Masterpiece (19 page)

When they returned to the Pompadays’ apartment, Mr. Pompaday swung open the door before they could even knock.

“Karl,” he said stiffly, nodding, then beckoned James inside. “Your mother’s waiting for you. She has something to tell you.” His voice crackled with excitement, which was such an unusual tone for Mr. Pompaday that Marvin emerged from James’s coat sleeve, wondering what could possibly have happened.

“Oh,” James said, looking confused. “Dad wanted to ask her—”

Karl shook his head at James slightly. “Another time, buddy. I’ll call her tomorrow.” He bent, and pulled James against him, kissing him warmly. “You did a great job today. A great job!”

“Thanks,” James said shyly.

Karl took the pen case out from under his arm and lifted the lid. “I’ll just clean off that brown ink for you—” He unseated the pen from its nesting place and stopped.

Marvin froze. There was no brown ink on the pen, of course. The pen had never been dipped in Christina’s jar of ink.

Why hadn’t they thought of that? Marvin groaned inside. It would have been so easy to do. Instead, the silver nib was shiningly free of ink, from Christina’s meticulous cleaning hours earlier.

“Um, that’s okay,” James said quickly, grabbing the pen from Karl. “I already cleaned it off.”

Karl looked at him strangely. “But how—”

“When we were at the museum,” James said. He shoved the pen back in the box and slapped down the lid.

Mr. Pompaday muttered impatiently, “Well, if that’s it, Karl, we’ll say good night. James’s mother—”

“Sure,” Karl said, studying James with a questioning expression on his face. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, James.” He started to back away, then said quietly, “Love you, buddy.”

“I love you, too, Dad,” James answered, not looking up.

Mr. Pompaday closed the door with a thud and herded James toward the living room. There, in the soft glow of the lamplight, Mrs. Pompaday was perched on a chair near the mahogany card table, with Marvin’s first drawing—the little street scene—carefully positioned in front of her.

“Oh, finally you’re back!” she cried, clapping her hands like cymbals. “James, the most wonderful thing! I invited the Mortons over today to see your cunning little drawing, and what do you think? They want to BUY it!”

James’s eyes widened. “Really?” he asked.

She rushed forward and grabbed James’s arm, pulling him to the table. “How much do you think they’ll pay, James? How much?”

But you won’t sell it, right
? Marvin thought.
I made that for you
.

James stared at the drawing. “They’ll pay money for it?”

“I did tell them I’d have to check with you. But James, this could be your first sale as an artist! A real artist! Think of that.”

“You’ll be making more than that father of yours in no time,” Mr. Pompaday added, chuckling. “Never thought of art as a lucrative profession, myself, but you just may be onto something with these little pictures of yours.”

Marvin crept forward, trying to see James’s face.
It was a birthday present
, he thought.

James blushed, his eyes reflecting his parents’ eager joy. “How much?” he asked.

“Oh, I want you to guess!” his mother crowed. “No, never mind, you’ll never be able to guess. It’s too much. . . . FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS.”

She clapped her hands again at James’s shocked expression. “I know, I know! I would never have put such a price on it myself, but it turns out they’ve been looking for a miniature for their downstairs powder room, and this is perfect.”

For their powder room? Marvin turned to James in disbelief.
Say no
, he thought.
Say you won’t sell it
.

But James smiled—a wide, slow smile of amazement—and said, “Four thousand dollars! That’s awesome! Nobody at school will ever believe it!”

“Then I’ll tell them yes?” When James nodded, Mrs. Pompaday snatched him against her in a bracelet-jangling hug. “Oh, James! I’m so proud of you. Look what you’ve made of yourself.”

Marvin inched back under James’s jacket cuff in disgust. Humans! Money was the only thing that mattered to them. Not beauty. Not friendship.

Through the dense fabric, he could hear the Pompadays’ muffled voices: Mr. Pompaday still chortling over the Mortons’ offer, Mrs. Pompaday now urging James to take off his jacket and come into the kitchen for supper.

“I have to put my stuff away,” James said. He walked down the hall to his bedroom, closing the door behind
him. Immediately, he peeled off his jacket and searched his arm for Marvin.

Marvin couldn’t bear to look at him. As soon as James lifted his wrist, Marvin crawled to the underside. When James turned his arm over, Marvin crawled to the other side again, out of sight.

“What’s wrong with you?” James asked. “Do you want to get down?” He rested his hand on the desktop, and Marvin immediately scurried across it, heading toward the wall.

“Hey! Where are you going, little guy?” James dropped his hand in front of Marvin, blocking the way. “Do you need to go home? I can take you, like I did last time. It’ll be much faster. Climb up.”

Furious, Marvin veered around the boy’s outstretched palm and continued toward the wall. He wanted nothing to do with James.

“What is it?” James persisted. “What’s the matter?” This time he settled his hand gently over Marvin and scooped him up, bringing him close to his face. He looked at him with troubled gray eyes.

By now, Marvin was seething, not just at James’s heartless sale of his drawing, but at the indignity of being so easily thwarted when he was trying to leave in a huff. He turned his rear end toward James, gathered his legs beneath him, and sank into a small immobile black mound. (This play-dead maneuver was a common beetle strategy in the face of imminent danger. Marvin had never used it before to show his anger, but he was beginning to realize that communication with humans required a large measure of creativity.)

“You’re mad at me,” James said.

Marvin didn’t move.

“But why?” James seemed genuinely bewildered. “Everything was fine at the museum. You were so great. You were amazing. The way you copied that drawing . . . you’re like a genius beetle, do you know that?”

Marvin was determined not to respond.

“What’s the matter?” James coaxed. He was quiet for
a minute. “It’s your street drawing, isn’t it? You don’t want me to sell it.” He let out a long breath and flopped into the chair at his desk. “I don’t want to sell it either,” he said softly.

Marvin remained in his tight huddle, trying not to listen.

“You know that, right?” James persisted. “I love that picture you made for me. That was my best birthday present ever.” He sighed. “It’s just . . . You probably can’t understand this, but my mom—she’s . . . ”

James set Marvin down on the desktop, lightly rolling him off his palm. “You can go if you want. I didn’t mean to stop you.”

Marvin slowly uncurled his legs, but stayed where he was.

James kept talking. “The thing is, she’s so proud of me, you know? That’s not how she is, usually. And it’s not even for something I did—it’s for something you did.” He crossed his arms on the desk and rested his head on them, his pale face close to Marvin, his breath warm and slightly salty. “It’s like this is a special trick she can show off to her friends. I wish”—he hesitated—“I wish she’d be proud of me for regular reasons . . . you know?”

Marvin turned to face him. He thought of Mama and Papa, who were always ridiculously proud of him, even for things that didn’t warrant it. It was like being followed around by your own personal cheering section. Sometimes it bothered him, but mostly it was pretty nice to know that his parents wholeheartedly believed he could do anything, yet were still bursting with pride when he did. He wondered if James had ever felt that way.

James kept talking, his voice husky and low. “They said it wasn’t my fault they got divorced. They said that over and over.
It’s not your fault, we still love you, you’re the most important thing to us
. But if I was the most important thing, how come I wasn’t important enough for them to stay together?”

He watched Marvin and waited, as if he thought Marvin might really know the answer. Finally he said, “Because if they’d ever asked me, ‘What do you want?’ that’s what I would have said: all of us together.”

Marvin crawled to the edge of James’s elbow and looked up at him, not feeling angry anymore.

He sighed. He saw that he would have to forgive James for the drawing. There were too many other things between them.

James let out another long breath. “But you know what? If they hadn’t gotten divorced, there’d be no William. So William was the one good thing that came out of it.”

Marvin recoiled in surprise. The beetles all thought William was quite horrible—grabby, irrational, and
dangerous. He knew that James didn’t feel that way, but he hadn’t ever imagined that James would see William as a blessing. However shocking, it was somehow comforting to hear that the pesky baby had brought a spark of pleasure to James’s life.

James sat up and rubbed his face. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” he said sheepishly. “I just like talking to you, I guess.” He grinned. “And I know you won’t tell anyone.”

He stretched out his hand again. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

Marvin climbed onto the boy’s finger, and James headed for the kitchen.

That night, after the fuss over his return, a full report of what had happened at the museum, and a stern scolding from Mama about the risks he’d taken when he disobeyed her, Marvin lay in his bed thinking about what James had said. Eventually, he called to his mother.

“What is it, darling? Your father and I are about to go foraging.”

“I can’t sleep,” Marvin said.

“Well, I’m not surprised. You’re completely off schedule from living on human time these past few days. But you must be exhausted from your outing. . . . What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking about something James said.”

Mama sat on the edge of the cotton ball and stroked his shell. “What?” she asked.

“About his parents getting divorced.” Marvin thought back to the conversation in James’s bedroom. “Why don’t beetles ever get divorced?”

His mother considered that for a moment. “Well, our lives are short, darling. What would be the point? We have so little time, we must spend it as happily as possible.”

She tucked the cotton fluff more securely around Marvin. “And we expect a lot less than people do. If we get through the day without being stepped on, with a little food to fill our bellies, a safe place to bed down for a few hours, and our family and friends close by—well, that’s a good day, isn’t it? In fact, a perfect day. Who could ask for more?”

Marvin snuggled into the soft bedding and nodded sleepily. “I guess,” he said.

“Also, we have no lawyers,” his mother added, leaving the room.