Tom lowered his gaze. “Short shrift?”
Yes. Short shrift. I don’t have the courage to tell him that I feel I’ve settled—that our romance is dying. Something is missing from my life that comfort can’t provide. That faceless child. I see it in my dreams and when I think of Kurt.
Tom flushed and Emma wondered if he might be having some kind of attack. She looked at him with questioning eyes.
“I have something else to tell you,” he said. “I don’t imagine you’ll be happy, but I’ve made up my mind.”
Her mind raced as she clutched the armrests. Did he want a divorce? Was he leaving her for Louisa or another woman? Blackness, like a veil, descended upon her.
“I’m going to Europe.”
A temporary burst of relief jolted her. Perhaps it was for work, for a project, for a short time.
“I’ve offered my services to the Red Cross in France.”
“What?”
“As a doctor. The Allied Powers need doctors. Thousands are dying at the Front for lack of adequate medical care.”
She looked at him with blank eyes, barely cognizant of his words. “Why?”
He scooted across the floor, settling at her feet, his hands grasping hers. “I’ve told you why,” he said gently. “I’ve felt this way for months. I don’t feel right, sitting here in Boston, doing nothing while men are dying. I’ve a chance to make a difference for thousands of others, to contribute to the war effort. I’ve made up my mind.”
“But what about our future? What about the practice?” Any budding anger was washed away by the shock of his words.
“We have obligations that are greater than both of us—your art and my medicine. Perhaps, later, after the war is over, when the world is a better place, we’ll have a better view of the future—when things are settled. An older physician, Dr. Lattimore, will be taking over the practice while I’m gone. I’m paying him, but any income will be ours.”
She thought of the years that might go by and whether, after the war was over, that future might include a child. She didn’t want to raise the subject because it would only lead to more discord and, perhaps, tears. What if Tom never came back from France? What if he was injured and couldn’t work? What if—a most heinous thought—he met another woman? Certainly, his decision was a noble one for humanity, but what purpose did it serve for them? The questions overwhelmed her.
“I’m tired,” he said. “We can talk more about it later. I won’t be leaving for a while—forms to fill out, clearance, passage to Europe—all that has to be worked out.” He rose from the floor. “Are you coming to bed? Please don’t be too upset—it’s for the best.”
“No, I’ll wait for the fire to die.” It’s for the best—for you.
For an hour, she watched the flames die, until only red embers remained among the blackened coals. The mantel clock struck midnight. She let Lazarus out on the patio to conduct his business and then treaded softly up the stairs to the bedroom.
Tom lay naked under the sheet and blankets. She crawled into bed and settled against him, tears welling in her eyes. Perhaps he was right. She was being selfish. There was a greater good, a higher purpose, for both of them than just blithely existing in Boston. A young woman around the house and the opportunity to perfect her art might be just what she needed. After all, for years she was used to being on her own: alone in the farmhouse, alone after Kurt, as solitary as a cloistered nun.
Tom faced her in sleep. She placed her right arm over him, but he snorted and turned over. The dampness slipped down her cheeks onto the pillow as she shifted to her right side away from him. They were two people next to each other in bed, but as distant as North America from Europe with an ocean between them. Nothing she could say or do would change his mind. Was it even necessary?
PART TWO
BOSTON MAY 1917
CHAPTER 2
The ragamuffin boy, his mouth twisted into a sneer, eyes bulging from his head in disgust, dashed from behind a building to the street corner. Then he turned, jammed his thumbs into his ears, stuck out his tongue, and wiggled his fingers at someone behind him. A woman in a drab black dress loped after the boy, shooing him forward with her hands.
From her spot across the street, Emma was unable to discern what had captured the boy’s attention. She shielded her eyes against the sun and watched as a nanny, resting her hands lightly on the rail of a black-wicker baby carriage, neared the corner. Spotting the same unidentified threat coming toward her, the young woman lowered her head and stretched a white blanket tightly across the pram’s opening before hurriedly pushing the carriage across the street. Her evasive actions reminded Emma of a bird fleeing a cat.
Soon, the object of their attention came into view. He was no terror, no supernatural adversary. He was a soldier attired in a tattered uniform.
Even from yards away, the scope of the man’s tragedy became clear. Emma guessed the soldier to be in his early twenties. He hobbled on spindly wooden crutches patched together with bandages soiled brown by dirt. His face had been burned, partially ripped away, the right side of his head sunken like a crater, the fleshy remains of his mouth grotesque and twisted. Red patches of flesh and black strands of hair floated like islands upon his scalp. In his left hand, he carried a battered tin cup.
Men and women looked away, lowered their heads, or crossed the street to avoid him. The surprised few who happened to look upon him cringed as if confronted by a monster.
Emma crossed the street in the patchy sunlight, weaving between horse-drawn carriages and sputtering automobiles, drawn closer to the soldier, fascinated by his face. Her curiosity vanquished any urge to flee—she had never seen a human with such injuries. He was abhorrent, freakish to most, but he elicited sympathy in her and, in some manner, empathy—powerful feelings that drove her toward him.
She understood the soldier’s need for comfort. His visage drew her forward, as she remembered the vision of the faceless child. If only she could heal the wounds and obliterate the anger and sadness he must feel, and, by doing so, assuage her own. Did she possess the patience and strength for such a task? The young soldier, illuminated in the sunlight, fueled a sudden bout of nerves in her, as if she were approaching a specter.
He looked up from his cup and stared, no spark of life flickering behind the one terrible, brown eye rimmed with scarred flesh. He might have been an American but he wore the unrecognizable tunic and breeches of a foreign army—Americans had not yet begun to fight in the war.
“May I help you?” Emma said as cheerfully as she could. “Do you need to cross the street?”
The man shook his head and slumped against the building’s brick wall.
Emma looked into his cup. It contained only a few pennies. She pitied him even though such an emotion seemed self-serving as her own memories of loss flooded her. The soldier needed medicine, a safe place to rest and recuperate, and the attention of doctors who could restore his face, if such a feat was possible. She reached into her purse, withdrew a shiny half dollar, and dropped it into the cup.
The soldier peered at it and then lifted his head.
Questions plagued her as she studied his face. What could she do for him? Could she fill his wounds with clay, much as she molded statues over wire frames in her studio? Could she restore his face along with his chance for a normal life? She thought of Tom, serving as a volunteer surgeon in France, struggling each day on the battlefield to save dying and wounded soldiers, facing even his own death. A Red Cross banner flying over a medical camp was no defense against errant shells.
An insane idea, she thought—filling a wound with clay. The dream from her past lingered and she shuddered at the memory, one that filled her with sadness no matter how hard she tried to bury it. Nothing could displace it while she was in the soldier’s company.
She managed to smile as he stared back with the brutal eye. He was dead inside and his cadaverous coldness settled over her like snow falling upon her shoulders on a winter’s d
ay. Emma turned, feeling the eye bore into her back as she walked toward home. His circumstances were too painful; his physical and emotional needs too grave for her to offer any real solace. She looked at her feet, the neat black shoes treading over the bricks as if she were walking in a dream. The soldier’s disfigured face threatened to overwhelm her.
Entry: 13th May, 1917
I return to you, diary, whenever I am bored. And now that Tom is gone, I find solace in you for a long night alone. I wonder where Tom is in France and if he is happy. When he left Boston, he looked so gay, like a child about to get a new toy. I didn’t cry when he stepped into the cab, only a slight numbness overtook me, no more than I have felt upon many an occasion. The next few days I knocked about the house with only the housekeeper for company. I even avoided our friends. When I look into my heart I know Tom’s work is his real wife and I’m only an occasional mistress. This throws me into minor despair, less so now than it did in the last weeks before his departure. Perhaps a certain emptiness has become like a comfortable friend—always there, constant, and without change. And to rid one’s self of a friend causes pain. Since our marriage I have been reliable, steady Emma because that’s what Tom and I wanted from our relationship. Now I focus on my art: A sculptress in a world where men of like ability are held in high regard and women are often scorned.
I feel oddly enough, at 27 years, that my youth is long past. My carefree feelings have been compressed by remembrance. My work calls, but still my art and my emotions suffer from my unfortunate past.
By chance, I saw a badly wounded soldier on the street today. I gave him a fifty-cent piece, which is probably more than he collects in a week. I don’t know his story and I’m sure I will never know, but he wrapped the war around me like a blanket. My fear for Tom, as well as for myself, surfaced, but for different reasons. That wounded, lonely soldier has more in common with me than he suspects. We both need restoration, and we both need love.
Emma stepped back. She stared at the creature and disgust prickled over her, filling her with darkness.
Perhaps the flute was out of proportion to the faun’s hands. No, the panpipe was perfect. She brushed her hand over the clay face. The eyes, the nose, were too odd, too alien, even for a world plummeted into insanity by the war raging in Europe. Thousands died every day; yet, Tom of the gentle hands and the sharp eyes saved soldiers’ lives. Here, safe at home, she tinkered with a maquette, everything seeming so bourgeois, so irrelevant, compared to the unfolding tragedy across the Atlantic.
She wiped her fingers on her white smock. In Boston, the war was as distant and remote as a tropical beach, but, whether she was working or not, her own inadequacies rushed to the fore, their sting compounded by memories. She blotted these out until they were dim shadows; but, when night drew close, or she tossed in muddled sleep, they cut into her like a scissor sliced against a finger.
A chilly breeze ruffled the newspaper covering her worktable and a desiccated edge flapped onto the brown clay. She flicked the newspaper away, then looked up, and watched the dull clouds drift over the courtyard. How long would it be until a spring downpour interrupted her work? Her first day working outside since the cerulean days of October had been frustrating—the exhilarating promise of May dashed by a gloomy afternoon. She put aside her anticipation of light and warmth even as bleak New England winter faded.
She swiped a finger through clay and softly molded the brown blob against the faun’s right cheek, drawing a furrow with her nail, then smoothing it with the mound of her index finger. For her effort, the cheekbone rippled like a creased sheet of paper. Now the faun, its youth destroyed, appeared old and ugly. She blotted the face with a towel, bits of clay sticking to the white cloth. She raked her fingers over the scalp and the faun’s wavy hair shifted like beach sand battling the tide.
No, it’s wrong. All wrong. Perhaps Bela Pratt’s warning was correct. I should spend my time in pursuits more suited to a woman. No, that’s madness! What do critics know? How can they understand what I’ve felt, what I’ve experienced?
Tom appeared before her, pleasing in his soft smile, his manner gentle, his words encouraging her from thousands of miles away. He wanted her to succeed! Just as quickly as she gauged his support it faded under her apprehension. He only wanted to keep her busy; thus, her little avocation would root her to home, pleasantly occupied, while he remained at the Front, doing the job he needed to do.
Lazarus padded past the open French doors into the courtyard, his tail slapping her leg. As she reached down to pet him, a spit of rain splashed her hand.
The faun stood naked, unprotected, under the gray, iron sky.
“Come, inside!” she yelled at Lazarus as he circled the courtyard before following her across the threshold. She closed the doors against the wind and stood in front of the logs sizzling in the sitting room fireplace. Her young Irish housekeeper, Anne, had stoked it earlier that afternoon in anticipation of a dreary day. The cheery light and warmth of the room buoyed her somewhat as the dog settled at her feet. Yet, she couldn’t help but stare through the wavy glass panes at her work sitting forlornly on the table.
“I feel sorry for the faun,” she said to Lazarus.
The small fir in the courtyard thrashed in a sudden burst of wind, and rain pattered upon the walls in increasing veils. Rivulets of muddy clay coursed down the faun, onto the table, soaking the newspaper, before splashing in brown streams upon the stones. The face she had fretted over for weeks was dissolving in the downpour. She turned to the fire and called for Anne.
The faun’s face was never right. Never.
Agitated, she swiped her hand across her husband’s photograph on the mantel. An oily film of soot and smoke coated the glass. Tom, in a contemplative mood, stared out at her. Anne needed to be more thorough in her cleaning. Tom’s picture should never be allowed to get dirty—but the thought arose more from irritation with her husband’s absence than with the housekeeper’s duties.
She stared at the photograph and was transported to the privacy of their bed in their first years of marriage. Trying to fire his emotions, she had touched his cheek, run a finger over the stubble of his chin, and down through the light matting of blond chest hair. Often when they had made love, even when she was thinking of Kurt, she studied the muscle and sinew of his body, the bone and cords that formed him. In a clinical way, he was a model for her. He had the gift of a surgeon; but, in the silence and the darkness, she was the artist, the sculptress who saw beyond the body, into the soul, capturing that essence for later transformation into bronze or marble.
But the early days with Tom had become long ago and Emma struggled to recreate in her mind any touch from a man, the way it had been before such tactile senses had diminished.
Anne broke the silence with her soft query, “Ma’am?”
“I’ll have supper upstairs, in the studio,” Emma said.
Anne nodded and then cried out.
“For heaven’s sake, what’s wrong?”
“Your statue, ma’am. It’s melting.”
The faun dripped in the murky light, the face transformed by the rain into a shapeless mass. Emma took some pleasure in watching the transfiguration, as if she were a Greek goddess mocking the folly of men.
“It’s all right,” she replied after some time, “the faun was a failure.”
“I thought it was beautiful,” Anne said.
“If only you were a critic.” She pointed to Tom’s photograph. “The glass is dirty. Please clean it the next time you do the room. I’d like his picture—”
“I understand, ma’am. I know how you must miss him.” Anne smiled.
“I don’t want things to get . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence because she didn’t know how to reply. Yes, she missed him dearly at times, but her instruction was more a matter of keeping a household together.
Anne departed and Emma settled into her favorite chair across from the fire. Lazarus, needing no prodding, curled at her feet. With
her every glance into the courtyard the faun’s form changed—metamorphosing—the eyes washing away, the nose disintegrating to a smooth lump. The brown water pooled on the stones.
An image jolted her.
Narcissus.
After supper, she would look at her art books for depictions of the youth obsessed with his image. He was the perfect metaphor for the nations, all vainglorious, thrust into war. Why had she not considered the subject before?
Her mind drifted from her work to Tom. From a basket next to her chair, she fished out his first letter from Europe. She read the censored text again, searching for some hidden meaning or further deduction regarding his emotional state that she might have overlooked on previous readings.
10th April, 1917
My Dearest Emma (from somewhere in France):
How can I describe what I see here? I cannot, for the censor would never let my words pass. We crossed the Atlantic without incident—although our guard was always up. Several merchant ships had XXXXXXXX. Upon arriving in France, the Red Cross rushed us to a field hospital at XXXXX. The field officer, without endangering our lives, wanted us to understand what we would be up against. The medical conditions are primitive but serviceable. The tents to which the injured are carried strive to keep out the wind, the rain, and the heat. The men lie in single beds under white sheets and service blankets. The smell of bleach and alcohol permeates the tents, but the men, mostly French, seem in somewhat good spirits despite their injuries. Some of them are in desperate shape, however, with wounds so XXXXXXXXXXXXXX they must eventually be moved to a better facility.
I am traveling now and will be happy when we arrive at XXXXX. There, I hope, we doctors will not have to deal with XXXXXX conditions, XXXX, or the rampant XXXXX. My fervent wish is that these men, the most seriously injured, fighting the good fight, have lives ahead of them, and that I, doing my duty, will aid them in their recovery.
The Sculptress Page 9
