And We're Off Read online

  I had told Lena how terrible it was getting to my dad’s wedding, going downtown on the Metro in my tight dress and heels. My mom never once offered to drive me. I hadn’t even realized she had declined on the RSVP until the night before.

  I pull my favorite set of pencils from the Tupperware under my desk and put it in my backpack, along with the new spiral of drawing paper I bought this morning.

  “I don’t think so. I mean, my mom’s at least going to want to say good-bye to her only daughter, right?” When I came home from the wedding, she was already in her bedroom, maybe asleep, and so I didn’t say good night.

  It suddenly dawns on me that it’s very possible my mom isn’t driving me to the airport after all. Maybe in our sullen obstinacy over the past few days, we cemented a tacit pact that even though I’m technically allowed to go Europe on her father’s dime, Alice Parker will do absolutely nothing to encourage my behavior. “I need to Google train schedules. Does the train even run that early?”

  “What time do you need to leave?”

  Before I can answer, my door swings open, revealing my mother: five foot three inches tall, newly minted paralegal, and parental nightmare.

  “Did you get home late last night?” she asks, not even bothering to look at Lena, let alone say hi. I give Lena an apologetic look, hoping she’ll forgive me for my mom being so rude. Usually she loves Lena, offering her an endless array of snacks that she’s never offered me and begging for stories about Lena’s little twin brothers.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Around two, I think? I took an Uber from the train station.”

  “Fifteen dollars or so?” She pulls an androgynous leather wallet out of her purse and extracts two bills, which I stand to take.

  “Thanks.”

  I wait a minute to see whether she’s going to ask about the wedding. She clears her throat and smooths out the hem of her skirt.

  “Your father looked well?” she finally says.

  Lena looks at me. “Yeah,” I say. “He looked good.” How am I supposed to respond? He did look well. Happier than I’ve ever seen him, if I’m being completely honest. “His hair got longer.”

  My mother opens her mouth slightly and then closes it again without saying anything.

  In my head, I play out a scene where I smile and tell her how terrible the halibut was. We’d laugh about how much we hate Arizona and how sad it is that Dad had to go and marry someone who would drag him off to the land of strip malls to be closer to her family. I could say something about how sad I feel about it too, about the hole he’s leaving, like a dry socket where a tooth was removed.

  But then I see the way my mom eyes the paint supplies I already packed, and the words dissolve like a Listerine strip on my tongue.

  “Wouldn’t you rather use that room in your suitcase for a more practical pair of shoes.” She says it as a statement, not a question.

  “Uh, no. I need the art supplies to complete the assignments Grandpa’s having me do in each stop.”

  Her frown tightens.

  Lena coughs, and my mom and I both look at her. Alice directs her attention back to me with a single sharp turn of her head. “So your flight is at eleven A.M. We’ll leave the house at eight forty-five,” she says. And then she turns to walk down the hall to her bedroom.

  “See you in the car,” I call after her. She’s already gone.

  Lena and I are quiet for a few minutes as I fold clothes as tightly as I can so that they’ll fit into the unfathomably tiny carry-on that I’ll be living out of. Suddenly, Lena gets off my bed and begins examining the paintings I’ve hung above my desk. They’re portraits, of us mostly, created using only primary colors, with bold lines like a comic book. Even when I’m not drawing cartoons for Tumblr, that’s the style I always seem to fall back on. “God, I love these,” Lena says.

  “Oh, gross, no.” I stand, cracking the knuckles of both of my hands out of habit, and walk over to run my finger along the edge of one of the canvases. At the time I painted them, I thought they were so good, like, call the MoMA now and set up a debut for a brilliant young talent! But now, just six months later, I only see flat, sloppy brushstrokes, like a middle-schooler’s paint-by-numbers.

  “What if—” I pause, take a breath, and start again. “What if I’m the worst one at the colony? What if they kick me out after the first workshop?”

  “Then fuck ’em,” Lena says.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Very comforting.”

  Lena realizes she made a mistake; her face falls, and she takes half a step backward. “Hey,” she says, sitting on my bed and patting for me to sit next to her. I do. “You’re great, honestly. You’re going to do amazing stuff. You’ll probably be the best artist there by a long shot. And then you’re going to meet some hot Scottish boy and fall madly in love and go off and be an art couple like Frida Kahlo and Geraldo Rivera.”

  For the first time all day, I actually feel my facial muscles unclench, and I smile. “Geraldo Rivera?”

  “Yeah,” Lena says, a grin making its way across her face. “What? Geraldo Rivera.”

  * * *

  For the next twelve hours, I tell myself I don’t need to worry about whether my art will be good enough, or how I’ll find a post office to send my paintings to Grandpa, or whether I’ll have to give my mom a kiss and pretend that I’ll miss her when she drops me off at the airport. All I think about is calculating exactly how good the odds are that I’ll meet a Scottish artist named Geraldo Rivera while I’m in Ireland.

  4

  I CALCULATE THE risk-to-reward ratio of changing the radio in my mom’s car from NPR to a pop station. Honestly, I kind of want to do it just to get under her skin. There’s something too curated, too oddly staged, about the two of us riding, backs straight, mouths closed, on the still-empty roads of the early morning while some woman half-whispers news about Bangladesh.

  The impulse strikes me. I pull my hand from paralyzing stillness and twist the radio knob until I hear a heavy synth beat. I would have turned the volume up as well, just to really make a scene of it, but it’s too early in the morning even for me to want to deal with throbbing eardrums.

  THIS TIME, BABY

  I’LL BE

  BULLETPROOF

  “Excuse me,” Mom says, but she doesn’t bring her hands from the wheel to change the radio back.

  THIS TIME, BABY

  I’LL BE-E-EEE

  BULLETPROOF

  “Sorry,” I say, but I don’t change it back either.

  We listen to the overproduced techno until the song ends and the station moves on to a commercial for a carpet-cleaning service. My mom turns the radio off with a quick, certain tap of her manicured fingers.

  We allowed ourselves a full hour to get to O’Hare Airport from Evanston this morning, but with the clear roads, we’re almost there in a third of that time. I watch my mom, her elbows still, her eyes fixed on the bumper of the Volvo ahead of us, her mouth slightly twitching as if silently mouthing the words to a song she was embarrassed to like.

  Fuck it. I pull my sketchpad out of the backpack between my knees.

  “Do you think—” my mom begins sharply before stopping to take a deep breath. I begin doodling lyrics from songs stuck in my head, stretching out lines until they fill a whole page.

  THIS TIME, BABY, I’LL BE BULLETPROOF.

  My mother’s eyes jerk from the road to my sketchpad and back. “Very antisocial behavior, Nora,” she says.

  “Oh, I’m sorry for ignoring the sparkling conversation of this car ride.”

  Mom rolls to a stop at a red light and turns so that her shoulders are square to me. “You really think—I mean, this focus on art . . .”

  “This ‘focus on art’ is basically my life,” I interrupt. “So . . . thanks.”

  She takes a deep breath through her nose. “I apologize. But spending a who
le summer at this . . . this camp. Don’t you think you could be more productive spending time with people with varied, well-rounded interests? Or finishing your real college applications?”

  I don’t make eye contact when I answer. “Honestly, the reason I’m so excited for Ireland is because, for the first time in my life, I’ll be completely surrounded by people who truly understand what art means to me. How much I care about it.”

  “I understand it’s a fulfilling hobby, but you’re usually so responsible, and in terms of making a good choice for your college major and career—”

  “If I’m usually so responsible, then you should trust me to make my own decision,” I say. “Because I’m heading into adulthood. And at some point, adults get to make decisions about what they want to do with their lives.”

  “But you’re not an adult yet, Nora,” she says. “I am. And I care about your future.”

  “Well, my future will be spent in Europe, and then at college, and then away from Evanston for the rest of my life,” I respond, before turning my full attention back to my sketchpad.

  Mom and I don’t speak for the rest of the car ride. In the stony, heavy silence, neither of us dares to turn on the radio. Our car crawls through the winding overpasses, following signs with arrows above the words INTERNATIONAL DEPARTURES.

  A traffic attendant motions for us to pull forward into an empty strip by the front of a glass building, and before the car even stops I pull my backpack onto my lap and sling an arm through the shoulder strap.

  “Don’t forget your carry-on, in the trunk,” my mother says.

  “I won’t.”

  I wait outside the car, backpack on, handle raised on the carry-on. My mother has decided to get out of the car and stand on the driver’s side.

  “Well,” I say. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Text me when you land in Paris.”

  I know I should say, “I love you,” the same way how, when you’re lying in bed at eight on a Monday morning, you know you should actually get up and brush your teeth. You can visualize yourself doing it, walk yourself through every step in your head, but when you come back to reality, you’re still there, in bed, teeth unbrushed, not actually doing what you told yourself to do.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I say again. And I turn, walking toward the automatic doors that just pulled open with an antiseptic whoosh.

  “WAIT!”

  At first I don’t realize that the voice is directed at me. I definitely don’t realize it belongs to my mother. My first thought? How embarrassing for whoever is getting in a fight at the airport. My second thought (when I realize that the voice came from the row of cars in Departures) is that someone is getting in a fight with the traffic attendant in charge of parking. Also embarrassing.

  But then I see Alice Parker speed-walking through the doors—our car blinking its hazard lights behind her—and my stomach pulls up into my throat. I pat my pockets and backpack to see if I forgot my passport. Nope. I just stare at her face and wonder what I could have possibly done wrong already, fourteen seconds into my trip.

  “I’m coming with you,” she says, panting.

  “Like, through security?”

  “No.” She straightens. “This trip. Europe. The first leg, at least—until you get to Ireland. What’s first? Paris and Belgium?” Already her eyes are scanning the American Airlines desks, looking for an available agent who can help her buy a ticket.

  “What? You’re . . . I mean, you’re not packed,” I say, my tongue feeling thicker in my mouth than usual.

  She sighs and looks in my eyes for the first time all day. “You’re leaving. But . . .” As she searches for the right phrase, a couple in matching tracksuits and sporting deep purple under-eye circles shoves their way through us with rolling suitcases. My mom tries again. “You’re pulling. We’re pulling apart, and it isn’t fair. You’re leaving for college so soon, and you’re so busy with your friends, and I’m so busy with work. I just realized that I don’t know you at all. Like the music on the radio—I didn’t even know you listened to that sort of music.”

  “I don’t!” I say. “I didn’t even know that song. Honestly. It was just what was on the radio!”

  “I don’t know you, Nora,” she continues, acting like she hasn’t even heard me. “And I’m not going to waste this opportunity to get to know you.”

  “What about work? How can you just leave for, like, a month?”

  Her face darkens for a moment, but then immediately recovers. “I can take of it.”

  “I wanted to do this on my own,” I say. I don’t know why my throat is tightening like I’m about to cry.

  “But you don’t have to!” my mother says, eyes bright, lips peeled apart.

  My visions of wandering alone and carefree through the streets of Paris and London suddenly dissolve. Where I had been drinking espresso and leisurely eating a chocolate croissant while reading a book in French (in my fantasy, I speak French), I now see myself plodding alongside Alice Parker, both of us in jeans and terrible sneakers, trying to make it to some tour I don’t care about.

  She places her hands on my shoulders with a little too much force.

  “I am so excited,” she says, still scanning behind me for someone to help her buy a ticket to ruin my summer.

  “Yeah,” I reply. But I can’t force myself to say, “Me too.”

  5

  IT’S A RUSH of phone calls in the car ride home, my mom’s voice oscillating wildly between confrontational and saccharine as she talks to the airline employees on the other end of the line. I think I fall asleep for most of the ride, hoodie pulled over my head, cheek against the window. If someone were filming this in black and white, it would be a very dramatic shot in a music video. Adele’s voice should be warbling over this scene.

  I resist the urge to sigh loudly when I drop my suitcase in the hallway. My mother doesn’t notice that her only daughter is upset; she heads straight to the breakfast-nook-turned-office and begins typing furiously at her keyboard, as if the harder she presses, the faster her dinosaur of a PC will respond.

  “Would you rather stay at the Maison Robespierre or at the place I found off the Rue De La Grande?” my mom asks without looking up from her computer.

  “I don’t care,” I say. I spent hours over the past few weeks combing through backpacker message boards to find a hostel with high recommendations for “MEETING NEW PEOPLE!” (and with free WiFi), but that was all for when this trip was mine.

  “Of course you care,” she replies. “Which do you prefer?”

  But the truth of the matter is, I really don’t, because my choice has already been taken away. All the preparation, all the excitement, all the daydreams about traveling on my own—they’re escaping me, leaving me a hollow shell nodding at every meaningless hotel or restaurant name Alice throws at me. I had already fully imagined the Facebook album I’d be uploading throughout the trip: images of me sipping coffee in Paris, meeting a roving gang of artists, kissing a stranger on the cheek while we both laugh. Wow, everyone back home would say. That Nora sure is an adventurous and independent free spirit. I guess we all underestimated her.

  Now, though, I’ll be posting pictures from a family vacation. No, not even a family vacation. The only thing lamer: a mother-daughter bonding trip. And with my mother, who still thinks a fanny pack is an acceptable article of clothing to wear unironically or outside of a music festival.

  In the span of a couple of hours, I’ve gone from European adventuress to prisoner. What does it matter which hotel room is going to be my cell?

  “I already have a hostel reservation,” I say.

  “Don’t be silly, we’re not staying at a youth hostel.” My mom practically spits the words at me. “You can stay with me at the hotel!” She sips the coffee that she had left on the counter to drive me to the airport and winces slightly at how bitter it
is cold. “Wouldn’t you so much rather have clean sheets? Maid service?”

  “Well, you know, you stay in a big room in a hostel, you get to make friends,” I say to my feet. She doesn’t hear me.

  “We’ll have our own big, beautiful room!” Her grin is sickeningly proud.

  The worst part about all of this is the generosity that oozes out with every word my mother says, as if I’m supposed to be grateful to stay at some random hotel instead of a hostel where I might meet some cute British boy with an accent and messy hair who would make me forget that Nick ever existed. Now, even if I do meet him, there’s going to be nowhere for us to hang out.

  ME:

  I forgot to mention that I’m a huge dork. Come back and meet my mom!

  HIM:

  Actually I just realized that I am not attracted to you at all in any way. Lovely to meet you, I’m going to go back to the hostel with a seven-foot-tall blonde Dutch girl who is old enough to travel by herself.

  I sit on the couch and put my feet up on my still-zipped suitcase. “What about your job?”

  My mom takes a large gulp of coffee, forgetting that it’s cold and a silvery film is already forming on its surface. She grimaces. “I told you. It’s fine. I took care of it.” When I don’t respond, she goes on. “I can work remotely, Nora. This isn’t the third world. They’ll have WiFi. I handled it.”

  I guess I missed that phone call in the unending flurry of tasks my mother seemed to complete without a second thought. I begin to wonder if my mother had planned this all along. Had she watched me for weeks as I booked hostels and bought guidebooks, waiting for the best time to weasel her way into my trip? Prepared to pounce when I was too tired and overwhelmed to come up with a good reason why she shouldn’t join me?

  My paranoia is interrupted by a text from Lena: I know you’re on a plane right now, but have THE BEST time in Paris and send me 17 postcards and a croissant. Also you’re so brave. Usually when I get a text message, I reply immediately out of habit. But now, looking at her message, I get a sensation in my stomach akin to a fifty-pound rock dropping into a shallow pond. There’s no emoji for “Looks like I’m going to have a curfew when I’m traveling throughout Europe after all! Good-bye, discotheques; hello, matinees of Cats in the West End!”