Under the Egg (5 page)

“But something she said makes no sense.”

“A lot of what she said made no sense.
Pastiche. Cinquecento. Gemma
. Ugh.”

“No, listen.” I bit my thumbnail. “Why would you create a fake Old Master by painting over an old canvas, and
then
paint over it again?”

“Beats me.” Bodhi kicked an empty soda can onto the subway tracks, sending a rat scampering.

“Seriously. If my grandfather wanted to fake a painting and cash in on it, wouldn't he just go out and try to sell it? Why would you fake a painting and then hide it for—what, forty, fifty years?”

“That's true,” nodded Bodhi.

“And there's something else I don't understand. Why did that rubbing alcohol take off the top layer of paint, but not the bottom layer?
That
doesn't make any sense. If it's the same paint, why wouldn't it have the same effect on both layers?”

“Hmmm. That's a good question, actually.” Bodhi perked up a little. “Does this mean that the mystery's still on?”

“You could say that.” I peeled my T-shirt away from my chest and flapped it back and forth. “But listen, I'm tired of these so-called experts. They don't have the answers anymore than we do. That Gemma—”

“Gemma,” Bodhi spat out.

“She barely looked at the thing.”

“And Reverend Cecily—well, she's a nice lady and everything, but she had her own . . . prejudice, you know?”

“Preconceived notions, you mean. And yeah, I know.”

A hot wind blew at our ankles, signaling the 6 train.

“Jack never did anything without a very good reason. And I want to know the reason behind,” I nudged the suitcase with my sneaker, “this. We need to become our own experts.” I fumbled suddenly. I still wasn't convinced that this should be a group project. “I mean,
I
need to do more research. Read more, look at more paintings, learn more about how paint works, stuff like that. I think I'll hit the library as soon as they open tomorrow morning.”

“Cool! I'll come over beforehand and help feed the chickens.”

“Really?” Was it possible Bodhi really wanted to hang out with me? Or was she just looking for another “independent study project”? “I mean, okay. I guess.”

“I need to get out of the house anyway,” Bodhi shouted over the rush of the barreling train. “
People
magazine is coming over to do a feature on my dad's yoga room. I don't want to spend the day watching him do the Flying Crow.”

I
hadn't expected to chase Raphaels all afternoon. By the time I got home, it was clear the house was feeling neglected and was going to take it out on me—starting right with the front door, which dumped its heavy brass doorknob into my hand. The upstairs toilet swirled spitefully. My mother “helped out” by dumping her dirty laundry on the hallway floor.

The garden was paying the heaviest price for my extracurricular activities: stems drooped, vegetables shriveled in the heat. Love your garden, and it will love you back, as Jack would say. Same goes for chickens. But today the chickens were peeved too, and Artemesia pecked my foot when I scattered some chopped beet greens as a guilt gift.

I spent the next morning atoning, and by the time I stopped for breakfast, I had redrilled and replaced the stripped screws on the front door, accosted the upstairs toilet, cleaned out the chicken coops, and turned the compost heap.

The timing of those last two items is not coincidental. The key to a good garden is, of course, good compost. What makes good compost? A secret ingredient: chicken poop. Trust me, when you bite into a juicy tomato or succulent squash, it's chicken poop you have to thank.

Anyway, those chores alone took me through a late breakfast. I had just brought up my mother's tray (“What, no Irish Breakfast?”), when I heard a rap from the big brass knocker on the front door.

“Hi!” shouted Bodhi, already sweating through her anti-paparazzi uniform. “Too early?”

“Well, I've still got a lot to finish up around here. I was just about to start some pickling.” I looked skeptically at Bodhi. “Do you want to help?”

Bodhi's face shone. “Sure, sounds great! Like
Little House on the Prairie
.” She bounded her way into the parlor. “I did an independent study project on Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was eight, back when we were at the Collective Living Experience. A couple of the guys even helped me build a log cabin. But then they all got into some argument about privatized property, and we moved back to Malibu.”

With Jack around, the morning chores had felt like a well-oiled machine, and now without him, a clanky one running on fumes. But something about Bodhi's enthusiasm made the whole operation feel . . . well, fun. “Got any music?” she asked, so I found a Benny Goodman record for the parlor phonograph, cranked it up, and led Bodhi down the stairs to the kitchen, where I'd already lined up Mason jars, canning racks, and tongs. Beets and a few cucumbers stood at the ready, washed in colanders in the big farmhouse sink, while every soup pot, stockpot, and lobster pot had been rounded up, filled with boiling water on the stove.

I showed Bodhi how to fill the jars with the veggies, vinegar, and spices and was surprised by how easily she jumped in, dancing around to “Sing Sing Sing (With a Swing)” as she worked. Most of the girls from school would balk at something so domestic—even dorky—on a summer morning. But a couple of hours later, the jars were cooling, and we'd moved on to the garden, pulling weeds and slapping mosquitoes with our beet-stained fingers.

“It's funny,” said Bodhi as she tossed a dandelion she'd pulled to the chickens. “They all have their own personalities, don't they? Like this one.” Bodhi rubbed the side of a silkie bantam with the toe of her sneaker. “She's a little softy. Just wants a cuddle.”

I put down the basket of eggs I'd collected and picked up Adelaide, who was nuzzling my shoe.

“That's Frida. Her sister, Adelaide, here is the same way. You can pick her up if you want. Just support her feet, like this.” I gave her head a little scratch and Adelaide clucked appreciatively. “But look out for Artemesia, that frizzy one over there. She'll go at you if you get too close.” Artemesia flapped her wings theatrically, and Bodhi pelted her with a dandelion.

“What's with the funny names?” asked Bodhi.

“All famous artists. All women. A little joke I had with my grandfather.”

Bodhi knelt down to stroke the hen who'd been diligently working on a hole next to the coop. “Who's this little digger?”

“Theodora,” I mumbled.

“Theodora? What artist is that? Or—wait, you named the chicken after yourself?”

It had been last summer, the day Jack brought out two new chicks he'd gotten from his breeder in Bed-Stuy. The chicks were now big enough to join the flock, and one—quickly named Artemesia—asserted her claim on the feed right away. Some of the older, wiser chickens squawked and flapped at her, schooling her on the pecking order, but Artemesia squawked back, and soon we had a real feather-flier on our hands. It took us ten minutes to get everyone back to their corners.

But when the feathers settled, we looked down and saw that most of the feed was gone. Nearby, the other new chick had her head down and kept scratch, scratch, scratching, determined to find more food.

“Ha! See that one? She let the others flap and fight and fuss at each other, while she kept her eye on the prize. Smart girl, just like you,” Jack had said. “Let's name her Theodora.”

“Gee, thanks. Why not Angelika? Or how about Little Jackie? That has a nice ring to it.”

“Well, she's not a rooster, so Jackie doesn't make sense.” Jack pulled a lock of my hair. “And Angelika—well, your mom's a songbird at heart. She just keeps flying overhead, circling and circling and never landing on anything.”

On that particular day, I had had to decline a rare birthday party invitation from a girl in my class whose mother had insisted she invite everyone. We couldn't afford the cost of the train out to her weekend house, let alone an appropriate gift.

“Who ever said I wanted to be a chicken?” I groused. “Maybe
I'd
like to be a songbird. Maybe I'd like to fly away somewhere for once.”

There was a very long pause, and when I looked up at my grandfather, I was surprised to see that his hands were in his pockets and his eyes were glassy.

“Why do you think we've hung on to this house?” he asked, his voice low. “Don't you know I could cash out and give it over to the yuppies who would polish it up like a Fabergé egg? The reason we stay—the reason my father stayed, and his father stayed, and his father stayed—is that this house is ours. This city is ours. Never let anyone tell you any different. Because, if you don't dig in, trust me—they'll dig you out.”

Jack picked up Theodora the Younger and stroked the top of her head.

“One day I'll pass on—and don't get any ideas, sister, the doctor says I've got the body of a man twenty years younger.”

“I know, I know, you keep telling me—”

“One day I'll pass on, and this house will be yours. This house and everything in it. It's the only legacy I can offer you. But it will also be your burden to shoulder—to finish the work that I couldn't.”

At the time, I had assumed that burden was my mother. Jack's expectations had always been clear: That I would take care of my mom the same way he dropped out of school to support his own mother through the Depression.

But it was only now, on this morning out in the garden with Bodhi, that I remembered those words and wondered if the painting was the burden Jack intended. Or the legacy. Or both.

I was jarred back to the moment by the familiar thwack of Madame Dumont's screen door. As expected, two eyes and a beehive appeared over the wooden fence. Jack always regretted that he'd made that fence too short.

“Oh, good, Theodora,” she launched in without a glance Bodhi's way, “I need to speak with you.
Alors
, your mother's debt is now to two hundred and twenty-nine dollars—”

My mouth gaped open but no words came out. “What?” I finally sputtered. “Why? I told my mom to stop going to the tea shop. I told you to stop selling her tea!”

“She never had the Smoked Oolong. It has a certain
je ne sais quoi
.” Yes, we get it, Madame Dumont. You're French. “This is becoming very serious, you see? I would hate to—
comment dit-on
?—to retain counsel.”

My head was spinning. “Counsel? What's counsel?”

“A lawyer,” she replied icily. “And when I speak to this lawyer, I will also ask about the city noise regulations. For your roosters.”

“For the last time!” I exploded, embarrassed at the unhinged screeching in my ears but too angry to stop myself. “We don't have any roosters! We have
never
had roosters! For fifty, sixty, maybe even two hundred years, we have not had roosters! For the love of Pete, roosters
do. not. lay
—”

An object sailed over my head, a white object that glinted in the morning sun and traveled a perfect arc that led straight to Madame Dumont's head.

Now Madame Dumont was the one who sounded unhinged, shrieking as she tried unsuccessfully to shake eggshell and egg whites out of her helmet of hair, all the while dodging the new missiles Bodhi lobbed her way.

She let fly a string of French not found in a school textbook, pausing long enough to pronounce us: “Wicked, wicked girls! I will take this to my lawyer. No, to the police! I will! You wait and see!” Madame Dumont's screen door slammed closed again.

“Who was that anyway?” Bodhi turned to me, lightly tossing the last egg back and forth between her hands. “Kind of a cranky old baguette, right?”

Frozen in place, I stood stunned and staring at that last egg in Bodhi's hand.

“You okay?”

I tried to take some deep breaths, then began to heave gasps of air, my body shaking as I sank slowly to my knees and fell back, right in the middle of the pecking flock.

“Oh, man.” Bodhi plopped down next to me and threw her arm around my shoulders. “Oh jeez, I'm sorry, Theo. I'll buy you more eggs. I'll buy you a dozen. I'll buy you a whole bunch of omelettes. I just couldn't help myself.” She thought for a moment. “I have kind of a problem with impulse control. At least that's what my mom's shrink says.”

But what Bodhi didn't realize is that great guffaws welling up from my belly were sobs mixed with laughter, dislodging that pit of knots I'd lived with for the last month—for the last thirteen years, if I was honest. I was shocked at Bodhi's sheer nerve; I was laughing at what Jack would think to see it; I was crying that he never would—and yes, I was mourning the loss of the eggs, too. And as I allowed myself to rest my head on Bodhi's shoulder—imagine that, on a friend's shoulder—I laughed and cried to think that I actually had someone to lean on.

I wiped my sweaty, teary face on my sleeve. “I've always wanted to do it. But I could never spare the eggs.”

Bodhi held up the egg in her palm. “There's one left. You still have a chance.”

I stood up and helped Bodhi up, too. “No. I know a better place for that egg. And you've earned the right to put it there.”

• • •

After a lunch of tomatoes, peppers, and one shared scrambled egg (we used the Egg of Honor we replaced with Bodhi's more heroic one), we escaped the heat of the house at the Jefferson Market Library.

I hadn't been to the library since the day Jack died, and while I mourned the loss of my grandfather, the library came in a close second.

The public library is the closest I'll ever come to a shopping spree. Once, twice, sometimes three times a week, I'll drop in, raid the stacks, wielding my library card like a socialite with a Bloomingdale's charge account. I grab anything that looks interesting, flipping through a few pages before losing interest or devouring the whole thing in one sitting. And if I don't like it, I can return it. It's the only place where I can be wasteful with no consequences.

As long as I return the books on time.

The day Jack died was also the day
Franny and Zooey
went missing. A missing book meant not only late fines, but a replacement fee. That was a hit I couldn't afford on $384—wait, $379. Every time I walked by the Jefferson Market branch, I could practically feel Ms. Costello, the ancient librarian, suspending the missing book over me with her liver-spotted hand.

But now we needed the full catalog of the New York Public Library at our disposal. So I gathered up my entire collection of outstanding books—even the ones I hadn't cracked yet—and hauled them back to the returns desk as a peace offering.

I can't remember the first day Jack brought me to the Jefferson Market Library; we were always just drawn there. “Now, this is my church,” Jack would say as we mounted the deliciously gloomy Gothic tower toward the stained-glass windows above. He always stopped to read “his creed” carved at the top of the stairway: “The precepts of the law are these: to live correctly, to do an injury to none, and to render to every one his own”—a holdover from the building's original function as a jail and courthouse.

Today Ms. Costello wasn't at her usual perch, so we dumped my books in one of those anonymous returns boxes and went straight to the Information Desk. There we found a beefy . . . well, dude, for lack of a better word. With a shaved head, old-timey moustache, and a spiral of tattoos disappearing up his shirtsleeve, he whistled as he zipped around his desk, propelling his wheeled office chair with his shiny two-tone wingtips.

Bodhi murmured, “Did the library hire a bouncer?” I shrugged. Sure, the library attracted its share of oddballs, but it wasn't like a biker bar or anything.

The desk chair stopped mid-slalom. “Whoa! How long have you been standing there?” His voice did not suggest that we were in a library. “What can I do you for?”

“What happened to Ms. Costello?”

“Well, they say she retired, but if you ask me, I think she ran off with Vincenzo the janitor, because he quit the same day.” He winked. “Just a hypothesis, though.”

“Are you . . . a librarian?”

“Sure am. I'm Eddie.” He reached out over the desk and shook our hands forcefully. “Freshly minted MLIS and at your service.”