Masterpiece

by Elise Broach

  The beetles had learned most of what they knew about the outside world from the Pompadays’ endless stream of television shows. Mrs. Pompaday’s favorites were hospital dramas or soap operas, while Mr. Pompaday preferred long documentaries on obscure topics. James liked cartoons, which Marvin found colorful and quite satisfying, especially when they featured a heroic or particularly energetic insect. The best thing about television in the Pompaday household was that the Pompadays tended to snack while they watched their shows, so the beetles could count on a veritable smorgasbord of popcorn kernels, raisins, and potato-chip crumbs at the end of the evening.

  Marvin watched James, who was jiggling a sneaker. “Mom,” James said, “do you think Dad will come?”

  “I don’t know, James. He said he’d try. But it’s going to be a wonderful party, you’ll see!” Mrs. Pompaday swept over and kissed the top of his head. “Stop moping. It’s your birthday! Come help me with the goody bags.”

  James’s father was an artist, the maker of large abstract paintings, one of which, a mostly blue canvas called Horse, hung above the couch in the living room. It was a constant source of tension between Mrs. Pompaday and her second husband.

  “I don’t see why I have to look at that every night,” Mr. Pompaday would complain. “It doesn’t look anything like a horse. It doesn’t even look like an animal. James could have painted that.”

  Mrs. Pompaday’s answer was always the same. “Oh, stop. It goes with the rug. Do you know how hard it is to match an Oriental?”

  Marvin secretly admired the painting very much. He sometimes climbed all the way up the brass floor lamp for a better view of the bold blue streak at its center. While the painting didn’t look like a horse, it felt like a horse: fast and graceful and free.

  “What can we give James for his birthday?” he asked his parents, as they lugged two cereal flakes and a crumb of buttered toast back to the cupboard. “It has to be something great.”

  “Look in the treasure box,” Mama said. “I’m sure you’ll find the perfect thing.”

  The treasure box was an open velvet earring case that had been very difficult indeed to push and tug into the beetles’ home. It was filled with the kinds of tiny things humans tended to drop or misplace, items that rolled under furniture or got caught in the cracks between floorboards—or, as William became more dextrous, the things he enjoyed sticking through the grates of the heating vents. Right now, the treasure box contained a few paper clips, two coins, a button, the gold clasp from a necklace, the slender silver bar that once held a watch strap in place, a small eraser, a pen cap, and, the most prized object of all, a single pearl earring.

  The beetles happened to know that the pearl earring, found in the wreckage of the Pompadays’ annual holiday party, belonged to a favorite client of Mrs. Pompaday’s, who had called the next day in a tizzy over its loss. Generally, Mama felt strongly that particularly valuable items should be returned to their human owners (which just meant that the beetles carried them to some obvious spot in the house and left them in full view, where they would inevitably be discovered and exclaimed over in relief). However, in this case, Mr. and Mrs. Pompaday had been so unpleasant to James in the wake of the party—berating him for a china plate that he’d accidentally dropped when his mother asked him to clear the dishes—that the beetles were not inclined to return the pearl earring.

  “I don’t think there’s anything good for James in the treasure box,” Marvin said worriedly. “None of that stuff is his.”

  “Does he have any electronics in need of repair?” Mama asked. “Clock radio? Boom box? I’m sure Albert would be happy to tinker with something for him.”

  Uncle Albert had trained as an electrician, a particularly useful skill in the Pompadays’ aging apartment. He’d been known to fix the faulty wiring in their thermostat on more than one occasion . . . though he sometimes raised the apartment’s heat to insufferable levels in the process. “Tricky business, thermostats,” he always said.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Marvin answered. “I haven’t heard him complain about anything.” Although, he realized, James wasn’t really the type to complain.

  “What about one of the coins in the treasure box?” Papa suggested. “I think there’s a buffalo nickel.”

  Marvin thought about that. Would James even notice that it was a special nickel? Probably. James was the type to notice things. “Maybe,” he said. “If we can’t find anything better.”

  The party was a boisterous disaster. Mr. Pompaday was dispatched to the park with William, while eleven energetic boys, none of whom paid any particular attention to James, raced through the apartment. They dumped elaborately wrapped presents on the sideboard, then stampeded from room to room, whooping loudly. They broke a knob off the stereo. They spilled soda on the dining-room rug. They locked a small, nervous boy named Simon in James’s closet without anyone realizing he was missing. When the magician arrived, they gleefully tormented him, yelling out spoilers—“It’s in his other hand! I saw it!”—as he performed his tricks. One boy dug around in the leather bag of props when the magician wasn’t watching and triumphantly brandished a set of handcuffs. “Let’s play jail!”

  Marvin watched the whole affair from a safe vantage point behind the skirt of the living-room couch. Sneakers pounded past him, squeaking on the wood floors. He kept warily out of sight, heeding Mama’s warning: “Whatever you do, darling, don’t let them see you. These are the kinds of boys who’d pull the legs off a beetle just for the fun of it.” It was an oft-repeated adage among the beetles that human parties were no place for their kind. Marvin remembered all too clearly the fate of his grandfather, who’d been crushed by a stiletto heel while pursuing a bacon bit during the Pompadays’ meet-the-neighbors party.

  From behind the skirting, Marvin could see James sitting quietly on the sideline. Mrs. Pompaday kept prodding him in exasperation:

  “James! Don’t just sit there like that. Show the boys your new computer.”

  “James, thank Henry for this lovely red sweater. It will be perfect for Valentine’s Day.”

  “James, tell Max about the wonderful time we had skating last week. At the Rockefeller Center rink, Max. We love to go there on weekday afternoons, when there aren’t so many tourists. We’ll bring you with us next time, shall we?”

  From a past conversation, Marvin knew that the Pompadays had been to the rink exactly once, that Mrs. Pompaday had dropped James off while she went across the street to Saks to buy a wedding present, and that James, who didn’t know how to skate, had spent the hour clinging to the side wall, unsteadily making his way around the circle while more experienced skaters zipped past.

  The doorbell rang, and Mrs. Pompaday clapped her hands, smiling brightly. “Oh, look at the time! Your parents are here, boys.” She herded them toward the entry-way. “Come get your goody bags! James, dear, stand by the door and hand them out.”

  Marvin, risking exposure, darted along the baseboard to the marble-floored foyer. When Mrs. Pompaday opened the door, however, it wasn’t the hoped-for cavalcade of parents, it was Karl Terik, James’s father. Mrs. Pompaday stepped back in disappointment. “Oh,” she said, “Karl.”

  The other boys thundered away in indifference. James’s whole face lit up. “Dad! You came.”

  James’s father was a big man with longish brown hair and a messy scruff of beard. He had a warm, gentle smile that Marvin liked because it spread across his face so slowly that it had to be real. “Hey, buddy,” he said to James. “Of course I came. . . . It’s your birthday!” He grabbed James by both shoulders and wrapped him in a hug.

  “You can come in for a minute,” Mrs. Pompaday said crisply, “but the boys are about to be picked up, and I need James to hand out the goody bags while I speak to their parents.”

  “Cutting deals?” Karl asked, still smiling.

  “No, no,” Mrs. Pompaday said dismissively, then added in a lower voice, “but you’ll see that Meredith Steinberg’s son is h
ere, and they’re in the market for a classic six, so it certainly wouldn’t hurt for me to say a few words to her.”

  Marvin had often wondered how someone like Karl Terik could ever have been married to Mrs. Pompaday. They seemed profoundly different. He’d overheard James ask his father a similar question once, hesitantly, as if he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to hear the answer. Karl had said simply, “Your mother has excellent taste. She always did, from the day I met her. An eye for beauty is a rare thing.”

  Good taste, to Marvin, didn’t seem like much of a foundation for love. Then again, it had turned out not to be.

  Karl was ruffling James’s hair with one hand. “I brought you something,” he said, setting a crumpled plastic shopping bag on the hallway table.

  Marvin edged away from the baseboard, trying to see. What was it? What would James want it to be?

  James grinned at his father and reached inside. He drew out a small navy blue box, which he opened carefully.

  “Oh,” he said.

  Marvin climbed quickly up one of the slippery polished table legs to have a look. The box contained a squat glass bottle filled with dark liquid.

  “It’s ink,” said Karl.

  James said nothing, turning it over in his hand. Marvin could tell he was disappointed.

  “It’s a pen-and-ink set. For drawing.” Karl rustled in the bag and pulled out a flat black case. “Here’s the pen. Look, your initials, so everyone will know it’s yours.” Marvin could see that there were three crisp gold letters on the top. “And I got you a pad of good paper, too,” Karl added.

  James tilted the bottle of ink, watching the liquid shift inside, catching the light. “Cool,” he said. He looked up at his father. “Thanks, Dad. It’s really cool.”

  “Is that permanent ink?” Mrs. Pompaday demanded. “Does it stain?”

  “Well, yes. . . . That’s what you use for pen-and-ink drawings.”

  Mrs. Pompaday sighed. “It had better stay in your room, James. On your desk. I don’t want ink splattered all over the house.” She shook her head. “Really, Karl. That doesn’t seem a very appropriate gift for an eleven-year-old.”

  Karl shifted uncomfortably. “He’ll be careful with it, you know that. James is careful with everything.”

  Mrs. Pompaday snorted.

  “It will be fun for him to experiment,” Karl said, looping one arm over James’s narrow shoulders and pulling him close. “Look at the pen, buddy.”

  James lifted the pen and unscrewed the cap. Marvin could see that the pen was slim and elegant, with a delicate silver nib.

  “Wow,” James said, clearly trying to muster some enthusiasm.

  “This is how you fill it,” Karl said, demonstrating. “Watch the position of your hand while you’re drawing, so you don’t smear the ink. It’ll take a while to get the hang of it.”

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Oh, here they are,” Mrs. Pompaday cried. “Boys! James, hurry, the goody bags.” She nudged Karl toward the door. “You can show all this to him tomorrow when he’s with you,” she said. “You’ll pick him up at noon?”

  “Yeah, or a little after. That okay, James?”

  James looked from his father to his mother and nodded quickly. “Sure, Dad.”

  Mrs. Pompaday pursed her lips, sweeping past him. “Well, I’d like to know what time to expect you. We have plans tomorrow afternoon. If you’re going to cancel like last time, you need to at least call! It isn’t fair to James, and it certainly isn’t fair to me. I have a life too, you know.”

  “Sorry about that,” Karl said sheepishly. “Stuff comes up, that’s all.”

  Mrs. Pompaday swung open the door and smiled broadly. “Julie! We’ve had the most wonderful time; we didn’t even notice it was so late. You’re going to have trouble dragging Ryan away! Oh, this is James’s father, Karl Terik. Yes, that’s right, the artist. He’s just leaving.”

  A Present for James

  That night, when the house was quiet, Marvin and Elaine sorted through the treasure box. Their parents were playing a game of staples in the other room. Staples was the beetles’ modified version of the human game horseshoes, in which two teams threw staples at broken toothpicks stuck in the floor. Because each beetle could throw as many as four staples at once, using his front legs, the air was filled with sharp whizzing objects, and the grown-ups preferred to sequester the children in another part of the house before they began.

  “Watch out, Albert!” Marvin heard his mother cry. “We have enough holes in the wall as it is.”

  Marvin and Elaine peered into the treasure box, looking for the perfect gift for James. “There’s the nickel,” Marvin said.

  “Oooo, a buffalo nickel!” Elaine cried. “He’ll like that, don’t you think? They’re rare. He can sell it and buy something better. That’s what I’d do.”

  Marvin touched the dull surface of the coin. “I guess it’s the best thing in here,” he said, “but I’d rather give him something to keep.”

  “Well, maybe he will keep it,” Elaine said cheerfully. “Boys like to save the silliest things. Look at you with your tack collection. What will you ever use those for?”

  “Those are weapons,” Marvin protested.

  Elaine laughed so hard that she fell off the edge of the box and lay on her back, feet waving in the air. “Oh! Help me! Marvin, turn me over.”

  But Marvin ignored her. He burrowed under the nickel and used his shell to flip it out of the treasure box. Then he heaved it upright and rolled it through the hole in the wall into the black expanse of the cupboard.

  “Marvin!” Elaine called. “Come back!”

  The journey through the dark apartment to James’s room was an arduous one. Rolling the nickel across the kitchen tile went relatively smoothly, but hoisting it over the door-sills left Marvin exhausted and panting. He had to watch for trouble every step of the way, not just night-roving Pompadays, but the booby traps of forgotten gum or Scotch tape on the floor or, worse yet, a foraging mouse.

  When he finally reached James’s bedroom, he had to sit for a minute to catch his breath. A streetlamp outside the window cast dim light across the walls, and in the bluish blackness Marvin saw the mountainous silhouette of James, asleep under the blankets. He heard the boy’s deep breaths.

  Marvin thought about the birthday party. Had it been a good day for James? The boys at the party weren’t his friends. The presents had been an uninspired mix of electronic games and designer clothing. Mrs. Pompaday was as fussy and self-centered as always, and even James’s father, whom Marvin liked a lot, hadn’t come up with a present that seemed to please his son. Marvin glanced down at the worn face of the buffalo nickel. Would the coin make up for everything else? Probably not.

  Suddenly, Marvin felt so sad he could hardly stand it. A person’s birthday should be a special day, a wonderful day, a day of pure celebration for the luck of being born! And James’s birthday had been miserable.

  Marvin rolled the nickel to a prominent place in the middle of the floor, away from the edge of the rug where it might be overlooked. James would see it there. He looked around the dark room one last time.

  Then he saw the bottle of ink. It was high up on James’s desk, and it appeared to be open.

  Curious, Marvin crawled across the floor to the desk and quickly climbed to the top. James had spread newspaper over the desk and two or three sheets of the art paper his father had given him. On one page he’d made some experimental scribbles and had written his name. The pen, neatly capped, rested at the edge of the paper, but the bottle of ink stood open, glinting in the weak light.

  Without really thinking about what he was doing, Marvin crawled to the cap of the bottle and dipped his two front legs in the ink that had pooled inside. On his clean hind legs, he backed over to an unused sheet of paper. He looked out the window at the nightscape of the street: the brownstone opposite with its rows of darkened windows, the snow-dusted rooftop, the street-lamp, the naked, spidery branches of
a single tree. Gently, delicately, and with immense concentration, Marvin lowered his front legs and began to draw.

  The ink flowed smoothly off his legs across the page. Though he’d never done anything like this before, it seemed completely natural, even unstoppable. He kept glancing up, tracing the details of the scene with his eyes, then transferring them onto the paper. It was as if his legs had been waiting all their lives for this ink, this page, this lamp-lit window view. There was no way to describe the feeling. It thrilled Marvin to his very core.

  He drew and drew, losing all sense of time. He moved back and forth between the ink cap and the paper, dipping his front legs gently in the puddle of black ink, always careful not to smear his previous work. He watched the picture take shape before his eyes. It was a complicated thatching of lines and whirls that looked like an abstract design up close, as Marvin leaned over it. But as he backed away, it transformed into a meticulous portrait of the cityscape: a tiny, detailed replica of the winter scene outside the window.

  And then the light changed. The sky turned from black to dark blue to gray, the streetlamp shut off, and James’s room was filled with the noise of the city waking. A garbage truck groaned and banged as it passed on the street below. James stirred beneath his bedcovers. Marvin, desperate to finish his picture before the boy awakened, hurried between the page and the ink cap, which was almost out of ink. At last he stopped, surveying his miniature scene.

  It was finished.

  It was perfect.

  It was breathtaking.

  Marvin’s heart swelled. He felt that he had never done anything so fine or important in his entire life. He wiped his ink-soaked forelegs on the newspaper and scurried behind the desk lamp, bursting with pride, in a fever of anticipation, just as James threw off his blankets.

  James stumbled out of bed and stood in the center of the bedroom, rubbing his face. He looked around groggily, then straightened, his eyes lighting on the floor.