Under the Egg

by Laura Marx Fitzgerald

  “Eddie, you coming?”

  But Eddie didn’t hear us. He was bent over the book with Goldie, their heads almost touching. More volumes towered just beyond Goldie’s elbow. This might take all afternoon.

  Chapter Seventeen

  While Goldie pursued her mysterious lead and Lydon plotted his warrant, Bodhi and I had nothing to do but wait. We regrouped the next day in Jack’s studio, guarding the painting while we sipped un-iced tea (really, just the leftover morning’s tea served lukewarm in jelly jars).

  It was clear we were at a crossroads—but we didn’t even know which directions the signs pointed.

  “To wit:—” I launched in.

  “To what?” Bodhi interrupted.

  “To wit,” I said. “It means, thusly—”

  Bodhi rolled her eyes. “Oh jeez, just talk like a normal person for once and not like an eighty-year-old in your old lady slip.”

  “Fine, okay,” I said, crossing my arms over my grandmother’s repurposed negligee (which I had thought made a nice sundress). “Here’s what we know. Anna Trenczer is probably—let’s face it—dead. Even if she survived the camp, it’s not likely she survived the Paris Executioner. And we know her parents are dead, and most likely, all of her family members.”

  “We don’t know that actually,” mused Bodhi. “There could be some long, lost cousin out there.”

  “Yes,” I admitted, “but we won’t find them without hiring an archivist, like Goldie said.”

  “True dat,” nodded Bodhi.

  “Okay, I’ll stop talking like an old lady if you stop impersonating rap stars.”

  “Hip-hop artists,” Bodhi corrected. I gave her a look, after which she said nothing but made an okay sign.

  “We also know that the painting is stolen.”

  “With no authentication.”

  “Or documentation. So I can’t sell it.”

  “And if you can’t find Anna, you can’t return it.”

  “So what was the point?” I clenched my jar of tea. “Jack must’ve known that I had no chance of finding Anna Trenczer. So why leave me with this great big mystery? Why shouldn’t I just give the stupid painting to Lydon?”

  “I don’t know, Theo,” said Bodhi. “Maybe you should.”

  We sat with that sign on the crossroads, attempting to dismantle the mental roadblock that kept us from admitting defeat.

  Bodhi finally spoke. “There is one thing that Goldie said that’s been bothering me.”

  “Just one?”

  “Okay, there were a lot of things that were . . . disturbing. But only one that doesn’t make sense. The Nazi officer—he signed Anna out of the camp, right?”

  “The Paris Executioner? Seems so.”

  Bodhi started pacing the room. “Well, why? If he wanted her to die, he could’ve just left her there.”

  “He needed the painting. She had it.”

  “So?” Bodhi stopped in front of me. “He could have gone to the camp—or sent some underling, for that matter—grabbed the painting, kicked her back inside.”

  Slowly it dawned on me. “But he signed her out . . .”

  “Exactly. I mean, if the Executioner wanted to kill her, it would have been a lot easier to just leave her at the camp and let the system do the dirty work.”

  “So do you think he got her to safety?”

  Bodhi spoke tentatively. “I think maybe he did.”

  “And maybe—”

  I was interrupted by a banging on the front door that carried all the way up the stairs. The kind of insistent banging that’s only produced by a fist.

  Bodhi and I ran to the small front window of Jack’s studio that overlooked the street, where a squad car was double-parked. Below, on the stoop, stood at least three men in police uniforms. Plus an older man in a seersucker suit.

  I knew in that instant that, whatever happened to the painting, it was not going to leave this house by force. Not this way.

  I turned to Bodhi. “Do you think we can wait them out?” I remembered Lydon’s last threats. “They probably have a warrant.”

  Bodhi shook her head. “I dunno. My dad has been in a couple of cop movies, and I think they can bust their way in if they have a warrant.”

  I started moving paintings around the studio, looking for a hiding place.

  “They’re going to search the whole house, you know,” said Bodhi.

  I stopped with my arms full of unfinished canvases. “I know.”

  “What about behind the house? In the chicken coop?”

  “That’s not a bad idea.” I looked out the front window again. “But they’ll see us coming down the stairs. Through the glass of the front door.”

  “What about the basement?”

  “Still have to go down the front stairs.”

  “Theo? Theo, are you up there? There’s someone at the door.”

  My mom’s reedy voice floated through the house.

  “Shhhhh, Mom,” I hissed. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Turning back to Bodhi, I said, “We’ve got to find somewhere to stash this before—”

  Lydon’s muffled voice drifted through the door and all the way up the staircase. “Theodora, we know you’re in there. I have a warrant here, and these police officers have every right to break your door down if you don’t open it of your own accord. Be a good girl now.”

  “Before that,” I finished.

  Bodhi furrowed her brow. “Don’t you have any secret rooms or passageways or something in this old house?”

  One dim, 30-watt lightbulb went off in my brain. “It’s a risk,” I muttered. “But she would be at the shop now. And I could get it back before she gets home . . .” I thrust the painting into Bodhi’s arms and headed down the stairs to the second floor, calling over my shoulder, “Wait at the top of the stairs. I’ve got to talk to my mom.”

  My mom was hovering on the second floor landing in her bathrobe. “Theo, aren’t you going to answer it?” She looked worried. “They seem impatient.”

  “Mom, look me in the eyes.” She made a few efforts, her eyes finally landing on my shoulder. Close enough. “Mom, I need you to do something very important. That’s Lydon Randolph downstairs with some friends of his. They are coming to see me, but I’m not ready for them yet. I need you to make them some tea.”

  “Tea?” She blinked rapidly. “Why me?”

  “Because I have to get something ready for them, and you’re the only one I can trust to know the right kind of tea to serve.”

  My mom looked momentarily confused, then proud. “Lydon and his friends? What kind of friends?”

  “Police officers.”

  She stood up a bit taller. “Oh, well, that’s easy. Something strong and bracing. Lapsang Souchong. I could do that, I suppose.” She wrapped her bathrobe around her tighter. “And the kettle is—”

  “On the stove.”

  “And the Lapsang—”

  “On the windowsill in the yellow tin.” I pushed her in the direction of the stairs. “Oh! And they are really interested in—what’s that thing you’re working on?”

  “Fermat’s Last Theorem?”

  “Yes! That’s why they’re here. To hear about that.”

  As my mother tripped downstairs like a girl with a gentleman caller, I waved Bodhi and the painting down to the second floor and pulled her into Jack’s old bedroom. We closed his door just as I heard my mother greeting Lydon and his merry band.

  Jack’s scent had faded, but at that moment, it felt overwhelming: paint, turpentine, Old Spice, the smoke of his one Saturday night cigarette. The furniture was just as he’d left it, too: a grand Victorian bedroom set made up with spartan Army blankets. It occurred to me for the first time that they were military issue, brought home from the war.

  “How much time can your mom re
ally buy us?” asked Bodhi.

  “They won’t start here. They’ll start poking around downstairs, or go right to the studio. We only need five minutes.”

  “But they’ll look in here eventually.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “but they won’t look in here.” I gestured dramatically to the heavy armoire that dominated Jack’s room.

  “Of course they’ll look in there. They’ll search every closet.” Bodhi shook her head. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “No, not in there.” I braced my back against the side of the armoire. “Listen, just put the painting down and grab hold of the other side. And help me move this as quietly as you can.”

  The armoire weighed twice as much as any other piece of furniture in the house, but we managed to slide it along the floor an inch at a time, hoping the groans and creaks would be lost in the confused conversation I heard downstairs. As predicted, the combination of Mom’s meandering thoughts and Lydon’s attempts to appear chivalrous in front of the cops was buying us the time we needed.

  Finally the armoire had been heaved aside, revealing the door that led directly into 20 Spinney Lane, home of Madame Dumont and brief dwelling place of the first Grandmama Tenpenny.

  I said a silent prayer that Madame Dumont was indeed at the shop, turned the knob, and pushed my shoulder against the door. It flew open with surprising ease, and I tumbled on the floor after it.

  No Madame Dumont here. I was surrounded by blackness and the smell of mothballs, a jungle of hanging fabric and plastic wrap entangling me from all sides. It turns out Jack didn’t have to worry about a lurking Madame Dumont all those years. She, or some earlier occupant, had built a closet in front of the door.

  “Are you okay?” asked Bodhi, her head haloed by the light of Jack’s room.

  I swatted away something woolen. “Yes, fine. Give me the painting.”

  Bodhi stepped into the dark closet and placed the painting in my arms. “Better hurry. I just heard them heading up to the studio.”

  I left the painting right there on the floor and hopped back into Jack’s room, where we reversed the moving process and planted the armoire right back where we’d found it.

  By the time Lydon and his men had finished ransacking the rest of the house, Bodhi and I were sitting in the parlor with my mother, drinking Lapsang Souchong and listening to her rattle on about Whoever’s Last Theorem.

  “Find anything good?” Bodhi inquired sweetly as the men reentered the parlor, wiping their foreheads on their shirtsleeves.

  Lydon’s tired face reminded me of an old cartoon character who always complained about “those meddling kids.” “Despite an incriminating amount of noise and disruption from your upper floors, no, we did not.” He loosened his tie. “Care to tell us anything, girls?”

  “Not really,” I said, sipping my tea.

  He turned to the officers who looked hot and bored. “It’s clear they have it. Somewhere in this house. Maybe in the walls or some hidden entrance. We need to get some kind of equipment to open up the walls. Or one of those detectors that locate hollow spots. Or—”

  The cops exchanged glances that said that this job was not going to get them any closer to making detective. The most senior looking one spoke up: “That’s going to require a different kind of warrant than the one you got, sir.”

  “What? Why? My good friend, Harry—Judge Harold Greenbaum to you—said all the paperwork was in order.”

  “Mr. Randolph, I think we’d better take this outside.”

  Lydon drew up his shoulders. “Yes, I think we’d better.

  My mother watched the men go, shaking her head. “They didn’t seem to know much at all about algebraic number theory,” she said, and shuffled her way back to her room.

  As soon as she left, Bodhi turned to me, her eyes ablaze. “Upstairs, and quick!”

  We tiptoed past the front door and up the stairs, the men too immersed in their debate to notice us, back up to Jack’s room. “Do you have a fire escape?” asked Bodhi.

  “Sure, but it just leads out to the backyard. And there isn’t any way to get out of the yard again.”

  “What about the roof? Couldn’t you climb up to the roof from the fire escape outside Jack’s studio?”

  “Maybe. But not with a painting under my arm.”

  “Then I’ll climb up. You hand me the painting. Then I walk over the rooftops to my house, slip our bodyguard twenty dollars—well, maybe fifty dollars—not to tell my parents, and climb down my own fire escape. Like Robert DeNiro in Godfather II.”

  “You guys have bodyguards on your roof?”

  “Focus here, Theo.” She rapped me on the skull. “We’ve got to move that armoire again.”

  Somehow the armoire had gotten heavier since we left. We inched it aside with even less finesse than before, certain with every scrape that the police would somehow hear us and track the noises to Jack’s room.

  With not a second to spare, I burst through the connecting door again. But this time, a light beckoned me at the other end of the closet. Where I saw Madame Dumont, sunken to the floor, the cardigan she’d come back for forgotten, my very own painting held in her arms while tears streamed down her face.

  Chapter Eighteen

  You may have figured out by now that Anna Trenczer was none other than my next-door neighbor, Madame Dumont. I didn’t until that very moment. And my grandfather certainly never did.

  In retrospect, it seems fitting that the very girl Jack hoped to rescue was hiding at arm’s reach: across that fence, behind that blockaded connecting door, inside that prim, prickly exterior that drove him farther away. They emerged from the war just alike, my grandfather and Anna—each captive in a prison of their own distrust, determined never to leave their fate or freedom in anyone’s hands but their own.

  So was it providence that brought her to the house right next door? Destiny? A mind-blowing coincidence? Not really, as it turns out.

  It seems the house next door wasn’t just any boardinghouse. Jack, after a decade spent searching for Anna Trenczer on various refugee lists, made a deal with a European relief agency. They could use 20 Spinney Lane, rent free, as a resettlement house for postwar refugees—so long as they were all girls between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four (the age Anna Trenczer would be at the time). Seeing as how this request raised a few eyebrows, he agreed never to enter the house or speak to the girls, but to only communicate through the house matron, who was directed to ask each girl if she knew—or was—Anna Trenczer.

  The plan worked. Sort of. Because Anna Trenczer did walk through the doors of 20 Spinney Lane sometime in the early 1960s, a recently emancipated orphan from war-torn France.

  It’s just that the now-grown Anne-Marie Dumont had no memory of ever being Anna Trenczer. Until she saw the painting.

  “It was in a suitcase,” she recalled slowly, her French-inflected whispers transporting us from her chintz-ruffled bedroom to the scene of her suffering. “We were allowed to bring only one suitcase with us, you see, and my father gave me his, though it was almost as big as me. He pulled out the—how do you say?—the lining and sewed the painting inside, and my mother put the clothing all around to protect it. ‘A man will come to for you,’ my father said. ‘He will wear a uniform with lightning on his collar. Give him the suitcase, and he will take you out of here.’

  “That was in the camp. A crowded, disgusting place, not fit for human beings. But they didn’t treat us as human beings, so perhaps it was appropriate in their eyes. Before that—I can still see it—there had been a grand apartment with a lot of lovely things. Books, silver, art on every wall. And toys, so many toys.” Madame Dumont sighed to think of it. “Now we were sleeping twenty to a tiny room, all of us living out of the one suitcase we were allowed. No working toilets, no washroom. We all had lice, and the hallways and stairways, disgusting with human waste . . .”

/>   Madame Dumont shook her head. “Ah, but I would have stopped time and made that our eternity, if I could. Because my mother and father were with me there.

  “They took the mothers and fathers away, you see. The children left behind. Can you imagine?” She looked from me, to Bodhi, who had crept in behind me. “Children no older than you, watching over hundreds of little ones.

  “The big children said we were going on the trains next. We waited and waited every day for an announcement. And then one day, they called my name. Mine alone. There was a man in a uniform like my father described. He said he needed to take me to a different camp. He smiled a lot with teeth so straight and white; he seemed so . . . golden next to my rags. The man signed a few papers, then put his hand on my shoulder and took me out through the front gates. At his car, he took the suitcase from my hands and picked me up and hid me in the trunk under a blanket.

  “We took a long, bumpy drive, and when the man opened the trunk, it was completely dark. We were behind the gates of an enclosed building—a convent, I learned. I had never been inside one before. The man handed some papers to a nun, who gave him a sort of blessing. Then he turned and went to his car. He did not look at me again.

  “From that moment I was Anne Dumont, the name on my false papers. I stayed there, a convent girl now, until I was eighteen.”

  “But Anne-Marie . . . ?” I broke in.

  “My baptismal name. The nuns baptized me, you see, when it was time for the First Communion. Otherwise the girls would know that I was . . . different.”

  What do you know? Goldie had been on the right track.

  Madame Dumont looked right at me with her shining, distant eyes. “I don’t remember my name, you know. Or theirs . . . my parents.”

  I took a tentative step closer and lowered down to my knees, too, as if approaching a strange puppy. “Max,” I said quietly. “Max Trenczer. That was your father.” I stopped there. The story about Max and Jack’s friendship could wait.

  “Tren-cher.” Madame Dumont echoed my pronunciation, tilting one ear up. “Anne—Anna Trawn-shair,” she repeated, with a French inflection this time, and nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, I remember it now.”