Andrew Davidson - The Gargoyle

“The instructor said Marianne was the most gifted student he’d ever had, that she just took to the chisel. When I couldn’t afford to shell out any more cash for lessons, he told Marianne to keep coming anyway. Said that someday he’d be bragging that he was once her teacher. So I made another stupid decision and suggested to Marianne that I should be her agent. She accepted, even after I pointed out that I knew squat about selling artwork. But I knew enough to get her a half-decent set of tools, which I found at an estate sale, just dumb luck, and then some stone. This first block was this horrible, cheap stone that practically crumbled away under her chisel, right, but she gets the gargoyle out anyway and it looks pretty good. So now I have this statue and I have to sell it before we can afford a second block of stone, so I borrow this beat-up old truck to drive around to different galleries with this big statue in the back. Finally I find someone willing to display it but only if they get a bloody outrageous commission, but by this point, we’re totally out of options, and so I say yes. When it finally sells, can you fucking believe this, I actually lose money on it. The whole process takes months and Marianne Engel is getting tattoos the whole time, going crazy without any stone. But eventually we sell another, and another, and then suddenly we have some cash flow and it all works out.”

I was fascinated to hear a history on Marianne Engel that did not include medieval monasteries. It made me realize how completely I had been engrossed in her fairy tales.

“When she really got rolling, the statues just didn’t stop coming. That was the first time I saw how she could get like this, you know? The first time she worked herself into collapse.” Jack cast her eyes up towards Marianne Engel’s room. “She was younger and stronger, and I thought it was just the flame of youth. The passion of first creation. I had no idea it would be like this for-how long now? Going on twenty-something years.”

“She must be doing all right,” I said, “I mean, the house and everything…”

“Yeah, moneywise, sure. Marianne is the best in the world at what she does, and I’m not just saying that. Five years in, we set up the gallery. Ten years, we got her this place. Cash down, not even a mortgage.”

“How did you become her conservator?”

“Just sort of happened along the way,” Jack answered. “No, fuck that, it took a lot of paperwork and endless visits to the courts. But you gotta remember that she doesn’t have a family, at least none that I know of. She never told me anything about her life before we met and, honestly, I don’t know if even she knows.”

“Jacqueline,” I said, “you never did answer my original question.”

“Don’t call me that, fuck, and I can’t even remember your stupid question.”

“If you were doing anything this Christmas.”

“No, my mother died about ten years back and my kids don’t talk to me anymore.” She grabbed her coat and said it was time for her to leave. At the door, she added, “Don’t think we’re all buddy-buddy now. If it was my decision, you still wouldn’t have a credit card.”

“Understood,” I confirmed. “I hope this doesn’t sound bad, but I’m actually pretty glad that Marianne collapsed. At least she’ll have to take some time off.”

Jack snorted. “She’s not finished yet.”

When Marianne Engel woke, she proved Jack correct. She ate a huge breakfast, then descended into the basement, where she spent the next four days. All her movements were sluggish, as if someone had taken a film of her working and was running it at half speed. She simply lacked the energy to work faster.

IF YOU SLIPPED HER A LITTLE MORPHINE What? SHE WOULD FALL ASLEEP.

On the twentieth of December, Sayuri came for my final exercise session before the holidays. We tried our best to ignore the slow tap-tap-tapping of Marianne Engel’s lethargic tools.

“Gregor tells me that you’re going to meet his parents,” I said. “Big step.”

“He’s never done this before,” Sayuri said, “taking a girl to meet them.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“No drama for me, but I’m a bit nervous for him. I think he feels like he’s never good enough for his folks.”

“Does he think you’re going to disappoint them?” I asked incredulously.

“He’s more worried that they’ll think he’s not good enough for me.” Sayuri increased the resistance settings on my exercise bike and implored me to fight, fight, fight ! “It’s ridiculous.”

“So, do you think he’s planning on…?” I tapped at her wedding finger, which was completely ring-free.

“No,” Sayuri responded quickly. She drew back her hand, but I could see on her face that she didn’t mind the idea of it. “He just wants me to see his hometown.”

There had been a change in the sound coming from the basement-the slow metronome of the hammer was missing. By this point in our living together, I knew Marianne Engel’s carving schedule well enough to realize she couldn’t possibly be finished with her current statue. “I should check on her.”

MORPHINE IS GOOD. Not for her.

I couldn’t see her when I started down the basement stairs. I called out, but there was no answer. Half a cigarette was smoldering in the ashtray. Then I saw her behind a mostly completed gargoyle, her arms splayed at awkward angles. Her fingers were still half closed around her hammer; her chisel had bounced a few feet away.

When I came around the rock, I saw that she was unconscious, with a large gash on her forehead. I presumed this was from falling headfirst into the stone as she passed out.

The hospital held Marianne Engel for four nights. Her head was stitched closed, and an IV pumped her arm with electrolyte solution to combat the dehydration. Luckily, she was too exhausted to work up much anger over the fact that I had put her under the care of the enemy doctors. I left her side only to go home to get some sleep. I let Bougatsa share my bed, even though Nan would have had a fit about the irritation that dog hair can cause burned skin. YOU CAN’T EVEN LOOK AFTER YOURSELF.In the mornings, I immediately returned to the hospital. HOW CAN YOU LOOK AFTER HER?

Marianne Engel was released on Christmas Eve. Honestly, the doctors should have held her longer, but they discharged her in consideration of the date. When we got home, she wanted to eat marzipan and nothing else, but I persuaded her to eat some mandarin oranges as well. I hauled my television and video player from the belfry into her bedroom and we watched It’s a Wonderful Life, because that’s what normal people do on Christmas Eve. After it ended, she insisted that I stay in her bed, because she wanted to wake into Christmas Day with me at her side.

I lay in that bed with my thick pressure suit pressed up against her thin nakedness, aware that I should have been enjoying our closeness. But I wasn’t; I was contemplating why her body affected me as powerfully as it did. I had spent much of my adult life in the company of naked women-it had been my job during the day, and my hobby at night-but with Marianne Engel it had always seemed different. It was different.

There are many possible explanations for my discomfort. Perhaps her body had a greater effect than that of other women because I actually cared for her. Perhaps it was because for the first time in my life, as a result of my penectomy, I could not dismiss the woman’s body by conquering it. Perhaps my feeling was simply pheromonal. All these theories are plausible, and to some extent perhaps all are valid, but on that Christmas Eve, lying beside her unable to sleep, I worked it through. The principal reason, I believe, that her body so thrilled mine was this: her body affected me as if it were not only human, but also as something that approached memory and ghost.