Madame Dumont was right. Raphael’s child, the drawn, wasted child sprawled on his mother’s lap, had not been sleeping. He was dead.
It had been right there on the surface (well, under the egg, technically) all along. Once we’d gotten Madame Dumont settled with a cup of tea and her beloved painting, I went home and dug out Reverend Cecily’s notes from the bottom of my sweater bag. She was right: the poem said it all.
The baby was indeed the “bread of life” in question, brought into the world by Raphael’s favorite “baker”: La Fornarina. But, as the poem tells us, his soul ascended to heaven before he could grow up: “risen yet unrisen.” And the experience of having a son must have deeply touched Raphael, nourishing and comforting even the man who seemingly had it all.
It wasn’t just the poem. The painting’s message was in every corner of the painting: the storm clouds in the distance, the ashen Christ Child. Even Bodhi had sensed something was wrong with our initial reading. Yes, that was a dove, but it wasn’t descending from heaven. It was ascending, flying away and leaving this world behind.
Of course, you really didn’t need clues or symbolism at all. The entire painting lay in La Fornarina’s face, stricken with grief. How did I miss it? Maybe it’s that the faces of mothers I see are more consumed with worry about their kid’s pineapple allergy or preschool applications. Or in the case of my mother, the mechanics of number theory and her dwindling tea stash.
But a sixteenth-century audience knew what a grieving mother looked like. And so did Anna.
I think grief transformed Raphael, too. He may have initially tried to hide his family from society, but ultimately he refused to let his child go to the grave in secret. In those final days of the child’s illness, Raphael immortalized the boy and his family through one real, unidealized painting: a painting that showed things as they really were and not how his patrons wished things to be.
Or at least, he tried to. Because when Raphael himself died not long afterward, the assistants from his studio sprang into action. After first packing Margherita Luti off to a local convent, they set to work painting out all evidence of La Fornarina’s marriage to Raphael, thereby preserving their teacher’s, and their own, reputation.
(That family portrait must have proven particularly challenging, requiring his workshop to cover up an entire self-portrait of their master with a single, withered tree.)
It worked. Because Raphael died young, he left behind a limited pool of unsold works. His reputation sterling and his works now rare, all of Europe went wild to secure a Raphael. The value of his paintings only rose from that point forward. The artists of Raphael’s workshop went on to successful careers of their own. And a young widow lived out the rest of her days in a Roman nunnery, just another girl whose secret was guarded by the convent walls.
• • •
In the end, the painting was priceless.
Quite literally. Because, despite all the tests and authentications and expert opinions and, don’t forget, groundbreaking discoveries of two thirteen-year-old girls, no one ever placed a single bid.
The painting never saw the light of an auction block. Once Madame Dumont got back that last link to her missing childhood, she wasn’t about to let it go. She even dug into her newly released store of generosity to host a viewing party at her tea shop one crisp Sunday afternoon that fall. She let Bodhi and me make the guest list, inviting all the people who aided in solving its mystery. Mr. Katsanakis offered to cater.
“It’s all my fault, you know,” said Bodhi, nursing a cup of Indian chai in one hand and brushing spanakopita crumbs off her shirt with the other.
“What’s your fault?” I said. “Stick to the stuffed grape leaves, by the way.”
“Remember when I made that wish at the Temple of Dendur at the Met?” She snagged a dolmade as a plate sailed by. “I wished for the painting to be priceless. And now I guess it is, because we’ll never know what it would’ve gone for.”
After the discovery in Madame Dumont’s closet, we’d been able to appeal to Goldie for guidance. Goldie hooked Madame Dumont up with a pro-bono lawyer who specialized in Holocaust restitution rights. That lawyer suggested we get the painting to an auction house ASAP for testing and appraisal and recommended a guy she knew: Augustus Garvey at Cadwalader’s. Reverend Cecily’s friend and Gemma’s boss. Gus ended up being a really nice guy who’d studied his way out of the wrong side of the Bronx. We hit it off right away.
“It’s not you, Bodhi,” Gus explained, blowing on a peppermint tisane. “I don’t know that it would’ve sold anyway. There comes a point when there is just not enough groundswell of confidence to tip the scales. Who wants to be the only institution to gamble millions of dollars, not knowing if anyone else is willing to pay it? No,” he mused, “I don’t think there’s enough scientific evidence in the world to authenticate a discovery this big.”
The painting loomed over us from a spot on the wall over the cash register, still as melancholy as ever. But the crowd was here to celebrate.
Reverend Cecily sat drawing out stories from Mo, who had been brought by his daughter, and her son, and his twins, who were in turn distracted from their great-grandfather’s tales by their strategic position next to the cake table.
Bodhi’s parents were there, too, her dad signing autographs, her mom in a corner captivated by my mom, whom we’d coaxed into a dress and out of the house. I wanted to think that they were trading stories about their ingenious daughters, but I’m pretty sure Jessica Blake was just studying her for an upcoming part as an eccentric recluse.
Sanjiv alternated between cornering Cadwalader lab technicians and refilling bowls with Toasty Nuts.
Goldie and Eddie had found a table away from the action, where they murmured sweet talk about archival storage and database management.
Even Lydon was there, aggressively courting Madame Dumont in hopes of a future donation of the unsold Raphael. (“Are you nuts?” I said when Bodhi suggested inviting him. “Hey, if he hadn’t shown up at your house, you never would’ve moved the painting into Dumont’s closet and the mystery never would’ve been solved.” She had a point. “Also,” she continued, “we can rub his face in it.”)
Whenever I attempted to get more hummus or find the bathroom, I was stopped by someone with a word or pat on the back or a “Can you believe . . . ?” I’d already received an invitation to both Bodhi’s and Mr. K’s for dinner, a nonnegotiable mandate to raid the Grace Church food pantry, and, most incredibly, an afterschool job offer.
Well, because of child labor laws, an unpaid internship, really. But an internship that carried a transportation stipend: twenty dollars that would stay right in my pocket each day as I made the long walk home from Cadwalader’s. Yes, Cadwalader’s. Gus had asked me to assist him three afternoons a week. You can guess how long it took me to accept.
It seemed so long ago that I could walk the streets of New York an entire day without uttering a word to anyone. So long ago that Jack and I had barricaded ourselves in our little fortress of self-reliance, scavenging the city for crumbs. But since Jack’s death, the city had changed. I had changed. Now, when I ventured out, I saw not crumbs, but a feast of possibilities.
Bodhi was right. The mystery was always bigger than just me. Somehow, along the way, I had become part of the city. And it had become part of me.