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Deja Who?

By Deb Brammer

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Prologue

Felipe was thirteen now, so he stepped back and let his mama get off the public bus ahead of him. As the man of the house, he had to learn how to treat a lady. He caught up to her on the sidewalk, hugging the sketch pad to his chest and gripping the set of artist’s drawing pencils in his fist.
As the bus pulled away, he leaned close to Mama. “Best birthday ever,” he whispered.
She grabbed his arm and pulled him close. “You deserve so much more, Felipe.”
“Who needs more? Now we live in a two-bedroom apartment, and I have my own room.” He held out the pencils. “You let me choose my own present from the museum gift shop. And you gave your whole day to take me to Minneapolis Institute of Art so I can see the most famous paintings in Minnesota.”
Mama smiled wider than he’d seen her smile in months. “I’m glad you enjoyed it so much.”
Felipe wished he could explain to Mama how rich he felt. Today he’d seen real masterpieces by Degas and van Gogh, not just prints in a library book. His favorite was Wyeth’s “Bronco Buster,” a painting that had once been a Cream of Wheat ad. He stared at it until he could almost feel the dust in his eyes as the bronc bucked furiously at a lasso closing around his feet. As Felipe studied the picture, the determination of the cowboy gripping the horse in the painting had grown in him. Someday he’d learn to paint people like N. C. Wyeth painted. He might never be able to afford art lessons, but he’d use his bus pass and visit every art museum in Minneapolis. He’d study the techniques the best artists used until his paintings hung on the walls of a gallery. But today, eight drawing pencils from 8B to 2H were a good start.
As they neared their apartment building, Mama angled across the grass. “You go ahead. I’ll go pay the rent while the office is open.”
Anxious to try out his new art pencils, Felipe ran to the apartment. He slowed, however, when he noticed a man sitting on the steps, staring his direction. He’d learned that strangers who showed too much personal interest could be dangerous, and this man never glanced away. Felipe stared at the ground as he approached the steps.
“Buenos dias, Felipe.”
The boy stopped, then stepped backward. Who was this stranger? Small boned, but muscular, the man sat with arms crossed. Snake tattoos twitched as he flexed his biceps, and a scar protruded from his neatly trimmed goatee.
“Sorry, sir. I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.”
The man stood and punched him playfully in the arm. “Come on, Felipe. Don’t you know your own papi?”
Could this be the same man as the one in his bedside picture? He sure looked different. “My father’s in Mexico. He’s a great man and the village needs him.”
The man reached for his shoulder, but Felipe stepped back another step.
“Well, your papi’s here now. You wouldn’t expect him to miss his son’s thirteenth birthday, would you? Feliz cumpleaños, Felipe.”
“You can’t be my father. He sent me a birthday card from Mexico, like he does every year.”
“What are you doing here, Ricardo?”
Felipe turned at his mother’s voice. She held her keys in her fist, with one protruding from her knuckles, like she did when she had to walk the city streets at night.
“That’s not much of a welcome, Elena,” the man said. “You used to beg me to come home. What happened?”
Mama eyed the man with the same frustration she turned on Felipe when he missed the bus for school. “After nine years, you could have called before just showing up on our doorstep.”
“I wanted to surprise you. Are you going to invite me in or not?”
Mama opened the outside door and led the way to their apartment.
Inside, this man, his father, fell into the most comfortable chair. “What do you want for your birthday, Son?”
Felipe leaned against the kitchen counter and stared at his sketch pad. “I got what I need. Mama bought me this art sketch pad and a set of drawing pencils. She took me to Minneapolis Institute of Art. We spent all day there. She didn’t even make me hurry.”
Father leaned back in the chair and put his feet on the worn footrest. “Well, that’s great, but your papi’s going to buy you a real paint set with lots of tubes of paint and real art brushes.”
“Sable or synthetic brushes?”
“The best. What do you think of that?”
Felipe glanced at Mama. She was scowling. After all the years she promised my father would come back to us someday, why isn’t she glad to see him now? He stole a peek at his father. “Paints are good.”
“See? Your papi has been gone too long, but now I’m here to stay. I’m going to make up for all the years we’ve lost. We’re going to be a real family again. You’ll see.”
For three weeks Papi took them places in his “muscle car” while Felipe tried to believe this man could be a father to him. As Felipe walked around the playground, he told himself Papi didn’t know teens were too old for slides and swings. Munching popcorn at the Twins baseball game, Felipe realized some of his friends would love to be there with their fathers. Gazing down from the third level of the Mall of America he decided Papi didn’t know that kids without money hated malls.
At least he’s trying. Papi did go into the educational store and buy him some tempera paints and plastic brushes. How should he know they weren’t what Felipe wanted? He didn’t see all the beautiful brushes with their fine bristles at the MIA gift shop. He probably didn’t even know what a filbert brush was. Maybe oil, acrylic, and tempera paints were all the same to him.
If I liked baseball and muscle cars like most guys my age, it would be easier for him to be a father to me.
Papi took lots of pictures and sent them back to his rich uncle in Texas. “Someday,” he said, “we’ll have money. We won’t have to live in a dump like this.”
Felipe knew better than to ask when that day would come.
After three weeks, Felipe began to get used to the snoring in the bunk above him every night. Kids at school treated Felipe with a bit more respect when they saw him ride up to the school in a classy car. Sometimes Papi actually washed the dishes and Mama almost smiled. Maybe if Felipe could learn to be a good son, Papi could learn to be a decent father.
One day, as he watched Papi polish his car, Felipe thought of a plan to make his father stay. “Papi,” he said, “I need to know about cars. What makes your 1975 Dodge Dart better than a minivan?”
His father’s eyes lit up. “You really want to know?”
“Very much.”
Father and son stood over the open hood of the car while Papi talked about “200 net horsepower from a 360-cubic-inch V8.” To Felipe it was just an old car, but it seemed to make Papi happy. Maybe now he’ll love me enough to stay.
Several days later Felipe woke up to a silent house. The bunk bed below him where Papi had been sleeping was empty and his suitcase was gone. Felipe ran to the window, but the muscle car was gone too. He shuffled into the living room where Mama sat on the couch staring at a note.
“Where’s Papi?” Felipe said.
Mama frowned, but her eyes were dry. “Gone.”
He reached for the note.

Elena and Felipe,
I had to go back to Mexico. Sorry. Maybe I’ll see you again someday.
Papi

Suddenly, everything made sense. He knew why his father’s handwriting didn’t match the signatures on the birthday cards he sent each year. And why the plastic bristles fell out of the paintbrushes when Papi had promised to buy the best. And why Mama’s stories about where Papi had been all these years didn’t match his father’s. He knew why his father couldn’t see him for who he really was instead of who he wanted him to be.
This man might be his birth father, but in life he’d never been a real father to him. Felipe didn’t know what ordinary people called a man like this, but the art world had the perfect word for him.
Forgery.



Chapter 1

Seven years later.
Time froze as Jordan stared at the beautiful painting. The curly headed little black girl sat in her mother’s lap. Sweetness shone from the innocent face clear down to the childish toes. The mother’s face was thoughtful, almost skeptical, which was exactly how Jordan felt just now.
Zophie scurried around the corner in Sorensen’s School of Business. “So here you are. Everyone’s wondering where you went.”
He continued to gaze at the painting which hung above a bird’s eye maple fireplace with a molded copper fire surround. “Something’s wrong with this.”
“I know. You could do a better job, but—”
Jordan touched the label. “Look.”
“‘In the Garden’ by Helen M. Brady. Fascinating, but do you know what time—”
“Keep reading. ‘Generously donated by Rev. Peter Shepherd, February 15, 1993.’”
“Shepherd’s a great surname for a pastor, but ‘Dad,’ the kids are restless.”
“That can’t be right.”
Zophie tugged at his shirt sleeve. “Maybe your art students would be more patient, but you can’t expect our kids to be like that. You told them this would be ‘a quick look at the art in an historic building.’”
Jordan turned to Zophie, his girlfriend who had followed him from Boise to Minneapolis with absolutely no promises for the future. “Some of our ‘kids’ are older than we are and better educated. I agreed to be a host parent to these international students, but I draw the line at the Dad label.”
“So. The art critic can hear. Lucy’s taking selfies by the spiral staircase. Zhang-Wei is reading cartoons on office doors of all the teachers. Felipe’s not saying much of anything. You could always come back and study this picture later.”
Still single at twenty-seven, Zophie was already a great host mom. Her beauty came not so much from her striking raven hair and deep brown eyes as it did from the ever-present smile that made everyone feel like her friend. But how could you expect someone who could barely draw stick figures to understand an injustice like this? Jordan gestured toward the painting. “This is serious.”
“And our students seriously want to go to Caribou Coffee, but we’re running out of time.”
A patter of footsteps spilled into the ornate reception hall. Zhang-Wei bounced up to Jordan. “We find you here. I feel very surprised you still look at this painting. We already walked to the other side of the building and cannot find you.”
Jordan would have to shift gears. “Sorry, Zhang-Wei. I didn’t mean to hold you up.”
“Hold me up?” The Chinese student tested the words. “I think I am very heavy for you.”
He and Zophie had moved to Minneapolis to help with a ministry to international students. He hadn’t visited his missionary home in Taiwan since he left the country seven years earlier. He was going to have to get used to thinking in English-as-a-second-language again. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, but something’s wrong with this.”
“I agree. Some other ones are better. Guess what? Zophie gave a new name to me. She says ‘Zhu Zhang-Wei’ is a difficult name to remember. She calls me Z. Z. I think it is a good name. Do you agree?”
Lucy slid between Z. Z. and Zophie and snapped a selfie of the three of them. “I think having an American nickname is good. Since the day Zophie named me Lucy, Americans can remember my nickname much easier than Liu Fang. Now Zophie has named two people. She is like a real mother.”
Felipe slipped close to Jordan. He was the only one in the group who was native to Minneapolis. When Jordan had asked his art class for suggestions of places to take his international students, quiet Felipe had suggested they visit the art collection at Sorensen’s School of Business. He even offered to come along to help explain the art work to them. “What’s wrong, Mr. Axtell?”
“Remember, Felipe, you can call me Jordan when we’re not in class. I’m only twenty-five.”
“Okay,” he said, “but what’s wrong with this painting?”
“I’ve seen it before,” Jordan said. “In Denver.”
“You mean you’ve seen a copy of it. This is the original. See?” Felipe pointed to the label. “Rev. Shepherd has donated quite a few paintings to small organizations and galleries in Minneapolis who could never afford them otherwise.”
Finally, someone could hear what he was saying. “But I know this one. I went to art school at the University of Colorado. You know Mary Cassatt’s picture, ‘Breakfast in Bed’?”
“Of course.”
“Look at the little girl’s mouth in this one, and the arches of the feet and turned up toes.” Jordan pointed out the features. “Even though Cassatt’s picture shows the mother and daughter in bed, and this one takes place in a garden, look at the similarities between the Cassatt and this one. Brady’s black girl bears a striking resemblance to Cassatt’s white girl. The moms are holding the girls in similar positions. Both show exceptional finish in the faces contrasted with relatively flat and formless backgrounds. Brady must have studied Cassatt’s painting.”
Felipe stepped closer to the picture. “You’re right, of course. No wonder this picture felt familiar to me. I love Cassatt’s women and children. But why do you know it so well?”
Jordan studied the gentle artist who was barely old enough to have facial hair. Here was someone who’d understand what he was saying as well as feel the insult a fake masterpiece was to an artist. Someday perhaps Felipe would labor over a prize sculpture only to find a cheap copy of it offered as a garden ornament as Jordan had. Then he’d burn with the injustice Jordan now felt.
“Part of the requirements for the course was copying a public domain masterpiece. Mary Cassatt’s been dead for more than seventy years, so her work qualifies. I copied her ‘Breakfast in Bed.’ All perfectly legal as long as I don’t sign it or try to pass it off as the original.”
Felipe nodded.
“Of course, ‘Breakfast in Bed’ is very well known. It hangs in a prominent museum in California. No reasonable art expert would try to pass a copy of it off as the original. But while I was studying every nuance of ‘Breakfast in Bed,’ I ran into one exactly like this Brady in a small museum in Denver. I returned so many times to study it that I memorized it. Dreamed about it at night. This one is identical.”
“Maybe Sorensen’s loaned it to the Denver museum.”
“Can’t be. Both museums claimed to have displayed the original Brady for years.”
Felipe leaned close to the painting, examining the brush strokes. Then he stepped back for the overall impression. Already the appreciation for it had faded from his face. Like Jordan, he’d begun to doubt its integrity.
Finally, Felipe leaned closer to Jordan and whispered.
“Forgery?”

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