Disintegration

by Nicholson, Scott

  Joshua crossed the sitting room, his boots shedding dried mud. He flicked his cigarette ash into the fireplace, picked up a crystal poodle, and held it to the muted light that leaked through the drapes. He rubbed a finger across the animal's head then raised his arm as if to fling the object against the grate. Instead, he tossed his cigarette onto the brick apron of the hearth, mashed it out with his foot, and returned the poodle to its proper place in the menagerie.

  "It's a little chilly in here," Joshua said. He pulled a couple of thin books from the nearest shelf. "Hemingway. Dad's favorite writer. I think we ought to build a fire."

  Jacob sat in a Queen Anne chair, a piece of furniture not designed for comfort. If the foyer was a hallway into the past of the entire Wells family, this room was solely his mother's, stiff and formal and brutal, as severe as a prison cell. Jacob had rarely spent time here during his childhood, and he perched on the edge of the chair as if expecting his dead mother to clatter around the corner, cane-first, and shout at him not to disturb anything. He breathed shallowly, afraid even to stir the air too much.

  Joshua stooped and opened one of the volumes to the front pages. "First edition, what do you know?"

  He tossed the books onto the log irons, where they lay like clumsy giant moths with paper wings. He pulled out his lighter. "Welcome home, Jake."

  He flicked the flint wheel and stared into the dancing flame. The flame touched the brown pages and burst into brighter life, sending shadows crawling along the curtains. Joshua grinned, his eyes sparkling with the reflected fire. He echoed familiar words, written words:

  "Hope you like the housewarming present."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Donald Meekins was definitely avoiding her.

  Renee looked at her watch. She'd been waiting for twenty minutes in the little room with Jeffrey Snow, who sat at his desk and occasionally looked at her over his computer. Jeffrey was fresh out of college and had been hired by M & W Ventures after the previous office manager had been caught kneeling under Donald's desk by none other than Mrs. Meekins. Jeffrey was as far from blonde and bouncy as they came, with a weak chin and faded gray eyes, and his name wasn't Staci and he didn't sign his name with a little heart over the letter I. He had just the proper amount of stern bookishness to cow tenants who were behind on the rent and enough equanimity to divert those who clamored for repairs or a new paint job.

  "Can I knock?" she asked Jeffrey.

  "He's on an important phone call. Long distance."

  "I see. Has Jacob been by?"

  "Mr. Wells?" Jeffrey looked around the office as if expecting to see him in one of the chairs by the rubber tree. "I haven't seen him, ma'am."

  "This week?"

  "Not since the accid--" Jeffrey pulled at his tie as if it were cutting off the oxygen to his brain. "Not since March."

  "He got my message, so he must have come by at least once."

  "He still has a key."

  "I guess things are a mess around here. I know Jacob and Donald were in the middle of a big land deal west of town. The way the economy's going, you can't afford to sit on anything."

  Jeffrey tapped at the keyboard as if randomly plugging in numbers to escape her. "I wouldn't know about that, ma'am. I only keep track of the leases."

  "I like Ivy Terrace. Easy to keep clean."

  "Yes, ma'am. And Donald paid you up three months ahead. That qualifies you for a five percent discount if you renew."

  "We'll be building another house soon," she lied. "When we get things straightened out."

  Renee stood and arched her back, stiff from the long wait. She looked at the telephone on Jeffrey's desk. There were three lines in the system, each with a red indicator light. One line each for Donald and Jacob, and one line for Jeffrey. None of them were lit.

  Renee picked up her purse from the floor beside her chair. Jeffrey did a bad job of hiding his relief at her leaving. "Tell Donald I'll give him a call later," she said.

  "Certainly, Mrs. Wells."

  Renee waited for Jeffrey's attention to return to the computer screen, and then she marched past him, twisted the knob to Donald's office, and flung the door open. Donald was behind the saltwater aquarium looking at the miniature undersea world, his face distorted by water and glass. The fish moved in darting patterns of color, nervous in their narrow world.

  "Bring any bait?" Donald asked.

  "No. Just some dynamite."

  The light in the room was soft, the furnishings heavy and dark against walls of paneled walnut. Donald had built his environment to match his personality. Aside from the fish, the only bold color in the office was the plaid upholstery in the wooden case that held a clutch of dusty golf trophies. Along the rear wall was a bookshelf that was bare except for some piles of loose papers. A filing cabinet beside the desk looked as if it had been placed there for effect instead of utility. Donald came around the aquarium and approached Renee with the slow steps of a condemned man climbing the scaffold.

  Renee searched his eyes for any sign of emotion. She hadn't seen him since the funeral. She wondered if he knew about Jacob's history of mental illness or if Warren Wells had cleaned up that mess along with all the others.

  Donald smiled, his face tanned to health club perfection, the several rows of deep wrinkles on his forehead giving him the appearance of concern. His hair was shoe-polish black and he resembled an overgrown ventriloquist's dummy. "How's it going?"

  "Oh, you know." She didn't want to cry here. She wouldn't think of Mattie or Christine. Not this time. Not now. Not unless she had to.

  "Jacob loved her so much. This must be killing him."

  "You've talked to him, then?"

  "No. I've been trying to reach him. He won't return my calls. I can't reach him on the cell and he didn't give me the number of your new place."

  "You haven't seen him?" She watched his face. He was a businessman, a speculator, an adulterer. A proven liar, and good at it.

  "Of course, I expect him to take some time to recover, get through this at his own speed. But we need a plan to tide things over until then. We've got some big deals hanging in the balance."

  She couldn't reconcile her image of Donald with the man who'd nearly wrecked his own marriage through a foolish affair. He seemed as cold and passionless as his fish. Jacob said Donald was an asset to the company, though, a partner who knew which palms had to be greased to push a deal through. This metaphorical grease seemed to cling to his skin, and probably left him slick under the folds of his expensive but drab suit.

  "Jacob told me to touch base for him. I thought he'd been in a couple of times." The walls seemed to close in on Renee. She had left the office door open and thought about making an escape. But this job wouldn't be finished until the final nail was driven in the coffin.

  Donald glanced at the door and lowered his voice. "Do you trust your husband?"

  "He's my husband."

  "I don't know how much he tells you--"

  "We're partners, Donald. I make deposits for him."

  "Okay, then," Donald said, slipping into his smarmy business manner. "You know we'll lose our purchase option if we don't make the second payment on the Martin property. And we've got a couple of contractors breathing down our necks for some major past dues. I know this has been devastating, but I'd hate to see Jacob lose everything his father worked for."

  Renee stared at Donald, whose eyes were watery and narrow. "He'll come through. He's a Wells."

  "I know, 'A Wells never fails,' but--"

  He glanced at the door again, went silently past Renee and closed it. Then he faced her, wearing what she imagined was the same grave expression he used when pleading for a zoning variance before a municipal planning board. "I've been worried about him. Ever since Christine died, maybe even before that, he was taking too many chances, overreaching and gambling. The real estate market's way too soft for the moves he was making, especially in commercial development. I don't know how much he told you, but when he went into his f
unk after Christine died, the company nearly collapsed."

  All she had done, all the sacrifices she'd made, were for Jacob Wells and their future together. This wasn't the plan. She'd been bailing a leaky boat and hadn't known it. As with the Titanic, there hadn't been enough life preservers to go around.

  "It's not that bad," she said. "We were doing fine. There was plenty of money."

  "Borrowed money. He was getting big loans to buy up land and inflating the values on all the appraisals. It's fairly common practice, but it's like juggling live hand grenades. One or two you can handle, but five or six and one's bound to go off sooner or later."

  "How much does he owe?"

  "A million three."

  She looked at the aquarium. A large fish with an extravagant top fin darted toward the ceramic sunken ship, chasing away a school of blue and silver fish. The soft bubbling of the aerator and the hum of the fluorescent lights were the only sounds in the room.

  "You didn't know," Donald said.

  She fought an urge to go to the shelves and arrange the loose papers into neat stacks. Donald put a hand out as if he were going to touch her shoulder then changed his mind.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "About Mattie. About your house. Nobody deserves such bad luck."

  She wished she had a better confessor. A Catholic priest hidden away in a dark booth, or a shrink whose breath smelled of exotic beer and goat cheese. But she was going to shatter right there in front of Mr. Smooth himself, an acquaintance, someone who knew only the wrong half of the story.

  "He put too much pressure on himself," Renee said. "Jacob always wanted to make his father proud. Part of him wants to outdo Warren Wells, but in this town he never had a chance."

  She'd brought him here. She'd seen through his street-poet act at college and she'd known all about his wealth before the second date, though she pretended otherwise. The Wells family turmoil aroused little interest, and she was happy to let him enjoy his secrecy. She cared about the future, not the past. But she'd assumed the past involved silly prom dates and inattentive parents, not intensive therapy for a dissociative disorder.

  "You want to sit down?" Donald waved toward the brown sofa.

  Renee couldn't bear the thought of sitting where Donald and Staci might have wallowed in vapid passion. "What about last year? How bad was it?"

  He held his finger and thumb about an inch apart. "I was this close to looking for some more investors to save our asses. But Jacob wouldn't hear of it. Said we'd get a break, something would come through soon."

  "And it did."

  "Like I said, the insurance from the fire--hey, I'm sorry, I'm an insensitive bastard. I didn't mean it that way."

  "I'm getting over it," she said. Donald had never lost a child. He wouldn't know that you never got over it.

  "The million can get us through the short run, but he's taken too many chances. God, I can't believe he didn't tell you all this."

  "That Wells pride. He wouldn't borrow a water hose if his pants were on fire."

  "Personally, I was ready to declare bankruptcy, start over in something with a future, like maybe pharmaceutical sales. But Jake just kept telling me the market would turn and we'd be okay, we just needed to hold out until we got a break."

  "And he got a big insurance payoff just in the nick of time."

  "That's why I asked if you'd made the deposit. I figured you'd at least have the check for the house. And, knowing Jake's business habits, I'll bet he had the family insured to the eyeballs."

  "Mattie's only been dead three months." The fish turned into bright blurred streaks in her vision.

  "The Christine money?"

  None of his business. "That was my baby girl, Donald."

  "Sure, but the living have got to keep living, right? That's what Old Man Wells said and Jacob's got so much of that blood in him, I forget he's human sometimes. I figured he'd be throwing himself into his work, getting the ball rolling again. Dealing with it his way."

  "His way. What the hell do you know about 'his way'?"

  "Don't shoot the messenger, Renee. You can't bring Mattie and Christine back no matter how much you hate me. Right now you ought to be worried about bringing Jake back."

  She wanted to slap Donald, take out her anger and frustration. But Donald was right. Jacob was the real target, as elusive as any prey, his survival instinct intact. Her bait of the marriage counselor hadn't worked.

  The electronic rattle of the phone interrupted them. Jeffrey's voice came over the intercom: "Mr. Meekins, line three. It sounds like Mr. Wells. He asked for Mrs. Wells."

  How had he known she was there? Was he watching her?

  "Hello?" Donald cradled the phone between his head and shoulder and nodded to Renee. "Listen, Jake, where are you? Things are going to hell in a handbasket here--"

  He held up his hand as if warding off a tirade from the other end of the line. "Okay, here she is. But I need to talk to you after you're done with her."

  Renee took the phone from Donald and squeezed it against her ear as if by force of pressure she could bring Jacob to her. "Jake?"

  "Yeah."

  "Where are you?"

  "The place I said I'd never go."

  "Come see me."

  "I already did."

  "What's wrong?"

  Jacob's phrasing was strange, slightly slurred, his voice made thin by the compression of the phone line. Just like the phone call about the package. "Well, let me add it up," he said. "You cremated my daughter while I was drugged to hell in a hospital bed. You moved out and set up your own little nest before I had a chance to make things right. And now you're conspiring with my business partner while I'm here trying to pull everything together."

  Her rib cage muscles clamped tight around her heart. "Jake?"

  "I saw the way he looked at you. Like a wolf at a pork chop. And you--well, we know how you are."

  Donald hovered close, wiggling his finger as if he wanted to listen. Renee raised her elbow to keep him away.

  "We need to talk." Her throat was tight, as if someone had shoved a large, dry stone down her windpipe.

  "There ain't nothing left to talk about."

  "We've got to fix this. I know you're hurting over Mattie, but so am I. We need each other. That's the only way we can make it. And I know about--"

  "All you need is Donnie Boy."

  The tears broke forth, hot as blood on her cheeks. "Jake, you're talking crazy."

  She immediately regretted using that word. Dr. Rheinsfeldt had explained that dissociative conditions came in several forms, and Jacob had exhibited some of the milder symptoms. Fugue states and amnesia didn't sound so mild to Renee, but at least he hadn't lost his identity or descended into any of the other horrible conditions Rheinsfeldt had described.

  Donald retreated to the aquarium, his expression revealing his distaste for Renee's emotional outburst. If he only knew what his partner was saying about him, the tanning-bed brown of his skin might have flushed to red.

  "Listen," came the voice from the end of the line. "Don't waste your breath lying. I don't care what you do no more. But I need you to do something."

  "Please, Jake. You need help."

  "Oh, yeah. Right. A round of skull sessions. Fixed me up good the last time, didn't they?"

  "It's not just for you, honey. For us."

  "There ain't no 'us.' There's just you and me and him."

  "You're drifting like you did after Christine died."

  "Except there's one major difference... Mattie's dead, too."

  "The doctor said drinking is risky in your condition."

  "I'm sober as a fuckin' Republican judge."

  "Tell me where you are," she said. "I'll be right there."

  "I'll bet you would. Because you're probably playing Donald, too. I reckon he got a million or two laying around."

  "Jacob, seriously." She didn't know how she was still breathing. Some animal part of her brain had taken over her functioning. All she felt was the numb
weight of the phone and the grief grinding her soul into ethereal sausage. Sometime during the last blurred minute, Donald had slipped out of the room.

  Even though she could have screamed, she whispered instead. "Listen. You know you're not yourself. When Christine died--"

  "When Christine fucking died. Stop pretending."

  "It was a hard time for us, Jake. Mattie, too."

  "The problem with Mattie was she was too much like you."

  "You--" She pulled the phone away from her head, clamped it in her fist and looked for a corner in which to hurl this insanity from her life.

  But she was compelled to listen again. The line carried only shallow static for fifteen seconds.

  "You want to know the deal?" he said.

  "Yeah," she whispered. At least Donald had the decency to close the door behind him. Now she could slip to her knees on the floor, let the tears crawl down without restraint. It took all her willpower to remind herself Jacob was ill. She would have to endure, that's all.

  "Okay. Here's what I want you to do. You got the money?"

  She nodded to no one. "I've got the money."

  "Good. I want you to bring it to the cemetery."

  There was only one cemetery in their lives. Heavenly Meadows, where Christine was buried. "Why there?"

  "Family reunion, honeybunches."

  Honeybunches. Jacob had only called her that once before. Years ago, during that hot August night Mattie was conceived in violent passion. He was cracking and she wasn't sure she had enough band-aids this time around. She summoned enough air to respond. "When?"

  "Thursday morning. And no doctors or police."

  "Please, Jake--"

  "And tell Donnie Boy to go fuck himself. Unless you want to help him with that."

  "Can't you see what's happening to you?"

  "Sure, honeybunches. Like you said, I'm not myself. See you Thursday."

  Before she could warn him to stay away from the Wells farm, the soft click came that cut her off from the man she loved.