Forged in Grace (24 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

I come by myself, by cab. I’ve told Marly only a little bit about the show. The gallery, set in an old warehouse, is much bigger than I imagined, big enough for a sports game with fans. Big enough for a faith healing. But if you don’t know where you are, you could easily miss it, thinking it’s a place to buy lumber or rock for a back yard.

The show is only announced once you
’re standing at the door, written in light.

I look but can
’t find the projection source. The entrance is a curtained tunnel—I walk in shadow, with a seepage of blue light beckoning me from up ahead. There is a slight hum of music and chatter, though I’m early, as Gus asked me to be.

Halfway up the tunnel little lighted images appear, as though I
’ve tripped a wire, projected onto the cloth: models, women made perfect by fasting and photo-shop, with sleek limbs and lips that plump forward of their own accord. I’ve seen them all my life—their flattened bodies are stacked to the ceiling in some of Ma’s corners, sating her need for filling emptiness—her body, her house, her mental chambers. And I get it, as I walk: there is something so satisfying in symmetry, an ease that allows the mind to feel safe.

I startle as the projections stop, and a well of panic hits me in the dark tunnel—a feeling of suffocation coupled with fear of what Gus has planned for the second half of the projections. Maimed and crippled bodies in hospitals? Other burn survivors who
’ve suffered worse than I have?

The new projections begin: close-ups of the natural world: spirals worked into fossils, the up-close magnifications of crystals and amoebas, a different kind of symmetry.

Bolstered by this, I move ahead, up to the edge of the curtains, and push my way through.

A tiny section of the huge warehouse has been cordoned off, fit into a neat square that houses the photographs, a huge throne-like chair at the center on a tiny raised dais.

The overhead lights are low and blue. Each photograph is lit by its own small team of bulbs, but you have to stand before one, or a triptych of several, to get the full effect.

And there, a light sculpture hanging at the start of the show reads
“Symmetry.”

Gus rushes toward me, dressed in a dark grey suit that shines even in the dim light. Sara is talking softly to a server in a tux. She, like me, is also wearing black—a long dress that brushes the tips of her black pumps, but her hair is up high on her head. I
’m wearing the long straight wig, the one in the photographs, and my dress only falls to my knees, one I spent two painful hours shopping for, trying not to take it personally when the salesgirl—she couldn’t have been more than 17—never once offered me help.

I
’m afraid to look at the photographs. Out of the corner of my eye I see them but I don’t want to look at them fully. Perhaps I can make it through the whole night without doing so.

“
Thanks for coming early,” Gus says. “Do you want me to walk you through the show once, before people arrive?”

I shake my head.
“I don’t think I’m ready.”

He nods.
“I get ya. Later, then. I hope you like what I’ve done.”

I can
’t even look at him because there’s a photograph of me in the distance behind his head, the one in the wig where I look most like my undamaged self, a tease of symmetry I’ll never have again.

I know Marly would hate this whole thing. And maybe I should, too. Nerves are beginning to eat at my stomach. I should never have agreed to do a healing under these circumstances—it
’s ridiculous. What if I can’t perform?

Sara offers me something delicately arranged on a cracker, so pink and shiny, it looks almost fetal, and my stomach lurches. I wave her away but accept a champagne cocktail and go to admire the pieces of Sara, for that half of the show is safe to me.

Alcohol molecules swim in my blood like tiny mermaids and then suddenly Gus is speaking in an excited tone, and urging Sara and me to stand at specific spots. I’m on the right, toward my half of the show, and Sara is to the left. We are Isis and Osiris, which makes Gus the gatekeeper to the underworld.

The size of the crowd stuns me: it seems impossible that any one person could know so many other people; Gus is a bigger artist than I realized. The rushing murmur of voices is morphing into a kind of primal song, a staticky buzz like bees in a swarm.

I don’t drink more than one glass of champagne. I must keep up the protective walls tonight, so that every person who steps up to me and puts a hand on my arm or shoulder, murmuring their awe at my photographed face, doesn’t deliver an injection of their own pain, too.

My cheeks hurt from smiling, especially my left side—ironically the side with fewer nerves. Every blonde head, every passionate exclamation, makes me look for Marly. We haven
’t been on friendly terms since I shouted at her after the church healing. Every time we’re in the same room together, there’s a charged feeling, like a lightning storm on the horizon. I’m hurt, though not surprised, that she isn’t here. And the longer I stand with my faux-smile, alone, the less sure I am this was a good idea. I’ve allowed myself to be objectified, taken apart, sliced for the camera—my wounds made into a novelty that someone can hang on their wall.

The blue lights flicker for a moment and then flip through an array of pink, green, then yellow. This causes the room to quiet, and then Gus steps up to the big throne-chair and smiles.
“Thanks all of you for coming to Symmetry. I’m really proud of this one. A big thanks to Sara and Grace, who made it possible, of course.”

Hands clap, loud, like a flock of pigeons rising. He goes on to talk about the show, but I
’ve stopped listening: Marly has just popped out of the birth canal-like curtains into the room. She sees me and nods just slightly. Rather than join the crowd gathered around me, Gus and Sara, however, she walks past us all. She’s surprisingly dressed down—black capris, a white cotton blouse that shows her obvious pregnancy, hair in a ponytail, no make-up. The plainness makes her seem sad. I have the feeling that she’s done this for me, made herself smaller, less pretty, and it makes me want to rush over and tell her that I love the big boldness of her.

I turn my head slightly to watch her enter the show with a bubble of anxiety. It wouldn
’t surprise me if she felt the need to make a public denouncement of Gus’s work.

Gus just keeps talking about his inspiration. I know that Marly is looking, and now, suddenly, I wish I
’d been braver and looked at the photographs myself, first.

In a lull of Gus
’s words, behind us Marly gasps, “Wow!” And I can’t tell if this is a pre-explosive “wow” or one of awe. I turn.

And really see what Gus has done with my face.

At first I feel not shock, not disgust, not happiness or pride, just: nothing.

It
’s as though I’m looking at a series of Hubble telescope pictures, returning proof of life on other planets. My scars up close, blown up to the size they are, in black and white, are otherworldly, all texture and pattern. Not any more grotesque than Sara’s overly-magnified nose hairs or black heads, and new ones I’ve not seen: private junctions of hair and skin, glossy reaches of inner cheek and ear. You might even say, if you didn’t know what you were looking at, that it looks natural, interesting, compelling.

The longer I look, the more I feel strangely protective of the rough-trod skin. I want to cover it, layer it in salves and put gauze and bandages on it, though it is no longer a series of open wounds. I want to protect it. I step down off the dais. As my tight right leg refuses to bend with ease and I stumble, a dozen hands reach out to help me, but I shrug them off and move toward Marly.

When I’m standing next to her, poised at last to see the show as it is meant to be seen—each image almost a holograph floating out of the darkness—I feel sick to my stomach.

“
I’ll give it to him,” Marly says, “He’s got talent.”

I bend forward, my head swimmy, little bright particles floating across my eyes.

“Grace!” Marly realizes I’m not okay. She reaches out, grasps my arm, leans me into her. I’m vaguely aware that everyone in the crowd is looking at me, at us. Here I am, appearing to faint at the sight of my own face. This is not what they came for.

“
I’m fine.” I stand up straight, taking a deep breath. “Drink just went to my head, not enough food.”

Marly turns and eyes Gus as though this is somehow his fault.

“You don’t have to stay,” she says.

“
Yes, I do,” I cringe in anticipation. “I said I’d do a healing as part of the show.”

Marly
’s eyes blaze white in the eerie dim light. “Really?” Her tone is tight.

“
Yes,” I say. “Look, he’s really sick—Gus is—Sara thinks he might not…that he might be dying, even.”

Marly starts to laugh, shaking her head.
“I know I shouldn’t be surprised, Grace, but
I
ask you to do something to help sick children, and you run out of the hospital.
He
asks you to be Queen of the Show and you leap to it. She shakes her head. “I’m beat, I’ve gotta go rest,” she says, but then, as though rethinking her words, turns back to me. “I’m happy for you, Grace.”

She moves so fast there
’s no chance of catching her in the swarm of people.

Gus takes Marly
’s exit as a sign. The lights do their magic flipping routine again and then he puts out an arm in my direction, beckoning me back.

It
’s only supposed to be one. That’s all I agreed to. But the woman who approaches with an inflamed gall bladder and constant digestive pain is a breeze; it feels like I’m flipping marbles out of a soft purse; my serpent rises to the occasion and leaves me feeling strangely energized, and I hear myself saying “next?” with such conviction that Gus looks at me with surprise.

I don
’t know what is giving me such strength, but I work my way through a woman with skin cancer, a bad case of gout, and, the shy fellow whispers into my ear, a terrible case of hemorrhoids that require surgery. I feel like Hera on Mt. Olympus, up on my throne, the wounded laid out before me, the way the crowd’s eyes seem to glow with anticipation and reverence in the blue light of the warehouse. Behind me, my face leaps out in the dark like a vision in a scrying bowl. I feel I could part seas and command the mists. My body runs hotter, sweat trickling down between my breasts, behind my knees, even gathering at my low back, but I don’t care. It feels like the good, hard sweat of exertion.

After the sixth or eighth or maybe even tenth person to lie upon the table and sit up feeling better, while the crowd
“ahh”s, the night steadily stretching into morning—I hone in on Gus, who’s sitting on the floor, back against a column, underneath the dark and fuzzy innards of Sara’s nose.

“
How about you, Gus?” I call out. “Want to be my last?”

Even amidst the florid show of his tattoos, his smile looks weary.
“You can’t heal what ails me, Grace,” he says softly.

“
I’m not talking about your heart,” I say, thinking that I should have a great carved wooden staff with a serpent head, and a headpiece.

He glances at Sara, the whites of his eyes the only part I can make out moving. He looks as though he
’s going to say something, but then he rises, claps his hands together. “Bravo!” he shouts. “To Grace, the eighth great wonder of the world,” and the crowd follows suit.