Jeremy's Masterpiece

Kimberly Clair

This story won Honorable Mention in the 2016 Bethlehem Writers Roundtable Short Story Award

Jeremy Schmidt was particularly proud of Wednesday night’s masterpiece, “Schmidts at the Sea,” and so he was terribly disappointed when his mother dumped it in the trash.

“I worked so hard on that!” Jeremy cried. “I even got all the lumps out of your face!”

“I’m sorry, dear,” Mrs. Schmidt whispered, but she was interrupted by a loud bang. Mr. Schmidt’s fist had struck the table again.

“How many times do I have to tell you not to play with your food?” he barked. “It’s uncivilized!”

“I’m not playing with my food,” Jeremy said. “I’m practicing for the art contest next month.”

“Then use your paint set like a normal child!”

“But Dad—”

“To your room! And no dessert!”

Jeremy grumbled as he shuffled up the stairs. He didn’t mind going to bed with no dessert, for you couldn’t make much with just vanilla ice cream, unless you added a lake of hot fudge, or a cherry sailboat, or a bridge of rainbow sprinkles. But his parents no longer kept hot fudge, cherries, or rainbow sprinkles in the house. In fact, they kept all of their sauces, toppings, and condiments locked inside a cupboard, which they opened only on special occasions.

As it happened, the very next evening was a special occasion, for Mr. Schmidt had invited a very important client to dinner. Mr. Mulberry brought his wife and twin daughters, whose upturned noses and small pink ears reminded Jeremy of the mice he’d seen at the pet store last week. None of them bothered to say hello when Jeremy introduced himself. Instead, they squinted their beady eyes and drew their lips into half-smiles as they scuttled toward the table.

“Don’t you dare upset your father,” Mrs. Schmidt whispered.

Jeremy wasn’t listening. The sight of the magnificent feast made his lips quiver. There were bowls of blood-red tomatoes and cabbage as purple as a bruise. There were gooey mashed potatoes, shimmering sardines, gold nuggets of corn—and the garnishes! Glossy olives, bumpy pickles, sea salt crystals pretty enough to wear. In the center of the table sat a rack of juicy roast beef.

He got to work right away. First, he sliced a sweet potato rind into the shape of Mr. Mulberry’s glasses. Then, he carved a tomato seed into the opal that dangled from Mrs. Mulberry’s neck. For the twins’ hair, he had to mix spicy mustard, Thousand Island dressing, and a bit of pickle juice before he was able to match the color. As his hands flew over the table, Jeremy thought of his art teacher, Ms. Crane. He couldn’t wait to tell her about his latest masterpiece.

“Look what he’s done!”

“Is that supposed to be me?” The twins leaned in to get a better look.

Jeremy beamed as he held up his plate, ready to receive his applause. Instead, he heard a burst of laughter from the twins, a tremulous sigh from his mother, and the sound of a camel spitting, which came from the very important client.

“UPSTAIRS! NOW!” Mr. Schmidt barked.

“You don’t like it?” Jeremy stared at his parents in disbelief. His father’s face was as purple as cabbage; his mother’s was as red as a radish. Mr. and Mrs. Mulberry pointed their noses in the air.

“Only babies play with their food,” one of the twins whispered.

“To your room! And no dessert!”

Jeremy stabbed his fork into the olive he’d used for his father’s head. “Doesn’t anyone here appreciate good art?”

“Not tonight,” his mother hissed. She whisked his plate off the table and threw the entire thing—china and all—into the trash.

*

Either Ms. Crane was wrong, or his father, his mother, and all four Mulberrys didn’t have the slightest idea about art. As Jeremy lay on his bed, his toes pointed toward the ceiling, he thought about everything he’d learned from Ms. Crane. Art was supposed to make people think. Sometimes it made them uncomfortable. Sometimes it made them angry. Jeremy’s work had accomplished all of these things. So why did he keep getting in trouble?

When the Mulberrys left, Jeremy could hear the psh psh of his parents’ whispering downstairs. Slowly, the psh psh was replaced by a very different sound—a sharp crack as if someone were trying to switch on the stove.

“Is that really necessary?”

Jeremy slipped out of his bedroom and peered down the stairs.

“What’s necessary,” his father hissed, “is teaching that boy a lesson!”

“But George—”

“I won’t stand for it!” Crack! “That boy will never—”crack—“ever”—crack—“embarrass me”—crack—“again!”

Tip-toeing further down the stairs, Jeremy saw a long silver box resting on his father’s knee. He recognized it at once. It was the very expensive art set that his mother had given him for his birthday. Only now, the box was empty. Its contents—paintbrushes, colored pencils, pens, charcoals, chalk, crayons, and stencils—were scattered across the floor, each of them snapped in two.

Jeremy flew down the steps so fast, his socks barely touched the wood. “What are you doing? I need those for the art contest!”

“Perhaps you should have thought about that before you ruined dinner.” With that, Mr. Schmidt snapped the last crayon in half.

*

At breakfast, Jeremy did not sculpt his eggs into a flowery hillside or sprinkle a snowy sugar mountain atop his grapefruit. Instead, he ate in silence until his plate was bare. Then, he offered to do the dishes.

“You see?” Mr. Schmidt beamed at his wife. “The boy just needed some sense knocked into him.”

Mrs. Schmidt disagreed. Jeremy’s art set had cost the same as two haircuts and a manicure. Surely, she thought, there was a less destructive way to knock some sense into their son. Still, she was pleased that his table manners had improved.

At dinner, Jeremy refrained from rearranging his meal into an idyllic landscape or a family portrait. Instead of scattering twigs of rosemary into a pair of bristly eyebrows or squirting a frame of barbeque sauce around the edges of his plate, he delivered the food directly into his mouth. Mr. Schmidt nodded with approval when Jeremy offered, once more, to do the dishes.

But after several days of this, Mrs. Schmidt was worried.

“He’s just not the same,” she told her husband. “I think something’s wrong.”

“Nonsense. He’s turned into a responsible young man just as I’d hoped.”

“Responsible, yes, but—”

“Don’t tell me you’re upset that he’s doing the dishes?”

Mrs. Schmidt said nothing.

“He’s even offered to take out the trash.”

And that wasn’t all. That weekend, when Mrs. Schmidt came to collect Jeremy’s laundry, he shooed her away.

“I can do it myself,” he said.

“At least let me vacuum.” Mrs. Schmidt wrinkled her nose. She thought she detected a rather unpleasant odor inside. But Jeremy refused. From that point on, he kept the door locked.

*

“Dishes? Laundry? Cleaning?” Mrs. Schmidt paced before her husband. “This isn’t like Jeremy at all. I’m telling you, George. Something’s up!”

“Do you hear yourself? Our son’s finally grown up! How can you possibly be upset?”

“He’s been so secretive!” Mrs. Schmidt protested. “He’s hardly left his room all month except to go to school.”

“That’s because he’s hard at work on his assignments,” Mr. Schmidt said triumphantly.

In fact, there was just one assignment to which Jeremy had devoted himself. He’d been working on it every night since the Mulberrys’ visit, and he continued to work on it up until the day of the art contest.

That morning, Jeremy did not come down for breakfast. Mrs. Schmidt was just about to go see if her son was feeling all right when she heard a knock at the door. To her surprise, a woman with spiky green hair was standing on the front porch. Her dress looked as if it were made out of orange rinds.

“Is this the Schmidt residence?” she asked.

“Maybe.” Mrs. Schmidt eyed the woman with great suspicion. “Who are you?”

“Why, I’m Ms. Crane!”

“And I’m Susan Sandwich.” A second woman appeared behind Ms. Crane. Her dress looked like a sleeping bag with a hole cut out of the bottom. “I believe Jeremy is expecting us.”

“What’s going on?” Mr. Schmidt peered over his wife’s shoulder and frowned at the oddly dressed guests. “And where’s Jeremy? He was supposed to take out the trash.”

Just then, Mrs. Schmidt saw a blue car pull into her driveway. The man who got out smiled and waved at the women on her doorstep.

“Mr. Willis! Glad you could make it!”

“Mr. Willis?” Mr. Schmidt’s frown deepened. “Isn’t that Jeremy’s principal?”

“I hope I’m not too late!” Mr. Willis called.

“Late for what?”

Before anyone could explain what was going on, Mrs. Schmidt heard the squeaky brakes of a school bus. Two school buses, in fact. Children spilled onto the lawn.

At last, Jeremy appeared. He wore a nice shirt and slacks and had combed his hair so it didn’t stick up in the back.

“May we see it now?” Ms. Crane asked expectantly.

“See what?” Mr. Schmidt bellowed.

“My submission for the art contest,” Jeremy said. “It was too big to bring to school, so Ms. Crane said—”

“We’d bring the school to it!” She followed Jeremy up the stairs. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve brought Mrs. Susan Sandwich from the Museum of Interesting Art downtown.”

One by one Jeremy’s guests climbed the stairs, eager for a peek inside his bedroom. Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt angrily pushed their way to the top, but when Jeremy opened the door, they instantly fell backward.

The stench hit them like a tsunami. It traveled all the way down the stairs and into the front lawn, where the students pinched their noses and tried not to vomit. Neither Ms. Crane nor Mrs. Sandwich seemed to mind. Their mouths dropped open in delight.

“It’s magnificent!”

“Astonishing!”

There, filling every inch of his bedroom, was a meticulously sculpted food fight. The children themselves were constructed from leftovers. Girls with shredded carrots for braids hurled rotten apples across a table of stale breadsticks. Beside her, a boy with onion rings for glasses ducked as the rind of a pork chop flew toward his face. The food that the children hurled was suspended in mid-air from strands of angel hair pasta that Jeremy had been hoarding all months long.

When the students saw Jeremy’s creation, they quickly forgot about the nauseating odor. They gasped and giggled when they recognized themselves in a wad of cheese, a dollop of yogurt, or an expertly carved plum.

“You did all of this? By yourself?” Mrs. Schmidt was the last to peek inside the room.

“He’s filled the room with trash!” Mr. Schmidt shouted. “I want it out! Out! Out! Out!”

“I’d be happy to take it back to the museum.” Mrs. Sandwich turned to Jeremy. “How much do you want for it? One thousand dollars? Two?”

Jeremy’s eyes watered, whether with pride or from the terrible stench, it was impossible to tell.

*

It took all day for the crew to disassemble Jeremy’s artwork and move it out of his bedroom, and it took Jeremy most of the evening to scrub the rotten food from his floor and wash the stench from his hair.

“I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” Mr. Schmidt said when Jeremy sat down to dinner.

“Oh, stop it, George.” Mrs. Schmidt tucked Jeremy’s gold medal inside his shirt so it wouldn’t drop into his soup. Then, she beamed at her son. “I guess some people just can’t appreciate good art.”