The Sculptor

“Don’t let her size fool you. She’s a real ass kicker, that Janet Polk. Didn’t get to where she is today on just her smarts, I’ll tell you that much.”

“A bit protective of you, is she?”

“Oh yes. Been that way from the beginning-ever since I was her assistant at Harvard. And when my mother died…well…let’s just say Janet was the only one who was really there for me.” Cathy felt her chest, her stomach tighten at the thought of Steve Rogers’s ultimatum; the teary-eyed, whimpering “end of his rope” speech that he delivered not even two months after her mother’s death, when the length and depth of Cathy’s grief had simply become too much for him.

“I’m begging you, Cat. You’ve got to snap out of it. I’m at the end of my rope with you. This isn’t good for us. You’ve got to try to move on, get past it. For us, Cat. For us.”

It wasn’t so much what her spineless excuse for a husband had said that still bothered Cathy, but that she, a Harvard educated PhD-perhaps the foremost scholar on Michelangelo in the world-had actually bought into his selfishness. Yes, what really set Cathy’s blood boiling there in the Trailblazer was the thought that, at the very moment when her husband should have been there for her, she abandoned her mourning to take care of him-not because he needed her, but because she was afraid of losing him.

That was the beginning of the end. Should have handed the selfish motherfucker his balls back right then and there.

“May I ask how it happened?”

“He cheated. With one of his graduate students.”

“I’m sorry. But I meant your mother.”

“Oh,” Cathy said, embarrassed. “Forgive me-my mind is going in a thousand different directions. Breast cancer. Fought it for years, but in the end it took her quickly. I suppose you could say she was lucky in that respect. You know, the statistics say that Korean women have one of the lowest incidences of breast cancer in the United States. I guess nobody got around to telling my mother that.”

“I’m sorry, Cathy.”

“Thank you.” Cathy smiled, for she knew Markham was sincere. “Anyway, Janet was the one who really helped me get through it all, from the time my mother was first diagnosed until the end-and afterward, of course. Helped me stay on track to get the book published, to get tenure and all that. Even before everything happened, I always thought of her as sort of a second mother.”

“And what about your father?”

“Retired military. Army. Lives somewhere down in North Carolina now with his second wife-the woman with whom he was cheating on my mother. They divorced when I was in the third grade-he and my mother, I mean-right after she and I moved to Rhode Island.”

“So you grew up around here?”

“Since the third grade, yes. My mother had a cousin who lived in Cranston -helped the two of us get settled-and she ended up getting her degree in computers. Carved out a nice little life for the two of us. Before that, I moved around like the typical Army brat. We were all stationed in Italy, near Pisa, when my father met his second wife. She was Army, too. It was after all that went down that my mother and I settled back in the States.”

“ Italy. Let me guess. Is that where you first became interested in Michelangelo?”

“Yes. My mother was only eighteen when she married my father-met him while he was stationed in Korea. Ever since she was a child she had wanted to become an artist, but back then things weren’t so easy for Korean girls. And being one of five sisters, well, her parents were more than happy to marry her off to an American GI. Anyway, ever since I can remember-since the day I was born, I think-no matter where we were stationed, she used to take me along with her to all the local museums. And during the two years we were stationed in Italy, well, you can imagine the time we had together. I don’t remember much from our first trip to Florence, but my mother used to say that the first time I saw Michelangelo’s David I actually started crying-that I thought the statue was a real man, a giant who had been frozen in ice, and that I cried for him out of pity.”

Markham laughed.

“It was funnier to hear her tell it. She was a lovely woman, my mother-very bright, very witty. Never remarried, either. Everything for her daughter. She was only fifty-two when she passed.”

“I really am sorry, Cathy.”

“I know.”

“And your father?” Markham asked after a moment. “You talk to him much?”