The Sculptor

“That’s right,” said his mother. “And I love you more than anything in the whole wide world. Just like in the statue.”

Oh yes. Even as a boy The Sculptor understood.

And for years on those Sundays at St. Bartholomew’s it was only just the two of them-Mary and Christian, mother and son-listening to Father Bonetti read the Mass, and then lingering in the votive chapel to stare at the marble statues long afterward. Mother and son always agreed: the Pietà was their favorite.

But when the boy named Christian grew a little older-oh, six or seven The Sculptor supposed-his mother began to rest her hand in his groin when she drove him home from the bakery after church-the smell of fresh Italian bread filling the car as his Sunday khakis grew tight beneath the warmth of her hand. It was a strange sensation, the boy named Christian thought, but one that was pleasing to him nonetheless. What was even better was when she would sit next to him that way on the sofa. She would let him stay up late on Fridays to watch Victoria Principal-that woman on Dallas who was so pretty, and who the boy named Christian thought looked just like his mother. On one such Friday, when the boy named Christian asked his mother why she did not sit with him that way when his father was home, his mother explained that it was a secret: a special secret from God that was to be kept only between mother and son; a secret that if anyone else knew, not only would the boy’s father kill himself, but God would kill her-would turn her into a statue just like Mary in the church.

And so the boy named Christian never understood why, all of a sudden one day when he was nine, mother and son stopped going to church. But it wasn’t too long afterward that the beatings began, and later, worst of all, the cold baths. Even though he did not like the beatings, the boy named Christian always understood why his mother knocked him on the head; he always understood why she slapped him then locked him in the bathroom with the spilled bleach. That only happened when he was bad-like the time he drank some of her wine, or the time he tore out some pictures from her old college history books.

But always-when he was super naughty as his mother used to call it-when the boy named Christian went down face first into the tub of icy water, he had no idea what he had done to set his mother off. The cold baths came only once every month or so; they were always late at night when his mother had been drinking. “Out!” she would say, bursting into his bedroom-her breath foul with the smell of wine and cigarettes as she yanked him by the hair into the bathroom. The baths were always the same, but the boy named Christian never got used to them. He was sure that every time he went under that this time would be the last; he was sure that, as he began to choke, as she pushed him under once more he would never see his beloved father again.

But always, just as he felt that icy tingle down in his chest, his mother would pull him out of the tub. And later, as he lay shivering naked in his bed in the dark, she would crawl under the covers with him-one hand stroking between his legs while she pleasured herself with her other-the warmth of her bare breasts against his skin indescribably magical in its consolation to him.

“A mother’s love,” she would whisper over and over. “A mother’s love.”

This too was a secret just between them-a secret with dire consequences for their whole family if revealed.

When he was a little older the baths and the beatings stopped, but his mother would still crawl naked into bed with him at night. She would stroke his penis longer, until the boy named Christian “blew his load” as his friends at school called it. And when he was older still, just before his father sent him off to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, Christian’s mother began putting his penis between her legs, instructing him with her hands and her body how to make love to her.

“A mother’s love,” was all she would say. “A mother’s love.”

And so the boy named Christian wrestled with his mother’s love for a long time-never told his father, never told anyone. What made it even more difficult for him was that he was so very bright. He understood what it meant when his counselor in elementary school said he tested at the “genius” level. He understood every single thing his teachers at Phillips threw at him, even the technology behind the patents his father had developed for his booming software company. Yes, all that kind of stuff came easily to the boy, to the young man named Christian. But the one thing he could never wrap his mind around was his mother’s love.

That is until he read Slumbering in the Stone.