by Jen Bryant
doesn’t even know it, and probably
doesn’t care.
11.
I took Blake for a long walk after school.
We’re lucky that your dog is real healthy
and has to go to the vet only for his annual exam.
(We use the SPCA community clinic. It costs just twelve dollars
and they give us free heartworm medicine
and flea powder for a year.) Once in a while he tries
to get Daddy to play,
but like everything else that reminds him of you,
Daddy mostly ignores him.
Blake just turned ten—that’s seventy in dog years, I think—
but he’s still high-strung. He drives Daddy
crazy at night, whining and pacing
if he doesn’t get enough time outside. He doesn’t bark much,
and he’s stopped chasing Mr. Kesey’s geese, which is good,
’cause I’m sure Daddy’d make me give him away
if he annoyed our landlord.
I used to dread going out in the cold to take Blake for walks
or to run him in the fields, but lately I don’t mind as much
’cause it seems like I’ll E-X-P-L-O-D-E
if I stay inside our trailer for more than an hour or so.
Like today, for instance…the snow had melted a little,
and there was mud everywhere.
I walked the first half-mile, then I started jogging, and then I ran—
for no good reason, I just ran—
the whole rest of the bridle trail and across
both big pastures and all the way
up the hill. My shoes got soaked, the back of my jacket got
splattered, and my leg muscles ached.
But I felt so much better—like the wind and mud
had sucked out some of my restlessness.
Whenever I get like this, when I feel like I
just drank twelve cherry Cokes, or like the top of my head
will pop off at any moment,
I start thinking something’s wrong with me.
Once, I asked Mrs. Reed about it. She said:
“Georgia, I think you’re a pretty normal seventh grader.
All those hormones swooshing through your body
will make you moody,
but don’t you worry too much about it.”
That made me feel okay…for about a day.
And lately when I get to feeling that way,
I put Blake on a leash and just get out.
If it’s not too muddy, we head over to Tiffany’s
(Mrs. O’Neill’s real picky about her driveway
getting paw prints on it).
But she’s hardly ever home. She’s usually at
basketball practice, lacrosse practice, or religious classes.
Last year, at one of her lacrosse games,
she got tripped and fell on her wrist.
She broke it in two places and had to have
an operation to set it straight. Then she got an infection
and had to stay in the hospital for a whole week.
You’d think with all the sports she plays
an injury would make her miserable.
But when I visited her,
she said it was the first time in months she’d had a rest.
“I’m gonna enjoy this,” she told me.
“The food’s no worse than what I usually have after practice,
and there’s no coach, no sprints or laps.
It’s like those hotels we stay in with my travel team,
but I have unlimited cable TV,
and I can stay up late ’cause I don’t have to play
in a tournament early the next day.”
We played cards (one-handed War—
I played one-handed, too, so it’d be fair)
and did crossword puzzles and watched
the Hitchcock Film Festival on HBO.
Tiffany got more thoughtful
while she was laid up.
“Maybe I’ll quit the summer swim team, or maybe
I’ll play only one sport and take up horseback riding just for fun,”
she said while we were watching Psycho for the third time,
and I reminded her that she was only
the fastest backstroker in the county
and the star guard on the school basketball team
and maybe she’d feel different after she
laid around a while longer. To cheer her up,
I told her I wouldn’t mind
having enough money to pay for
a pool membership,
a lacrosse stick and uniform,
a new pair of Nikes, a backboard and hoop,
and I sure wouldn’t mind traveling
all over the state on Saturdays,
instead of cutting coupons and food shopping all morning,
and spending the afternoon bathing and braiding
other people’s horses for the Sunday shows.
Tiffany just looked at me, and we both
laughed, remembering when she tried to teach me how
to catch and throw a lacrosse ball
and how I accidentally cracked her mother’s kitchen window
and how, when we went swimming at her country club,
I swam back and forth across the lanes
instead of up and down.
“I think you are a lot less dangerous
with a sketch pad and pencil,” she said,
and I had to agree.
12.
From our trailer, it’s a ten-minute walk
to the little shopping center
where the Route I shuttle bus comes.
If I get on and ride three stops, I can get off right
at the traffic light by the
Brandywine River Museum.
Whoever sent me the membership
also sent me this schedule: Open 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily,
Closed Christmas Day, and a brochure about its history,
which I’ve already read five times.
I also looked at their Web site
and at a book in the school library
while I was supposed to be
researching cell division for science.
So far, this is what I know:
The building used to be an old mill and sits
right on the riverbank.
A lot of the stuff inside was painted by three guys
from the same family, all named Wyeth.
The grandfather, N. C. Wyeth, was the oldest.
He was a famous illustrator who painted
pictures for adventure books like Kidnapped and Treasure Island.
The Web site said he and his wife had five kids
and he encouraged them all to be creative.
His youngest kid was Andrew,
and I think he must be famous, too,
’cause the Web site had links to articles about him in
the New York Times and the Washington Post.
But Andrew’s paintings are a lot different from his father’s.
He doesn’t use a lot of color, and he doesn’t
always paint people
(N. C.’s illustrations almost always have people).
Andrew seems more obsessed with the land—
streams and fences, fallen logs and branches, patches of half-melted
snow and dry grass.
You’d think they’d be boring, but each one
is a little mysterious, like something had just happened,
or is about to happen.
Andrew’s son James (they call him Jamie)
paints portraits of people
(the one in the book was of President Kennedy—
he looked real serious, but it was good, I thought)
and also portraits of animals: One was a big pink pig
and another was a huge raven,
but Mrs. Mc
Given caught me
not doing my science, so I had to put the book
back before I could see more.
I’d rather not go to the museum alone, at least not the first time.
I considered telling Tiffany about my anonymous gift,
then asking her to come with me.
But I know she has basketball practice and then lacrosse
and then she has to write an essay for American history
that was due last Friday, when she was
away at a tournament. And anyway, Tiffany has been so
jittery lately, I’m not sure she’d stand still long enough
to actually see the paintings.
I’d take Blake, but they
don’t allow pets.
So I guess I’ll go by myself, after all.
Tomorrow. Right after school.
This is one of those times, Momma, I really do wish
you were here.
part 2
“When I get an idea that means a lot to me, I just bury myself in it.”
—Andrew Wyeth
13.
I got the last seat on the shuttle, way in the back,
where there are no windows. I couldn’t see past
the two fat ladies in front of me, so I had no idea
where we were. I would have missed my stop
if the driver hadn’t turned around and said:
“Honey, didn’t you mean to get off here?”
I thanked her and made sure my watch was set
the same as her clock
so I’d catch the last ride back.
It was a short walk past the gray and tan
sign by the highway
and into the gravel driveway leading to the museum.
My hands were shaking and my stomach
was flip-flopping when I showed my membership card
to the lady in the booth.
She nodded and pointed through the cobblestone courtyard
to the brick steps that fanned out like a skirt
below the entrance.
Unless you took me to one when I was little—
and if you did, I don’t remember it—this was my first visit
to an art museum. Miss Benedetto tried to take us
to the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
but when one of the seventh-grade mothers discovered
they had a show on Michelangelo that included nudes,
the PTA made us go
to a paint factory instead.
The guard inside the entrance looked at me hard.
I guess he saw I was new…. He walked over to the table
marked “Admissions Desk” and brought me
a map and a floor plan.
He led me upstairs and through a hall that’s all
glass on one side and you feel like you could stride right out
over the Brandywine River. At the first room,
he smiled, nodded, and left me
alone. I liked that. Right away I liked that
no one was going to follow me around like I was some
bad kid who shouldn’t be there.
I was a little nervous—
the people I’ve seen in pictures of art museums always have
nice clothes and shoes
and they look like they know something.
But once I started looking at the paintings and reading
the little white signs next to them on the wall,
I didn’t feel nervous at all.
The upstairs room was full of N. C. Wyeths,
and I saw right away that the photos in the books
did not come close to the real thing. That man loved his
bright colors and he painted big. Four framed paintings
of Indians came first
(Mr. Hendershot would say “Native Americans,”
but even the descriptions next to the paintings said “Indians,”
so I guess things were different back then).
In the one called The Guardians, three old men in deerskin
are sitting cross-legged on a ridge.
One wears a necklace of bear claws and one
has eagle feathers around his head. The last one has enormous
dark brown hands, like Daddy’s, and his shoulders are
draped in skins. They look lean and fit,
like they were chiseled right out of the rock.
Then came one with a long title:
The Children Were Playing at Marriage-by-Capture.
A boy wearing nothing but a thin cloth tied around his hips
is chasing a girl in a deerskin dress as she
leaps over a creek. I counted twenty-five diagonal lines.
(In art class, Miss Benedetto is always making us
draw lines through paintings so we’ll “see the geometry.”
Of course, I just drew them with my eyes this time.)
On the October Trail (A Navaho Family) was next—
a handsome man on a brown horse, his wife riding beside him
on a donkey, a tiny baby strapped to her back.
What a great view that baby must have had…
watching eagles and flocks of hawks,
thunderclouds and the tops of distant mountains.
A single Indian in his canoe, on a wide, foamy river,
steep canyons rising on either side…
That one was called In the Crystal Depths.
The Indian’s oar is still. He’s staring down, looking for something—
or maybe he’s thinking—or maybe he’s admiring his reflection,
like that Narcissus guy we read about in English.
Something about it was sad.
N. C. Wyeth’s pirates came next.
These were big paintings, too, and he used lots
of browns, yellows, and blues.
The pirates have nasty faces and some have gold hoop
earrings and head scarves and carry knives.
I wanted to read more about them on the signs,
but it was already after 4:00,
so I had to go.
On the bus ride, I realized I hadn’t seen one picture
by Andrew or Jamie Wyeth (there wasn’t time!).
I realized that even if I go there right after school,
I will only have an hour or so. But whoever
anonymous is, whoever
gave me that membership, must know that….
so I’ll go whenever I can.
The shuttle dropped me back at the shopping center
at quarter till five, and I was inside our trailer
in less than ten minutes. I went right to my
nightstand, pulled out this diary, and started writing, my heart
pounding like a bass drum.
Then Daddy called and said I should go ahead with dinner,
’cause he had to wait for the foreman to sign some papers
and he’d be home sometime after 8:00. I made
my voice sound casual on the phone,
like I’d spent the whole afternoon at home,
doing nothing.
14.
Mr. Krasinski caught me
sketching Indians in the margins
of my math book. He was trying to teach us x to the third power,
but all I could think about
were those N. C. Wyeth paintings—
that baby looking at the sky, and that one
lonely guy staring into the river.
Mr. K. made me stay in
for lunch to work on some extra problems. But even then
I kept picturing those three Indian men
sitting on that mountain, that canoe in the canyon,
those Navajo with their donkey and their baby.
Half of my mind was working on x to the third times twenty,
while the other half was wondering
if I’ll ever have enough money for proper art supplies
and
if I will ever find someone to teach me
how to use them. Next year Old Mrs. Finnegan is retiring
and they’re hiring
a new art teacher for eighth grade, so I don’t know
if the new teacher will give me
charcoal and sketchbooks for free, like Miss B.
Mr. Krasinski corrected my stuff. He said I got enough
right to make up for my not paying attention in class.
“Georgia, I know you prefer to draw, but you’re going to have to
deal with numbers your whole life, so I’d
take this class more seriously, if I were you.”
He doesn’t know that
I do think about numbers all the time…
at least when it comes to money. I have tried to put aside
some of what I’ve earned from the horse boarders
for when I’m sixteen and get my license.
Tiffany says in two years, when she’s sixteen,
her father’s going to give her his blue BMW,
“’cause by then he’ll want a new one in a different color.”
I laughed when she told me that.
But when I saw she wasn’t kidding,
I almost cried.
15.
I stayed after today ’cause
Tiffany had a play-off basketball game against Pennfield.
It’ll be the best one, she wrote on the note she passed in math,
and my father can drive you home when it’s done.
She knows I’m not much of a sports fan…. I don’t really get
all the fuss about strategies and scores,
and after glow-in-the-dark flea collars, I think cheerleaders
are the stupidest things ever invented.
But I do like basketball—Daddy is a big 76ers fan,
and I watch their games with him whenever I can. Besides, even if
you’re someone who doesn’t know squat about sports,
you would see right away
that Tiffany is good.
In the first half, she scored fourteen points and had six assists,
