The Mistaken Masterpiece

by Michael D. Beil

  “Yes!” cries Jessica. “Rip her fingernails out!”

  “Hey!” I protest, making fists to protect my nails. They may not look like much (I’m a biter), but I still don’t want anyone yanking them out.

  Mr. Eliot nods in admiration at Margaret. “Good example. But it doesn’t always have to be a life-and-death situation. Sophie, you make the calculation all the time; you just don’t realize you’re doing it. Remember when you made the decision to disobey Father Danahey’s order to stop snooping around the church for the Ring of Rocamadour? Finding the ring was an end that, for you, justified almost any means, including breaking the rules.”

  “So you’re saying it’s okay to do whatever it takes to get what you want,” Leigh Ann concludes.

  “No, no, no,” Mr. Eliot says. “And please don’t tell your parents that’s what I said. There is no easy answer. Philosophers have been arguing about it for centuries. The point is that you have to really weigh the two sides in your mind every time. You have to use your own conscience as a guide.”

  The Blazers meet in Elizabeth Harriman’s basement after school, and we decide to stick with the songs we know for our regular Friday evening gig at Perkatory. We know that we need to add a few more to our repertoire, but it’s hard with the limited time we have for rehearsal.

  “Maybe we should just drop out of school now,” Becca suggests. “Think of all the time we’d have to rehearse then. And you know, lots of famous musicians didn’t go to college.”

  “But I think most of them at least went to high school,” I say. “I don’t think that’s a very practical solution.”

  “Yeah, Becca, something tells me your mom wouldn’t be too thrilled,” says Leigh Ann.

  “Or my dad,” says Mbingu, shivering. “I think you would hear him screaming at me all the way from Africa.”

  “I was kidding,” Becca says. “It’s just frustrating sometimes. Especially when I see some of these people on TV—I mean, we are so much cooler than some of them. And we’re starting to sound better, too.”

  “We just have to keep working at it, doing what we’re doing,” Leigh Ann says. “Cam says we sound great—especially when you know we’ve only been playing together a couple of months.”

  Mbingu, Becca, and I stare at her. “Cam says?” we all say together.

  With a flash of perfect white teeth, Leigh Ann brightens the dim basement with her smile, and I remember her (broken) promise to tell us about him at lunchtime.

  “Oh yeah. I guess I forgot to tell you. We were so busy arguing about all that means-and-end stuff that it just—”

  “Slipped your mind?” I say, finishing her thought. “A movie star calls you and you forget to tell us.”

  “Oh, come on—you guys met him, too.”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t ask for our number,” I point out.

  Becca looks like she’s going to explode. “He asked for your number? When did this happen?”

  I explain about the Saturday morning encounter in the park and the voice message that followed, which leaves Becca and Mbingu shaking their heads.

  “Man, life is so unfair,” Becca notes.

  “Tell me about it,” says Mbingu.

  “Guys, it was just one phone call. We talked. That’s it. He’s nice, and funny, and he’s not even conceited—not like Nate at all. I mean, Nate is really good-looking and everything, but he so knows it. Cam totally admits that he just got lucky.”

  Becca wags her eyebrows at me, which makes me and Mbingu laugh. A couple of seconds later, Leigh Ann realizes what she has said. “I mean, with his acting career! It all started with one commercial when he was a little kid in Chicago. But guess what—he’s coming to Perkatory again on Friday. We have to keep it secret, though. If everybody finds out ahead of time, there will be, like, a million girls there, and then he’ll never get in. Heck, we probably wouldn’t get in. So, promise?”

  We all make a solemn vow to keep the secret, if Leigh Ann agrees to dish on everything they talked about.

  “So, does he like you?” Becca asks.

  Leigh Ann shrugs, her perfect skin blushing slightly. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess he does a little.”

  “Do you like him?” asks Mbingu, diving right into the heart of the matter.

  “He is cute,” Leigh Ann admits. “But it’s all so … temporary. I mean, I’m trying to be realistic. They’ll be done shooting the movie in a couple of weeks, and then he’ll be gone. It’s not like you and Raf, where he just lives on the other side of town. I’ll probably never see him again.”

  “Or,” I say, “he falls madly in love with you and never forgets you, even when he’s starring in a really romantic movie with some beautiful actress, and then he comes back for you and you two live happily ever after.”

  Becca scoffs at my vision of Leigh Ann’s future. “And let me guess, in this little fairy-tale fantasy of yours, they live right next door to you and Raf—and Tillie, of course—and your kids play together every day.”

  Wait a minute. Has Rebecca been reading my diary?

  Leigh Ann uses the mention of Raf’s name to steer the conversation away from her and in my direction. “What’s the latest with you two, anyway? Is he still acting weird?”

  Despite my best efforts to hide it, my friends know I’ve been obsessing about Raf’s Friday night good-night non-kiss.

  “It’s been a pretty quiet week so far,” I say. “He won’t admit that anything’s wrong, but he still isn’t really talking to me. I tried calling him last night, but he said he had to do his homework.”

  “Ouch,” says Becca. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Gee, thanks, Bec,” I say. “Now I feel much better.”

  “Hey, that’s what I’m here for,” she adds, grinning.

  Leigh Ann throws her arm around my shoulders. “Don’t listen to her, Sophie. Just give him a little time. He’ll call. I promise.”

  Maybe she has a sister named Raisinella

  Later, while Tillie is helping me study for a Spanish quiz by eating my vocabulary flash cards, my phone rings. I cross my fingers as I flip it over to see the screen; it’s still not Raf. I try not to sound too disappointed when I answer.

  “Hey, Bec.”

  “We have a problem,” says a more-serious-than-I’m-used-to Rebecca.

  “Who’s we?” The first thought that races through my brain is that this is where she tells me that she’s really sorry, but Raf is dropping me to go out with her. The second is that the rest of the Blazers have decided to kick me out of the band. I brace for the worst, wondering how I’ll respond to either piece of news.

  I’m dead wrong, of course; it’s something completely different. “You, me. Margaret. Leigh Ann. The Agency.”

  “Ooh, I like the sound of that: the Agency. Sounds very clandestine.”

  “Clan—what?”

  “Secret. So, big problem or little problem?”

  “Huge. It’s about the painting.”

  “What? Did you find something?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Bummer. So it was painted after 1961.”

  “I dunno. Probably.”

  “Becca, what are you talking about? Was it or wasn’t it?”

  “This is a different problem. Remember that nice big picture that Father Julian gave us? Where the painting is really clear? Well, I was looking at it, and then comparing it to the picture that I took of the actual painting that Father Julian showed us in the rectory. And guess what—they’re not the same. It’s just a slight difference, but they are two different paintings—I’m positive.”

  “How can that be?”

  “Somebody made a copy—an almost-perfect copy. They made one little mistake in the bottom right-hand corner, six or eight inches up. There’s a place where two squares are on top of each other. In Father Julian’s painting, the darker square overlaps the lighter one, but in the old photo with his great-grandparents, it’s the other way around. There are dozens of overlapping squares, so t
his one doesn’t stand out. The only way anyone can possibly tell is by doing what I did—comparing the original to the copy.”

  “We need to tell Margaret and Leigh Ann,” I say. “And Father Julian. This changes everything. If the painting is a fake, then it really doesn’t matter when it was painted. Can you print out a nice big copy of your picture for tomorrow?”

  “Way ahead of you, St. Pierre. Oh, and, Soph?”

  “Yeah?”

  “About Raf.”

  Uh-oh. Here it comes.

  “Uh-huh. What about him?”

  “I’m sorry about earlier—you know, when I said that about it not sounding good. L.A.’s right. He’s gonna call. And if he doesn’t, I’m gonna go over to the West Side and kick his skinny little butt.”

  “Thanks. That’s really sweet.”

  After school on Tuesday, Becca presents her two-paintings theory to a bewildered Father Julian. It is hard to argue with her analysis of the two pictures. Even though the portrait of his great-grandparents is black and white, the contrast of the light and dark squares is unmistakable, especially when viewed through the loupe. When Father Julian breaks out the painting, we go over every square inch, comparing it to the painting shown in the portrait. Everything else about it is perfect, down to the little curlicue in the bottom of the y in Pommeroy.

  “This is remarkable, Rebecca,” Father Julian marvels. “I might have looked at those two pictures side by side for ten years and not seen what you saw in a few moments.”

  “I guess that’s what they mean by an ‘artistic eye,’ ” I say.

  “So now what?” Margaret asks. “Even if we know this painting isn’t the same as the one in the old picture, it still doesn’t tell us about that picture. Do you have any idea how—or when—the two paintings could have been switched? Or where the other one might be?”

  “No, but I know who would know, if anyone does,” says Father Julian, standing. “Girls, it’s time for a visit with Aunt Cathy.”

  “Right now?” Leigh Ann asks.

  “No time like the present,” he replies. “And besides, I know she’s home today. You’ll get to meet my cousin Debbie, too. You know, this makes me wonder about everything those folks in that gallery said. I’m more convinced than ever that they weren’t being completely honest with me.”

  Margaret gives me a nudge with her elbow and whispers in my ear, “Maybe this is a good time to tell him about the baseball.”

  “What? Oh. Yeah. Why don’t you start, and I’ll jump in if you leave anything out.”

  She shakes her head slowly. “Chicken. Um, Father Julian, before we go, Sophie and I have something to tell you. Sort of in the interest of complete honesty.”

  “Oh? Something else about the painting?”

  “No, it’s the baseballs this time. It’s one of those good-news, bad-news stories. The good news is that we figured out which baseball is the real thing.”

  “Really?” he says. “That’s terrific. What’s the bad news?”

  “Tell him, Soph,” Margaret orders.

  “Well, we had a little accident with the other ball. Tillie ate it.”

  “Who’s Tillie?”

  “Tillie is a dog. She’s not mine. She belongs to Nate Etan—you know, the actor? We met him, and, well, it’s a long story, but now I’m taking care of her for a while.”

  “And she ate a baseball?”

  “Yes, but it was the fake,” I add quickly.

  “Lucky for you,” Becca snorts. “I’d love to hear how this would have turned out if she’d eaten the real one.”

  “Is she okay?” Father Julian asks. He seems genuinely concerned about the stupid dog that almost ate a valuable family heirloom.

  “Oh, she’s fine,” I say. “She didn’t actually eat much of it. Mostly she just tore it into a million pieces. But even if she did, I think she’s pretty much indestructible.”

  “Unlike the baseball,” says Becca. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

  “And the other ball—how can you be sure it’s the original?”

  Margaret explains about the fake rubber center that proves the ball that Tillie ate was made well after the 1928 World Series.

  “Not exactly the way the experts would have done it,” Father Julian says with a broad smile, “but the result is the same—so no harm done. Now let’s go see Aunt Cathy.”

  He grabs his coat from a hall closet and leads us out the door. His aunt lives in a doorman building just off Third Avenue at Fifty-sixth Street, and we take the elevator up to her apartment on the ninth floor, where she’s waiting for us with the door open. She’s dressed in that classy-but-comfy cashmere-and-pearls style, like a grandmother from a sixties sitcom. And even though it’s almost fifty years later, I would still recognize her from that picture of her standing in front of her birthday cake. I don’t think her hairstyle has changed a bit; there’s a big ol’ aerosol can of hair spray lurking somewhere in her apartment.

  “Aunt Cathy, you look great!” Father Julian exclaims, kissing her on both cheeks.

  “My goodness, look at you,” she says with a disapproving look at his jeans and sweater. “Traveling incognito, I see. No one would even know you’re a priest.”

  “I’m undercover today,” he answers with a wink.

  “Oh, leave him alone, Mom,” says a young woman’s voice from another room.

  “Hi, Deb!” shouts Father Julian. “Come here, there are some people I want you to meet.” He gathers his four crimson-blazer-attired friends around him as Debbie, a pretty, round-faced woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, barrels into the room and attempts to squeeze the life out of him.

  “Uhhhnnn. Good to see you, Deb,” he says, catching his breath.

  Debbie takes a step back to get all four of us into her frame of vision. “Hey, I remember reading about you girls. You solved a big case a couple of months back and found a valuable necklace, is that right?”

  “A ring,” Margaret corrects. “It was hidden in the church for twenty years.”

  “And they’ve been very busy since then,” Father Julian says. “They recently solved a case involving a violin that was stolen—twice!”

  Once we’re all settled in, with glasses of milk for us, coffees for Aunt Cathy and Father Julian, and a glass of wine for Debbie, he explains the situation with the painting, including the newest detail.

  “So, one reason we’re here is to see if you would have any idea of how or when or why this happened. For instance, do you remember anyone talking about making a copy and then hiding the original for safekeeping? Dad certainly never mentioned anything like that.”

  Cathy looks at the photograph of her grandparents, standing proudly in front of the fireplace, the painting hanging above the mantel. “Now that you mention it, my sisters and I raised a bit of a fuss with your great-uncle Phillip. When Mom died, she left the painting to your father in her will, no doubt about that. Oliver didn’t want the painting, but Phillip was not pleased by that. He swore that Mom had promised him the painting. After her funeral, your father was away on business for a few days, and Phillip used that opportunity to take the picture from her house. We begged him to return it, but he finally stopped answering his phone. But then, just before your father came back, Phillip suddenly returned the painting, saying that his conscience was bothering him.”

  “You’re kidding,” says Father Julian.

  “Oh no. It’s all true. We never said anything because we didn’t want to cause any hard feelings between your father and Phillip. And then, remember, Phillip dropped dead six months later.”

  Margaret absorbs all the information and then says, “Maybe Phillip made a copy—or had one made. Rebecca, how long would it take you to make a really good copy of this painting?”

  “A couple of days, maybe three or four, to do a nice job,” Becca answers. “The paint wouldn’t really be dry all the way through, but you probably wouldn’t notice anything like that unless you were looking for it. And I’m sure there are ways
to help that along, too.”

  “It sounds like a possibility,” Father Julian acknowledges. “Which just raises a whole slew of other questions, the most important of which is, if Uncle Phillip kept the original, what did he do with it?”

  “You’ll need to ask Miss Pennsylvania about that one,” answers Aunt Cathy.

  Leigh Ann makes a quizzical face. “Miss Pennsylvania?”

  “Miss Prunella Scroggins. We called her Miss Pennsylvania—not to her face, of course—because she always had her hair done up on the top of her head like a beauty queen. She was Phillip’s, ahem, girlfriend. For more than forty years.”

  “Goodness. I haven’t thought about her in years,” Father Julian says. “Good old Prunella.”

  “Something tells me there’s a great story connected with her,” Margaret says.

  Aunt Cathy chuckles quietly. “Oh boy. About a million stories. One thing I can say about Prunella: life was never dull when she was around. She was from some tiny town up in the Pennsylvania mountains, I believe. Eagle’s Lake, or Eagle Mountain, I think. Eagle something. Phillip used to go fishing a couple of times a year, and he met her on one of his trips. Something of a local character up there, if you know what I mean. The woman could hold her liquor like no one I’ve ever seen, before or since. Phillip found her in a tavern and, for reasons no sane person can imagine, he was absolutely smitten. And her language—oh my.”

  “I do seem to remember it being on the spicy side,” Father Julian recalls.

  “That’s putting it lightly,” Aunt Cathy says. “It could peel paint off the walls. It was the sixties, and civil rights marches were in the news all the time. Let’s just say that Prunella did not approve of Martin Luther King. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite so bigoted—certainly no one so outspoken in her bigotry, at least. Phillip dragged her out of that bar in the early sixties, and she stuck with him to the bitter end. Because they weren’t married and he didn’t leave a will, all of his possessions should have gone to your father, your aunts, and me, as we were his closest living relatives. Nobody really cared about the money; after all, life with Phillip was no bed of roses. He was a pain in the neck, and frankly, Prunella was welcome to whatever he had. But some family heirlooms—items with sentimental value only—disappeared. Family photos, jewelry, my grandfather’s pocket watch—things she had no right to. I guess she had adapted to life in the city, because she didn’t go back to Pennsylvania when Phillip died. She moved right into his rent-controlled apartment uptown.”