Then he drove her back to her house, pressing an apple into her hand as she got out of the car. He drove off with a friendly wave.
With a deep sigh she pulled open the front door, looking resolutely down the steps. At some point, Jamie had removed the Lucy from the center of the floor. She closed her eyes, profoundly grateful to be spared the sight of the ruined statue.
Tomorrow, she thought, tomorrow I’ll go down and see exactly how much damage was done. Tomorrow I’ll be able to start all over again if I have to.
She was sagging with fatigue. She left a note for Tonia on the floor in the hall and went upstairs to bed.
The phone’s shrill ring woke her around five. When she got the receiver to her ear, she heard Roman’s voice whispering on the downstairs extension so she hung up. She got out of bed and went to prepare supper. Then she sat and watched TV with the kids until it was time for them to be in bed.
The next morning she felt less exhausted but still detached from life. The children had already forgotten some of the tension of the previous day and she envied them their resilience. She did all the necessary chores but she wouldn’t walk through the studio so she left the dirty-clothes basket at the bottom of the steps. She was sitting down for another cup of coffee when Howell’s car turned up the driveway. His reappearance did not, somehow, surprise her.
This time she mustered a smile as he passed the window, and gestured him to come on in.
‘The Madonna of the Sorrows is better, I see,’ he said.
‘Coffee?’
‘Thank you and don’t get up. I know where the cups are. The bourbon, by the way, is not over the refrigerator. It is in the dining-room closet. That’s why I know where the cups are.’
‘Oh.’
He sat down at the corner of the table at her right, pouring out his coffee.
‘I said some selfish things yesterday about not getting involved in your marital problems. On further reflection, I have the nagging suspicion that I might have been the cause of one.’
She looked him squarely in the eye for the first time since their pleasant lunch so long ago.
‘I can almost set the scene,’ he continued, gesturing expansively in the air, ‘small child makes comment about Mommy coming home in a big beautiful car . . . hubby asks sternly whose big beautiful car . . .’
‘Yes, you can set the scene. But your entrance is the climax of Act Two, not Act One, or should I say Act 22.’
‘You’ve a jealous-type husband?’ He leaned back to scrutinise her, his expression neutral. ‘Has he any reason?’
‘In spite of my parentage, none. Maybe, because of parentage, none. But he feels that the sins of the mater, in this case, are indeed likely to crop up in the daughter. And right now,’ she turned to Howell with a brazen smile, ‘if he’s giving me the name, I might just as well have the game. So, how about it, big boy, shall we adjourn to the “casting couch”?’
Mirelle ruined her bold effect by bursting into tears, hiding her face in her arms on the table. Howell let her cry and when her sobs had quieted, he gave her his handkerchief.
‘It would be a red silk one,’ she said, drying her eyes.
‘I buy them by the gross.’
‘As if anyone would have any interest in a dragged-out schlep like me,’ she sighed, pushing back her chair to get the comb and lipstick from the hall table drawer.
Howell poured fresh coffee in her cup when she returned so she sat down again, flipping her thick hair back over her shoulder.
‘You have a certain je ne sais quoi about you even now,’ he said blandly. ‘However, I prefer to be loved for my own sweet self rather than be used in a masochistic spirit of revenge.’
‘You certainly deserve better. I mean . . .’ and her voice trailed off. She bent her head and busied herself in rubbing off the lipstick mark on the cup rim.
‘What do you do now?’ he asked in a quiet kind voice.
‘Oh, I pick up the pieces and try to put them back together again.’
‘The pieces of the statue . . . or your marriage?’
‘Both, I guess. Ironic though that it’s Lucy. She kept my marriage from cracking up once before and over a much, much much more basic problem. It’s funny. I know he’s been unfaithful to me. And that doesn’t bother me. Honestly! Because, well, infidelity is simply not worth getting upset about. I mean, I had an idea of certain qualities that would be essential to me in a husband. Steve has eight of the twelve so I figured that I was ahead of the game. Sexual fidelity was not one of the twelve. I know that isn’t the usual priority . . .’
‘Certainly it’s not prevalent in suburbia,’ Howell interjected with sour amusement. ‘As a matter of fact, if you’d stop being such a paradox, you’d probably be better off.’
‘I don’t understand.’
He grinned at her reassuringly. ‘Think it over. Later. When you’ve started thinking again. But you are a paradox, my dear.’
‘What’s paradoxical about not worrying if your husband is sleeping with other women? That’s on his conscience, not mine. And good Lord, the man’s away so much, it’s only natural to . . . to do what’s natural.’
‘You are either remarkably well-adjusted or incredibly naive.’
She didn’t know whether or not he was laughing at her.
‘I shouldn’t have brought that up, his sleeping around, the other night. But he was accusing me of it, and I haven’t.’
‘Thus spake outraged virtue!’ There was a damnable twinkle in Howell’s eyes.
‘I’m not being outraged virtue!’ But he’d no right to blame me for the sins on his conscience. And he was sorry about knocking the Lucy over. He really is proud of my work. Lucy did that for me. Maybe he doesn’t understand why I have to sculpt, but he likes the money it brings in. I don’t care which just so long as I have the chance to do it and he doesn’t complain too much.
‘Oh, don’t misunderstand me, Jamie. I’m no undiscovered Michaelangela, but I’ve been well trained. And if there is such a thing as inherited instinct or talent, I have that, for all that my father worked only in oils. But my work is solid, competent and sometimes provocative.’
‘I’d employ different adjectives,’ Jamie said, clearing his throat hastily. ‘I rank “provocative” with “interesting” as damning adjectives. In sculpture, I put the wire-crate junkyard variety in the “provocative” category.’
‘I just have to sculpt,’ she ended lamely.
‘Then you won’t give it up because of this brouhaha and the damage to the Lucy?’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head for emphasis, ‘especially because the Lucy was involved. So you will have your work,’ she added quickly.
‘That was furthest from my mind,’ he said in acid annoyance. Then, seeing his reaction distressed her, he took her hand in his. ‘I want a LeBoyne, believe me I do. Besides,’ and he grinned wickedly at her, ‘I feel I’ve earned it.’
‘I apologise for involving you in this cris des nerfs. I see now that it’s been building up. I can usually sidestep them but I was happy and I didn’t keep my eyes open.’
He shook his head disapprovingly and pursed his lips. ‘I don’t see, myself, why you should have to keep your eyes open when you’re happy.’
‘You’re most vulnerable then,’ she replied as if he should know.
‘No wonder you close up so tightly, Mirelle.’ He rose to his feet. ‘You have no reason to apologise to me. In an obscure way, I was glad to be here with you yesterday. You needed someone. I suggest, most sincerely, however, that you cultivate a female friend. Actually I dropped by yesterday to say that I’ve been called to substitute for another accompanist who’s ill. I’ll be away until the 14th. I’ll call you when I get back.’
At the door, he turned.
‘Find Lucy in someone else, Mirelle. Clay has no opinions and makes a damned clammy shoulder to cry on.’
She watched him stride quickly to his car, his left shoulder hiked up, his gait that of the foot-
weary infantryman. For all that caustic tongue of his, James Howell was a kind man.
6
THE DAY AFTER Howell left on tour, Mirelle found the courage to go down into the studio. Howell had righted the stand and replaced the cloth. Dispassionately Mirelle stripped the statue and regarded the unnatural, misshapen twist of the mashed plasticine body. The aluminium wire of the armature showed as a grotesque fracture through the clothing clay across the thigh and down one leg. Little suggestion was left of the personality she had brought out of her material. Tentatively she twisted the head-high hand back to its position on the forehead, then she reset the position of the body frame, obliterating the remaining details of the draping. Snorting to herself, she used both hands to gouge the plasticine from the frame, and begin afresh.
To her surprise, the reworking of the statue took a relatively shorter time. There was a different feeling about the Lucy when she got it to the same stage it had been at the time of the accident. Mirelle tried in vain to define the subtle alteration because the result was a more powerful representation of the woman Mirelle had loved. Some of her unwitting sentimentalisation had been stripped from the new concept, making it a more candid portrayal of Lucy Farnoll.
She was fussing over a minor drapery detail when the doorbell rang.
‘I ought to disconnect that damned thing,’ she muttered as she reluctantly left the Lucy. The bell clamored a fourth time. ‘Just a living minute!’ She wiped her sticky hands on her smock front. ‘Never have callers when I’m clean, do I?’ She threw open the door.
‘Mrs. Martin?’ asked the woman standing there. She was clutching the strap of a shoulder-bag, balancing a thick notebook, a packet of forms, and trying to talk intelligibly around the ball-point pen between her teeth.
She wasn’t even vaguely familiar to Mirelle: not a face seen at church or the Food Fair or school and community meetings. In a stylish grey jersey dress with matching coat, her dark brown hair smartly coiffed, she was an attractive woman. Her even features were carefully made-up, lightly but expertly, so that with animation the lines of age and dissipation were not immediately apparent. The mouth was wide and thin-lipped: the smile which the pen bisected was winningly apologetic. Only the expression of the large, slightly protuberant grey eyes belied the total impression of the suburban type. The eyes, quick, darting, shrewd, were mocking and critical.
‘I’m Sylvia Esterhazy, your ward-heeler.’
‘My what?’ Mirelle laughed aloud.
Sylvia Esterhazy repeated herself good-naturedly, her husky voice playing with the laugh inside her. ‘Your county committee woman.’
The notebook was slipping from her grasp and so was the strap of her shoulder-bag. Before Mirelle was aware of her intention, she had taken the notebook from Sylvia’s hand and was shepherding her into the living-room.
‘Ward-heeler is what I am though, despite the politer title on the election ballot. We’re having a registration unit at the elementary school on Saturday and I’m trying to get all those eligible down there to register. That includes dispensing Girl Scouts as baby-sitters if necessary. You and your husband have been here over the statutory year, haven’t you? Good, we want your votes . . . either way . . . because the next election is going to be a bitch.’
‘I’m afraid I’m an Independent.’
Sylvia’s carefully delineated eyebrows rose mockingly.
‘Don’t be afraid of independence, dearie. It’s better than being a Republican,’ and her eyes glinted with repressed malice.
Mirelle laughed. ‘You mean, there actually are Democrats willing to come out in the open in this state?’
‘That’s part of the fun of being a Democrat in Delaware,’ Sylvia replied with a triumphantly wicked laugh.
Mirelle grinned back.
‘By any remote chance, is your husband also an Independent?’
‘As much as anything.’ His parents had been Republicans but they hadn’t often discussed politics.
‘Now, may I count on both of you to come and register on Saturday?’
The thought of going anywhere with Steve on Saturday was not comforting to Mirelle. Sylvia was watching her face and abruptly altered her expression.
‘He’s out of town right now,’ Mirelle explained as smoothly as she could. ‘I expect him home on Friday but . . .’ She shrugged.
‘Company man, huh?’ Sylvia asked, making a notation. ‘Your occupation is . . .?’
‘I’m a sculptor,’ Mirelle said swiftly, to forestall the onerous ‘housewife’. Then she realised that Sylvia’s pen had been poised: the woman was asking, not assuming.
Sylvia rolled her eyes now, at the defiance in Mirelle’s voice.
‘I like decisiveness,’ she said with a chuckle as she wrote. ‘I put “politician” down for myself,’ she added, looking up as she finished writing. It was then that she saw the Running Child.
‘You did it,’ she said with agreeable surprise and absently disengaged herself from her impedimenta, walking over to examine the figure closely. ‘Your daughter, too,’ she stated.
‘Yes, Tonia was three when I did it. She’s seven now and grown so unlike this that I’ll have to do another of her. Whining!’
Sylvia chuckled, turning the statue carefully on its base to get the full effect. ‘You sculpt with a great deal of love, don’t you?’
The phone’s summons saved Mirelle from having to answer. She excused herself quickly. The call was from a telephone solicitation for magazines so she hung up more rudely than was her custom and returned to find the living-room empty.
A sound told her that Sylvia had found the studio, and when Mirelle joined her, Sylvia turned from the Lucy, her face white with shock.
‘You knew Lucy Laben . . . Lucy Laben Farnoll?’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘Where? When? She’s been dead for years!’
The two women stared at each other until Sylvia laughed unsteadily.
‘I didn’t mean to be nosey. No, I tell a lie. I did. Then I saw the statue and . . .’ Sylvia shrugged, swallowing hard. ‘Curiosity is the bane of my existence. But you can’t imagine what a turn it gave me to see Laben to the life. Why, that’s just the way she’d stand . . . we were classmates at Duke . . . when she couldn’t make up her mind to shower or play bridge. We used to call her p.m. . . . perpetual motion . . . the way you have her feet, almost not touching. It’s uncanny, that’s what!’ Sylvia gave an embarrassed bark of laughter, shaking her head over her reaction and shock. ‘Life’s little surprises! You know, when I said you sculpt with a great deal of love a moment ago, I didn’t realise how accurate I was. Martin. Martin.’ She ran the name through her mind. ‘Mirelle Martin!’ Her eyes widened with astonishment and something else. ‘But, on the list you’re Mary Ellen . . .’
‘My baptismal name . . .’
‘Mirelle. Mirelle Martin. Of course.’ Sylvia clapped a dramatic hand to her forehead. ‘In one of those Christmas letters Lucy would deign to write, she mentioned meeting a young woman who . . .’ Sylvia paused, obviously hesitant with the truth.
‘. . . Was a very mixed-up little fool,’ Mirelle supplied with a self-deprecating laugh to put Sylvia at her ease.
‘No, that wasn’t what Lucy said,’ and Sylvia shot Mirelle an appraising look. ‘But she did mention your . . . and the adjective she used was “lovable” . . .’ Sylvia waggled a finger at Mirelle, ‘pieces that she bludgeoned you into doing for a church bazaar she’d got herself involved in.’
Mirelle laughed as a series of happy memories from that year crowded into her mind.
‘Come. Come have coffee with me,’ she urged Sylvia.
‘Oh, Lord, girl,’ and Sylvia rolled her eyes heavenwards beseechingly, ‘I’ve got the whole damned street to canvass. But I’d much rather have coffee with you. You’re the brightest spot in a weary dreary day. Okay! The Democratic Party owes me a coffee break at the very least.’
It was two hours later that Sylvia, explosively resisting her own inclination, gathered up her paraph
ernalia and whipped from the house, promising in no uncertain terms to return very soon.
She was like a private hurricane, Mirelle thought, leaning weakly against the door when Sylvia had left. The vitality of the woman, different from Lucy’s, had a contagious strength about it. For the first time in ages, Mirelle felt disappointment in a guest’s departure. They could have talked for hours more without scratching the surface of a hundred points of common interest and disagreement. What was even more flattering was Sylvia’s obvious reluctance to leave.
Mirelle caught herself up sharply. What was the use? As soon as she had got halfway friendly with Sylvia, Steve would undoubtedly be transferred. They’d been in Wilmington for over two years already, a record stay in one place. What was the sense of involving herself, with all the contingent sense of loss when they moved away? A little piece of herself bestowed and unreclaimable.
That afternoon she received a second call, from June Treadway, the chairperson of their church’s women’s association. Mirelle was not of an organisation temperament: she joined neither bowling leagues, bridge clubs nor women’s associations, resisting with inverse ratio to the amount of pressure put on her to join. Early in life, Mirelle had learned never to be dependent on the social support of other women.
In Ashland, it had been Lucy who had stimulated her interest and sponsored her at the easy geniality of the church women’s groups. She had not felt like participating in that climate again. As a matter of fact, they had not sent for their letter of transfer from the Ashland church until they moved to Wilmington. Steve had initiated that action, for obscure business reasons, and Mirelle had complied because she hadn’t cared one way or another. She went to a church anyway, Steve’s because he had a definite preference and because she wanted the children to have consistent religious instruction until they were old enough to sort that problem out for themselves. But she had never repeated her enthusiastic participation of Ashland days. It was therefore slightly surprising that she should be approached at all by the Concord church.
The Year of the Lucy Page 9