And We're Off

by Dana Schwartz

  I came here because I wanted to feel independent, but I feel more like a child than ever. And it doesn’t help that I don’t know any French, so really my mom is the only person I can talk to if I even want to talk. If I had been traveling alone, I would be staying in a hostel with other young people. We’d hang out and go on pub crawls and become friends for life, friends you see in beer commercials and ads for tampons, running along beaches in bikinis and dancing through the night around a bonfire or something.

  Instead, I’m in hotels, walking on eggshells around Alice Parker.

  Sorry for being such a depressive mope. I’ve been doing really good drawings here, and I’m excited to finally get to the program in Ireland. Hope you’re well, and hope you’re still good with Nick. Tell your sisters I say hi and that they shouldn’t watch Hocus Pocus until I’m back with you and the entire Peyson clan.

  Love love love,

  Nora

  * * *

  I wake up early, expecting to have a few minutes to myself, but my mom is already lacing up her gray gym shoes. I think the brand is Nike Obvious Tourist.

  “What’s the plan, Stan?” she says with more energy than I would assume is possible before ten A.M. and/or several very strong cups of coffee. Clearly trying to turn the other cheek from our train-car-evacuating argument on the way here.

  “I was going to go to the city center and do Grandpa’s assignment.”

  “Great!” she says with enthusiasm that has to be fake. “Let’s walk down together. I’ll check out some of the chocolate shops and buy you a waffle when you’re done.”

  She’s too polite. She’s treating me like a college roommate whom you secretly suspect of stealing your stuff when you leave the room.

  Following the map they gave us at the front desk, we cross the dirty river. The architecture of the buildings seems to change with every block, like we’re walking through a museum diorama instead of a city. Discount shoe stores and places selling seafood that look like they haven’t been renovated since 1992 become cheap hair salons and tacky dive bars, then become cell phone stores and McDonald’s, followed by pharmacies and bakeries and buildings that look lifted from the eighteenth century. In three city blocks we seem to have journeyed from Detroit to the little French town from Beauty and the Beast. I look at the assignment Grandpa gave me.

  THE TOWN HALL WAS BUILT BY MULTIPLE BUILDERS AT ONCE, ALL CONCERNED WITH SPEED AND SAVING MONEY. LEGEND HAS IT THAT WHEN THE ARCHITECT WHO DESIGNED THE BUILDING FINALLY SAW HIS NOW-COMPLETED PROJECT, HE CLIMBED TO THE TOP OF THE TALLEST TOWER, SURVEYED THE CITY, AND LEAPED TO HIS DEATH.

  EXAMINE THE BUILDING. DISCOVER WHY THE ARCHITECT WAS FILLED WITH SUCH DEEP DESPAIR. DRAW THE BUILDING AS PRECISELY AS YOU CAN. DETAILS CAN BE A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH.

  —RP

  He included a tiny dollar-store protractor, most likely to help me get my angles right. I don’t say anything out loud, because there’s no way my mom will understand, but I’m kind of terrified. I worry that, even trying as hard as I can, I’ll end up with a tangle of lines that doesn’t resemble anything good. Straight lines and perspective are a bit of a weakness for me, and when I say “weakness,” I mean “total blind spot.” Even in elementary school art class, teachers criticized my “chicken scratch” style, despite the fact that my pieces were clearly the best. The trend continued through middle school, high school, after-school lessons at the Community Center, and summer programs. All short lines. I don’t do heavy, black, straight. I’m good at all over the place and impressionistic, lines layered on top of each other until they come out looking like real art, the type that would be at home hanging alongside Robert Parker’s in the Art Institute. Even when I draw faces—my specialty—I leave the shadow of the shapes I sketched for guidance. Drawing a building isn’t going to make me look like a real artist.

  Following a little map I picked up on a street corner, my mother and I walk together toward the town hall. I swear there’s a chocolate shop every second storefront. This isn’t hyperbole. Literally, we walk, pass a gourmet-looking chocolate shop with towers of dipped marshmallows and toffee tilting in the windows, walk another four steps, and there’s another, this one with onyx lettering and a luxury salon feel, with each piece of chocolate under its own glass dome.

  “How could any economy possibly support this many chocolate shops?”

  “Tourists,” my mother replies simply.

  “I was kidding.”

  Her pace doesn’t slow. We turn into one of the stores. “Oh,” she says. “Ha, yes.”

  “Having to explain a joke ruins it,” I say. “It’s like that old saying—you know, something like ‘explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog: You’ll understand it, but you’ll have a dead frog.’”

  “Do you think your aunt Jocelyn would like these?” My mother holds up a box of dark chocolates shaped like flower blossoms.

  “You weren’t even listening to me. I was explaining a comedy thing.”

  “I was—dead frog. Maybe she prefers white chocolate?”

  * * *

  Even though the town center is full of gorgeous Gothic buildings, the town hall is still easy to spot. It’s almost the full length of the entire city block, so tall I can’t capture it in an Instagram square, and dotted with hundreds of tiny windows. Just thinking about the windows makes my stomach sink.

  With her chocolate purchased (a thoughtful combination of dark AND white), my mom decides to duck into a Starbucks on a nearby corner. “I’m going to send a few e-mails, for work, with their WiFi,” she says, gesturing with her head. “Why don’t you get started drawing? And meet me over here when you’re done?”

  “Well I don’t know how long it’ll take—”

  “That’s fine,” she says, looking distracted. “I’ll be right over here.”

  And so even though at this moment I would rather do literally anything else, I nod and smile, pretending to be excited. “Sounds good.”

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes in, and my drawing is already a lopsided Tim Burton excuse for an architecture sketch. Even using the protractor, my angles are somehow slightly too wide, and trying to draw straight lines using the six-inch ruler at the bottom means that the base of the building is only straight in six-inch increments. And no matter how many times I swear I counted the windows on each side of the building, I can’t seem to get the number right. If I hadn’t already cramped every muscle in my hand drawing half a million tiny square windows I would have ripped the page off my notepad and started over.

  I’ve been staring at this building for so long that the windows have all blurred into tiny, shapeless glass blobs. I look up and see that the windows are two panes across with a block below them. I look down, I look up again, and now they’re one pane across. Then I draw that and look up again, and it turns out they are two panes across but without the block, and I need to erase like a maniac and start over. I’m starting to understand why van Gogh cut off his ear. And shot himself.

  I have no read on how much time has passed, but it’s been at least long enough for three distinct tour groups to meet in the main square under the giant orange umbrella, hear the same cheesy introduction, and depart.

  I’m struggling with getting the shape of the tower right when I hear my mother’s voice.

  “How’s it going?”

  I quickly block as much of the terrible, smudged disaster of a pencil drawing behind me as I can.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “Interesting building.” She’s not looking at my drawing at all. “Did you notice how the tower is off-center? And look,” she points. “Even the arch in the tower is off-center. Someone’s head probably rolled for that.”

  I laugh. I can’t help it. I start laughing so loud Belgium strangers probably think I’m having a nervous breakdown.

  I look down at my drawing, and suddenly it doesn’t look so bad. “I think I migh
t be done,” I say.

  “Looks really good!” she says, examining the drawing a little closer than I’d like. “So how about we try one of these famous waffles?”

  I do not have the poetry of language to describe how delicious this waffle is.

  It’s about six inches across, definitely not the plate-sized “Belgian waffles” they serve at breakfast places in the States. They serve them in these little cardboard boats, like how they’d serve hotdogs at a baseball game. The waffle is chewy and dense and almost gritty with sugar. It’s warm and heavy with Nutella and strawberry slivers (Mom chose just whipped cream). It’s like the best doughnut I’ve ever had, if the doughnut made love to a crepe and ran away to have its baby. I want about seven more.

  “Save some room for fries,” my mom says when she sees me edging back toward the stand, where they are tossing fresh rounds of dough onto the press with a smell so good I could float on it like a cartoon character.

  I could pretend that we wait at least an hour post-waffle to have fries, but I would be completely lying. We go directly toward the longest line (the shop we overheard several tour guides point out as the best fry shop in Brussels) and each get an order, with our own sides of spicy mayo. By the time we finish the hot, crispy, greasy things, their cardboard carriers are transparent.

  “Did you know,” my mom says, her fingers tracing the bottom of her dish for the crispy burnt bits, “that ‘French fries’ is actually a misnomer? They were invented in Belgium, and during World War I . . . World War II? Anyway, during one of the wars, Americans saw them eating them in Flanders but assumed since the Belgians were speaking French that they were in France. Hence,” she waggles the last burnt bit, “French fries.”

  “That’s actually pretty cool,” I say, just beginning to feel all of the grease I consumed in the previous hour settling in my stomach. “How’d you know that?”

  “Heard half a tour while I was waiting for you to do your little drawing.”

  The phrase “little drawing,” the dripping condescension hidden within those four syllables, immediately freezes any goodwill I was feeling. My face stiffens into a frown, and I feel the grease so heavily now I worry that I’m going to be sick.

  “So what do you want to do for the rest of the day?” my mother asks, patting her stomach. It’s one P.M.

  I contemplate the silent treatment, but the idea of having another fight with Alice Parker is too exhausting to consider. So I swallow my frustration whole. “We could go to the Hergé museum? The cartoonist who did Tintin?” It’s the only thing I can think of, since we’ve already walked past a lifetime’s worth of gourmet chocolate shops, eaten a waffle and an order of fries each, and passed the famous Manneken Pis sculpture. The list of Brussels “must-see” attractions is getting smaller by the minute.

  “Sure, I used to love Tintin,” she says.

  I’ve actually never read a Tintin book. But I know the art and style, and I read the Wikipedia page this morning, so I can discuss it like I know what I’m talking about. It’s a little disheartening to think that my mom is more knowledgeable than me about something relating to art.

  We spend fifteen minutes walking there—practically rolling ourselves after the sheer quantity of fried food we put in our bodies—in silence. It’s obvious even without looking at a map when we finally find the museum; the entire side of the building is painted with Tintin, his iconic round face and butter-yellow hair. I already feel a little better just thinking about going to a museum filled with cartoons.

  “Closed,” my mom says. A sign is posted on the door. “It’s closed today. Open tomorrow, though.”

  “Tomorrow we’re going on the trip to Ghent.” I’m practically shouting.

  “Well, fine,” she says, sputtering. “I didn’t plan the schedule.”

  “I KNOW!” I shout back. I’m mad at myself. Mad for not planning what we would do in Brussels, mad that I didn’t check the opening hours for museums I wanted to visit, mad that I drove myself crazy drawing the town hall without realizing it was off-center. Mostly I’m mad that this is my one chance for a European adventure and my mother and I are both ruining it at every turn.

  “Well,” she says crisply, “is there anything else you wanted to see while you were here? What would you be doing if you were alone?”

  “I don’t know.” I check the list of tourist attractions: a military museum, a finance museum, a beer tour—nothing that excites me at all. “There’s, like, nothing to do in this city.”

  We end up walking back to the hotel, back past the McDonald’s and the seafood shops and the discount shoe stores, across the dirty river. We spend the rest of the afternoon on our laptops taking advantage of free WiFi and the mutual decision not to speak. The dynamic feels better than in Paris, though. Less hostile. My mother and I have actually become an unlikely team, united allies against the awful city that is Brussels. The enemy of my enemy and all that.

  Later that night, I’m suddenly struck by the distinct paranoia that when Lena gets my letter, she’s going to open it with Nick, and they’re going to read it together and laugh. The thought is crazy—delusional, even—but it plays in my head like a distorted nightmare. I remember hearing in English class about Caroline Lamb, who fell madly in love with Lord Byron and then fell madly insane when he broke off their relationship. She would write him long love letters, including a lock of her hair, asking for a lock of his back. Lord Byron, cad that he was, was dating someone else, and he and the little so-and-so would read poor Caroline’s letter and laugh, even going so far as to send back a lock of his new girlfriend’s pubic hair, pretending it was from Byron’s head, because the color and texture were similar enough, which is just about the most horrible and heartbreaking thing I can think of. (They didn’t tell us the pubic-hair part in class; I looked it up afterward online.) It’s not that I’m still in love with Nick—I’m not, obviously, and I never was, obviously. But I will say I feel like I have a lot in common with Caroline Lamb at the moment.

  I definitely don’t tell my mom, who doesn’t understand boys or friends or English poets of the romantic period. We just keep each other company like mutually polite roommates at this point, and that’s fine.

  11

  “YOU NEED YOUR tickets.”

  The woman at the tour-company counter has her hair in a beehive, like the housewife in a Far Side cartoon. She’s typing slowly, barely looking at us. She is the oldest person I’ve ever seen with fake nails.

  “We have our tickets,” I say, showing my iPhone screen again. “See? Confirmation e-mail, receipt, tickets.”

  The Far Side cartoon glances at my phone, then immediately back to her far more fascinating computer screen. “Your tickets need to be in hard copy.”

  My mom steps in. “It doesn’t say anywhere that the tickets need to be hard copy.”

  Far Side heaves a sigh like she’s Atlas himself and reaches a wizened arm to snatch the phone from my hand. It took us forty minutes to find the Belgian Adventure offices tucked into a far corner of the city, on a street that wasn’t labeled on the map, where the e-mail had told us to meet the group at eight A.M. sharp.

  “Mmm,” she says. “This tour doesn’t run today.”

  Mom takes control, stepping slightly in front of me like a human shield. “We bought and paid for these tickets, which were available online . . .” She trails off, the staccato in her voice draining away when she realizes her words are having exactly zero effect on the woman behind the counter.

  I notice a small group hovering outside and grab my mom’s hand to pull her with me.

  A handsome guy who looks to be in his late twenties approaches us. “You guys have tickets for the Ghent thing today too?” He’s Australian. He’s joined by his girlfriend or wife, who is beautiful with long dark hair and bangs.

  “The customer service here is a disaster,” she adds. “Never using Belgian Adventure
again.”

  “Yeah,” the guy continues. “We had mates who came to Belgium and went on the tour to Ghent and said it was un-missable.”

  “I just wanted to see the altarpiece,” I say. Maybe it’s something about how friendly they are, or how we’re all in the same sinking boat, but it’s surprisingly easy to talk to them, and normally I hate talking to strangers.

  “What altarpiece?”

  “The Ghent Altarpiece. It’s one of the most important masterpieces of the Northern Renaissance. Fifteenth century, I think. It’s a cornerstone of Christian art. Sometimes they call it The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, probably painted by Jan van Eyck.”

  All three of them—the two Australians and my mom—listen intently, and I immediately realize that I haven’t told her anything about the altarpiece yet.

  “Yeah, yeah,” the girlfriend says. “I’ve heard of that. It’s a big deal!” She turns to the guy. “Jan van Eyck’s the guy who did the Arnolfini Portrait painting.”

  “Oh, no way, that’s so nice. Lucky you guys are on our tour; we’d have totally missed that. Where is it?”

  “The Saint Bavo Cathedral,” I say. “Don’t worry, it’s definitely part of this tour.”

  “If this tour happens,” my mother says, and the three of us turn to look at the Far Side lady again.

  The guy gestures his head toward the tour offices. “This is a fucking shit-show. Oh, shit—” He covers his mouth with his hands. “Sorry for the foul language.”

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “I swear all the fucking time.” He and his girlfriend both laugh, and I resolve not to make eye contact with my mom for at least twenty minutes.