Galatea

Feel how chilled your hands are?’

The ocean floor was sandy and soft as pillows. I settled into it and slept.

My lungs ached a little but it didn’t matter, because I wouldn’t need them soon

never cold, nor hot either. And I said to her, “Shall we go to the countryside?”

And she said, “Daddy will not let us,” and I said, “I know, so let’s not tell him.”

We did not make it beyond the next town, because everyone noticed us. A woman and a girl, pale as milk? Yes, just that way

THE THING IS, I don’t think my husband expected me to be able to talk. I don’t blame him for this exactly, since he had known me only as a statue, pure and beautiful and yielding to his art

“Fine,” he said. Just that ugly, nothing word

“How old is the girl?” I asked.

“Ten,” he said.

I had expected him to say “young.” When I had once asked him how old he meant for me to be, he had said, “A virgin.”

I didn’t open my eyes, because my job was to lie on the couch without moving so that he might murmur, “Ah, my beauty is asleep

He is rich because of me, if you want to know, but he doesn’t like it when I say that. He says it’s the goddess’ gift first, and then his own since he was the one who made me from the marble.

I lay down and arranged myself in the right way. It’s easy, because I’ve had a lot of practice, but also because I think there’s some part of me, the stone part, that remembers and is glad to settle into its old lines. The only hard thing is the fingers, which my husband likes to say he spent a year on, making them look real instead of still and limp, like lazy sculptors do. So I have to concentrate and hold them just the way he likes, or it ruins everything