Set This House in Order

by Matt Ruff

  t.

  “I guess I can’t put this off any longer,” I said. Adam didn’t respond. I tried again: “I probably should have written back yesterday, huh?”

  Still nothing. It was Wednesday morning, and Adam was giving me the silent treatment, paying me back for taking Aunt Sam’s side in an argument last night.

  “Fine,” I said. “I can handle this myself.”

  There was the briefest snicker from the pulpit, then silence again. I opened up an e-mail reply window in my Web browser, and poised my fingers over the keyboard.

  Dear Thread, I thought, but didn’t type, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you, or Penny…

  Dear Thread, though of course I’d like to help you, I’m afraid I’m not the right person…

  Dear Thread, if Penny is really ready to “find herself,” then what she needs is a good doctor, not—

  “Dear Thread,” Adam offered, unable to resist, “the truth is I don’t give a rat’s asshole about you or Penny. But since I’d probably kiss a rat’s asshole if Julie Sivik asked me to, I’ve decided to dick around about this—”

  “Be quiet,” I said.

  “What? I thought you wanted my advice.”

  “I do. But if you’re not going to be helpful…”

  I heard the rustle of someone entering the tent and looked up from the computer. “Julie…?”

  It wasn’t Julie. It was Penny, or rather, Penny’s body. The soul was Thread’s. I could see the difference in body language right away: where Penny hunched her shoulders as though expecting at any moment to be snatched up by a predator, Thread stood and moved with greater confidence—even when, as now, she was clearly very nervous.

  “Mr. Gage?” she said.

  “Hah,” I said softly. I took a deep breath: “Hi.”

  “Hello.” She stuck out her hand. I took it, and shook it, my emotions suddenly in an uproar. A moment ago, by e-mail, I’d been ready to put her off, but now that we were face to face, I started remembering my father’s stories about when he’d first sought help—how scared he’d been, and how much courage he’d had to muster. All at once, my reluctance to help seemed selfish and mean.

  But before that thought could go anywhere, Julie burst into the tent, well into phase two. “Andrew!” she barked at me. “Andrew, I need you to—” She saw Penny’s body, and stopped short.

  “Oh,” Julie said. She looked from me, to Thread, to our two hands clasped over the desktop, back to me again. “Oh, I’m sorry…I’ll come back later…”

  “No!” I jumped up and let go of Thread’s hand (actually, I didn’t just let it go—I kind of shoved it away). “No, you don’t have to—”

  “Didn’t mean to interrupt,” said Julie. She was smiling now, the same self-satisfied smile she’d smiled two days ago, when Penny and I had first met. “You two keep on, I’ll just…” She started to back out of the tent.

  “You aren’t interrupting anything!” I didn’t mean to shout, but that’s how it came out—as if Julie had accused me of something awful, and I was denying it with all my might.

  “All right,” said Julie. “Take it easy.”

  “What…what did you want?”

  “The Honey Bucket,” Julie said. She wasn’t smiling anymore. “It’s…fouled. Courtesy of Dennis, I think. I need you to clean it up, but if you’re—”

  “I’m not,” I said, my voice still too loud. “I’ll get right on it.”

  I glanced at Thread, who seemed stunned by my outburst but was still waiting to continue, or begin, our conversation. I knew that I ought to say something to her, that it would be rude to just leave her hanging, but I couldn’t think of anything, especially not with Julie standing right there, so I just nodded and muttered something incoherent. Then I walked out, trying hard not to look like I was running away.

  “Very smooth,” said Adam, as I broke into a jog outside the tent. “You were right, you’re handling this just fine on your own.”

  “No thanks to you,” I said angrily.

  “Don’t worry. If you keep freaking out every time she tries to talk to you, I’m sure she’ll get the message.”

  “I’m not freaking out. I was just surprised, that’s all.”

  But a few moments later back in the latrine area, as I was preparing to decontaminate the Honey Bucket, I felt eyes on me, and turned to find Thread standing a short distance away, staring at me. My brain locked up again. I looked down at my feet and tried to think of something to say; I asked Adam for help, but he’d once more fallen silent. Finally, thinking that if I just forced out one word, others might magically follow, I looked up and said “Listen…”

  She was gone, vanished back among the tents. I didn’t go after her. When I next saw her—about an hour later, coming out of the Big Tent—she wasn’t Thread anymore.

  I went back to my own tent then, thinking I’d take another crack at responding by e-mail. My computer was still on, as I’d left it, but the Web browser was closed, and when I reopened it I found that Thread’s last message to me had been deleted. I checked the “Saved” folder; the two earlier messages were gone, too.

  Subject: Dear Mr. Gage,

  Date: Thur, 24 Apr 1997 06:01:03

  From: Thread

  To: housekeeper@pacbell.net

  Dear Mr. Gage,

  I’m very sorry to have bothered you. I won’twHat the fuck is your problem asshole? someone comes to you for help and you wont even takl to them what is that I ought to kick your fucking ass you cocksucking cunt

  Shortly before noon on Thursday, Julie came looking for me again. I was back in the woods behind the Factory, shoveling fresh lime into the pit where we dumped the Honey Bucket waste. As I saw Julie coming I braced myself for a rebuke—she hadn’t told me to lime the pit today—but when she spoke, her voice was concerned, not angry: “Have you seen Penny?”

  “Me?” I said. “No, I—”

  “Nobody else has seen her either. Her car’s not here, and when I called her house just now there was no answer. I hope she’s all right.”

  The last sentence sounded like a question, but I pretended not to notice. “I hope so too,” I said.

  “So you haven’t heard from her at all? She didn’t say anything about not coming in today?”

  “I haven’t…spoken to her since yesterday. And no, she didn’t say anything about not coming in.”

  Julie nodded, and I felt a flush of shame for having deceived her. I wanted to tell her about the e-mail messages I’d been getting, but I knew if I did she’d want to get involved, and I was having enough trouble deciding what to do on my own.

  “All right,” said Julie. “I’ve got to go into Seattle anyway, so I think I’ll stop by Penny’s apartment. If she shows up here while I’m gone, will you tell her I’m worried about her?”

  “Sure, Julie.”

  “Thanks.” She started to turn away. I bent to pick up the shovel, and Julie said: “Oh. By the way…”

  “Hmm?”

  “What was that all about, yesterday?”

  “What was what all about?”

  “When I walked in on you and Penny, and you flipped out. What was that about?”

  “Flipped out?” I said, trying, and failing, to sound confused. I really am a terrible liar. “I didn’t flip out.”

  Julie said nothing, calling bullshit on me with a lift of her eyebrows.

  “I didn’t flip out,” I repeated. “She, Penny, just came in to say good morning. That’s all.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Julie. Then she shrugged, and let it go. “Well, just be sure and tell her I went looking for her…”

  After I got done with the waste pit I decided to hike into town to pick up some roofing materials. I got some petty cash, grabbed an army backpack from one of the storage tents, and set off down the road.

  It was a beautiful day, clear and warm, like summer. At the Autumn Creek Café (a vegetarian restaurant across the street from the Harvest Moon Diner), the waiters had
moved some tables out on the sidewalk, so I sat in the sun and had a leisurely meal. There was a radio on inside the café, tuned to an all-news station; as I was finishing up my spinach lasagna, the newscaster announced that Warren Lodge was being sought for questioning by police, who now suspected that he, and not a cougar, was responsible for his daughters’ disappearance. That was such good news that I stayed at my table another twenty minutes until the story was repeated, just so my father could come out on the pulpit and hear it for himself. Then I went to the hardware store on Mill Street and bought shingles.

  I was crossing the east bridge on my way back to the Factory when I heard a car approaching. I thought it must be Julie returning early from Seattle, or maybe a lost tourist, but when I looked over my shoulder I saw Penny’s Buick coming up behind me. I was still so happy about the Warren Lodge news that I forgot to get flustered—I raised my hand to wave, and if it had been Thread driving the car I would probably have flagged her down, climbed in, and finally had a chat with her.

  But it wasn’t Thread driving, or Penny either. The soul behind the wheel of the Centurion was one I hadn’t met before, at least not in person: the foul-mouthed protector. As the car drew close enough for me to clearly make out the protector’s expression, I could see that she (or he) was enraged—not just annoyed, or angry, but enraged.

  “Oh shit,” said Adam, and then I knew I was in trouble.

  I stopped waving, dropped my arm to my side, and turned my back on the car. My first instinct was to run, but something told me that would be a bad idea, so I quick-stepped the rest of the way across the bridge, then got over on the soft shoulder of the road and slowed up again, hoping that the Buick would pass me by. It didn’t; it pulled alongside me, and paced me. I could feel the protector staring at me but just kept walking, my own gaze fixed straight ahead.

  Then the protector laid on the Centurion’s horn, and I fell back on my first instinct. I broke into a sprint, which turned out to be not so much a bad idea as a useless gesture. With a squeal of tires the Buick sped up, got ahead of me, and swerved onto the shoulder, cutting me off.

  The protector leaned out the window and screamed at me: “Get your motherfucking ass in this fucking car right now, cocksucker, or I’ll rip your goddamn fucking head off and—”

  Adam yelled something at me too—probably “Don’t get in the car!”—but I was already racing back towards the bridge. The protector tried to cut me off again, but the Centurion didn’t handle as well in reverse, and I managed to get to the bridge ahead of it—and then, instead of going across, I ducked to the side.

  There’s no path or walkway to the bottom of Thaw Canal, just a steep rocky slope that I equal parts slid, scrambled, and fell down, the pack full of shingles pounding hard against the back of my head and neck. There’s no path or walkway along the banks of Thaw Canal either, so instead of trying to escape upstream, I hid underneath the arch of the bridge. Standing knee-deep in freezing water, I listened to the idling of the Buick almost directly above me, and the ranting and raving of the protector as she—it was a she, I was sure now—paced the bridge’s span, promising to do me all sorts of harm if I didn’t come out and show myself. I pressed a hand over my mouth to keep my teeth from chattering, and tried not to sneeze.

  Eventually all the noisemaking frightened some squirrel or woodchuck up along the rim of the gully, and as it crashed through the underbrush, the protector mistook it for me. She ordered it to come back, right fucking now!, but it didn’t, and shortly after that she gave up. She spat out a few more curses, stalked the length of the bridge two or three more times, then jumped into the Buick and drove off with a furious squeal of tires.

  The silence that fell then was broken by the voice of my father, speaking from the pulpit: “We need to have a meeting about this.”

  Mrs. Winslow opened the Victorian’s front door just as I was coming up the porch steps. “Andrew!” she said. “What happened to you?”

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  “Well, come inside then.”

  I followed her back to the kitchen and had a seat at the breakfast table. Mrs. Winslow brewed coffee; I peeled off my shoes and socks, and, at Mrs. Winslow’s insistence, my jeans as well.

  Even before Adam warned me not to, I recognized that I couldn’t tell Mrs. Winslow the full story of what had happened. Much as I wanted to be completely honest with her, and much as I wanted to discuss this matter with someone outside my own head, I knew that there were elements of what had taken place, like the threatening e-mails, that would upset her beyond all proportion. So I was deliberately vague, saying only: “I’m having some trouble with one of the people at work.”

  “One of the people…” Mrs. Winslow frowned. “Does that mean Julie?”

  “No,” I said, “it’s a new girl, a new programmer. Penny.”

  “And what did she do, roll you down an embankment?”

  I laughed nervously, although I suppose, given my wet and muddy condition, that it wasn’t that astounding a guess. “You know I trust you, Mrs. Winslow,” I said. “More than anyone. But I think this is something I, we, need to deal with on our own. My father’s called a house meeting about it, and I’m sure he’ll know what to do. So you mustn’t worry.”

  “I’ll respect your privacy, of course,” she told me, her tone suggesting she’d make her own decision about whether to worry. “But…I know I don’t have to tell you this, Andrew, but if you ever do need my help—if you should decide to quit your job, for instance—”

  “Quit my job! Why would I do that?”

  Mrs. Winslow glanced at my jeans, drying on the back of a chair. “If you need to put some distance between yourself and this Penny person, for instance. If your father thinks that would be a good idea.”

  “Oh…”

  “Don’t worry about the rent, is all I’m saying.”

  “Well thank you, Mrs. Winslow. I’m sure it won’t come to that, but I, I appreciate it. My father appreciates it. And speaking of my father…” I set my coffee mug on the table. “I should probably get to that meeting now.”

  Mrs. Winslow nodded. “I’ll see to it you’re not disturbed.”

  We both stood up. Mrs. Winslow took my mug, and, on her way to the sink, switched on the TV. The sound of a newscaster’s voice reminded me of something. “Mrs. Winslow?” I said. “Did you hear about Warren Lodge?”

  “I’ve heard,” Mrs. Winslow replied, not sounding nearly as happy about it as I would have expected. Then she explained: “The latest report is that the police can’t find him. He’s run off.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time—”

  “We’ll see,” said Mrs. Winslow, understandably skeptical. “You go have your meeting now, Andrew. I’ll call you for dinner in a few hours.”

  “All right, Mrs. Winslow.”

  Somebody has to run the body: that is a truism in many ways, but it’s not literally true; it is possible, though generally not a good idea, to leave the body unattended. The trick is to make sure the body is in a safe place, a place where, if bad stuff starts to happen, it will happen slowly and with lots of warning. With this in mind, I prepared for the house meeting by checking my bedroom carefully for open flames, frayed electrical cords, teetering bookshelves, escaped circus tigers, and other potential sources of sudden catastrophe. Though I joke about it, it is serious business: after one memorable early meeting held back before the house was built, my father returned to the body to find a crow pecking at his chest.

  When I’d verified to my own and my father’s satisfaction that the bedroom was safe (with the windows all shut tight, and latched) I lay down on the bed, arranging myself comfortably on the mattress.

  Julie once asked me what it feels like to leave the body. “Do you contract into yourself, or float away, or what?” After several mangled attempts at a description, I came up with the following exercise, which, while not perfect, at least conveys the general idea: Tilt your head back
as far as you can. You will feel a tension in the muscles at the back of your neck that quickly becomes painful. Imagine that tension spreading outwards, wrapping around the front of your face and shooting down into your torso, arms, and legs, turning your whole skin into a rigid shell like a suit of armor. Now imagine stepping backwards out of that suit of armor and finding yourself, not behind your body, but somewhere else entirely. Imagine all of this happening in the space between two heartbeats.

  That’s what it’s like, more or less. Or at least that’s what it’s like for me; from exchanges I’ve had over the Internet, I know that some multiples experience it a bit differently—and of course, what happens to you after you’ve left the body depends on what your internal geography is like, something that is different for every multiple.

  The map of the geography inside Andy Gage’s head looks like this:

  The X at the bottom of the map marks the spot where I appeared, beside the column of light that is the conduit between inside and outside. The column of light touches down on the crest of a hill above the south shore of the lake; from it, a path curves west and north around the lake’s perimeter, eventually splitting into three branches. The rightmost branch leads down to a boat dock on the western lakebank; the middle branch runs straight and level to the pumpkin field; and the left branch goes up another, broader hill to the house. The question of distances gets kind of metaphysical, and I will return to it presently, but let’s just say for the moment that the length of the path from the column of light to the front door of the house appears to be about a mile.

  Colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations are all exactly the same inside as they are outside. The house looks and feels just like a real house; the hills, rocks, and trees just like real hills, rocks, and trees. The only obvious difference is you, since when you’re inside, you’re not wearing the body—so depending on how tall your soul is, for instance, your eye level may be shifted up or down.

  The geography has a sky above it just like the real sky, with a sun, moon, and stars. The motions of these heavenly bodies are all controlled by my father, who for the most part keeps them synchronized with their real-world counterparts: generally, when it’s day outside, it’s day inside, and ditto for night. The geography also has weather—this, too, controlled by my father—which is definitely not in sync with real-world weather, or at least not real-world Pacific Northwest weather: day or night, the sky in Andy Gage’s head is almost always clear, and it never rains. Sometimes, around Christmas, my father will stage a brief snowstorm for Jake and the other kids.