Stuart and I dragged box after box of debris down to the street, including a hideous — so it seemed to us — painting of the Holy Family. Mary, Joseph and Jesus had been painted in a few bright colors against a battleship gray background on a piece of plywood. We shook our heads, deposited it in the trash along the curb, and went back to continue cleaning.
Not long afterward Dorothy arrived carrying the rejected painting. “Look what I found! The Holy Family! It’s a providential sign, a blessing.” She put it on the mantle of the apartment’s extinct fireplace.
I looked at it again and this time saw it was a work of love and faith, however crudely rendered. If it was no masterpiece of iconography, it had its own unlettered beauty, but I wouldn’t have thought so if Dorothy hadn’t seen it first.