Works and Days

 The Works of Our Hands

Conclusion

“I found it!” Thom shouted.

“Great,” Patti said vaguely, from her end of the couch.

“The people who bought the painting,” Thom elaborated.

“Oh, Thom, you’re not seriously going to try to buy it back?”

“I sure in the hell—buy?”

“Did you think they’d just give it to you for free?” Patti looked at her husband incredulously.

“I had hoped...” Thom’s voice started and trailed off. “Maybe they’d be understanding.”

“They’ll be understanding when you give them your money,” Patti told him.

“Alright, alright.” Tom got up. “I’ll go get my wallet. Do you think forty dollars’ll cover it?”

“Maybe,” Patti allowed, “but from what I know about art, probably not. Where is the painting, anyway? I mean the people who bought it?”

“Indiana,” said Thom. “Right on the state line.”

 

It was an hour drive during which Thom repeated, “Gonna get the painting back. Yeah, yeah. No more Naked Thom. Yeah, yeah,” and beat down on his car horn so that, occasionally, fellow drivers looked into his car to see who the madman was. He entered South Bend just so he could pass Notre Dame, looked reverentially at the Golden Dome rising over the trees, turned down Angela and headed east.

It was easy to get lost in the twisting subdivisions that reminded Thom of Keyworthy back home. It was strange that no matter how far you went, you kept on coming back to the same places. He found the house, checking the address twice.

He went up the winding brick walk, rang the doorbell, and a tall, pale man with washed out red hair answered. He stood looking at Thom a long time, and then cocked his head a little.

“You?” he said in surprise. “You’re him! Come in!”

Nervously, Thom came into the house. It was large, modern, champagne carpeted, and well appointed.

“Rudy, come down!” the man called out. “Come down. It’s him. I’m sorry,” the man said, turning back to Thom who saw, over the fireplace, his naked self, looking back at him.

“I’m Lionel, Lionel Tremor.”

He was still holding Thom’s hand.

Another man, this one blond and about Jackie’s age, came bounding down the stairs in a blue housecoat.

“Rudy, look!” cried Lionel. The other man approached Thom. His face opened in delight. He turned to Thom, then to the painting and then back to Thom again. Suddenly his face opened.

“I told you I knew that face from somewhere!” Rudy exalted.

“I knew that I had to have that painting for a reason. I know you!” Rudy was crying. “I know you!”

Thom was looking from Lionel, to Rudy, to the painting.

“That thirty-five hundred dollars wasn’t wasted at all,” Rudy went on.

“Thirty-five hundred...” started Thom, looking at Frank’s painting.

“Yes,” Lionel spoke now. “Such genius. Francis Mc.Larchlahn is a genius of a painter. The ages will remember him. He is a genius, and you are his glorious muse. The light’s in your eyes even now!”

“Who are you!” Rudy kept saying. “I know you!”

Where am I?  Thom was thinking to himself and finally he said, to shut Rudy up. “My name’s Thom Lewis—”

“Yes, that it!” Rudy cried. “Remember me, Tommy!” Rudy caught both of Thom’s hands and began shaking them as Thom stared at him bewildered.

“Oh, it’s been years,” Rudy allowed, “so I can understand, but you haven’t changed a bit. It’s me, Rudolph Parr!”

Thom stared hard in confusion, and then in recollection. His eyes almost pushed themselves out of his head. He turned to Lionel Tremor who was still smiling idiotically, having even less of an idea of what was going on. Now Thom remembered.

“Rudy,” Thom said quietly. He remembered a little boy fond of ballet and Bette Midler who dressed up as Mae West for Halloween. Always around in those years before Patti. Liz Parr’s baby brother.

And Lionel?

Now he remembered Liz Parr, his ex girlfriend whom he’d gone to bed with during the time when Patti had thrown him out. He remembered what she had told him over dinner, about how she and her husband had differences they could not get past.

“What was it that you couldn’t get past?”

“Walking into the bathroom and finding Lionel in the shower with my brother.”

 

Thom stood there looking from Liz’s ex husband Lionel to her little brother Rudy, then to the the thirty-five hundred dollar painting Patti’s father had made, hanging on the wall, and then repeated this circuit all over again.

He was too shocked to laugh.       

    

“Russell, go see who’s at the door,” Chayne urged, and when the boy came back into the kitchen with a strange look on his face, Chayne saw that he was followed by:

“Geoff Ford?”

“Chayne, I thought we should all talk.”

“I’ll leave,” Diggs volunteered, though Chayne wasn’t sure just how gracious his friend was being.

“Alright.”

Geoff began.

“Me and Robert were talking, and we decided that if you and Russell study with his Dad and Jeff Cordino, then there’s no reason Russell can’t get confirmed at the Easter Vigil.”

“The Catholic Church: Democracy in action,” Chayne commented. “I like it.”

“Sounds like a book title,” Russell added. Then, “Thank you, Father Geoff.”

“Chayne,” started Diggs.

“Yes, Jason?”

“Don’t you think we should tell him?”

“Tell me what?” Geoff’s eyebrows rose, looking around the kitchen for the what in particular.

“I would say no if he weren’t right in front of us,” Chayne told Jason Dygulski.

“Well,” Russell said to console Chayne, “I don’t suppose we could have hidden it forever.”

“Yes,” Chayne insisted. “Yes we could have. But it’s all a little late for that now. Just like it could still be unbroken if your nit wit of a father… Ah, never mind.”

Chayne gestured gruffly to Geoff Ford. “Com’on.”

Chayne Kandzierski flipped on the switch for the basement, and led the small procession downstairs to the cupboard that contained the Evervirgin. He stopped, drew to the left of the cupboard and told Geoff, “Open it yourself, I can’t look.”

Warily, Geoff Ford looked from Chayne to Diggs to Russell, and then, shrugging, he flipped open the cupboard. There was, first, a look of incomprehension on his face, then of joy, and then he threw back his head, laughing.

“Great! Great! Guys, how long did you expect to keep this up for? This is rich!” Geoff kept chuckling.

“I don’t think you understand—” began Chayne, but Diggs, who had approached the cupboard, said in a trembling and half dazed voice, “Chayne, whydoncha come here?”

Chayne looked to Russell, and they both nodded and came to the cupboard. Chayne approached, and his eyes widened the same time tremors spread over Russell’s body.

There, in the cupboard, stood the statue of Saint Mary the Evervirgin, ivory skinned, dark eyed, whole and quiet, hands outspread, a small smile of triumph on her lips, and the index finger of the right hand, extended in blessing, seemed to be chiding them.

Geoff Ford just kept laughing.

Chayne said nothing.

Dygulski crossed himself.

Russell did the same.

The Virgin just stood there, smiling.