Thursday, November 18, 2015 - 2:00 a.m.

“Really, Em. You’re being such a drama queen, all that moaning and groaning. It’s not like you’re dying. You saw the X-rays, it’s just a little crack.”

Lucy risked a glance away from the wet road to frown at her cousin Emma, huddled beneath a blanket in the passenger seat. “And, FYI, your shirt’s buttoned all crooked. You look like a sad-ass refugee.”

A gust of wind rocked the car. Sucking in her breath, Lucy tightened her grip on the wheel and braked. She hunched forward, squinting past thrashing wipers into inky blackness. Seeking a glimpse of slick pavement through the downpour.

Woozy with painkillers, preoccupied with tracking rain streaks on the side window, Emma blinked herself halfway into focus and organized a response.

“Next time,” she began slowly. “Next time I break a bone…I’ll dress better. I’ll be dressed. No more…” She thought a bit. “No more posing nudely. Nuditity? Posing nude.”

Lucy shot her a worried look. “You don’t mean that, right? You can’t stop sitting for me. I need you, Em. You’re my abso-fucking-lutely best model, always have been.” Her eyes flicked to the road, then back to Emma. “You’re kidding, right? Hey, Mouse. I said I was sorry.”

Nudidity, Emma thought. There’s a fun word. Who used to say that?

Radar O’Reilly, that’s who. On M.A.S.H., her dad’s favorite show. She should call. Let him know she was okay. The broken collarbone was nothing, they’d still be there for Thanksgiving.

Call her dad, she amended. Not Radar O’Reilly. And not right now because it was like two in the morning. 

Belatedly, Emma caught up to Lucy’s words and worry. “But posing for you is dangerous. You saw it, right? That easel attacked me.” She frowned. “My name’s not Mouse. I hate that nickname. You should use my real name.”

The pain meds were doing a fine job now of blurring everything except the mesmerizing swipe of the wipers. Emma rolled her head back toward the side window, careful not to jostle her left arm in its sling.

Lucy found the interstate’s on-ramp and accelerated, risking a skid.

Emma wanted to say something about the perils of excessive speed on slippery mountain roads, but then she felt the Subaru’s all-wheel-drive take hold and the moment was gone. The words weren’t lining up correctly anyway. 

Lucy exhaled loudly and relaxed her grip on the wheel. “That doctor said you’ll be just fine, Em, all healed up in a week or two. So no one needs to know about this, right?”

Emma considered that. “I’ll need an extension from Panetta. I’ve got a paper due Friday, the day after tomorrow. No, tomorrow. Today’s Thursday already, right?”

“I’ll call him,” Lucy reassured her. “What’s your topic? Never mind,” she added quickly. “This is just me, faking an interest. I’m sure it’s totally mind-numbing.”

“The Roles of Women…” Emma frowned in concentration. “…in Sub-Saharan Village…Economies? …Maybe.”

 “Yeah, boring as fuck.” Lucy swapped dismissal for persuasion. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell Panetta you got a doctor’s note. But no one else needs to know. Right?” Fingers twitched on the wheel. “This is adulting one-oh-one, Em. We don’t need to run to Daddy or Uncle Jerry with every little boo-boo, right? We solve our own fucking problems. Pinky-swear, okay?”

Only Lucy would say fucking and pinky-swear in the same breath.

Through the rain and inky darkness, Emma saw the flash of an exit sign and the lights of what might be a gas station. She wanted to remind her cousin about the Subaru needing gas but instead she fell asleep.

She woke to the crunch of tires on gravel and the growl of the Outback downshifting as it began the sharp climb to their cabin. On the car’s instrument panel, the GET GAS NOW light glowed red.

A small panic jolted Emma upright. “Lucy, the gas—” She gasped as a sharp pain knifed her left shoulder.

Lucy scowled, her face inches from the windshield as she navigated a hairpin turn through the downpour. The wipers were slapping frantically now, running on high. At the second switchback, she slowed to a crawl and snapped on the high beams. 

“Stupid headlights.” One hand left the wheel to scoop back a shock of white-blond hair. “They’re fucking useless!  I can’t see anything.”

“Go back to low beams,” Emma forced the words through clenched teeth. “It won’t reflect off the rain as much.”

“Really?” Lucy snapped. “Do you want to drive?”

Emma bit back a response.

Yes I do, but no I can’t. What if we run out of gas? No one else drives this road, we’re still half a mile from home— 

Her right hand flew to the grab handle as the Subaru fishtailed on loose gravel and thumped into a pothole. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and braced both feet against the floor. Pain shot again through her shoulder.

Five minutes later, they pulled into the nearly invisible clearing at the end of the old logging road. The Outback sputtered its last fumes and died, sliding a little sideways in the mud. 

At least the cabin’s lights were still on.

Lucy offered Emma a weak grin, the silver stud in her lower lip glinting in the dashboard’s glow before she switched off the ignition.

“Made it, Mouse. Easy-peasey.”

They stumbled through blasts of cold rain to the porch, strewn now with slick wet leaves. Inside, Lucy slammed the door against a blast of wet wind as Emma dropped her wet blanket on the floor and toed off her muddy shoes.

Rain drummed hard on the cabin’s metal roof. We’re okay now, Emma thought as Lucy helped her peel off wet jeans and socks. In a few hours it would be daylight. When the rain ended Lucy could take their other car, Emma’s Miata, to get gas for the Subaru. Everything would be fine.

As Emma tried to figure out how to lie on her right side while holding an icepack on her left shoulder, Lucy’s “easy-peasey” tickled her memory. One of her mother’s favorite phrases. What other platitudes would her mother provide now?

It's not a problem unless you make it a problem, Emmie. A warm blanket and a hot cup of tea, that’s all you need. Let Lucy do the hard stuff. She’ll take care of you like she always does.

Except her mother was gone forever and there was nothing easy-peasey about life with Lucy.

***

Emma at nineteen liked to study root causes. What factors precipitated the Great Depression? Which innovation motivated a barter economy to transition to a monetary system? How did she end up with a hairline crack in her collarbone? 

The physics of that was simple: The crossbar of Lucy’s easel had collided with Emma’s clavicle. Force plus velocity plus trajectory. But what was the propelling force, Lucy’s frustration with that damned art project or the disturbing text from her mother? Probably both.

Like all juniors in the Silvermill College art school, Lucy was required to produce a capstone project, a major artwork worthy of exhibition at the end of the fall semester. She’d proposed creating a three-dimensional self-portrait, a life-sized plaster sculpture that she would then destroy during the gallery show. 

She had a theme and a title, Genesis and Catharsis. She knew what Catharsis would look like, a multimedia video extravaganza—with strobe lights, clashing cymbals, maybe cannon fire—during which she’d sledgehammer her plaster self into smithereens.

But Genesis was proving tricky. She’d begun with typical Lucy-style enthusiasm, creating detailed drawings that exaggerated her own angular features—aquiline nose, wide shoulders, sharp hips. Plus all the body art, the ink and metal ornaments.

The timeline required her to complete a frame of wood and chicken wire by Thanksgiving, but she’d spent all of October and half of November changing her mind about the perfect posture to express The Full Essence of Lucy. Nude, of course, but what then? Spreadeagled on a concrete slab or draped on a tree limb? Emerging from the ground as a hellish demon or crouching like a hungry spider? She loved Louise Bourgeois’ arachnid Maman at the National Gallery in Ottawa, but wouldn’t a spider be too derivative?

Emma had suggested a Lucy-piñata, suspended from a tree branch like a naked paratrooper or a flying zombie. Just joking, Emma had added, but her cousin liked the idea. She just couldn’t decide what should spill out of the Lucy-zombie-piñata when she destroyed it on camera.

After months of listening to Lucy’s indecision, Emma was done contributing feedback. You’re going to smash it anyway, she wanted to say. Just get it done.

On the afternoon before the hospital trip—Wednesday, a week before Thanksgiving—they’d come home early from classes. Emma retreated to her bedroom to work on her economics paper while Lucy sat in front of the television, sketchpad in hand, to draw warrior poses from Game of Thrones freeze frames.

A little before six p.m., Lucy dragged her big A-frame easel into the center of their front room and set it up beside the fieldstone fireplace.

“Please, Em, I need you to pose. Twenty minutes, that’s all. I’ve got it narrowed down to three concepts. It won’t take long.”

Emma stifled a sigh. The economics paper needed her full attention but Lucy sounded desperate. She set aside her laptop and pulled off her sweatshirt because posing for Lucy usually meant nude.

“Twenty minutes,” Emma agreed. “Then dinner. I’m holding you to that. How about Norah Jones?” 

They’d agreed years earlier that the model chooses the music. To the opening notes of “Sunrise,” Emma draped her jeans and underwear neatly over the sofa and stood naked on the braided rug in front of a dark window.

“I need your hair up,” Lucy reminded her. 

Emma gathered her thick curls, wrestling the mass into a thick bird’s nest and securing it with an elastic band above her neck. A few russet strands always escaped, springing away from her head in defiance of hairdressing and gravity.

At Lucy’s direction, Emma eased into a warrior pose with feet planted wide and hands clutching an imaginary broadsword over a shoulder. 

Beneath the music she heard a light rain peppering the windows, the beginning of a storm moving through the mountains. She shuddered a little, imagining the cold rain against her skin.

“Puh-leese, Em,” Lucy coaxed. “Hold it just a little longer. I’ve really got to get this done. Bring that left leg forward a bit.”

By the time the first sketch was completed, all the blood had left Emma’s arms. Twenty minutes came and went, but Lucy kept sketching and coaxing.

“Hang on, Em. I’ve almost got it. Five more minutes.”

 Then it was five more in a new position and five more after that, until Lucy forgot to ask and Emma forgot to protest.

Norah Jones had run out of songs. The only sounds now were the rain and Lucy’s frustrated mutterings as she dragged a floor lamp around the room and repositioned her easel. Nothing was working. She blamed gloomy lighting, paper-curling humidity, and Emma.

“Jeez, Mouse. That pose is so static. You’re just standing there like a freaky little rodent. I need you fierce and powerful. Be a dragon queen.”

Emma steeled herself, not for the pose but for what would happen next. There’d be swearing and foot-stomping, sketches ripped to shreds. Eventually Lucy might produce something brilliant, but the process was always fraught with drama.

“Just fucking try,” Lucy growled. “Come on, Mouse. You’ve got to look like me.”

Emma remembered Rodin’s nude study of Jean d’Aire, a bronze sculpture at the art museum in Raleigh. One of Auguste Rodin’s besieged Burghers of Calais, the massive figure stood in defiance and despair, fists clenched at his side as he prepared to sacrifice himself to the invading army.

Worth a try.

“How about this? From the Rodin garden.” Emma turned away and imagined herself large and powerful. Knees locked, fists coiled, jaw clenched.

Lucy’s scowl evaporated. “Oh! Yes. Can you get more weight on your right leg? Like you’re stepping toward death. Keep your back arched, show those biceps. That’s awesome!”

But it wasn’t awesome, it was impossible. Emma was six inches shorter and ten pounds heavier than Lucy, all soft curves where Lucy was hard bone and muscle. Emma didn’t have biceps.

She couldn’t be a body double for her Valkyrie cousin and she really couldn’t be the nine-foot-tall statue of a desperate, naked Frenchman. Five minutes later, her arms began trembling. When her right calf cramped, she collapsed on the sofa and folded herself into a blanket.

“Sorry, Lucy, I can’t do this. You took pictures of the Rodins. Can’t you just look at those?”

“No, I can’t! I deleted those stupid photos and now there’s no time!”

She tore the Emma-burgher sketch off her easel and ripped it in half. Crumpled the pieces and tossed them into the cold fireplace. Threw herself into a chair and buried her face in her hands.

“It’s a fucking disaster,” she groaned.

“Let’s take a break,” Emma coaxed. “We can go back to it after dinner.”

She pulled on her clothes and began ladling chili from the pot on the stove while Lucy sulked on the sofa. Emma hesitated over a bottle of red wine, then poured a scant half glass for Lucy. She corked the bottle and tucked it away in a cupboard.

Food brought Lucy back to life. She ate hunched over the table, spoon in one hand and phone in the other, alternating between eating and swiping through a dating app. Left, left, left. She snort-laughed derisively and kept swiping.

They finished the chili just before eight, when Lucy’s phone pinged with a text.