Page 55 of Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon
“So, just you and the kids,” I say. “Sure you can handle it?”
He looks through the bars at the trapped mice. “I’m a little afraid of Bella, to be honest. She’s intimidating for someone so small.”
I think about Bella’s complicated frown last night when I asked her if she wanted to go look at art with Henry and Ian today—all those neatly stacked questions just below the surface. “She mostly likes you,” I say. “Candy would help.”
“M&M’s are in the car.”
“Oh, then you’re golden.”
I pause and wonder if it’s any of my business to ask him what I want to ask him, but I do it anyway.
“So, any luck, you know, talking to…?”
His expression turns solemn now as he looks down at the trap again. “It’s harder than you made it sound.”
The kids are onto us now; I can hear them coming. “Keep trying,” I say.
“I don’t know, Grace,” he says. “What if she just doesn’t want anything to do with me?”
Maybe it’s a fair question. Or, maybe we’re both crazy. Who knows? Either way, I tell him to be patient. “When you’re ready,” I say, “it’ll happen.”
Our trip to the Walters is for Ian. I want him to see art celebrated because that’s not always something kids get to see. I also want him to see the museum’sArt and Processexhibit, which displays famous works from inception to finished product, complete with things like sketches and notes, because it’s useful to learn that art takes time and work.
This visit is for me, too, though, because I’m depressed, and museums sometimes help.
I’ve tried and failed to talk to Brynn maybe twenty times since Grace’s crash course in my car. From various spots in my apartment, I closed my eyes, focused on breathing, and told her the most inconsequential stuff I could think of. The little things.
Nothing.
In fact, less than nothing—it’s like the already blurry image of her in my mind is getting blurrier, fading in real time.
“I love this place!” says Ian now, practically hopping up and down. He’s been like this since we got here, like he’s about to start breakdancing.
Bella stops at a painting of some elephants. “This picture’s okay, I guess.”
Aside from the M&M’s she ate in the car on the way here and thedoughnut I got her in the café, that’s the most enthusiasm she’s shown all day.
I look at the exhibition label. “Cool, right? It’s watercolor. And check out the sketch the artist did first.”
We move to a simple charcoal drawing of elephants mounted a few feet from the finished piece, and I remember dutifully sketching out myCity Seriesyears ago.
“Oh wow,” says Ian. He points at another painting. “Look at these buffalo things.”
“They’re bulls, actually, but yeah. Again, the artist laid out a road map for himself first. See?”
Ian runs off toward a painting calledThe Tulip Folly. A security guard looks like he’s about to scold him, but then he lets it go because I suspect he doesn’t see many kids bound toward nineteenth-century art.
“I’m kinda tired of walking,” says Bella.
I know what she means. I love museums, but there’s something energy-sapping about wandering through them. “Are there any kinds of pictures you wanna see?”
She answers immediately. “Pictures where we can sit down.”
I look through the map I grabbed at the entrance. “Doesn’t seem like there’s a specific nonstanding section. Any other requests?”
“Are there pictures that don’t look so old-timey?”
Again, I get it. Despite my aforementioned love of museums, there are enough virgins with child here to sink an ark. More religion in general than I remember. A sculpture of Jesus on a donkey sits outside theArt and Processexhibit. Behind that there’s a room that seems solely dedicated to crucifixes. Then I flip the map over and see a painting of a young Black woman wearing a stunning green dress and head-scarf against an orange wall. The headline reads, “The New Radicals.”
