Chapter 33
“Did you paint the kitchen?” Tessa surprised herself with that first question, it wasn’t what she’d planned, but Henry had set up the laptop in a place with the refrigerator behind him, so she knew it was the kitchen.
And it was yellow. Completely, saturatedly, sunshine buttercup daffodil you-name-it yellow. So very yellow.
“Yes. It’s sick, as Zack insists on saying.” Henry swiveled the laptop screen, swishing by a bank of white cabinets, past the sink and a back door that led to… Where again? And then past the refrigerator, and then another group of white cabinets, now ringed in creamy, American-cheese yellow.
“Is the paint color called Velveeta?”
The video screen snapped back to Henry’s face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, it’s just, yellow. Superly yellow. I didn’t know you were painting the kitchen. I’ve only been gone three weeks or whatever, and that nice white kitchen, I think I remember it was white, now it looks like somebody dumped egg yolks on the walls. Where’d you even get the idea for yellow?”
“Don’t you know that yellow is the new taupe? Hey, Tesser. Have you had dinner? Do you have low blood sugar?”
Henry looked sympathetic, and he was right about the low blood sugar, but that wasn’t what she cared about now. He was painting the house without her. Her house. Her kitchen. Their kitchen. He was making the house his instead of theirs. Yellow is the new taupe? What kind of a ridiculous…
“This is not about my blood sugar. This is about… about…” Tessa stopped herself mid rant.
Took a deep breath. She adjusted the screen on her own laptop, showing the headboard behind her, the bad hotel art of buffaloes on the plains, and pulled her bathrobe high around her neck.
“It seems like a lot is going on at home, and I don’t feel part of it. ”
“You’ll be home soon, babe,” Henry said. “I’m only trying to make it nice for you. So did you sell a lot of books tonight?”
“We did, yeah.” Tessa tried to convince herself to feel normal, whatever normal was.
“But…” She remembered that woman, the “friend in Denver.” “People are weird, that’s all I can say.
Sometimes they ask oddly personal questions.
Where’s my hometown. And have I made a Faustian bargain. Who even says that?”
“They’re showing how much they love you.
” Henry put both hands over his face, rubbing it the way he did when he was trying to think.
“And the deal with the devil is in your book, sweetheart. Everybody thinks the main characters of books are the authors. Don’t you?
Like when you read that book about the podcaster, you told me you pictured the author.
And wondered if that happened to her. Remember? ”
“I suppose so.” Tessa heard the edge in her voice.
Henry was trying to help, but it wasn’t working.
She should tell him about the suitcase mix-up, and the earrings but didn’t have the energy for it.
The more she was away, the more things became wearying to share, things that probably didn’t matter in the long run, it all took too long.
She saw her own face in the screen, noticed her lanky hair and weary eyes. She did not look like Barbie, not at all.
“Let’s change the subject,” she said, brightening her voice. “I’m missing you all. How was your day?”
Henry turned to his right, lifted his chin as if he were looking for someone.
Or listening. “Well, Zack is on his big overnight, and so far no frantic calls to retrieve him. This Tristan kid seems reasonably sane for a nine-year-old boy. Tris’s mother is there, too.
Linny is up and around somewhere, I’ll go get her.
But remember it’s summer, and it’s not that late. Don’t be mad, sweetheart.”
“I get mad?” Tessa didn’t think of herself as a person who got mad, she thought of herself as a person who understood things. Talked them through. “But isn’t it almost midnight there?”
Henry’s face had disappeared from the screen, leaving only a view of the refrigerator.
And his stubby glass with ice and some clear liquid.
Tessa turned her screen to look at the rest of the room, and laughed—but the unsettling reality was that it wasn’t her screen that mattered.
Her screen was only showing her the background Henry had set up for her to see.
On the other side of the camera, anything could be going on, totally invisible to her.
Henry had absolute control over her perspective on his life.
Without having talked to Linny, Tessa would not know anything about the dog walker lady, or the bookstore, or Barbie.
Or that Henry had been outside, after dark, “talking” to someone.
All Henry had to do was decide not to tell her something, like why the kitchen was yellow, or not to show her something, and she would never know.
Although she was the one who had told her daughter not to say anything.
“Hi, Mom.” Linny had changed her hair since their last conversation, now two ponytails danced over her ears, and she wore her precious vintage I Missed Taylor Swift T - shirt. Henry was on-screen next to her, their two heads close together, Henry with his arm around his daughter. Their daughter.
“Hey, sweetie.” Tessa squinted at the screen. “What’s that on your T-shirt?”
Linny looked down, and used two fingers to pull the front of her T-shirt into her line of vision. She sighed, and Tessa saw her shoulders drop.
“Paint,” she said. “The gross yellow paint from the kitchen. I hate this. How did it get on my T-shirt?” Her voice had tightened into that Linny voice, the voice of confusion and disappointment that often led to tears.
“We all had to paint the kitchen. It was gross. And now my T-shirt is totally ruined.”
“Just you and Dad? And Zack? Painted the whole kitchen? Today?” Tessa tried to calculate how that could happen.
The taping and primer and prep. Someone had to choose the paint.
Buy the paint and brushes and rollers. Tape the trim.
Prime the walls. Before rolling on the “new taupe.” Henry and the kids had done all that?
“How do I get the yellow stuff out of my T-shirt?”
“We’ll get you a new T-shirt.” Henry ruffled Linny’s hair, and the little girl pulled away.
“Dad. You know nothing. These are like impossible to get. This is the only one. I’ll never have another one and you ruined it.” A tear rolled down Linny’s face, and she swiped it away. “You ruined it! You made me paint. You and, and, everybody.”
Tessa almost started crying herself, not only because she wasn’t there to understand and comfort her daughter, but because she knew that feeling, that teenage feeling of doom and pressure and loss. Of the supreme importance of whatever it was at the time, the panic to hold on to it.
“Sweetie, depending on what type of paint it is”—Tessa risked a glare at her husband—“I can get that out for you. Put that special T-shirt aside, and we will make it as good as new as soon as I get home. I promise. Don’t fuss with it, okay?
Don’t put water on it or wash it or anything like that.
Leave it. Put it in your mind’s worry pile.
” She wanted to make Linny feel secure; she had taught her daughter to stash things in the “worry pile” for later, and, as a result, she would learn that when she did that, the worries would disappear.
“And hey”—Tessa hoped she was not stepping over a parental line—“how about I give you my new periwinkle sweater? The one you love so much? Keep it for yours.”
“Awesome, awesome, awesome.” Linny’s face changed, briefly, the sun coming out. “Thank—”
“Just tell your father not to let you paint wearing it.”
“Huh? Sure. Good night, Mom.” Linny was still examining her T-shirt, pulling it away from her thin body, frowning. “I’m suddenly really tired.”
“I bet you are, darling,” Tessa said. “It’s way too late to be awake. Even in the summer.”
Linny’s face left the screen, and left Tessa’s world entirely.
Henry appeared. Frowning. “What is wrong with you, Tessa? It’s like you’re picking a fight.”
“I’m not picking a fight. I’m not picking anything.” She lifted her wineglass, surprised that it was empty. “I—it’s hard. I’m happy, yada yada, but I miss home and I miss you and I miss the kids and I miss everything that’s going on because I’m out here doing this.”
Henry sighed, she watched his broad chest move up and down, saw him run his fingers through his hair.
“Come home then,” he said. “Come home.”