Thoughts of her secret correspondent become constant companions,
edging to the fore whenever she lowers the barrier of concentration
on her carving. Sitting over her morning mug of mocha java, soaking
at night in a bubble bath scented with chamomile or cedar, taking
a midday break to stretch and ease the muscles in her lower back,
she wonders. She
searches among her spectators, looking for a face that appears
more often than others, for a sign of more than usual interest.
She walks through both cemeteries in a peppering shower, examining
every one of her tombstones, looking for clues to the person making
the rubbings. Marta rests on a bench beside a tomb of pre-cast
concrete. The walls are covered with low relief patterns, a style
she'd once seen described as a concrete version of gingerbread
gothic. She's found all of the tombstones used in the rubbings
but there are no clues to the identity of the artist-no pattern
in the location of the tombstones, the dates of their placement,
or the people memorialized, no personal property left behind.
Rising to leave, Marta notices that the rain has left verter-water
in the hollows of the tombstones and wonders absently who might
need a charm for warts.
~
Two weeks pass. Branches of holly arrive asking, "Am I forgotten?"
Marta feels compelled to answer, but too shy to speak in any
but the language of flowers. She is carving a tombstone for the
former chief of police, a man who took up gardening in his retirement.
The central element is his police badge crest. She chooses a flower
border for the gardener he became, but also for her correspondent:
Canterbury bell, acknowledgment of the messages, and monthly honeysuckle
to say, "I will not answer hastily." The day after that stone
is set, another square of newsprint appears under her door. Marta's
habit is to work with her back to the window, the southern light
falling on the face of her work. She wonders whether her message
was read in her studio or in the cemetery. Is her correspondent
perhaps a gravedigger? A cemetery caretaker? She unfolds a rubbing
of chickweed. He is seeking a rendezvous.
Marta never consciously decided it was so, but she feels her
correspondent is a man. The thought of meeting a man makes her
heart pound. Even in her youth, she was too awkward and tongue-tied
to be popular. She knows she is not pretty-nearly six feet tall
and top-heavy. The weight of the granite-carving tools has produced
prodigious muscles. Marta's hard, callused hands tremble as she
takes up her hammer and strikes. The carbide tip of her chisel
bites into the granite. Eupatorium emerges from the stone: delay.
The next rubbing is of celandine, promising joys to come, and
balsam done in yellow chalk, speaking his impatience. Marta lies
wakeful in her bed, nightfoundered, and arises to add white poplar
to a landscaper's gravestone, again seeking time. Her lover-she
thinks of him as her lover now-sends a rubbing of red balsam,
still impatient but resolved to win her love. Marta smiles behind
her mask. She thinks perhaps this romantic artist is different
from the men she has known. But she cautiously taps out a Carolina
rose in reply: love is dangerous.
~
That evening, Marta finds her cache of rubbings on the kitchen
table. Her brother Jim has been painting her bedroom. "When did
you do these?" he asks.
"I didn't. A-a friend gave them to me." Her four other brothers
gather round, pushing, elbowing each other aside, snatching sheets
of newsprint in ways that make Marta cringe.
Joe says, "What? You got a boyfriend?"
Jack waves the rubbing of celandine and yellow balsam. "What
kind of man would do pansy shit like this?"
"What's his name?" demands John.
Marta looks down, her straight dark hair a slice of midnight
across her pink cheek. "I don't know. I haven't actually met him."
Joe says, "Whaddya mean, you haven't met him?"
Marta's blush deepens. "He's-like a secret admirer, I guess."
"Get real." Jason looks sideways at Marta. "We love you, Mart.
But we're family. You're thirty-seven, you're built like a trucker,
and your hair's going grey. Somebody's pullin' your chain!"
John's tone is soothing. "Maybe it's an honest mistake. Maybe
he's just mistaken Mart for somebody else."
Jack says, "So? What do you think he'll do when he finds out?"
Marta lies awake long into the night, Jack's question filling
the spaces where sleep should be.
~
Marta's lover sends a rubbing of pansies, "Thinking good thoughts
of you."
Marta carves lavender, "Distrust."
Her lover says, "Please relieve my anxiety" with hellebore niger,
the Christmas rose.
Marta vacillates over possible answers. She is carving a tombstone
for a beloved minister, an elaborate pattern of crosses. She knows
over 400 forms of the cross, though Christian symbolism uses only
50. Suddenly she sees that the cross is the answer for her lover:
faith. She encloses the crosses in a border of dock, seeking his
patience.
Ten days later she receives a rubbing of everlasting pea, again
asking for a meeting. Marta spends nearly an entire week carving
an angel holding olive wreaths of peace above the heads of two
kneeling figures, one with a roll of the honored dead and the
other with the upright torch of eternal life, its flame appearing
to be blown by the wind. Marta labors long over the flame. But
her border of straight lines says nothing of a meeting.
She carves a relief of fire engines for a woman firefighter who
died of smoke inhalation trying to save an infant from a burning
apartment. She carves standard mortuary symbols-doves, ferns,
daisies for innocence, lilies of the valley for purity and humility,
broken flowers for life terminated-with borders of Greek key,
lines, and braids. She is careful to include nothing that could
be inadvertently interpreted as an answer, no gates opening, clasped
hands, or pansies for remembrance.
Every night she sleeps fitfully and wakes often. Sometimes she
imagines enchanted meetings, perfect understanding, marriage and
happily ever after. More often she has nightmares of pain, rejection
and abandonment. Eventually, under Marta's sure hands, the refusal
of striped carnations emerges from the stone, mixed with auricula,
"Importune me not."
Her lover says, "I am your captive" with peach blossom, then
sends myrtle for love. Marta's hammer and chisel remain silent.
There is a time with no rubbings and then her suitor sends carnations
rubbed in red chalk, "Alas, my poor heart." The next rubbings
are marigold for grief, despair, and-finally-laurestina, "I die
if neglected." The last rubbing arrives on the autumnal equinox.
~
Weeks pass. Winter brings less light for work, more dark for
loneliness, familiar as an old friend who's returned after her
recent absence. Surrounded by her brothers, Marta feels as though
she's been alone forever. Their parents died in a car crash when
Marta was 22, only ten days out of college, her B.F.A. still warm
in her hand-the only one of the six siblings old enough to be
a legal guardian for the others. Their father had been a stonemason.
Marta took over, made many mistakes and worked long hours to compensate
for them. She brought each brother into the business as he grew.
As they took over more of the construction work, to bring in extra
cash Marta started carving tombstones in a tiny comer of one of
the warehouses. The work gave voice to her soul and light to her
days, shaped her life and the woman she became. Eventually she
escaped the business-sold her share to her brothers for the capital
to start her storefront studio-but she's never escaped the house
they share.
~
Marta wakes in the night, needing the lover she almost had, and
goes early to her studio. Two weeks before, a winter storm forced
a white-burying. This bitter cold morning is right for carving
that stone. She holds her chisel firmly but not too tightly, angled
60 degrees, about midway down the shank, and swings the hammer
freely with her other hand. She carves zinnias, thoughts of an
absent friend.
As the snow melts, she carves a double stone for a couple killed
in an automobile accident. She chooses baby's breath for everlasting
love and adds petunias, "Do not despair." The second part of the
message speaks as much to her own heart as to her silent lover.
These days Marta's eyes look bruised and the face in her mirror
is pale. Her clothes fit more loosely than they used to:
A ten-year-old girl is dying of leukemia. During her final illness,
she summons Marta to her bedside. The big brown eyes and solemn
mouth are familiar to Marta. In the fall she had come often to
watch the carving, sometimes standing at the window for an hour
or more, her nose pressed to the glass. "I want a special tombstone,"
she says. "I've tried to talk to my parents about it, but Mom
just cries and leaves the room and Dad says, 'Well, Elsa, we'll
see. I rather favor lambs and flowers myself.' If you don't help
me, that's what I'm going to get-lambs and flowers. I just know
it." Tears stand in her eyes.
"And what sort of tombstone would you like to have?" Marta asks.
"I want monsters. One of my doctors said the leukemia is a monster,
eating my white blood cells." Her pointy chin juts pugnaciously.
"I want that monster trapped in my gravestone. He's been with
me all this time, I don't want him leaving me just because I'm
dead."
Marta says, "I'll see what I can do." She speaks to Elsa's parents.
Elsa's mother weeps. Her father shrugs helplessly. "Anything
that will make her feel better. The end is near."
Marta sets other work aside, hoping Elsa will be able to see
her tombstone. She leafs through old books and finds reference
to a yirdswine, a mysterious, dreaded sort of animal believed
to live in graveyards, burrowing among the dead bodies. She carves
a fantastical animal, with huge eyes, an ugly snout, clawed feet,
and scales. She intermingles smooth surfaces with others left
rough-just as they are finished by pointing tools, bush hammers,
and chisels-playing one surface against another. Around the beast
she carves straw for her lover, a message of agreement. Elsa's
father carries her in his arms to see the stone in Marta's studio.
The child's gratitude nearly breaks Marta's heart. Elsa dies and
her caged monster is set atop her grave in the snowbroth.
As the year's greening starts, Marta searches among her blanks.
The first two stones she taps with a steel hammer give off a dull
thud. They are dead, not suitable for carving. It's a bad omen.
Marta's never had trouble with stone from this supplier before.
The third stone she strikes rings clear. Marta starts carving
immediately. She carves a plum tree, "Keep your promises." But
there are no more rubbings.
~
It's Friday night. Marta and her brothers sit around the kitchen
table. The middle of the green and white checked tablecloth is
hidden under a heaping platter of spaghetti, a teak salad bowl,
and a basket of garlic bread. Marta is nibbling the heel of the
bread, sipping red wine, toying with her salad. The brothers are
drinking Budweiser and wolfing the spaghetti. Jim says, "You're
looking a little peaked, Marta. You lost your appetite?"
Joe glances up. "Mart? Are you sick?"
Jack waves his fork, sprinkling spaghetti sauce around his plate.
"Nah. Mart's never sick. Unless maybe it's love-sick." He guffaws.
John waggles his eyebrows at Marta. "What's up with your lover-boy,
Mart? The guy with the posy pictures?"
Marta looks at her plate and shrugs. "Nothing."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Jack demands.
Jason drains his bottle of Bud. "It means he dumped her."
Joe says, "Mart?"
Marta looks at them with stony eyes. "He's dead."
For a few seconds no one says anything. They sit motionless,
forks and bottles suspended in midair. Then Jim says, "Oh. Geez.
Well, never mind, Mart. We have each other." As if on cue, the
men noisily attack their food, nobody meeting Marta's gaze.
She looks at her brothers, all of them bigger than most, most
of them more good-looking than not. Jason seems to be getting
serious about the petite blonde he's been dating, the one with
the burbling laugh. Joe has started dating, too, a librarian as
quiet as he is. But Jim-only in his early thirties but already
an old man, set in his ways, pulling the circle of his world closer.
Yes, she and Jim would always have each other.
~
The vernal equinox finds Marta at her grindstone. She uses no
oil because oil discolors the stone. She works the edges of her
tools until they are as sharp as they can be and then she chooses
the most colorfully variegated Carrara marble from her new shipment.
She begins carving a cenotaph. She has carved hundreds of tombstones,
but hardly ever a memorial to someone whose body is elsewhere.
When the carving is done, the stone is set on her cemetery plot
overlooking the river. On the north side is saffron, "My best
days are past," black mulberry, "I will not survive you," and
clasped hands to signify both farewell and a meeting in eternity.
On the east face are yellow acacia for a secret love, camellias
for steadfast love, and roses for unity. On the south side a broken
column for the broken support of life, twined with ivy for immortality.
And on the west, sweet scabious for widowhood and the first words
ever written to her lover: "Fearing life, she welcomes death."
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