Under the Egg (2 page)

That was just one of the painting's oddities. Another was the frame. Jack rarely framed anything. Usually he sold everything just as he painted it, a canvas on its stretchers. Never with a gilded frame. And while Jack usually worked on a grand scale, sometimes on canvases that almost reached the ceiling, this painting was puny by comparison. Just two or three feet high and not quite as wide. I'm not exactly strapping, but I could manage it fairly easily, and I placed it carefully on the floor against Jack's worktable, still cluttered as he left it with bottles and rags and coffee cans filled with paintbrushes.

I went through the same motions that had as of yet revealed nothing. Flip it around, pore over the back (some faded stamps on the wood, now illegible). Peek around the edges where the painting meets the frame (nada). Inspect the bottom half of the painting, particularly the underside of the frame (nada again).

Next, the mantel. Anything in the bowl, under the actual egg? Nope. Anything under the bowl—either on the underside or sitting on the mantel? Nope. Anything under the mantel? I'd tried to remove the shelf that formed the top, but it was fastened tight. One night I'd used a screwdriver to chip out two or three bricks from the hearth, but only found dark, rotting floorboards beneath.

And so each night ended in a same sense of defeat, the light fading and the shadows settling over the studio.

On that night, I flopped myself down on the floor and contemplated the bare wall above the mantel, wondering if it would be worth busting it open (with what—a drill? a sledgehammer?).

Then a mouse ran up my leg.

Now, I live in an old house in the city. I've seen my share of mice, even rats. I've seen them on the street, on the subway, even at the playground. But seeing a rodent is one thing. Letting one run up your leg is another.

I jumped, screaming, to my feet, scrambling onto the chair (which was sort of pointless, seeing as how the mouse was already clinging to my leg) and kicking my legs wildly. The last kick sent the little guy leaping for my petticoat, where he dug his claws in some lace trim and held on for dear life. Crazed flapping followed to no effect, so I finally pulled off the skirt, flinging it blindly toward Jack's worktable, where it toppled paintbrushes and bottles of who knows what.

The studio was quiet as I caught my breath and waited for the mouse to emerge from the crumpled skirt. Within seconds I saw his whiskers peeking out of the waistband. “Out!” I shouted, shaking the skirt by the hem, and he bolted, skittering his way over the mess of Jack's table and leaping past the painting still propped below.

The painting! As I looked down, I saw that a bottle of rubbing alcohol had overturned, spilling its contents over the surface, dragging and mixing colors along its path.

I grabbed an old bandanna off the table and dabbed frantically at the liquid. But the more I rubbed, the more paint I removed, as the rag I held became stormy with a soup of dark colors and the white smears that had once formed the egg.

I crouched there frozen, my hand wavering in midair, my heart sinking as the last connection to my grandfather melted away. As the night's shadows filled the studio, they seemed to pause respectfully just over my shoulder. And as I peered in the dusk, I could just make out—under the paint that was once that everlasting egg—a bird in flight.

I
hadn't slept well since Jack died. The relentless summer heat hadn't helped. Neither had the nighttime creaks and groans of our endlessly complaining house.

Most nights, I lay without even a sheet, tossing and turning with the thoughts I'd held back all day.

What do we eat tomorrow? Will the heat take out all the tomatoes in the garden? Should I go out and water them one more time? If the upstairs toilet goes out again, can I fix it, or will a plumber accept a flat of cabbage as payment?

But tonight I had a new list of questions.

Why would Jack paint over another painting? Was he reusing the canvas and the frame? Or was he hiding it?

What was under there anyway?

Around 3:00
A.M.
I got up and took a cold bath in the big claw-foot tub, soaking long enough to cool off, then putting my nightgown back on, sopping wet, and lying in front of the old metal fan. Usually it's enough to get me back to sleep. But not tonight.

At 4:15 the air lifted and ushered in the first light. I headed back up to the studio, armed now with another bottle of rubbing alcohol I'd found in the second-floor bathroom and one of Jack's old T-shirts, wadded in my hand.

The alcohol took off the top layer of paint with alarming ease, and by daybreak most of what had been my last connection to my grandfather was now clinging to the T-shirt rag. I stood back to get a better look in the light.

I pretty much grew up in New York's greatest museums. When other kids were swinging from the monkey bars, I was sitting on the floor of the Met, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, or the MOMA, doodling with my crayons while Jack did his sketching. By the time I was five, I could spot a Picasso, and by eight I knew the difference between a Manet and a Monet.

So yes, I know a Madonna and Child when I see one. The one in front of me had a demure, dark, and big-eyed Mary, sitting with the sleeping Christ Child on her lap. The child looked about a year old. His outside arm was held open, draped over his mother's leg, and a small bird was flying just out of his grasp—the bird once covered by The Egg.

There was no signature, but along the bottom of the painting was a string of what looked like Latin words, in a single line, reading:

PANIS VITAE / QUI SURREXIT SED NO SURREXIT / PLENISSIMOS NUTRIVIT / ET ANGELUM CURARUM CURAVIT

Within minutes, I'd come to a few conclusions:

It looked old—probably Renaissance, maybe Italian.

It looked real—like something I'd see in a big museum.

It looked like it was worth something—maybe a lot.

Which was strange, because any painting of value from the original Tenpenny collection had been sold a long time ago. Jack had been a painter, not a collector. If there was some image he had admired—a sketch, a study, a scrap torn from a book or magazine—he would have pinned it to the wall for reference, not hidden it from view for the last thirteen years. Maybe—probably—longer.

And this is where I got nervous. Because Jack wasn't just a painter. Not many painters are able to support their families with their art alone, no matter how frugal they are. No, Jack had worked a day job.

As a security guard. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the European Paintings wing.

Which brought me to another conclusion: The painting looked stolen.

• • •

As Jack always said, life doesn't stop for lunch, and lunch doesn't stop for life. We still had to eat, so that morning I headed to the garden as usual. I gathered the eggs, pausing to debate whether to still select an Egg of Honor (I did), and pulled the day's haul of pole beans and beets. Beets and beans, of course. Whether fresh or dried, beans made an appearance at every meal except breakfast, with the resulting gastric reverberations. (Jack and I called it “The Tenpenny Symphony.”) Beets were even more adaptable. In the summer, grated into salads. In the fall, boiled. In the winter, hot bowls of borscht, and in the spring, when the root cellar was empty and it was too early to plant, there were always pickled beets.

I hate beets.

But today, as I dug and weeded and watered, my daily curses and concerns were pushed aside by a new crop of worries.

What's the punishment for possession of stolen property? Do they send family members—including thirteen-year-old kids—to jail? What if the kid isn't the one who stole the property? What if the kid just found the property and turns it in? Do they give reward money for stolen paintings? Or do they demand restitution from the thief's family? What if the thief's entire estate adds up to $384 and a fairly reliable flock of chickens?

The sound of a slamming screen door sent the flock fluttering, and a silver beehive hairdo, followed by a pair of manicured hands and two glinting eyes, appeared over the backyard fence.

“What is this?” demanded Madame Dumont, our next-door neighbor and my mother's tea pusher. “Can't you keep these wretched birds quiet?”

Although really it sounded like this:

“Psshhhhh. Wot eez zeess? Cawn't yew keep zese hretched bairds qui-ette?”

Despite fifty years at 20 Spinney Lane, Anne-Marie Dumont still sounded (and acted) as if she'd just arrived from Versailles. According to Jack, Madame Dumont moved in sometime in the 1960s, after he'd sold the adjoining house next door, and it became a boardinghouse. Her complaints started shortly thereafter: His jazz music was unsuitable, his paint fumes were encroaching, and always, the chickens were too loud. Jack was horrified when the boardinghouse owner died and left the place to her favorite tenant. Guess who?

“I could not sleep last night with all this noise,” Madame Dumont huffed. “All night it was
cocorico
this and
cocorico
that.”

“
Coco
—what?” I glanced at the fluffy cluster of coos at my feet. “Do you mean cock-a-doodle-doo? Either way, I very much doubt that since they are all girls, and we've never owned a rooster.”

“Nevertheless.” This was how Madame Dumont ended all of her arguments. It meant: I may be wrong, but I still won this round.

“Oh, and another thing,” she stopped at the screen door and turned back. “I have not received the payment on your mother's account at the tea shop since your grandfather . . .
bof
, how you say . . . passed. Now your grandfather, he has a lot of faults—a rude manner, for one; also, a fast temper and very hogheaded . . .”

“Pigheaded?”

“
Exactement
. And I suspect quite deaf, which seems to run in your family. But,” she paused to dab her collarbone with a dainty handkerchief, “he did always pay your bill on time.”

“How much is it?” I asked, bracing myself.

“Two hundred fourteen dollars. And seventy-three cents.”

I thought I was going to throw up.

“Why? Why on earth did you let my mother charge so much?”

“Ah, I see it is my fault your mother likes the quite rare Asian imports? Nevertheless, she has always paid. That is, until—” She left Jack's death hanging in the air.

“Yes!” I pleaded. “Until that! You know our situation has changed.”

“You think you are the only one with difficulties? Bah! I myself was left with nothing and no one else. But I start my own shop, and the only way I keep it so long is to make quite certain all debts are paid. In full.”

Leave it to Dumont to use her orphaned poverty to one-up me.

“Listen,” I grabbed the fence with both hands, “Madame Dumont, be reasonable. I don't know when—or how—we're going to pay you back. Maybe I could find something—” I looked wildly around for anything I could barter. Apples? Eggs? Beets?

“No. You
will
find a way. Ah,” Madame Dumont opened the screen door again, “when you see your mother, remind her the new Golden Assam comes in today.”

What? “I just
told
you, we can't afford—”

Slam. Madame Dumont flounced back inside.

• • •

Fuming, I delivered my mom's morning oatmeal and tea, ready to lay down an embargo on all future tea purchases. But I was distracted by a photo on her nightstand, a picture of Jack and my mom when she was my age.

“Hey, Mom.”

Numbers, symbols, squiggly lines . . .

“Mom!” I tapped her shoulder. “You know that painting in Jack's studio? The one with the egg?”

My mom turned in her seat and looked at me, and a fog momentarily lifted. “Oh, yes, the egg. You know, every morning when I was a little girl, Jack would have me choose the finest egg from the chicken coop, and then we'd place it on a little dish under that painting. And he would always say—”

“‘A new day, a new beginning, a new chance at a new ending.'”

My mother smiled. How long had it been since I'd seen her do that? “Yes, that's it. ‘A new chance at a new ending.'”

“So the painting was there when you were a little girl?”

“Yes. Now please,” she turned back to her desk, “I was just on the verge of something . . .”

• • •

Upstairs in the studio, I looked back and forth between the new discovery and the discolored rectangular space on the wall where the painting had hung for what I now knew was at least forty years.

I worked my way slowly through the tepid oatmeal, but my brain raced ahead.

What if it's some undiscovered work by some famous artist, and wealthy collectors from all over the world flock to buy it, jockeying to outbid each other?

There was something about it that looked weirdly familiar. From my very first glance, I'd felt an almost audible “click” of recognition—but I wasn't able to say why. It was like having an itch that you can't quite find, no matter where you scratch.

I found myself drawn back to the painting throughout the morning, between my chores, returning to sit in its beauty in a house where everything else was falling apart.

Whenever Jack caught me breezing through a museum's galleries, he would practically shout, “Look! Look! You aren't looking! You're glancing. You're,” he said the words as if describing an obscene act, “window-shopping.

“What is the artist trying tell you? There is a message here. Maybe the message is a feeling. Maybe it's a moment in time, or a lens on the world. Or simply the state of being in a single color. But if you look just on the surface, you'll see—what—a portrait, a saint, a myth, a man. But will you see the story? The meaning?”

So I looked. Not just looked, but sat with the painting and drew it in. And the more I looked, the more I saw.

The beautifully modeled faces, the delicate landscape, the sense of a very real knee behind the elegant draping of the Virgin's dress. Together, they all suggested the work of a true master, exactly the kind of thing you'd see in the galleries where Jack worked.

But at the center of that beauty was a kernel of pain and sorrow, like an oyster whose pearl began in the thorny prick of a grain of sand. The composition as a whole carried an unshakable sense of—what was the right word—melancholy? No, straight-up sadness.

Take the Virgin Mary. At first glance, she appeared peaceful and solid, the anchor around which everything else revolved. But the longer I looked, the more that sense of peace resembled resignation. She held her right hand over her heart, but I couldn't tell if it was a gesture of love or heartache.

The Christ Child—who is almost always painted as an alert and cherubic toddler—here weighed heavily on his mother, his face drawn, his arms slack.

Like a third figure behind the mother and child loomed a small tree, jagged and leafless. And behind the tree, beyond the distant landscape of mountains and lush vegetation, a gathering of dark clouds.

• • •

Of course, through all of this, I should've been pickling beets and attending to that upstairs toilet. But by noon, neither the painting nor the chores could keep me in that stifling house.

Mother Nature had draped a wet wool sweater around the city's shoulders that day. On these empty summer days, I had a few options—more limited without hitting my $384 with subway fare. The Jefferson Market Library, usually my first choice, was off-limits until I could find that missing copy of
Franny and Zooey
. There were always the breezes on the piers of the Hudson River Park. Washington Square Park, where I could dip my feet in the fountain. The big modern bookstore with air-conditioning. The clothing stores with air-conditioning, where the security guards would follow me around if I stayed too long.

I walked past a chain store on Sixth Avenue with its doors wide open, its AC spilling out onto the sidewalk. That clinched it. The bookstore would be utterly chilly, and I could sit around as long as I wanted.

That's when the sky finally coughed and unleashed a pelting rain.

When your entire outfit consists of a 1950s nylon slip, your grandfather's old white undershirt, and a training bra made of two handkerchiefs and a piece of elastic you fished out of a pair of sweatpants, you don't really want to get caught in a downpour. So I was running for the bookstore when I heard—

“Hey! Girlie! Get in here!”

I swung around to see Mr. Katsanakis, the owner of New City Diner, holding open the door.

Mr. Katsanakis was not exactly a friend of the family. In fact, he was on my grandfather's list (The League of Nemeses, I called it). Jack had an extensive catalog of personal grievances against most of his acquaintances, stemming from disagreements over art, politics, sports rivalries, money owed (or not owed), parking violations, and garbage can placement. And like a good lieutenant, I accepted Jack's grudges as my own. If Jack knew I was—

“What, you like looking like a wet dog? Get in!”

Dry booths, a discarded
New York Post
, and air-conditioning vs. some long-forgotten slight. I went in.