As Cathy and Markham sped across town toward the East Side of Providence, a brown paper wrapped package-bundled neatly with the rest of her mail into a folded Pottery Barn catalog-sat waiting patiently in Cathy’s mailbox.
Even the postman had thought it a curious-looking parcel-felt bubble wrapped, about the size of a DVD case-but with no return address, and covered with far too many stamps-of various denominations, ten dollars worth in all-as if the sender did not want to go to the post office, but wanted to make sure it arrived at its destination. But what was even more curious to the postman was the way in which the sender saluted its recipient-a neatly written phrase above the street address which read simply:
Especially for Dr. Hildebrant.
Chapter 27
Miles away, The Sculptor wiped the spittle from his father’s chin. Instead of seating him as he usually did in the big chair by the window, The Sculptor had served his father his supper in bed that evening. He had played a few episodes of The Shadow on the CD player inside the old Philco and thought he saw the left corner of his father’s mouth curl up ever so slightly during the introduction.
Then again, The Sculptor could not be sure. His mind might be playing tricks on him, for he was tired-very tired. And he had been working very, very hard lately. His Pietà was completed-had come together in just over two weeks from the afternoon he picked up RounDaWay17 at Kennedy Plaza in downtown Providence. Then again, in a way he had cheated, for The Sculptor had finished off many components of his Pietà over a year ago-the metal frame, the rock of Golgotha on which the Virgin would be seated, the contours of her flowing robes. And of course, the most important parts of the Virgin herself-her head, her hands, her breasts-had been preserved, articulated, and painted long before Bacchus and his satyr went into the pressurized tub of chemicals.
Back then, when he first started experimenting with pieces of the women, the Plastination process took much longer than it did now-just as long as it still took von Hagens and his team over in Heidelberg, Germany. But The Sculptor had made improvements on von Hagens’s methods; he found that he could speed up the process considerably by alternating pressure and energy currents through the solvent, as well as by inserting thin “conductor tubes” at key points around the body between the various tissues. And unlike von Hagens, who skinned his subjects to display the muscles and internal organs, The Sculptor, who had no need for the insides, found that hollowing out the torso and placing a single conductor tube along the spine would help speed up the process even more. And so, whereas it took von Hagens months, sometimes a whole year to prepare and then pose a figure, it now took The Sculptor-working diligently, around the clock-just a little over a week.
Yes, The Sculptor could have made quite a bit of money patenting the improvements on von Hagens’s Plastination process if he wished. But then again, The Sculptor was not concerned with such base matters as money.
Ironically, it was the skin that had always given The Sculptor the most trouble, for during the process of preparing his figures The Sculptor found that, after dissolving the hair with depilatory cream and removing the lipid tissues from underneath, the skin became loose and slippery and very difficult to work with. And only through trial and error with the pieces of the women did he finally find the right balance of traditional tanning techniques and the methodology he adapted from von Hagens. The result gave him a tighter surface through which he could articulate the veins and muscle tissue underneath for desired definition and detail, yet the skin remained porous enough so that his mixture of special paint bonded with it nicely.
Indeed, once you got past all the trial and error, all the experimentation with this or that much of yada-yada-chemical, the rest of the process was pretty straightforward. After The Sculptor hung and drained his material from a large hook he had attached to the bottom of the mortician’s table-and after the internal organs had been discarded and the preliminary embalming of formaldehyde complete-The Sculptor followed his improvements upon the Plastination process until it was time to pose the prepared figures and let the silicone harden in a bubble of plastic sheeting heated by UV lamps. Unlike with his Bacchus, the appendages of which required a much more complex articulation process to get the positional ratios correct, the Rome Pietà did not take nearly as long. The Pietà was much tighter, much more compact in the way the original figures’ limbs had been carved from the marble. The real trick had been getting the angles right-the Virgin’s arms, the tilt of her head, the degree of incline of Christ on her lap.
As with his Bacchus, The Sculptor discovered that he could save himself a lot of trouble if he got the angles of the iron frame right first. And since the Virgin’s body would be almost entirely hidden under her robes, there was really no need to worry about damaging that material. Thus, The Sculptor had much more room for error, much more room with which to play in terms of manipulating the figure onto the frame. Then once both of the bodies were cured, stuffed, and mounted-and once the Virgin’s head and her hands and her breasts had been attached and the last of her robes laid on and starched into the right pattern of folds-The Sculptor adjusted Mother and Son’s plastinated limbs by tying them off and suspending them at various heights from rows of smaller hooks that he had fixed to the underside of the mortician’s table. After enclosing the statue in a ring of clear plastic sheeting running from the underside of the table to the floor, and after the silicone rubber had hardened under the heat of the UV lamps, all that he needed to do was sculpt the epoxy compound for Christ’s hair and his beard, let it dry, then layer his paint on with his pump sprayer until he achieved the desired finish.
The last of the paint had gone on that morning.
And even though he was tired, even though he had worked feverishly for days with little or no sleep, as The Sculptor pulled the blankets up to his father’s chin, he was nonetheless pleased not only with how quickly his Pietà had come together, but also with how beautiful it had turned out in the end. Even better than my Bacchus, he thought, smiling. The Sculptor could not help but feel giddy when he imagined what Dr. Hildy’s reaction would be-knew that when it was all over she would thank him when she saw, when she understood how his work had changed the world. Yes, very soon she would learn to appreciate him.
Of course, in the end, it was really he who appreciated her. Oh yes, The Sculptor had much to thank her for. And hopefully, when she saw the DVD he sent her, when she understood just one of the many reasons why fate had brought them together, maybe she would already start to appreciate him.
Just a little.
The Sculptor knew that Dr. Hildy would most likely receive the DVD today or tomorrow-might have already watched it, for that matter. He hoped she had, for the information she and the FBI would get from watching it would help him in his plan. The Sculptor had wanted to deliver the DVD personally-had wanted to slip it in her mailbox himself just like the old days when he used to sneak into the List Art Center to deliver the notes, his heart pounding with fear and excitement. But now things were different, and he dared not get too close. Yes, The Sculptor knew the FBI was probably still watching Dr. Hildy very closely; which was why, since the unveiling of his Bacchus, he had driven by her place on the Upper East Side only twice-in disguise; in his third car, his ’99 Porsche 911. The Sculptor always used his Camry to drive by the Polks’-much less conspicuous in that neighborhood. The Sculptor could tell by the metal mailbox next to Dr. Hildy’s front door that she was still picking up her mail even though she was staying with her friend Janet-the older woman, the one who looked like that tennis player from the 1970s, Billie Jean King.