“What do you mean?”

“If we could just take Catherine to a good witch doctor.”

I laughed a bit.

“I know a woman who still believes in them,” I said. “She went to one, said he healed her with music.”

“Well, if that was all it’d take, Catherine would be the most healed woman!”

“You better believe it! This woman, though, said that he knew the right combinations of sounds. I think we just don’t know the right combinations of sounds.”

“Give us the right combination of sounds!” He raised his hands. He sounded like he was in somebody’s church.

We laughed till our laughter itself sounded almost like some incantatory formula.

63

In Catherine’s studio, we select and number sculptures—some to be shipped to New York to her agent and others to be shipped to their home in Detroit.

“I want to send this one to my agent,” Catherine says.

“No, don’t send that one . . . That’s not anything yet,” says Ernest. “Needs more work, don’t you think?”

“This?” Catherine asks. Then, “Shall I ship this one to Detroit or to my agent?”

“No, none of those, Catherine, not to the agent. You want them to be good enough. I don’t think they’re good enough yet. What do you think?”

Catherine stands with her hands in the pockets of her yellow trousers. She stands squeezed in a corner. She mumbles something we can’t hear.

“No, pack that one with straw,” Ernest says to me. “That one has to be packed with straw. And don’t touch this. I’ll pack it myself.”

“What about me?” Catherine asks suddenly.

“You?” Ernest turns and stares at her.

“I want to be packed in straw and shipped back too,” she says.

“You have to speak up,” Ernest says. “I didn’t hear.”

But Catherine can’t speak up; she stands with her head tilted, looking idiotic, then she bends down and picks up The Birdcatcher.

I start to scream, “Watch out!,” get my mouth into the “Wah,” but she is bending toward a crate to deposit it.

I lift up a handful of straw and line the bottom of a crate. I pick up another handful.

“I’m not going back with you guys after all,” I say, matter-of-factly.

Ernest has his back to me and doesn’t turn around, though I see his shoulders stiffen. He goes on packing.

Catherine looks as if she’s squeezed herself tighter into the corner. She scratches her bottom lip and stares at Ernest’s back.

When she looks toward me, I feel like I’ve already disappeared.

The Stuffed Elephant

In a curio shop I buy a stuffed elephant.

“A leftover of the Republican Convention,” the saleswoman says. “I didn’t make beans when they were here. I thought I was going to rake up, but I didn’t make beans. In fact I lost money . . . Are you a Republican?”

“No, I just like elephants.”

When I come back to the apartment, my husband looks up, worried.

“Where have you been? I turn my back and you disappear.”