The Sculptress by V.S. Alexander (ereader for comics txt) 📗

the bathtub in the kitchen. I’ve never seen her so angry or mortified. Remember what she said? ‘I’m not taking a bath here. This is obscene!’”

Her father chuckled but beneath the veneer of amusement sadness bubbled, a despair born of ever hoping to satisfy his wife, Emma sensed. “Yes, for six months we had to heat water and bathe behind the screen. I became a water boy and bathing attendant until I completed the heated bathhouse outside.” He urged the horses forward with a few clicks of his tongue.

The heated bathhouse still was not enough for her mother. The small wooden building was subject to variations in the climate—often too hot or too cold in the winter, the same in the summer. Still, it was private and relaxing when the weather was good.

They passed between two hills rising near Chesterwood. “There’s another matter I have to discuss with you,” her father said, his gaze drifting toward his feet. He looked there, then at the wooded countryside and the horses before speaking. “Your mother should have a talk with you now that you’re a woman. I would do so myself, but I feel it’s a mother’s place to handle such matters.” Wrinkles furrowed on his forehead below his flat cap. “Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

“Yes,” Emma said, “but I know the facts of life. Isn’t that what they’re called these days?”

“The facts of life.”

“She needn’t worry. With my studies, I’ve learned all there is to know about the anatomy of both sexes. And, if you can keep a secret from Mother, the girls at school talk about it all the time.”

Her father kept his concentration on the reins and the horses. “That’s the problem, Emma. There’s much more to it than anatomy and talk—sex and love are separate and distinct, but it’s best when it meshes. Emotions are part of it, too. Sometimes love is confused by sex, and vice versa, and tragedies can result. We—your mother and I—don’t want that to happen to you.”

She fell silent knowing her father was right, but feeling confused by his words. Were the emotions she felt when she saw Kurt—excitement, desire, and longing—wrong? Was there so much more to be learned?

“Yes, Father, I know,” she said, hoping she spoke the truth.

Chesterwood with its gleaming windows appeared. The time for conversation was over until the ride home.

After a volley of handshakes and exchange of greetings, Emma and the sculptor walked to the studio, as her father went off to spend time in the garden.

“I don’t need to be entertained—this beautiful day is joy enough,” George told them. Emma thought he looked flushed and out of sorts, but her father had always enjoyed his nature walks and horseback rides, and his time alone in the beautiful Chesterwood gardens would be no different.

She, under the sculptor’s tutelage, spent two hours drawing and working with clay. He complimented her on her progress, although she felt the face she was working on was still too crude to commit to bronze or marble.

“It will take time,” he said, pulling a gold pocket watch from his jacket. “It’s nearly four and I must be getting back to the house. We have guests coming for dinner.” He returned the watch to its resting place. “I’m surprised your father isn’t here.” His face crinkled with concern.

“I’m sure he’s lost in thought. I’ll find him.” She walked past the broad studio doors, left open to let in the air, and into the nearby garden. She called out for her father, but there was no answer. To her right, the carriage stood near the barn where the horses rested. Ahead, the lovely garden, with its flowering trees, geraniums in standing vases, marble columns, and bubbling fountain, extended north from the studio.

She spotted him, sitting in the sun on a circular stone bench across from the fountain, his head slumped against his chest in sleep, his hands clasped together in his lap.

“Papa, it’s time to leave,” Emma said gently for fear of startling him.

He did not move.

She drew closer, and, as she did, her anxiety grew. Her father didn’t look well: parts of his face and hands had turned a bluish-purple, his body rigid against the bench.

“Papa!” She ran to him, grabbing his shoulders, shaking him, grasping his hands, the skin cool to the touch. Her efforts to awaken him were of no use, no breath went in or out of his body.

Emma cried out and fell to her knees in front of him.

She had no recollection of how long she was in front of her father, or of Daniel Chester French lifting her from the ground and leading her away from the corpse.

* * *

Emma wanted to blot the whole afternoon from her mind: the parade of men who arrived at Chesterwood; the minister, the police officer, the undertaker; the tiring explanation of how she found her father, the long ride home with the clergyman after the body had been taken away, the house growing larger in the twilight as her mother stood nervously on the porch wondering why they were so late.

Before anyone else could, she told her mother that her husband was dead. Helen hissed at the news, the sound reminding Emma of a scared animal as likely to bite as to flee from danger.

Her mother’s eyes turned as dark as the indigo sky in the east. “Leave me.”

The minister attempted to say a few words, but he was ordered away as well.

Full of fear and pain, Emma plodded up the stairs to her lonely room, where she placed her head on the pillow and cried as she had never cried before. Her father’s face floated behind her closed eyelids, more a ghost than a comfort, and Emma wondered how she could go on living with a mother whose love was doled out by whim—when it suited her. This was the pattern that Emma had grown up with, arbitrary affection at holidays and special occasions, a calculated coldness when her mother’s