The Masterpiece

The summer morning smashes me awake with a vase shattering in the next room. I push myself up to sit, the lumpy mattress threatening to suck me down again.

“Uncle Jake?” I call.

“Put it on your Aunt Maria’s tab!” His voice is muffled through a gaudy baroque wall. I blow wayward locks of hair out of my face with a forced exhale.

Aunt Maria buys it, Uncle Jake destroys it. I piece things back together.

I open my little black book, grab a pen nestled on my nightstand, and record the expense. “The amphora?” I shout again. It had been too deep of a shatter to be porcelain.

“Christie, where did she find this one?” I take that as a yes.

“Auction last week.” I find the figure, dated July 29: Greek amphora — ~$13,000.

“In Athens?”

“Yes.”

I imagine him sighing, eyes rolling, hands twisting through thin hair. Then he’d shrug it off. He’s probably still in that woven Tencel robe, shuffling around in his bamboo slippers. All this before morning coffee.

My door swings open and I jump. Aunt Maria is clutching the handle, black hair woven into her curlers, her eyes slitted like crescent moons. She pads across my lushly carpeted room and leans against one of the bed’s posters.

“Who can fix—”

“I’ll find someone.” I’m still writing: amphora repair — ~$1,200. “Maybe the guy who restored the painting last week knows somebody.”

As an afterthought, she asks, “How much will it cost?”

I tap the ledger. “Based on the last Merrimac vase? About twelve hundred.”

Aunt Maria considers this, and I glance at her and notice the sagging, soft skin beneath her eyes. She must be between fillers. I’ll likely be recording a new expense for that soon.

“Donate it to somebody who wants it!” Uncle Jake calls through the wall.

My pen stops. I stare up at Aunt Maria. Eventually, she tips her head in defeat. “Donate it. Some museum will accept it in pieces.”

I don’t ask why this happens. They can afford to quarrel over priceless artifacts and still have a cordial afternoon tea.

I close the ledger and unfurl the blanket draped over me. It’s drafty at night here. A two-hundred-year-old mansion can’t hold its warmth, but it can hold one petty lover’s spat.

I glide into my fuzzy slippers and walk past Aunt Maria, through the hall, into the other room. The Treasure Room, they call it. Sconces hold glittering jewels, pedestals cradle ancient busts, curios crowd every available surface. Paintings and tapestries drape over every square inch of wall, drowning the room in an intoxicating cocktail for the eye. Except for one solitary window that has a hole in the glass—a hole suspiciously shaped like Soto’s Ruby. Uncle Jake is peering out of it, down the mountain and into the miles of forest surrounding the Ricci home. The shards of the amphora are littered around his feet.

Uncle Jake collects it on an expedition, Aunt Maria tosses it. I’m going on a long walk in the woods to retrieve it.

Uncle Jake snaps out of his reverie and notices me in the doorway. “We’ll need the window repaired.”

“Easy to estimate, since we fixed it last week.” I recall the figure: window repair — $624. “Is the same company as last time okay?”

Uncle Jake cracks a smile. “Thanks, Christie. You’re holding the books together.” He gives me a conciliatory pat on the back as he walks past me.

“One more thing,” I call after him. He turns expectantly. “University starts up again in a couple weeks. I’m applying to those accounting internships today. I was wondering if—”

“The letter of recommendation is already written.” He smiles wide, lines wrinkling his face. “Asked Martin to email it to you by this evening.” As he walks off down the tiled hall, he calls back, “If you can handle Aunt Maria and me, you can succeed at anything!”

Aunt Maria pokes her head out of my room and chuckles, all in good fun. “He’s right, you know.”

I turn to her. “Why did you toss Soto’s Ruby?”

“To make room for a statuette I bought Wednesday.” She shrugs. Thousands down the drain, and she shrugs. “I’ll send Harriet to sweep up the amphora.” With Uncle Jake a dot traveling down the hall, she calls after him, "Croquet at eleven?"

"Wouldn't miss it, dear!" Uncle Jake's voice travels down to us. Then, Aunt Maria dances off, and I'm left to marvel at my rich, reckless relatives.

My eyes glaze over the hall. Three empty guest rooms. A music room and home theater playing dark silence. Yet the Treasure Room never expands. It cycles through their quarrel. Aunt Maria hoards her ancient art and historical artifacts, bought through her inheritance. Uncle Jake fills the room with gems and plants and fossils, natural wonders from his travels across the globe.

Territory in the Treasure Room is tight, daily skirmishes litter the battlefield. I balance the books between them.

I skirt through the sacred space that is the Treasure Room, dare a glance behind me to check if I’m alone, and scoop up a painted egg. Pysanka. Aunt Maria loves them. She loves Uncle Jake, too. Just not when he’s taking up space in the Treasure Room.

As my gaze follows the lines winding around the egg, my thoughts navigate a difficult equation. Is this any way to treat what you love? It's beautiful art. Too bad no one gets to see it. And who knows how long it will last before Uncle Jake crushes it with a petrified tree stump? And Aunt Maria plunks an antique bust on top of that?

I situate the pysanka onto its stand. I need to pack for a hike. Soto's ruby needs finding. Given Aunt Maria’s reliable throwing arm, it’s likely in the same spot the Ethiopian diamond landed. And the Peregrine Pearl.

* * *

Sweaty and disheveled, I plop myself and my backpack onto the bed, Soto’s Ruby in hand. The clock whittles the afternoon away with diligent ticks. I’m tired, but only physically. My mind itches.

I leave the ruby and wander into the art studio with my little black book. Colorful teal tile blankets the space, and a wooden workbench stands in the center of the room. Buckets of brushes crusted with ancient paint sit beside the sink. I test the water. To my surprise, it works.

Who used to paint? Was it someone in Aunt Maria’s family? I can’t gauge how long it’s been since someone used this room. Harriet still tidies it weekly.

An idea stirs me. After a few minutes rummaging through creaky cabinets, I station myself at the bench armed with brushes, a palette dotted with prehistoric hues, and a cluster of paints that miraculously haven’t dried.

My head whips back to the doorway, expecting someone to catch me at work. But I’m alone in this corner of the mansion’s maze. I turn around and flip to the back of my book, past the rows of numbers. The back is where I keep the secrets.

I squeeze some paint out of a tube, and my thoughts wander. Through the rows of items in the Treasure Room. Through the columns on the spreadsheets. Down the sidewalk to my university. Everywhere I go, something doesn’t add up. Is it me?

I’m twisting around the answer, like the winding lines on the pysanka. I paint two black lines converging at a point in the distance. That’s where it’ll all make sense.

Make good grades. Go to university. Major in something profitable. But with every new semester, cramming my life into that box feels more like Aunt Maria and Uncle Jake cramming everything into the Treasure Room. Does it have to be this way?

I paint a pair of glasses, framing my view of the road. It’s too late to change majors. I’m spending my summer interning with family before my last year. I can’t disappoint them, I can’t let my parents down, and I can’t lose more time.

I clean the brush and dip it into ruby red. Like Soto’s Ruby. That’s what Uncle Jake treasures. I treasure my art. But I don’t know if monetizing my passion is the right choice when it could shatter what I love. Do I shelf it and leave it to collect dust?

I sit back and study my work. It’s been a couple months, but my reflexes remember how to paint. The barren desert road leads to the skyline, a hot sun beating down. Rose-colored glasses frame the shot, bathing the scene in crimson. As a finishing touch, I sign my name, cramped and quick in the bottom right corner.

I remain frozen, waiting for my paint to dry.

I stare through the ruby-red lenses…

Maybe I should shelf it here.

I steady the book’s spine with one hand and hold the page with the other. Then, I carefully tear it away.

* * *

Glasses shatters in the Treasure Room, and I tear my eyes from the labyrinth of spreadsheets on my laptop. I can hear it from my bedroom. Someone must be at it again.

“Uncle Jake? Aunt Maria?” I call out.

“Come take a look, Christie!” Aunt Maria answers through the wall.

My brow furrows. Why? Still, I scoot out my chair and head to the Treasure Room. Peeking through the doorway, I feel my stomach twist in a knot.

Uncle Jake and Aunt Maria stand over a glass frame flippantly shattered on the floor. In its place on the wall is my miniature painting, neatly framed and not an inch askew.

“What do you think?” Uncle Jake asks, arms folded reverently, eyes locked on my work.

“I think that you don’t even like paintings.” I cautiously approach them, my eyes darting between them, gauging the two for some hint that it’s a prank.

“I’ll make an exception for my niece’s work.”

“Where did you find it?” is all I can think to say.

“Harriet found it in the art room’s trash.” Aunt Maria locks her hands behind her back, gazing at my trash with that sparkle in her eyes. The kind you see when people stare up at the stars.

A moment of silence enfolds us, the tranquility of patrons studying the walls of an art museum. My painting swallows Uncle Jake and Aunt Maria’s attention. And my stomach flips over and over like a traveling tumbleweed.

The first flip is embarrassment. My art is flanked by Caravaggio and Rothko, shrinking in their shadows. In the hall of priceless paintings, it's a toddler's drawing tacked onto a fridge.

My stomach flips again, coloring me with shame.

But I glance at Uncle Jake and Aunt Maria, still enraptured by my piece, and I see the painting, through their eyes, through the ruby-colored lenses gazing down the road. I fix on that point on the skyline where the road converges.

The third flip my stomach does...is it excitement?

“How much is it?” Aunt Maria turns to me, breaking the silence.

My mouth flaps open.

“Don’t answer that.” She puts her hand up and thinks. “Twenty thousand?”

“You can’t mean…”

“It’s the least we can do,” Uncle Jake cuts in. “For all your hard work this summer, and for this.”

“You couldn’t,” I splutter. "It's a little hobbyist painting. It's nothing!"

“Christie,” Aunt Maria’s hand rests on my shoulder. “Enjoy your last year. And take an art class, on us.”

Tears squeeze out of my eyes like paint out of a tube. And my gaze glazes over the painting again. No matter how small, it's beside the masterpieces. It's treasure.

I look back at them and smile a wavering tremor. “Don’t break it, okay?”

Aunt Maria and Uncle Jake share a knowing glance and break into smiles of their own.

“We’ll treasure it,” Uncle Jake says, and the two wrap me in a hug.