[Untitled], Statue of a Woman
In a sundrenched loft resting high above the city, there lives a sculptor and the woman he claims to love. The Sculptor is not, by and large, unhappy. Quite the contrary; when he sits framed in the picture window, as he does now, feeling the warmth of the sun on his face and the earthy squelch of the clay between his fingers, he is often filled with an overwhelming sense of calm. Of peace. The Sculptor has had little peace in his life, and so he makes a point to claim these moments in his mind. The quiet of the loft wraps him in a feeling of timelessness. Drifts of dust suspended in the air. The muffled sounds of traffic from the street far below. The cool, mineral scent of his next masterwork taking form beneath his palms. He has earned this; a balm for his soul. He deserves it.
The woman he claims to love lounges on the loveseat, supine, magazine dangling from her porcelain fingers. The sunlight spilling through the bay window pools in the hollows of her collar bones. As he looks at her, the Sculptor feels a rush in his body, a wash of the feeling he always feels when he looks at her in reverie. His hands massage the clay in sensual circles. The curve of her breasts begins to take shape beneath his palms.
“Oh my god, Alona and T. Swig are back together.”
She drops the magazine to the carpet beside discarded socks and a styrofoam cup of half-eaten noodles. She stares into the glow of her phone, submerging her face in its pool. She coughs twice, her tongue hard and stuck out like a toddler’s, the tail end of a cold that’s refused to let go. It is hard for the Sculptor to decide which aspect of this tableau is more an affront to his constitution. Her words tinge the muted sun streaking across the floor.
“Honestly, if they aren’t going to make it, what hope do the rest of us have?” she says. “She was all in for Setty. I would have bet money.”
“Is that right?”
Most days, the Sculptor does his best to tune out her gossipmongering. But today he has little patience. His self control is not what it usually is. And so, despite the protestations of his better self, he engages.
“Who is Setty, again?”
“Seriously?” she asks, this time looking at him, her eyebrows a wave of incredulity. “Setty, Bug. You know who Setty is. We listened to that song. Remember, last night? That was Setty.”
“Of course,” says the Sculptor. “How could I have forgotten?”
His fists clench around the clay until it squishes out between his fingers, destroyed. He molds it back to nothing and begins again.
She has not always been this, has she? Before she’d come to share the space that had once been his home. Before she’d become so comfortable to use the restroom with the door open, to leave her soiled athletic shorts and damp towels on the hallway floor. Before he’d claimed to love her. When they’d spent endless nights roaming the downtown streets, discussing ideas, philosophy, politics. Her upbringing had been more expansive than his, and he’d drunk in her perspective like a deep, foreign coffee, the adrenaline of her lighting up his brain. He’d learned the shape of the world through her eyes. Your blue is not my blue. He’d wanted to know every word for every color she had ever seen.
But that was before. Before they had said all there was to say. Nothing left but current events. Royal weddings.He said, she said.
“I swear,” she says, chuckling softly. “You’re lucky you have me around to keep you from sounding like an idiot.”
“Yes, I would surely be lost without your encyclopedic knowledge of internet garbage.”
He does not intend for it to come out so harshly, but it is how he feels. She will make him regret saying it, of course. In the end, however, the Sculptor decides not to apologize. Many worse things have passed between them, and would again. Best not to set a precedent. By now, she has picked her magazine up again and is paging through it roughly.
“What are you working on over there?” she asks, again without glancing in his direction.
The Sculptor looks down at his clay. He had been absently forming it into some sort of obelisk, which he now flattens down again into nothing.
“It’s still taking form,” he says.
“You’ve never sculpted me, you know.”
“I thought you weren’t interested in art.”
“Of course I like art,” she says. “Everyone likes art.
That’s why they call it art.”
The Sculptor does not know what this means, but he lets it go.
“Would you like me to sculpt you?” he asks.
“I mean, I don’t know. It’s just nice to be asked, you know?”
The Sculptor turns the clay over in his hands. He asks it, silently, what secrets it is hiding from him.
“Alright then,” he says.
“Alright?” She lays her magazine on the couch beside her and sits up. He waits a moment to respond, reveling in her wide-eyed attentiveness. He’d forgotten what it felt like to have her hanging on his words, waiting with bated breath for him to provide.
“Up you get,” he says, gesturing with his hands. “Over there.”
She stands as if on strings and follows his fingers to the center of the open loft room. The waning sunlight from the window coats her shift dress in pale pinks and oranges. It hangs from her bones like Spanish moss. The Sculptor rises and pulls a milk crate from beneath the kitchen counter. He empties the putty knives and other sundries onto the floor, and flips it over on the hardwood in front of her. He pats it, as one would for a dog, and she rises onto it.
“You sure about this?” he asks. “Why would you ask that?”
“Okay then,” he says, and grabs the hem of her dress. The Sculptor has often thought, in his darker moments, that were he to find himself on his deathbed, his mind casting about for any image that might bring him comfort, that this, right here, is where he would land. The shift dress slides up over the generous curve of her hips, caresses the dark fluff nestled in her armpits. He sees her face obscured, the sunlight projecting her image as if through gauze. Her featurelessness a statement in itself. And then she is unsheathed, the unbroken tawny of her skin a buffet on which his eyes are pleased to feast. She stands before him, cocks a hip, flips her hair.
“Is that art enough for you?” she asks.
The Sculptor puts a finger to her lips. He begins to walk around her, slowly, his fingers trailing along the under curve of her buttock, up the ridge of her spine, the wrinkled flesh of her elbow. The mole on her inner thigh. He does his best to feel these elements through his fingers, understand the braille of her. They have always spoken the language of touch.
The Sculptor turns his back on her, walks to his clay by the window. He hefts a cool hunk in his hands. Beside him sits the pedestal, striped in sunlight. He sits in the windowbox and throws the clay down in a heap. He looks up to where she stands, across the room, already fidgeting on the crate, arms crossed over her chest.
“You have to put your arms down,” he says. She does as she’s told.
“Actually,” says the Sculptor, “take your left arm and sort of drape it over your head. Yes, like that. Relax your fingers.”
The effect is delicate and glib all at once. If he squints his eyes, he might be able to see a sort of elegance in her.
He adds more clay to the misshapen lump, scooping from the bucket at his feet and beating her form into shape. The bend of her knee, the curve of her breast, her sharp chin. Minutes pass; his hands work quickly. She is not the first woman he has sculpted in this way. There was a time, in fact, that this very loft had housed many of his subjects, standing on the very crate on which she stood now. Each one more thankful than the last.
“No, you can’t move.”
“Bug, I’m tired,” she says. “Can’t we take a break?”
Her arms hang limp at her sides.
“You said you wanted me to sculpt you.”
“I know, I know. Just give me a minute.”
She scratches her nose with the heel of her hand.
“We don’t have to do this, you know.”
“I said give me a minute.”
She steps down off of the crate, crosses to the couch, picks up her phone once again, then steps back into place. She swipes at the glass with her thumb, then starts.
“Oh, you remember Antony, right?”
The Sculptor does not remember Antony. He tries to picture the bend of her elbow, the delicate drape of her fingers, but he cannot.
“I totally forgot; I was texting with my mom the other day,” she says, cocking her hip to the other side, disrupting. “Apparently he was supposed to get married. Down in Tijuana of all places.”
The Sculptor carefully pushes the mid section of the clay to the left. The hips displace. He will have to start over.
“Anyway, his fiancée I knew from college. She was always kind of wild, but I never expected this. So he flew down there, right? Him and his whole family to set up the venue; it was at this all-inclusive resort. And like, so many people showed up. Uncles and cousins and the whole thing. So anyway, his fiancée gets down there—just her. No family. Apparently she hadn’t told a single person. She lied to him the whole time, saying she was in contact with all these people. Even messaged him from accounts pretending to be her cousins. Like, the whole thing. And then she gets down there, waits until he’s standing at the altar right in front of her, and then tells him she can’t go through with it. Apparently she’s been sleeping with some guy from her work. A server, I think. Can you believe that? She went through all that just for a couple days of free vacation?”
The Sculptor rises from his stool and turns to face the window. The afternoon sun is beginning to set, turning the city skyline to dark jagged teeth.They are at once both sinister and broken. She calls his name once, twice, but he does not answer.
“This isn’t working,” he says to the window.
“Just give me another minute. I can hold still. I just need the feeling back in my fingers.”
“No.” The Sculptor turns to face her. She has returned to the crate, phone again abandoned, and is shaking her hand at her side, face screwed up in concentration.
“This isn’t going to work.”
She stops shaking, looks at him quietly as if trying to discern his meaning. He looks back at her, doing the same. But after a silent moment, the Sculptor is struck with an idea. Without a word, he hoists the misshapen lump of clay in his hands and crosses the room, quick as ever, to kneel at her feet. He looks up at her, the prostrate Christ ready to demonstrate His servant’s heart.
“Ready?” he asks.
“You’d have to tell me what we’re doing first.” She laughs nervously.
The Sculptor slops the clay down onto her feet, covering her toes.
“Oh, it’s cold!”
“You have to stay still.”
She squirms in place, but keeps her feet planted. Slowly, the sculptor begins to work the wet clay up over her ankles, wrapping her heels.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” she says. “Have you ever done this before?”
“Many times,” says the Sculptor. “Trust me. You move too much. This is the only way we can make it work.”
Still crouched at her feet with his hands around her ankles, he looks up at her and smirks with half of his mouth, giving his best imitation of the man he used to be. She doesn’t respond, but neither does she move.
In thirty silent minutes she is covered nearly to the waist. The clay is still misshapen, tumors swelling from her knees and thighs, but she is no longer wiggling, and so the Sculptor begins to trust in the foundation he’s built. In the past half hour she’s hardly spoken a word but for the occasional exclamation as the cool clay touched some new uncovered part of her. As much as he had welcomed the silence at first, he knows from experience that models often require distraction as the pain of stillness begins to set in.
“You said you spoke to your mother,” the Sculptor says. “Did she get the flowers I sent?”
“Not totally sure,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest as he moves the clay up over her belly button. “She didn’t mention it. But that new nurse they have on her floor is a bit of a nutjob. She might have just forgotten to drop them off.”
“I can always send more. Even if she did get them, you can never have too many flowers. That room of hers is far too dreary. You told them to brighten it up?”
“I may have. The surgery was just last week.”
“Two weeks ago,” says the Sculptor.
“Right, two weeks. God, what would I do without you, Bug?”
The Sculptor’s hands stop moving for a moment. Normally, such a correction would elicit some sort of disagreement, an argument that would end with the two of them going to the calendar on the wall in the kitchen and flipping pages to prove every timeline of their long relationship. He reaches into the bucket at his feet and scoops another handful of clay for her lower back.
“It just seems like she should have been further along by now, you know? She still isn’t back on her feet, she only just started eating again. Now they’re talking about having to go back in. Like maybe it didn’t take. I don’t know, her nurse was trying to explain it to me, but like I said.”
“Nutjob,” says the Sculptor. He steps back from her to examine his work. She is still bare from the waist up, arms crossed over her breasts, collarbones catching the fading light. But from the waist down she is indiscernible, the bust of a mermaid jutting from the rough-hewn bow of a ship. Her legs are still formed together into one large mass, the curve of her hips and her buttocks erased. It is time for him to give her shape.
“I just don’t know how long she can take it in there,” she says. “And even when she gets out, what then, you know? She’s still going to need a lot of help. There’s no way she can live alone anymore.”
“Of course,” says the Sculptor. He begins pulling putty knives from his bag of tools, arranging them by size on the floor beside the milk crate.
“Maybe she could move in here for a little bit,” she says. “Just until she’s back on her feet. I’m sure she’d want to get back on her own as soon as possible.”
He chooses his tool—a long-edged putty knife—and begins with her feet. He’s spent many nights holding these feet between his hands, digging his thumbs into the arches as they watched some inane reality program on television. As he begins scraping and shaping the clay around her feet, he tries to recall the arc of her toes. The second one is long, isn’t it? Unnaturally so. Her little toes turn inward, he knows that for sure. She complains regularly about that particular deformity. She would change it if she could. She has always said so. The Sculptor works his putty knife around the outline of her left foot, leaving a knob of extra clay where the little toe would be, taking off a little more around the second. He worries for a moment that he might cut it too close, but he finds he is able to shorten the toe with ease.
Before too long, he has carved out both her feet up to the ankles. They are perfect, proportionate, delicate.
“What do you think?” he asks her, gesturing downward.
“Wow,” she says. “Is that really what you think of me?”
“I think you’re beautiful,” says the Sculptor. And he means it.
He wastes no time moving up her calves, carving out the space between her legs in a thin but muscular curve. To him, her legs have always been one of her best features, first framed for him by the lacy hem of a red dress, twirling and sliding across the dance floor at his brother’s wedding. He’d spent half the night sitting, if only to keep her thighs in his eyeline. He held them now in his hands, picturing in his mind what they had looked like those years ago. The soft flesh tight and warm, the gap between them calling him upward. He pressed them first with his palms, shaping the outer curve as they swelled into the rise of her hips, bending out the inner line to follow. Leaving just enough of a space between for his hand to rest.
The Sculptor is acutely aware, of course, that she is not the woman she used to be. He does not expect her to be. That would be unkind. In fact, the aging female body has always been of particular interest to him. The way it seems to fold in on itself. A lithograph of care, each act of mercy etched into the skin. The wrinkle, he has always said, is an admirable quality. Indeed, there was a time when he made his living on those particularly feminine fissures. His renderings of the soft curve of the stomach, the cut of the hip bone, had shaped his career. There was no shortage of women willing to line up at his door for a perfect facsimile of their physical form, immortalized as it was. While outside his walls the world was a melting pot of ideas for how a woman should be shaped, how their bodies were allowed to announce themselves—inside his studio, every woman was invited to appear exactly as she wanted. To dictate how she wished to be seen. And he would take their every direction. He only wanted them to feel their best. After so many years performing such a service for strangers, isn’t it only fitting that he do the same for her, the woman he claimed to love?
“Do you ever get jealous?” the Sculptor asks as he carves a sharp divot into her left hip bone with his knife. “When you think about all the other women I’ve been with? Like this.”
“Sculpting, you mean?”
“Yes, sculpting,” he says. “And sexually.”
“Oh.”
He watches her face as she searches for a response. He can’t imagine she hasn’t considered it before. The only question now is whether she is interested in telling the truth.
“I mean, not really,” she says. “Of course I don’t want you out here sleeping with other women now. But it’s good for me to know that other people want you. So I know I’m not delusional.”
“Delusional?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, no offense Bug, but you’re a grown man who spends all day playing with modeling clay. It’s not exactly a slam dunk.”
The Sculptor does not respond. With the flat of his hand, he presses into the curve of her hip, compacting it, removing the excess.
“That sounded bad,” she says, and only now does she look at him. “I love that you’re an artist, really I do. It’s just that—well it’s not like every woman is out here just trying to find a nice sculptor to settle down and raise a family with.”
On this point, the Sculptor believes her. She loves that he is an artist. She makes sure to let everyone know when they go out in the Village: girlfriends, bartenders, strangers. But when they're around her family—or as she puts it, “mixed company”—suddenly he becomes an art teacher. Nevermind that he hasn’t taught an art class since his university days.
“Sure,” he says, moving the clay over to her other hip, cutting an even sharper line now, nearly grazing skin. He will go back and fix the other one later. “No offense, babe, but an unemployed communications student isn’t exactly society’s idea of a catch, either.”
“That’s not fair,” she says. “You know I need to focus on my degree right now. And with everything with my mom—”
“I know, I know. And I’m happy to support you in that. Truly. I’m just saying. Maybe you shouldn’t be throwing stones.”
The next few minutes pass in silence, the Sculptor turning the clay in his bucket to keep it loose while she does her best to avoid his occasional glances. Finally, he is finished with her hips and moves upward to her stomach, painting a large swath across her soft skin, pushing it into the dimples, filling her navel. In his peripheral vision, he sees her shoulders relax. Often when they are lying on the couch together watching television, she will ask him to rub her stomach. It helps to calm her, she says, something about her mother doing it as a child to help her fall asleep. Though what she has to relax from has always been a mystery to him.
“I know that sounded harsh,” the Sculptor says. “I don’t want to fight.”
“Fight?” she asks, a genuine question in her voice. “Are we in a fight?”
“Well, just,” the Sculptor says, “you didn’t seem to like what I was saying.”
“Oh, that’s alright Bug,” she says, smiling. “I know you only have my best interests at heart. I couldn’t do any of this without you.”
The Sculptor stops for a moment, and removes his hands from her stomach. Not once can he remember her speaking to him with such genuine love and kindness. In fact, that was one of the first things that had attracted him to her—her caustic manner, her biting attitude. Things that had only grown sour with time.
“Do you think you could?” she asks. “Think I could what?”
“Do this without me,” she says.
The Sculptor pauses before responding. Perhaps this was the reason for her suddenly sunny demeanor. Simply bait for the honeytrap.
“Well it would be pretty difficult to sculpt you without you.”
“Stop, Bug,” she says playfully. “You know what I mean: this. Life. Getting up and going on and making plans. Hoping for the future. All of it.”
The Sculptor pretends to think about this. He has, however, imagined doing exactly that for more months than he cares to admit. What it would be like to wake up alone in his bed, stretched out and free, the warmth of the morning sun on his face. Preparing breakfast for one, choosing the course of his day. Not worrying about loan payments or hospital visits. There had been a time when the intimate calculation of tradeoffs between them had balanced those scales. The sensual benefits offsetting the costs. But lately, her weight had become too much to pull.
“Well,” he begins, “Society was certainly designed around the idea of partnership. It isn’t meant to be able to be done alone.”
“That makes it sound like I could be anyone.”
“Are you asking if I think you’re the one?”
“Well, I think you’re the one,” she says. “For me. I know you are.”
There was a time, the Sculptor remembers, she would have scoffed at this kind of talk. The fire of the movement still warm in her chest.
“Here I thought the romance industrial complex was designed to keep women searching for a perfect mate so they never achieve their full potential.”
She laughs.
“Oh, Bug,” she says playfully. “Not everything has to come with an artist’s statement.”
For her, perhaps. And yet, despite the narrowness of her argument, the Sculptor finds it brings him a sort of comfort. That there can exist an unexamined love. That such an easy thing could be turned to shine on him. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. This in itself deserves to be captured in clay. He feels himself inspired. He can see it now, taking shape beneath the hands in his mind. He will have to hold onto that one for later.
“Can you go back to rubbing my stomach again, please?” she asks. “It felt so nice.”
The Sculptor smiles, nods, and does as he is told.
“I think number two would have to be Napa. It was just so great to get away from all that dreary winter slush and be out in the sun, sipping wine, looking at you.”
“Not to mention what we got up to back at the hotel.”
“Oh, stop. You’re terrible.”
The sun has long since set. She’s now covered nearly to her breasts.He has spent the past hour carving out the curve of her waist. It had taken him a while to get the ratio right, and more than once he was afraid his knife would hit skin. But he only found clay. The finished product is admittedly more dramatic than reality. But she will be happy with it in the end. Now he is more concerned with the length of the session, and how he might eventually extricate her from the clay without damaging his work. But instead of complaining, here she is babbling away, running down the list of favorite vacations they’ve taken together.
“Okay so that’s number two,” says the Sculptor. “What’s the winner?”
She hums, puts a hand to her chin, the Beautiful Thinker.
“That would have to be Hoboken.”
“But that wasn’t a vacation,” says the Sculptor. “I had to work.”
“I know,” she says. “Maybe it didn’t feel like a vacation to you. But being able to actually come with you to one of your out-of-town shows, being there to support you. To see everyone else telling you how amazing you are, instead of just me.”
The Sculptor chuckles lightly to himself. He remembers the show, of course, though obviously a bit differently than she does. He had been one artist among many, his showing—The Angel Takes Flight, depicting an ex-lover of his in repose, her legs, arms, and feathered wings open to embrace the eyes of any who might come along—stuffed in a corner by the bathroom. And he certainly doesn’t remember her enjoying it so much, between the long nights at the gallery and the passing comments about the sculpture’s subject.
“I didn’t know you thought much of that trip,” the Sculptor says. “Or me.”
“You must be joking,” she says, and when he looks up into her face, he can see mist glistening in her eyes. “Bug, I think you’re incredible. You’re so talented.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“I’m serious.”
By now, he has reached the underside of her breasts. He stands in front of her, face to face, looking down into her glistening green eyes. And he kisses her of his own volition for perhaps the first time in weeks. As he does so, he considers her lips—the waxy taste of lip balm, their plump give between his teeth. He looks forward to rendering them in clay. When he pulls away, her eyes are still closed, her lips searching like a child for his mother’s breast.
“I’ll take it,” says the Sculptor. “But I still don’t think that counts as a vacation.”
“Fine then, what was your favorite?”
The Sculptor’s eyes shift to the window. The faint glow of the city lights below cast flashing shadows on the ceiling. It’s Friday night, the sidewalks likely full of young women in short dresses and the men who want to sleep with them. But up here, in the turret of their castle, they are alone. For the first time in a very long time, that doesn’t feel so bad.
“Unfortunately,” says the Sculptor, “that answer will have to wait until morning. My hands are beginning to cramp. And you must be tired.”
“I could keep going, if you want to,” she says, but he can see the pain at the corners of her mouth.
“I think we’ve both earned a rest,” he says. “Now to remove you from the clay without ruining all our hard work.”
He walks around behind her to examine her back. The deep red dimples framing her tailbone. The ridge of muscle on either side of her spine. Each detail he has expertly shaped such that he’s impressed even himself. This may be the most important work of his life. It would be a shame to cut into it, an insult to the art. But if they are going to finish their work in the morning, she will need her strength.
“Maybe if we just slice down the spine, we can sort of peel the sides back, and—”
“No,” she says. “Not after you’ve spent so much time perfecting it. It would be an insult to your art.”
The Sculptor smiles, puts a hand on her shoulder. Even uncovered her skin feels cold and slick, like the clay between his fingers.
“I don’t want you to collapse before we finish.”
“I’ll be fine,”she says. “I can sleep standing up. You can wake me in the morning.”
“You’re sure?”
Again, she closes her eyes, searches with her lips. He waits, just a moment, holding her vulnerability in his hands. A gift freely given. He accepts, kisses her, leans his forehead against hers. He tries to quiet his mind, hear her thoughts. But he hears only his own.
“I love you,” he says, and he means it.
“I love you too,”she says, her eyes still closed. “Sweet dreams.”
The Sculptor turns, walks to the open kitchen, flicks the light switch. The room descends into darkness, the city lights from below the only nightlight. He sees her there, cast in shadow, breasts bared, mouth hanging open, the whiteness of her teeth a beacon in the darkness. He thinks about going to kiss her again, but decides against it. He has been here in the past, with too much attachment to a subject. It can make the art muddy. He wants to capture her, not his idea of her. So instead, he walks down the hall into his bedroom, and shuts the door.
That night, the Sculptor has a dream. In the dream, he is surrounded by darkness. He turns his head but cannot see any- thing. He hears a muffled sound, a finger tapping the glass of an aquarium. Then a sudden crack of light pierces the sky. Then another, jagged lightning, only it doesn’t dissipate. Each new bolt joins the last, crisscrossing the black pitch sky above his head. Finally, there is a blinding light, as the husk of the sky falls away to reveal nothing but white. White, and a set of great, powerful talons reaching down, grasping him around the waist, and now he is flying, pulled from the ground and up into the open air, the wind around him beaten by the powerful wings of some great eagle as it slices through the atmosphere, rising ever upward toward heaven. Dangling there at the mercy of the terrible beast, the Sculptor cannot remember feeling so free, in real life or in a dream. The morning sun warming his face, the wind in his hair, unburdened by gravity. He twists his body to look up into the face of the eagle, but he is blinded by the sun. There is no point in trying to see who holds him aloft. It’s all in his head, anyway.
Dawn breaks, the sun’s glow seeping through the Sculptor’s bedroom window, crawling across the carpet, warming his bedsheets. He wakes feeling light, his chest a balloon. For a moment, he feels a wind rushing across his face, the ground beneath him air. He lays there, trying to recall that feeling in his hollow bones. But the Earth has hold of him once again. He breathes deep, watches through half-lidded eyes as drifts of dust float through the rays of sun. Beyond that, the room is still. Until he rolls over, his arm draping across the empty width of the mattress. And then he remembers.
The Sculptor sets his feet on the floor and tiptoes to the bedroom door. He puts an ear to the wood. He hears nothing. Slowly he turns the knob and pushes it open, careful not to let it creak. Quiet. He creeps down the hall and into the kitchen. And there she is. He can see her over the counter, her head hidden from view by the cabinets, her arms folded tight over her exposed breasts, her shoulders slumped slightly to one side in sleep. And yet she has somehow managed not to move. In fact, the clay now presses tightly into the wrinkles of her waist, the skin of her knees—it has gotten better overnight. More lifelike. The Sculptor supposes perhaps that by sleeping within the clay, it is settling more realistically into her form. He will have to remember this technique; as if he could ever find another participant so willing to support his vision.
He brings over a high stool from the kitchen and places it in front of her with great care.There is no need to wake her. He sits on the stool and stares into her face, eyes darting back and forth beneath their lids. Her cheeks are wet; but her face is relaxed. Peaceful. Carefully, the Sculptor releases her arms from their tensed posture, peeling her fingers one by one from the flesh of her bicep, revealing the red indentations beneath. They relax to her sides, and still she does not stir. He takes a moment to admire her sleeping breasts, as he has done many times before. Her large brown nipples relaxed, the few long hairs she’d forgotten to tweeze curling like eyelashes. They hang lower than they once had, the flesh slightly dappled where it had been taut. But beautiful, still. He reaches down to the bucket still half-full of clay and mixes it with a splash of water from the cup he’d left out last night. He works the clay in his hands until it is supple enough and then, with a careful touch, begins to massage it onto her breasts. And still she doesn’t stir. It is not difficult for the Sculptor to recall what they used to look like. Between the photos she used to send him and the countless hours she’d spent beside him on the couch, lamenting her aging body. They had always been one of her favorite features, but if the Sculptor was honest, they had always been a little large for his liking. Dis- proportionate, he’d always thought. He is not even surprised this time when the clay comes off under his knife with not a scrape of flesh or drop of blood.
By the time she finally stirs, she is covered completely to her collar bones. Her arms he has positioned in a stance of faux formality: held behind her back, one hand clasping her wrist, the other with two fingers extended, crossed, as if she has a secret she refuses to tell. A stroke of genius on his part, if he does say so himself. But they say the sculptor does not create, he simply reveals what lies hidden within the clay. Already it is giving him ideas for a title. The Secrets of Eve, or maybe Original Sin. There is something there. More time, perhaps. No point naming it until it’s complete.
“How did you sleep love?” Her first words, spoken through the gravel of sleep.
“You’re awake,” the Sculptor says. He had been working so close to her face, filling in the well of her clavicle, and yet hadn’t noticed her stir until she spoke. Her gold-flecked eyes are rimmed with red.
“I missed you,” she says.
“I had the most incredible dream,” says the Sculptor. “Oh, please tell me all about it.”
As he recounts the details—the sky of lighting, the eagle’s talons, and that incredible feeling of lightness—he continues to work the clay into her collarbones, up her neck, and finally over her chin. For ease, he’s piled her hair on top of her head and tied it there with a rubber band. He’ll have to deal with it later. Likely he will sculpt it flat to her head and add the hair on later, carving out the threads with the point of a pin.
“What do you think it means?” she asks.
“Perhaps it’s some kind of metaphor,” he says. “For getting unstuck from something. Or perhaps it means nothing at all.”
“I think it’s a prediction,” she says. “For your career. You’re about to have a huge breakthrough, and soon you’ll be soaring through the clouds!”
“Is that so?” says the Sculptor, bemused at her enthusiasm. So uncharacteristic even a day ago. But that version of her feels long dead now.
“Of course! You deserve it, Bug.” “Maybe you’ll be my big break, then.”
A phone rings, muffled behind her. The Sculptor stands, wipes his hands on a towel. He finds it wedged between the couch cushions, but too late. It goes quiet in his hands. The light of the screen assaults his eyes. Numerous missed calls, every twenty minutes or so, all through the night. All from her mother. Suddenly, it jumps to life in his hand once again. He picks it up.
“Aggie, yes—no, she can’t come to the phone right now. She’s in the middle of something important. Yes—I understand you’re in a lot of pain. That’s what the nurses are for, Aggie. Your daughter is not a nurse. She’s barely through her undergrad—I’m sure she misses you too, but right now—no, she asked not to be—did you get my flowers? I sent flowers—yes alright, fine. But you aren’t going to like the answer.”
The Sculptor mutes the call and walks back over to his masterpiece.
“Your mother wants to talk to you.”
“Oh, her again?”she says. “I’m sure she’s alright. I don’t want to interrupt your flow.”
“She’s insisting.”
The Sculptor presses the unmute button and raises the phone to her ear, still uncovered by clay.
“What is it mom? No, I can’t come right now, I’m in the middle of something. Yes it’s important—what do you mean they’re discharging you? You haven’t recovered yet. No—well tell them they can’t. I haven’t had a chance to—we haven’t talked about it yet. Yes I’m going to, but—mom, I have to go. I promise, someone will be by tomorrow. No, they’re not going to just throw you out on the street. Don’t worry. I have to go mom.”
She nods her head toward him, and the Sculptor hangs up the phone.
“They’re trying to discharge her,” she says.
“I heard,” says the Sculptor. “She can hardly walk.”
“She says it’s the money. But I know I paid her bill. It’s just that damn nurse.”
“Nutjob,” says the Sculptor. “What haven’t we had a chance to talk about?”
At this, she casts her eyes down, nearly closing them. He hadn’t thought about her eyes. He won’t be able to sculpt directly into them; she will have to keep them closed. He can carve the irises overtop.
“It’s nothing,” she says. “Really, I’m sure that nurse is just misinformed.”
“You want me to take care of your mother,” he says.
“No, of course not. I couldn’t ask that of you. I know. It’s just—I don’t know what’s going to…”
“You can ask anything of me, and I will give it to you. You are the love of my life.”
At this, she smiles, big and broad, the corners of her mouth creasing so beautifully he feels tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. He reaches into his bucket of clay and smears it on her cheeks, filling in the wrinkles, outlining the bones. And then the corners of her eyes as well, holding on to her joy. Her forehead, capturing the lines before they have a chance to fall. Before long, he has wrapped the clay fully around her head, until all that remains uncovered are her red-rimmed eyes, brimming with tears, and the small puckered center of her mouth.
“Nearly there, love,” he says. “Nearly there,” she repeats.
“You’ve done beautifully.” “I love you, Bug.”
“I know you do,” says the Sculptor.
She closes her eyes, a tear dripping from the corner, wetting the clay as he smears it over her eyelids. He will miss those eyes. Their tired flutter as she drifts in and out on the couch. Their sarcastic roll in his direction. He will be sure to do them justice.
But he can’t bring himself to finish it. Her mouth—her lips. He’s enjoyed talking to her these last hours. He’s surprised just how much he’s enjoyed it. They could go on just like this, he thinks. He could do his work over there by the window, and she could stand here, encouraging him, keeping him company. She used to sing, didn’t she? He has a memory, somewhere, of her voice. It was beautiful. Maybe she could sing for him again.
“Bug?” she asks, her voice hoarse. “Yes, my love?”
“I hate to ask, but—”
“I told you, love,”the Sculptor says. “Anything.”
“Could you bring me a drink of water? It’s just that, I haven’t had anything since yesterday and I’m getting a little thirsty.”
He sees then her lips, puckered, searching, but not for him.
“Of course, dear.”
The Sculptor stands from his stool, wipes his hands on the towel, walks to the kitchen. The water pours cloudy into the glass, agitated from being pushed up and out of the pipe. But it settles eventually. He opens the drawer beside the kitchen sink, grabs a plastic straw.
Her lips are still searching when he returns, and he places the straw between them. She sucks greedily, draining the glass gulp by gulp. She gasps when it’s over.
“Thank you, Bug,” she says, panting like a child. “You always know how to take care of me.”
“And I always will,” says the Sculptor. “Ready?”
She says nothing, nor can she move.But he imagines she nods. He leans forward, savors her lips one last time, then reaches into the bucket, draws up his clay, and seals them.
The loft is still. Quiet. The noontime sun pours in through the picture window. His stomach rumbles. He is hungry. When did he last eat? He wipes his hands on the towel, stands, drops it to the floor. His knees ache. He cracks his thumbs, then his elbows.He rubs his eyes. It has been a long time since he’s taken on a project of this magnitude. He’d forgotten how much it takes out of you.
The Sculptor steps back to admire his work. It stands like an obelisk, a woman captured in salt. And yet it is perfect. Every curve, every line, every wrinkle and crease. The soft plane of the stomach, the tone of the thighs. He could stare at it for the rest of his life, he thinks, and still find new things to admire in it.
A robin flutters by out the window, lands on the sill, looks in. Its short talons grip the concrete, and then it leaps, diving down and out of view.
And yet, there is something. Not a flaw, per se. Just there, on the left ankle. Uneven with the other; a bit of spare clay. He picks up his knife, shaves it off. There. Much better.
The phone rings once again on the floor, and the Sculptor lifts it to his eyes. Her mother. Calling again to demand his attention. As if he hasn’t already shown her more care than she deserves. He presses the silence button, drops it onto the stool. Picks up his tools once again.
He’ll call her back later. Right now, he has work to do.
