And We're Off

by Dana Schwartz

  I go downstairs and find my mom cooking breakfast on the stove, with thick slices of Evelyn’s homemade bread already in the toaster. “Your backpack on already? We’re not leaving until this afternoon.”

  “What do you mean? I’m spending the weekend with Callum. In Galway.”

  My mom drops the spatula on the counter, and bits of scrambled egg fly into the air. “What? You didn’t tell me that.”

  Oh shit. No, no, I definitely didn’t. I really, really should have. I could’ve sworn . . . Nope. No. I didn’t. “Oh god, I am so sorry. I’ve been so busy trying to finish this project for Declan and spending more time with Maeve and Tess . . . I totally forgot to mention it. But,” I say, “in my defense, we do have that ‘no more commentary on my life, more freedom because you’re staying’ thing?”

  “Did you also forget,” she says, “that we were going to go to Belfast this weekend?”

  Double shit. Triple shit.

  Option A: Run. Run as fast as I can to the bus station, go to Galway, and live there forever. Change my name and begin a new life as Eimer the Shipbuilder.

  Option B: Melt into liquid form and disappear in the floorboards.

  Option C: Apologize profusely, and then apologize some more. Beg forgiveness, and then apologize again.

  “I am so sorry,” I say. Option C it is. I contemplate getting on my knees, but I decide against it. “I totally forgot.”

  “Well, that’s all right. Just make sure you message Callum before he makes too many plans.” She returns to her eggs.

  “Wait. I mean”—I struggle with choosing the right words—“I’m still planning on going with Callum. I mean, I want to go to Galway and . . . and see the Cliffs.”

  “So,” she says, “you are bailing on the plans that you and I made to go off with a boy you barely know.”

  “Mom, I’m sorry. I’m not bailing. Yes, I want to go with Callum. I made a mistake, but this trip is still supposed to be about me gaining some freedom. Like you promised, remember?”

  “I thought . . .” She pauses. “I thought that you would have wanted to spend some time with your mother. When you made plans with her. When she came halfway around the world to be with you. I mean, really, Nora, how selfish can you be?”

  And that’s when I lose it. “I never asked you to come!” I shout so loud that I’m probably waking Evelyn and half the town, but I don’t care. I’ve kept what I’ve wanted to say inside for too long, and now that it’s found a tiny hole to release the pressure, everything is coming out in full force. “You were never supposed to be here in the first place. And you were never supposed to stay this long! I’m selfish? ME? What about you? Crashing my trip and manipulating me into staying even longer than I originally agreed to? Why are you still here?”

  My mother sits down at the kitchen table. I have never seen her respond to confrontation this way. The flame is still on underneath the pan of eggs. They’re about to burn, but neither of us dares to move. “I lost my job, Nora.”

  The toaster dings.

  I try to wrap my head around what she just said. “Because . . . because of this trip? Because you’ve been gone for so long?”

  “No, Nora.” I don’t like the way she keeps repeating my name. “Before we left. I . . .” Her voice cracks. “Going back to work has been hard. I’m not as quick as I once was, or as I thought I would be, and they’re bringing in younger partners, and with you, and things changing, I just . . . It was the Edwards case. I made a mistake. And with Walter—I mean, with your father gone . . . I thought taking some time to go on this trip would help me figure out what to do next.”

  “No,” I say, synapses in my brain firing like an electrical storm. “Hold on. This happened before the trip? So this whole time—” My voice is sharper than it usually is, shriller. I don’t quite recognize myself, but at this moment, the most important thing is that my mom keeps talking, that I make sense of what she’s saying, because right now everything is just a blur.

  She’s hysterical now, hands shaking, hair frizzing at the temples. I haven’t seen her like this since the day after Dad left, and I’m about to comfort her when a terrible thought creeps into my brain.

  “At the airport, you told me—you said you wanted to come on this trip to ‘get to know me.’ I went along with it because I thought it was nice. I thought it was nice that my mother finally wanted to get to know me. But that’s not why you came. You . . . lied?”

  “What do you mean, Nora?”

  “I mean”—my voice is getting louder—“I mean all of that stuff you said, at the airport and here, about wanting to get to know me before I leave for college, it was all bullshit. You came here for you. To clear your head? You lied to me and guilt-tripped me and manipulated me so that you could control me. You couldn’t just let me have this one thing.”

  “You don’t understand what you’re saying,” she says, standing up. She walks over and turns off the stove with a definitive click. “Do you think it was easy having a baby when I was twenty-two, relying on help from a father who wasn’t sure when or if his next painting would ever sell? How hard it was to go back to work after your father left? I’ve been fighting to take care of myself my entire life.

  “When I tell you to come up with a plan B, it’s not because I don’t think art is a wonderful pastime. It’s because I want a daughter who’s able to take care of herself and will never need to rely on anybody else for anything. It’s because you’re being naive and unrealistic.”

  Heart rate up, I shout back: “But I’m good enough! I got into the Deece!”

  My mother laughs a bitter, terrible laugh. “You got into the Deece because your grandfather wrote you a letter of recommendation, Nora.”

  “He didn’t even know I applied!” I spit back. “I sent an application with my portfolio, which you would know if you paid attention to anything that ever mattered to me. If you paid attention to anything other than your stupid job and stupid clothes and stupid exercise.”

  My mother looks at me, her eyes aiming for sympathy but landing on condescension. “Of course he knew, Nora. Who do you think told him to write the letter of recommendation?”

  We look each other in the eye for the first time all morning. We’re both breathing heavily, and my mom’s eyes are watering.

  I turn around and storm up to my room, stomping so hard with each step it’s like I’m trying to transmit my rage and sadness into the floorboards. It doesn’t work.

  There are three unread messages from Callum on my phone: “Hey, you on your way?” “Bus coming soon!!” “You still coming?” I throw my phone as hard as I can onto my bed, where it bounces innocently on a pillow and lands on the floor. If I don’t look at it, it doesn’t exist.

  I hear my mom leave the cottage, and I’m left alone, lying on my bed, closing my eyes, and pressing my palm against my forehead, where a throbbing headache is blooming, hoping that in a few minutes my head will hurt less and everything will be less complicated. The day is going on without me, and I am here: stagnant, frozen, crying. I stay immobile on my bed as the buzzing message notifications from my phone become more and more infrequent until, finally, they cease altogether.

  24

  IT’S STILL DAWN, and sunrise is just barely visible as I look out the taxi’s rearview window. I wonder if Callum is awake yet, whether he’s seen the note I left on the stoop of his dad’s house. I tried to keep it from becoming too sappy, but I’m not sure I succeeded.

  Dear Callum,

  I’m really sorry for missing our trip to Galway. And the Cliffs of Moher. I didn’t even get a chance to tell you how excited I was to quote The Princess Bride with you. I could go into detail about how complicated things got, but it’s going to be easier for both of us if I say I ran into problems with my mom. And then I spent the rest of the day thinking about what I want and who I am (just some light, breezy things), and what I realized is th
at I need a chance to be on my own, completely. To experience what it’s like to travel—and be an artist—on my own terms. So I changed my flight and left a little early for Florence—the next step on Grandpa’s tour.

  I’ve spent so long trying to be there for my mom, and holding my tongue around my best friend, and falling for boys who don’t feel the same way about me that I forgot who I am without all of that. But I hope you know that this isn’t about you. Really. It’s about me: the cliché American girl in Europe trying to find herself.

  So you might be wondering: Who is Nora Parker-Holmes? Excellent question. I’ve come up with the following lists.

  Things I Hate:

  The color orange

  The smacking sound my mom’s lips make before she’s about to say something

  Boys with gauges in their ears

  Chalky fingers after using pastels

  Jazz music, the fast kind that makes me anxious

  The thin, pasty, flat strands that stick to a banana after you peel it

  Things I Like:

  Brie cheese

  The ding from a text message

  Wearing a bathrobe after a shower

  Ginger tea

  Squeezing paint out of an aluminum tube

  Maybe you. Probably you. Definitely you.

  There are a million more things I want to talk to you about (and a million more locations where I want to make out with you), but for right now, this is more important. I really, really hope I get to see you again. The miracle of the Internet means that, if you’ll still have me after totally ditching you, we can video chat and you can teach me all about Lord of the Rings from across the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, there’s also the distinct possibility that you’ll get into Brown and I’ll get into RISD, in which case, I’ll see you in Rhode Island. And I’ll buy your ticket to the next Marvel Cinematic Universe movie when we see it together to make up for ditching you.

  Love,

  Nora

  P.S. If you’re not too mad at me, check out Ophelia in Paradise. I drew something before I left that you might like.

  * * *

  “Going to the airport?” the taxi driver asks over her shoulder. “What terminal?”

  “Ummmm.” So this is what it feels like to be on your own. Responsible for all the annoying little things. I scramble to find my confirmation e-mail. “Aer Lingus,” I say. “Terminal One.” Already I feel more competent and capable.

  There’s one more letter I need to write before I can actually tell myself that I’ve taken control of my own life, but I won’t be able to start it until I’m on the plane. In the time it took to wait in line at security, get scanned by those terrifying glass-box terrorism preventers, find the gate, board the plane, find my seat . . . I still haven’t figured out how to start the first sentence. And so I just start the letter anyway with whatever’s on my mind and hope the right words will come somewhere in the middle.

  NORA PARKER-HOLMES

  To: LennyLady41@gmail.com

  Subject: Leaving Ireland

  Dear Lena,

  Well, I’ve left Ireland. I’m officially on my own now—completely Alice Parker–free. You feel very grown-up boarding a plane on your own, saying “excuse me” to people and pretending you’re an important businesswoman traveling from Ireland to Florence on important art-related business. I needed to get away from my mom for a bit. I think I’ve realized something you’ve been telling me for a while: I can’t fix her life, and I don’t have to. Sometimes I just need to be the kid and let her deal with whatever’s going on. Does it sound like I’m in an after-school special?

  I guess what I’ve learned at the Deece, other than that the Irish accent is inhumanly attractive (and that people in Ireland treat JFK like the pope), is that being an artist is tough. I only ever really saw my grandpa’s success, but I didn’t realize how hard he had to work to get there, or how lucky he was, or how much he and my mom sacrificed along the way.

  I still want to be an artist, I think, but at least now I know that it’s going to take more than an application to RISD and faith that everything will work out. The more I think about it, the more I like your plan of going to college and seeing what you like and going from there.

  Yes (I know you were going to ask), I had to leave Callum, but the important thing for me right now is learning how to be okay without taking care of someone else or having someone else there to take care of me.

  And I have something to tell you that I didn’t tell you because I was embarrassed or hurt or a combination of both of those. I lost my virginity over winter break to Nick. And then he never texted me again, and I forgot about things until you started dating him in the spring, and I was too shocked or embarrassed or hurt or a combination of all of those to tell you. And then I waited too long, and I assumed you would hate me. Please don’t hate me.

  Love you forever,

  Nora

  For whatever reason, once I press send, I feel more alone than ever before. I finalized things with Callum and Lena, and I can’t talk to my mother right now. It’s just me and the flight attendant who looked at my pityingly when she saw that I was traveling alone.

  Even though I totally try, I still can’t get into the book I brought. The words just won’t fix themselves into sentences that make sense. I alternate between sketching figures that come out looking disproportionately top-heavy and listening to the pilot’s channel on the built-in radio.

  I force myself not to check my e-mail to see if Lena responded until I’m at the hostel. The directions I printed to get me to the Ciao Hostel via public transportation said that I should buy a five-dollar bus ticket to the center of town and then take the number 4 bus from there, which doesn’t sound too complicated until I get to the arrivals area of the airport and see that there are about five thousand buses and services claiming to go to the center of town, and another six thousand saying they’re the number 4 bus. Apparently there are buses called ATAF and buses called LI-NEA, and according to something I read back home, I’m definitely supposed to use one of them, and I’m definitely supposed to avoid the other.

  I see people waiting in line at a kiosk. Am I also supposed to be waiting at that kiosk? I’m not entirely sure what people are waiting in line for. Okay. I’m not a grouchy dad in a hacky road trip comedy. I can ask for directions. Before I pick the person to ask, a man with a mustache approaches me.

  “Need a taxi?” he says in English.

  “No, thank you,” I say.

  “No charge!” he says and makes an attempt to grab my carry-on for me and put it into his already popped car, which is black but otherwise gives no indication of being an actual taxi. I snatch my carry-on back. “No,” I say. And just in case it doesn’t translate, I waggle my finger. “No, no.” He raises both hands and lowers his head apologetically, and I walk off as quickly as I can.

  I wish I spoke Italian; if I spoke Italian, I would have stepped off the plane like I’m in a Vanity Fair photo shoot, with a white capelet and sunglasses and a hat. And I would have had a friend come pick me up in a tiny car—or no, on a moped—and I’d kiss her on both cheeks, and she’d toss me a helmet that I’d catch effortlessly, and we’d zip through the city, making everyone who saw us so jealous that they spit in the dirt.

  I see a policewoman! She’s smoking and she looks like she’s off duty, but I need help, and a policewoman is the perfect person for a minor in a foreign country to talk to. I feel like they probably showed us a video about this sometime in elementary school.

  “Please, por favor”—oh god, that’s Spanish. Retreat to English. “Can you . . . help me, please?”

  “I speak English,” she says.

  “Oh, thank god. I’m trying to get . . .” I shove my phone in her hand, the screen showing a map with a pin in my hostel’s location. She zooms in.

  “Ah,” she says and points to one of the lines tha
t I had about a one-in-five chance of choosing if she didn’t help me. “Fine Austostrada A11. Buy the ticket here, and stop off at Via Rosselli 66. Two-minute walk from there.”

  “Ah! Thank you! Thank you,” I say and begin rolling my bag off toward the right area, repeating the name of the bus and the stop in my head so I won’t forget it.

  “Very brave,” she calls after me. Which makes me slightly nervous that the policewoman thinks it’s brave to take a bus to where I’ll be staying, because now I’m starting to think that the Florence bus system is a Hunger Games–style competition to the death. “Traveling on your own,” she adds.

  “Oh,” I say. “Thanks.”

  She’s already back to her cigarette.

  * * *

  I make it to the hostel after a few false turns and after cutting through what was almost definitely private property. The girl at the front desk gives me a thin, knobby towel and two keys—one for my room (which I’ll share with thirteen strangers) and one for the locker under my bed, where I should keep my things.

  Once I’m set up on my bed, I run out of excuses not to check Lena’s e-mail. What, exactly, am I hoping she’ll say? Something perfect and understanding like:

  Nor—

  I’ve never broken up with anyone faster in my whole life. He was a dillweed anyway. I bought the funfetti cake mix for the “We Hate Nick DiBasilio” party as soon as you get back.

  You couldn’t stop me from being your friend if you tried.