And We're Off

by Dana Schwartz

  “You’ll be able to come back to Paris at some point in your life,” she says quietly.

  “Yeah, some point in my life,” I parrot back at her. “How long as it been since you came back?”

  “Hey. Do not take that tone with me. I apologized. These were unlucky circumstances. We just weren’t meant to visit the Musée Delpont.”

  The employees and I all respond in unison. “Musée Delacroix.” I roll my eyes and storm out of the building, my mother following close behind. “I just want to go back to the hotel, okay?” I say, swinging back around to face her. “My feet hurt from walking in circles so much.”

  Our cab ride back is so quiet that the driver puts on the radio. At times my mother looks over at me and takes a breath like she wants to say something, but instead she releases it in a sigh and stares out the window. I fantasize about a different version of this trip, one where I’m alone, where I went to the museum and met a tall stranger, probably a British boy studying at the Sorbonne, and we fell in love and went to La Belle Hortense together at night.

  Maybe if things had gone differently today, I’d ask my mom to go back with me to the bar/bookstore this evening. But now my feet are swollen, fat baby cows in my shoes, and all I want to do is take a nap.

  8

  THE NEXT MORNING, I decide to leave the hotel without checking in with my mother to see if she’s in the café with her coffee and a newspaper. I leave a note in the room (Musée d’Orsay and art project, with the word “art” underlined several times) and decide that I have fulfilled my daughterly obligations. Dinner last night (quiet, in a restaurant near the hotel) was about as friendly as the United Nations cafeteria after hostage negotiations.

  But when I open the door to head out, I find myself face-to-face with my mother, her face dripping with sweat, dressed head to toe in lululemon workout clothes. Where did she even find a gym? This old boutique hotel definitely doesn’t have one.

  “Hi, honey,” she says, wiping the sweat off her forehead and sliding past me to get into the room.

  “I’m going to the museum.” I point to my backpack full of art supplies for emphasis.

  Her face falls. “Give me thirty minutes to hop in the shower and I’ll come with you!”

  But I’ve already started walking down the hallway toward the elevator. “I want as much time there as possible,” I call out over my shoulder. “Sorry!”

  If she responds, I don’t hear it.

  * * *

  I pass a bakery, and the smell of buttery, sugary something makes my mouth literally water. I half-expect to be carried like a cartoon, floating horizontally, on the whiff toward the source of the smell by my nose.

  Using my expert international language skills (pointing and smiling), I buy a round, curled bun with raisins in its folds. I plan on eating it while I walk, but after I take the first bite—a slight crunch into sweet, bready, crumbly paradise—I realize that the pastry deserves my respect. It’s far too good to eat while I’m preoccupied with something else, even walking. So I stand outside the bakery, chewing away, feeling very grown-up, even when flakes of pastry coat the front of my dress. This is what my entire trip should be like, I think. This is freedom.

  The line for the Musée d’Orsay moves quickly. “Just one?” an attendant with a heavy accent asks when I reach the velvet rope. I wonder how he knows that I’m American. “Art student?” he inquires when he sees my backpack. I nod. I’m an art student! It’s a title I try on like a hat, and I like it a lot.

  All art museums have something familiar in their DNA: sculptures in the open hall that no one knows quite how long to look at, a man with a gray ponytail and a port wine turtleneck self-consciously massaging his chin with two fingers like a caricature of an intellectual, an impossibly thin girl who sets up an easel in one of the galleries, a retirement-aged docent talking too quietly for her tour group to hear. In that way, the Musée d’Orsay is just like the Art Institute in Chicago.

  Grandpa used to take me once a year, calling our house at seven fifty A.M. on a random weekday, surprising me just as I was about to leave for school.

  “Call in sick, we’re playing hooky,” he’d say, and my mom would roll her eyes and clear her throat but oblige, and we’d go back inside and wait for Grandpa Robert’s olive-green Pontiac to pull into our driveway.

  “You can’t keep doing this,” Mom would say, tight-lipped.

  “Art is an important part of her education, Al,” he’d respond, winking at me. Grandpa Robert is the only person who calls my mother Al.

  And then we’d be off, stopping to eat at a diner where he knew all the waitresses by their first names. Once we’d arrived at the museum, I’d always make sure we started on the second floor: the American painters exhibit. It housed my favorite paintings: American Gothic—always surrounded by a tour group—in one room, and in the next, Nighthawks, that classic scene of lonely souls sharing space (but not much else) in a diner.

  And then, when I was seven, The Reader and the Watcher, Grandpa’s most famous painting, and the only one of his in the Art Institute.

  I cringe thinking back on how proud I was, or arrogant, or obnoxious—the way kids tend to be before they develop a filter—the first time I saw the painting hanging in that museum.

  “Grandpa! Look!” I pointed and tugged on his windbreaker. He smiled at me. I ripped my hand from his and ran up to a stranger who was admiring the painting.

  “That’s my grandpa!” I said to the stranger. He was a young man, maybe thirty.

  “Oh, cool.”

  “NO. He painted it! There!” I jabbed my finger dangerously close to the canvas. “That’s his signature, right there. RP. Robert Parker.” I then pointed at Grandpa, who probably gave an embarrassed wave.

  “Hey, no way!” The young guy introduced himself—he was an art student or something—and soon, more people realized what was going on and introduced themselves as well.

  “Beautiful use of negative space,” one of the strangers said.

  “What was it like to break out after so many years of struggling?” another asked.

  “It’s an honor, sir,” said a woman, extending her hand.

  For the rest of the visit, a whisper followed us throughout the museum. I preened like a peacock the entire time, a smirk on my face, proud to be walking next to the Robert Parker, but more proud that I was his granddaughter, inextricably linked to him. I was tied by my blood to one of The Greats.

  Later, I asked Grandpa why he hadn’t told people right away that the painting was his. If it were me, I would have declared it loudly, and probably set up a small booth signing autographs.

  Grandpa swiped at his nose and crinkled his eyes, pulling me into focus. “That’s not why I became a painter, bear. I painted before I became well-known, and I’ll paint after no one wants to buy my work anymore.”

  Even now, I don’t fully understand Grandpa’s attitude toward his fame. I mean, I understand his love of art—the way the world slips away and time speeds up when I’m working. For me, painting feels like the way people describe yoga or their gluten-free lifestyles: It makes me feel whole. Still, I wouldn’t say no to some notoriety if I got it.

  To be perfectly honest, though, even more than Grandpa’s success, I’m jealous of his style, the way nearly everyone in the world can see a painting of his and know instantly that it’s a Robert Parker original. They recognize his distinctive lines, the way he draws noses and eyelids, how his figures are always lit from behind. Every one of my paintings, on the other hand, is filtered through the style of the last good piece I saw. I’m still searching for my identity, and I’m often afraid that I’ll never find it.

  * * *

  Should I open Grandpa’s envelope now? I have it, zipped into the same compartment in my purse as my passport. I finger its edges through the fabric. But the instructions specifically stated that I should open it after
visiting the museum. So, with a self-satisfied sigh, I begin walking through the exhibits, hoping that I seem like a contemplative French artist/model and not a slightly jet-lagged American high school student.

  I nearly jump a little when I see a painting I recognize. It’s a van Gogh—I can tell from the thick brushstrokes and color palette—and it’s of a church. I’m proud of myself for recognizing the artist as I check the placard to the side of the painting (The Church at Auvers) before feeling decidedly less proud when I realize that the painting looks familiar because it was in an episode of Doctor Who.

  Being here, in the museum, reminds me of when I was ten and my dad and I took a road trip to the Grand Canyon while my mom was away at a conference. We drove for three days straight, staying in motels and eating drive-thru McDonald’s with the conspiratorial air of criminals. (“Mom isn’t around to see us get large fries!”) Finally, on a damp morning, we drove toward a scenic lookout where a splintery wooden fence was the only thing keeping us from a steep fall.

  The canyon was amazing, breathtaking, all of the adjectives people use when talking about natural wonders of the world. And then, like a director was cueing it somewhere, the clouds pulled back and revealed it was ten times bigger than we initially thought.

  I was speechless. The two of us just stared for a long time, not taking our eyes off the painted orange streaks, trying to grasp just how enormous the thing was. That feeling of being completely overwhelmed, of insignificance in the face of greatness: That’s how I feel now, in the museum.

  * * *

  I hover in the back of a small tour group being led by a short girl with a Scottish accent. She must be an adult—she’s in a skirt and a tucked-in white button-down shirt and a floral scarf that marks her as an employee of the museum—but she doesn’t look older than sixteen. How does someone have her life together that much? To come from a different country and land a job at one of the best museums in Paris at such a young age? And even if she’s not actually sixteen, she’s infuriatingly beautiful and probably wears sunblock every day to look so young, which means she has her shit together even more than it seemed at first glance.

  Without even meaning to, I join the tour group, first skulking behind the American couple with a baby strapped to the father’s chest and a group of German boys who look about fourteen and then, when I couldn’t quite hear, getting bolder and coming right alongside the tour guide. She doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, when I sidle up next to her, she gives me a small smile.

  I miss the title of the painting, but I can see the subject matter clearly: a woman’s lower body, her pelvis on display beneath a lifted sheet, her legs spread and a cloud of pubic hair in the center of the canvas. Her arms and legs are out of frame—if she weren’t curled erotically she would look like the torso of a cadaver left after a serial killer.

  “Obviously, when the piece was first displayed, its erotic nature caused some controversy. But the name—L’Origine du monde, or The Origin of the World—is meant to be more symbolic than sexual. Courbet features more than the woman’s—uh—genitalia; he’s showing us her womb, literally the source of all life. Now, this next painting was equally if not more controversial upon its first display . . . let’s see if you can figure out why.”

  She gestures us toward a very different painting, a bleak scene of a woman sitting at a café table, staring down at her glass. A man sits down the bench from her, and it’s not until I look closer that I realize impressionist brushstrokes give him the pallid face of a zombie clown.

  “This painting was released to outrage, the type that you’d see today if Disney put out a Quentin Tarantino movie.” Her pause for laughter is met only by a slight chuckle from one of the German boys. “It was shocking, to say the least,” she continues, only slightly put off by the lack of audience participation. “Some said grotesque. You can see the woman’s face, sullen, almost green, in line with the buffoon’s face behind her. L’Absinthe, named for the drink before the woman, is the strong bitter beverage flavored with anise. Has anyone here had anise yet?” The American family stares blank faced, and one of the German boys raises his hand. His three companions laugh and pull it down. I can’t tell what sport the jerseys they’re wearing are for. “No?” the tour guide continues, looking at us. “I recommend you try it while you’re here in France. Enjoy it in moderation.”

  I raise my hand. Slightly confused, the tour guide gestures toward me.

  “You don’t have to raise your hand,” she says.

  “Sorry, I mean, why did they think the painting was so grotesque? It looks fine.” And it does. Sure, the faces are somber and slightly blurred, but it’s a quiet, composed scene, a nineteenth-century French Nighthawks. I can’t imagine pulling the curtain off a painting of a woman quietly drinking a glass of absinthe to the sound of gasps and the swoons of fainting women, too shocked to remain upright, or conscious.

  “Well,” she begins. The American couple move in closer, interested, until the baby gives a whimper of discomfort. Why would you even bring a baby to a museum? What could it possibly learn? I assume this is a sort of playing-Mozart-in-the-womb type of thing. The husband gives his wife a sympathetic glance and takes a few steps away, hushing the baby. The wife, who I see has a few tattoos creeping from under her tank top, moves in closer to the tour guide. “It’s certainly a departure from Degas’s other works, the ballerina paintings for which he’s known. The scene is . . . sad. The woman is on her own, the man behind her sort of leering . . . I imagine it wasn’t the type of scene the wealthy Parisians would want in their sitting rooms.”

  One of the German boys bumps into me, pushed by one of his laughing friends. He regains his composure, looking me up and down. “Did you pay for dees group?” he asks, waggling an eyebrow. I back away slowly, and he leaves me with a cackle, descending into anonymity among the other boys in matching jerseys.

  The tour group moves on, now down to just the boys and the American woman, her husband now singing to the baby in the corner next to some Monets. I’m still staring at the painting, at the woman’s face, like if I could look at her for long enough without blinking she would move and invite me to join her. She does look sad, but not like she’s waiting for someone. She’s content. She’s where she’s supposed to be, but she doesn’t like it.

  In my mind, I compare it to Grandpa’s painting The Reader and the Watcher. The reader is content, while the man looking out the window is a model of impatience and anxiety. I once asked Grandpa what the story behind the painting was, who the people were, what the man was waiting for. He looked at me with his deep eyes and cleared his throat. He told me that the story is all in the painting and anything left over is supposed to be left over. I understand that looking at the woman with her glass of absinthe. I don’t want to know who she is or where she came from. I just need to know that she’s sad and lost in a scary place that’s turned brown and abstract and grotesque around her. The painting doesn’t make me want to faint; it makes me wish I were able to paint something that conveyed a twentieth of that much sadness.

  Maybe I haven’t been sad enough. Maybe my life has been too precious and protected in the cocoon of upper-middle-class suburbia to ever make anything worthwhile. Sure, I was sad when Dad left, but I can’t help but think that it was harder on my mom. She was the one in the kitchen with the open bottle of white wine like a sitcom’s depiction of the Sad Woman, the one who spent four months talking in tight sentences with a tone like a knife sharpened into a pin. I, on the other hand, saw my dad all the time. I still do—or, at least, I did. I’m not sure what will happen now that he’s in Arizona and I’m college-bound.

  I was sad when Nick stopped returning my text messages, and then, days later, sent a message longer than anything he’d ever sent before. But that was Taylor Swift–song sad, not artistic-existential-dread sad.

  I wander the museum for a couple more hours, but I’m preoccupied. With every painting I
pass, all I can think about is how much more sure the artists’ brushstrokes are than my own, how much cleaner and more purposeful every one of their movements must have been. Each painting seems at once to inspire me to create something a fraction as beautiful and discourage me from even trying because I’ll never match the talent on display. The awe and anxiety are still gnawing at me like a devil and angel on each of my shoulders when I leave the museum and step back into the Parisian sunlight, itching to open Grandpa’s envelope. With a burst of excitement, the angel finally wins. I get to paint something. In Paris. After visiting one of the most celebrated museums in the world. My fingers are twitching to get started, already half-drawing the outlines of figures in my pockets.

  Alice Parker might be somewhere in the city waiting for me, but it doesn’t matter. I have the company of van Gogh and Degas and Courbet and Manet, and their thoughts and feelings and memories are still swirling in my brain when I step out into the sunlit street.

  9

  HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE MUSÉE D’ORSAY AS MUCH AS I DID THE FIRST TIME I WENT TO PARIS AND AS MUCH AS YOUR MOTHER DID THE FIRST TIME SHE WENT TO PARIS. AND NOW, YOUR ASSIGNMENT:

  HEAD TO THE LEFT BANK AND PICK A CAFÉ. ORDER A CROISSANT, SIT DOWN, AND PARTAKE IN SOME PEOPLE-WATCHING. CONTINUE DOING THAT FOR AS LONG AS YOU NEED. WHEN YOU’RE READY, PICK A SUBJECT AND DRAW HIM/HER. MAKE SURE YOU’RE NOT SPOTTED. BY THE TIME YOU ARE FINISHED, YOU SHOULD FEEL LIKE YOU KNOW THIS PERSON.

  ANY MEDIUM.

  —RP

  I wish Grandpa were here right now so I could squeeze his hand and show him how excited I am to get started. Just being here, in Paris, so happy to be drawing, makes me feel like I’m doing right by him. He’s proud of me for everything I do, like any grandparent worth their salt: celebrating my mediocre soccer performances and B+ English papers with the kind of praise normally reserved for a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. But I know it’s my art that really makes him happy. The way the corners of his eyes crinkle when I finish a painting never fails to make me feel special and understood and loved.