped in a magic blanket. She was still sitting on the couch, and she was still being ignored by basically everyone, but she felt the distinct absence of worry. It was incredible.

  And then Mindy’s older sister, Jordan, yelled: “The cops are here!”

  Thank God she hadn’t had that drink.

  Now Angus harrumphed, settled into a cushioned chair next to the sofa, and turned on the television with a flick of the remote. In the kitchen, Penny rummaged through cabinets as a cable news show played in the background. She poured popcorn into a bowl, went into the living room, and offered it to Angus, who was busy mumbling his disapproval about current events.

  That’s when she noticed the news scroll at the bottom of the screen: ARTIST HENRY WYATT DEAD AT 83.

  It was real. Mr. Wyatt was gone. And even the little white pill couldn’t change that.

  Chapter Four

  Saturday mornings at the hotel were the busiest times of the week.

  Typically, Emma did not take a break, did not check her phone, and was lucky to find a moment to use the bathroom. That was part of the deal when you worked in hospitality. But Penny’s therapist, Dr. Alice Wang, would be out of town for their regularly scheduled appointment later this week, and today at noon was the only slot she had available. Emma didn’t want Penny missing a session, especially in light of everything that had happened last night.

  “I’ll pick you up at eleven thirty,” Emma had said to Penny on her way out the door that morning.

  “I can just ride my bike over and meet you,” Penny said. That would actually be much easier for Emma, but Penny was grounded.

  “You’re not to leave this house until I get home,” Emma said.

  Again, Penny apologized for not telling her mother she was going to a party—a party where, it turned out, people were using drugs and alcohol.

  “I only went because I was upset about Mr. Wyatt and I didn’t want to be alone,” she said.

  Here, Emma blamed herself for not taking the time to call Penny and break the news. Now she had to both console her and punish her, and all before leaving for work.

  Sometimes, she wished she had a mother she could ask for advice about Penny. But she was on her own when it came to her hopes for and worries about her daughter. And Penny, through no fault of her own, had given her plenty to worry about.

  The OCD had started at around age eight; the anxiety, age ten.

  When Penny was in fifth grade, Emma started her in CBT, cognitive-behavioral therapy, although Penny hated it. For a long time, there was very little improvement, and Emma was frustrated.

  Then, over the past year or so, Penny had gotten noticeably better, and Emma couldn’t help but think it had something to do with Henry Wyatt’s drawing lessons. The drawing kept Penny’s mind occupied. Maybe there was something meditative about it. Maybe it was the sense of accomplishment after a contained task.

  She had been surprised when Penny and the old man hit it off. Wary, to be honest.

  It was a shame you had to think cynically, but in today’s world? With a young daughter? But it was clear the old artist was just entertained by Penny’s interest in drawing. And Penny, in her typical way, connected more naturally with an octogenarian painter than with a kid her own age. Henry Wyatt, for all his fame and money, was alone. Maybe lonely. So he and Penny were good for each other. She just hoped his death wouldn’t set Penny back too much.

  The desk phone rang.

  “The American Hotel, Emma speaking.”


  “Em, it’s Sean. I’m at the dock with a woman who’s booked at the hotel. She needs help with her luggage. Can you send someone down?”

  Sean Pine operated a water taxi and he also rented moorings to a lot of the seasonal boaters. Like Emma, he was a Sag Harbor native who had never left and had figured out how to make a living in town. His wife, Alexis, had grown up in nearby Southampton and now owned the bookstore.

  Emma sighed. “I’m totally shorthanded.”

  “I’d bring the bags myself but I have another pickup.”

  Emma checked her watch. She had fifteen minutes before she had to go get Penny.

  “I’ll be right there,” she said.

  Outside, she shielded her eyes from the bright, late-morning sun, breathing in the smell of fresh coffee from the full patio tables. A jitney pulled up in front of the hotel and unloaded another pack of vacationers. She turned and walked to the wharf, passing the perfume shop and the upscale restaurant Wölffer Kitchen, where a friend was outside writing the day’s specials on a chalkboard. Emma waved but kept moving; there was no time to chat.

  The air smelled briny and fresh as she got closer to the water. She crossed Bay Street, where a family of ducks had halted traffic. She passed the theater and a seafood restaurant called the Dock House, then found shade in the shadow of the town’s historic windmill. From there, she surveyed Long Wharf. The dock was filled with boats of every size and variety: yachts and elegant sailboats and small skiffs. In the distance, Emma saw local captain Cole Hopkins sail by on his signature turquoise catamaran. At the edge of the dock, a couple stood taking pictures of each other, the shimmering, still water in the background.

  She spotted Sean’s water taxi just pulling into a slip with one passenger on board, a woman who looked to be about eight months pregnant.

  “Sorry to trouble you,” the woman said as Sean helped her off the boat. “I’m not supposed to be lifting anything.”

  Sean’s dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Melville, barked from the deck at a low-flying seagull.

  “Not a problem,” Emma said, hoisting the strap of the woman’s stuffed Vera Bradley bag over her shoulder and taking hold of her roller suitcase. “It’s just a few blocks to the hotel.”

  Sean called Emma aside. “Meet us for drinks tonight at Murf’s? Alexis is done at nine.”

  “I can’t go out. Penny’s acting up.”

  Sean shook his head. “You need to live a little.”

  Sometimes Penny zoned out during her therapy sessions. Instead of listening, she marveled at Dr. Wang’s endless array of shift dresses and matching accessories—gold trinkets, high-heeled and trendy footwear, intricately knotted silk scarves.

  Basically, a dose of high fashion was the only thing that Penny got out of the weekly visits. Two years and counting, and Penny felt no closer to being able to “boss it back.” That was what Dr. Wang called not listening to her obsessive and compulsive thoughts.

  Penny had admitted this to her mother, who must have repeated it to Dr. Wang. At their previous session, Dr. Wang said, “Penny, OCD is an illness and if you want to get better, you have to work at it. If a person had heart disease, the doctor would tell him to exercise and adjust his diet. You need to do the work so we can retrain your brain.”

  Penny was all for retraining her brain. It was just that none of Dr. Wang’s advice helped.

  “Remember, your OCD is not you. It’s separate and something you can control.”

  So far, Penny had seen no evidence of that.

  And the worksheets weren’t helping. Every week, Penny was supposed to keep a log of things that triggered her anxiety—what had happened, what was she thinking, what was she feeling? Then she had to rate her level of worry on a scale of 1 to 10.

  The concept of rating her worry was just so frustrating. She didn’t want to admit that she never felt degrees of worry. She was worried, or she wasn’t. Whether the scale was 1 to 10 or 1 to 100 meant nothing. Worry was worry, and when she felt it, it took over. That’s when the compulsions kicked in.

  And this brought Penny to the worst part of seeing Dr. Wang: Exposures. Yes, Penny washed her hands too much. Yes, she thought excessively about germs and getting a stomach virus. But it felt like torture to have to come to Dr. Wang’s office and, for example, touch the light switch and then touch her mouth.

  “How are you doing, Penny?”

  Today, Dr. Wang was wearing a lavender dress with silver jewelry. Or maybe it was white gold? Contemplating this, Penny realized she’d forgotten to do her worksheet that week. Maybe Dr. Wang would forget about it too.

  “Do you have your worksheet?”

  Penny shook her head.

  “Can you remember for next week? It’s important, Penny.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. But really, who cared about a stupid worksheet? A worksheet wasn’t going to help her. The one person who had helped her was gone. She felt tears in her eyes but blinked them away. No need to get Dr. Wang all excited. Drawing with Henry helped her more than anything she’d ever done in therapy. When she was drawing, her mind was blank. She was free.

  Dr. Wang handed her a tissue. “I know you suffered a loss last night. I’m sorry about Henry Wyatt.” She asked Penny if she wanted to talk about it, but Penny shook her head. Still, Dr. Wang went on and on about death being a part of life and that she was lucky she had met him and all sorts of other true, positive things. But none of it changed the fact that Mr. Wyatt was gone. And none of it acknowledged the thing that Penny knew would sound crazy: Mr. Wyatt had been her best friend. Her only friend.

  What did it say about her that her best friend was an eighty-year-old man? And what was she going to do now that he was gone?

  Chapter Five

  For two weeks after the death of Henry Wyatt, Bea Winstead barely left the great house called Windsong. The house made her feel connected to Henry, and it was painful to leave it even for a few hours.

  She surfaced only to attend the memorial service back in Manhattan, at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home on Madison Avenue, where she had spoken to few people. One of those few had been Henry’s longtime attorney Victor Bonivent.

  “I’ll call you,” Victor had said.

  But Victor had not called her. Bea realized, waking with a start in the middle of the night in Henry’s guest room, that the probate process must be well under way.

  In the morning, she left a terse message at his office. By noon, no one had returned her call, so she left another. And then, impatient and unable to lie around grieving any longer, she decided it was time to get to work.

  Bea paced in front of the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking a sprawling green lawn. Her eyes fell on a sculpture on the back lawn, a twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot hollow steel cube. Part of the second phase of Henry Wyatt’s legendary career. First, the painting. Then sculpture. Then—the house.

  He designed the house during a period when the two of them were, if not estranged, then certainly less connected than they had once been. For a few painful years, Bea had felt she was losing her biggest client and dearest friend.

  She learned about the completion of Henry’s modern masterpiece of a house from a magazine. She heard rumors that he was designing a building, that he was painting, that the State of Texas had commissioned him to do a sculpture for a public square. None of it was true. None of it except for the great house.

  She wanted to get him back to painting. She wanted to get him back to New York City. She wanted the two of them to be what they had once been.

  The night of her first visit to Windsong, they sat on terrace lounge chairs, drinking wine and looking out at the bay. A far cry from their early days in the East Village cooking on a hot plate.

  “I think your heart is still in painting,” she’d said.

  He said no. His days of creating art were behind him. Looking forward, he wanted to turn the place into a museum someday. A permanent installation of his work. And he wanted her to be in charge of it.

  T
he suggestion took her by surprise. She wasn’t ready to let go of the idea of Henry returning to Manhattan and re-creating the magic of the old days. After the visit, back in the city, she all but forgot about the Henry Wyatt Museum. There was plenty of time for that later. And then time ran out.

  Bea sat down and called for Kyle.

  “Send for my clothes in New York. Clear my calendar for the next six weeks. Postpone all my events until the fall. We need to catalog all the art in this house, and I want a list of the private collectors who have his work so we can buy some back.”

  The sound of the front door clicking open and then closed startled them both.

  “Are you expecting someone?” Kyle said.

  “Certainly not!” Bea jumped up. “And the alarm was set.”

  Bea rounded the table and peeked into the hallway, caught between irritation and fear. She turned and waved for Kyle to follow her, then put her finger to her lips in a shh gesture. Kyle nodded, then picked up a heavy, decorative ceramic plate from a table. To use as a weapon? Finally, some proactive thinking!

  They crept along until they reached the entrance foyer, where Bea realized a weapon would not be needed after all.

  A gray-haired man in a jacket and tie looked up, startled, clearly as surprised to see them as they were to see him. “Bea! What are you doing here?”

  Bea squared her shoulders. “If you’d returned any of my many phone calls, Victor, you would know what I’m doing here.”

  He sighed. “Bea, I’ve had my hands full.”

  “Indeed. Let’s talk in the dining room,” Bea said briskly. “Kyle, put on a fresh pot of coffee.”

  Victor did not move. “Bea, I’m sorry. I know this is a difficult time for you, but you cannot be here in this house.”

  “Don’t be absurd, Victor. Where better for me to manage his estate than in the house with the work?”