Masterpiece (3 page)

T
he next day was Saturday, James’s birthday. There was to be a party, a large one, and the Pompadays’ dining room was festooned with streamers and balloons. As Marvin and his parents foraged for breakfast under the kitchen table, they listened to the plans.

“I don’t want those boys eating in the living room,” Mrs. Pompaday told James. “Make sure they stay at the table when it’s time for the cake.”

“But, Mom,” James said. “I can’t tell them what to do. They’re not even my friends.”

William banged deafeningly on his high-chair tray with a spoon and crowed at James. “Ya ya! Ya ya!” From what Marvin could tell, this was the word for James in William’s very limited but forceful language.

“What a big boy you are!” Mrs. Pompaday crooned, wiping the baby’s face with a washcloth. She turned to James. “What do you mean they’re not your friends? Why, the Fentons live right upstairs. You see Max every day.”

James sighed.

“They’re very important clients of mine, the Fentons. I’ve gotten several referrals from them, and you know, that’s the heart of my business. Word of mouth.” Below the table, Mama and Papa looked at each other and rolled their eyes. “So I hope you’ll treat Max nicely, dear,” Mrs. Pompaday continued.

Mama shook her head, whispering, “Clients! Will he have a single one of his own friends at the party?” she asked.

“Of course not,” Papa replied.

Marvin had seen enough of Mrs. Pompaday’s parties to know that his parents were right. Whatever the occasion, the guest list was always a loose assemblage of people she worked with or wanted to work with, and
for the entire party Mrs. Pompaday would float fawn-ingly from one person to the next, confiding self-important tips about the Manhattan real estate market.

Mrs. Pompaday plucked William from the high chair and said encouragingly, “We’re having a magician, remember? You know how you love magic, James.”

James hesitated. “Mom . . . don’t you think that’s the kind of thing people have at a little kid’s party?”

“Nonsense, dear. Everyone loves magicians. They’re like clowns.”

Marvin personally hated clowns, which he had seen in abundance on television because Mr. Pompaday had an odd fascination with the circus. Clowns struck Marvin as scary and untrustworthy, with their painted faces and exaggerated expressions, always trying to get strangers to laugh.

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 here, 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.