“I love her,” Val had told him and he’d laughed, said only, “You’ve gotta be kidding.” He didn’t move from the door. Over the next eight hours, he tried reasoning with her, begging her, and even threatened to end his own life if she left him.
“I’m sorry,” she told him over and over. She wept, but would not change her mind.
At five in the morning, Spencer stepped aside and let her pass through the door.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered one final time.
He said nothing, and stared at the floor.
VAL HAD DECIDED TO let Suz cut her hair not just at Suz’s insistence, but because she knew how much it would piss Spencer off—he always said her hair was her best feature and made up for her skinny ass and flat chest.
Suz went to work around her ears, then moved to the back of the head. Val held her breath and closed her eyes. It will grow back, she told herself. Her chest clenched and her breathing was fast and shallow. The scissors were moving quickly, singing almost. Val opened her eyes to see her hair fall in great clumps to the floor.
“Who’s behind all this raggedy-ass hair?” Suz asked, her voice lilting, teasing.
Who indeed? If Suz saw, would she stay? She’d already seen the scars. She knew about the cutting and hadn’t been scared away. She’d listened to Val’s poems, even the ones Val had never shown another living soul. Maybe, just maybe, Val had finally found another human being who might understand her, who might love her for who she truly was, not what she pretended so hard to be.
Val bit her tongue, not sure if Suz was waiting for an answer. Sometimes, with Suz, you couldn’t tell what was an actual question and what was just a springboard for one of her monologues. And you didn’t want to make the mistake of jumping in and interrupting her before she was ready.
“And while we’re at it, babycakes—what’s up with the hippie clothes?” Suz stopped cutting, plucked at Val’s baggy peasant blouse. The bells on the neckstrings jingled. “You wear them because that’s what half the people at Sexton wear, right? You want to fit in, to blend, so no one will notice you. Just another long-haired girl in Birkenstocks, right?” Val didn’t respond.
“Am I right?” Suz repeated.
Val shrugged.
“Is that who you are, Val? Are you just a mousy little hippie girl? Thinking her limp organic broccoli thoughts?”
Val held her breath.
“Or are you something more?”
Val looked down at the clumps of hair scattered across the gray linoleum floor.
Suz went back to work with the scissors, said, “It’s time to show the world who you really are.”
“So who am I?” Val asked, her voice a papery whisper. Wind through cornstalks.
Suz stopped cutting, leaned down and put her mouth right against Val’s ear, and asked, “Who do you want to be?” Val shivered as Suz ran her tongue lightly over the folds of her ear, gave the lobe a startling nibble. “You can be whoever, whatever you want, babycakes. Be the lion or the mouse. You choose. But I’ve gotta say, the lion is a lot more sexy.”
When she was finished, Suz guided Val over to the mirror, her hands covering her eyes.
“Behold the new you,” she said, taking her hands away.
Val gasped. She hardly recognized herself. “I look like a boy,” she said.
“You look hot,” Suz said, kissing her on the back of her newly exposed neck.
“I’ve got something for you,” Suz said and went over to the bed. She got down on her knees, reaching for something underneath. Val stood in front of the mirror studying the shape of her closely cropped head, the squareness of her jaw, her thick eyebrows. She was wearing an old black T-shirt Suz had told her to put on for the haircut and baggy jeans. She looked…tougher. She stood up straight and scowled at herself, practiced her evil eye.
“Surprise!” Suz was holding a gun. A deer rifle.
“What’s that for?” Val asked, taking a step back.
“It’s a gift. I picked it up at that flea market last weekend. I thought it would come in handy for our missions. I even got bullets. After dinner we’ll go down to the lower field, and you can try it out.”
“I don’t think I can,” Val said.
“Don’t give me this pacifist bullshit,” Suz snarled, shoving the rifle at Val, who reached out and took it with trembling hands. It felt solid—the wood smooth and dark, the metal barrel somewhat sticky and covered in greasy fingerprints. Val imagined the men who might have held the rifle: men in red wool hunting jackets, hats with earflaps; men whose breath reeked of stale beer and cigarettes; men with huge leather boots who took up space just because they could. Men who knew what it was like to kill, who had a taste for it, a burning need.
Suz ran her fingers though Val’s freshly shorn hair and said, “I’m not asking you to go on any killing sprees or anything. The rifle’s just a prop, Val. The gun, the haircut, they’re about letting go. Deconstructing yourself. Becoming someone else. Someone with more power who no one would ever dream of putting in a box. I say enjoy the fucking ride. See what it’s like on the other side for once.”
Val took in a breath, raised the rifle up with the butt end against her shoulder and used the sight to look down the barrel. Just a prop. Her own small fingers mingled with the greasy fingerprints, covering them, as she aimed right at her reflection in the mirror, and didn’t recognize the figure she saw there. Someone stronger, braver, scowled back at her. Someone who refused to back down or take any shit. Suddenly, this whole thing felt like one of their missions, only this time, it was Val herself who had been dismantled. And peeking over her shoulder with an I-told-you-so grin, was Suz. She wrapped her arms around Val from behind, her hands working their way under Val’s T-shirt, up to her breasts.
“Who do you want to be?” Suz asked, the words hot against Val’s neck.
Val felt her body turn to liquid beneath Suz’s hands, and the unspoken answer echoed through her head, driving everything else away:
Whoever you want me to be.
Chapter 35
TESS CAN STILL TASTE the sweet floral smoke of Claire Novak’s cigarette on her tongue. Violets, but not violets. Someone else’s wedding cake. She longs for another cigarette as she locks the door to her studio.
She finds herself unsettled by the idea of Winnie being back in town. Winnie, at least the Winnie of ten years ago, was not to be trusted.
“HAS SHE FUCKED HIM yet?” Winnie asked.
The two of them were on the beach at the lake, moon bathing. Henry and Suz were having one of their races out to the rocks at the other side.
“What?”
It wasn’t just the words that caught Tess off guard, but Winnie’s tone. It seemed, to Tess, like these past few weeks since school ended, Winnie had been trying out different voices—varying her tone and rhythm, even experimenting with slight accents, struggling to find something that would fit with her new name and the haircut Suz had given her. The voice that seemed to have the most staying power, the one she’d just used, was dark and gravelly, bubbling with quiet rage.
“Suz and Henry. Do you think they’ve fucked yet?”
Tess flushed and immediately felt stupid. “Henry’s with me. And Suz is with you.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Tess,” Winnie said. “If they haven’t done it yet, it’s just a matter of time, right? He thinks he’s in love with her. You’ve seen the way he looks at her. The way she teases him.”
“And what about Suz?” Tess asked. “Is she in love with him?”
Winnie laughed, rolled over onto her side to look at Tess. Her short hair made her eyes seem huge. Henry said the new haircut gave her a sexy androgynous look. Tess thought it made her look sick in some way, like someone with cancer, or a mental patient.
“Suz is in love with being loved,” Winnie said. She scooped up a handful of sand, watched it run through her fingers.
Tess sat up, tried to spot Henry and Suz out on the water. They were just two pale dots in black wa
ter at the other side of the lake.
Winnie lit a cigarette, held it out to Tess who took a drag. The filter was squished from Winnie clamping it tightly between her teeth.
“You love Henry, right?” Winnie asked.
Tess exhaled smoke, nodded.
“Like I love Suz,” Winnie said, laying her head back down in the sand.
They were silent a minute. Tess watched Winnie smoking on her back, her eyes fixed on the stars.
“I don’t think it’s too late,” Winnie said. “You could hold on to him. You could find a way.”
“I don’t know…” Tess’s voice trailed off. The two white specks out on the lake were gone. Underwater? Or had they made it to the rocks already?
“Henry’s a good guy. One of the few. If you got into trouble, like say you got, you know, knocked-up or something, he’d do the right thing. He’d stand by you.”
Tess turned back to Winnie. “Are you suggesting I get pregnant on purpose to get him to stay with me? To choose me over her?”
Winnie sat up, shrugged her shoulders.
“That’s a little fucking archaic, isn’t it? Not to mention pathetic. If Henry wants to be with me, I want it to be his choice. I’m not using a baby to tip the scales.”
Winnie nodded, stubbed out her cigarette, stood up and headed for the path back to the cabin. “It was just a suggestion,” she called back. “A way to fix both our problems. To make sure everyone ends up where they’re meant to be.”
LATER THAT SUMMER, WHEN Tess first began to think she might be pregnant, she studied the condoms Henry kept in the milk crate next to their futon in the loft. Did condoms have an expiration date? She picked a foil package up by the corner and held it to the window to check. Light shone through a dozen tiny holes. Pinpricks.
One by one, she checked the rest of the box. They were all the same.
She gathered them up, threw them into the trash. Later, she borrowed Henry’s van and drove to the drugstore for an identical box, which she replaced without him ever knowing, and a home pregnancy test, which she used in the ladies’ room at the Green Mountain Diner, confirming what she already knew.
TESS SHAKES THE MEMORY from her head, looks over the work scattered around her studio. She sighs, realizes Claire is right. All these paintings are empty. Meaningless. Technically accomplished, but so what? A flower is a flower is a flower.
“Knows how to stretch her limits, my ass,” she mumbles, sitting herself at the drafting table and reaching for a new sketchbook. She picks up a pencil, places the tip of it on the paper, and waits.
White space. Blank canvas. Intimidating, but thrilling beyond belief. Anything can happen.
When was the last time her art mattered?
When was a flower not just a flower?
“YOU NEVER MENTIONED SETTING anything on fire,” Tess said as she watched Suz lug a gas can from the back of the van. They were at the construction site for the new Green Hills Savings Bank. Earlier that afternoon, Tess had discovered the holes in the condoms and learned she was pregnant. She hadn’t said a word about it to Henry or confronted Winnie. When she returned from town with the van, she was swept up in a flurry of activity getting ready for the evening’s Dismantling mission. Suz’s plan had been to tear down whatever they could at the construction site and maybe take some lumber to use for art projects. But now, it seemed plans had changed.
Tearing things down and taking a few pieces of plywood was one thing, arson was another. If they were caught, they’d be arrested. Tess wondered if you could have a baby in jail.
Suz began dumping gas on the neatly bundled piles of framing lumber and plywood.
“Won’t people from the highway be able to see the flames?” Henry asked. He shifted from one foot to the other, nervously watching the headlights going by on the hill off to their left.
“That’s the point,” Suz said, emptying the last of the gas. “Fire is cathartic. Cleansing. It burns away anything transient and imperfect. I think that people get that—fire speaks to them on this kind of primitive level. Fire is life. And death. And rebirth.”
Tess touched her belly, trying to imagine the baby inside. Winnie watched, grinning, the rifle cradled in her arms. If Tess had any doubts about how the holes got put in the condoms, they disappeared when Winnie smiled at her knowingly, conspiratorially.
Suz took out a book of matches, lit one, and held it to her face, smiling. “Fire is a wake-up call,” she said, dropping the match. The gas caught with a whooshing sound and the flames raced over the wood. Tess felt as if all the air around them was being sucked into it and replaced with thick smoke. Suz lit the second pile, then the third. She grabbed the empty gas can and danced around the flames, screaming, “Dismantlement equals freedom!” She pulled Winnie to her, kissed her so ferociously that Tess was sure when they pulled apart, Winnie would be bleeding.
“Banks are all just part of the trap,” Suz said as they made their getaway in Henry’s van. “Part of the machine. They keep the rich rich and the poor poor. Think what a different place the world would be if we could just go back to using barter. If I could walk into the market with one of my paintings and trade it for a week’s worth of groceries.”
Tess believed that barter might be better, but knew it would never happen. Not on the large scale Suz dreamed of. And the truth was, Tess thought as she watched all that lumber go up in flames in the rearview mirror, she kind of hated the waste. She would rather steal than destroy—take the wood from the bank construction and use it for a sculpture, or give it to some homeless guy to build a shack under a bridge. But that’s not what it was about for Suz. For her, it was about tearing it down, burning it up. That’s what got her off—made her eyes light up, all wild and surprised, like she’d just won the fucking lottery.
WITHOUT EVEN REALIZING IT, Tess has begun to draw, her hand moving freely across the paper, seeming to have a memory and will of its own. And it’s a flower she sketches; not a common sweet pea, but some hothouse beauty growing from a vine with tendrils like arms and legs reaching, grasping, trying to pop through the two-dimensional trap of paper and actually touch her. Wrap its sticky limbs around her, threatening to never let her go.
Tess draws in a trance, remembers that this is what it’s supposed to be like: the goal is to lose yourself in the work, to give yourself over entirely.
As she draws, she feels everything else slipping away: Henry’s drinking, Emma’s near drowning, Winnie’s arrival in town, even Claire Novak vanishes from her mind.
It’s not until she’s finished, ready to flip the page and start another, that she sees that there, in the dark folds of petals curled like flames at the flower’s center, is a face. Hard eyes, a mischievous grin showing crooked teeth.
Suz.
The only true creative force is chaos, babycakes. Don’t you forget it.
Chapter 36
IT’S NEARLY MIDNIGHT. THE main house is dark and Henry’s sure Tess is asleep. He makes his way through the garden, around the fish pond and to the grotto, navigating by moonlight. Once there, he pockets the little photo of Suz in its plastic case, then hurries back to his barn.
Henry tucks the photo from the grotto into a bag of rags on a shelf in his workshop, then settles himself into the canoe with a fresh bottle of wine. He flips through Suz’s journal, knowing full well that this is evidence too, but at least he has the good sense to keep it hidden.
July 4—Cabin by the lake
Happy birthday, America, you cocksucking, bloodthirsty wasteland of corporate greed and power.
Yesterday, we did something wonderful. Our best act of compassionate dismantling yet. We dismantled Spencer! Left him out cold in the middle of nowhere. Can’t say he wasn’t warned. He knew he wasn’t welcome here. I mean, Winnie dumped his ass months ago, before graduation even. But the stupid fucker was too proud to let her go. Too arrogant to think that anyone in her right mind might not want the great and powerful heir to the Styles fortune as her very own boy toy. And
what does Styles Industries make? Security systems. SECURE YOUR WORLD is their ridiculous slogan. Cameras, alarm systems with keypads and secret codes. Secure your world. Ha! Perfect! But Winnie chose to dismantle her world, which included, first and foremost, breaking up with the great Spencer. Her hooking up with me should have been the final slap in the face, the grand fuck off and farewell, but the idiot didn’t give up.
He is the worst person in the world for her. Maybe the worst person in the world, period. Did he even notice that she was slicing and dicing herself? Think it was odd? Did he give a flying fuck?
For weeks, Spencer has been hassling us—he wanted to join us, move to the cabin, be a Dismantler.
“So prove it,” I finally said. And I asked him to perform a simple act of sabotage. To show Papa’s company just how insecure their world really is. Lo and behold: he did it! Broke into Styles Industries and smashed up hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. A fire was set in the office of the CEO. It was on the news—police were investigating. When Spencer came back here yesterday, he had his knapsack with him. “A deal’s a deal,” I said. “Welcome.” Without missing a beat, he starts creeping around after Winnie, calling her Val. Then he gives her this note all secretive like. Of course Winnie showed it to me.
“Come back to me, Val,” it says. “Suz doesn’t love you. She doesn’t love anyone but herself.”
I don’t love anyone but myself? Spencer Styles is the most pretentious, egotistical, self-centered, pompous fuck I have ever met. And it was high time for someone to teach him a lesson.
“I NEED FOUR OF your Benadryl,” Suz whispered, leaning in so close that her hair tickled his face.
Tess, who was on the other side of the room with her sketchbook, gave them a warning glance.
“What for?” Henry asked.
“You’ll see,” she promised.
They could hear Winnie and Spencer outside, gathering wood for a bonfire.
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