Disintegration Part 19

"s.e.x," Renee said. The s.e.x hadn't been great at first. Jacob had been tentative, restrained, as if carrying a burden of guilt. It had taken months before he really opened up and became considerate and expressive. It had started with the night he'd come home drunk and taken her forcefully, with an animal pa.s.sion that receded into such deep tenderness that she had wept during her final round of o.r.g.a.s.ms. The night that Mattie had been conceived.

"I was trying to come off as a gentleman."

"Remember that we only have one rule in this room," the doctor said. "Absolute honesty at all times."

Renee nodded at him. Jacob had never been a good liar. Despite his success at business, despite the long Wells tradition of deception, despite his hatred of his parents and twin brother, Jacob's blood had never turned cold enough to qualify him as a sociopath. She knew him better than he knew himself. She gave him a smile of support.

"Let's go back to your adolescent fugue states," Rheinsfeldt said. "What happened during them?"

"I would experience periods of forgetfulness. Most of the time they would only last a minute or two. Like I'd be in school, listening to the teacher start a math problem, then all of a sudden I'd hear the bell ring and all the kids would be getting out of their seats to change cla.s.ses. The chalkboard would be full and I'd look down at my paper and see all these notes to myself. Notes that had nothing to do with the cla.s.s work."

"Notes?"

"To my brother, mostly. We used to play a game called 'Wish Me.' Just a silly game where you wish something impossible. Except Joshua always made it scary."

"Scary?"

"In our room at night. He'd hide under my bed and be the Sock Monster. Put a sock over his hand and sneak up and pinch me. I'd say, 'Wish me away from the Sock Monster.' But he'd say, 'Wishes don't come true for rotten little boys.' And he'd twist my ears or s.n.a.t.c.h my toes or claw my face."

"No wonder you harbor anger toward him," Rheinsfeldt said, tapping the unlit cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. Renee was sure the doctor would be delighted to have the twins in the same room. Though she'd never met Joshua, Renee couldn't help loathing him after all the pain he'd caused her husband. And, of course, he might be dangerous in other ways. He was a rival.

"I covered up for him," Jacob said. "He was the black sheep, always getting in trouble, messing around with girls, disobeying Dad."

"And you were the responsible one?"

"Not always. But"--he looked at Renee, eyes unreadable--"he made me pretend to be him sometimes."

The doctor straightened. "During your dissociative disorder?"

"Nothing serious," Jacob said. "He'd skip a cla.s.s and make me cover for him. So I would be the one who was marked absent. He had a Sat.u.r.day job as a carpenter's helper, and if he had a date with a girl, I'd have to fill in. And the carpenters would get mad at me because I didn't know how to do the work. We were so identical that no one ever caught on. Except Josh is left-handed, so I had to learn to be ambidextrous."

"Did you ever pretend to be Joshua at home? Did you try to fool your parents?"

"Dad could always tell us apart. Like I said, Joshua always was his favorite, the one he finally decided would carry on the family tradition. I was the afterthought, even though I was born first. Mom seemed to ignore both of us equally. I don't think she cared enough to learn our individual mannerisms."

"After you left home, how did you feel?"

"Liberated. Like I could finally breathe for the first time in my life."

"And your fugue states?"

"I didn't have any after that. But there was one I still worry about."

"Really. Please tell us."

The room's cloying sweetness gave Renee a headache. Jacob had kept so much from her. She glanced at him, at his eyes that would always remind her of Mattie's. She studied his features more closely but saw nothing of Christine there. Christine had been hers, if only for two months.

"Joshua used to torture the guinea hens," Jacob said. "Dad kept them around so he could pretend to be the gentleman farmer, but we never collected their eggs. They mostly just ran wild around the woods. Joshua would corner them in the barn and shove things inside them--cigarette b.u.t.ts, pieces of corn, pencil erasers. He always made me watch."

"How could he force you? What sort of power did he hold over you?"

Jacob shrugged. "He was a Wells."

"Did your brother ever have counseling?"

"No, but I did. Because of the blanking out. They even ran brain scans. Dad thought it was for something else. Adjustment problems, or whatever the guidance counselor at school called it. Like he'd ever notice a difference."

"Ah," Rheinsfeldt said, with a knowing smile, confident her profession had successfully addressed Jacob's earlier problems. "So which fugue bothered you?"

"The one where I came awake in the barn. Joshua was standing there holding a b.l.o.o.d.y hatchet. There were six hens scattered around the floor of the barn. Joshua said I'd gone crazy and chopped their heads off. My hands were coated with blood. One of the hens wasn't dead yet, and it scratched its way across the dirty hay, one wing drooping to the ground. Its head lay at my feet, the eyes blinking at me as I watched the light fade out of them. And I can't understand why I'd ever do such a thing." Jacob looked at his hands as if the chicken blood was still slick on his fingers.

"Repressed memory," the doctor said. "People often block out traumatic events. It's the brain's way of protecting itself. Protecting us from ourselves, one might say."

"Anyway, once I got away from Dad and Joshua, everything was wonderful. I met Renee and she allowed me to be myself. I know it sounds corny, but once I got some distance, I began to miss Kingsboro."

"Did your father approve of Renee?"

"Once he figured out she would set me on the path to success. His His idea of success. Real estate development, civic pride, big shot dreams, and money. Lots of money." idea of success. Real estate development, civic pride, big shot dreams, and money. Lots of money."

"Yet you don't resent your wife? After all, it sounds like she had the same kind of power over you that Joshua had, and your father had, only she used it in a more constructive manner."

Renee didn't like the doctor's shrewd lick of the lips. Her power over Jacob was unreliable. Love could only work so much magic. After that, all she had was words.

And the threat of secrets.

But Jacob didn't follow the doctor down that path of reasoning. "I would be nothing without Renee. After Christine--after that first tragedy--we really pulled together. We decided to dedicate the rest of our lives to making Mattie happy. Like maybe if we loved her twice as much, somehow Christine's short life wouldn't have been completely wasted."

Renee pulled a tissue from the box on the table. She was glad it was unscented, though some of the room's smell had settled into the fibers. She wiped her eyes and nose, determined not to break down. This was for Jake. She didn't need to add drama.

"And after Mattie died?" the doctor said, visibly taking measure of the dampness in Jacob's eyes. "After our session?"

"I lost it," Jacob said. "The drinking, avoiding Renee, shirking my business responsibilities. Pretty much everything I worked for and believed in was gone."

"And you were angry?"

"d.a.m.ned right."

"And you needed someone to blame?"

"Sure."

"He blamed me," Renee said. "And it was partly my fault. If I had gone to Mattie's room with him, maybe together we could have saved her."

"No," Jacob said. "We have to move past that. It was just an awful, terrible accident. I'm sorry."

She wanted to trust him, wanted to believe he was back to his regular self. The Jacob he'd promised to be, the one who would remake Kingsboro in his image. But she had to know where his loyalty really lay, and who had the most power over him.

"Joshua's back in town," she said to Rheinsfeldt. "And I'm afraid Jacob's fugue states are coming back, too."

Rheinsfeldt's mouth opened in either surprise or pleasure. She stood on her thick legs and crossed to the telephone, pressed a b.u.t.ton and spoke toward it. "Judy, cancel my next appointment. Thank you."

Then the doctor returned to the couch, plucked the unlit cigarette, and puffed on it as if frustrated by the lack of smoke. She faced Renee. "Tell us all about it."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Jacob chose the Dodge Ram pickup truck over the Mercedes. The truck projected a blue-collar, hands-on att.i.tude. He'd tried to talk Renee into getting a new car, but she said they should be frugal for a while. Otherwise, people might talk.

He'd had some money left over even after replacing what he'd embezzled from the M & W accounts. He'd had to concoct a few receipts by creating dummy subcontracting firms, landscapers and plumbers and excavators, the same companies he'd used to drain off most of Donald Meekins' money in the first place. And then there was the payoff to Joshua...

But now he was out of the red and ready to unleash the bulldozers on a sleepy Kingsboro.

It was September, a prime month for groundbreaking in the mountains. He leaned against his truck, which had a fine sprinkling of red dust on its black hood. This side of the hill overlooking the old part of town would yield maybe a dozen houses, and the view would add tens of thousands of dollars to the asking prices. One of the homes was already under construction, log cabin kits with lots of gla.s.s to catch the southern exposure. The subdivision road was cut and graveled, and chain saws ripped the air as workers cleared the adjoining lots. The well hadn't been drilled yet, so no water lines were connected. Two fifty-five gallon drums of water stood by the housing site for use by the block masons. The work crew was Mexican, dark-faced and solemn, shouting to one another over the noise of their machines. Jacob appreciated the Wells tradition he'd carried on, employing immigrant workers who were there on temporary visas. He didn't care if their papers were in order. They worked under the table, for cash, with none of the onerous paperwork.

He looked over the sprawling valley below. Kingsboro's western end consisted of flat and low buildings. The hospital rose above the urban skyline to the east, along with the Holiday Inn that Jacob thought of as his own creation. A new strip mall was being built along the main thoroughfare, the work of some outfit from Texas. Jacob wasn't threatened by it, though. Four thousand square feet of floor s.p.a.ce, four storefronts, nothing major. Probably end up as a craft shop, a Christian bookstore, a laundromat, and an investment agency. Besides, they were building out, not up, and Jacob knew his real mark would be made by adjusting the skyline. Right now, the First Baptist Church was the highest structure in Kingsboro, eighty feet if you counted the steeple. Warren Wells had won the contract by becoming a member of the congregation the instant he'd heard the church was collecting t.i.thes for a building fund.

"What do you think, Jacob?" Donald asked. Donald rarely visited the field sites, preferring the controlled environment of his office. He'd been pleased to have his partner back, because they both knew that Donald would never survive if he had to deal with real people, those who had to work with their hands and lived from paycheck to paycheck. He enjoyed the suit crowd, the financiers and bankers and attorneys. But lately he'd taken a much greater interest in the company's enterprises on the ground level.

"We should get this subdivision wrapped up by October," Jacob said.

"I've already got some people lined up to buy."

"Good, because we can use that capital to get some other things rolling. I feel a hot streak coming on."

"Hope it lasts the winter, but I'm ready to get back to the air-conditioned office." Donald wiped at his brow. The sun was glaring, though the seasonal humidity had yet to settle in the Southern Appalachians. Donald's jacket and tie were out of place on the scarred stretch of earth.

"There," Jacob said, pointing to a mixed stand of evergreens and hardwoods across the valley. A two-lane ribbon of asphalt wound up the slope and few roofs were visible through the canopy, but most of the mountain was undeveloped.

Donald put his hand to his forehead to shade his eyes. "Yeah? What about it?"

"Another subdivision. And in a couple of years, Kingsboro will be ready for a business park."

"I don't know, Jake. We've done pretty well with this safe residential stuff. We tend to lose our a.s.ses when we gamble on commercial projects."

Jacob's lips tightened. The Comfort Suites deal had lost a quarter million due to rain. The bad weather had delayed the pouring of the foundation and slab, and that set all the other contractors back. Some of those who had committed went on to other jobs and Jacob had to use all his muscle to get them lined up again. Meanwhile, the interest on the borrowed money had compounded and Donald had to get rid of a few rental properties to cover the difference. But Donald didn't seem to appreciate the accomplishment of a shiny new lodging establishment, of what it meant to the community and other businesses. All Donald could see was the bottom line.

"We'll be okay," Jacob said. He reached out and swatted Donald on the shoulder. The collective sounds of hammers, drills and chain saws blended into a symphony of progress. It was the music of money, yes, but it was also the song of a better town.

"I don't know. Jeffrey's been looking over the receipts and believes he's spotted some holes. Probably some math mistakes, but it seems like enough that we might want to have our annual audit a little early this year."

"How early?"

"November, maybe. I'm sure it's nothing, but mistakes can eat away our a.s.set base if we don't catch them fast. And if we've overpaid some people, we need to recoup before the money's all spent."

"Well, I wouldn't put too much faith in Jeffrey. He's a receptionist, not an accountant."

"He's good on the phone," Donald said. "And he annoys the tenants if they call up and make maintenance requests."

"He's too expensive, though. And I think he's bad for business."

"What do you mean?"

"What you said. Sure, he rubs tenants the wrong way, and that's fine when it's just apartments, but if we move into office and professional rentals--"

"Wait a second, Jake. Don't be rushing into anything. I know you've got a hole in your life, but some wild plans aren't going to fill it."

"I think we should get rid of Jeffrey and hire Renee. We'd save on insurance because she's already covered under my policy. She'd work for a lower salary, too." Jacob looked past Donald to a man who was installing and squaring a door on one of the houses. "She needs something to keep her busy. I don't want her dwelling on the past."

Donald straightened his tie and grimaced. After a moment, he said, "Well, as long as my wife understands this was your idea and not mine. Any female in the office can spell trouble for me."

"Only if you can't keep it in your pants, Donald."

"Jake, I swear I've never even looked at your wife--"

Jacob grinned. "Just kidding. d.a.m.n, you're really jumpy."

"Yeah. This accounting thing scares me, I guess. I'm at the age where I want to play it safe."

"Play it safe when you're dead." Jacob spread his arms toward Kingsboro. "We've got the whole world to conquer."

Donald pursed his lips then nodded. "Okay. We'll give Jeffrey two weeks' notice and two weeks' severance pay."

"Renee will be good for business. She has an eye for detail."

"Fine." Donald waved his hand. "I'll go tell Jeffrey the news. I'll tell him we had too many tenants complaining about him and we both need to move in a new direction. The usual."

Donald climbed into his Lexus and eased down the gravel road toward Kingsboro. Jacob went to his truck to get his bagged lunch out of the cab. Renee had been feeding him lots of carrots and celery, along with high-protein foods like peanut b.u.t.ter sandwiches and those granola energy bars. He'd regained most of the weight he'd lost while in the hospital, and working outdoors had driven the pallor from his skin. Jacob settled behind the seat, turned on the radio to hear the weather forecast, and opened the bag.

Inside was a bundle of wax paper. He lifted it out and unwrapped the package, wondering what surprise Renee had left for him this time. The chicken head rolled out, bounced off his knee, and settled onto the floor board with a meaty plop. The wax paper was smeared with dried blood. Written on one corner in black marker were the words, "Don't chicken out."

Beneath that, the initial "J." Leaning to the left.

Jacob knelt and examined the chicken head. It was a guinea, the same breed that used to run wild on the Wells farm. A ring of congealed blood circled the hatchet wound. The dull onyx of one eye showed through the crescent slit of the eyelids. The beak was parted as if in a gasp or scream.

The cell phone on the seat beside him emitted its electronic bleat. Renee had given him a new one when he'd purchased the truck, a tacit acknowledgment that Jacob was back to normal. The children's spirits had been laid to rest in their hearts and they would move on. Happily ever after wasn't an option anymore, but neither was mutual suicide.

Jacob flipped open the phone, looking through the windshield at the house under construction. "h.e.l.lo?"

"How was your lunch?"

"I told you not to call me anymore. You're out of my life now. You and Carlita can head back to your Tennessee trailer park, or hang around Daddy's house until your d.a.m.ned skeletons collect cobwebs. But we're through."

"Dear brother," Joshua said. "We're not even halfway through. Because you still owe me a million. And brothers always keep their promises, don't they?"