Grandma Sweetwine and I are lost in oblivion, unable to see anything in the fog as we make our way through the ground cloud to Day Street in the inland flats of Lost Cove where Guillermo Garcia’s studio is. That’s the name of the sculptor that was on the piece of paper Sandy gave me. I don’t want to wait to see if it’s a go, I just want to go.
Before leaving school I consorted with The Oracle: Google. Internet searches are better than tea leaves or a tarot deck. You put in your question: Am I a bad person? Is this headache a symptom of an inoperable brain tumor? Why won’t my mother’s ghost speak to me? What should I do about Noah? Then you sort through the results and determine the divination.
When I put in the question: Should I ask Guillermo Garcia to be my mentor? up popped a link for the cover of Interview Magazine. I clicked on it. The photograph was of a dark, imposing man with radioactive green eyes wielding a baseball bat at Rodin’s lovely romantic sculpture The Kiss. The caption read: Guillermo Garcia: The Rock Star of the Sculpture World. On the cover of Interview! I stopped there because of the cardiac symptoms.
“You look like a hoodlum in that getup,” Grandma Sweetwine says, sweeping along beside me a good foot above the ground, twirling a magenta sun parasol, without a care for the dismal weather. She’s dressed to the nines like always, in a color-splashed Floating Dress that makes her look like a billowy sunset, and enormous tortoiseshell movie-star sunglasses. She’s barefoot. Not much need for shoes if you hover. She got lucky on the foot-front.
Some visitors from the beyond return with their feet on backward
(Beyond disturbing. Thankfully, hers are on right.)
She continues. “You look like that fella, you know, whosamacallit, Reese’s Pieces.”
“Eminem?” I ask, with a smile. The fog’s so thick, I have to walk with my arms out straight so I don’t collide into any mailboxes or telephone poles or trees.
“Yes!” She taps the sidewalk with the parasol. “I knew it was some kind of candy. Him.” The parasol’s pointing at me now. “All those dresses you make locked away in your bedroom. It’s a travesty.” She sighs one of her record-length sighs. “What about the suitors, Jude?”
“I don’t have any suitors, Grandma.”
“My point exactly, dear,” she says, then cackles with delight at her own wit.
A woman passes us with two kids in fog harnesses, also known as leashes, not unusual in Lost Cove during a white-out.
I look down at my invisibility uniform. Grandma still doesn’t get it. I tell her, “Being with boys is more dangerous for me than killing a cricket or having a bird fly into the house.” Other serious portents of death. “You know this.”
“Nonsense. What I know is you have an enviable love-line on your palm, just like your brother, but even fate needs a goose in the rear sometimes. Best stop dressing like a life-size rutabaga. And grow the hair back already, for Pete’s sake.”
“You’re very superficial, Grandma.”
She harrumphs at me.
I harrumph back, then turn the tables. “I don’t want to alarm you, but I think your feet are starting to point the wrong way. You know what they say. Nothing ruins an ensemble like ass-backward feet.”
She gasps, looking down. “How to give an old, dead woman a heart attack!”
By the time we get to Day Street, I’m damp through and shivering. I notice a small church at the end of the block, a perfect place to dry off, warm up, and strategize about how I’m going to convince this Guillermo Garcia to mentor me.
“I’ll wait outside,” Grandma tells me. “But please, take your time. Don’t worry about me, all alone out here in the cold, wet fog.” She wiggles her bare toes on both feet. “Shoeless, penniless, dead.”
“Subtle,” I say, heading down the path to the church.
“Regards to Clark Gable,” she calls after me as I pull the ring to open the door. Clark Gable is her pet name for God. A blast of warmth and light embraces me the moment I step in. Mom was a church-hopper, always dragging Noah and me with her, except never when a service was going on. She said she just liked to sit in holy spaces. Me too now.
If you’re in need of divine help, open a jar in a place of worship
and close it upon leaving
(Mom told us she sometimes used to hide out from her foster “situations” in nearby churches. I suspect she needed more than
a jar of help, though it was impossible to get her to talk
much about that time in her life.)
This one is a beautiful boat-like room of dark wood and bright stained-glass panels of, it looks like, yup, Noah building the ark, Noah greeting the animals as they board, Noah, Noah, Noah. I sigh.
In every set of twins, there is one angel, one devil
I take a seat in the second row. While rubbing my arms furiously to warm up, I think about what I’m going to say to Guillermo Garcia. What does a Broken Me-Blob say to The Rock Star of the Sculpture World? A man who walks into a room and all the walls fall down? How am I going to convey to him that it’s absolutely dire that he mentor me? That making this sculpture will—
A loud clatter blasts me out of my thoughts, my seat, and skin all at once.
“Oh bloody hell, you scared me!” The deep, whispery English-accented voice is coming out of a bent-over guy on the altar picking up the candlestick he just knocked off. “Oh Christ! I can’t believe I just said bloody hell in church. And Christ, I just said Christ! Jesus!” He stands up, rests the candlestick on the table, then smiles the most crooked smile I’ve ever seen, like Picasso made it. “Guess I’m damned.” There’s a scar zigzagging across his left cheek and one running from the base of his nose into his lip. “Well, doesn’t matter,” he continues in a stage whisper. “Always thought heaven would be crap anyway. All those preposterous puffy clouds. All that mind-numbing white. All those self-righteous, morally unambiguous goody two-shoes.” The smile and accompanying crookedness hijack his whole face. It’s an impatient, devil-may-care, chip-toothed smile on an off-kilter, asymmetrical face. He’s totally wild-looking, hot, in a let’s-break-the-law kind of way, not that I notice.
Any marked peculiarity in the face indicates a similar
peculiarity of disposition
(Hmm.)
And where did he come from? England, it seems, but did he just teleport here mid-monologue?
“Sorry,” he whispers, taking me in. I realize I’m still frozen with my hand plastered to my chest and my mouth open in surprise. I quickly rearrange myself. “Didn’t mean to startle you,” he says. “Didn’t think anyone else was here. No one’s ever here.” He comes to this church often? To repent probably. He looks like he has sins, big juicy ones. He gestures at a door behind the altar. “I was just skulking about, taking photos.” He pauses, tilts his head, studies me with curiosity. I notice a blue tattoo poking out of his collar. “You know, you really ought to put a lid on it. Such a chatterbox, a guy can’t get a word in.”
I feel a smile maneuvering its way around my face that I resist as per the tenets of the boycott. He’s charming, not that I notice that either. Charming is bad luck. I also don’t notice that his sinful self seems smart, nor how tall he is, nor the way his tangly brown hair falls over one eye, nor the black leather motorcycle jacket, perfectly worn in and ridiculously cool. He’s carrying a beat-up messenger bag on one shoulder that’s full of books—college books? Maybe, definitely a senior if still in high school. And he has a camera around his neck that is now pointing at me.
“No,” I shriek loud enough to blow the roof as I duck behind the pew in front of me. I must look like a cold wet ferret. I don’t want this guy having a picture of me looking like a cold wet ferret. And vanity aside:
Every picture taken of you reduces your spirit
and shortens your life
“Hmm, yes,” he whispers. “You’re one of those, afraid the camera will steal your soul or some such.” I eye him. Is he versed in some such? “In any case, please keep your voice down. We are in church, after all.” He grins in his chaotic way, then turns the camera up at the wooden ceiling, clicks. There’s something else I’m not noticing: He seems familiar to me somehow, like we’ve met before, but I’ve no idea where or when.
I slip off my hat and start combing my fingers through the stubborn mat of neglected hair . . . like I’m not a girl with boy blinders! What am I thinking? I remind myself he’s decaying like every other living thing. I remind myself I’m a bible-thumping Broken Me-Blob with hypochondriachal tendencies whose only friend is possibly a figment of her imagination. Sorry, Grandma. I remind myself he’s probably worse luck than all the world’s black cats and broken mirrors combined. I remind myself some girls deserve to be alone.
Before I can get my skullcap back on, he says in a regular speaking voice, quite a deep, velvety one, not that I notice, “Change your mind? Please do. I’m going to have to insist on it.” He’s aiming the camera at me again.
I shake my head to indicate I am in no way changing my mind. I put my hat back on, pull it down low, practically over my eyes, but then I bring my index finger to my lips in a shhh, which might appear to be flirting to the casual viewer, but luckily there are no casual viewers present. I can’t seem to help it. And it’s not like I’ll ever see him again.
“Right, forgot where we were for a minute,” he says, smiling and bringing his voice down to a whisper again. He regards me for a long, unnerving moment. It’s like being held in a spotlight. Actually, I’m not sure it’s legal to be looked at like this. My chest starts humming. “Too bad about the photo,” he says. “Hope you don’t mind me saying, but you look like an angel sitting there.” He presses his lips together as if considering this. “But in disguise, like you just fell down and then borrowed some bloke’s clothes.”
What do I say to that? Especially now that the humming in my chest has turned into jackhammering.
“In any case, can’t blame you for wanting out of the angelic order.” He’s grinning again and I’m spinning. “Probably quite a bit more interesting to be among us screwed-up mortals, like I said before.” He sure has the gift of gab. I used to too, once, though you’d never know it. He must think my jaw’s wired shut.
Oh boy. He’s looking at me again in that way of his, like he’s trying to see beneath the skin.
“Let me,” he says, his hand circling the lens. It’s more command than question. “Just one.” There’s something in his voice, in his gaze, in his whole being, something hungry and insistent, and it’s untethering me.
I’m nodding. I can’t believe it, but I’m nodding. To hell with my vanity, my spirit, my old age. “Okay,” I say, my voice hoarse and strange. “Just one.” It’s possible he’s put me in a trance. It happens. There are people who are mesmerists. It’s in the bible.
He lands in a squat behind a pew in the front row, spins the lens a few times while looking through the camera. “Oh God,” he says. “Yes. Perfect. Fucking perfect.”
I know he’s taking a hundred pictures, but I don’t care anymore. A hot series of shivers is running through me as he continues clicking and saying: Yes, thank you, this is totally bloody it, perfect, yes, yes, sodding hell, God, look at you. It’s like we’re kissing, way more than kissing. I can’t imagine what my face must look like.
“You’re her,” he says finally, putting the cover over the lens. “I’m sure of it.”
“Who?” I ask.
But he doesn’t answer, just walks down the aisle toward me, a lazy, lanky walk that makes me think of summer. He’s completely unwound now, went from high gear to no gear the moment he covered the lens. As he approaches, I see that he has one green eye and one brown eye, like he’s two people in one, two very intense people in one.
“Well,” he says when he’s by my side. He pauses there as if he’s going to say something more, like, I’m hoping what he meant by “You’re her,” but instead he just adds, “I’ll leave you to it,” and points up at Clark Gable.
Looking at him from such close range, it strikes me now with certainty that it’s not the first time I’ve laid eyes on this totally unbelievable guy.
Okay, I effing noticed.
I think he’s going to shake my hand or touch my shoulder or something, but he just continues down the aisle. I turn around and watch him stroll along like he should have a piece of hay in his mouth. He picks up a tripod I didn’t notice when I came in and swings it over his shoulder. As he goes out the door, he doesn’t turn around, but raises his free hand in the air and waves slightly like he knows I’m watching him.
Which I am.