Dismantled (25 page)

T
ESS IS STANDING IN
line at the supermarket, casting an eye over the tabloids and fat Sunday papers, when she spots the irises over in the floral department. She came out to the store for bread and tea and has been throwing a random assortment of things into her cart: cat treats, a tin of cookies, low-fat balsamic dressing. She didn’t really need bread and tea, but she had to get out of the house before she drove herself crazy. All day, she’s been putting off calling Claire to tell her she can’t do the portrait. She kept herself busy with one distraction after another: cleaning the oven, working out with the heavy bag until her knuckles screamed, organizing her desk. She began each task promising herself that when she was done, she’d pick up the phone and call Claire. After dinner, she announced to Emma and Henry that she was running to the market. She even asked Emma if she wanted to come along, but Emma declined.

“I’m working on something in my room,” she said. “A project.”

“We can get ice cream after,” Tess said, thinking a little bribery just might work.

“No thanks,” Emma told her. “I really want to finish this. I can’t wait for you guys to see.”

Henry tousled Emma’s hair, said, “We can’t wait either, sweetie.”

Now, as Tess makes her way from the checkout line with the racks of magazines and candy bars to the deep purple flowers, she knows just what she’ll do. She’ll buy two bouquets, and drop by Claire’s place with one of them, tell her face-to-face. She owes her that much. Tess imagines bringing her own bunch of flowers home, setting them right out there on the table in her white vase, right out in the open. Every time she sees them, she’ll think of Claire and how brave she was to end things before they became…unmanageable.

She carries the red plastic basket with her oat-bran bread, Earl Grey tea, cookies, dressing, cat treats, and two bunches of cellophane-wrapped flowers to the checkout line, feeling purposeful. Almost giddy.

S
HE PARKS IN THE
gravel driveway and creeps up the railroad-tie steps to the rented house with its weathered gray shingles, clutching the irises to her, wondering if this was a good idea after all. She hesitates at the front door, considers leaving the flowers there and running.

What is wrong with you?

Her palms are sweating, greasy and slippery against the clear cellophane covering the bouquet.

What are you doing here? What are you
really
doing here?

But then, before she can knock or plan her next move, Claire surprises her by swinging the door open, smiling.

“I was hoping you’d come,” Claire says.

“I…,” Tess stammers.
Focus. Say what you came to say and get the hell out.
“I have something to tell you.”

Claire is wearing a light muslin dress. Sleeveless. Her arms are tan.

“Well, come in then. Are the flowers for me?”

Tess nods, follows Claire inside then holds the bouquet of irises out.

Named for Iris, the messenger of the gods, who, some stories say, used a rainbow to transmit messages between heaven and earth. Tess opens her mouth to tell Claire this, but stops.

Claire steps toward her, reaching for the flowers, but instead of taking the irises, she lays her hand on Tess’s, which is clinging to the damp cellophane wrapping the flowers. Claire strokes Tess’s wrist with her index finger, right at the pulse point.

And Tess knows, at this moment, that it’s all over. This woman has her. Has her in a way no one person has ever had her.

Her whole body is humming, glowing like an electric filament.

“What was it you wanted to tell me?” Claire asks, her accent thick, her voice husky.

Iris. Messenger. Rainbow.

Tess steps forward until her body is pressed against Claire’s, and she lets out a little sigh, a little “oh” sound she hadn’t meant to make, then turns her face up and kisses Claire on the mouth, tasting lipstick, flowery cigarettes, and a sweet spice she cannot name.

Henry closes the book, looks at his watch: 10:30. And still, Tess is not home from her trip to the market three hours ago. He’s tried her cell phone, but she doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even know why she has the phone—it’s always either turned off or dead because she forgets to charge it.

Henry has Emma’s old baby monitor so he can listen to his daughter sleeping back in her room. He hid the other half under her bed. He knows she’s too old for this, that she’d be horrified if she discovered he was listening to her sleep, but she’s been acting so strange today: staying in her room behind a locked door on which she’s hung a
DO NOT DISTURB
sign; coming out only for an odd assortment of things: a needle and thread, to use the printer in the office, a bucket of sand from her old plastic turtle sandbox.

He climbs out of the canoe, pours himself a coffee cup of merlot and wonders what’s going on with Tess. First, the grotto. The strange phone conversation he overheard. And now she’s gone missing. Should he be worried? A normal husband might have called the police by now. The wine stings the raw places where he’s been biting the insides of his cheeks.

“Screw it,” he says, rising from the canoe, shoving the baby monitor into the pocket of his jacket and heading to the main house. He grabs the key to Tess’s studio from the bowl in the entryway and heads back outside, across the lawn, floodlights blaring. He skirts the edge of the little pond, goldfish rising to kiss the surface as the mermaid taunts him:
Where are you going? What are you doing?

Through the crackly receiver in his pocket, he hears Emma groan, roll over in her bed. The cement owls leer, eyes huge; the dodos chuckle. Behind him, the floodlights click off.

He hurries to Tess’s studio, fits the key into the lock by feel, opens the door and flips on the light. Safe. But feeling like a criminal. He hasn’t been in her studio in over a year, not since they were “together.” It’s an unspoken rule that this place is off-limits. It’s a Henry-free zone. Her own private clubhouse. He wishes he’d remembered the wine.

On the desk, he finds an empty tube of vermilion paint. And a brush, stained red.

Beside those is the red camping knife Tess claimed she found at the grotto. Henry picks it up. Large blade, small blade, bottle opener, spoon, and fork. Battered red handle. Suz’s. Or one exactly like hers. But originally, it was Spencer’s, wasn’t it? Taken from him when they emptied his pockets back on the side of the highway in Maine.

Henry picks up a sketchbook. Under it, the stack of Polaroids he’d been hiding in the metal toolbox. So she’s been sneaking around his studio too. Which means she knows about Suz’s journal. Maybe she’s even been reading it. Eyes still on the photos, Henry absentmindedly flips open the sketchbook. What he sees astounds him.

Suz.

Suz’s face at the center of a flower. Not one of the tame, farmers’-market-style flowers that Tess usually paints these days, but one of the old flowers. The carnivorous, toothy, dripping flowers. On the next page is a drawing of himself from that summer, bearded, young and smiling. Others of Winnie. The moose. Suz. The final drawing in the book is the most haunting: Suz in the lake. Eyes closed, sinking into the dark water.

“Jesus,” he mumbles. Outside, he hears something. A popping sound. Then another. He freezes, eyes still on the drawing.

Suz. It’s Suz.

Now a dog is barking, far off in the hills.

Is that a car door closing? Shit. That’s all he needs now, for Tess to come home and catch him here. He snaps the sketchbook closed, throws it on top of the photos, and flips off the light. He stands at the door for a moment, listening. Nothing. Or almost nothing. There’s the faintest sound of footsteps on the gravel path that weaves through the garden. And they’re coming his way.

In his pocket, Emma sleeps on through the static.

Looking around the dark studio frantically, he sees there’s no place to hide. His only hope is to open the door and make a break for it, hope she isn’t close enough to see him.

Slowly, he opens the door, heart leaping, mouth salty with blood from where his teeth have been clamped down on the insides of his cheeks. He crouches down and sneaks along the edge of the building like a burglar. When he gets to the back side, he stops and listens. Nothing. Had he imagined the footsteps?

Still crouched down, running like a soldier in battle, Henry hurries around the edge of the sculpture garden, to the driveway where he stands up straight at last. No sign of Tess or the Volvo. And no motion lights. It’s pitch black. He gets close to the one angled down from above the front door of the main house, jumps up and down to try to get it to come on. Nothing.

“Must have blown a circuit,” he says out loud, thinking that the sound of his own voice will help keep things rational.

He makes his way to the barn and checks the breaker, which is fine. He flips it off, then on. Henry pulls back the stapled-on black plastic and looks out the window. Still no lights.

He chomps down on the inside of his cheek, tells himself he should get back out there and check the lights more carefully. But somehow, the very thought of it makes his guts go cold. So much for being rational.

“Coward,” he says.

What is it that’s supposed to be out there?

In his mind, he sees the sketch of Suz in the lake, going under.

He steps toward the sliding barn door, then stops, hears Winnie’s voice in his head:
In all that chaos, there are patterns. There’s no such thing as coincidence.

His fingers are on the door, but instead of opening it, he finds himself pushing the latch closed, bolting himself safely in.

He’s just had too much to drink. That’s what Tess would say. The wine’s making him jump to conclusions rather than think things through. Maybe Tess is right. Maybe it’s time to give up the drink once and for all.

He looks out the window again. It’s dark. Too damn dark. He’ll probably trip over shit if he goes out there. Break an ankle or something. It’s best to stay inside. He’ll check the lights tomorrow when he can actually see what he’s doing.

Content with this plan, he refills his coffee mug with wine, settles back into the canoe with Suz’s journal.

Henry sits up, closing the book. He hears a sound on the baby monitor. He fumbles in the pocket of his jacket, turns the volume all the way up.

Emma’s awake. Talking. Whispering. Having a conversation.

She’s not alone.

Henry holds his breath. Puts the receiver to his ear, trying to make out words in the static.

They’ll burn,
he hears a voice say.

But this isn’t just any voice.

It’s Suz. Crackly, faint, but Suz. He’s sure of it.

Henry stands on shaky legs, coffee cup in one hand, monitor in the other. Dropping the cup of wine, he bolts out the door, monitor in hand, heading for Emma’s room, terrified of what he might see when he gets there.

But he stops dead in his tracks, arms pinwheeling like a cartoon character who has just found himself at the edge of a cliff.

Across the yard, the little shed Tess uses as her studio, the building where he was just a trespasser, is in flames.