“What’s she like? This Claire Novak?” Tess asked, studying a new piece of Georgia’s: an old man in a wheelchair, yarn face twisted into a toothy grin. Whenever she looks at Georgia’s art, Tess can’t help but wonder what she herself might be producing at eighty. Will she still be painting? Or will she have given it up, realizing, at last, that she’ll never come to greatness?
Julia hesitated, then, smiling, answered, “Intriguing.”
Tess couldn’t remember the last time she had caught the interest of someone intriguing. Well, she could remember, but it was a long time ago. Back in college. She wasn’t supposed to think about that, let alone talk about it. And this, this was real life. The present. Here and now. She turned away from Georgia’s portrait of the old man in the wheelchair, and tucked Claire Novak’s number into the breast pocket of her linen shirt, where it seemed to flutter a little, like a butterfly against her heart.
TESS FEELS FOR CLAIRE Novak’s phone number in her pocket, steps on the gas, speeding a little now. The pink-and-purple chicken in front of the Seven Bridges Egg Farm glows in the final rays of sunset, seems to move as the light changes, inching toward the road in some barely discernible way.
She’ll call Claire when she gets home. Or maybe tomorrow. She doesn’t want to seem too eager. As she drives, she goes over what she’ll say to Claire when asked about her education, her influences. More important, she thinks about all she’ll leave out.
Tess spent four years studying art at Sexton, a small liberal arts school in the center of Vermont that had, at full capacity, no more than two hundred campus students. The dorms were cottages, complete with kitchen, lounge, and fireplace. There was the clothing-optional dorm, the vegan dorm, the women’s dorm, the substance-free dorm, and of course the substance-friendly dorm.
Junior year, Suz appeared. Tess had seen her standing in line in the cafeteria at breakfast the first day—she got only coffee and dumped about eight sugar packets into it. She was a tall girl with straight, pale blond hair and amber eyes and was wearing combat boots, black leggings, and a flowing earth-tone silk tunic.
“She transferred from Bennington,” one of the girls sitting at Tess’s table said.
“Why the fuck would anyone leave Bennington to come to Sexton?” another asked.
“She got kicked out,” the first girl said. “She set a fire in the dorm. Claimed it was an accident.”
“No, that’s not why,” said yet a third girl, Dee, who had a face full of piercings. Her boyfriend Lucas was on the admissions committee, so Tess figured she should know. “She got kicked out for a prank. She painted the dean’s house black, windows and all. Did it one night while everyone was sleeping.”
“Impressive,” said the first girl.
“Yeah,” said the second. “If she did that here, she’d probably get independent-study credit for it!”
They all laughed, watched Suz take her coffee outside where she sat on the grass, took out a plastic pouch of Drum, and rolled a cigarette.
Suz took a sculpture-studio class with Tess and spent the first two months outside, constructing a fifteen-foot-tall man out of scraps of wood and tree limbs. She used a chain saw to cut pieces and worked from a stepladder. As a finishing touch, she gave him a gigantic, out-of-scale erection that nearly pulled him off balance, making him tilt slightly forward. Jon Berussi, their sculpture professor, clearly loved it.
“This,” he said, shaking his arms at the sculpture, “is what you should all aspire to. Look at the lines! The symmetry. Look at the flow she’s got going on here, people.”
“Would you consider it modern primitive?” Spencer Styles asked. He had a pointed ferret face and wore black clothing that was a little too big on him. His family had tons of money, and here was Spencer rebelling with his Salvation Army wardrobe, the pockets of his trench coat full of books of poetry and existential philosophy. He was always trying to impress Berussi; to talk to him artist to artist.
Suz shook her head. “I’m not into categories. No artist should be put in a box.”
Spencer’s girlfriend, Val (who would one day become Winnie), smiled. She was a skinny girl who dressed in hippie clothes and had long, unkempt dark hair covering half her face. Val never spoke in class, but she would visibly cringe whenever Spencer opened his mouth, as if she just knew he was about to embarrass himself.
Berussi, a fifty-something bear of a man with wild gray hair and beard (both of which he kept confined in ponytails), said, “I’d consider it great art. That’s what matters, people. Suz is right, in the end, all the categories, movements, and schools are bullshit.” He put his hand on Suz’s shoulder and Tess heard Spencer whisper to Val, “He’s totally boning her.” Val shivered.
Berussi took a photo of Suz’s sculpture and brought it to admissions, suggesting it be put in the new catalog. The admissions director agreed only after cropping the photo off at the waist. So in the spring Sexton catalog, there was a photo of the giant wooden man with Suz next to him on her ladder, banging on his shoulder with a hammer.
When the sculpture was finished, she sent invitations to the whole school to view what she called an “Art Happening.” Everyone gathered around the giant man after dinner, bundled up in the early November cold. Snow started to fall as they waited for Suz.
Tess zipped up her parka and shoved her bare hands, raw and red from the cold, deep into her pockets. All around her was the buzz of anticipation: What, people asked in hushed whispers, is the kooky new girl up to?
Spencer stood in his long black coat, doing his best to look bored, as if he was above all of this. Val was half a step behind him, head upturned, watching the snow fall through her chin-length shaggy bangs.
Suz came out of the sculpture building wearing a hooded cloak, carrying a lit torch.
“Maybe she’s a witch or something,” said Dee with the piercings. Dee took a swig of the bottle of schnapps she was holding and passed it to Tess, who had a tentative sip, her teeth aching from the sweetness; it was like a liquid candy cane.
The crowd parted to make way for Suz and she strode silently through the students and faculty, right up to her sculpture, where she paused, closing her eyes.
Tess held her breath.
In the silence, they could all hear Suz making a low buzzing sound. The noise got louder, turning into more of a groan, then she opened her eyes and touched the lit torch to the tip of his penis.
“No!” Berussi wailed, but it was too late. The flames spread down the penis, and onto the body. Within minutes, he was engulfed, the scraps of lumber and tree limbs cracking and popping—Tess had had no idea a fire could be so loud. The group moved back, away from the heat. The penis fell off, followed by the arms. Then the rest of his body collapsed in, leaving only a pile of burning wood that no one would guess had once been a sculpture.
“Okay, it’s official—she’s fuckin’ crazy,” Dee said, her teeth chattering as she moved closer to the heat of the fire and took another gulp of schnapps.
“Totally pagan,” a hippie girl in a peasant skirt and poncho said.
“Brilliant,” mumbled Henry, the brooding sculpture student Tess had had a serious crush on since freshman year.
Spencer shook his head disdainfully, pulled his coat around him tighter, grunted, “Come on,” to Val, and started to walk away. But Val stayed, eyes fixed on the fire. “Suit yourself,” he told her, heading off on his own.
Suz tossed the torch onto the flaming remains and pulled down the hood of her cloak.
Someone made a coyote howling noise.
A joint was passed around.
A guy in a floppy leather hat said, “Where’re the marshmallows? There should totally be marshmallows.”
Jon Berussi was near tears. “Why?” he whimpered, reaching out to clutch Suz’s cloak. “All that effort…it’s such a waste.”
Suz smiled. “Don’t you get it?” she asked. “It’s the ultimate act of creativity. Destruction is transformation. In order to be reborn, you have to di
e.”
“But your sculpture,” Berussi said. “That will never be reborn. It’s gone. Ruined.”
“The energy behind it is stronger than ever,” Suz said. “Can’t you feel it, Jon? Can’t you feel how this makes anything seem possible?”
He shook his head mournfully.
The smiled disappeared from Suz’s face. “Then you have nothing to teach me anymore,” she said, turning her back to him.
TESS TOSSES HER KEYS into the red ceramic bowl by the front door, on top of Henry’s. His keys are on a ring with a silver horseshoe that Emma had picked out for him last Christmas. “For luck,” Emma said.
“Home!” Tess calls. She hears the TV but no other signs of life. The kitchen is tidy, the dishwasher running. The air smells tangy, acrid. Henry has barbecued. An empty bottle of merlot is in the recycling bin.
“Shit,” Tess mumbles. It’s not even seven o’clock.
She finds Emma on the couch, engrossed in a movie in which a group of very attractive people are shooting at each other and shouting obscenities. Emma’s sitting with her legs tucked under her, a package of Oreos open on her lap.
“Where’s your dad?” Tess asks, reaching for the remote and flipping until she finds a cartoon.
“On the phone,” Emma answers, not taking her eyes off the TV, which now shows a cartoon octopus washing a leaning pile of dishes, pulling them from the bottom until the tower finally crashes down on him.
Tess finds Henry in her bedroom, the bedroom that used to be theirs, lying down with his eyes closed.
“Hey,” she says. “Another headache?” She takes off her earrings, sets them on the dresser.
Henry sits up, his eyes red and glassy, and nods.
“Who were you talking to?” she asks.
“Was I talking?” Henry looks alarmed.
“I don’t mean just now. Em said you were on the phone. Who was it?”
“The phone? No, I wasn’t on the phone.”
He’s clearly lying. He has this way of looking just to the side of her face, somewhere over her shoulder, when he isn’t telling the truth.
Was there even a time when they’d told each other everything? Isn’t that what young lovers are supposed to do—stay up all night confessing each sordid detail of their lives? Not Henry and Tess. They had secrets from the start. Henry never talked about his feelings for Suz, which were obvious. And Tess never did tell Henry that she’d had a crush on him for three years before Suz finally pushed them together. Tess thinks that those first secrets were like seeds, and now a wild garden grew, the lies all tangled, untended. It’s a dangerous place.
“So how was your evening with Em?” She leans down to un-buckle her shoe.
He looks pale but seems surprisingly sober.
“She told me Danner knows the lady who painted Francis.”
Tess feels herself shiver involuntarily. The hairs all over her body rise, as if lightning has struck nearby.
“Emma loves that damn painting,” is all she can manage to say.
“I think it’s pretty fucking spooky. Yesterday, she’s asking Danner how she died. Now today, Danner claims to know Suz.” Henry tries to keep his voice calm, rational. He’s just stating the facts. But Tess sees the panic in his red eyes. Hears the tremor in his voice.
“I think maybe you’re overreacting,” she tells him, sticking to her role as the rational skeptic. It’s far safer that way.
That does it. Tess sees his face go from practiced calm to angry panic.
“Overreacting? You don’t know how fucked up it was to hear her say that.”
“Keep your voice down,” she warns. “I think it’s just a coincidence. Emma loves the painting. She doesn’t know a thing about Suz, just that she’s an old friend.”
“A dead friend.”
“We’ve never told her Suz was dead.”
“No,” Henry agrees. “No, we haven’t. And that’s my point. It’s as if she knows.”
Tess takes a deep breath, lets it out.
“Christ, Henry, I really wish you wouldn’t drink so much. You’re not thinking clearly. And it’s no wonder you get so goddamn many migraines. Sometimes I think if you didn’t drink so much, then maybe…”
“Maybe what?” Henry asks. His brown eyes are soft, expectant as a dog’s.
“Nothing,” Tess says. She turns her back to him, begins undressing, which she should probably be doing in the bathroom, but screw it, this is her bedroom. She unbuttons her shirt slowly, feeling his eyes on her.
Does some part of him still want her? If she turned now, would he come to her? She unzips her trousers and lets them fall to her ankles, then steps out of them and moves to the dresser in only panties and a bra. She’s pulling out an old pair of paint-stained jeans when she feels Henry’s hand on her lower back. Tess freezes, waits for the hand to move, for his other hand to join it.
Please, she thinks. She lets herself imagine how easy it would be to turn around; how that one small gesture could lead to an end to their separation. And things wouldn’t be resolved—she would still feel second best, resentful that she wasn’t with someone who would love her with his whole self—but at least it would put an end to the incessant loneliness.
And just when she’s convinced herself that this is what she truly wants; just when she’s sure she can’t stand the heat of his hand on her skin any longer; just when she’s about to turn and wrap him in her arms, she feels his fingers slip away. Listens to his footsteps cross the room, in full retreat.
Keeping her back to him, she slips on the jeans she’s been holding in a tight knot in her hands. Finds a T-shirt.
“I’m going out to my studio,” she announces, turning to face him. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, not meeting her eyes with his own. Ashamed.
“Don’t you want dinner? I made shish kebabs.”
“Not hungry,” Tess says, walking past him, out into the safety of the hall. She pokes her head in on Emma, still glued to the TV, which has somehow ended up back on the shoot-em-up movie where every other word is fuck.
“Change the channel,” she orders. Emma gives a dramatic moan, reaches for the remote, and flips back to the octopus cartoon.
“Bed in an hour, Em,” Tess says. “I’ll be back to tuck you in.”
“Mo-om!” Emma says, rolling her eyes. “I can tuck myself in.”
“But if I do it, then I know you’re actually in bed and not watching some grisly movie where they seem to use every possible expletive for fornication.”
“Forni-what?” Her brow is crinkled, her pale eyebrows raised.
“Never mind. Bed in an hour. And cartoons until then. Sitcoms. The Home Shopping Network.”
Emma sinks down into the couch with a groan.
Tess stands, studies her for a few seconds. Nine years old and already so much her own person.
“Hey,” Tess says, “I love you.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Emma says, not taking her eyes off the TV.
Out in the front hall, Tess stops at the painting of Francis, looks straight into his eye, which, tonight, looks troubled and stormy. It looks, she thinks, like Suz’s eye.
“Coincidence,” she mumbles, turning her back on the moose and feeling that electric buzz again, all of her tiny hairs raised.
Chapter 12
“DID YOU GIVE THIS to her?”
Tess is holding a box of frogs. Rotten, bloated frogs.
“Henry?”
He tries to speak, but can only manage a soft, disgusted moan.
His eyes flutter open. He’s fallen asleep in her bed. The bed that was once theirs and now feels as strange to him as waking up in a hotel. The digital clock on the bedside table says it’s a little after nine.
He’d stayed in her room, trying to call the mysterious number left in his mailbox, but there’d been no answer. Somehow, he’d drifted off.
Tess is standing over him and he moves to sit up, but is halted by the stabbing ice-pick pain in his left eye. She’s waving a photo arou
nd. A Polaroid. He squints up at it. It’s one Spencer took of all four Compassionate Dismantlers.
“Give it to who?” he asks.
“Emma, Henry. Did you give the photo to Emma?”
“No,” he tells his wife. “Of course not.”
“It was under her pillow. I was turning back the covers and I found it hidden there.”
Henry shakes his head, mystified. “Under her pillow?”
“Do you know where it came from? Is it yours?”
“The barn,” he explains, his voice sounding small. “I grabbed some photos that day we went back to the cabin, the day Emma was born. They’re in the barn.”
He rises, shuffles down the carpeted hallway, and looks in on his daughter, who is in her bed with the covers pulled over her head.
“Have you been out to the barn, Emma?” he asks. She doesn’t answer. She’s playing possum.
Henry turns, jogs down the stairs, out the front door, and across the yard, Tess following. He pulls open the sliding door of the barn, steps inside, and throws on the lights. They point at the canoe, light it up, make it glow, all holy, a tiny ark. The pain in his eye is pulsing like a living, breathing thing. He covers it with his palm, and steps forward.
Henry goes to the old metal toolbox, jerks open the lid. He pulls out the top tray full of screwdrivers and wrenches. The stack of photos is there, but they’ve been moved. And the photo of the four of them is missing.
“They’ve been moved. Someone’s been through them,” he calls to Tess.
Suz’s journal is still there. The journal he hasn’t been able to bring himself to ever open. Not once. Under it, he feels the small Magic 8 Ball key chain with a single key, wondering if Tess would even recognize it now, or understand its significance. It was the one thing he took with him the night Suz died, and it had been hidden in the toolbox ever since. Without thinking about what he’s doing, he palms the key chain, balls it up tight in his fist, then slips his hand into the pocket of his pants.
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