“You’ve lost your mind – with your damn stubbornness.” I shook the car keys in open impatience. “We’re going home!”
“If you want to leave, then leave. I’ll call Dan. He’ll help me for sure.” Lily dropped a bomb.
“What’s with you and this Dan?” I burst out.
“Nothing. If you won’t help, someone has to. I need help!” Lily came closer and hugged me. I stayed silent. She had me cornered. I knew that if I abandoned her, she’d call Dan, and he’d come. Why would I want that?
“What do you care? Help me – it could be interesting,” she said, touching parts of me she knew well – my curiosity, my creativity, and yes, even my jealousy, I admitted to myself.
“All right,” I muttered.
“So let’s start with an experiment.” Her eyes lit up.
Lily prepared a small batch of the material so we could figure out the timing – the mixing, the waiting for it to harden, and how to breathe with the straws.
“I’ll put two straws in my mouth, you spread the material over me, and we’ll see,” she instructed.
I did as she asked. Lily struggled to breathe and quickly removed the material from her face.
“Please, let’s stop here,” I pleaded, feeling the pressure drop from my throat into my chest. But she refused.
“That’s exactly the purpose of preliminary experiments,” she said with determination.
“Do you think you can last two minutes breathing through a straw?” I asked nervously.
This time, Lily put three straws in her mouth. Her breathing was indeed easier. She passed two minutes with no problem.
“Ready?” I asked. I knew we had to succeed in one go – otherwise she’d have to bring another can from the north, and we’d spend another Saturday in the studio instead of at Nelson’s.
I quickly mixed a large amount of the material with water. When it reached the right consistency, Lily lay down on the bare floor. Slowly and carefully, I spread the viscous substance over her face.
“Close your eyes, close your eyes,” I urged as I saw the mixture trickle down from her forehead toward her eyes.
“Don’t worry – it’s not poison.”
When the material covered her nose, I panicked. What if she stopped breathing? What if she inhaled it? It was too late to turn back. Lily put the three straws in her mouth and lay completely still. Only her chest rose and fell, her breathing quickened – but her face remained utterly relaxed. The silence in the room heightened the tension. Without realizing it, I held my breath too, as if in solidarity with her – but failed to keep pace. I knew I mustn’t utter a word, lest she react and we’d have to redo everything.
“Magnificent,” I told her three minutes later, as I peeled the elastic material – now hardened – off her face.
“Thank you.” She wiped the residue from her face and got up from the floor.
“You’ve no idea how happy I am,” she said, hugging and kissing me as if she’d just finished a hundred-meter sprint in first place.
“And now what?”
“Now we pour plaster into the mold.”
In this stage, she revealed great skill. She used a wooden box filled with sand to support the rubber mold, and poureda generous amount of white plaster into it. Lily separated the plaster from the rubber and gazed at her creation in disbelief – her life mask. The bright white plaster, warm to the touch, seemed almost to breathe with life. The joy that radiated from her response to the final result was absolute.
In the days that followed, Lily duplicated her life mask several times. Tirelessly, she created a whole series of images, photographs, paintings – and now, sculptures too…
I never imagined that the life mask that she’d shaped with her own hands would one day become her death mask.
Chapter 52
Body Art
Lily’s works went through a transformation. Influenced by her teachers in body art, she took those ideas as far as she could. She didn’t stop painting on canvas or huge plywood boards, but she began using self-photography more and more. When she wanted to see the innards up close, she asked Dr. Rifin, head of the surgical department at Desert Springs Hospital, for permission to photograph in the operating room.
