Under the Egg Read Free Page A

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.

Chapter Three
    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