‘Will your book talk about things that will grow in California?’ Angie asked. ‘Steven and I have a little back garden plot that I’d love to find a use for.’
‘I’m sure,’ Rosemary said. She pulled out the binder, which she must have carried everywhere, and flipped through the laminated pages. ‘I have an example somewhere in here.’ Although I wondered how-every garden she was featuring was in Vermont.
Angie patiently waited, patting her bangs, which were cut bluntly across her forehead. She had a fifties vibe about her, and today she wore saddle shoes, cherry-red lipstick, and a pink twinset-it made me think, startlingly, about Stella and the twinset sweater-wearing girl her husband had once dated, the one who’d fallen through the thin ice. I couldn’t imagine what Steven had told Angie about our family. Whatever it was, maybe it hadn’t been the truth-she didn’t seem the least bit awkward or uncomfortable.
‘Really, artist colonies are just like mental hospitals or rehab facilities,’ my father was saying to Philip. ‘Only people don’t go there to dry out, they go there to…I don’t know. Juice up. But they spend a lot of time in little rooms, thinking about themselves. They gather around a central television. They play ping-pong. They eat the carrot sticks they give you at every single lunch. It’s really no different. We sometimes have silent dinners, where no one speaks. At first, it’s strange. You think you’re supposed to talk, that it’s awkward not to. And you laugh and you don’t make eye contact with anyone and you gobble up your food as fast as you can. But after a while…I don’t know. It becomes nice. It’s like this huge weight is off you. You don’t have to talk. You can just exist.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘You eat dinner at the colony?’
My father shrugged. ‘The chef there is great-except for the carrot stick obsession, that is. Rosemary goes too.’
I looked around aimlessly for a while, until my eyes landed on Rosemary. ‘Hi,’ she said, beaming.
‘Hi,’ I answered, not quite as enthusiastically.
‘You tired?’ she asked.
‘Something like that.’
My father said a few more things, then excused himself, heading down the narrow corridor for the front door. The others acted like it wasn’t a big deal, but I got up and followed him, wondering if he was going to light up another cigarette.
There was a line outside for tables; about a half-hour before, we’d been standing in it, too. Every so often, a waitress served people coffee in oatmeal-colored mugs. Another waitress handed out orange slices and cookies. I followed my father a few doors down, where he stopped in front of a hardware store. And, sure enough, my father pulled out a Marlboro from his pocket and fumbled with a pack of matches.
‘I can’t believe you’re doing that,’ I said.
He glanced at me. ‘I know. Bad habit.’
‘Bad habit?’ I clenched my fists. ‘You used to make me look at the scariest skin cancer photos to keep me away from cigarettes.’
‘Skin cancer photos?’ His face clouded.
‘The woman with the…the hole in her leg? The guy dying in the hospital bed? You tortured me with them.’
‘Oh. Right.’
His eyes still looked faded. I wondered suddenly if this was a gap in his memory, an old wound from ECT. ‘Do you…not remember?’
‘Sort of. I guess. It was a while ago.’
When my dad and Rosemary came to Cobalt to help clean out Stella’s house, I checked his toiletries bag to see if he was still even on medication. He was-a different antidepressant, the same sleeping pill, and another prescription I’d never heard of, maybe something for anxiety. The prescribed daily dosages were still quite high. There was a time when I knew every detail of my father’s drug regimen, perhaps even better than he did. It was a long time ago, now.
‘It’s weird being in the apartment,’ I blurted out. ‘It’s weird that you’re going to sell it.’
My father put his hands in his pockets and leaned back. ‘We can’t just let it sit there.’
‘It’s just…even if I have some strange memories from there, it’s hard to think that it’s just going to go away. That it won’t be ours anymore.’
‘I know.’
We stood facing the street, our breath coming out in translucent puffs. I felt him looking past me-but for what? ‘What if I bought it from you?’
He smirked. ‘At market value?’
‘No. What if I…I took over your mortgage? I could probably manage that with a job, right?’
‘They would have to do a credit check on you,’ my father said slowly.
‘I have good credit, probably.’
‘Would you and Philip buy it together?’
‘No, just me.’ I felt a rush of euphoria, followed immediately by a stomach-gnawing surge of doubt. I imagined living in the apartment alone, sleeping in my old bedroom.
My father pulled at the edges of his hat. ‘New York City is going to be nuked. It’s dangerous to live here these days.’
‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’