I’m sunk into a giant plush leather chair across from Sandy. He’s just apologized about the screw falling out and joked that maybe Fish was right about that ghost, eh, CJ?
Chuckling politely here at the absurd notion.
His fingers are piano-ing on the desk. Neither of us is speaking. I’m fine with this.
To his left is a life-size print of Michelangelo’s David, so vivid in the fragile afternoon light that I keep expecting his chest to heave as he claims his first breath. Sandy follows my gaze over his shoulder to the magnificent stone man.
“Helluva biography your mother wrote,” he says, breaking the silence. “Fearless in her examination of his sexuality. Deserved every bit of acclaim it got.” He takes off his glasses and rests them on the desk. “Talk to me, CJ.”
I glance out the window at the long stretch of beach buried in fog. “A white-out’s coming for sure,” I say. One of the town of Lost Cove’s claims to fame is how often it disappears. “Do you know that some native peoples believe fog contains the restless spirits of the dead?” From Grandma’s bible.
“Is that right?” He strokes his beard, transporting flecks of clay from his hand to it. “That’s interesting, but right now we need to talk about you. This is a very serious situation.”
I think I was talking about me.
Silence prevails once again . . . and I’ve decided to eat the crushed glass. Final answer.
Sandy sighs. Because I’m disturbing him? I disturb people, I’ve noticed. Didn’t used to.
“Look, I know it’s been an extraordinarily hard time for you, CJ.” He’s searching my face with his kind billy goat eyes. It’s excruciating. “And we pretty much gave you a free pass last year because of the tragic circumstances.” He has on The Poor Motherless Girl Look—all adults get it at some point when they talk to me, like I’m doomed, shoved out of the airplane without a parachute because mothers are the parachutes. I drop my gaze, notice a fatal melanoma on his arm, see his life pass before my eyes, then realize with relief it’s a dot of clay. “But CSA is a tight ship,” he says more sternly. “Not passing a studio is grounds for expulsion, and we decided to just put you on probation.” He leans forward. “It’s not all the breakage in the kiln. That happens. Granted, it seems to always happen to you, which calls into question your technique and focus, but it’s the way you’ve isolated yourself and your clear lack of investment that deeply concern us. You must know there are young artists all around the country banging on our doors for a spot, for your very spot.”
I think how much Noah deserves my spot. Isn’t that what Mom’s ghost is telling me by breaking everything I make?
I know it is.
I take a breath and then I say it. “Let them have my spot. Really, they deserve it. I don’t.” I lift my head, look in his stunned eyes. “I don’t belong here, Sandy.”
“I see,” he says. “Well, you might feel that way, but the CSA faculty think differently. I think differently.” He picks up his glasses, begins cleaning them with his clay-splattered shirt, making them dirtier. “There was something so unique in those women you made out of sand, the ones that were part of your admission portfolio.”
Huh?
He closes his eyes for a moment like he’s listening to distant music. “They were so joyful, so whimsical. So much motion, so much emotion.”
What’s he talking about?
“Sandy, I submitted dress patterns and sample dresses I made. I talked about the sand sculptures in my essay.”
“Yes, I remember the essay. And I remember the dresses. Lovely. Too bad we don’t have a fashion focus. But the reason you’re sitting in that chair is because of the photographs of those wonderful sculptures.”
There are no photographs of those sculptures.
Okay then, feeling a little light-headed here in this episode of The Twilight Zone.
Because no one ever even saw them. I made sure of it, always sneaking far down the beach to an isolated cove, the tide taking them away . . . except Noah did tell me once, no, twice actually, that he followed me and watched me build. But did he take pictures? And send them to CSA? Nothing could seem less likely.
When he found out I got in and he didn’t, he destroyed everything he’d ever made. Not even a doodle remains. He hasn’t picked up a pencil, pastel, stick of charcoal, or paintbrush since.
I glance up at Sandy, who’s rapping his knuckles on the desk. Wait, did he just say my sand sculptures were wonderful? I think he did. When he sees I’m listening again, he stops knuckle-rapping and continues. “I know we inundate you with lots of theory your first two years here, but let’s you and me get back to basics. One simple question, CJ. Isn’t there anything you want to make anymore? You’ve been through so much for someone so young. Isn’t there something you want to say? Something you need to say?” He’s gotten very serious and intense. “Because that’s what all this is about. Nothing else. We wish with our hands, that’s what we do as artists.”
His words are loosening something inside. I don’t like it.
“Think about it,” he says more gently. “I’m going to ask again. Is there something you need in the world that only your two hands can create?”
I feel a searing pain in my chest.
“Is there, CJ?” he insists.
There is. But it’s off limits. Imagining that meadow now.
“No,” I say.
He grimaces. “I don’t believe you.”
“There’s nothing,” I say, holding my hands together as tight as I can in my lap. “Nada. Zip.”
He shakes his head, disappointed. “Okay then.”
I gaze up at David . . .
“CJ, where are you?”
“Here, I’m here. Sorry.” I turn my attention back to him.
He’s clearly upset. Why? Why does he care so much? Like he said, there are young artists all around the country dying for my spot. “We need to talk to your father,” he says. “You’d be giving up an opportunity of a lifetime. Is this really what you want?”
My eyes drift back to David. It’s like he’s made of light. What I want? I want only one thing—
Then it’s as if David’s jumped off the wall and swooped me into his massive stone arms and is whispering into my ear.
He reminds me that Michelangelo made him over five hundred years ago.
“Do you really want to transfer out?”
“No!” The vehemence in my voice surprises us both. “I need to work in stone.” I point to David. An idea’s exploding inside me. “There is something I need to make,” I tell him. I feel wild, like I’m gulping for air. “Badly.” I’ve wanted to make it since I got here, but I couldn’t bear it if Mom broke it. Just couldn’t bear it.
“This pleases me to no end,” Sandy says, clasping his hands together.
“But it can’t be built in clay. No kiln,” I say. “It has to be stone.”
“Much more resilient,” he says, smiling. He gets it. Well, part of it.
“Exactly,” I say. She will not be able to break this so easily! And more importantly, she’s not going to want to. I’m going to dazzle her. I’m going to communicate with her. This is the way. “I’m so sorry, Jude,” she’ll whisper in my ear. “I had no idea you had it in you.”
And then just maybe she’ll forgive me.
I don’t realize Sandy’s been talking, oblivious of the music swelling, of the mother-daughter reconciliation that’s occurring in my head. I try to focus.
“The problem is, with Ivan in Italy for the year, there’s no one in the department to help you. If you wanted to work in clay and cast in bronze I could—”
“No, it’s got to be stone, the harder the better, granite even.” This is genius.
He laughs, back to his mellow goat-grazing-in-a-field self. “Maybe, hmm, maybe . . . if you’re okay with mentoring with someone outside of school?”
“Sure.” You kidding? Bonus.
Sandy’s stroking his beard, thinking.
And thinking.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Well, there is someone.” Sandy raises his eyebrows. “A master carver. One of the last ones standing perhaps. But no, I don’t think it’s possible.” He pushes the idea away with his hand. “He doesn’t teach anymore. Doesn’t exhibit. Something happened to him. No one knows what the deal is, and even before all this, he wasn’t the most . . . hmm, how shall I put it?” He looks up at the ceiling, finds the word there: “Human.” He laughs, starts digging around in a pile of magazines on his desk. “An extraordinary sculptor and a helluva speaker. I heard him when I was in grad school, amazing, he—”
“If not human, what?” I interrupt, intrigued.
“Actually . . .” He smiles at me. “I think your mother said it best.”
“My mother?” I don’t even need to have The Sweetwine Gift to know this is a sign.
“Yes, your mother wrote about him in Art Tomorrow. Funny. I was just looking at the interview the other day.” He flips through a few issues of the magazine Mom used to write for, but doesn’t find it. “Oh well,” he says, giving up. He leans back in his chair. “Let me think . . . what were her words? Oh yes, yes, she said, ‘He was the kind of man who walks into a room and all the walls fall down.’”
A man who walks into a room and all the walls fall down? “What’s his name?” I ask, feeling a little breathless.
He presses his lips together for a long moment, studying me, then seems to make a decision. “I’ll give him a call first. If it’s a go, you can pay him a visit after winter break.” He writes a name and address on a piece of paper and hands it to me.
Smiling, he says, “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”