In one sane compartment of her mind, she was appalled at the intensity of her hysterics, yet unable to control herself.
Oh, God, make the phone ring. Let someone come to the door. I'll have to get control then. I'll have to calm down. Someone! Help me!
The door was flung open and Sylvia came bursting in. The shock stilled the next sob in Mirelle's throat. She held her breath with every ounce of strength, determined not to let the sobbing resume. Sylvia! Thank God. Then Mirelle panicked. Oh, my God, what do I say? I can't… I can't talk. She'd know.
"Any coffee left, Mirelle?" Sylvia asked, half-way to the kitchen even as she called.
"Make more." The two short words came out just as if Mirelle was concentrating on a vital detail. She struggled up from the couch and lurched into the laundryroom. She grabbed the first towel in the basket, turned on the tap and started slapping water in her face, still gulping back the remnants of the hysterical contractions.
"You sure are eager-beaver in the studio this morning," Sylvia was saying cheerfully from the kitchen.
Oh, please, stay there a little longer, Mirelle silently entreated as she grabbed a clean bra and pants from the dryer. Yesterday's jeans were gritty with plaster and caked with paint but with a clean shirt over them… She even found a piece of broken comb with enough teeth left to get her hair into some kind of order. She dabbed at her eyes again with cold water but her hands were trembling badly. So were her knees.
"Got a cup down there, Mirelle?"
"Yes."
Mirelle peered at her shadowy reflection in the clear windowpane. One look and she's going to know that I've been crying. And what'll I say? Oh why… Well, you demanded someone's presence. At least it's Sylvia.
High heels clacked on the bare space between hall carpeting and the stair tread. Mirelle, trying to smile, stepped back into the studio, shoulders braced for the inevitable question. But Sylvia's attention was focused on the tray she carried and didn't look at Mirelle.
"Oh, you're working on the Lucy again? That's good. I'm all for charitable works but in moderation."
"Not working. Just checking."
"Coming down with a cold? Your voice is rough."
Mirelle hastily cleared her throat. "No. Frog. Coffee'll help."
"Where's your cup? Ooops!" Sylvia filled it and handed it back to Mirelle, still without looking at her, being intent on not spilling the hot liquid. "You don't happen to have another of those silly pigs, do you? Like the ones you made for Tonia and Nick? Because I have to have something as an inconsequential birthday present and the pig would be sooo appropriate." Sylvia dropped her voice to a droll pitch to stress the fact that the recipient was unlikely to appreciate the obscure insult.
"I've two rough plaster ones, easily finished and glazed."
"On the shelf here?"
"Over more to the left, behind that plaque. Right there."
Sylvia stretched up, blindly but carefully feeling along the shelf with her hands. Then her fingers located the right shapes and brought both pigs down. She took them over to the window, turning them into the light and chuckling.
"You wouldn't mind, would you? I mean, if you're doing some serious work on the Lucy…"
"No, no. I don't mind at all. I'm sort of worked out at the moment, idling as it were."
"In that case, Madame da Vinci, I want the pig pink and polka-dotted. A raucous pink and a putrid purple for the dots. Could you possibly prostitute your art for little old me?" Sylvia swung round then, her eyes still on the bigger pig, her grin malicious. "How long will it take?"
"To glaze and fire? Two days at the most."
"Sure I'm not interrupting an important phase?" And Sylvia gestured at the Lucy.
"No. Not at all. I'd tell you. Here, drink your coffee and I'll put on the underglaze right now," Mirelle said. She could brush on a glaze without having to look directly at Sylvia.
Sylvia curled up on the couch, watching as Mirelle, with deft small strokes, applied the coating. She gave a shudder.
"I could never work that precisely. My stomach gets wrapped up in knots."
"You're the expansive type. That's why you can't be good with small motor movements and controlled gestures."
"You said it!" Sylvia sounded so unexpectedly bitter and caustic that Mirelle looked up. Her face was still averted but the coffee cup was shaking in her hand.
Mirelle suddenly realized that, if she had not wanted Sylvia's attention, Sylvia had been avoiding Mirelle in an adroit manner.
"Do you know what I was doing when you came this morning, Syl?" she asked, without thinking it over.
Sylvia ducked her head down and rubbed a forefinger on the rim of her cup. "No. What?"
"I was having a first class case of hysterics, praying to Almighty God to make the phone ring or let someone come to the door so I'd have to get hold of myself."
Slowly Sylvia met Mirelle's eyes. Her face, expressionless and almost ugly with its lack of animation, was sadly old. She'd no make-up on which, if Mirelle had not been so self-concerned, would have immediately indicated distress.
"If you could have seen me throwing cold water on my face, tearing clothes out of the dryer so you wouldn't catch me in my nightgown…" and Mirelle started to laugh at the inanity of it. "The two of us playing the same game…"
"Well, I'll be damned." She stared at Mirelle for one moment longer and then began to chuckle. Color came back into her face and the infection of Mirelle's giggles doubled hers. They sat across the room from each other, laughing at themselves.
"Okay, what were you hysterical about, Mirelle?" Sylvia finally asked, wiping her eyes.
Mirelle shook her head, as much at herself as to indicate an inability to answer.
"Oh, things just dumped on me all of a sudden. You?"
Sylvia grimaced. "All right, we'll play it coy a little while longer."
"Maybe if we both talked AT each other at the same time, neither of us would hear what the other said and our terrible confessions would remain secret?"
Sylvia gave Mirelle a long sideways glance. "I think you've got the right end of that stick, my friend. But," and she sighed deeply, "now that we've had a therapeutic laugh at each other, I do feel better." She cocked her head quizzically at Mirelle.
"I feel better, too."
"Good, then these two blind mice can fare forth anew to find that better mouse-trap."
Despite Sylvia's brisk rejoinder, Mirelle recognized that her friend had only the most tenuous grip on herself.
"I wonder if a better mouse-trap would do any good at all?" she said softly.
Sylvia glared at her. "You're nearly there," and she gestured dramatically at the Lucy. "Even this feckless thing," and she pointed angrily at the half-glazed pig, "is cuts above the usual twee gimcrackery. You've got an outlet. You create…" Sylvia broke off, her eyes filming with tears. Instead of giving way, she blinked furiously, knuckling her eyes with brusque strokes. "Can you produce a very very bad purple for the spots?" she asked in a wheedling tone.
Dutifully then, Mirelle took her bottles of coloring from the shelf and found a clean jar. She sprinkled in a few grains of red, blue, a bit of orange luminescent paint, and mixed. Sylvia didn't approve. They spent the next hour trying to extract from the pigments exactly the shade in Sylvia's mind.
"Of course, it'll fire darker, and more vitriolic," Mirelle said when an approximation of the vile shade had been achieved.
"This is going to be a horror," Sylvia said in triumph. "Honest, Mirelle, it's a shame to do this to such a nice pig," she added contritely.