Next she put on her homemade earrings. They were large white beads that hung on a hoop. She looked different, quite definitely. The train roared by outside the window, and Petra stood still, watching her earrings tremble with the vibrations.
She put on her jacket with the fake-fur collar and cuffs — she had sewn carefully trimmed pieces of an old Dalmatian costume onto a yellow sweater. She was ready. Lowering her lids a fraction of an inch and smiling a smile that was more an idea than a movement, she looked at herself sideways in the mirror. She felt filled, at least for that moment, with the easy elegance of the writer in her dream.
When Petra opened the door, there was Calder on her front porch wearing a large red letter made out of taped-together cardboard squares.
“Hi, Calder!”
“Petra —”
She suddenly wished she hadn’t done all that stuff to her hair, and instinctively pulled back out of the light.
“You look like something I’ve seen, I mean, just like a painting —”
“I do?” Petra mumbled.
“How did you think of dressing up like her?”
“Like who?” Petra looked at Calder directly now, frowning slightly.
“The lady with the feather pen, the lady at the desk!”
Calder tried to protect his pentomino costume as Petra pulled him into her front hall. “Tell me exactly what you’re talking about.”
“Look out! Now you’ve bent my F,” Calder said crossly. “What’re you so upset about?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that you recognized my costume. You see, I dreamed about it.”
“What do you mean you dreamed that painting?”
“I didn’t say it was a painting. I don’t know what it was.”
“Weird. I have your picture at home — come over and see for yourself.”
They were down Petra’s steps and up Calder’s in seconds.
Once inside, Calder ducked out of his F and flew up the stairs. When he reappeared, he was carrying an oversized library book. He sat on the floor and leafed quickly through the reproductions. Petra knelt beside him.
“There!”
Petra’s stomach gave a sickening lurch. It was not only her costume, it was the woman in her dream. She touched the reproduction with her hand, as if to be sure it was really there. The caption next to it read: JOHANNES VERMEER, A LADY WRITING, 1665.
Calder and Petra found three other paintings of the woman in the yellow jacket. In one, she was wearing a pearl necklace and looking into a mirror. In another, she was playing a lute. In the third, she was seated at a writing table and a maid was handing her what looked like a letter.
“You’ve never seen any of these before?” Calder looked worried.
“Never.” Petra had taken off one of her earrings and was rolling it around on the floor.
“So how did you dream about something you didn’t know existed?”
“I wonder,” Petra said slowly, “if paintings that float into your mind on their own are kind of like flying frogs or disappearing people.”
“Mmm … you mean your dream might be part of something bigger.” Calder jumped up and got a piece of paper and pencil. He handed them to Petra. “Maybe we should start keeping a record of unexplained stuff.”
Petra ducked her head happily over the paper. “Fine.”
She began with:
Charles Fort: chief questioner, philosopher, guide
“Hey, here’s something else. Did you know I made that F costume because I was thinking ‘F for Fort’?”
“We’ll include that.”
Calder told Petra about his box, explaining the reason he happened to be looking at the book. “I wonder what made me remember that old thing, anyway? If it hadn’t popped into my mind, I wouldn’t have recognized The Geographer at Mrs. Sharpe’s, and then I would never have read about Vermeer or recognized your costume.”
“It’s Ms. Hussey’s fault,” Petra said, delighted. “It all started with her find-some-art assignment. We found it, all right.”
They spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out what happened when. Petra wrote:
1. Calder writes about box with Geographer on it, same day that Petra finds Lo!, writes about it, then dreams about woman.
2. Calder and Petra have lunch, talk about Fort.
3. Calder visits Mrs. Sharpe and sees Geographer, hears about Vermeer.
4. Calder takes book out of library.
5. Petra and Calder make costumes. Petra thinks about Vermeer, Calder thinks about Charles Fort.
6. Halloween: Calder recognizes Petra’s costume.
Calder was flipping back and forth in the book. “This doesn’t tell you too much about Vermeer’s life. Do you think we should do some research? I’ve been wondering if there’s some kind of secret code that no one’s ever noticed before — I mean, why so many pearls and pens and button thingies?”
“Good thinking.” Petra grinned.
“And maybe there’s some other crazy connection with Charles Fort,” Calder went on. “Some facts we might be missing.”
“We could look in the high school library tomorrow.”
“Great.” Calder stood up and reached into his pocket. He stirred the pentomino pieces around and pulled one out.
“V for Vermeer.” He smiled in a distracted way at Petra, who looked puzzled. “A one-in-twelve chance. Think it’s coincidence?”
On the way to school the next morning, Petra asked Calder about the V for Vermeer business. “I told you about the woman. Now you can tell me about these pentominoes. And don’t say they’re just for making rectangles.”
“They help me figure things out,” began Calder. He looked sideways at Petra. “Promise you won’t laugh.”
“Why should I? What could be weirder than my dream?”
“Well, it seems like the pentominoes kind of talk to me. I’ll get the feeling that they want to tell me something, and so I’ll grab one, and a word will just pop into my head.”
Petra was looking at Calder with interest.
“I know. It sounds like a superstitious game. And it probably is. But you’re right about Charles Fort. He makes you look carefully at stuff you might have ignored before.”
“I think it’s cool.”
Calder smiled gratefully at Petra. He should have known she’d understand.
At 3:30 that afternoon, they were sitting behind a stack of books in the library.
“Let’s begin with dates, okay?” Petra, writing in neat purple ink, started a new page with the heading “Facts about Vermeer.”
Calder looked at the book in front of him. “Whoa! Petra! Get this: Vermeer was baptized on Halloween in 1632. That’s the first fact about his life.”
“Kind of spooky, don’t you think? We started writing about him on the same day that his name was first recorded. There are more than three and a half centuries in between….”
“Here it is,” Calder went on. “Johannes, son of Reynier Jansz and Digna Baltens —”
“Wait. Spellings.”
Calder paused for a moment while Petra copied the names. He went on: “His father was an innkeeper in Delft, but was also a weaver who manufactured a fine satin cloth called ‘caffa.’ Vermeer was an innkeeper, too, and then an art dealer. Let’s see…. When he was twenty-one he married Catharina Bolnes. Later that year he was registered as a ‘Master Painter’ in the Guild of Saint Luke … became a director of the same guild several times … had eleven children. He died in 1675, at age forty-three.”
Petra was writing madly.
Calder turned the page. “It looks like he died owing money, and that he wasn’t really famous until about a hundred years ago. Huh. He’s mysterious, I mean everything about his life is. There aren’t any records of how he got started, or of what money his family lived on. Historians don’t know where he worked, or who the women and men in his paintings were, whether they were friends or family or what. I read that before — almost nothing at all is known about h
im as a person.” Calder looked up. “That’s so strange, don’t you think? I wonder if someone destroyed his notebooks or letters?”
Petra glanced at Calder. “It does seem suspicious. And sad, don’t you think? These magical scenes that no one will ever know more about.”
Calder was reading again. “You know what else? He only signed some of his paintings. I wonder why?” Calder turned the page. “I’d never have done that,” he muttered under his breath.
“Let’s find out more about the painting in your dream,” he went on. “Here it is: A Lady Writing, and it’s in the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C. The thing she’s wearing is a morning jacket, and it has white fur around the collar and sleeves. Those big earrings are either some kind of fancy glass or pearls, can you believe it? The oyster that made those would have to have been the size of a football. That’s a quill pen, of course. The same chair with the lion’s-head knobs turns up in other images … and the same jewelry, furniture, even maps and paintings on the walls. I wonder if this is Vermeer’s home.”
“Must’ve been hard to work with so many kids.” Petra was thinking about how noisy just five could be.
“Is anything making sense here?” Calder asked.
“Well, there’s the Halloween thing. That’s a pretty weird coincidence.”
“But is there anything else we’re missing? A pattern? Numbers?”
“It seems like there’s too much connection here,” Petra said slowly. “Like Mrs. Sharpe knowing about both Vermeer and Charles Fort, you knowing Mrs. Sharpe, me reading Mrs. Sharpe’s book and having that dream right when you were reading about Vermeer, and then the costumes we both made…. Do you suppose that ideas overlap like this all the time, and people just don’t realize it?”
“Maybe.”
Outside the library, they walked several yards in silence. Calder pulled two packages of peanut M&M’s out of his coat and passed one to Petra.
“Thanks,” she said, surprised.
“What’s your favorite?” he asked.
“The blue ones.”
“Hey, how about the blue M&M symbolizes secrecy? We can start a collection and each eat one at special times as a sign of our determination to figure this out. It’ll be kind of our own private thing —” Hearing himself, Calder stopped.
Petra added quickly, “It’ll represent us, Charles Fort, and Vermeer. Perfect.”
They decided to save the blue M&M’s in Calder’s box and keep it under his bed. Petra would hold on to the notebook.
At the end of Harper Avenue they stopped and both ate an M&M, agreeing that the color blue had a rare and mysterious taste.
Calder felt restless as he stood in front of the living room window on Wednesday afternoon. It had been two days since their trip to the library. Not knowing what to investigate, neither Calder nor Petra had done any further research.
Outside, it was pouring rain. The water was running and puddling. As Calder absentmindedly watched the droplets forming and re-forming in shape after shape, an idea came to mind. Of course! It was the obvious next step. He bounded up the stairs, away from his parents talking in the kitchen, and picked up the phone.
When Petra answered, he said, “Listen, I think we should call the National Gallery and ask if A Lady Writing is there. You know, to find out if the painting is safe and all that.”
“Why wouldn’t it be there?”
“Well, I just want to be sure. Maybe Charles Fort’s warping my brain, but stories about teleportation and people vanishing into thin air … we should check.”
“I’ll be right over.”
Neither Petra nor Calder had ever called a museum before. They flipped a penny about who was going to speak, and Petra dialed. There was a recording, with museum hours and information about shows and tours, and then finally a chance to talk to an operator. Petra held the phone at an angle so that Calder could hear, too.
“National Gallery of Art.” The voice was silky, not young, and very official.
“Umm, we’re calling to find out if a certain Vermeer painting is on the wall right now.”
“Oh? What picture are you looking for?” Petra made a face at Calder; the voice now had that half-fake cheeriness that some adults get when talking to kids.
Petra continued, trying to sound as businesslike as possible, “A Lady Writing.”
“Let me check my computer. If the painting is on loan, I can tell you.”
Petra and Calder waited, silent, for her to come on again.
“Well, yes, the painting is traveling just now. It’s in Chicago. There’s going to be a show called ‘Writers in Art’ at the Art Institute.”
Petra’s and Calder’s eyes widened. Calder grabbed the phone, pulling Petra’s hair in the process. There was a fierce, whispered “Ow!” followed by a muffled “Sorry!”
“Excuse me?” The woman’s voice came on again.
“Do you know whether the painting is in Chicago now?” Calder was squeezing the phone receiver so hard that his knuckles stood out.
The woman on the other end hesitated. “Well, that’s what the computer said. I assume so. It left Washington several days ago, and the show opens next week.”
Sensing that the woman was going to ask them what they were doing, or whom she was speaking with, Calder said a quick “thank-you-good-bye” and hung up.
“Holy smokes, Petra!”
Petra nodded, silent.
“Are you thinking the same thing I am?”
She nodded again. “I’m calling the Art Institute. And this time, Calder Pillay, you’re not grabbing the phone and ripping out my hair.”
After a great deal of waiting and transferring to other lines, the second call told them only that a new show was going up the following week.
“Well, it could just be that we’re thinking about this stuff because the painting is part of a show here, and … and we’re just picking it up, that’s all….” Petra’s voice trailed off.
“Yeah, but I still feel funny knowing she’s traveling, don’t you?” Calder said.
“Paintings travel all the time. And now we’ll actually be able to see her.”
“Time for a blue one.”
They sat cross-legged on the floor with the Geographer between them, arguing about whether the M&M’s they’d picked were the same size. They played a halfhearted game of Monopoly. Calder’s mom brought them cookies on dark blue napkins covered with green frogs.
“Hey, where did these napkins come from, Mom?”
“I don’t remember, but they’re fun, aren’t they?”
After she left the room, Calder and Petra looked at each other.
“Maybe the rain gave the frogs an excuse to drop in,” Calder grinned.
“Right. Speaking of frogs, any news from New York?”
Calder had called Tommy the night before. He’d told Calder he was beginning to wonder if there was a reason that everyone in his neighborhood was so unfriendly — like there was some huge secret he hadn’t figured out. Frog was definitely not around, and no one wanted to tell Tommy why. He admitted to Calder that he might have been a bit dramatic with the kidnapping stuff, but facts were facts: Frog was there one day and gone the next. And no one was talking.
“I feel bad not being able to help,” Calder said to Petra. “Must be creepy, wondering if you’ll be the next kid to go.”
“Maybe your pentominoes will say something,” she suggested.
Calder stirred them around. He pulled out an N. He frowned. “N for what?” Calder thought aloud. “New York? No. National Gallery? Forget it — a serious case of Vermeer on the brain.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to think about anything else.”
After school the next day, Petra raked leaves with her dad, who seemed to be in his own world lately. He never passed the food at meals. He had forgotten to turn off the bathtub a couple of days ago. He tried to put on tiny socks from the socks basket and just looked puzzled when they didn’t fit.
Now he raked
over and over the same spot on the lawn. The grass was pulling up, leaving patches of bare dirt.
“Dad?” Petra had stopped working.
“Yes?”
“You okay?”
Petra’s dad looked at her as if she were on the other side of a closed window. He lifted his hand in a stiff wave. “Fine!”
But Petra didn’t believe him. What had happened to him? He still went off to work, but he was always distracted. She wished with all her heart she had found the letter that had started this, the one her parents had been arguing about weeks ago. There might have been something she could have done.
As her dad headed inside, she heard him mutter, “A loan. Insane.”
Petra’s eyes opened wide. A loan … The first thing she thought of was A Lady Writing. What was her dad talking about? Had he meant money? Or had she heard wrong? Maybe he’d said “alone.” Either way, it sounded bad.
Calder made two pumpkin pies that afternoon with his mom, and played three games of solitaire. He helped his dad fold the laundry.
“Calder, I need you for something else. Come outside.” Calder’s dad was already in his jacket.
Calder followed him onto the front walk, noticing with interest all the papers that had collected under the dead plants in their yard. He was remembering the letter about crime and art that Petra had found there and then lost.
His dad was squinting up at the outside of the house. “It’s time we repainted. Think we should keep the same color?”
“Yup,” Calder said. “That’s Grandma Ranjana’s color, isn’t it? Too bad she can’t know we’re keeping her choice. Why did she like red so much, anyway?”
Calder’s dad laughed. “It’s a long story. Something about the artist Vermeer … she wished he’d used more red, because she thought he was the best, but red would have made him perfect.”
“Weird,” Calder said quietly.
He glanced down the block and saw Petra in her yard. She had on a red hat, a smudge of bright color against the November gray.
Sometimes he wished he’d never heard of Fort or Vermeer. Events that were purely accidental were beginning to feel like they fit together, but not in a way he understood or even knew how to think about. It was one thing if you were using a handful of plastic pieces to find solutions to a puzzle; it was another if you felt like you’d fallen inside a puzzle and couldn’t get out.
Chasing Vermeer Page 5