And We're Off

by Dana Schwartz

  A small cluster of people forms around a woman who is about four feet tall with a tuft of white hair like a decorative poodle. “The tour for Ghent?” she wheezes. There’s a murmur of approval. “Hand over your tickets and follow me to the bus.”

  “Excuse me,” I say. “I didn’t print the tickets, but I have them on my phone?”

  “You need the tickets printed,” she replies, taking other people’s responsibly printed-out pages, not looking at me.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know that.” My mom comes up behind me for backup.

  “It doesn’t say anywhere that the ticket needs to be printed out.”

  The woman heaves a heavy sigh and gestures for me to give her my ticket. “Fine,” she says, looking at it. “Follow me!”

  “It’s like she’s doing us a favor,” my mom says to me as we walk toward the parking lot. “We paid for this.”

  After we file onto the bus, the tiny tour guide informs us that her name is Elsa, and “Would you please take these headphones and plug them into the seat for the audio tour to begin?” We acquiesce. As soon as the bus starts moving, the “tour” scratches to life with a ’90s-sounding electronic theme song.

  Turns out, the audio tour is a prerecorded, heavily accented voice just naming buildings as we pass them: “City hall. Former beer hall. The Ludwig Building. The National Bank.” No context, no history, and subpar audio quality. And since the tour was prerecorded, the timing is a little off. “Actually, that’s the National Bank,” Elsa adds at one point, gesturing vaguely toward a turreted building down the block.

  “This,” I say to my mom, “is the worst tour in the history of tours.”

  “They should give tours commemorating how terrible this tour is.”

  “A bust of Elsa.”

  “A statue of the woman at the tour-company counter.”

  “She already is a statue.”

  We erupt in laughter, together, for the first time since I can remember.

  “Excuse me,” a man with a bucket hat leans across the aisle toward us. “I’m trying to listen here.”

  My mom disguises her smile. “Very sorry.”

  Elsa interjects the audio tour with random musings on Brussels, where we’ve been informed that she’s lived with her second husband for four months. “A family friend used to live there,” she says, gesturing toward an apartment building, drowning out the sound of the audio tour, pointing out the public gardens that are still several blocks away.

  “I think I’m going to try to fall asleep,” I say and rest my head on the bouncing, vibrating bus window, letting the sound of Elsa and the electronic tour lull me into sleep like the world’s laziest lullaby.

  * * *

  “Nora.” My mom shakes me, and for a moment I’m sure we’re there already, although in my half-awake delirium I can’t remember exactly where there is. “Nora. I think she said the cathedral is closed.”

  “Hm?”

  “The woman. I think she said the cathedral is closed today. Preparing for a festival or something? Saint Pavel’s?”

  “That’s the festival?”

  “No, the name of the cathedral. That’s the name of the one with the altarpiece you wanted to see, right?”

  “Saint Bavo.”

  “I think she said it was closed!”

  I’m starting to wake up now. “That can’t be true. I bet they wouldn’t have even run the tour today. Or they at least would have told us before we got on the bus.”

  “I could’ve sworn . . .”

  “Why would they close a cathedral? Cathedrals don’t close, do they?”

  “You’re asking me?” Two suburban half-Jewish agnostics are not the appropriate source for insight into the business hours of cathedrals.

  We sit in uncomfortable silence for the rest of the ride. I half-attempt to fall back asleep, but I’m waiting for the chance to ask Elsa or Enda or whatever her name is whether or not the one thing I wanted to see in Belgium is even open.

  The bus finally pulls into a dusty parking lot and squawks into park. As we descend the steps, I make a beeline for the tour guide and tap her on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me? While we were on the bus, did you mention that Saint Bavo Cathedral is closed today?”

  “Military wedding,” she says, counting the rest of the descending tourists.

  “But what about the altarpiece? How are we going to see it?”

  “Can’t see it today. I said so on the bus.”

  The Australian couple from before has made their way beside me, equally incised. “Yeah, but why wouldn’t you tell us that before we boarded the bus? Maybe we would have gone on the tour a different day.”

  Elsa gestures to a walkie-talkie the size of an ostrich egg. “Just found out while we were driving.” With that, she walks away, carrying a sparkly baton that looks like a children’s toy, which she uses to lead the group as we make our way into town.

  I shake my head. “How is this company real? How is this woman a tour guide?”

  My mother laughs. Genuinely. “I’m assuming the European training system leaves a little to be desired. But look!” She points toward a tower that even I have to admit is pretty picturesque.

  “It’s nice,” I agree. And then we nod, wondering what else there is to do in this city. Turns out, not a lot. We pass the nice clock tower, but as we get closer, our view is obstructed by hanging beams and ropes for a stage that’s going to be erected at night (“For the festival,” Elsa informs us knowingly). We pass approximately seven hundred chocolate shops. I have to imagine somewhere there’s a good Ghent, a Ghent where tourists in the know would be welcomed into tiny European speakeasies and discuss art and literature with handsome men named Claude while sipping cocktails with names no one can pronounce. I’m sure somewhere there’s a charming courtyard with a restaurant where the waiters know every customer by first name, and when tourists come in they offer the chef’s best dish, on the house. I can imagine an alternate universe where Ghent is a beautiful, interesting, culturally rich town. But that’s not the universe this tour company dropped us off in.

  After Elsa herds us back to a pocket off the main square, she waggles her baton once more in the air for good measure. “Be back here in forty-five minutes. The bus is leaving. Or else you’ll find your own way back.”

  My mom and I, the Australian couple, and oddly enough the man with the bucket hat find ourselves sitting at the only semi-decent café we can find. Bucket Hat orders a beer. The rest of us order cappuccinos.

  “Shame about the altarpiece,” Bucket Hat says after taking his first swig of beer.

  The Australian couple light up. “Yes! You knew about it too? It’s well-known, right?” They seem particularly vindicated by the idea that the altarpiece is something more people have heard of than just me. Their suspicions have been confirmed that it’s not, as Elsa put it, “just a painting.”

  “Yeah,” Bucket Hat continues. “It’s the only reason I took this tour to Ghent in the first place.”

  “Us too!” I exclaim. “And now there’s, what, a wedding or something? We should just crash it.”

  The Australians laugh. Bucket Hat doesn’t. “Do you think we’d get in trouble?” he says.

  “Oh,” I say. “Yeah. No, I was kidding. We’d definitely get in trouble, right?”

  The subject is dropped, and the bill is paid. Our little group scatters off to collect some last-minute photographs or chocolate purchases, as the case may be.

  We’re already headed back toward the bus when my mom tugs at the bottom of my shirt. “Hey,” she whispers. “Let’s go.”

  I turn toward her. “To the buses?”

  “No!” She looks around and lowers her voice even more. “To the church. The cathedral. Let’s . . . check it out.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Come on
! Let’s try.”

  And before I know what’s happening, I’m following my mother down a narrow cobblestone alley beside the cathedral, looking for a way in. Through one of the windows, I see men in military dress filing into pews alongside women in giant hats. They seem to be just milling about, but I can’t tell if the ceremony is over or if it hasn’t even begun yet.

  Mom points to a small, unobtrusive wooden door being held open by a stopper. “Come on,” she says.

  My heart is pounding. I’m light-headed. I’ve never done anything like this before, let alone with my mother. We weave through a dark room, the sound of our footsteps eclipsed by the echoing of casual chatter from the main hall. It looks like we’re in some sort of classroom, with a few scattered tables and a small chalkboard.

  “We just have to look like we belong,” my mom says. I almost snort laughing. We’re both wearing yoga pants and gym shoes.

  “At least take off your fanny pack,” I say. She does, and I shove it into my backpack. I can hear the sounds of conversation, louder, just on the other side of the door. “On the count of three. One, two . . .” On three, I pull open the door, which makes an excruciatingly loud creak, and we both slide through.

  The good news is, no one seems to notice us. The place is milling with wedding guests in formal wear, but also people setting up tables and taking coats. It’s crowded enough that two extra bodies don’t immediately draw attention.

  The bad news is that I don’t see the altarpiece anywhere. In my imagination, it’s giant—the centerpiece of the cathedral—and lit up, maybe with neon arrows pointing to it. Maybe I got the wrong cathedral. Or the wrong town. Maybe I made up the entire concept of an altarpiece altogether. Maybe—

  “Look,” my mom half-whispers, directing my attention toward the corner of the cathedral, where, blocked off by a small metal barrier, sits the altarpiece. We move together, silently as ghosts, turning every few steps to make sure no one has noticed our presence. Luckily, it seems like most people’s attention has been diverted by the entrance of a very old man—flanked by a few soldiers with sashes and swords—who seems pretty important.

  “It’s beautiful,” my mother whispers, and it is. The colors are muted, but the intricacy of it is breathtaking. A lot of religious altarpieces, at least the ones they showed us in AP art history, look weirdly flat, with babies with abs and faces like adults. But this is stunning. It’s better than the photographs.

  The lights change, and without our noticing, it seems like most people have taken their seats. We’re standing behind the pews, with a good view straight up the aisle to where the priest is standing. He’s making direct eye contact with me.

  I tug on my mom’s coat sleeve. “Do you think we should—”

  A wedding march begins to play, and everyone turns to look at the back of the cathedral, expecting to see the wedding party making their way up the aisle. Instead, their eyes find us: two Chicago suburbanites with one backpack and one fanny pack between them, and two panicked expressions. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the groom in full military regalia begin walking out toward the aisle, eyeing us the entire time. I desperately scan the building for possible exits.

  A woman with a tight updo approaches us and begins half-whispering, half-yelling in rapid French or maybe Dutch; I’m too nervous to care or notice. My mom and I whip across the cathedral and out the wooden door we entered through, making our way into the classroom and finding ourselves face-to-face with the bride, her father, and two other women.

  “Congratulations,” I shout as we fly out the door and into the sunlight, onto a street that still exists, everything familiar and foreign and beautiful all at once. Adrenaline has made the world Claritin-ad sharp.

  We scan the horizon for Elsa’s sparkling stick, find it, and rejoin the group without anyone commenting on our tardiness. We pass under Elsa’s baton, giggling like escaped convicts (do escaped convicts giggle?). We discuss it in play-by-play the entire way home. Remember how we just walked in? Did you see the look on the groom’s face? I can’t believe you said, “Congratulations!”

  Everyone else on the bus shoots us odd glances, jealous that they weren’t a part of whatever is making us so happy.

  We’re still floating by the time we make it to the hotel.

  “I can’t believe we did that,” I say, collapsing onto the bed.

  “I’m glad we got to see the altarpiece!” Mom calls from the bathroom. She is flossing. I suddenly feel a wave of gratitude that my mom is here, that I didn’t have to suffer through the world’s worst tour alone. I smile into the comforter. “Thank you for sharing that with me,” she says, entering the room.

  I almost say, “Thank you for coming,” but I catch myself. “You’re welcome. I’m glad we did it.”

  She sits down on the corner of my bed. “I’m going to miss you next year,” she says, looking at the floor. I get the impression that if she looks at me she might begin to cry. “The house has just been so quiet since—you know.” She means since Dad left. “It gets lonely sometimes.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “You do?” she says, surprised.

  “I mean, yeah. The . . .” I hesitate. “The crying . . .”

  “I thought I’ve kept things together well.”

  “Mom, I know you miss Dad. It’s pretty obvious.”

  “Well,” she resists the urge to scoot closer. “You’ve been a bright spot in my life—the bright spot in my life—these past two years.”

  “Well, there’s your career.”

  “Yes. Well. You’re more important.” She stiffens. “And that’s why I’m so serious when I talk to you about your fixation on this art thing. I know you’re passionate about it, and that’s wonderful, but I’m just trying to make sure you’re looking out for your future.”

  There are only three more days of our trip together—three more days in Brussels, and then we go together to Ireland, where she drops me off at the program. If I can avoid one of the thousand fights we’ll probably have between now and then, I’ll be happy.

  “Let’s just figure out how we want to spend the rest of our time in Brussels,” I say, and with a sigh that I accept as a resignation, my mom abandons the topic of my sad, terrible future as an unemployed art major.

  “Why did Grandpa want you to spend this much time here?” my mom asks as she flips through the Rick Steves book on the bedside table.

  “Actually, I booked the flights. I wasn’t sure how long I’d want to stay. Belgium seemed exciting.”

  “Okay!” She says, trying to be a good sport. “So what’s on your agenda for tomorrow?”

  “Ummm, we could walk around some more? Get another waffle. Get some more fries. Oh! Check out the Tintin museum? Get another waffle after that?” It sounds excruciating. Honestly, the thought of one more day looking out at the dirty river and the plastic lawn chair hanging above it is enough to make me want to formally propose that they give Belgium back to France and the Netherlands. It’s a terrible fake country, and it shouldn’t exist.

  “You never read Tintin books when you were younger, did you?” my mom asks.

  I shake my head, and to my surprise she gives me a rare, honest-to-goodness, authentic Alice Parker smile.

  “How about,” my mom says, “we see if we can get an early flight to Ireland?” She pauses, waiting for my reaction.

  “Oh, thank god,” I say.

  12

  THE BUS CREAKS to a stop and opens its doors by the side of a road with no visible signs or street names. It suddenly occurs to me that the bus driver hasn’t been announcing the names of stops, and even if he had been, I’m not sure I know exactly where we’re supposed to get off. The same thought must occur to my mother, because she looks up from her book for the first time since we got on the bus.

  “Which stop are we getting off at?” she asks.

  “Um, try
ing to figure that out now.”

  She folds a corner of the page she’s on and returns it to her bag. “Honestly, Nora, how were you going to do this without me?” She reaches into her bag and pulls out information from the Donegal Colony for Young Artists website.

  The bus stops again, and a boy—an adorable boy, it should be noted—around my age gets on. He has dark curls and wears glasses that make him look like a model in a Warby Parker ad. He sits a few rows ahead of us and takes out a book, and I crane my neck to see what he’s reading.

  “Okay,” my mom says. “It looks like we can either take the train to . . . no, we didn’t do that . . . Oh, oh, we get off the number 2 bus at . . . do you think we’ve passed Ballyshannon already?”

  “Why don’t we ask someone on the bus to help us?” I say, looking at the boy.

  “Ah! Nora. We got on the wrong bus. We needed to get on the 2. Look, this is the 5. We need to get off at the next stop and figure this out.”

  I don’t have a better plan, and I don’t argue. We make our way to the front of the bus, and I try to get a slightly better view of the boy’s face, but I don’t have time. The bus stops, and we get off, finding ourselves on a tiny strip with a bus station, a few houses, and what looks like a restaurant. We head toward the restaurant as I say a silent prayer for WiFi, and then, seeing how dark it looks inside the windows, an even more frantic silent prayer that it’s open.

  “You’d think the guidebook would have a FEW more specifics on public transportation,” she mumbles, more to herself than to me. I’d seen the page on Donegal County (yes, just a page in an entire book about Ireland) and the two sentences that she’d underlined and highlighted: “Although the far-flung northern corner of Ireland doesn’t have much in terms of high-profile attractions or museums, if you have a few extra days and a car, head up to enjoy the natural beauty of the coast and soak in some of the county’s artistic history.”

  A sign on the restaurant’s window indicates that they have WiFi. “Oh, thank the Great Leprechaun in the Sky,” I say. And the place is open, though we seem to be the only people inside, and when we walk in, the waitress looks at us like we’re the children of Bigfoot.