I'll Give You the Sun (18 page)

I remain committed to my eyes-on-the-shoes strategy, so I'm not sure but believe he's released his grip on my arm so he can accompany the ranting in Spanish with flailing hand gestures. That or birds are swooping around above my head. When the movement stills and the irate Spanish peters out, I gather my nerve and raise my head to take a gander at what I'm up against here. Not good. He's a skyscraper, impossibly imposing with his arms crossed now against his chest in a battle stance, studying me like I'm a new life form. Which really is pot meet kettle, because, wow, up close he looks like he just emerged from a pit of quicksand—a total swamp thing. He's completely covered in clay except for the streaks on his cheeks from crying and the hellfire green eyes that are drilling into me.

“Well?” he says with impatience, like he's already asked me a question I didn't answer.

I swallow. “I'm sorry,” I say. “I didn't mean to . . .” Um, what comes next? I didn't mean to jump a fence, climb a fire escape, and watch you have a nervous breakdown.

I try again. “I came last night—”

“You've been up there watching me all night?” he roars. “I tell you go away the other day and you come back and watch me all night?”

Not only puppies, this man eats adorable bouncing babies.

“No. Not
all
night . . .” I say, and then before I know it, I'm at it again. “I wanted to ask you to mentor me, you know, I'd work as an intern, do whatever, clean up, anything, because I have to make this sculpture.” I meet his eyes. “Just
have
to make it and it has to be in stone for many reasons, ones you wouldn't even believe, and my teacher Sandy said you're the only one who carves anymore, like practically in the world”—did he just smile ever so faintly?—“but when I came you seemed so . . . I don't know what, and of course, you told me to go away, which I did, but then I came back last night thinking I'd try to ask again, but chickened out, because, okay, you're a little scary, I mean frankly, whoa—you are like
totally
scary . . .” His eyebrows rise at that, cracking the clay on his forehead. “But last night, the way you sculpted that piece blind, it was . . .” I try to think of what it was, but can't come up with anything to do it justice. “I just couldn't believe it,
could not believe it,
and then I've been thinking that you might be, I don't know, maybe a little magical or something because in my sculpture textbook it talked all about those angels you used to carve as a kid, and it said you were believed to be enchanted, or possessed even, no offense, and this sculpture, the one I have to make, well, I need help,
that
kind of help, because I have this idea that I can make things right, like if I make it, maybe someone will understand something finally and that is very important to me, very, very important, because she never understood me, not really, and she's very mad about something I did . . .” I take a breath, add, “And I'm sad too.” I sigh. “I'm not okay either. Not at all. I wanted to tell you that the last time I came. Sandy even made me go to the school counselor, but she just told me to imagine a meadow . . .” I realize I'm done, so I close my mouth and stand there waiting for the paramedics, or whoever comes with the straightjacket.

It's more than I've talked in the last two years combined.

He brings his hand to his mouth and begins examining me less like I'm a space alien and more like he did that sculpture last night. When he finally speaks, to my great surprise and relief, he doesn't say, “I'm calling the authorities,” but, “We will have a cup of coffee. Yes? I could use a break.”

• • •

I
follow Guillermo Garcia down a dark dusty hallway with many closed doors leading to rooms where all the other sixteen-year-old art students are kept chained up. It occurs to me that no one knows I'm here. Suddenly the whole gravestone-cutter thing doesn't seem like such a plus.

For courage, say your name three times into your closed hand

(How about a can of pepper spray instead, Grandma?)

I say my name three times into my closed hand. Six times. Nine times and counting . . .

He turns around, smiles, points with his finger into the air. “No one makes coffee as good as Guillermo Garcia.”

I smile back. So that didn't seem particularly homicidal, but maybe he's trying to relax me, ease me into his lair, like the witch in Hansel and Gretel.

Health Alert: A respirator is in order. Whole civilizations of motes are caught in the thick stripes of light beaming down from two high windows. I look at the floor, jeez, it's
so
dusty I'm making footprints. I wish I could hover like Grandma S. so as not to stir it all up. And this dankness—there's got to be toxic black mold spores creeping all over these cement walls.

We enter a bigger area.

“The mailroom,” Guillermo says.

He's not kidding. There are tables, chairs, couches, land-sliding with months, maybe years of mail, all unopened, falling to the floor in piles. There's a kitchen area to my right teeming with botulism, another closed door, surely where some bound and gagged hostages are, a staircase leading to a loft area—I can see an unmade bed—and on my left, oh Clark Gable yes, to my great happiness, there is: a life-size stone angel that looks like it lived outside long before it moved in here.

It's one of
them
. It has to be. Jackpot! In his biography, it said that to this day, in Colombia, people come from far and wide to whisper their wishes into the cold stone ears of a Guillermo Garcia angel. This one is spectacular, as tall as me, with hair that falls down her back in long loose locks that appear to be made of silk, not stone. Her wide oval face is cast downward like she's gazing lovingly over a child, and her wings rise from her back like freedom. She looks like
David
did in Sandy's office, one breath away from life. I want to hug her or start squealing but instead ask calmly, “Does she sing to you at night?”

“I am afraid, the angels, they do not sing to me,” he says.

“Yeah, me neither,” I say, which for some reason makes him turn around and smile at me.

When his back is to me again, I make a hard left and tiptoe across the room. I can't help it. I have to get my wish in that angel's ear immediately.

He waves an arm in the air. “Yes, yes, everyone does that. If only it work.”

I ignore his skepticism and wish my heart out into the perfect shell-like ear of the angel—
Best to bet on all the horses, dear
—noticing, when I've finished, that the wall behind the angel is covered in sketches, mostly of bodies, lovers, blank-faced men and women embracing or rather exploding in each other's arms. Studies, I suppose, for the giants in the other room? I survey the mailroom again, see that most of the walls are similarly covered. The only break in the cave art is where a large painting hangs without a frame. It's of a woman and a man kissing on a cliff by the sea while the whole world around them spins into a tornado of color—the palette is bold and bright like Kandinsky's or my Mom's favorite Franz Marc's.

I didn't know he painted too.

I walk over to the canvas, or maybe it's the other way around. Some paintings stay on a wall; not this one. It's color-flooding out of two dimensions, so I'm smack in the middle of it, smack in the middle of a kiss that could make a girl, one not on a boycott, wonder where a certain English guy might be . . .

“It saves paper,” Guillermo Garcia says. I didn't realize I'd started tracing my hand over one of the wall-sketches by the painting. He's leaning against a large industrial sink watching me. “I like the trees very much.”

“Trees are cool,” I say absently, a bit overwhelmed by all the naked bodies, all the love, the lust everywhere around me. “But they're my brother's, not mine,” I add without thinking. I glance at his hand for a wedding ring. None. And no feeling that a woman's been here for ages. But what about the giant couples? And the woman wrenching out of the male form in the sculpture he made last night? And this painting of a kiss? And all these lusty cave drawings? And Drunken Igor? And the sobbing I witnessed? Sandy said something happened to him—what was it? What is it? There's definitely the feeling here that something's gone terribly wrong.

The clay on Guillermo's forehead has crinkled up with his confusion. I realize what I just said about the trees. “Oh, my brother and I divvied up the world when we were younger,” I tell him. “I had to give him the trees and the sun and some other stuff for an incredible cubist portrait he made that I wanted.”

The remains of the portrait are still in a plastic bag under my bed. When I got home from Brian's going away party that night, I saw that Noah had ripped it up and scattered it all over my bedroom. I thought: That's right, I don't deserve a love story. Not anymore. Love stories aren't written for girls who could do what I just did to my brother, for girls with black hearts.

Still, I gathered up every last piece of the guy. I've tried to put him back together so many times, but it's impossible. I can't even remember what he looked like now, but I'll never forget the reaction I had when I first saw him in Noah's drawing pad. I
had
to have him. I would've given up the real sun, so giving him an imaginary one was nothing.

“I see,” Guillermo Garcia says. “So how long did these negotiations last? To divide the world?”

“They were ongoing.”

He crosses his arms, again in that battle stance. It seems to be his preferred pose. “You are very powerful, you and your brother. Like gods,” he says. “But honestly, I do not think you make a good trade.” He shakes his head. “You say you are so sad, maybe this is why. No sun. No trees.”

“I lost the stars and the oceans too,” I tell him.

“This is terrible,” he says, his eyes widening inside the clay mask of his face. “You are a terrible negotiator. You need a lawyer next time.” There's amusement in his voice.

I smile at him. “I got to keep the flowers.”

“Thank God,” he says.

Something strange is going on, something so strange I can't quite believe it. I feel at ease. Of all places, here, with him.

Alas, that's what I'm thinking when I notice the cat, the
black
cat. Guillermo leans down, takes the black bundle of bad luck into his arms. He nuzzles his head into its neck, cooing to it in Spanish. Most serial killers are animal lovers, I read that once.

“This is Frida Kahlo.” He turns around. “You know Kahlo?”

“Of course.” Mom's book on her and Diego Rivera is called
Count the Ways
. I've read it cover to cover.

“Wonderful artist . . . so tormented.” He holds up the cat so she's facing him. “Like you,” he says to the cat, then lowers her to the floor. She slinks right back to him, rubbing herself against his legs, oblivious to the years of rotten luck she's filling our lives with.

“Did you know that toxoplasmosis and campylobacteriosis are transmitted to humans from the fecal matter of cats?” I ask Guillermo.

He knits his brow, making the clay on his forehead break into fissures. “No, I did not know. And I do not want to know that.” He's spinning a pot in the air with his hands. “I've erased it from my mind already. Gone. Poof. You should too. Flying bricks and now this. I never even hear of those things.”

“You could go blind or worse. It happens. People have no idea how dangerous having pets is.”

“This is what you think? That it is dangerous to have a little kitty cat?”

“Most definitely. Especially a
black
one, but that's a whole other bunch of bananas.”

“Okay,” he says. “That is what you think. You know what I think? I think you are crazy.” He throws his head back and laughs. It warms up the entire world. “Totally
loca.
” He turns around and starts talking in Spanish, saying Clark Gable knows what as he takes off his smock, hangs it on a hook. Underneath he's wearing jeans and a black T-shirt like a normal guy. He pulls a notepad out of the front pocket of the smock and slips it into the back pocket of his jeans. I wonder if it's an idea pad. At CSA, we're encouraged to keep an idea pad on our person at all times. Mine's empty. He turns both faucets on full blast, puts one arm underneath, then the other, scrubbing both with industrial soap. Brown water runs off him in muddy streams. Next he puts his whole head under the faucet. This is going to take a while.

I bend down to make friends with bad-luck Frida, who's still circling Guillermo's feet. Keep your enemies close, as they say. What's so odd is that even with Frida and the toxoplasmosis and this man who should terrify me for so many reasons, I feel more at home than I have anywhere for so long. I scratch my fingers on the floor, trying to get the cat's attention. “Frida,” I say softly.

The title of Mom's book
Count the Ways
on Kahlo and Rivera is a line taken from her favorite poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. “Do you know it by heart?” I'd asked her one day when we were walking in the woods together, just us, a rarity.

“Of course I do.” She did a joyful little skip and pulled me close to her so that every inch of me felt happy and leaping. “‘How do I love thee?'” she said, her big dark eyes shining on me, our hair whipping around our heads, blending and twisting together in the wind. I knew it was a romantic poem, but that day, it felt about us, our private mother-daughter thing. “‘Let me count the ways,'” she sang out . . . wait, she
is
singing out! “‘I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach—'”

It's her, here, now—her deep gravelly voice is reciting the poem to me!

“‘I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.'”