The Mistaken Masterpiece (22 page)

After we place our order, we pretend to have a conversation while straining our ears to hear everything we can.

And boy, do we get an earful. It’s going to take a week’s worth of showers before I feel clean again, just from
listening
to Prunella, who has, as Leigh Ann puts it, a mouth “like a sewer.” And frankly, I think that’s doing an injustice to sewers; the stuff coming out of her mouth is filthier than anything I’ve ever seen in a New York sewer.

Instead of a blow-by-blow description of every offensive thing that Prunella said, let me start with a list of emotions registered at our table in the time it takes to eat half a sandwich and some soggy, undercooked fries that no Frenchman would admit to having invented:

So much for feeling sorry for the little old lady. By the time I snag the last fry from Margaret’s plate, the five of us are ready to climb over the booth and steal her purse!

Occasionally, Arthur Svindahl steers the subject back to the painting and whether she’s made a decision about selling it, but somehow she always seems to get back to her original topic.

Amelia, clearly frustrated with Prunella’s behavior and her brother’s inability to deal with it, finally takes charge. “Miss Scroggins, if we can just focus for a few moments on the painting that we looked at in your apartment. We are prepared to write you a check for this amount for the painting
today
.” She slides a piece of the gallery’s stationery across the table to Prunella. “Now, you’re perfectly welcome to talk to other galleries, but I doubt you’ll find any who are willing to pay this amount—especially since you don’t have a certificate of authenticity or other real proof of provenance.”

“Oh, it’s real enough, all right,” Prunella says loudly enough for every ear at our table to perk up. “Phillip took it from his sister’s house. I told him to do it and he did it.”

She seems almost proud of that fact, the crazy old bat.

“I want to think about it,” Prunella says. “I know I ought to take your money and run, because I have a hard time believing that
anybody
would want that monstrosity, but I need a little time to get used to the idea.”

“Then let’s say the offer is good for a week,” says Arthur. “We will get in touch with you next Thursday or Friday. We’ll have a cashier’s check ready for you.”

“Fair enough,” Prunella says.

The diner door swings open and I instinctively duck down in my seat when I realize that it is Livvy Klack. She is pushing a woman in a wheelchair, and the brisk November wind is making it hard for her to hold the door open and maneuver the wheelchair inside.

Our waiter hustles over to the door. “One second, Olivia. Let me help you,” he says.

Olivia?
How often does she come here?

When everyone is safely inside, he greets the woman in the wheelchair. “Good afternoon, Miss Demarest. The special today is roast chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans. Get you started with some coffee?”

I lean over the table and whisper, “Code red, everybody. Livvy Klack is in the building. Repeat, Livvy Klack is in the building.”

“Where?” Becca says, spinning around to see for herself.

“Don’t look!” I hiss, but it’s too late. We’ve been spotted.

There is an awkward moment of recognition when Livvy’s eyes and mine meet. I sort of half smile, half
wave at her, but she doesn’t return either; she seems to look right through me. I don’t know what it is, but at that moment, even with all the rotten things she’s done to me, I feel kind of sorry for her. She’s so used to being in control that she must absolutely hate situations like this, where people might see a side of her she doesn’t want to be seen.

“We should go,” I say.

Leigh Ann nods. “Yeah, I don’t think I can take any more of you-know-who.”

“You don’t want to snoop a little?” Becca asks. “You’re tellin’ me you’re not a little curious about Livvy?”

And that’s when good ol’ Miss Prunella puts the icing on the cake. As the Svindahls get up to leave, she points at Livvy and Miss Demarest and says, loudly enough to be heard by nearly everyone in the place, “Well. Now I’ve seen everything. A pretty white girl pushing a crippled old
colored
woman around in a wheelchair. I’ll bet you there’s nothing wrong with her; she just likes having a white girl do all her work for her.”

I close my eyes, cringing. My face feels like I have a sunburn as the blood rushes to it, but I don’t know what to do. A quick peek at my friends’ faces, mouths hanging open in sheer horror, tells me that they’re all struggling with the same dilemma. Do we butt in and stand up for Livvy, Miss Demarest, and, well, common
decency
, for crying out loud, or do we just pretend we didn’t hear a thing and walk away?

Livvy spares us that decision. Whatever discomfort she felt at seeing us in the diner is gone, and she stands up and unloads on Miss Prunella.

“How dare you, you ignorant old bigot!”

Arthur Svindahl starts to come to Prunella’s defense. “Now hold on. There’s no need to …”

But Livvy aims her death-ray vision at him for a microsecond, and when he wisely backs off, she turns her attention back to Prunella.

“You aren’t worthy to even be in the same room, to breathe the same
air
, as this woman. She’s done more in her life than you—”

This time, she is interrupted by Miss Demarest, who has calmly placed her hand on Livvy’s arm. “Olivia, dear, sit. Don’t let her spoil our nice dinner. Please.”

Livvy, whose face has turned the color of a nice piece of tuna sashimi, takes a deep breath, glares one last time at Prunella, and sits down.

When the Svindahls finally leave, I stand up and pull on my coat. “Okay, now it’s definitely time to leave.”

But believe it or not, Prunella’s
still
not done. This time, however, she has the sense to mutter under her breath—quietly enough that Livvy doesn’t hear, thank God.

“With a temper like that, she must be
Irish
. It’s a shame—she’s a pretty young thing, too.”

As we walk out the door and into the darkness of a November evening, we are uncharacteristically quiet—but, I’m convinced, more determined than ever.

An hour later, the Blazers are still filled with enough adrenaline to rock Perkatory from the sticky floor tiles to the stained and peeling ceiling. Before launching into our final number, however, I take the microphone in hand for a mysterious announcement.

“We’d like to dedicate this next song to a … well, she’s not really a friend, but she’s somebody I have newfound admiration for—somebody who did something really brave today. Um, that’s all I can say about it right now, but trust me, she did a good thing. This one’s called ‘You Rock,’ and it’s by our very own Leigh Ann Jaimes and Becca Chen!”

“Amen!” shouts Mbingu, who hits her cymbals like she’s imagining they’re Prunella’s face, I think. We all play with a kind of reckless abandon; it’s not our best performance, but it certainly is our most passionate.

As promised, Cam Peterson shows up right on time and sits at a table with Margaret and Andrew. Except for their Saturday morning quartet practice at my
apartment—with my mom three feet away—it’s the only time those two get to see each other. And unfortunately for them, that situation isn’t likely to change for a while. Margaret’s dad is super-protective and old-fashioned in a way that would be charming if it wasn’t affecting my best friend’s love life, and has forbidden dating of any kind until she is sixteen. It’s only because of her status as our official manager that she’s getting away with these little Friday evening rendezvous. The final notes from “You Rock” are still hanging in the air when Alex, Leigh Ann’s gorgeous older brother, walks in.

Leigh Ann runs off the stage to hug him, and the disappointment shows immediately on Cam’s face.

“Don’t worry—that’s her brother,” I whisper in his ear. “He’s a senior.”

Cam’s face brightens. “Ohhh. Phew.”

Alex, who is a full head taller than Cam, turns to introduce himself and then kids Cam in a good-natured, protective-big-brother way. Leigh Ann blushes and pushes him away from the table.

“Alex! Leave him alone—he’s a really nice guy. And at least
he
got here in time to hear us play.”

“Uh, yeah. Sorry about that. Slow train. I’ll make it one of these weeks.”

“Speaking of
slow
,” Becca says with a devious smile, “where’s Raf? Grounded again? Hee hee hee.”

“He’s
not
slow, Becca,” I say. “
One
time he got grounded for flunking
one
test. And for your information, he’s staying in tonight so we can go to a movie
tomorrow night—the original
Frankenstein
. It’s one of his favorites. His mom is finally starting to crack. She’s giving him a whole extra hour. So there.” I stick my tongue out at her to punctuate my defense of Raf’s honor. “But I do have to go home early tonight, too. I promised Mom, ’cause I’ve been leaving her alone with Tillie a lot.”

Margaret and Andrew offer to walk with me, but I don’t want to spoil their once-a-week chance to talk in person. Besides, I have a lot on my mind, and I’m looking forward to the chance to just walk and think. That little scene with Prunella and Livvy really has me wondering. If Livvy hadn’t stood up and confronted that raving lunatic, would I have done it? Or would I have just sat there, fuming? I desperately want to be the kind of person who will do the right thing—who will stand up to injustice when I see it—but I’m not sure I have the courage. I did stand up to Livvy that one time outside the movie theater, when she was insulting Margaret, but that was different; I know Livvy, and Margaret’s my best friend in the world. Could I do the same thing for a complete stranger?

Another really good reason to make it an early night is that I have to be back at St. Veronica’s at five-fifteen on Saturday morning for a swim meet. At our practice Friday morning, Michelle told us about an important development. All the girls on the team come from either St. Veronica’s or Faircastle Academy. When the
Faircastle kids announced that they’ll be leaving because their school is forming its own team, Michelle called Sister Bernadette to find out if we could work out a similar deal. Sister Bernadette loved the idea, so effective immediately, we are officially the St. Veronica’s School Swim Team. It’s not going to be much of a change; we’ll still be practicing at Asphalt Green, and we’ll still have red swimsuits, although maybe Sister B will pay to have the school name embroidered on them. We immediately start dreaming of matching warm-up suits and sneakers, but Michelle warns us not to get carried away. I guess the private luxury bus I requested is out of the question, too.

It promises to be a long day; our team, half the size it was a week ago, is taking a van to Haworth Prep, a school near Princeton, New Jersey, for an invitational meet. When Michelle shows me where we’re going on the map, I start to worry about being back in time to meet Raf at Lincoln Center for the movie. With all the stuff about Nate, the weird conversation outside Perkatory, and my practically hanging up on him the last time we talked, I can’t help thinking that Raf is a little annoyed with me—maybe even with good reason. Showing up late for the movie probably won’t help things.

The one good thing, if there is anything positive about getting up at four-thirty on a Saturday morning, is that no one expects you to talk. Even Carey Petrus, who, as Mr. Eliot would say, “could talk the ear off a
brass monkey,” is basically comatose as we wait for Michelle to unlock the van. Livvy already has her hand on the door handle for the front passenger seat—the only one that reclines—and no one has the gumption to challenge her for it, especially at this time of day. Without a word to any of us, she closes her eyes and drifts off to Livvyland, which, if the smile on her face means anything, is a much happier place.

The meet itself is not such a great beginning for the St. Veronica’s School Swim Team. Haworth Prep looks like a college campus, and basically, we get our little red-swimsuit-wearing butts kicked by a bunch of snooty New Jersey kids. We win only three events: Livvy dominates in both the 200 and 400 backstroke, and our 400 medley relay team pulls out a victory—but only because the anchor swimmer for the other team took off too soon. To be fair to us, though, if the Haworth swimmer had waited and made a legal start, the finish would have been
really
close.

Despite our “crushing defeat” (as Carey, a wannabe sportscaster, has dubbed it in her running commentary), we’re all in good spirits for the van ride back to the city. In fact, it is an absolute blast; to someone passing our van on the New Jersey Turnpike, we must look like the crushers, not the crushees.

A funny moment occurs when Carey and Rachel are teasing Livvy—a dangerous activity most days—about how she’s so much better than the rest of us that she’ll probably ditch us to join a better team.