The Gargoyle (64 page)

I have no doubt that Gregor Hnatiuk is a good doctor but his practice mostly involves speaking to people, trying to figure out their problems, maybe prescribing a few pills. He was not prepared to see what Marianne Engel had done. He didn’t seem to be able to accept the scene as real, perhaps in part because she had long since stopped being a patient and had grown into a fond acquaintance. He was unable to distance himself and kept blinking as if trying to reset the wayward gyroscope of his mind, surprised each time he opened his eyes to find that nothing had changed.

Marianne Engel turned her euphoric face towards me, her eyes filled with tears not of pain but of joy. Her face was filled with vacant wonder, as if she had seen something far too marvelous for mere words to describe.

“God sent an immense fire into my soul.” Her voice quivered with delight, as the blood continued to flow out of my name on her breast. “My heart was utterly inflamed with love, and I hardly noticed the pain.”

Despite his initial shock, Gregor recovered first and ran upstairs to phone emergency services. Meanwhile, I tried to convince Marianne Engel to rest calmly, but she just kept talking. “That which abides the fire shall become clean.” She stared at me wildly, as if waiting for agreement. “The water of separation shall purify.”

Gregor returned, bringing with him a blanket to cover her shaking body. As we draped it over her, he tried to reassure her. “The paramedics are coming, and everything will be okay. You just need to relax.”

Marianne Engel paid no attention to the words. “The Lord is a consuming fire.” Ten minutes later, when the EMS team arrived and Gregor led them into the basement, she was still going on. “That which can’t abide the fire shall go through water.”

The female paramedic asked whether there was a history of substance abuse and I assured her there was not; she nodded, but I’m not sure she believed me.

“The skies sent out a sound,” Marianne Engel was saying, as they knelt beside her and checked her vitals, and it was as though she were trying to convince them. “The arrows went abroad.”

The paramedics strapped Marianne Engel to a board and carried her out. I was allowed to ride in the ambulance with her, while Gregor followed in his car. I held her hand as they slipped an IV tube into her arm. “When the rock was opened,” she slurred, “the waters gushed out.”

In a few moments, the drugs put her to sleep. As soon as she was under, I gave a more detailed medical history—as much as I knew, in any case—so the paramedics could radio ahead to the hospital. When we arrived at the emergency entrance, two doctors and the on-duty psychiatrist met us and Gregor took over the task of admitting her. I continued to hold her unconscious hand and talk soothingly, saying all the things I wanted to tell her, but still couldn’t, when she was conscious.

When I finally returned to the veterinary clinic, Cheryl sat me down. “Do you know what pancreatic insufficiency is?”

I said I did, if it was anything like pancreatitis in humans.

“Dogs can get pancreatitis as well, but that’s not quite what Bougatsa has. Pancreatic insufficiency is common in large breeds like German Shepherds, and symptoms come on quickly, which sounds like what happened here. To put it simply, he can’t break down his food into smaller molecules because he lacks the proper enzymes. As a result, he’s not absorbing any nutrients, and that’s why he’s hungry all the time. He’s been eating as much as he can, even plants, to make up for the lack, but no matter how much he eats, he isn’t getting the nutritional benefits. It’s kind of like he’s been starving to death.”

“But that’s the bad news,” she said. “The good news is you caught it quickly and it’s completely treatable, controllable with diet. He’ll be his old self in no time.”

She took me to the kennel and I would almost swear there was a sparkle in Bougatsa’s eyes when he saw me coming. But it was probably only because Cheryl had given him some food he could finally digest.

The doctors told Marianne Engel they were only treating her for exhaustion, but the truth was that they were also monitoring her mental state closely. Gregor came by her hospital room often, but his visits were driven by friendship rather than professional interest. Because of his personal involvement, a different psychiatrist was handling the case.

I came every day and the doctors even let me bring Bougatsa by the hospital once. Canine therapy, they called it. Marianne Engel came out to sit on a bench in the sunlight and pet him a bit. She seemed shocked by his thinness, as if she didn’t remember that his condition had developed in front of her eyes. The dog, for his part, forgave her completely for deserting him when he needed her most. Dogs are stupid like that.

When she was released at the end of the week, it was against the strongest recommendations of her doctor. I was hesitant, as well: of all the damage she’d inflicted on herself, most had come through simple disregard for her own body. Carving my name into her chest was a willful and horrifying act, which made me feel I was no longer simply neglectful of her but also a cause of her pain. As she was physically recovered, the hospital couldn’t keep her without a court order, however, and no matter what I said I couldn’t talk her into a few more days. When we returned home, Bougatsa ran all around the house, knocking over the plant that a few weeks earlier he’d been eating.

Marianne Engel had been home only two days before she started peeling off her clothing to prepare for her next stone. When she came to the bandages wrapped around her chest, she removed those as well. “I can’t communicate with these on.”

I was not going to let her do this again. I had already watched her collapse twice. I would not fail her a third time; I would not allow my name to become infected on her flesh.

What followed could not properly be called an argument, because arguments involve an exchange of opposing ideas. This was all me. I spoke softly; I yelled; I cajoled; I threatened; I pleaded; I demanded; I spoke with logic; I spoke with emotion; I spoke word after word after word after word that she completely ignored. She gave the same answer repeatedly: “Only five statues left. I’ll rest when they’re finished.”

As I could not talk her out of it—logic is useless in the face of obsession—I would have to find another way to protect her. I decided to visit Jack, even though she had broken her promise to care for Marianne Engel while I was in the hospital.

When I walked into the gallery I saw a trio of familiar grotesques and, on the wall behind them, a picture of a healthy Marianne Engel. Chisel in hand, her mutant hair artfully tousled, she was leaning against one of her early creations. The short caption under the photo mentioned nothing about her mental illness: “Unlike most modern sculptors, this local artist with an international reputation refuses to use any pneumatic tools, preferring to carve in the medieval tradition….”

A young couple walked around one of the larger works, running their fingers over the edges. They were discussing its “wonderfully tactile sense”—but where could they put it? Nothing turns the stomach quite like moneyed thirtysomethings discussing art. Jack, seeing a prospective sale, attempted to walk right past me with a dismissive hand lifted in my direction and said, “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Why did you abandon her?” I asked. For once, I was pleased with the rasping quality of my voice—it made my proclamation of her failure sound all the worse.

Jack immediately aborted her approach to the customers and pulled me into an alcove to launch into a vigorous defense against my accusation. The way she spoke reminded me of a train derailing: all her words were boxcars, hurtling frantically forward, threatening to fly off the tracks and burst through the end of each sentence in a devastating mess. She claimed that she had gone to the fortress every night I was in the hospital, forcing her way in past the furniture piled up against the front door. Once inside, she had stood between Marianne Engel and her statues, refusing to move until she at least ate some fruit.

“You found her in the middle of the afternoon, right?” Jack was referring to the time of day when Gregor and I arrived at the fortress. “I work, you know. I’m not like you—I pay my own bills. I can’t shut down the gallery to fritter away the day with her. And if you’d bothered to call, I would have rushed right down to the hospital. But
no…”

We debated who was responsible for what, until the young couple couldn’t help but stare in our direction. I shot them my most monstrous look, the one that would let them know to mind their own goddamn business.

Jack viewed this as an excellent opportunity to point out that her customers funded my life. I countered that they paid for her life as well, while she piggybacked on Marianne Engel’s talent. “You’re probably overjoyed that she’s already carving again.”

In that instant, all the anger on Jack’s face was replaced by genuine surprise. “She’s what?”

It became impossible for me to continue my attack: there could be no denying Jack’s concern. “She’s never had manic sessions so close together before. Once a year, maybe. Twice, in a bad year.”

In that moment, I hated Jack for the fact that she’d shared twenty years of her life with Marianne Engel. It was the very worst kind of hate, built upon envy, but it was also hate that I had to put aside. Jack’s experience would be invaluable, so I leveled my voice as well as I could. “What do I do now?”

“I don’t know.” She flipped the sign from “Open” to “Closed,” shooing out the remaining customers, and I followed her out of the shop. “But we have to do something.”

Jack knew a lawyer who specialized in matters of involuntary hospitalization. I suppose this was only natural, after all her years of dealing with psychiatric patients—first her mother, then Marianne Engel.

Clancy McRand was an old man who sat behind a big wooden desk that sported a computer covered with small yellow Post-it notes. He kept pulling down on the lapels of his coat, as if doing so would allow him to close his jacket over a stomach that he refused to admit was as large as it really was. McRand cleared his throat a lot, even though I was doing most of the talking. He jotted down the facts on his big yellow legal pad, and Jack offered a few comments when he asked questions to which I didn’t know the answers. He seemed to know a fair amount about Marianne Engel already, from the thick file he had pulled out of the cabinet when we first arrived. It was clear that Jack had engaged McRand’s services in the past, perhaps in setting up the conservatorship.