Read Online Under the Egg by Laura Marx Fitzgerald - Free Book Online Page A

glassy.
    â€œWhy do you think we’ve hung on to this house?” he asked, his voice low. “Don’t you know I could cash out and give it over to the yuppies who would polish it up like a Fabergé egg? The reason we stay—the reason my father stayed, and his father stayed, and his father stayed—is that this house is ours. This city is ours. Never let anyone tell you any different. Because, if you don’t dig in, trust me—they’ll dig you out.”
    Jack picked up Theodora the Younger and stroked the top of her head.
    â€œOne day I’ll pass on—and don’t get any ideas, sister, the doctor says I’ve got the body of a man twenty years younger.”
    â€œI know, I know, you keep telling me—”
    â€œOne day I’ll pass on, and this house will be yours. This house and everything in it. It’s the only legacy I can offer you. But it will also be your burden to shoulder—to finish the work that I couldn’t.”
    At the time, I had assumed that burden was my mother. Jack’s expectations had always been clear: That I would take care of my mom the same way he dropped out of school to support his own mother through the Depression.
    But it was only now, on this morning out in the garden with Bodhi, that I remembered those words and wondered if the painting was the burden Jack intended. Or the legacy. Or both.
    I was jarred back to the moment by the familiar thwack of Madame Dumont’s screen door. As expected, two eyes and a beehive appeared over the wooden fence. Jack always regretted that he’d made that fence too short.
    â€œOh, good, Theodora,” she launched in without a glance Bodhi’s way, “I need to speak with you. Alors , your mother’s debt is now to two hundred and twenty-nine dollars—”
    My mouth gaped open but no words came out. “What?” I finally sputtered. “Why? I told my mom to stop going to the tea shop. I told you to stop selling her tea!”
    â€œShe never had the Smoked Oolong. It has a certain je ne sais quoi .” Yes, we get it, Madame Dumont. You’re French. “This is becoming very serious, you see? I would hate to— comment dit-on ?—to retain counsel.”
    My head was spinning. “Counsel? What’s counsel?”
    â€œA lawyer,” she replied icily. “And when I speak to this lawyer, I will also ask about the city noise regulations. For your roosters.”
    â€œFor the last time!” I exploded, embarrassed at the unhinged screeching in my ears but too angry to stop myself. “We don’t have any roosters! We have never had roosters! For fifty, sixty, maybe even two hundred years, we have not had roosters! For the love of Pete, roosters do. not. lay —”
    An object sailed over my head, a white object that glinted in the morning sun and traveled a perfect arc that led straight to Madame Dumont’s head.
    Now Madame Dumont was the one who sounded unhinged, shrieking as she tried unsuccessfully to shake eggshell and egg whites out of her helmet of hair, all the while dodging the new missiles Bodhi lobbed her way.
    She let fly a string of French not found in a school textbook, pausing long enough to pronounce us: “Wicked, wicked girls! I will take this to my lawyer. No, to the police! I will! You wait and see!” Madame Dumont’s screen door slammed closed again.
    â€œWho was that anyway?” Bodhi turned to me, lightly tossing the last egg back and forth between her hands. “Kind of a cranky old baguette, right?”
    Frozen in place, I stood stunned and staring at that last egg in Bodhi’s hand.
    â€œYou okay?”
    I tried to take some deep breaths, then began to heave gasps of air, my body shaking as I sank slowly to my knees and fell back, right in the middle of the pecking flock.
    â€œOh, man.” Bodhi plopped down next to me and threw her arm around my shoulders. “Oh jeez,