Monday with a Mad Genius (8 page)

“How’d you figure that out?” asked Annie. “I mean, you’re always coming up with new ways to do things. How do you do that?”

“I ask questions,” said Leonardo. “All the time, I ask questions: How can I paint the light? How can I capture the shadows? How can I do this? How can I do that?” Leonardo stopped painting. He put down his brush and looked at Jack and Annie. His eyes were sparkling. “And now, my friends, I know the secret.”

“You do?” said Jack.

“Yes,” said Leonardo. “The secret of happiness is available to
all
of us,
every
hour of
every
day. Young, old, rich, poor—
everyone
can choose to find happiness in this way.”

“How?” asked Annie. “What’s the secret?” She and Jack leaned forward, eager to hear the answer.

“
Curiosity,
” said Leonardo.

“Curiosity?” repeated Jack. He had curiosity. He had lots of it.

“Always ask questions,” said Leonardo. “Always try to learn something new. Ask: Why? When? Where? What? Say: ‘I wonder what this means.’ ‘I wonder how that works.’ ‘I wonder what this person is like. And that person. And that one.’ I am always searching for answers to things I do not understand.”

“Me too!” said Jack.

“And so I look forward to each new day, each spring and summer and fall and winter, and all the months and years ahead, because there is so much to discover,” said Leonardo.

“Me too!” said Annie.

“Through my curiosity, I forget my failures and sorrows, and I feel great happiness,” said Leonardo. He looked up at the sky. “For instance, one might wonder how they built that eight-sided dome on top of the cathedral.”

“I
do
wonder that!” said Jack.

“And I wonder—what exactly makes the clouds change shape?” said Annie.

“And—and what makes bread crackly on the outside and soft on the inside?” asked Jack.

“Are there really just ten types of noses?” said Annie.

“How many kinds of ears are there?” said Jack. “How many kinds of feet?”

“Hands!” said Annie.

“Eyebrows!” said Jack.

Their two voices spilled over each other as they kept calling out questions: “And who rings the bells in the bell tower?” “Why is the sky blue?” “Where do city birds sleep?”

“AND WHY WON’T LISA SMILE FOR LEONARDO?” asked Annie.

Jack and Leonardo looked at Annie. Then they all turned and looked at Lisa. Jack had actually forgotten she was sitting near them.

The quiet, lovely woman blinked. “What?” she said. “What did you say?”

“Why won’t you smile for Leonardo, Lisa?” asked Annie. “Are you mad at him because you’ve been posing for three years?”

Lisa’s face grew red. She seemed to be fighting tears. She shook her head.

“Is—is there another reason?” Annie asked softly.

Lisa looked at Leonardo. He was staring back at her. “Yes,” she whispered. “There is.”

“What is it?” Annie asked.

“I am afraid to smile,” said Lisa. She kept staring at Leonardo, though she was talking to Annie. “If I smile, Leonardo will paint my smile, and he will be done with me. He will sell my portrait to my family and never think of me again.”

There was silence for a moment. Jack and Annie looked at Leonardo. “Annie,” said Leonardo finally, staring at Lisa. “Tell Lisa that if she will smile, I
will
finish her portrait. But tell her that I
will not
sell it to her family. I will carry it
with me wherever I go, for the rest of my life, and I will never forget her.”

“Lisa, Leonardo says that—” started Annie.

But Lisa stopped her. “I heard,” she said softly. Then she smiled. It was a faint smile, but a mysterious and beautiful one. Her face glowed in the golden light of late afternoon.

“Ah!” gasped Leonardo. “Keep that smile,” he said. He kept staring at Lisa as he dipped his paintbrush into a jar. “Please! Keep that smile, Mona Lisa.”

Mona Lisa?
Jack had heard the name Mona Lisa before.

Lisa kept smiling. Leonardo painted.

“Hey, listen,” Annie said to Jack.

Jack listened. He heard a bird whistling and trilling. A plain brown bird was singing from the rooftop above the courtyard.

“That looks like the bird you let out of the cage,” said Jack.

“It
is
him!” whispered Annie.

“He is a nightingale,” said Leonardo, keeping his eyes on Lisa. “A beautiful singer, yes?”

Annie smiled at Jack. “Time to go,” she said. “Remember Morgan’s rhyme—help the genius ‘
Till the night bird sings its song.
’ ”

“Right,” said Jack, sighing. “Good-bye, Leonardo.”

Leonardo didn’t seem to hear him.

“Good-bye, Lisa,” said Annie.

Lisa turned her eyes to look at Jack and Annie. “Bye,” she whispered.

Then Leonardo turned and looked at them, too. “Yes, good-bye, my friends!” he said. “Come again soon, please! You have been a great help to me today.”

“You helped us, too,” said Annie.

Leonardo bowed to them. Then he turned back to his work. He painted Lisa’s smile as the nightingale sang on. The bird’s song grew louder and louder, until it seemed to fill the Florence night.

I
t was twilight when Annie and Jack stepped back out into the street.

“Where’s the tree with the tree house?” asked Annie.

“Somewhere over the bridge beyond the big dome,” said Jack.

They kept their eyes on the dome as they threaded their way through the streets of Florence. When they came to the cathedral, the square was quiet. The cathedral’s great doors were open. Jack and Annie could see candles burning inside.

Jack and Annie kept walking and soon came to the market. The hundreds of tents and stalls were all closed for the night. The square was empty.

Jack and Annie returned the way they had come that morning. Walking down the same narrow lanes, they saw that all the shops were closed now, too. They crossed the covered bridge and walked along the flowing river, past quiet houses where smoke curled from chimneys into the darkening sky.

Finally Jack and Annie came to the hedge that hid the tree with the tree house. In the gray light of dusk, they climbed up the rope ladder.

“Before we go home, I want to look something up,” said Jack. He pulled their research book out of his bag and looked in the index for
Mona Lisa.
He found it and turned to the right page.

“Look! It’s Lisa!” said Annie.

Jack and Annie stared at a picture of Leonardo’s painting. It looked exactly the same,
except now there was a smile on Lisa’s face, the same smile they’d just seen in real life. Jack read aloud:

Jack closed the book. “He kept his promise,” he said.

“I knew he would,” said Annie. She sighed. “Good-bye, Leonardo,” she whispered. Then she picked up their note from Morgan and pointed at the words
Frog Creek.
“I wish we could go there,” she said.

The wind started to blow.

The tree house started to spin.

It spun faster and faster.

Then everything was still.

Absolutely still.

Sunlight flooded through the tree house window. No time had passed in Frog Creek. The school bell was still ringing, announcing that class would start in ten minutes. Jack and Annie were wearing their school clothes. Jack’s cloth bag had changed back into his backpack.

“We have to hurry,” said Annie.

“I know,” said Jack. He looked inside his pack.
He was happy to see the Wand of Dianthus. As he pulled out their research book, a piece of paper fell out. It was the sketch of Leonardo’s angel.

“Oh, I forgot all about this,” said Jack. He and Annie looked at the sketch.

“It shows he was really a good drawer,” said Annie.

“Yep,” said Jack. “And it will remind us about Leonardo’s secret of happiness.”

“He was curious about everything,” said Annie. “Angels, noses, birds.”

“Feathers, flowers, wolves, and spiders,” added Jack.

“Shadows, light,” said Annie.

“Bells, clouds, the moon,” said Jack.

“And every time he was unhappy about something, his curiosity seemed to make him happy again,” said Annie.

Jack took the angel drawing from Annie and carefully put it back into his pack. “Come on,” he
said. “We don’t want to be late for school.” Jack started down the rope ladder, and Annie followed.

Jack and Annie walked together through the sun-bright woods. “I wonder where my new class will be,” said Annie.

“Yeah,” said Jack, “and I wonder where my desk will be. Close to the window? Or the door?”

“And will Randy and Jenny be in my class again this year?” said Annie.

“Will Joe be in mine?” said Jack.

“Whatever happened to Raymond Johnson?” asked Annie. “Is he coming back this year?”

“I hope so,” said Jack. “And who’s the new librarian? And the new music teacher?”

“Yeah, and what kind of noses do they have?” said Annie.

Jack laughed. All the questions about school didn’t make him nervous anymore. Now he was eager to find out the answers. He quickened his steps. “And how long will it take us to get there, if we walk really, really fast?” he said.

“What if we run?” said Annie.

Jack and Annie started running, as the wind blew through the trees and the leaves fluttered through the air and the birds sang from the branches in the Monday-morning woods.