Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance Master (4 page)

RENAISSANCE MEANS REBIRTH

“R
enaissance means rebirth,” Miss Landers said.

Except she wasn't saying it to Felix's class. She was saying it to the entire sixth grade. A special assembly had been called, and all of the sixth-graders were sitting in the auditorium where
The Crucible
would be performed in a few weeks.

“We are about to begin an exciting unit,” Miss Landers continued. “It involves art, science . . .”

But Felix couldn't listen to what Miss Landers was saying.

Renaissance means rebirth
.

Would Great-Uncle Thorne, lying in a coma at Newport General Hospital, be reborn?

Would his parents' marriage, despite Bruce Fishbaum, finally be reborn?

Would Amy Pickworth, whose story still remained untold, be reborn?

How could he possibly listen to Miss Landers talk about something that happened centuries ago when right now his whole world needed to be reborn?

While Felix considered all of this, somehow the art teacher, Ms. Silva, had appeared at the microphone.

Ms. Silva wore long flowing caftans. Her hair, long and wavy, was streaked with gray. A large woman, she somehow managed to move gracefully, as if she were floating. Even when Felix, who did not take art, saw her in the hallways, she seemed to float in her colorful clothes, her multitude of bangle bracelets and bells around her ankles making a sound track to Ms. Silva.

“Oh, sixth-graders!” she crooned, clapping her hands together in front of the microphone and releasing more jingles and jangles than usual. “Oh, sixth-graders! The Renaissance! I will be your guide through Florence. I will show you art. And artists. And”—here she paused dramatically and took a breath so deep that the sound of it magnified through the microphone made everyone titter.

“And! Sixth-graders! You will learn the names of artists, like my personal favorite, Piero della Francesca. Artists so magnificent that . . .”

Ms. Silva became overcome by the magnificence of the Renaissance artists, and without finishing her talk, was led from the stage.

Miss Landers recovered quickly.

“Together, we will have a Renaissance fair, to which all of your parents will be invited. Jennifer Twill will play the
lira da braccio
, which is a Renaissance violin she has mastered.”

The class snickered. Jennifer Twill did only odd things.

“Now, class, I want to remind you of Jennifer's hammered dulcimer performance at last year's Christmas party, and her wonderful contra dancing at the end-of-the-year talent show.”

This only led to more snickering, but Miss Landers continued.

“
This
year, at the end of the unit, we will hold our own Renaissance fair. Ms. Silva will do workshops on masks, and Mrs. Witherspoon will hold cooking classes so that you can prepare a feast for the fair.”

Miss Landers sighed happily.

“The Renaissance,” she said.

Dear Lily,

A lot has been going on at Anne Hutchinson Elementary School. For one thing, there are new kids. Twins! For another thing, Maisie got the lead in the play, which is
The Crucible
. (Maybe you are also reading this play? I like to think that sixth grades everywhere are doing the exact same thing, even in Cleveland.)

And now we are beginning a unit on the Renaissance. We have to make masks with Ms. Silva and food with Mrs. Witherspoon and put on an entire fair. To tell you the truth, I kind of stopped listening during the assembly because so much is going on at Elm Medona. The biggest thing, the worst thing, is that Great-Uncle Thorne is in the intensive care unit of the hospital. My mother said it doesn't look good.

I know I have not been a good friend. I haven't stayed in touch the way I promised. Because I don't have an e-mail address, I couldn't e-mail you. But I could have written a real letter, like I'm doing now. Still, I think about you at least once every day. Sometimes even more.

Lily, Renaissance means rebirth. So now I am trying to be reborn as a better friend.

Felix Robbins

PS Did you notice the red seal on the back of this envelope???????

PPS I hope you write back.

“Once,” Jim Duncan said as he and Maisie and Felix walked to school the next day, “my family went to Florence. We spent three weeks in Italy. One in Rome. One in Venice. One in Florence.”

“That's nice,” Felix said, but he couldn't really listen. He could only think about the letter he mailed to Lily Goldberg in Cleveland last night. Part of him wished he hadn't mailed it. The other part wished she'd answer back as soon as she got it.

“Our father studied art in Florence when he was in college,” Maisie said to Jim Duncan.

She wasn't really listening, either. She was thinking about how yesterday their father came to Elm Medona after they finished their homework and brought them out to the Thai place on Thames Street for dinner. She was thinking about how much she liked having her father so near.

Maybe Mom would like some Thai food, too?
she'd suggested as they walked down Memorial Boulevard.

She has to work late,
he'd said, and Maisie couldn't figure out if he was sad about that or not.

And of course, underneath these thoughts, Maisie and Felix both couldn't stop thinking about Great-Uncle Thorne.

“I was only seven,” Jim Duncan said. “But I remember some things. Like how hot it was in the Uffizi and how big the
David
is.”

“Uh-huh,” Felix said, to be polite. He knew the
David
was a sculpture by Michelangelo, because his father had a big book about Michelangelo with the
David
on the cover.

“The Uffizi's a huge museum,” Jim Duncan said. He sighed. “It took practically forever to go through the thing.”

Felix smiled, despite how heavy his heart felt. Jim Duncan had a way of telling him things without sounding like a know-it-all.

“Hey,” Jim Duncan said, “I forgot to tell you. Guess who was in Newport this weekend?”

Felix shrugged.

“Lily Goldberg!” Jim Duncan said. “I saw her and her mother on Bowen's Wharf at the chowder place. I guess they had to finish up something about selling their house.”

“What?” Felix said. “She was here?”

Jim Duncan immediately realized his mistake. “Well, maybe it wasn't her.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“Well, maybe.”

“I can't believe she was in Newport and didn't even tell me. I mean, us,” Felix said, images of that letter crowding his brain. He thought about how carefully he'd written out her address, how he'd melted the red sealing wax on the back and pressed the seal into it.

Felix groaned. “I can't believe it,” he said again.

Anne Hutchinson Elementary School appeared up ahead. Felix didn't think he could make it through the whole day at school. How could he listen to Ms. Silva and Miss Landers and everybody talking about the Renaissance while that stupid letter was on its way to Cleveland?

“I . . . I think I'm going to turn around,” Felix said.

“What does that mean?” Maisie asked him.

“It means I think I'm going to go home. I think I'm sick.”

“You can't just go home,” Maisie said. “You at least have to go to the nurse and have her call Mom.”

“I'll walk you to the nurse,” Jim Duncan offered. By the look on his face, Felix could tell how awful he felt.

“No, it's okay. Thanks,” Felix stammered. “I'm just going to go home.”

Maisie and Jim looked at each other.

“Well . . . ,” Jim said, because he didn't know what to say.

“Are you going to throw up or something?” Maisie asked.

“Yes,” Felix lied, and clutched his stomach to be convincing.

“Then let us walk you to the nurse,” Maisie insisted. “She'll take your temperature and let you lie down.”

Of course that was the sensible thing to do. But Felix could not walk another step toward school. Without saying anything more, he turned around and began to run in the opposite direction. He wondered if that letter was already in some post office in Cleveland. Once, when he was in first grade, they'd gone on a field trip to the main post office on Eighth Avenue, and they'd seen all the thousands of letters in a giant bag, waiting to get sorted and delivered. Was his letter to Lily Goldberg already waiting in Cleveland? Maybe he could call the main post office there and have someone find it and rip it up. He knew that was preposterous, but the idea made him feel a little better.

Felix kept running.

But he didn't run home.

Instead he ran to the Hotel Viking, where his father was in Room 208, probably still asleep.

“Hey, buddy,” his father said as he wiped the sleep from his eyes. “Aren't you supposed to be in school?”

“I guess so,” Felix said.

His father opened the door of Room 208 wider so that Felix could come inside. How could he describe how good it felt to see his father standing there in his long gray gym shorts with the faded letters RISD practically completely gone and a T-shirt, also faded, with Leonardo da Vinci's drawing of a man on the front. RISD stood for Rhode Island School of Design, which was the art college his father went to a million years ago. And that T-shirt was from the semester he spent in Florence. Those things, plus his father's particular smell of turpentine and maybe sweat and something limy, were all so familiar and comforting that Felix, as upset as he felt, broke into a grin.

“We used to call that
bunking school
,” his father said.

He sat on the bed and picked up the phone beside it.

“Could you send up a pot of coffee, some chocolate milk, an eggs Benedict, bacon, and some pancakes, please?” he said to room service. He glanced at Felix. “Blueberry?”

Felix nodded, grinning even more.

His father hung up and ran his hands through his curly hair. Like Maisie's, his hair had a mind of its own.

“So you're not in school because . . . ,” his father prompted.

“Dad,” Felix said, sitting beside him on the bed, “is there any way to retrieve a letter from the main post office in Cleveland, Ohio?”

“No,” his father said. “Once a letter is mailed, it's gone.”

Felix groaned. “That's what I was afraid of.”

“Why are you sending letters to Cleveland, Ohio, anyway?”

Felix flopped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.

His father waited.

“Lily Goldberg,” he said finally.

His father waited some more.

“She's a girl,” Felix added.

“Most people named Lily are girls,” his father agreed.

“She moved to Cleveland and promised to stay in touch and, okay, I wasn't a very good friend, but she was in Newport this weekend and didn't even call me or anything,” Felix said, his words spilling out in a rush. “And,” he continued, “I wrote her a letter before I knew that.”