Walking back through the mailroom feeling dismal, I notice that a door I could’ve sworn was closed when I ran past a moment ago is now ajar. Did the wind open it? A ghost? Peering in, I find it hard to imagine one of mine would want to lure me in here, but who knows? Opening doors is not Grandma’s thing.
“Mom?” I whisper. I say a few lines of the poem, hoping she might recite them back to me again. Not this time.
I open the door wider, then step into a room that was once an office. Before a cyclone hit it. I quickly close the door behind me. There are overturned bookcases and books toppled everywhere. There are drifts of paper and sketchbooks and notepads that have been swept off the desk and other surfaces. There are ashtrays full of cigarette butts, an empty bottle of tequila on its side, another one smashed in a corner. There are punch marks in the walls, a shattered window. And in the center of the floor, there’s a large stone angel facedown on the ground, her back broken.
The room has been taken apart in a rage. I’m thinking maybe the one that was going on the first time I came here, the one that sounded like a furniture-throwing contest. I look around at the physical manifestation of Guillermo’s trouble, whatever it is, and a mixture of excitement and fear weaves through me. I know I shouldn’t snoop, but curiosity quickly overrides my conscience as it often does—snoop-control issues—and I’m bending down and randomly perusing some of the papers on the floor: mostly old letters. There’s one from an art student in Detroit wanting to work with him. Another handwritten from a woman in New York promising him anything (underlined three times) if only he’d mentor her—jeez. There are consignment forms from galleries, a proposal from a museum about a commission. Press releases from past shows. I pick up a notepad like the one he keeps in his pocket and leaf through it, wondering if there might be some clue in it, in this room, as to what happened to him. The small pad is full of sketches, some lists and notes too, all in Spanish. Maybe material lists? Notes on sculptures? Ideas? Feeling guilty, I toss it back onto the heap, but then I can’t help myself and pick up another one, flip through it, find more of the same, until I come to a page where there are some words in English:
Dearest,
I have gone mad. I do not want to eat or drink, or I will lose the taste of you in my mouth, do not want to open my eyes if not to see you, do not want to breathe any air that you have not breathe, that has not been inside your body, deep inside your beautiful body. I must
I turn to the next page, but it doesn’t continue. I must—what? I whip through the rest of the pad, but the remaining pages are blank. I search through a few more notepads scattered around, but find no more words in English, no more words for Dearest. The skin on my arms is prickling. Dearest is her. It has to be. The woman in the painting. The clay woman climbing out of the clay man’s chest. The female giant. All the female giants.
I read the note again. It’s so steamy, so desperate, so romantic.
If a man doesn’t give his beloved the letter he writes, his love is true
That’s what happened to him then: love. Tragic, impossible love. And Guillermo’s so perfectly cast. No woman can resist a man who has tidal waves and earthquakes beneath the skin.
Oscar seems like he has natural disasters under the skin too. But give me a break. Male leads in love stories need to be devoted, need to chase trains, cross continents, give up fortunes and thrones, defy convention, face persecution, take apart rooms and break the backs of angels, sketch the beloved all over the cement walls of their studios, build sculptures of giants as homages.
They don’t flirt shamelessly with the likes of me when they have Transylvanian girlfriends. What an effing jerk.
I separate the page with the love note from the rest of the notepad, and as I’m pressing it into the safety of my jeans pocket, I hear the front door to the studio do its horror-creak. Oh no. My pulse speeds as I tiptoe over to the door and tuck behind it so I’ll be hidden should Guillermo decide to come in. I’m definitely not supposed to be in here. This is a most private kind of chaos, like the contents of his mind all spilled out. I hear a chair scrape across the floor, then smell smoke. Great. He’s having a cigarette right outside the door.
I wait. And stare down at all the art books piled everywhere, recognizing a lot of them from school, recognizing my mother. Half of her face is staring back at me from one of the stacks. It’s the author photo on the back of her Michelangelo biography, Angel in the Marble. It gives me a start. But of course it’s here. He has every art book in here. I squat down and reach for it, careful not to make a sound as I pull it out of the stack. I open to the title page, wondering if she signed it when they met. She did.
To Guillermo Garcia,
“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
Thank you for the interview—a tremendous honor.
Yours with admiration,
Dianna Sweetwine
Mom. I close the book quickly, quickly, keeping it shut with my hands so it doesn’t fly open, so I don’t. My knuckles are white with the effort. She always signed with that Michelangelo quote. It was her favorite. I hug the book to my chest tight, so tight, wanting to jump inside it.
Then I secure it inside the waistband of my jeans and cover it with my sweatshirt.
“CJ,” Guillermo calls. I hear his retreating footsteps. When I’m certain he’s gone, I slip soundlessly out of the room, shutting the door behind me. I cross the mailroom swiftly, quietly, and enter the jail cell room, where I hide Mom’s book in my portfolio case, aware, oh, yes, I am, that I’m acting like a super-kook, buttons flying everywhere today. Though it’s not my first bout of larceny. I’ve stolen quite a few copies of Mom’s books from the school library too—every time they replace them, in fact. And the town library. And several bookstores. I do not know why I do it. I do not know why I stole the love note. I do not know why I do much of anything.
I find Guillermo in the studio, squatting, petting a blissed-out Frida Kahlo’s belly. His note to Dearest is burning up my pocket. I want to know more. What happened to them?
He nods at me. “Are you ready?” He rises. “Are you ready for your life to change?”
“And how,” I say.
The rest of the afternoon consists of my choosing a practice rock—I fall in love with an amber-colored alabaster one that looks like a fire’s burning inside it—and listening to Guillermo, who has become Moses, recite commandments about carving:
Thou shalt be bold and courageous.
Thou shalt take chances.
Thou shalt wear protective gear.
(BECAUSE THERE’S ASBESTOS IN THE DUST!)
Thou shalt have no preconceptions about what is inside the practice rock but shall wait for the rock to tell thee directly.
After this one, he touches my solar plexus with his outspread hand, adding, “What slumbers in the heart is what slumbers in the stone, understand?”
Then he bestows the final commandment onto me:
Thou shalt remake the world.
This is something I would very much like to do, though no clue how carving a rock will achieve it.
When I get home after hours and hours of practice carving—I’m spectacularly horrible at it—with my wrist muscles aching, thumbs bruised from hundreds of hammer mishaps, asbestosis disease already spreading through my lung tissue despite the face mask, I open my bag and find three big round oranges looking up at me. I’m stupid-struck with love for Oscar for a moment, then remember Sophia.
What duplicity! Seriously, what a major asshat, as Noah used to say when he was Noah.
I bet he told Sophia his mother prophesized about her too.
I bet his mother’s not even dead.
I take the oranges to the kitchen and make juice.