Retreat to Love (9 page)

“It’s remarkably realistic,” I ventured, meeting Wren’s gaze and quickly averting my eyes.

“And the shock effect is genuine,” Caleb added. “Not like a lot of stuff people do just for effect. It genuinely surprises.”

“I like the combination of brass and porcelain. The fragile and the enduring,” Wren said, taking it back from Angelica. “They must have been hard to combine.”

Angelica grinned. “It was. God, I’m glad you all like it. I was so nervous, being the first one under the microscope, so to speak.”

“I kept telling her she didn’t need to worry,” Theo said, taking her hand. This was new, their holding hands in front of us all. For several painfully obvious days, they had pretended to be just pals when anyone else was around. “Everyone can see right off how talented you are. Show them the sketches of the heron.”

We had seen the white block on the way in, cleaned and formed but not yet detailed. She gathered us around her easel and drew back the cover page.

“Is it, um …” I asked.

“Dead?” finished Wren.

Angelica traced the neck lightly. The heron was apparently asleep, but in some of her detail sketches we could see the bare patches of feathers carried away, the lack of eyeballs, the fact one of its legs was actually in three separate pieces.

“I want him to look as peaceful as possible,” she explained. “He’ll be large, of course, so I can get all the details right. It was taking up so much of my energy, I had to step back and regroup by finishing the little rose.”

“I do that all the time,” said Brandon. “It’s like, certain projects are so intense we can’t focus on the big picture, as it were. So we have to let it drop for a bit and just take study pics of trees, which is what I do.”

Of all of Brandon’s work I’d glimpsed in the computer lab—he left it on screen a lot when he stepped out to the toilet, it’s not as if I was snooping—every shot had been a tree. Mostly the tallish pine near the main entrance to FireWind.

Happy to get off the subject of her work—did she not find it in the least macabre?—I talked about the way I’d been stuck at home, how this retreat was exactly what I needed to refresh my mind. Everyone had a similar story, except Theo, who was, according to him, merely a funnel of some kind. His inspiration came from outside himself and he was the hand holding the brush. Angelica stroked him from shoulder to elbow as he said this.

Caleb, Lizzy, and I stopped at Wren’s cabin on the way out of Angelica’s.

“Am I the only one who thinks she doesn’t know she’s twisted?” I asked. “I mean, she’s talented as hell, but there was, like, no awareness death and destruction can be disturbing. She could be sculpting bluebirds and rainbows for all she reacts to it.”

“If eight year old boys could buy art, she’d have a big market,” Wren said, scooting over so Caleb could sit on the arm of the sofa next to her.

“Maybe that’s what she’s going for.” He leaned back so his arm was along the back of the sofa, behind Wren and Lizzy and Wren’s bright face. “Of course, I’m not saying anything bad. I don’t want anyone retaliating against me next week.”

Wren grinned up at him. “You have a lot of maggots and decomposition in your compositions?”

“Not so much.”

“Then I’m sure we’ll love it.”

“Ah, you’re just saying that. Make me feel all confident so I’ll be crushed on Tuesday.”

I stood up. “I’d best to get going if I’m going to have anything presentable myself. I haven’t had this tight a deadline in a long while.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Caleb offered, standing. “I forgot to order the groceries after lunch.”

“Give you one simple job,” I muttered.

“Hey, not fair. I’ll get them in time.”

“Barely.”

“Shuddup,” he said, nudging me with his elbow. “See you later, alligators,” he added to Wren and Lizzy.

“Bye,” they chorused. I winked at Wren, who suppressed a giggle.

Lizzy and Wren’s shows were a lot smoother. Rafael even wandered up to CypressWood when we were marveling at the half-completed
In Sickness and In Health
. Lizzy stopped talking about how she would combine the soapstone with the granite when he walked in, and we all turned to gape. He’d grown a goatee. He didn’t say anything more than ‘hi’ before kneeling in front of the sculpture to examine it, straightening to shake Lizzy’s hand with a formal little bow, and leaving.

“That was praise, I think,” I ventured after he’d left.

“I guess. He wasn’t exactly moved to tears.”

“Maybe he was holding them back until he got outside.”

She shook her head at me. “Well. As I was saying.” She looked around. “What was I saying?”

Wren let rip with a belly laugh. “He just did it for effect, hon, snap out of it! You were telling the assembled crowd of admirers about fitting Sickness over and around her,” she reached out and played her fingers over Health’s muscular back.

Health was a granite woman half-kneeling, her face towards the ground and her hair pulled loosely behind her. Her calf muscles were flexed and her hands reached behind her to cup the empty air above her hips. Her smile was so strained it was hard to decide if she was actually grimacing or not.

Sickness would be a soapstone woman resting on Health’s back. Lizzy wanted to wrap one of her arms around the granite waist; the other would be supporting her head as she leaned her elbow into Health’s back (which explained the twisting of her left shoulder blade.) Lizzy had started the sculpture months before, when she was still in Ireland, but once she had shaped the granite she’d found she couldn’t concentrate on it long enough to get anything substantial done. The break-up with Moira had further complicated things, since she couldn’t contemplate the work without also facing her emotions about the end of her relationship.

So she’d applied to FireWind and a few other retreats, and shipped the stone ahead of her once she’d been accepted. Fortunately, the founders had provided all the pneumatic equipment she and Angelica could use, since her equipment was both bulky and wired for 220v. Their studio was outfitted for the heavy work of sculpture: built-in compressor cabinets, hoseable studio floors, hydraulic work tables that could elevate to five feet, two- and four-wheel dollies. She’s bought a good block of soapstone in Austin when she’d arrived, and concentrated since her arrival on drilling Health’s features.

“I’ve been vacillating so much on the expression of Sickness, I suppose it’s my main problem at the moment,” she told us, moving to her easel. “Her form I know already, as you can see, so long as I can handle the logistics of fitting them together. But her face leaves me cold.”

She flipped to a page with five sketches of a face. They ranged from nauseated to lugubrious. “What do yous think? I don’t want her too much, you know, in need of antacids. It’s more of a mindset thing.”

“But aren’t you going for the problem between the two?” Caleb asked. “Health is carrying Sickness even when she shouldn’t?”

“Even so, the way these things work, or at least how I’ve seen them, is the Sickness one will play up the problem with her weakness,” I said. “So she can’t look all happy or anything.”

“I know, but look at the way Lizzy has the posture,” he said, turning back a page to indicate the lax muscles. “She’s just flopped up there on top of Health, it’s not like she’s so sick she can’t even sit up a little and look around and enjoy the ride.”

“Co-dependency goes deeper than that,” Angelica told him. “Both partners become so tied to their roles they can’t help but adopt them when they’re together. Isn’t that your message, Lizzy, at least a little?”

“That’s what I see,” said Theo.

She smiled at the two of them. “That is how I put them together, yeah. So you know what I mean about her face, right? Not too ill but believing she is?”

I turned back to her sketches. “So here, maybe, along these lines?” I pointed to a face with sad eyes and drooping mouth, but a slightly raised brow. “She’s feeling down and yet enjoying the vantage point, maybe just a little bored, too.”

“I don’t know,” Wren chimed in. “It’s close, but maybe a little too, calculating, I guess. Can you work from here and maybe add more furrows, more pain?”

Lizzy considered it. “I think ... you mean along here?” she asked.

Wren nodded.

“And if I thin out the hair a bit, let her grasp a handful of it with her left hand?”

“But leave her body like it is,” Wren told her, “so we know it’s coming from her mind, not so much physical.”

“That’s great,” Caleb said to Wren. “You’ve got a fantastic eye.”

“You’re telling me,” Lizzy said, kissing Wren’s cheek. “Thanks. Thanks a million.”

Wren blushed. “Aw, go on.”

“No, really,” I added. “That was inspired. Let’s skip doing you tomorrow so you can come tell me how I’m doing.”

“Now you all have to get out of here so I can work on this before dinner,” Lizzy said, grabbing pencils from her desk. “Brandon, I’ll be late for k.p., you get it going and I’ll set the table and wash up.”

I laughed. He’d spent the whole time at Lizzy’s silent, even less of a presence than Rafael. It seemed he was afraid of his food partner.

Caleb headed for the door. “Let’s go, people, the artist is at work. Nothing more to see here.”

Another volley of pebbles woke me the next morning. Wren half-waved when I sat up to squint at her. She threw herself down on my still-warm, still-comfortable bed while I shut myself in the bathroom.

“You’re up before Caleb.”

“I’m sorry, I know you wanted to rest.”

“Uh-huh.” Wetting my hand in the warming shower spray, I rubbed at my eyelids and forehead.

“I tried Lizzy but she had her curtains drawn and wouldn’t stir.”

“Lucky Lizzy.” I brushed my teeth while leaning against the tub.

“My showing is this afternoon.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Maybe you’ve noticed I haven’t been talking about the houses much lately.”

Sighing, I wrapped a towel around myself and stepped out to kiss the top of her head. “I know, sweetie, but some people are just like that. Give me a minute to get clean, okay?”

She nodded and I went back to my shower. The peppermint castile soap slowly but sweetly opened my senses to the day, and just to bring myself wholly awake I exfoliated my face. Wren had a cup of coffee sitting on my dresser when I opened the bathroom door, and she’d made my bed.

“Thanks,” I smiled. “Caleb knocked yet?”

She shook her head. “It’s not late.”

“So why are you nervous? It’s just us.”

“Doesn’t matter. I hate showing my stuff even when it’s done.”

“Everyone does.”

“No, not … Not for approval.” She flopped on the bed again. “Well, yes, for approval, but more for my own sense of purpose. I can talk about it in advance, because I’m just telling you what I intend the finished product to be, but half the time even when I think I’m done I realize there’s another angle I haven’t explored yet, another way to re-examine and re-focus—I don’t know if I’m saying it right. It’s like, I think I know what I’m doing, I put a lot into development, but the second I show it to someone, they say something that isn’t even necessarily what I’m trying to accomplish, but it suddenly points up some major flaw in execution which means I have to almost go back to square one.”

“You don’t have to listen to us. You can even tell us not to talk.”

“I know. But nothing’s going to stop you thinking, and I’ll be trying to read your minds and second-guessing myself anyway.”

“Well, then, if you know you’re going to be re-thinking the project when we’re done today, just accept it and give yourself the space you need to dwell on everything.”

Wren laughed, dropping the hair she’d been idly braiding. “Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But I’m not sure I want anyone else causing me to re-think this. I’ve been dwelling on these dwellings for months, and now I think I have the key to the right execution, and the second you squint to take in a detail, I’ll be convinced I’ve done even this all wrong.”

“I know what your problem is.”

“Oh, good.” She sat up a little.

“Your internal critic is far too astute. You did it to Lizzy, and you’ve done it to me, too—swept in and in thirty seconds seen what we’ve been completely blind about, and told us exactly how to fix it without taking anything away from our own ideas. It seems like no big deal to you when you do it to us—and believe me, I’ve appreciated it—but when you do it to yourself it’s complicated by the ideas the artist side of you has about the work, so the critic side of you ends up giving you grief.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “So the fact I’m multifaceted makes it hard for me to be an artist?”

“In a nutshell.”

“I’m not sure I feel any better.”

“Well, come to breakfast with me; you can moon at Caleb to take your mind off it all, and I’ll try to get him to bend over a lot with his backside towards you.”

She linked her bony arm through mine. “What a pal.”

Rafael, oddly enough, showed up at Wren’s studio with a handful of wildflowers—the bluebonnets were just beginning to bloom and he’d mixed them with some incredibly vivid Indian paintbrush, very startling and cheerful. I decided not to mention it was illegal to pick our state flower. Wren stuck them in a glass of water while we looked at her houses.