unknown source.
Once, when I was around five, Jack caught me trying to sneak some change out to buy a candy bar. He roaredâthe only time he ever directed his famous temper at meâenraged more by the betrayal than the theft. âBut itâs a magic jar,â I gasped between my sobs. âYou take money out, and it always comes back.â He got down on one knee, his strong, paint-flecked hands gripping my shoulders. âItâs not magic. Itâs hard work that fills that jar. The hard work of earning the money, and the harder work of keeping it.â His hands moved to my cheeks, wiping the tears into his calloused palms. âNow, donât cry, sister. Youâll seeâIâll make sure thereâs always money to be found.â
Tonight I poured out the jarâs contents and counted it againâ$384. On the day Jack died, there had been $463. I guess I was lucky that he died only a week after refilling the jar. From that day forward, I had done the hard work of keeping what we had: eating only from the garden and the pantry, avoiding our few functional appliances even as the red-lined utility bills kept streaming through the mail slot. Iâd even given up the Laundromat, hand-washing my sweaty clothes in the kitchen sink and drying them on the backyard line.
Still, no matter how hard I worked, the money couldnât hold out forever. Jack was rightâthe only magic around here was the moneyâs disappearing act.
That left us only one lifeline: Jackâs promised âtreasure.â I popped a last raspberry in my mouth and crossed over to the studioâs defunct fireplace, where atop a grand marble mantel a chicken egg sat in a small ceramic bowl.
My first official chore in the Tenpenny house had been the placement of that egg. Every morning, Jack and I would gather the chickensâ output and select the whitest, most perfect egg of the lot. The rest of the half dozen or so went to the kitchen. The egg of honor went to the mantel. Jack would lift me in his arms, and Iâd gently place the egg in the bowl made by my grandmother, a woman I knew only through Jackâs stories of her skill at the potterâs wheel and her fine Scandanavian cooking.
âA new day, a new beginning, a new chance at a new ending,â Jack would intone solemnly. It was as close as he ever got to morning prayers.
The egg would sit in its place of honor through the day until it was replaced by the next morningâs selection, when it joined the other eggs in the kitchen. But for that one day, its only job was to echo the painting above it. One of Jackâs earliest pieces, the canvas was an abstract, a dark swirling abyss of midnight blues, black like charred wood, and gray like the dawn. And floating in this void was a stark white oval that haloed the real egg below.
Canvases came and went in Jackâs studioâsold, lent, shownâbut this one stayed above the mantel, supervising the Changing of the Egg each morning. Jack said heâd never sell it. I donât think I ever saw him so much as move it for dusting.
That was before The Spot on Spinney Street. And his last words.
Since then, every night after dinner, I worked into the last moments of the dayâs light to find out whether there was anything âunder the eggâ at all.
Maybe âunder the eggâ was just the last random outburst of a blood-soaked brain. But Jack always said heâd take care of me. He always said Iâd find out when I was ready. It stood to reason that, whatever there was to find, was indeed under the egg.
The only problem was that âunder the eggâ could mean a lot of thingsâand whatever it meant, I hadnât figured it out. Standing on a chair Iâd dragged over, I was still surprised by how much heavier this painting was in my arms than most of Jackâs works. For some reason it was painted on wood instead of canvas.
That was just one of