She had been killing
for as long as she’d been able to hold things.
Her first was a
mess of soap, warm with summer and malleable between her fingers. The soapy
model killed her cousin. He was beyond saving the moment she drew the curve of
his eyeball with her fingernail. She had not meant to. Then- five years old-
she didn’t have the grace or precision to make anything but horrible
Picasso-likenesses. It only barely looked like her cousin, to her, but she’d
been proud of herself for picking up the soap in the first place and seeing a
face in it. Two days later, her cousin had died.
Several more
deaths, and a few years later, she went to the Mandel. The Mandel was a house
as out of the way as could be when you were near the centre of the city. There
was a lot to get accustomed to in the house. The roof was one, because it was
constantly there, above her. The floorboards were another, because they were
constantly under her feet. She thought she might singlehandedly wear the entire
floor to a soft pulpy blanket with her pacing. She wanted out, badly. But not
badly enough to kill people.
She lost both
parents to it, and it was only because her aunt was estranged and had not seen
her since she was an infant and too young to retain her aunt’s image, that she
did not kill her aunt. Third time’s the charm, her aunt had told her, through a
crack in the door. She stood on the opposite side of the room while her aunt
held the door nearly shut and explained that it was clear now what was
happening. The faces were to be removed. From pictures, from streets, from sight.
There were to be no more faces in the world. There was a window with a sheet of
film over it to keep the faces outside hidden. When she squinted through it she
could only see the diffused colours that made up trees and joggers and bikers.
Some days she squinted at the diffused colour spots until her vision went
blurry and the spots reminded her of streetlights in the rain, with the light
striking outward like starspray.
She hesitated to
call the Mandel a prison, though by her seventeenth year, she could not
remember whether or not she had agreed to the Mandel house. She didn’t think it
mattered, as she agreed now. There were boxes of soapstone in the Mandel, and
it was a lump from one of these boxes that she sanded when Andrew McKinnon
arrived. He knocked first, to warn her of his presence, but he didn’t need to.
She’d had the mask over her eyes the moment she heard footsteps on the stairs.
The mask
revealed only his appearance from the knees down. He wore dark pinstriped
slacks and dress shoes with green embroidery around them, as though the brogue
patterns was not enough. He was interesting by virtue of non-matching socks
with patterns of fruit on them. Watermelons on his left foot, and the makings
of a disappointing fruit salad on his right. This seemed the most important
detail, though she knew it was not; his feet faced her. It was brave of him to
look her head on. She could easily remove her eye mask before he had the chance
to hide his face.
“Good evening,”
he said. She blinked, because it must have been later than she’d thought. She
blinked a second time because her brain had only just caught up with the sound
of his voice. She knew that voice. Responsible for some of the most precise
sculptures in the world, and for the most intricately balanced Inukshuks in Canada.
He was a boy-wonder. Michelangelo’s legacy at nine years old. Her mother, in
fit of maternal interest, had delivered an article about him once to her.
“You sculpted a
boar’s head two months ago, didn’t you?” Andrew said. The door closed behind
him. He walked over. She tried to follow his brogues, tucking her chin against
her chest to keep from seeing too much through the slit under the eye mask. “It
was lovely. It could use some improvement, if you’re interested.”
“In, sculpting?”
I repeated.
Andrew tapped
something with his hand. His forehead or nose. “You’ve got it. Impressive. But
really, are you interested? I don’t teach those who aren’t.”
He taught others
who appeared on daytime television or did not have to live on the money made at
seasonal conventions. “If you are interested, then really,” Andrew said to my
glare. “Just sculpting. You would be great.”
“At sculpting,”
she said.
She could hear
the smile in his voice, just as she could see the restless shift of his feet.
The summer
equinox crept in on the weekend, which usually meant it would creep in when
Andrew was absent. The weekends were for pacing without the eyemask. She
organized her soapstone people into lines on the side table. They were all done
to resemble the senseless drawings of children. It was dissatisfying to file
and pick out faces from the stone that might not exist in the world. She was
just copying someone else’s work, she figured. She disliked watching Andrew’s
brogues and mismatched socks disappear outside the door. She imagined he took
off those socks and walked barefoot on sand some days, or he wore shorts
instead of his slacks and walked beneath the sun and burned and felt the wind.
Her fingers were
bored of sculpting. They would not stop sculpting.
She knocked her
soapstone people to the ground. Only two of them chipped. Parts of them broke
off into chunks and small slivers. She looked away from the film on the window
and went about picking up the larger chunks. The other parts looked to her like
the slivers of a piece of ice, and she liked seeing them on the floor somehow.
She imagined she could use the sharp edge of one to scrape away some of the
film on the window.
No one came to
ask her if she was still all right staying in the Mandel or if she’d changed
her mind since moving in.
Andrew joined
her the next day and sat on a stool while she sat on the edge of her bed. She
held the sliced away bottom of a cardboard box on her knees to catch the
shavings. She tried to mimic what he’d shown her with his hands, another part
of him that she could see. The file paid attention to his movements, and now
she forced it to pay attention to hers. When the dust became too much, she wet
the stone. The room smelled like polish, though she wasn’t anywhere close to
polishing this figure yet.
“You don’t do
any animals,” McKinnon complained. He smelled like coffee and yogurt. She was
fairly certain he lived on yogurt. Like a fancy car, or a purebred animal,
there was only one thing that could go into him if what you wanted out of him
was art. Perhaps food other than yogurt foiled his talent.
“I don’t do
planets either,” she said to him. “I thought you knew what I sculpted?”
“I had, but that
didn’t prepare me for the possibility that that was all I had to look forward
to. I’d thought you might branch out. My optimism runs on a separate track than
the rest of me. Watch that edge.”
“What edge,” she
said, feeling it. He wasn’t wrong; the edge was too severe.
“The one beneath
your fingers. The one you’re trying to make sharp enough to cut yourself. Think
of beach glass.”
She felt bitter,
thinking of beach glass. Reluctantly, she filed away the sharp edge until it
felt like it had been shaped by time and water instead of her hands. She heard
McKinnon shift on the stool. His disappointment was just as evident in his
voice as a smile. “That’s it?” he said.
“What’s it?” She
turned her head toward him, but she didn’t tilt it.
“That. Your
argument. You didn’t have to file it down.” He tapped the soapstone creature.
His hands were long-fingered, with dusty finger pads. The smell of dust was
almost as strong as the smell of yogurt. “It’s your piece.”
“You told me to
file it down. You, my mentor,” she replied. “Acknowledged and famous sculptor.
Prize-winning artist. Mentor to a murderer.”
“My god, the
drama,” McKinnon said. “And none of those things makes me inherently right.
Argue once in a while.” His hand disappeared, then his feet. The stool screeched
against the floor as he stood.
“It’s over?” The
clock was invisible with the eye mask, but it didn’t feel like he’d even been
here two hours. The rest of the hours of the day seemed longer without him here
to fill them with talking and advising and company.
“My optimism has
been dented by all these figures,” he said. He gathered his bag and his sanding
materials. She held the soapstone figure in her hand and filed half-heartedly.
She would continue filing when he was gone, because her hands would not rest,
and she would make a face out of a child’s drawing and hope that it resembled
no one real. She still was not sure if he was leaving for a day or a week or
forever. He had only been gone for three days at a time since he’d begun
tutoring her, but it occurred to her that he could not return, and he could not
return and not explain the not returning.
She couldn’t
think of something to say to make him stay, because she wasn’t entirely sure
why he was there in the first place.
When his steps
descended the staircase, she took off the eye mask. The figure was smooth in
her hand. It had chubby cheeks and eyes shaped like upside down moons. She
hoped no one’s days had just become numbered. Through the film she watched
McKinnon’s blurred shape disappear into the blurred shape of a car. Then the
shape streaked away. Her hands were filing before she even looked at the figure
again.
“If you want to
know someone,” McKinnon had said, “show them a picture of themselves. A
painting or a sketch or a sculpture. Their reaction will tell you what they
think of their own image. If they think your image of them doesn’t do them
justice, or makes them prettier or more fanciful than they are. Someone’s
reaction to your own eye will tell you more than any self-portrait.”
“You like to be
wise,” she’d said, “don’t you?”
She couldn’t see
his expression, but he turned on the stool to face her, and she could almost
feel his attention on her. He said, sunnily, “It’s nice to have my efforts
recognized once in a while.” His voice so clearly held a smile that she felt it
in her spine. Thinking about it made her skin prickle now.
Her skin
prickled so much that she remembered, viscerally and strongly, wind on her
skin, cold and wetness, and the elements. She remembered it all so strongly
that the strength of it carried her up and out the door. Her eyemask, tucked
into her belt, bouncing against her hip as she crashed down the stairs. She
hadn’t been to the back door in some time. She didn’t know if there was still a
grassy slope, a riverbank, an enclosure of trees, outside the door. Shoes? she
wondered. No shoes, she decided. Just her feet in the grass, even if it was
wet. There would be no shoeprints to tell anyone what a risk she’d taken.
It was by
hitting McKinnon with the door that she did not see his face. She stumbled back
as he clutched at his face. She saw his hand fly up and by the time she’d
reflexively looked up he had his blazer pulled across his face with one hand.
The other hand had shocked her, grabbing her about the arm to keep her from
falling straight back.
“Don’t let me
see you!” she ordered.
“Are you going
somewhere?”
“I’m being-“ she
hesitated. “I’m staging a revolution.” She pulled out of his arm, because it
was now distracting her more than balancing her.
“Viva la
revolucion,” McKinnon intoned. “I’ll join you. Where to?”
He wasn’t about
to drag her back inside. He still had his blazer covering part of his face, but
he hadn’t told her to put on her eyemask. She described the riverbank.
He said,
“onward”.
She hesitated.
Her soapstone was upstairs. There was dirt, but she hadn’t sculpted something
so soft in a long time. “My stuff is up-”
“I’m sure it is.
But you don’t need it.” There was a pause. “I did say onward, didn’t I? I
remember my mouth saying it. Let’s go, while the mystery sets in.”
The riverbank
was green and yellow all over. It was a buttery, summery yellow. No autumn
touched the trees here. The dirt outside the tree cover was baked. Beneath the
tree cover it was just barely dry. She rolled up the cuffs of her pants and put
her feet over the edge of the riverbank. Tree roots climbed from the soft wall
of the river into the water, like mangroves. She’d seen pictures of mangroves
before.
She leaned back
on her hands, then her elbows, then lay on the bank. Grass prickled her ears.
The wind pushed her hair into her eyes and mouth. Her fingers remembered the
textures of the real world. Her skin was beginning to remember there was more
than soapstone out here.
Beside her,
McKinnon was sitting with his back to her, but it was clear he was removing a
lump of soapstone from his bag.
“I don’t see any
animals here,” she said. “There’s nothing to make-” She waved lazily around,
senselessly happy that there was so much to wave at – “except trees.”
McKinnon turned
so she could see the slice of his earlobe but not his face. “I sculpt people as
well.”
She shifted.
“I’ll have to keep my eyes closed.”
“That would be
preferable,” McKinnon said. “Please do, and I’ll try to finish this quickly.”
She put an arm
across her face. This might interrupt his attempt to sculpt her, but he had
seen her face many times before, and if she did not keep her arm there, then
her eyes would betray them both. She felt the springy grass beneath her begin
to yield and accept its new shape. She opened one eye very carefully for a few
seconds to look at the overlapping pattern of leaves in the trees above them.
She looked out beneath her arm, like she did with her eyemask, and saw
McKinnon’s brogues, and his socks with tangerines and radishes on them. She
heard him filing and sanding. There was a lot of sanding involved.
When the
productive noisiness ceased, she sat up. She looked up slowly, but this only
meant that he had the time to hide the figure as well as his face by the time
she got there. She could see a small rounded portion of soapstone between his
fingers.
“I feel like I
have a right to see it, as the model,” she said.
The smile was
gone from his voice. “You know I wouldn’t show you your own face.”
Her tears sprung
up quickly. They were of the variety that didn’t exist until they were already
tumbling down your cheeks, so she took an embarrassing moment to wipe them
away. She was only glad he wasn’t looking because she didn’t want him to see
her tears or die, but she was ashamed the tears had happened at all. She stood
up. “This was a good field trip.”
McKinnon stood
up slowly, but he walked quickly up the riverbank, and hooked two fingers
around the inside of her elbow. He smelled of yogurt and river mud. “So much
drama. No one’s died today.”
She closed her
eyes so he could kiss her cheek. She though of turning her head, but he’d
already pulled away. She could not find his lips without opening her eyes.
“This isn’t a
permanent solution,” McKinnon said. “You wouldn’t tear apart a mountain just
because it avalanches now and again. You just keep people off the pass.”
“It’s a large
pass to keep people off of,” she said. She felt jittery and alive with the
kiss.
“There are
ways,” McKinnon insisted.
She let him
steer her back to the door while she looked at the sky and the grass and
everywhere but him. Everything was sharper without the film over it. She
remembered this too: the day getting colder and darker.
“It’s your turn
again tomorrow,” McKinnon said. “A day off isn’t a day wasted, but two days off
definitely is.”
She let herself
smile. They parted ways at the door. She could see his car, clearly, for the
first time, on the street. She knew he was going to walk to it and put his
sculpture and tools in the backseat before he sat in the front. She knew
because she has seen him bustle around the car many times before, through the
film. She knew the feeling in the pit of her stomach, terrible and murderous
without meaning to be. Her eyes were uncovered. She was too intrigued by the
new sharpness of the world not to look.
He fell into the
driver’s side. He had an ordinary face. His nose was long, his brows low, his
mouth a little amused by everything he saw. The longer she looked at his
expression, the expression he wore when he was thinking of nothing in
particular, the easier it was to see his face emerging from a lump of
soapstone.
Her fingers
itched.
Her father had
lasted the longest, at six days. She’d sculpted his face from play dough. He
had been the last straw.
McKinnon must
have climbed all the way up the stairs before he discovered she was no longer
there. She wondered if he was out of breath because he’d hurried down to the
riverbank to try to find her. She lay along the edge of the riverbank this
time, stretched out as though she could role right into it. She held one hand
in the water, so the water could soften and clean and polish.
“Revolutionizing
again?” McKinnon said.
“The revolution
is dying.”
“You have drama
in spades,” McKinnon said, because he hand was still in the water.
She shook off
the small sculpture before she lifted it out of the water. She cracked her eyes
open and saw his face, saw his eyes sweep down her arm to the sculpture of her
own face. Water ran down from her stone eyes.
The water hadn’t
truly had time to soften, but she’d sanded it for a while.
Art by Ngyuen Thanh Nhan
Text by Lucie MacAulay