Dismantled
Dismantled
A Novel
Jennifer McMahon
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DISMANTLED. Copyright © 2009 by Jennifer McMahon. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition May 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-188651-5
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Michael, who knows how to take things apart
Contents
Present Day
“DISMANTLEMENT EQUALS FREEDOM.”
Nine Years Ago
WHEN TESS’S WATER BROKE, she was staring into the long-forgotten…
Part One
To Understand the Nature of a Thing, it Must be Taken Apart
Chapter 1
THE MOOSE, OR RATHER, the left eye, ear, antlers, and…
Chapter 2
“LOOK, DADDY, I’M A frog!"
Chapter 3
HER RHYTHM IS OFF. Her concentration, gone. Spencer is dead.
Chapter 4
THEY’RE ON THEIR WAY home from the supermarket, Henry at…
Chapter 5
WHAT IS A GHOST? Danner says it’s not always the…
Chapter 6
TESS HAS WORKED LATE into the night to finish the…
Chapter 7
LAST SPRING, JUST DAYS after Henry moved into the barn,…
Part Two
We Oppose Technology, Hierarchy, Rules and Laws, and All Forms of Government
Chapter 8
IT’S A FORTY-MINUTE DRIVE from Henry’s office to Alden. Route…
Chapter 9
DON’T GO OUT OF sight. Stay where I can see…
Chapter 10
“YOU’RE LATE,” TESS ANNOUNCES when he walks in the door.
Chapter 11
DRIVING HOME FROM HER appointment with Julia, owner of the…
Chapter 12
“DID YOU GIVE THIS to her?”
Chapter 13
TESS’S HAND IS TREMBLING so hard she can’t get the…
Chapter 14
THEY SIT IN THE kitchen drinking the coffee Henry made…
Chapter 15
HENRY LEFT THE KITCHEN to go work on his canoe.
Chapter 16
HENRY FINDS A ROLL of black plastic, cuts off a…
Chapter 17
SHE PICKS UP THE phone after the first ring.
Chapter 18
EMMA OPENS HER EYES. Danner is standing above her, holding…
Chapter 19
DRIVING OUT TO THE lake, Henry remembers helping Suz stretch…
Chapter 20
TWO A.M. EMMA’S ASLEEP, her belly full of cocoa. Henry’s…
Chapter 21
HENRY STAGGERS DOWN THE path. Trips on tree roots. He…
Chapter 22
THIS IS HOW IT began. A series of seemingly random…
Chapter 23
SHE LOWERED THE RAZOR blade, traced the surface of her…
Chapter 24
“WHERE THE HELL HAVE you been?”
Part Three
The Universe Was Created Inchaos, and the Only True Creative Force is Chaos
Chapter 25
“DADDY!” EMMA CRIES WHEN he enters the kitchen the next…
Chapter 26
“I’M GOING OUT TO the garden,” she tells her dad.
Chapter 27
AFTER TESS LEFT THIS morning, Henry found the Swedish vodka…
Chapter 28
“DO YOU MIND IF I smoke?”
Chapter 29
DRIFTING IN AND OUT. Clouds in the sky. Clouds in…
Chapter 30
PASSION?
Chapter 31
HENRY DOES NOT NEED stitches. Winnie was able to revive…
Chapter 32
THERE WAS A FACE down there at the bottom of…
Chapter 33
“IT LOOKS WORSE THAN it is,” Henry promises.
Chapter 34
WINNIE’S NEARLY TO THE cabin when she realizes she left…
Chapter 35
TESS CAN STILL TASTE the sweet floral smoke of Claire…
Chapter 36
IT’S NEARLY MIDNIGHT. THE main house is dark and Henry’s…
Chapter 37
SHE’S COLD. SCARED. EMMA’S been watching her father’s barn all…
Chapter 38
TESS HEARS HENRY DRIVE off, and slips out of the…
Chapter 39
HENRY TAKES A STEP toward her, staggers a little. He’s…
Chapter 40
“I WAS ABOUT TO call the police,” Tess says as…
Part Four
Dismantlement is an Act of Compassion as Well as an Act of Revolution
Chapter 41
SUZ IS KISSING HER.
Chapter 42
HE’S SWIMMING OUT TO the center of the lake, his…
Chapter 43
“IT MAY BE TIME to call off Operation Reunite,” Mel…
Chapter 44
CLAIRE HAS LOADED HER mesh shoulder bag with sourdough bread,…
Chapter 45
“IT LOOKS LIKE THE same wig,” Henry tells her. He…
Chapter 46
“I’VE NEVER TOLD ANYONE this before,” Tess says, her face…
Chapter 47
“I DON’T BELIEVE THIS,” Tess says. “Twice in one week…
Chapter 48
SHE BOBS AND WEAVES. Practices her footwork. Side step, side…
Chapter 49
“I’M SORRY ABOUT THE window,” Emma whispers into the phone.
Chapter 50
TESS IS STANDING IN line at the supermarket, casting an…
Chapter 51
July 14—Cabin by the lake
Chapter 52
TESS WAKES UP DISORIENTED and in complete darkness. She’s naked.
Chapter 53
HENRY FREEZES IN THE doorway of Emma’s room. Emma and…
Chapter 54
“I’M NOT SURE THEY liked you,” Emma whispers, curling up…
Chapter 55
“WHERE THE HELL DID she get that wig?” Tess asks.
Chapter 56
July 21—Cabin by the lake
Chapter 57
TWO A.M. AND TESS lies in bed, tossing and turning,…
Chapter 58
THE CLOCK ON THE dashboard says 10:21 A.M. as Winnie…
Chapter 59
“WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR hand?” Erin LaBlanc asks. Vanessa Sanchez…
Chapter 60
“WHAT WAS SPENCER’S ROLE in the group?” Bill asks.
Chapter 61
HE’S FINGERING THE THICK shards of broken lightbulb on the…
Chapter 62
EMMA IS ON HER hands and knees, dabbing a Q-tip…
Chapter 63
TESS ISN’T SURE THE Volvo will make it up the…
Chapter 64
“WHAT?” MEL SNAPS INTO the phone.
Chapter 65
June 17—Cabin by the lake
Chapter 66
NEARLY MIDNIGHT. TESS HAS worked out, showered, watched the evening…
Chapter 67
THE HOUSE IS TOO quiet. He settles in on the…
Chapter 68
“TELL ME YOUR BIGGEST secret,” Claire says. “The one thing…
Chapter 69
HE WAKES UP GASPING, drenched in sweat, his heart thudding…
Part Five
Dismantlement = Freedom
Chapter 70
HENRY GLANCES OUT THE window toward the Blazer as he…
Chapter 71
EMMA HAS MADE A sculpture of herself this time, a…
Chapter 72
RUNNING LATE, HENRY HEADS for his workshop to grab the…
Chapter 73
WINNIE’S SITTING AT THE table in the cabin, wearing the…
Chapter 74
PARKED ON THE BEACH, Henry stares out at the water…
Chapter 75
EMMA CRAWLS OUT FROM under the tarp, lowers herself over…
Chapter 76
PUSHING OFF IS EASIER than he thought it would be.
Chapter 77
THERE WAS A LOUD rapping at the cabin door, and…
Chapter 78
WHEN TESS WAKES UP, the first thing she thinks is…
Chapter 79
“SUZ?” HE’S SQUINTING AT her, not quite believing. This isn’t…
Chapter 80
EMMA’S MOVING FAST THROUGH the water, her cadence perfect. She’s…
Chapter 81
WHEN SUZ DIVES OFF the front, it makes the canoe…
Chapter 82
“I WAS SO CLOSE to piecing everything together,” Bill Lunde…
Part Six
Look in the Mirror to See What You Saw
Chapter 83
HENRY’S ON THE FLOOR of his workshop, amid the sawdust…
Chapter 84
&nbs
p; TESS’S EYES ARE MOVING from wall to canvas as she…
Chapter 85
WINNIE ROLLS OVER. THE train is rattling along on its…
Chapter 86
IN ORDER TO TRULY understand something, you have to take…
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Jennifer McMahon
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Present Day
“DISMANTLEMENT EQUALS FREEDOM.”
Suz is there, whispering the words in his ear, each syllable hot and twisted. She’s glowing, radiant, still twenty-one and burning with the fierce need to fuck up the world.
The dead don’t age.
He finishes the knot, his hands steady, without the slightest tremble, then climbs onto the chair and throws the rope up over one of the beams in the kitchen. Old, hand-hewn beams his builder rescued from a salvage yard. They’d reminded him of Vermont. Of the cabin near the lake.
In his mind, he goes back ten years, sees Suz coming up the path, stepping into the clearing, pole in one hand, string of fish in the other: bass, sunfish, trout. They glisten like jewels, strung on the braided nylon rope she’s carefully looped through their mouths and gills.
Suz’s walk is a dance, her movements fluid, the silk tunic she wears flutters around her, making it seem as if the wind itself is carrying her, buoying her along like a kite.
She winks at him.
He loves her.
He hates her.
He doesn’t want to be here, but there’s no way he could ever leave. Once you’re in her orbit, it’s impossible to pull yourself away.
The others gather around as she lays the fish out on the table to clean them. She pulls the trout off the braided rope, lays it flat on newspaper, and slides the knife in, slitting it open along its belly from gills to vent. The fish opens its mouth, sucking at air. Suz smiles, showing crooked teeth, pushes her fingers gently inside the fish, widening the opening with her hand. The skin stretches; the movement of her fingers produces a wet, tearing sound.
“To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart,” Suz says, tugging out a string of entrails, sticky and shimmering with rainbows, like oil on a puddle.
“YOU NEVER REALLY GOT it, did you, babycakes?” he hears her whisper in his ear.
“No,” he tells her, slipping the rope around his neck, pulling the postcard from his pocket to look at one last time. “But I do now.”
He steps off the chair.
The postcard falls from his hand, drifts to the floor in slow motion, turning: moose, words, moose, words—until it lands, the carefully printed words facing up, the last thing he sees before losing consciousness:
DISMANTLEMENT = FREEDOM
THE COMPASSIONATE DISMANTLERS WERE HERE
Nine Years Ago
WHEN TESS’S WATER BROKE, she was staring into the long-forgotten aquarium, her eyes fixed on the bodies of the frogs floating like lost astronauts in oversize spacesuits, something clearly not of this world. They were pale and spongy, having frozen and thawed with the cruel cycles of winter and spring. It was, somehow, to Tess, as if they were stuck in limbo, waiting to be rescued, to rise singing from their own tiny galaxy of stagnant water; calling out in deep, vengeful bullfrog voices, How could you leave us here? How could you forget?
And they stank. God, how they stank. They reeked of cruel abandonment. Of things gone terribly wrong.
It was the first of May and Tess and Henry had hiked up to the cabin to take a look around. What they were looking for exactly, neither of them could say. And even if they could have named it, this thing that they hoped to find, they wouldn’t have dared utter it out loud.
They were a week away from Tess’s due date and the trip had been her idea. She thought they should visit the place one last time—the cabin where they had conceived their child, where so much of their lives had both begun and ended. The building, and everything in it, had been abandoned nearly eight months before—the night Suz died—just left as it was, nothing taken with them but the clothes on their backs, the summer of the Compassionate Dismantlers left entombed within the cabin walls.
The building was a hunting camp built sometime in the late sixties and the only access was up an old logging road, impassable by car most of the year. Henry and Tess opted to walk up, as the road was still soft and muddy from snowmelt and spring rains. The cabin itself sat in a clearing at the top of a steep hill—a simple single-story box twenty-four by thirty feet, with a gable roof that made room for a sleeping loft. The outside was sheathed in plywood once painted red, now warped and faded by years of snow and rain, chewed through in places by porcupines with a taste for wood, glue, and the sweat of human effort. The roof was rust-splotched tin, layered with years of pine needles and maple leaves that had formed a rich compost where baby maples sprouted and grew, stunted, with no hope of ever fully developing.
They arrived in the clearing out of breath, their shoes caked with mud, blackflies buzzing around their heads like angry halos. Several times on the way up, Henry had suggested they turn back. He was worried about the strain on Tess, who had a difficult enough time traversing flat surfaces with her large belly, much less mountain climbing. Surely it couldn’t be good for her or the baby. But Tess was determined to stick to the plan, to make it to the top.
To the right of the clearing was the path that led down to the water. The lake and the land around it was a protected watershed area and threatening TRESSPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED signs were nailed to trees every twenty-five feet or so. The lake, referred to on maps only as Number 10 Lake, was not accessible by the main road and theirs was the only cabin even close. About fifty feet up the driveway to the cabin, there was a turnoff leading to the little beach they used, but the brush and weeds made it almost impossible to recognize it as a road. In any case, you’d never make it to the water without four-wheel drive and a lot of clearance. They’d never attempted it in Henry’s van, sure they’d lose the exhaust system or put a hole in the gas tank. The entire summer they spent there, they never saw a single person anywhere near the lake.
TWO TRASH CANS LAY tipped over outside the cabin, their contents scattered in a wide swath: rusted cans, wine bottles, plastic containers torn to shreds. Henry picked up a ripped-open Hershey’s syrup can.
“Bears,” he said.
Tess nodded, gave a little shiver as she scanned the treeline at the edge of the clearing. Henry dropped the ruined can and touched his wife’s shoulder in what he hoped was a reassuring way. She wasn’t expecting it, and jumped, startled. As if his hand was a thick brown paw with razor-sharp claws.
“Sorry,” he muttered, knowing already that he’d been right all along: they shouldn’t have come.
Above the rough-hewn door (which Henry found to be unlocked, just as they’d left it at the end of August) were the words THE COMPASSIONATE DISMANTLERS WERE HERE. It had been painted in dripping black letters the week they’d moved in, mid-June of last year, when they were all sure they were going to have the most exciting, important summer of their lives. The words were a way of marking the building as theirs, the way gangs tagged their home turf with graffiti. Henry couldn’t remember who had painted them—him, Tess, Winnie, or Suz—and this surprised him; he had already forgotten a piece of their puzzle.
Circling the cabin, like alligators in a moat, were the cats. Yes, he’d forgotten the cats too; they both had. Not forgotten them exactly, but just assumed they’d gone elsewhere, found some other home. They now seemed more wild than tame—mangy, skin and bones, their fur dingy, their eyes weeping, ears torn. At first, just a few, then more gathered, until Henry and Tess were surrounded by ten or twelve feral cats, half starved, who seemed to remember that these were the people who’d once fed them. The cats mewed and screeched, their voices ragged and pleading as they circled Henry and Tess, followed them inside, hopeful, insistent. Henry kicked at them, while Tess hurried to the kitchen.
“Maybe we left some cat food. Friskies. If there’s water, I could mix up some powdered milk,” she said.
Henry bit the inside of his cheek, knowing it was hopeless to try and stop her.
The air in the cabin was stale and smelled like mice: a sour stink came from the ceiling and walls, where Henry imagined the insulation torn into nests, pockets, cities of hidden condos, dampened by the urine of generations of its residents. Behind the mouse smell was something more sinister: the damp smell of rot and decay.
“There might be a dead animal in here,” Henry called from his spot near the front door. “Maybe one of the cats got stuck.”