The year of the Lucy

CHAPTER EIGHT

IN retrospect the next morning, Mirelle realized that, while the evening had had its shallow pleasures, it had only served to emphasize the broadening and apparently unbridgeable gap between Steve and herself. Fifteen years of marriage provided patterns to follow and routine exchanges filled awkward silences.

Steve plunged into a backlog of projects, rewiring the hi-fi equipment which had never been properly installed in the Wilmington house, repairing furniture, refinishing the boys' dressers, painting Tonia's bookcases and starting garden beds for planting the following spring. He joined the men's group at church and had time to enjoy home and community.

Mirelle cooked, kept the house tidier during the week than she had when he was away so constantly, and spent every other moment in the studio. The children were well accustomed to such absorption and, because they knew that she was busy on creche figures and items for the Bazaar, they never noticed that she and Steve were rarely together.

Yet, despite her ability to concentrate on sculpting to the exclusion of all other thought, Mirelle was constantly having to turn her mind away from the estrangement. Fortunately Sylvia got in the habit of dropping in for morning coffee, a practice that Mirelle had never encouraged before in anyone. A visit from the often caustic, always interesting Sylvia was bracing.

"If you mind my dropping in like this, 1 wish to God you wouldn't mealy-mouth around, but just say so," Sylvia said on Friday. "I've been here every morning this week…"

"Except Monday…"

"… Which might be stretching my welcome a bit. I think you once mentioned that you didn't go for the coffee break routine." Sylvia cocked one eyebrow quizzically. There was a tautness in the cords of her neck and an undercurrent in her sardonic manner that alerted Mirelle.

"No, I don't mind you dropping in, Sylvia. For one thing, you always make the coffee yourself."

"G.F. says I'm a managing type, but I must have my daily gallons of coffee…"

"Which you supplied the last pound of yourself, you nut…"

"Why not?"

"You don't expect me to stop what I'm doing…"

"God forbid! It's therapeutic watching you - better you than me - muck with that filthy stuff and turn out something repulsively human…" Sylvia gave a delicate shudder at the grinning Dirty Dick on Mirelle's wheel. This particular model was of Nick on the memorable day when he and Roman had come home, their best clothes covered with mud, carrying a pailful of tadpoles. Small Boy Triumphant Over Odds.

"… And you don't natter on and on…"

"I don't?" Sylvia was outraged. "I talk your bloody ear off."

"Yes, but you've a style of talk that's fun."

"Good time gal, that's Sylvia Esterhazy. A laugh a minute."

Mirelle looked up anxiously.

"I talk your bloody ear off because you listen, and you hear, and you do me the extreme courtesy of NOT offeringpredigested woman's magazine drivel as advice!" Sylvia's fine eyes were troubled but she turned her face away from Mirelle. Mirelle dropped her eyes back to the Dirty Dick, stenciled over a line unnecessarily. "I've got problems," Sylvia said in a tough voice. "You've got problems. All God's children got problems. Even if I could explain mine… But there are some days when I've simply got to talk AT someone." Sylvia gave a shuddering sigh. "Because I can't vocalize what is really… is bothering me. Talking AT someone like you is a helluva lot of help!" Sylvia made a sound that was half-gasp, half-laugh. "God, sometimes if you can just get the words out, you realize how silly it all is. Of course," she added in a brisker, Sylvia-ish tone, "this sort of talking at is reciprocal."

Mirelle shot a quick glance at Sylvia, wondering if she'd guessed how shaky the Martin marriage was. There was only a mute appeal in the woman's posture.

Mirelle recalled all the times when she had unburdened herself to Lucy, Farnoll, monologues that often proved to herself in the hearing how trivial her problem was, receiving the compliment of sympathy and practical advice. If by providing Sylvia, who'd known Lucy, with the specious solace of being her sounding board, she could repay her debt to their mutual friend, Mirelle was more than eager to oblige.

She smiled at Sylvia, prodding the plasticene in the bucket.

"I'm not the vocal type, Sylvia, but my ears are available."

Sylvia chuckled, her whole body relaxing suddenly. "No, you're not the vocal type, but it's another mark in your favor, m'dear. 1 simply cannot abide women who incessantly talk about themselves." She caught Mirelle's startled look and grimaced in self-deprecation. "Oh, yes. I obviously can't stand myself by the same token." She gulped the last of her coffee, gathered up her jacket and bag. "Monday? Same time? Same coffee station?"

"You'll always be welcome, Sylvia," Mirelle said as warmly as she could.

"Thanks, kiddo." And Sylvia was up the stairs and out the door.

As Mirelle finished the Dirty Dick, she couldn't help wondering what could be troubling a woman like Sylvia, who outwardly had all the essentials and many of the luxuries of life, was active socially and seemingly satisfied professionally since Sylvia insisted that she was a professional politician. Their relationship had not reached an intimacy at which anything deeply personal could be discussed, but Mirelle was oddly flattered by Sylvia's request.

Sylvia was not Mirelle's only visitor. June Treadway had come not once but three times, each time phoning to make sure of her welcome. Mirelle felt more formal with June but no less at ease. In her late forties, with all her children at various levels of college education, June enjoyed her involvement as volunteer secretary for the Church, organizing the social activities, assisting the very busy minister and his curate in all secular particulars.

"I'm the model of a modern matron," she told Mirelle, "and I shall thoroughly enjoy being a modern grandmother. Someone once told me that there are compensations for every age. It's a consoling notion if you examine it in any depth, and a damned good excuse, too. If I'd been born in the era when it was done, I should probably have embroidered a sampler with that motto. Matter of fact, perhaps I should anyway. Only being modern, I'll use one of those felt-tipped marking pens and have it done in five minutes instead of five weeks."

"Plan ahead," laughed Mirelle, printing the infamous sign in the air.

"That's how mine would probably look, too," June said with a chuckle.

A memory, forgotten like so many parts of her childhood, leaped to mind in unbidden association.

"When I was a child, about eight or nine," Mirelle began, "I was taken to see the Martelet at Loches. It had a horrible dungeon…" and she shuddered at the recollection of the cold clammy smell of accumulated fear and terror in that dark place, "… where the Duke of Something had been imprisoned for twenty years. He'd painted a sign on the curve of the wall. You could still see traces of the paint. The reds held up best. He'd written 'celui qui n'est pas contain' …"

"How apt," June interjected drily.

"Very. The 'celui qui' was huge and the 'n'est pas contain' progressively smaller until it got crammed in a corner. The guide didn't say whether he ran out of paint, energy or light. But I suddenly realized that's why the Plan Ahead sign always fascinates me."

"I didn't go down in those dungeons. I'd had enough of them," June surprised Mirelle by commenting. "The children chattered all afternoon, I remember, about how hideously dark and scary it had been and so cold underground. Although it was July and warm for France. We were there in '58. Marvelous trip. But you said you were eight or nine? Were you raised abroad?"

"No, just visiting." Mirelle tried very hard to keep her answer casual, remembering how she had answered Jamie Howell.

"I guess at that age you weren't taken to any of the museums or galleries?"

"1 was, but I got my training here in the States. At Cooper Union."

"But that gives excellent training. My grandfather went there. He was a printer and engraver."

"So that's why you know about the mechanics of sculpting."

"I don't know anything, my dear, but I can appreciate the result."

June was a comfortable personality and Mirelle found herself wishing that the woman would stay longer. June always seemed to have another appointment that she had to get to on time. She never appeared hurried, however, for her energy was not obtrusive, yet she apparently accomplished a great deal for the Church.

"I've got to go, Mirelle," she said now with a groan and rocked herself up out of the spring studio couch. "I should spend more time walking than 'going', " she added, smoothing her skirt over her plump hips. "Oh, well, who wants a bony grandmother?"

She grinned down at the unpainted Dirty Dicks in their various postures.

"Have you ever seen Dr. Mason's six year old Tommy? I could wish that you'd put his face on one like this fiend," she said, indicating the one with Nick's face. "But that wouldn't be very good public relations, would it?"

That Sunday Steve entered the studio for the first time. He made an exclamation at the sight of two rows of the glazed, finished Dirty Dicks.

"How many of these are you donating to the Bazaar?" he asked.

"I'd planned on sixteen of these, some of the cat poses and animals to add to Christmas scenes."

"Done anything for that Howell guy?" The question was casual.

"No. Not yet."

"What did he want?"

Mirelle decided to take the question at face value.

"He saw the Cat in the Stamford Museum. He wants something with that kind of feeling."

"What? Washing its paws? Wasn't that Tasso?"

"I should pay the cat a percentage of what he's earned for me," Mirelle said with a laugh.

"Howell doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who'd go for cats."

"On the contrary," and Mirelle regarded Steve's frowning face with bland amusement, "he's so constantly on the concert circuit that the at-homeness is very much what he wants."

"Funny he should see that in the Cat. That wasn't what you intended at all, was it?"

Mirelle looked Steve right in the eyes. "As a matter of fact, it was. I did it just after we left Ashland."

Steve flushed and Mirelle held her breath, wondering if yet again her errant tongue would precipitate an argument.

"You were pretty torn up then, weren't you? And I was so damned glad to have a territory of my own after two years of being overruled by that paper-assed Patterson."

It was Mirelle's turn to feel chagrined. She had been such a bitch then, and Steve had been so elated by his promotion. He'd done very well and the bonus that year had been substantial.

"I got two hundred for that Cat," she said. "It isn't everyone who can make money out of being homesick."

Steve snorted. "I guess not."

He went off to bed while she put her tools away. It had been a tranquil weekend, she reflected gratefully. And he hadn't taken exception to the extent of her proposed donation to the Church, or Jamie Howell's commission. If only he would not say something, or if I can just hold my tongue, if only this truce will last a little longer, maybe I can find my way out of this impasse.

She took a shower because plaster dust was gritting between her breasts and sticking to the fine hairs on her arms. When she came back into the bedroom, Steve was lying naked across her bed. The sight of his well developed arms, his heavily muscled chest tapering to a still trim waist no longer aroused her as once it had done. There had been a time when she had risen from love-making to sculpt his relaxed and satisfied body. Plaster replicas of every portion of his physique gathered attic dust. She knew each tendon, muscle, bone and plane of his body: a knowledge that had thrilled her as lover and sculptor.

She understood what had prompted his generous attitude in the studio. Did he honestly think that a passing interest in her work constituted an apology? Or the reminder that she, too, had been at fault in their relationship?

Peace at any price, she told herself. She felt neither desire nor revulsion as she joined him on the bed.