“What’s up there?” asked Winifred. “Can I come up and see before I change?”

“No, I’m very sorry, but no one is allowed. It’s where I write.”

“Oh,” said Winifred. She thought about this and then asked, “Can I read something you’ve finished writing?”

“Well, I haven’t exactly managed that part yet.”

“How do you know you can, then?” she asked.

“I don’t. That’s what’s so frustrating. But you have to try.”

This reminded me of Old Tom’s Church of Lost Causes, but I couldn’t possibly believe it was a lost cause or why bother?

“Why don’t you write about Sina’s UFO?” she suggested.

That’s the problem with telling people you write. They always want to give you things to write about. As if the things you write about could come from them. Or from you.

“Gee, shouldn’t you get changed?” I said.

“You don’t want to talk about it anymore,” she said kindly, and ran off to change and wasn’t all huffy the way she could have been had she misinterpreted my reticence as snottiness. Probably living with Crying Alice had inured her to strange people.

As I went up the stairs I had a sudden idea. I wrote Church of Lost Causes on a piece of typing paper and I took a chair and scotch-taped it over the door outside the cupola. It made me feel vaguely better, as if I had done the opposite of jinxing things. I had taken the pressure off. If it was a lost cause, if it was celebrated, worshipped as a lost cause, then maybe something could sneak in and happen after all.

I heard Winifred come into the hall, so I ran down to join her and we went out to Sina’s studio.

Sina was staring at the sculpture she had made. It was a mermaid and it was quite beautiful, I thought, but as we stood there she kicked it over and jumped on it with both feet.

“Botheration,” she said. “I’m going to give up. I’m simply going to give up. I always wanted to sculpt in marble. Michelangelo—now, there’s an artist.”

“Well, why don’t you?” asked Winifred.

“I tried. I can’t. Clay is my medium. But real sculptors use marble. The David, there’s a statue. The Pietà, nice bit of work. The Prisoners, genius. Genius. The prisoners trying to get out of the marble. But nothing tries to get out of my clay. It sits there like a lump. I give up. I’m going to get a job as a waitress.”

Then she stomped into the house to rinse off, calling, “Load up the truck, girls,” over her shoulder.

“Oh dear,” said Winifred. “Mother said that Sina’s semi-famous. She said there is a piece of hers outside the Parliament Building in downtown Victoria. Is she really going to quit sculpting?”

“I doubt it. She says that every day. Your mother may think she’s famous, but Sina never likes anything she’s finished. She says it never lives up to its potential. Even the piece outside Parliament.”