Dismantled (17 page)

P
ASSION
?

Fuck.

Tess puts on her sunglasses, pulls the shift lever toward her so that the car is in reverse, begins to back away from the salt-box covered in weathered gray shingles. Claire is standing on the porch, waving with the hand that holds a lit cigarette.

Tess sees the hummingbird return for a moment, zigzagging through the air above Claire. Claire looks up, smiles slyly, and points to the bird.

Tess nods, smiles back. Eases her car down the driveway in reverse, tires crunching gravel.

Claire asked her to think over the offer and call in the next couple of days. She mentioned that Tess would be “well compensated” for whatever work she produced.

“Even if you decline, it would be nice to see you again. Maybe we could have lunch,” Claire said. Tess promised she’d call.

Tess’s hands are shaking as she grips the Volvo’s wheel tighter. Nicotine, she tells herself, but that’s not it.

It’s that Claire is right. This woman who hardly knows her saw through the crappy peonies stuffed in rusted watering cans; saw through to the carnivorous, dripping flowers with faces like gods who swallow men whole.

Tess’s skin is still buzzing from Claire’s touch.

It reminds her of…of what? Some long-forgotten feeling.

She’s too pumped up to go home just yet; she knows that whatever magic happened just then at Claire’s will be gone when she sees Henry and Emma. When she steps back into her regular peony-in-a-watering-can life. Up ahead, she spots a field of lupines and pulls over. Ordinarily, she’d pick some to take home for a painting. She sees herself doing this, like watching an actress in a movie. The artist in black T-shirt and crisp linen pants doing what she does best—getting a bucket and some water from the trunk and filling it, then racing home to arrange the found flowers, get an image down on canvas while their life force is strongest, before they begin to fade.

NO!
she wants to scream at this image of her ghost self already out of the car, going through the motions of normal life. It’s all wrong. Stop.

It’s like those horror movies where the girl does something stupid—steps into the shower, opens the front door, goes down to the basement—and the whole audience is screaming
NO!
, feeling doom in the pit of their popcorn-full stomachs.

Stop.

“Passion,” she whispers to herself, still gripping the steering wheel. “Shit.”

I
T WAS
S
UZ WHO
finally got Tess and Henry together, at the beginning of senior year.

“It’s obvious you’re totally in love with him,” Suz said to Tess.

“I don’t think it’s obvious to him,” Tess said, picking at the lint on her sweater.

They were getting stoned in the tube that connected the painting and sculpture buildings. It was one in the morning and Duane, the security guard, had already made his rounds on that side of campus. When you were in the Habitrail tube at night, you felt as if you were right up in the stars. Tess sometimes imagined that the two buildings and tube that connected them was a space station orbiting around the earth. The hardest part was always coming back down.

“So tell him,” Suz said, exhaling smoke as she spoke.

“I can’t,” Tess told her. She’d tried a thousand times, dropped hints whenever she could. By now she figured it was pretty much a lost cause. And besides, if she actually came right out and told him and he didn’t feel the same way (which she was pretty sure was the case), then that would probably screw up their friendship, which was the last thing she wanted.

“Life is too short for can’ts, babycakes,” Suz said. She handed the joint to Tess and stood up. “Stay here,” she said, heading toward the sculpture building, where Henry was working.

“What are you doing?” Tess asked, terrified by what Suz might do. “You’re not going to say anything to him, are you?”

“Don’t worry. Just stay here.”

Tess waited for what seemed like forever.

She lay on her back and looked up at the stars, imagined she was out there, spinning through the universe, untethered.

Just when she was about to give up and head back to the painting building, Henry arrived in the tube.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Tess answered back. He sat down beside her, picking at a hole in his jeans. They were quiet a minute. Tess’s heart felt as if it had dropped into her stomach. What had Suz said to Henry? What should she say now?

Life is too short for can’ts.

“Remember the dream you told me,” Tess finally said, “when we first met? About being a cow in a field?”

Henry smiled. “Yeah. I think about it a lot. It’s kind of an existential conundrum. I mean, how do we know we’re really who we think we are? I think I’m here sitting beside you, but what if I’m really a cow in a field, or a guy in a coma?”

“So all of life might be a dream,” Tess said, the words trailing off as she looked out at the stars.

“Right,” Henry said. “And how are we supposed to live our lives knowing that’s a distinct possibility? It adds this whole other layer to things, don’t you think?”

Tess smiled. “I think we just have to make sure we have the best dream we possibly can,” she said.

And that’s when he kissed her.

Later, when she asked him what Suz had said to him, he shook his head.

“Nothing,” he told her, his eyes focused on the spot just over her shoulder—the look that she would, over the years, learn that meant he was lying. “She just said you were out there waiting for me.”

H
ENRY DOES NOT NEED
stitches. Winnie was able to revive him by pressing her knuckles firmly into his sternum and rubbing; grinding her bones into his cartilage so hard that when he woke he felt like she was kneading his heart as if it were a piece of soft dough. Winnie stopped the bleeding above his eye and put on a butterfly bandage from the first-aid kit in the bathroom. Then she made a pot of coffee, and some hot chocolate for Emma.

“Danner would like some too,” Emma says.

“Danner?” Winnie says.

“Invisible friend,” Henry explains.

“She’s not invisible. I can see her just fine, Dad.”

Emma’s sitting on a stool at the counter, her bare feet resting on the bottom rung. She looks to her left, at the stool beside her, where apparently Danner is waiting patiently for her own cup of cocoa.

Winnie smiles, gets down an extra cup and passes it to Emma, and says, “I gave her extra whipped cream,” with a wink.

She looks right into Emma’s eyes, and says in a low, conspiratorial voice, “You know, I used to have a friend no one else understood.”

“Really?” Emmas asks. She’s perched at the edge of her stool, leaning ever-so-slightly toward Winnie.

Winnie nods.

“Could other people see her?” Emma asks.

Winnie shakes her head. “Not really. Not the way I saw her.”

Henry sits propped up in a kitchen chair and watches Winnie move through the kitchen as if he’s peeking into some other dimension: some place and time where he married someone else. Maybe in this version of his life things worked out. Maybe their love for each other is somehow enough for both of them. Maybe she’s not going to kick him out to live in the barn or hand him a newspaper with apartment listings circled in red pen.

Winnie has changed out of her wet things into a pair of sweat-pants and T-shirt that belong to Tess. She’s a good deal taller than Tess and has rolled the already short pants up into capris. Her own clothes and the drenched wig are draped over the shower curtain rod in the downstairs bathroom.

“Drink this,” says Winnie, placing a cup of hot black coffee in front of him. “I’m going to make some sandwiches.”

Tomato. Lettuce. Smoked turkey. Swiss cheese. Rye bread. Stone-ground mustard. Winnie seems to know where everything in the kitchen is. Some part of Henry’s brain knows that this should puzzle him, worry him even, but instead, he’s comforted. He smiles drunkenly at Winnie.

“You saved my daughter’s life,” he says.

Emma sets down her cocoa, looks from her father to Winnie, then back to the invisible girl beside her. Is it Henry’s imagination or does Emma seem frightened when she glances at the blank space where Danner is supposed to be?

“Drink your coffee,” says Winnie, slicing into a tomato, juice and seeds spilling out onto the cutting board. He watches her lick her fingers. Thinks that if they were married, this is one of those familiar gestures he would love, something he’d look forward to at the end of the day—Winnie, his Winnie, licking her fingers after slicing a tomato.

“Are you sure he doesn’t have a concussion or something?” Emma asks. “He looks a little dopey.”

Winnie glances up, still holding the knife. “Doesn’t your father always look a little dopey? He did when I knew him.”

Emma laughs.

“Seriously,” Winnie says. “He’s fine. A little food and some coffee and he’ll be good as new.”

When she’s finished with the sandwiches, she hands Emma a plate and asks if she and Danner could go watch TV in the living room for a while. “Your dad and I have to talk.” Emma nods and leaves them alone. Sometimes Emma seems like a grownup in a girl’s body. Intuitive and wise beyond her years. Such a serious kid, always counting, straightening, bringing things to order. He remembers the day the old tree fell in the yard, how frightened Emma had looked; how she’d said,
Maybe it’s a sign
. She’s a girl who believes in signs, who understands when the universe is sending you a warning.

“She would have drowned,” says Henry, his eyes filling with tears. He’s pathetic. He knows that. The most unworthy man on earth. The worst father. The most faithless husband. Maybe Tess was right. Maybe they’d all be better off if he found someplace else to live. But the thought of leaving his home, his family, splits him open. He’s sure it would kill him.

“You don’t know that,” says Winnie.

Winnie begins stroking Henry’s hair. Comforting him as if he were a little boy. Henry lets himself rest against her and stares at Winnie’s arms. The beautiful patterns of scars that stop right at the wrist. Crisscrossing, like row after row of diamonds. Or fish scales. Maybe she’s a mermaid, this wife in another dimension. Maybe she’ll take him to live underwater.

Under. Water.

Down, down, down. Stones in her clothes.

He gets a cold chill, pulls away from Winnie.

“What were you even doing here?” asks Henry with the sudden realization of a drunk person.

“I came to see you. To apologize for that ridiculous stunt last night, and try to explain. See, a couple of weeks ago, I got this postcard—”

“But I didn’t hear you. You didn’t come in a car.”

He feels cagey, sly.

“I parked by the road. I walked in through the woods. Through Tess’s sculpture garden.”

“Did you see the grotto?” Henry asks. He’s slurring his words and grotto sounds like
rotten.

“Yes, I saw it.”

“Pretty unsettling, huh?” Henry asks.

“It’s a beautiful tribute,” Winnie tells him.

“You want to know a secret?” Henry asks, leaning toward her. He’s still just drunk enough to be able to share secrets. To say anything.

“What is it?”

“Sometimes,” he begins with a whisper, “I think Suz is here. I think she’s found a way back.”

Put the two halves together and make a whole. Crawl through the hole and escape.

“Lately,” Henry continues, “I find myself wondering if she’s behind everything that happens to us.”

Winnie smiles. “Sometimes,” she says, gently fingering the butterfly bandage over Henry’s left eye, “I think so too.”

They look at each other a moment. Henry remembers what he thought when he watched Winnie pull Emma out of the pool—that she was him somehow. He thinks, as he looks into Winnie’s eyes, that Winnie can see everything that’s happened to him in the past ten years: how one disappointment begot another; how he’s never managed to make it to the happily-ever-after he was so determined to find for him and Tess. And Henry is sure that it’s the same for Winnie. He sees the same emptiness in Winnie’s eyes, and when Henry speaks, he says, “We deserve more than what we’ve had.”

“Maybe,” Winnie says, then she leans in and kisses Henry on his forehead, just above the butterfly bandage.

“Winnie,” he whispers, the name itself a sort of life raft he’s clinging to. But Winnie’s not even her real name, is it? When he first met her, she was a girl with some other name who wrote poems thick with grief—suicide letter poems, lost-soul-at-the-end-of-her-rope poems. A twitchy, nervous girl who wouldn’t look you in the eye. What was her name before? It was the name Bill Lunde had just called her by this morning, but the funny thing is, Henry can’t think of it now.

All he remembers, all that matters, is that Suz turned her into someone else. She gave Winnie a gun, a haircut, and a new name. Henry wants to ask Winnie whatever became of that old Winchester rifle, but then, his drunk mind circles around again.

“Did you say something about a postcard?”

Winnie nods. “I got it a couple of weeks ago. From Vermont. There was a picture of a moose on the front. And on the back it said, ‘
Dismantlement Equals Freedom. To understand the nature of a thing, you have to take it apart.
’”

“Just like Spencer’s,” Henry says.

Winnie nods. “I know. My stepmother told me. She also said his father hired a detective. Anyway, when I got the postcard, I decided to come back and take a look around. It’s a good thing I did too. I went to the cabin, and everything was the same, Henry. Just like we left it. It was a little eerie. Like entering the Land Where Time Stood Still.
Twilight Zone
shit. I’ve been staying there. Cleaning up.”

Henry nods. “He’s here, you know. The private detective. Have you seen him?”

Winnie shakes her head.

“He must have talked to your family or something, because he knew you were back. He came here today. When he left he was heading up to the college. It won’t take him long to find out about the cabin if he doesn’t already know.”

“It’s okay,” Winnie says. “The place is clean. There’s nothing for him to find but me.”

“Which I think he’ll find pretty interesting. Especially if you keep running around dressed like Suz,” Henry can’t help but add. “You didn’t really expect to fool me again coming here dressed like that, did you?”

Winnie bristles. “God, no…that’s not it. It’s just that I was scared to come here. I didn’t know if I’d have the guts to actually face you. Dressing up like Suz, it gives me strength. Makes me feel like I can do things I could never do as myself. And when I’m wearing her old clothes, I feel so close to her, Henry. Like she’s right there with me again; like I’m whole again. I feel like these last ten years I’ve been half-alive, sleepwalking through life. When I first put on her clothes, I woke up. Does that make sense?”

Henry doesn’t think it makes any sense at all, but doesn’t say so. Maybe it makes as much sense as believing his daughter’s invisible playmate may be a vengeful spirit.

“So where the hell did the postcards come from?” he asks.

Winnie shrugs. “Did you and Tess get postcards?”

“No.”

She nods as if it’s the answer she was expecting, then looks down into her coffee cup. “Don’t you think that’s odd?”

He doesn’t like the way she’s looking at him now. Suspicious.

“What, you think
I
sent them? Why the hell would I do that? Why would I want to risk my entire life like that?”

“I didn’t say it was you.”

“Who then? Tess? You think Tess did this?”

Winnie raises her eyebrows a fraction of an inch.

“Jesus!” Henry snorts hot, black coffee. Starts to laugh. “That’s crazy, Winnie.”

“The postcards were mailed from Vermont, Henry. You and Tess didn’t get them. No one else—no one who’s alive anyway—would be able to quote the manifesto like that. And there’s the grotto…”

“The grotto?”

“When did she build it?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “She started a couple of weeks ago, I guess.”

Winnie nods. “Around the same time the postcards were sent.”

“Coincidence,” Henry says.

Winnie blows air through clenched teeth. “Suz taught you better than that, Henry.”

No. This is all wrong.

“Suz said we needed to take everything apart,” Henry argues. “That the universe was created in chaos.”

Winnie nods. “And in all that chaos there are patterns. There’s no such thing as coincidence.”

Henry lets this seep into his vodka-muddled brain. Is Winnie right? Is that the truth they were all trying so hard to prove by taking everything apart? That they could tear it all down, murder someone even, but like it or not, there were connections and patterns that couldn’t be broken. Not by time or even death. Things all the wine and vodka in the world couldn’t drive away.

Henry touches the Magic 8 Ball key chain in his pocket—just further evidence that Winnie’s right.