so ugly, but they all had something so fragile about them. Something that gave them life in their eyes.”
Jack paused. I looked out through the slots in my plexiglass facemask and, for a moment, I was worried that she was going to add that there was something sympathetic in my eyes, too. But she only took another slug of bourbon and continued speaking. “She said that she wasn’t really a sketch artist. Said she was a sculptor and that these creatures were waiting to be released from the stone.”
“So,” I said, “even as a teenager…”
“Yeah, even as a teenager,” Jack confirmed. “I guess I was kind of fascinated by the idea, but I didn’t know shit about art. Most of the time, I think I still don’t. But I do know this-there’s something unique about her vision. I liked it, and it turns out that so do a lot of other people. But in those days, I just nodded my head, because what the hell was I going to be able to do about it? As the months passed, I kept coming to visit my mom, and Marianne kept showing me drawings, and I don’t know…she just grew on me. I suppose I felt sorry for her. She was so young, and maybe I understood about being trapped someplace that’s no good for you. The asylum was the right place for my mom, no question, but it was the wrong place for Marianne.”
“So what happened?”
“The doctors played around with her meds forever until they found a combination that worked and her condition leveled out. Marianne can function, you know, when she takes her medicine. But she’s always thought that it’s poison against her hearts.” Jack paused. “Yeah, that fantasy is nothing new, either. One time I even got them to take chest X rays to show her that she had only a single heart and she still wouldn’t believe me.”
“But how did-?”
“I’m getting to that, if you’d just shut up.” Jack jabbed her chopsticks at me, a piece of kung pao chicken wedged between them. “After the docs got her all straightened out, they put her in a group home and she ended up getting a job in a cafeteria. Washing dishes, can you believe it? When I heard about it, I paid her a visit and found her elbow deep in dirty water, and all I could think about were those amazing sketches. In the meantime, she’d gotten her first tattoo, one of those Latin sayings on her arm. When I asked why, she said that since she couldn’t afford stone, she might as well use her body as a canvas. All those tattoos she’s got, she got them when she couldn’t carve for some reason. Anyway, I said, Fuck this. If she wants to carve so bad, I’ll help her. So I paid for a course in the evenings, even though all I had was a little money left from my father’s death, and all this when I had a couple of kids at home. Completely stupid, right?”
It was stupid, but I also thought (although I certainly didn’t say it aloud) that it was wonderful. Jack took another of Marianne Engel’s cigarettes-because Jack didn’t smoke, as she’d told me more than once-and continued with her story. Whenever she got to a dramatic part, she poked the cigarette around in the air as if trying to pop invisible balloons.
“The instructor said Marianne was the most gifted student he’d ever had, that she just took to the chisel. When I couldn’t afford to shell out any more cash for lessons, he told Marianne to keep coming anyway. Said that someday he’d be bragging that he was once her teacher. So I made another stupid decision and suggested to Marianne that I should be her agent. She accepted, even after I pointed out that I knew squat about selling artwork. But I knew enough to get her a half-decent set of tools, which I found at an estate sale, just dumb luck, and then some stone. This first block was this horrible, cheap stone that practically crumbled away under her chisel, right, but she gets the gargoyle out anyway and it looks pretty good. So now I have this statue and I have to sell it before we can afford a second block of stone, so I borrow this beat-up old truck to drive around to different galleries with this big statue in the back. Finally I find someone willing to display it but only if they get a bloody outrageous commission, but by this point, we’re totally out of options, and so I say yes. When it finally sells, can you fucking believe this, I actually lose money on it. The whole process takes months and Marianne Engel is getting tattoos the whole time, going crazy without any stone. But eventually we sell another, and another, and then suddenly we have some cash flow and it all works out.”
I was fascinated to hear a history on Marianne Engel that did not include medieval monasteries. It made me realize how completely I had been engrossed in her fairy tales.
“When she really got rolling, the statues just didn’t stop coming. That was the first time I saw how she could get like this, you know? The first time she worked herself into collapse.” Jack cast her eyes up towards Marianne Engel’s room. “She was younger and stronger, and I thought it was just the flame of youth. The passion of first creation. I had no idea it would be like this for-how long now? Going on twenty-something years.”
“She must be doing all right,” I said, “I mean, the house and everything…”
“Yeah, moneywise, sure. Marianne is the best in the world at what she does, and I’m not just saying that. Five years in, we set up the gallery. Ten years, we got her this place. Cash down, not even a mortgage.”
“How did you become her conservator?”
“Just sort of happened along the way,” Jack answered. “No, fuck that, it took a lot of paperwork and endless visits to the courts. But you gotta remember that she doesn’t have a family, at least none that I know of. She never told me anything about her life before we met and, honestly, I don’t know if even she knows.”
“Jacqueline,” I said, “you never did answer my original question.”
“Don’t call me that, fuck, and I can’t even remember your stupid question.”
“If you were doing anything this Christmas.”
“No, my mother died about ten years back and my kids don’t talk to me anymore.” She grabbed her coat and said it was time for her to leave. At the door, she added, “Don’t think we’re all buddy-buddy now. If it was my decision, you still wouldn’t have a credit card.”
“Understood,” I confirmed. “I hope this doesn’t sound bad, but I’m actually pretty glad that Marianne collapsed. At least she’ll have to take some time off.”
Jack snorted. “She’s not finished yet.”
When Marianne Engel woke, she proved Jack correct. She ate a huge breakfast, then descended into the basement, where she spent the next four days. All her movements were sluggish, as if someone had taken a film of her working and was running it at half speed. She simply lacked the energy to work faster.
IF YOU SLIPPED HER A LITTLE MORPHINE
On the twentieth of December, Sayuri came for my final exercise session before the holidays. We tried our best to ignore the slow tap-tap-tapping of Marianne Engel’s lethargic tools.
“Gregor tells me that you’re going to meet his parents,” I said. “Big step.”
“He’s never done this before,” Sayuri said, “taking a girl to meet them.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“No drama for me, but I’m a bit nervous for him. I think he feels like he’s never good enough for his folks.”
“Does he think you’re going to disappoint them?” I asked incredulously.
“He’s more worried that they’ll think
“So, do you think he’s planning on…?” I tapped at her wedding finger, which was completely ring-free.
“No,” Sayuri responded quickly. She drew back her hand, but I could see on her face that she didn’t mind the idea of it. “He just wants me to see his hometown.”
There had been a change in the sound coming from the basement-the slow metronome of the hammer was missing. By this point in our living together, I knew Marianne Engel’s carving schedule well enough to realize she couldn’t possibly be finished with her current statue. “I should check on her.”
MORPHINE IS GOOD.
I couldn’t see her when I started down the basement stairs. I called out, but there was no answer. Half a cigarette was smoldering in the ashtray. Then I saw her behind a mostly completed gargoyle, her arms splayed at awkward angles. Her fingers were still half closed around her hammer; her chisel had bounced a few feet away.
When I came around the rock, I saw that she was unconscious, with a large gash on her forehead. I presumed this was from falling headfirst into the stone as she passed out.
