Dismantled (23 page)

C
LAIRE HAS LOADED HER
mesh shoulder bag with sourdough bread, maple syrup, breakfast radishes, arugula. Tess just introduced Claire to Lisa, who makes goat cheese at Second Chance Farm.

“Delighted to meet you,” Claire says, holding out her hand. Claire is wearing loose linen capris, an olive green silk blouse, leather sandals, and a cowrie shell necklace. A wide-brimmed straw hat keeps the early afternoon sun off her face.

“Enjoying the market?” Lisa asks. Lisa left a big corporate job in New York ten years ago after being diagnosed with MS. The disease hadn’t progressed much, and Lisa told people that she believed this was because she’d followed her bliss. She bought the land, the goats, went to France for a summer to study cheese making, and now was living the life of her dreams.

“Very much,” Claire tells her. While Claire peruses the cheeses, Tess scans the crowded farmers’ market. She sees her dentist, one of the men who works for Henry, and the holistic practitioner she saw two years ago when she was exhausted all the time. She was advised to give up dairy, white flour, and sugar—a regimen that lasted approximately one week and left her feeling more tired and grumpy than ever.

“A life without ice cream and pizza is a life half lived,” Henry told her. In the end, Tess agreed and didn’t go back.

Across the market, over by the heavily tattooed woman selling eggs, a man is watching her. He’s wearing a green polo shirt, khakis, and sunglasses.

Don’t be paranoid, she tells herself. But is it paranoia? The man has had his eye on her since she and Claire arrived. She tries to think back to when she first noticed him. It may have been back in the parking lot by the courthouse. Had he followed them here?

She feels Claire’s hand on her elbow. “I chose the chèvre encrusted with fresh herbs,” Claire says.

“Excellent,” Tess says, her eyes still on the man, who has his back to them now and is talking with the tattooed woman.

Tess and Claire say their good-byes to Lisa and wander away from the goat cheese, meandering between umbrellaed tables laid out with free-range chicken, the first of the season hothouse tomatoes, cinnamon buns, and potted sunflowers. Claire is still holding on to Tess’s elbow. Tess nods and says hellos to all the people she knows, glowing and giddy because she’s here with this exquisite woman on her arm.

At the center of the market, on a little makeshift stage under a canopy, a woman with a shaved head and a pink guitar does a version of Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue.”

“I am absolutely enchanted with this place,” Claire says, leaning in so that Tess will hear her as they walk past the singing girl’s amplifier. “I may never leave.”

Claire’s breath in Tess’s ear is as warm and silky as her blouse. Tess feels her heart jump-start. Lets herself imagine what life might be like if Claire took up permanent residence here: the Saturday trips to the farmers’ market, the galleries she’d take Claire to, sharing popcorn at the foreign film festival that she could never get Henry interested in.

“I see you two found each other!”

Tess turns. Julia from the Golden Apple is coming up behind them, a flat of dianthus in her arms.

“We certainly did,” Claire says, giving Tess’s elbow a little squeeze.

“No Emma today?” Julia asks. Emma is usually the one to accompany Tess on these Saturday trips. After the market, they go to Ben & Jerry’s for waffle cones.

Tess shakes her head. “She’s off on an adventure with Henry.” Tess looks over at the tattooed egg woman and sees there’s no sign of the man who’d been watching her.

“How
is
Henry?” Julia asks. “I haven’t seen him in ages.”

Tess feels herself stiffen a bit. “Fine. It’s his busy season and he’s working too hard, as usual.”

Julia nods, shifts the tray of plants in her arms. “What you all need is a vacation. Robert and I really enjoyed Tuscany last fall. When we came back, we were just so
invigorated
. It did wonders for our marriage—we were like newlyweds.”

Tess smiles. Is it painfully obvious that her marriage is on the rocks and needs to be
invigorated
?

“We’re not big travelers,” Tess says, almost apologetically.

She feels the gentle, comforting pressure of Claire’s fingers on her elbow. “When you live in a place as magical as this,” Claire says, “why would you
ever
want to leave?”

“I
T LOOKS LIKE THE
same wig,” Henry tells her. He can see the disappointment on Winnie’s face. She probably picked it up and brought it back to the cabin yesterday without even thinking about it. He tries to remember seeing it in her hand as he watched her leave his house and walk down the driveway and out to the road where she’d left her car.

Being in the cabin again puts him on edge. Everything is the same, but different. The place is neat and tidy now, everything in order. The mouse smell is still there, but hidden behind the stronger scents of pine cleaner and coffee. What did the cabin smell like when they were all there that summer? Cigarette and pot smoke. Oil paint and turpentine. The curry powder Suz dumped into practically everything she cooked.

He sees the place where Suz carved her initials in the heavy wooden table and runs his fingers over the pale letters:
SP
.

Why’d you come back, babycakes? What was it you were hoping to find?

Winnie claims the new wig appeared this morning. She woke up and found it sitting in a paper bag on the table, beside her journal.

“It’s not the same wig. It’s new. And it’s too big. I lost the first one and she gave me another.”

“She?” Henry asks. He bites the inside of his cheek.

“She’s come back, Henry. She left me another message in my journal too! Look.”

Henry watches her open up the notebook on the table, flip through the pages.

He’s worried. Not that Suz has come back. But that being here is just too much for Winnie. She’s breaking down in some crucial way.

Already she looks older, more worn than she did just twenty-four hours ago, when she pulled Emma from the pool. There are dark circles under her eyes. Her face seems gaunt. Henry finds himself scanning the cabin, making sure she’s got food. He sees a can of coffee, some instant oatmeal, a large bag of cat crunchies.

“Here. Look.” She thrusts the notebook at him.

He reads the lines on the page:

Use the saw to cut the table in half. Put the two halves together to make a whole. Crawl through the hole and escape.

His breath catches in his throat.

Of all the crazy coincidences.

But then, maybe Suz was right: there’s no such thing as coincidence.

Henry flips to earlier pages in the journal, then back to the last page.

“It looks kind of like your writing, Winnie,” he tells her.

She shakes her head. “No, Henry. No. It’s impossible.”

He lays his hand gently on top of hers, gives it a comforting squeeze. “Maybe you’re sleepwalking. Maybe you don’t remember.”

But what if she isn’t? What if someone really is leaving clothes and wigs laid out for her, scrawling messages in her journal?

“It’s her!” Winnie says. “I know it is. She’s come back.” Winnie starts to tremble. Henry pulls her gently to him, takes her in his arms, and whispers, “Shhh,” into her hair.

A horrible popping sound fills the cabin and he jerks away from her, turning to the front window, which has cracked in a starburst pattern. And there’s Emma looking in at him, her face twisted in pain, her right hand dripping blood.

“I’
VE NEVER TOLD ANYONE
this before,” Tess says, her face flushed from wine and the thrill of confession. “My friends and I in college—we formed a sort of outlaw art group. The Compassionate Dismantlers.”

Claire’s green eyes widen with interest. Tess has never seen eyes the color of Claire’s. Emerald eyes that draw you in, make you think you’re the only one in the world who matters right now, at this moment, because those eyes, those beautiful eyes, are focused only on you. You have said something interesting. Something to hold her attention. You don’t want this moment to ever end. You want it to be one of those rubber-band moments that stretch on and on, and only later, when everything is snapped back into place, does the world seem small and lacking.

They’ve spent the afternoon in town and are now having an early dinner at a little café with outdoor tables on a deck that overlooks the river. Claire ordered them a bottle of wine, and the waitress brought a sliced baguette, olive oil with garlic, and a peppery tapenade.

Claire had been asking Tess about college.

“You went to Sexton, right? And isn’t that quite close to here?”

Tess nodded. “About forty-five minutes away. It’s small. Funky. Alternative. The classes were taught in circles. We called the professors by their first names. No grades. No exams. The dorms were tiny houses—there was even a clothing-optional dorm, and a vegan dorm—you had to take off any leather products and ditch your coffee with cream before entering.” Tess rolled her eyes in a can-you-believe-it kind of way.

Claire refilled Tess’s wineglass. They ordered dinner, both choosing the pan-seared sea scallops with roasted red pepper sauce. Claire got out her cigarettes, prompted Tess to continue.

Tess’s sketchbook is out on the round wrought-iron table and she’s showing her new drawings to Claire, giving the people in them names: Henry, Winnie, Spencer, Suz. Real names. Nothing invented or withheld. She’s a teacher giving a lesson, naming the parts of a thing, diagramming it, telling all its secrets.

Claire offers her a cigarette and lights it for her. Tess inhales the perfumed smoke hungrily.

“I’m sorry,” the waitress calls from the doorway into the restaurant. “But you’ll have to put those out. State law.”

Claire groans, rolls her eyes as she stubs her cigarette out on the rail of the deck. Tess does the same, then lets herself continue.

“We believed that in order to truly understand something, you had to take it apart. That art, real art, was more about destruction than creation.”

Claire smiles. It’s an aha-moment smile. A please-go-on-you’ve-got-me-on-the-edge-of-my-seat smile.

“We did all kinds of crazy stuff—destroyed our records at Sexton, set fire to a construction site, shot up a power substation, we even kidnapped this guy once.”

Tess knows she shouldn’t be saying the words. But she can’t stop herself. She’s caught up in the dizzy momentum of their day together. She pulls her wrought-iron chair around, moves closer to Claire so that their thighs are touching as they study the sketchbook.

“It was silly, really,” Tess says. “How seriously we took ourselves back then. How earnest we were.”

Tess remembers back to third grade when she first learned to write in cursive, the first assignment she did for Miss Ferris after weeks spent practicing letters and words. Tess filled an entire page with words, all attached to one another, no spaces, no periods or commas; a run-on, breathless word that told an entire story.

This moment is like that sentence, she thinks now.

“I find this drawing the most interesting,” Claire says, her hand tracing the edge of the first sketch Tess did of Suz’s face inside the carnivorous flower. “Tell me about this girl in the flower.”

I didn’t mean to put her there. She just appeared. She keeps appearing. In my yard. My studio.

Tell me.

“She died,” Tess says, reaching for the wine. How many glasses has she had? Three? Four? She’s sure Claire is still on her first glass. Other than the occasional paper cup half full of wine at gallery events, Tess rarely drinks. Now here she is, good and drunk and suddenly terrified that she’s going to make a fool of herself.

She glances at Claire, who is clearly waiting for her to say something more. “Drowned,” Tess says. “The summer after college. We were all living together.”

Tess tells herself she will not have any more wine. She will shut her mouth and not say any more. But it feels so good, such a release. To finally be telling the truth, or some part of it at least. She mustn’t tell the whole truth, she knows that, but it’s okay to skirt around the edges, isn’t it? To flirt with it. Tease it by telling these little half-truths.

“How horrible for you,” Claire says, reaching out to put a hand on Tess’s knee, making it feel warm and cool all at once.

Tess nods. “It was. I think”—she hesitates—“I think that’s when my paintings stopped mattering so much. When I lost the…” Tess bites her tongue.

Shut up. Just shut your mouth before you say any more.

“Passion,” Claire says, pushing her leg ever so slightly into Tess’s, keeping her hand on Tess’s knee.

Tess’s heart is a moth fluttering toward light.

“Yes.” Tess doesn’t pull away. She loves the closeness. The feel of this woman next to her, the dangerous temptation to open her mouth and tell Claire everything. How easy it would be.

“But now you’re ready to get it back?” Claire asks.

“I don’t know.”

“I think what you need to do is paint something completely different,” Claire says, looking right into Tess’s eyes with such intensity that Tess has to fight the urge to turn away. “Something you’re both compelled by and afraid of.”

Tess lets this sink in as Claire empties the last of the bottle into Tess’s glass. Tess takes a sip, holding the wine in her mouth, tasting oak, cherries, and something vaguely metallic. It’s blood she tastes. From the cut her teeth made on her own tongue.

She’s been silent so long. Afraid for so long. She’s studied boxing. Made her body lean and strong. Getting ready for a fight with some imagined enemy. But all along, her biggest enemy has been her own self. And she has this deep and true sense that this woman beside her in the restaurant can somehow help her raise the flag of surrender, maybe even set her free.

She spots the waitress coming through the open door onto the deck with two plates of food.

“I know what I want my subject to be,” she says as the waitress approaches. Tess looks right into Claire’s eyes, green as the canopy in a tropical forest, as the waitress sets the plates down in front of them.

“Can I get you ladies anything else right now?”

“No, thank you,” Claire says. “Everything looks perfect.”

The waitress walks away in quick, gliding steps. The delicate white Christmas lights that line the porch come on.

Claire turns back to Tess. “You were saying?”

“You,” Tess tells Claire, the pungent, charred scent of the food hitting her suddenly, making her realize how truly ravenous she is. “I want to paint
you
.”