And We're Off

by Dana Schwartz

  Maeve smiles sweetly and looks down. When she’s up, nobody comments on the drawing I did. We get to keep each other’s drawings of us, but I wish I could have mine back. I’m overcome with the urge just to rip it up into as many pieces as physically possible.

  A gray cat the color of lint and larger than any cat should be weaves between my legs and starts making a noise that’s less purring and more vibrating. Áine dips in and picks the cat up, causing it to immediately droop in her arms like it’s given up on being a sentient being.

  “Maeve, will you make sure Bartholomeow behaves?” she says, shoving the cat onto Maeve’s lap. Already, Maeve is the favorite. She had the best drawing, and Áine already trusts her with the studio cat. Once Bartholomeow is on Maeve’s lap, he begins purring. In fact, I think he might actually be snoring. Oh great, she’s a cat whisperer too. Gold stars for Maeve, insecurity complexes for the rest of us.

  15

  Dear Lena,

  So I’m two days into the program, and it’s insanely cool/intimidating/fun/inspiring/terrifying. When I say we’re in rural Ireland, this is what you should picture: a small town, and then twenty minutes away from the small town, a road with a pub and a church. And then, surrounded by farmland, the studio where we work. When you get to town, it’s a different story, but I swear, there are more cows and sheep than people in the one-mile radius around my studio.

  The program is run by this married couple: Declan and Áine (which I have yet to pronounce correctly—it’s harder than it seems). Declan dresses like the headmaster of the world’s most fashionable prep school—he’s always in a full suit with a jacket and tie, and most of them are patterned. I can’t describe how odd it is to see a man in a polka-dot suit and purple shoes strolling through a field filled with dirty farm equipment and horses too old to ride. It’s like an Alice in Wonderland fever dream. He’s definitely the hard-ass of the program. In two days he’s given us about half a dozen lectures on technique and muscle memory and forgetting anything about your work that you considered to be any good and starting over from the ground up.

  Áine (even in my head I know I’m pronouncing it wrong; maybe you can do better than me) is like everyone’s mom here. I’ve never heard her say anything critical of anyone’s work. Like, the worst that she’s said was yesterday, when one of the boys (he’s from California, but I can’t remember his name) was painting a landscape from the window, and the colors were totally off. Áine suggested that he try painting the rest of it without touching white or black paint. And so he really had to focus on the colors of things—that fence isn’t really black, it’s dark blue with green streaks, you know. And it came out so much better! Áine is all about “releasing your inner artist” (she says that all the time). Everyone loves her.

  My real mother, on the other hand, has been fine, considering. Still clearly missing my dad and worried about her job, for some reason, even though she said that taking a vacation wouldn’t be an issue at all. I do feel bad. She’s lonely, and she’s been lonely since she and dad got divorced.

  I think I told you about the time I came downstairs around eleven P.M. and saw her watching their wedding video. I was behind the couch, so I couldn’t actually see her face, just her reflection in the window. And she was crying. I didn’t know what to do. I guess, now, in retrospect, I should have comforted her, told her that it was for the best, that I love her, and that I’m here for her, but in retrospect everything’s easy. I was embarrassed for her. I snuck back upstairs as quietly as I could and managed to get back into bed without her hearing me.

  Is there a long German word that sums up the combination of shame and discomfort when a child sees her parent cry? It’s this terrible combination of wanting to help someone you love but hating the feeling that you have to be the one to comfort your parent. Is this making any sense? I’m sorry I’m rambling. The good news is, she’s leaving in two days, and so I won’t have to worry about this anymore or be distracted from my art.

  My art! The art here is really hard, and everyone is really, really good. We sketched this animal skull that Declan placed in the middle of the table. You would have hated it. Just imagine three hours of near silence (just the low background jazz music Declan plays) while we all just drew in a circle. Mine came out fine, a little lopsided, but fine. But almost everyone else’s had . . . something. I don’t know. Being here for two days around real artists, other people who take their art seriously—it makes me nervous.

  Maybe I’m not as good as I thought I was. I mean, I’m fine. I can draw, I know I can. But, like, one of the girls, Maeve, draws things that I could pick out as hers anywhere on the planet. She has something special. Maybe that’s the kind of thing you need to make it as an artist. Oh, and Maeve is also Declan and Áine’s actual daughter! She lives here, near Donegal, with the coolest parents in the world, probably making art together all the time. I am almost positive the universe will reach its heat death before I make art with my mother. And of course she’s gorgeous, with thick black hair and bangs like Zooey Deschanel, and she’s skinny in a way that everything she wears looks good on her. And the worst part is I can’t hate her because she’s also insanely nice. People like that are the worst.

  I did meet a boy—insert blushing emoji here, ha-ha—named Callum Cassidy, and yes, he is real, and yes, he is as adorably Irish as he sounds. We met at a pub my first night here (ALICE WAS ALSO AT THE PUB. IT WAS AS STRANGE AS IT SOUNDS), and he promised that we’d hang out again soon, even though it’s been a full thirty hours and he hasn’t messaged me yet. I hope Nick is better at texting you. The trip to Six Flags looked fun from your Instagrams.

  So, here’s hoping that the next two and a half weeks actually turn me into a good enough artist to get into RISD. Maeve could probably get in with both hands tied behind her back, painting with a brush in her mouth.

  Love you, miss you,

  hugs and kisses

  and all that,

  Nora

  * * *

  “I think it’s cute that you and Lena are writing each other real letters, with pen and paper,” my mom says as she slinks into my room. “I didn’t think any of you kids still did that.”

  I’m not sure if she’s trying to be friendly or passive-aggressive. It’s so hard to tell with her sometimes. “Well, Grandpa gave me that beautiful stationery.”

  “And it’s nice that you’re putting it to good use.” She sits on the corner of my bed. It’s the same pose she was in on my bed back home when she told me she and my dad were getting a divorce. She must realize it, because she almost immediately stands back up and runs her hand over the comforter to smooth out its wrinkles. “Is everything okay with you and Lena, with her new boyfriend? I know that can be hard sometimes.”

  What is this conversation? Why does my mom think that just by coming into my room, we’ll suddenly have a magical Gilmore Girls relationship where we dish and gab about how my best friend just starting dating the boy who took my virginity then stopped talking to me, and how that same best friend still doesn’t know. Because I didn’t tell her. Because I was embarrassed. Because I was heartbroken.

  “It’s totally fine,” I say. “We’re fine. Why wouldn’t we be?”

  In a completely un-Alice move, my mom ignores the sharpness in my voice.

  “How was the first day of your program?” she asks.

  What I could say:

  Well, to be honest, it was kind of stressful because all the other kids have cool accents and seem so sophisticated. They already have unique artistic voices, and I’m just here trying to go from cartoons to serious art and realizing that everything I’ve been taught just isn’t enough. And what if you were right all along? Being a professional artist is hard, but I was always willing to put the work in. But it’s becoming increasingly obvious that my talents are above average at best, so what if hard work isn’t enough?

 
What I do say:

  It was fine!

  I see by the look on her face that this was the wrong answer. “Fine?” she repeats back. “I come in here asking about your day, about the program that we both traveled halfway around the world to get to, and you give me ‘fine’?”

  “I never asked you to come, okay? I’ve made that abundantly clear.”

  “Well, I am here, and I asked my daughter how her day went.”

  “It was kind of stressful, okay? I’m used to drawing cartoons. I don’t do a lot of this stuff, and a lot of the other students are really good at it.”

  She needs to take a moment to process the realization that I actually confided something about my life. “Maybe it’s a good wake-up call, that art makes a better hobby.”

  The fury in my chest that I had been letting carefully dim erupts. This is why I didn’t share with her in the first place.

  “Mom. I don’t want your advice right now,” I say as calmly as I can. If I start yelling, the argument is lost. “I have a friend who gives me advice.” I gesture to the letter I’m sending to Lena. “And I need to be around people who actually respect what I’m doing and how hard it is.”

  My mom opens her mouth, and in that split second I’m not sure if it’s going to be rage or apology, and maybe neither is she, because just then the door opens and Evelyn pops her head through the gap.

  “Sorry to interrupt, darlings. Alice, dear, can I get your help downstairs?”

  The timing is too perfect. I wonder if Evelyn had been waiting outside the door, hearing our conversation grow more tense, waiting for the best moment to pull my mom away before we exploded like a cigarette and a gas station.

  My mom nods and follows Evelyn out.

  Two more days. Just two more days and my mother will be on a plane back to Chicago.

  16

  I FEEL LIKE I’m in one of Grandpa’s paintings. My mom, Evelyn, and I sit by the fireplace (with an actual fire going, I might add) and quietly read while rain patters against the window. Evelyn insisted on pouring each of us a glass of Baileys (“Over ice! The only way to drink it!”), and so now here I am: in an armchair, a book in my left hand and a glass of dessert-flavored alcohol in my right hand, like I’m a retired shipping magnate at his seaside manor, waiting for his trained beagle to bring him slippers.

  My mom has been devouring a copy of Pride and Prejudice that Evelyn had in her library, reading feverishly, as if Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy were flirting and fighting in real time. I see the appeal: Minus the whole “needing her daughter to get married as soon as possible,” my mother is Mrs. Bennett incarnate, incapable of keeping herself out of every detail of my life.

  “Find any characters in there that you relate to particularly well?” I ask.

  “I’m reading, honey,” she says. And she goes back to the book.

  I sigh. And then I sigh again, a little bit louder, because no one seemed to recognize or care about the original sigh. I’m bored, that’s the problem. I’ve spent so much time painting and drawing in the studio that if I pull out my sketchpad, I think my hands will take over for my brain and start drawing the words: PLEASE STOP GIVE US A BREAK. I sigh a third time, even louder, but neither Evelyn nor my mother responds. I bounce up and down on the chair a little bit, kicking my legs.

  “Mind the cushions,” Evelyn says, her eyes never leaving her book.

  I turn to the window and pick a single droplet of water to trace as it floats down the pane. It’s like a horse race. I root for my droplet to win, silently willing it to combine with nearby droplets to gain mass and speed. There! Go! It’s almost made it to the window ledge and—

  “Nora. Stop shaking your leg.” My mother’s voice distracts me from the water droplet, and I miss its moment of landing.

  “I feel like I’m a sixty-five-year-old retired shipping magnate in his seaside manor, waiting for, like, trained beagles to bring me my slippers.”

  No one responds to my hilarious joke.

  I sigh again, even louder, and try to go back to my book. It was written by a semi-famous white boy, and it contains humorous short stories that were published in the New Yorker that everyone called wry and deft. For some reason, I haven’t been able to get through the first story (about a fisherman who’s trying to catch boots on purpose).

  I’m saved by a glorious ding from my cell phone. (If Pavlov were still alive, he’d have a hell of a time watching teenagers salivate at the sound of an iPhone notification.) My heart practically leaps out of my chest when I see that I’ve just received a Facebook message from Irish superhero Callum Cassidy.

  Callum Cassidy:

  up to much?

  Nora Parker-Holmes:

  nah. just at home (evelyn’s home), reading and drinking baileys

  Callum Cassidy:

  Sounds like Grandpa’s ideal evening.

  I am vindicated!

  Nora Parker-Holmes:

  hahahahahahahahahaha

  Callum Cassidy:

  new plan: come out with me and some mates to a cèilidh in town

  Problem: It’s still raining outside, and it’s about a twenty-minute walk to town. There’s no way I can get there without looking like a drowned rat. Follow up concern: This is a random boy I met in a bar. Aren’t young women warned about that? After all, there is a distinct and altogether completely legitimate possibility that I was so distracted by Callum’s accent that I missed signs of him being a complete creep.

  Completely Plausible Scenario

  IRISH-ACCENTED BOY

  I enjoy hobbies such as staring at the sun and kicking babies.

  ME

  (Distracted by said accent)

  Please let me put my face on your face.

  On the other hand, he likes to read. And he liked my cartoons. And has that accent. And hey! I’m young! And I want to go to a party with a cute Irish boy whose name I can’t pronounce.

  There’s still, of course, the rain issue.

  Callum Cassidy:

  I can come pick u up in 20

  That was easy.

  Nora Parker-Holmes:

  I’m in! See you soon :)

  I contemplate the use of a winky face but decide it’s best to leave something to the imagination.

  “I’m going to a party!” I announce to the room.

  Evelyn smiles.

  “With whom?” my mother says.

  “Uh, that boy I met at the pub. And some of his friends.”

  Alice closes Pride and Prejudice, which is how I know she’s serious, because there was not a single point in the past hour when she has lifted her eyes from the page. “You’re running off with a boy when you don’t even know his name? Or where he’s from?”

  “I do know his name!” What a great feeling. It’s like when the teacher calls on you because she doesn’t think you’re paying attention, and truth be told you’re not, but then you get the answer right anyway. “It’s Callum. Callum Cassidy! And he lives with his mom in Dublin!”

  My mom pauses. “And where is this party?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but he said he’d pick me up.” I hear it as I say it, the assertion that it’s totally fine to get in a car headed toward an unknown place with a strange boy in a foreign country where I know no one. It screams red flag.

  My mom’s mouth tightens into a thin line. “I’m worried about you. I know you want to have a good time with your friends, and I want that for you too, but this i
s a worrisome situation.”

  I can’t really defend the choice, other than by resorting to a petulant tantrum, which statistically and historically has a very low success rate, but before I can even stop myself the words spill out: “This is exactly why everything would be better if you weren’t here.”

  I can see I’ve hurt her. She recoils at the words and folds her hands on her lap tightly. “I’m sorry,” I murmur, and I’m not sure if she hears me or not, because she doesn’t react.

  And then my guardian angel makes another appearance.

  “Callum is a sweet boy,” Evelyn says, putting her book down on her lap and clasping her hands together.

  “You know him?” My mother’s face softens just a bit.

  “Of course,” Evelyn says. “The Cassidys live just up the road. Callum’s a good boy. I’ve known him since he was a tyke. Nora will be fine!”

  My mom turns back to look at me, and I give her my most responsible smile.

  “Okay,” she says. “Try to be back before midnight?” She looks back at Evelyn, who nods, and I breathe a giant sigh of relief. I’m going to a party with a cute Irish boy named Callum!

  I look down at the flannels and oversized Northwestern hoodie that I’m wearing. “I’m going to change.” Evelyn smiles, and my mom, in pure Mrs. Bennett fashion, nods enthusiastically. And I smile in spite of myself, thinking of my mom reading in Evelyn’s chintz chair and wanting me to have a good time.

  * * *

  Callum arrives in a green pickup truck, because my life has suddenly become a Taylor Swift song. EDM that I don’t recognize blasts from the speakers, and an iPhone attached to an aux cord dangles precariously from the dashboard. A boy is already in the front seat, so I slide into the back.

  “Nora, Michael. Michael, Nora.” Callum needs to shout so that we can hear him over the music. “Should’ve made him slide in back for you. Michael’s not much of a gentleman.”