The Mistaken Masterpiece

by Michael D. Beil

  Margaret presses the button for apartment 5B, and after we identify ourselves, Prunella buzzes us into the building.

  When she opens her front door, Prunella seems normal—almost charming, even.

  “It’s nice to see young people taking an interest in their country,” she says after Margaret has explained the purpose of our visit—recruiting new LOONYBIN members. (Of course, we’re not referring to the organization by its acronym in front of her.)

  “And such nice, fair-skinned girls, too,” she continues. “There aren’t too many of us left—what with all these immigrants taking over everything. Come inside.”

  My skin starts to crawl as she leads us into the room she calls the sitting room, which is not at all what I expect. Instead of floral wallpaper and maybe a doll collection, or even a big-screen TV, the walls are covered with dead animals. There are several deer heads, including one that looks suspiciously like Bambi’s mother; a moose head that is, I admit, much bigger than I expected a moose head to be; a bearskin with the head still attached; the head of some animal that looks like a really ticked-off pig; a fox; a bobcat; four fish; and strangest of all, in the corner of the room, a complete stuffed coyote, its nose raised as if on high alert.

  Elizabeth turns in a performance equal to one of my finest. She gushes over all the dead animals in a way that makes me believe that every interior decorator in New York will be hanging deer heads and bearskins in apartments all over town.

  Frankly, I think the whole place is positively creepy—especially that poor coyote, who, to me, looks a bit too much like a lighter-colored Tillie. And, unlike his cartoon character cousin, not wily at all. I stop for a moment, perching on a stool (supported by real deer legs—yuck!), and try not to focus on all the eyes that seem to follow my every move.

  “We’re just trying to make America a better place,” Margaret says convincingly as our hostess continues the tour of her very peculiar theme park: Prunella’s Tacky Treasures of Taxidermy. “We need to start taking care of the real Americans—like us. The ones who have been here the longest.”

  Oy. Margaret’s family has been in America for all of five years. My phone is resting in the pleats of my uniform skirt, and Becca and Leigh Ann, listening in from outside the building, are laughing so loud that I have to cough to cover it up.

  But Margaret is on a roll. “As you can see here on our flyer, one of our boldest ideas is to sell American citizenship. Every year, millions of immigrants come to America, and we don’t charge them a cent, when we could be charging them thousands of dollars. If they really want to come here, they’ll be willing to pay—don’t you think?”

  There’s no doubt that we have Prunella’s undivided attention, so Elizabeth suggests that she and Prunella go into the kitchen and make a pot of tea before we all continue this important discussion in the living room. She insists on helping out in the kitchen, leaving Margaret and me alone with the Pommeroy, which, in the midst of all those dead animals, sticks out like a Michelangelo in a room full of macaroni sculptures. Elizabeth’s job is to keep her new best friend in the kitchen for an absolute minimum of two minutes, even if it means blocking the door with her own body—something I would pay plenty to see.

  As soon as the kitchen door closes behind Elizabeth, Margaret swings into action. We can’t risk using the front window, where everybody in the neighborhood can watch, so she yanks open a window on the side of the apartment and signals to Becca and Leigh Ann to get into position.

  “Okay, Soph, unwind that piece of twine and hand me the safety pin.”

  While I’m doing that, she takes the painting off the wall and heads for the window.

  The kitchen door squeaks, and we freeze. “Do you girls want tea?” Elizabeth sticks her head out the door and gives us the okay sign.

  Margaret snaps the safety pin onto the wire across the back of the frame after giving it a good tug to make sure it is solidly attached to both sides. She then starts lowering the painting out the window while I try to keep it away from the building, tree branches, and the nasty, sharp points of the iron fence on the way down. Becca reaches up and snags the painting just as a gust of wind hits it, almost pulling the twine out of Margaret’s hands.

  “Got it!” Becca yells up at us.

  Leigh Ann makes the switch, attaching the twine to the wire stretched across the back of Father Julian’s almost-but-not-quite-perfect copy of the Pommeroy.

  “Okay!” she shouts. “Take it away!”

  Margaret starts quickly reeling in the twine hand over hand. Five feet. Ten. And then … disaster! A strong gust of wind gets under the painting and blows it sideways, and the twine wraps itself around a section of the scary iron fence.

  “Uh-oh,” I say.

  For a few precious seconds, no one has anything to add to my rather astute analysis; “uh-oh” seems to have said it all.

  But wait. We don’t do quitting. It’s simply not in the RBGDA playbook.

  “I have an idea,” I tell Margaret. “It might just work, but I have to leave you here for a minute. I’m going downstairs; if you don’t see me in thirty seconds, tell Becca to bring the other one back to the lobby. We’ll put it back if we have to.” I make a beeline for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Margaret asks. She glances worriedly at the kitchen door. “Never mind. Just go!”

  It’s an old building, the kind in which the stairs are not enclosed, and as I’m racing for the third floor, I hear the unmistakable sound of a dog skittering across the tile floor in the lobby and then bounding up the steps. Tillie practically knocks me off my feet when she sees me. But we’re in the middle of a crisis situation and I simply don’t have time to ask how or why. I grab her by the collar and knock firmly on the door to apartment 3B—the one belonging to Livvy’s former nanny, Julia Demarest, and two floors directly below Prunella’s. (How do I know which apartment is hers? Easy—her name was right there on the door buzzer panel. A simple matter of observation, as Sherlock would say.)

  The door opens, and suddenly I am in the twilight zone, facing the strangest sight I have ever seen. For a moment, I’m not sure if I’m looking into a mirror, or if that is a different girl and dog in front of me. When I finally focus, I realize that the blond girl I’m staring at is, of course, Livvy, and the dog she’s trying to hold back could be Tillie’s identical twin.

  “Sophie? What are you—” But Livvy is cut off by Tillie, who leaps out of my hands and almost tackles her, wagging her tail and whining and licking Livvy’s face. Livvy’s dog watches this for a few seconds, and then starts barking.

  “Tillie, sit!” The words leave Livvy’s and my lips at precisely the same moment, and for the next ten seconds I completely forget that I’ve left Margaret (and a certain painting!) hanging two floors above me.

  “You have a dog named Tillie?” I say. “This is Tillie, too, but she’s not really mine. She’s Nate Etan’s—she we … I … it’s kind of a long story.”

  Livvy is still petting my Tillie, who continues to tell her the story of her life.

  “Ohmigosh, I almost forgot … I, um, need a huge favor. Do your side windows open?”

  “The … windows? Uh, yeah, I guess so.” “Bewildered” doesn’t begin to describe the look on her face.

  “Look, I promise to explain everything later. It’s kind of an emergency.”

  The two Tillies sniff and circle each other as Livvy steps aside and waves me in. “Which window do you need?”

  “Far wall. That one.”

  I can see the yellow twine curving into the tree branches that are only a few feet from the window, and as I stick my head out, Margaret looks down at me. “I think I can reach it,” I say. “Livvy, can you hold on to my feet so I can reach out a little farther?”

  Poor Livvy is in some kind of shock—she just nods and wraps her arms around my ankles. (Livvy Klack! Helping me! A few weeks ago I would have been worried that she’d toss me out the window.)

  I stretch my arms and finge
rs to their limit, and with the help of a swirling gust of wind, I first touch and then get a firm grip on the edge of the painting’s frame.

  And then … I freeze.

  Pointing directly at my head is a black iron spear; its razor-sharp tip seems only inches away.

  “Ohhh. Whoa.” The ability to think clearly disappears as my imagination goes haywire. Please, please, please don’t let go, Livvy. I swear I will never say another bad word about you.

  Margaret calls down to me. “Sophie? What’s wrong?” A pause, and then, “Oh. My. Gosh. Okay, I see it, too, but you can do this, Soph. Focus on the painting. Deep breaths.”

  Those are the magic words for me. Margaret knows that when I get overly excited or stressed out, I sometimes forget to breathe, which makes thinking—or just about anything else—extremely difficult.

  Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.

  I pull the painting toward me, untangling the string from the fence. Success!

  “Go!” I shout up to Margaret, who pulls it up and into the fifth-floor window.

  I close the window and turn to face Livvy, who smiles at me.

  “I’ve gotta go right now, but—”

  “Go,” she says. “You can tell me later. I can’t wait to hear what this is all about.”

  “Thanks—for, you know, not dropping me. I owe you, big-time. Come on, Tillie,” I say. Both dogs make a move for me, and I hesitate before choosing the one with the collar. “Let’s go, girl.” She wags her tail at me but looks back at Livvy with a sad whine as I pull her out the door and up to the fifth floor.

  I knock softly and Margaret opens the door; she gets a wild look in her eyes when she realizes that Tillie is with me.

  “Where did she come from?”

  “Becca must have let go of her leash when she was trying to climb the fence,” I say, stepping into the foyer with Tillie. “How did everything go up here? Is the painting on the wall? She didn’t see or hear anything?”

  “It’s perfect. Everything looks exactly like it did before she went into the kitchen,” Margaret answers. “Come on, they’re going to be back in the living room any second now.”

  “I can’t stay in here with her,” I say, pointing at Tillie. “And I can’t just leave her in the hall.”

  “Ah, there you are!” Elizabeth says. “Tea’s ready, girls.”

  Without warning, our hostess suddenly appears behind Elizabeth and peers around her at Margaret, Tillie, and me.

  Batten down the hatches: Tropical Storm Prunella has made landfall. Her face clouds over when she spots Tillie. She sputters for a moment before spitting out the words, “What is that filthy beast doing in here?”

  Now, before I go any further, let me remind you that this outburst is coming from a woman with a hundred dead animals hanging on her walls.

  “She’s not filthy,” I say, seriously insulted on Tillie’s behalf. I brush her coat every day, and even wash and dry her feet when we get back from the park. She’s cleaner than lots of people I know.

  “Out! Out, out, out! All of you! I invite you into my home and you bring a dog. I should have you all arrested.”

  “For what?” I ask. I’m not trying to be a smart aleck; I really want to know what crime she thinks we’re committing.

  “But what about the League?” Elizabeth says. “We haven’t had a chance to talk about a role for you.”

  “As if I would join an organization that includes dog owners! I know when I’m being cheated! Now, out with you!” She reaches into the hall closet for a broom and literally starts to sweep us out of her apartment. “Out, out, out.”

  The door slams shut and we practically fall on the hallway floor laughing.

  “Now do you believe us?” I say to Elizabeth. “We tried to tell you she belongs in the loony bin.”

  “Now, girls,” she says. “Be nice. You probably thought the same thing about me the first time we met.”

  Margaret shakes her head emphatically as we start down the stairs. “No, we thought you were interesting. Maybe a little eccentric. But never crazy.”

  “At the moment, I am a bit confused,” Elizabeth admits. “Where did Tillie come from? Was she part of the plan all along?”

  “That’s a very good question, isn’t it, Sophie?” Margaret says. “But then, I have a lot of questions for Miss St. Pierre. Starting with how you got into that apartment on the third floor.”

  “Magic,” I say. “Tell you what—I have to go thank somebody, and, uh, sort some things out. I’ll come over later. Tell Becca and Leigh Ann I’ll call them.”

  I give Elizabeth a kiss and a big hug and knock once more at the door to apartment 3B.

  In which Malcolm delivers some disturbing news

  Livvy opens the door to apartment 3B, and once again I have the uncanny feeling that I’m staring into a mirror.

  “Man, this is weird,” she says.

  I hold up my hand. “Before you say anything else, I have a question for you. Does your Tillie know any tricks? You know, like play dead or roll over?”

  “Um, she used to. She had a whole act; we’d go through them all the time. Then all of a sudden, she stopped. Now I can’t get her to do anything.”

  “Hmmm. Do me a favor: try it again, right now.”

  Livvy looks at her Tillie and shrugs. “Okay, but I know she won’t do it. Hey, Tillie! Play dead!”

  Livvy is right; her Tillie stands there unmoving, staring blankly up at her. My Tillie—er, Nate’s Tillie—on the other hand, spins in a tight circle three times, stands stiff as an ironing board momentarily, and then flops to the floor, as if some unseen force has pushed her over.

  “Oh. My.” Livvy’s jaw drops. “T-Tillie? Is that … you?” She looks at the other Tillie. “But … then who are you?” She drops to the floor, dazed by the revelation that she’s been living with somebody else’s dog.

  “I think I know,” I say. “Would you say that her behavior changed about two weeks ago? Maybe after a walk in the park?”

  Livvy nods. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  I then have to explain how I know Nate Etan, and how I ended up with his dog. Which is actually Livvy’s dog.

  “So, the bottom line is, you’ve been taking care of his dog, and I’ve been taking care of yours. Who started barking the second she saw this building, and who ate a pair of my shoes and a baseball. My personal favorite, though, is when she howls at the moon.”

  “Oh my God!” Livvy cries. “She does do that! Isn’t it spooky? But … how?”

  “When they were shooting those scenes in the park, Nate used to take Tillie—his Tillie, that is—for walks around the park and let her off-leash in the mornings—”

  “And I did that, too! I usually stay here with Julia on Friday nights, and Saturday mornings I take Tillie over to the park. There are always a million dogs off-leash, and I let her have a good run. A couple of weeks ago, she disappeared for a while, but then I found her. It’s funny, but now that I think about it, I remember that something seemed wrong at the time. She had the same collar, but something about the way it was put on was different, and the way she looked at me when I called her. Like she didn’t really know me. And then she was really picky about the food that she’s always eaten. How did I not know it was the wrong dog?”

  “That’s easy. Look at them. They’re impossible to tell apart by looks. And remember, you weren’t the only one fooled. Nate didn’t know, either. It’s a good thing I knocked on your door today. Nate’s coming back for Tillie on Friday. They’re going up to New Hampshire and then back to California. But then again, who knows? If we hadn’t figured this out, Tillie might have become a movie star.”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “Yeah, I think so. And he should probably see the two Tillies together so he doesn’t think we’re scamming him or something. You want to meet him?”

  Her eyes light up. “Yes!”

  “I think we can arrange that.”

  Livvy, thrilled to be reunited wit
h her Tillie, is greatly amused by the Tales of Prune-hell-a.

  “Now that I know she hates dogs, I’ll have to make sure that Tillie and I run into her more often,” she says with a smidgen of that old Livvy sass. (Which doesn’t seem so bad when it’s not being directed at me.) “I still owe her from that day in the diner.”

  “You’d need ten dogs, a couple of horses, and maybe a goat to get even with her for that. But let me know when you’re ready. I’d love to help.”

  Before I leave—not with the same dog I brought—I invite Livvy to stop by my apartment on Friday night, at the time Nate is allegedly picking up Tillie. “I have to warn you, he probably won’t come. He’s … well, he’s not exactly the most reliable person.”

  “Does he look as good in person as he does on TV?”

  “Better.”

  “Then I don’t care if he’s unreliable. I’ll be there.”

  Confession time: I fell asleep while reading Nicholas Nickleby. But before you Dickens-haters out there start in with your chants of “I told you he’s boring,” let me explain. I’ve been getting up at five in the morning, swimming for two hours, and then running around like a maniac every day, and it has finally caught up with me. End of story. So just lose those smug smiles right now; Charles Dickens still rules.

  In my dream, I’m sitting at my favorite Parisian café with Leigh Ann and Cam … and Nate, doggone it. The waiter arrives on a mint-green Vespa and fills everyone’s water glass except mine. Then he scoots away, his white apron flapping in the breeze.

  “Excusez-moi,” I say, trying to get his attention. “You forgot me!”

  He stops and turns around to see what I want. For the first time, I see his face—it’s Raf’s wonderfully familiar face!—and he’s aiming that licensed-to-kill smile of his directly at me. He opens his mouth to say something, and—

  “Sophie! Wake up!” Mom says. “You’ll be late for swim practice.”