“It’s okay,” Winnie says. “I taped some plastic sheeting over it. I’ll pick up a new piece of glass Monday when the hardware store opens. It’s an easy fix, really. How’s your hand?”
Emma flexes her fist inside the wrap of gauze. “Okay.”
“You really don’t remember doing it?” Winnie asks.
“No.”
The last thing Emma remembers is seeing the reflection of Francis in the window. Then everything went black.
Mel thinks maybe she got possessed. Emma laughed at this. Mel said, “Seriously, maybe it was Danner or something. Maybe Danner’s the devil.”
Emma shakes her head at the memory. Right. Danner’s the devil.
Still, it scares her. Not remembering. What if the kids at school are right and she really is a mental case? Danner could be just another symptom; maybe she has multiple personalities, like Bernice at D.J.’s General Store.
Everything you have is mine.
Maybe what that means is: I am you, and you are me.
She hears the line of a song in her head: And we are all together. Lyrics from some CD her dad listens to. A song about being a walrus that makes no sense at all.
“Dissociative episode,” Mel said earlier when they were riding home in the backseat of the Blazer. “A sure sign of possession.”
“Right,” Emma said, thinking that maybe it’s time for her to take a little break from Mel, who has been getting on her nerves big time these last few days.
Emma presses the phone against her ear. “You still there?” she asks.
“Yeah,” says Winnie. “You know, there’s this ancient Chinese proverb that says that once you save a person’s life, you’re responsible for it.”
Emma lets this sink in and smiles. “So what? Does that mean you’re always going to be looking out for me?”
It seems backward to Emma. Like she’s the one who owes Winnie something, not the other way around.
“It means I’ll try. It means I’m here for you. If you ever want to talk.”
Emma twirls the phone cord with her finger. Maybe Winnie thinks she’s crazy now. Troubled. That she’s a girl who needs to talk. At least she doesn’t think Emma’s possessed by the devil. Not yet anyway.
“My mom doesn’t want me coming out to the cabin anymore.”
There’s silence. She can hear Winnie breathe. “Did she say why?” Winnie asks.
“She says she thinks it’s dangerous.”
“Maybe she’ll change her mind,” Winnie says.
Right. If there is one thing Emma knows about her mother it’s that once she’s made a decision, it’s pretty much set in stone.
“Was my mom always so stubborn? Back when you knew her, I mean?”
Winnie chuckles. “She was always strong willed,” she says. “And she and your dad, they were both such terrific artists.”
Emma thinks of the photo she found: her dad’s arm around her mom, both of them young and happy. A Long Time Ago.
“And they loved each other, right?” Emma asks, her voice shaking a little.
“Of course,” Winnie says.
“I think they could again,” Emma tells her. “I mean, I think they still do, they just need to remember. To be reminded.”
“Emma,” Winnie says, “sometimes when two people split up, it’s for the best. I’m not saying that’s the case with your parents, I’m just saying it’s not going to do any good to make yourself crazy hoping for something that might not ever happen. Do you understand what I’m getting at?”
“Sure,” Emma says, her voice thick. She bites her lip.
“One thing I’m sure of,” Winnie says. “They love you very much. Nothing’s going to change that.”
Emma wonders how much they’ll love her if she turns out to be a total mental case. The fights they might have, arguing about who’s to blame. She’s supposed to be bringing them together, not giving them new stuff to argue over.
“You know,” Emma says, “working on Francis today got me thinking. Maybe I should try to make my own sculpture.”
“I think that’s a fantastic idea, Emma!”
It is a good idea, an idea she didn’t even realize she had until the words were out of her mouth, which, she guesses, is just what it means to be artistically inspired.
She’ll follow in her parents’ footsteps. Maybe if she works on a sculpture, it will help draw her parents back together. It will give them all something to talk about. A family of artists. The only problem is, Emma’s never felt very artistic. She’s more the math and science type. Art has always seemed so…so messy.
“But I don’t know the first thing about it. I mean, how do I even start? I don’t have clay or tools or anything.”
“You use what you have,” Winnie tells her. “People make sculptures from cloth, old telephones and garbage. Look around the house with an artist’s eye.”
Emma likes this: the idea that she has an artist’s eye. Something that ties her to her parents.
“No one sees the world like you do, Emma. Creating art is about sharing your own personal vision with the world. Taking something no one else can see and bringing it to life.”
After getting a few more pointers from Winnie, Emma hangs up and walks through the house gathering things: plastic trash bags, stray socks, rubber bands, an old dress of her mother’s from the box of things to go to Goodwill.
She hears her mom attacking the Everlast bag in the basement. The thud of leather gloves on the bag, the rattle of chains making angry ghost sounds. The floor shakes below her feet.
“I live in a haunted house,” she says to no one.
On the kitchen table, Emma spots the digital camera her dad gave her for her birthday. A little voice tells her, You’ll need that too.
Mixed media, it’s called. Bringing all these elements together into a single work of art. She’s spent her whole life hearing about art from her parents. Passively absorbing the meaning of the color wheel, phrases like “mixed media.” Now it’s time to put all that sponged-up information to use. She’ll create something that will make them proud.
Emma goes into her room and lays the stuff out on her bed, and, at first, it seems like this random assortment of junk.
“Great going, super freak,” she says to herself, understanding the truth: there’s no way she could ever be an artist. She can’t believe she even thought she could pull this off. A girl who is good at numbers and being fastidious, but not much else. She’s about to stuff everything into the back of her closet when she hears a voice say, Not so fast.
She rearranges the things on her bed, walks around it counting by nines, moving objects from here to there, squinting so that she can barely see, like an artist’s eye is a blind eye. Then, as if by magic, the sculpture starts to take shape.
And she feels it, she truly feels it: this connection to her parents, to Winnie, to all the artists who have come before her. It’s as if she’s plugged into this art-powered party line, and now she’s being guided, inspired by some force so much bigger than herself. A force that whispers in her ear, says, Get the scissors. Get a bucket of sand. Don’t be afraid. I’ll show you what to do.
All her life she’s heard that art is done in a trance, and when she looks up at the clock two hours later, she finally gets what it means. The sculpture is laid out on the bed, nearly complete, and here she is, covered in sand and glue, pinpricks in her fingers from numerous mishaps with a sewing needle. Emma the artist.
“Dissociative episode,” she says out loud, trembling a little as she wipes the sand from her clothes, eyeing her creation with wonder, her skin prickly, a strange new hum in her ears.
Chapter 50
TESS 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 n
eed 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.
SHE 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.
Chapter 51
July 14—Cabin by the lake
Spencer found his way back from the wilds of Maine. He hasn’t shown his face here at the cabin but he’s been around for the past week.
He’s been sending letters to Winnie at her P.O. box in town. Letters and chocolates. Good, expensive chocolates, not the waxy kind in heart-shaped boxes from the drugstore. The letters are angry and arrogant, but also pleading and pathetic. He’s even asked her to marry him, of all delusional things!
Winnie laughed when she read this out loud to all of us, but it was this weird, strangled-sounding laughter.
Winnie disappeared one afternoon last week. She said she was out walking. Only later, I saw that Spencer’s wallet was gone. So I asked Winnie, “Did you see anyone on this walk of yours?” She said no, she didn’t.
Spencer still has this asinine radio show on WSXT and every week, he dedicates a song to her, “This is for Val,” he says. And it’s always some sappy-ass love song. We all listen in the cabin and groan. This week, he played Elvis Costello’s “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and I thought we would die laughing.
When he’s not playing songs, he’s reading poetry or rambling about nature. Sometimes he treats his listeners to some of his spirit chimes. Jesus God.
This week’s topic was moose. He’d read an article about them in some wildlife magazine and decided to dedicate a show to their “magnificent beauty and strength.” Talk about making a person want to puke! Spencer read most of the article on the air, recited all these totally dull moose facts, and asked people to call in with their moose stories and that’s when I got my idea. True inspiration really is like a bolt of fucking lightning sometimes!
I had Henry go down to the pay phone at the general store and call in. He can do this real thick Vermont accent, sounds just like his grandpa. So Henry tells this story about driving out on Route 2 real late a few weeks back and damned if he doesn’t almost run smack into this young bull moose. He gets out of the car to take a look—this old duffer, he’s lived in Vermont his whole life and has never seen one up close before. And the fucking thing talks. Henry gets to this part in the story and Spencer starts laughing, like the old guy’s telling a joke, and Henry’s like, “No, sir. You listen to me. I’m deadly serious. That moose opened its jaws and spoke.”
“Well, what did the moose say?” asked DJ Spencer, live, on the air. We were all listening in the cabin, laughing our asses off.
“It asked me a riddle.”
“What was the riddle?” Spencer wanted to know.
“You’re in a cement room with no doors or windows. All you have is a table and a mirror. How do you get out?”
Spencer was silent. Dead air. “What’s the answer?” he asked.
“Can’t tell you that,” said Henry-the-old-timer. “What if one day you meet the moose? Wouldn’t he be disappointed if you already knew the answer to his riddle?” Then Henry hung up. And I started work on phase two of What to Do About Spencer.
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.
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