🎧 248: It was Luther . . .

IT WAS LUTHER who occasioned the first manifestation of Lorna’s interest in, and talent for, sculpture. For Lorna’s fourth birthday, Luther made her a papier-mâché duck. He painted the duck in lurid colors, colors that have never been seen on a real duck, colors that Luther supposed would please a four-year-old girl. It was a large duck, large for Lorna, who had to use both her chubby hands to hold it. After dinner, while Lorna’s parents and her Uncle Luther were still sitting at the dinner table, Lorna sat in the parlor, on the davenport, holding the duck.
     “That’s an ugly duck,” said Bertha. She had come into the parlor silently, and she stood in front of Lorna, looking down at her and her duck. Bertha had in the past year or so begun to think of the affections of Uncle Luther as hers, rightfully hers, only hers, in part because Luther had begun to call her “Little Lady” or “My Little Lady,” but also because she had determined, secretly, that she would marry Luther when she grew up. Now he had given Lorna a papier-mâché duck that he had made himself. Bertha snatched the duck from Lorna to look at it more closely.
     “This is an extremely ugly duck,” she said. She looked at Lorna to see what effect she was having on her, and Lorna, who had been looking into her lap, lifted her head and looked up at Bertha, and it was one of those moments when Lorna’s elusive beauty shone. Bertha wanted to hurt her then, wanted to hurt Lorna immediately; the urge to hurt was so pressing that she couldn’t allow herself the time to design an injury, could only strike with the crudest sort of blow.
     “Uncle Luther,” she said, slowly, leaning closer and closer as she spoke, “wouldn’t give you an ugly duck like this if he liked you. He made this duck for you so you’d know that he doesn’t like you.”
     Lorna watched Bertha turn the duck over in her hands. Lorna still thought the duck was beautiful. What Bertha had said hadn’t changed that. But what Bertha had said, and the way she had leaned toward Lorna when she said it, had changed the way Lorna thought about Bertha. It had shown Lorna that Bertha hated her.
     “It’s mine!” Lorna cried. She reached out and tore the duck from Bertha’s hands. It seemed to hang in the air for a moment, that heartbreaking moment when we realize we’ve made a terrible error and imagine that if we act quickly enough we can reverse it, and then fell to the floor. A crack opened along the neck, and the feathers in the tail were bent upward crazily.
     “And you’re welcome to it,” said Bertha. She turned on her heel and walked out of the parlor, up the stairs, and into her room.
     Crying, Lorna carried the duck into the dining room and asked Luther to fix it for her. She told him, when he asked, that she had dropped it. She never told him how it had happened. She watched while Luther made some papier-mâché and patched the broken parts. When he had finished, Lorna asked him to teach her how to make a duck like it, and Luther agreed. Over the next several weeks, he showed her how to make papier-mâché and how to work with it. She made a series of ducks in imitation of the one that Luther had made for her, and her ability to work in the medium improved with each. Luther was surprised and pleased. She had a talent for imitation, and she had a good eye. He provided more complex models, and he helped her refine her technique. She continued to progress.
     Bertha watched with a jealous eye. She felt that Lorna was taking from her something that was hers: the affections of her Uncle Luther, which she valued far more than the affections of her parents, whom she considered hopelessly enthralled by the magic beauty of the little interloper anyway.

In Topical Guide 248, Mark Dorset considers Art: Materials and Media: Papier-Mâché and Interpersonal Relationships: Sibling Rivalry from this episode.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

• You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

• You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

• You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

• At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.

• You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.