The Bone Parade (10 page)

Lauren didn’t understand how anyone could feel such passion for a sport, but she did understand the nature of passion itself, and had long pitied those who had never experienced its power. She had thought she’d known all about it, had experienced its many dimensions in her obsession with sculpture; but in the past few weeks she’d learned that passion exists well beyond the confines of a studio, and every time she saw an email from Ry Chambers the elevator dance in her belly reminded her of this all over again. She’d never felt this for Chad. She’d never felt this for any man. Even when Ry asked for a simple detail about a green patina that she’d used on a piece (as he had this morning), it thrilled her to read his words. The feelings she had for him rivaled even the passion she’d long felt for sculpture, which had also come alive in a single spark. On a spring afternoon her sophomore year in high school, her art teacher had given each of them a box of clay and said they were free to fashion anything they wanted.

She had worked a ball of it in her hands anxiously, unsure of the direction she should take, worried that she’d even find a direction. And then it had come to her, and in the hour that followed she’d roughed out the figure of her absent father, not as she’d known him, but as she had
felt
him, the inner life she’d endured thinking about him since his disappearance. The form had been abstract, and its abstraction had possessed a reality that only the emotions could ever know. Her teacher, who spent compliments with the mean, pinched face of a miser, had looked over her shoulder and spoken the one word that had changed her forever: “Excellent.”

As a professor, she’d always strived to do the same for her students, to send them on to a larger life than the one they’d lived before meeting her. To let them feel the license of passion, the way it could unchain them from their more conservative impulses. Now Kerry was moving out from under her tutelage, taking her admiration elsewhere. In a way, it was like losing a lover, not the one you took in your arms but the one you took under your wing. And you had to withhold judgment. She could never say to Kerry that Ashley Stassler’s work lacked vision, or integrity, that it was little more than the glitzy, fashionably macabre accumulation of appearances worshipped by a celebrity-conscious culture. Kerry would have to come to those conclusions on her own. Or not. Even thinking about Stassler’s work in such critical terms made Lauren feel like an ingrate because he alone had agreed to work with an aspiring sculptor; none of her other students had secured an internship. Then again, to her knowledge none of the other young women had included a photograph of herself in a snug halter and short skirt.

Nevertheless, Stassler’s willingness to take on an intern kindled Lauren’s grudging—and wary—gratitude; he would be helping Kerry pursue her dreams. She’d send him a thank-you note tomorrow, wish him well, and remind him that in Kerry Waters she was entrusting him with her very best student.

J
OLLY ROGER’S WEIGHT IS DOWN
to the point where I think I can put him on a strength-building program without killing him. Until recently, he looked like he had a heart attack waiting in the wings, an understudy eager for the leading role in his life.

None of them know exactly what’s in store, though the video of
Family #8
drilled real fear into at least three of them. But they’ve also gathered that they’re on a health kick of some sort, what with all the supplements, lean protein, and low-fat foods. June even wondered aloud why I’d bother taking such good care of them if I had any “foul intentions.” The camera mikes pick up their conversations, though there are few of them. For the most part, they’re as sullen as oxen.

The free weights make a clanging sound when I pull them out from behind the bone parade, not pleasant to their ears, judging by the way June cringes, but like Mozart to mine. I like weights, the brutal struggle to lift them. I’m forty-eight years old, and I have a better body than most twenty-year-olds. Weights are the only reason for this. You can’t do it any other way. You sure can’t run your way to a beautiful body. Your typical marathon masochist looks as emaciated as a Nepalese beggar. Pumping iron gives you definition, but definitely does not make you look like the Incredible Hulk. That’s a total misconception. To look like him you’d have to spend years eating your way through a mountain of food. That’s not going to happen with the Vandersons; their calories are as carefully calibrated as the fuel for the space shuttle
Challenger
.

They’ll hit every body part twice a week. It’s what I do, and it’s a very challenging regime. But if I didn’t do it I’d end up looking like Roger. Dying like Roger.

I position the workout bench directly in front of the cage. I can raise or lower one end of it so I can hit different muscles, even different parts of the same muscle. That’s what the uninitiated don’t understand: you can’t do one exercise for one muscle and get optimum development. Weights are your chisel. You hit a muscle from down below, the sides, and from the top. You chip away at it from every angle. After a few weeks of sweating, they’ll see.

The aficionados of my art believe I sculpt my series out of clay, entire families rising into perverse perfection from the rich depths of my admittedly unusual imagination. It’s what I’ve told them, and they, dutiful dolts that they are, believe me when I say that I make molds of the clay figures, and cast them in bronze. So simple. So false. So contemptibly common. I sculpt people alive.

Before I ever pour an ounce of bronze, I sculpt their living flesh. I forge it right down here, right before their very eyes. By the time I’m through, they have the best bodies of their lives. The Vandersons won’t be any different. They’ll have muscles where muscles are only a memory right now, if that. They’ll have ridges and curves and sharply defined shapes, instead of all that loose flesh that hangs off them like moss (though to be fair, I’m thinking of Roger mostly). They might even become aroused by their partners again. I’ve seen that happen more than once. A few weeks into the regime I’ve seen husbands and wives start eying each other, then eying the children until they’re asleep; and then I’ve seen what they do with their new bodies, how they copulate in silence, running their greedy hands all over each other. I do them favors with this program, but they rarely recognize the benefits in the beginning. That’s why acts of persuasion take precedence, though in the case of
Family Planning #5
nothing worked. They were so addicted to nicotine that the parents became irrational, and I had to speed up the schedule. I felt sorry for those poor kids, living with parents like that. Their folks wheezed like a couple of sour old cushions when I put them on the stationary bike, and even with the threat of death hanging over them like their favorite cloud of Marlboro smoke, they didn’t make much effort with the weights. I cringe every time I think of
Family Planning #5
. They could have been a career breaker for me. Killing them was an act of mercy. For me
and
for them.

But Jolly Roger and June, Sonny-boy and Diamond Girl are going to work out. I mean that literally. Jolly Roger’s back problem seems to have eased up. At least he’s no longer gripping himself like he’s got lumbago, and I’m dearly looking forward to watching Diamond Girl lie face down on the hamstring machine, hook the bar behind her ankles, and start curling those weights back. It’s a movement that produces the most delightful effect. With every pump the buns rise hungrily, as if achy for relief, as if inviting the swiftest violation. On Diamond Girl, I expect this delectable sight will only be heightened by the cruel constancy of her firmly rounded cheeks.

They watch me with great interest. I understand why. It’s boring down here. Weeks of tic-tac-toe with Sonny-boy would drive anyone to distraction. Yes, they do get to see ongoing episodes of
Family Planning #8
, but it’s not precisely the distraction most of them would prefer. Only Diamond Girl continues to smart off, so much so that I’m beginning to think she could use some professional help. Why they didn’t get her to a psychiatrist years ago is beyond me. Could any human being be that cold? That indifferent to her fate? It’s got to be an act. She’s got to be gaming me. I can’t believe she’s willing to die just to get away from her family. Although, who knows? Maybe if I’d spent fourteen or fifteen years—I still don’t know exactly how old she is—with that clan, I’d be ready to die too.

I haul out the weight stand and take my time setting it up at the end of the bench. Then I go back for the barbells and dumbbells. I’ve cast them from bronze, the most handsome set I’ve ever seen. Diamond Girl stares.

“How old are you?” I finally ask.

“Eighteen,” she says as June blurts out “thirteen,” and Roger, the idiot, says, “sixteen.” Roger is the only one telling the truth. June’s trying to keep me away from her daughter by claiming she’s little more than a child (admirable, given their obvious difficulties). Diamond Girl herself is trying to claim adulthood, and whatever prerogatives she presumes it holds in store. And Roger, good old guileless Roger, is hoping the truth is a talisman of some sort. I suspect that in the end, he will be most burdened by my duplicity. He will spend weeks forcing himself to get into shape, and will die feeling bitter and betrayed when he realizes that all his sweat and toil not only failed to buy his freedom, but assured the desirability of his death.

Sixteen, such a sweet age. I believe it was Bette Davis who said that the nicest thing about being eighteen were eighteen-year-old-boys. Much the same could be said for being forty-eight, and having Diamond Girl around.

The whole time they’ve been here I’ve had all of these barbells and dumbbells behind the bone parade. Now it’s as if the Vandersons are suddenly finding out that they’ve been staring at a screen, and that when you roll it up you find the tools of the trade, the secret to all this success. It’s called hard work.

That’s my quarrel with the new generation of artists. They’re not willing to really work, to commit themselves fully to their art. They have dalliances with their medium, but they never truly commit, which means they’ll never be more than dilettantes. I give
everything
to my art. Everything. Always have. And so will the Vandersons. They’ll work harder than they ever have before. They’ll see the payoff, and if they’re reasonable people, they’ll be grateful. What do people have? Fifty, maybe a hundred years? Sculpture is for centuries, maybe forever. Look at Michelangelo’s
David
. He’ll be around long after we’re all gone. He’ll be around a thousand years from now, two thousand. And so will the Vandersons. They should thank
me
. When I think of the pleasure I’ll have sculpting Diamond Girl, taking the impressions of her breasts and pudenda, her hard round bottom, I can’t help thinking of Michelangelo chipping away at David’s penis, fashioning his hard young ass, eventually unveiling in raw rock the physical expression of his own intense longing for adolescent boys. To say the master did his work lovingly is to understate the most obvious motivation of all: lust. That he did so much of his work for the Roman Catholic Church is the greatest irony of all.

It takes a full hour to set up all the equipment. I put on my fingerless leather gloves and tell them to watch carefully.

“Your lives depend on doing this right.”

“He’s fucking crazy,” I hear June say under her breath. This from a woman I thought was June Cleaver, maybe even a Mormon. I let it pass. Who cares what
she
thinks. Crazy? Who’s in a cage staring out at
me?
Who’s been having more mood swings than the hunchback of Notre Dame? Who’s been trying to scratch the eyeballs out of her daughter’s head one minute, and playing tic-tac-toe with her son the next? If anyone needs to take her meds around here, it’s you, Juney.

“I’m starting you off with the stationary bike. Easy at first. I don’t want to see any heroes out here. You’ll come out one at a time, and you won’t even
think
about trying any funny business.” I pull out my gun and wave it in the air. I feel like a Wild West cowboy on his bronc. “You hear me?”

They actually all mumble something. I think it’s “yes.”

I set the resistance on low and begin to pedal. “I want you warming up slowly.” I can see it now, Ashley Stassler, Personal Trainer. I suppose if this sculpture thing goes south, I could always do it for a living. I have had some amazing results with some really out-of-shape people. Unfortunately, they don’t let you hold a gun to the head of the folks who join health clubs. Too bad, really, because the threat of murder is a marvelous motivator.

“You see, my legs are not pumping away like mad. I’m going nice and smooth.”

I don’t want Roger and June to pull any muscles or injure themselves. That would set everything back. I’m not so concerned about Sonny-boy and Diamond Girl. I’ll work them enough to bring out some muscle, but it’s very hard to do much with a young boy’s body. He’s so lean to begin with, and his sister is as close to perfection as I’m likely to get. It’s Roger and June who need the work.

“I’m perspiring. See?” I point to my brow and climb off the bike. “Now I’m ready to lift weights, but even now I’m going to start off slow.”

I slip light weights onto the barbell, and crank the upper part of the bench until it rises to a thirty-five-degree angle. I begin to pump out incline presses, fifteen of them.

Now it’s time to strip off my warm-up jacket. Underneath, I have a body builder’s shirt on: sleeveless, with extra narrow shoulder straps, and cut low on the sides to expose much of the back and chest, and all of the shoulders. They’ll learn the names of these muscles—pecs, lats, deltoids, traps—as we go on. Right now, I don’t expect the Vandersons even know they exist.

It takes me about fifteen minutes to complete all three sets of incline presses. I point out how critical it is to rest for a couple of minutes between each set. I’m knocking down eight to twelve repetitions every time. That’s lifting to failure, which means until I can barely push the bar back on to the rack. Then it’s on to more lifts, again with three sets apiece.