This time she mustered a smile as he passed the window and gestured him to come on in.
"The Madonna of the Sorrows is better, I see," he said.
"Coffee?"
"Thank you and don't get up. I know where the cups are. The bourbon, by the way, is not over the refrigerator. It is in the dining room closet. That's why I know where the cups are."
"Oh."
He sat down at the corner of the table at her right, pouring out his coffee.
"I said some selfish things yesterday about not getting involved in your marital problems. On further reflection, I have the nagging suspicion that I might have been the cause of one."
She looked him squarely in the eye for the first time since their pleasant lunch so long ago.
"I can almost set the scene," he continued, gesturing expansively in the air, "small child makes comment about Mommie coming home in a big beautiful car… Hubby asks sternly whose big beautiful car… "
"Yes, you can set the scene. But your entrance is the climax of Act Two, not Act One, or should I say Act 22."
"You've a jealous-type husband?" He leaned back to scrutinize her, his expression neutral. "Has he any reason?"
"In spite of my parentage, none. Maybe, because of parentage, none. But he feels that the sins of the mater, in this case, are indeed likely to crop up in the daughter. And right now," she turned to Howell with a brazen smile, "if he's giving me the name, I might just as well have the game. So, how about it, big boy, shall we adjourn to the 'casting couch'?"
Mirelle ruined her bold effect by bursting into tears, hiding her face in her arms on the table. Howell let her cry and when her sobs had quieted, he gave her his handkerchief.
"It would be a red silk one," she said, drying her eyes.
"I buy them by the gross."
"As if anyone would have any interest in a dragged out schlep like me," she said, pushing back her chair to get the comb and lipstick from the hall table drawer.
Howell poured fresh coffee in her cup when she returned so she sat down again, flipping her thick hair back over her shoulder.
"You have a certain je ne sais quoi about you even now," he said blandly. "However, I prefer to be loved for my own sweet self rather than be used in a masochistic spirit of revenge."
"You certainly deserve better. I mean…" and her voice trailed off. She bent her head and busied herself in rubbing off the lipstick mark on the cup rim.
"What do you do now?" he asked in a quiet kind voice.
"Oh, I pick up the pieces and try to put them back together again."
"The pieces of the statue… or your marriage?"
"Both, I guess. Ironic though that it's Lucy. She kept my marriage from cracking up once before and over a much, much, much more basic problem. It's funny. I know he's been unfaithful to me. And that doesn't bother me. Honestly! Because, well, infidelity is simply not worth getting upset about. I mean, I had an idea of certain qualities that would be essential to me in a husband. Steve has eight of the twelve so I figured that I was ahead of the game. Sexual fidelity was not one of the twelve. I know that isn't the usual priority…"
"Certainly it's not prevalent in suburbia," Howell interjected with sour amusement. "As a matter of fact, if you'd stop being such a paradox, you'd probably be better off."
"I don't understand."
He grinned at her reassuringly. "Think it over. Later. When you've started thinking again. But you are a paradox, my dear."
"What's paradoxical about not worrying if your husband is sleeping with other women? That's on his conscience, not mine. And good Lord, the man's away so much, it's only natural to… to do what's natural."
"You are either remarkably well-adjusted or incredibly naive."
She didn't know whether or not he was laughing at her.
"I shouldn't have brought that up, his sleeping around, the other night. But he was accusing me of it, and I haven't."
"Thus spake outraged virtue!" There was a damnable twinkle in Howell's eyes.
"I'm not being outraged virtue! But he'd no right to blame me for the sins on his conscience. And he was sorry about knocking the Lucy over. He really is proud of my work. Lucy did that for me. Maybe he doesn't understand why I have to sculpt, but he likes the money it brings in. I don't care which just so long as I have the chance to do it and he doesn't complain too much.
"Oh, don't misunderstand me, Jamie. I'm no undiscovered Michelangelo, but I've been well trained. And if there is such a thing as inherited instinct or talent, I have that, for all that my father worked only in oils. But my work is solid, competent and sometimes provocative."
"I'd employ different adjectives," Jamie said, clearing his throat hastily. "I rank 'provocative' with 'interesting' as damning adjectives. In sculpture, I put the wire-crate junkyard variety in the 'provocative' category."
"I just have to sculpt," she ended lamely.
"Then you won't give it up because of this brouhaha and the damage to the Lucy?"
"No," she said, shaking her head for emphasis, "especially because the Lucy was involved. So you will have your work," she added quickly.
"That was furthest from my mind," he said in acid annoyance. Then, seeing his reaction distressed her, he took her hand in his. "I want a LeBoyne, believe me I do. Besides," and he grinned wickedly at her, "I feel I've earned it."
"I apologize for involving you in this crise des nerfs. I see now that it's been building up. I can usually sidestep them but I was happy and I didn't keep my eyes open."
He shook his head disapprovingly and pursed his lips. "I don't see, myself, why you should have to keep your eyes open when you're happy."
"You're most vulnerable then," she replied as if he should know.
"No wonder you close up so tightly, Mirelle." He rose to his feet. "You have no reason to apologize to me. In an obscure way, I was glad to be here with you yesterday. You needed someone. I suggest, most sincerely, however, that you cultivate a female friend. Actually I dropped by yesterday to say that I've been called to substitute for another accompanist who's ill. I'll be away until the 14th. I'll call you when I get back."
At the door, he turned.
"Find Lucy in someone else, Mirelle. Clay has no opinions and makes a damned clammy shoulder to cry on."
She watched him stride quickly to his car, his left shoulder hiked up, his gait that of the foot-weary infantryman. For all that caustic tongue of his, James Howell was a kind man.
CHAPTER SIX
THE DAY AFTER Howell left on tour, Mirelle found the courage to go down into the studio. Howell had righted the stand and replaced the cloth. Dispassionately Mirelle stripped the statue and regarded the unnatural, misshapen twist of the mashed plasticene body. The aluminum wire of the armature showed through as a grotesque fracture through the clothing clay across the thigh and down one leg. Little suggestion was left of the personality she had brought out of her material. Tentatively she twisted the head-high hand back to its position on the forehead, then she reset the position of the body frame, obliterating the remaining details of the draping. Snorting to herself, she used both hands to gouge the plasticene from the frame, and begin afresh.
To her surprise, the reworking of the statue took a shorter time. There was a different feeling about the Lucy when she got it to the same stage it had been at the time of the accident. Mirelle tried in vain to define the subtle alteration because the result was a more powerful representation of the woman Mirelle had loved. Some of her unwitting sentimentalization had been stripped from the new concept, making it a more candid portrayal of Lucy Farnoll.