Page 59 of Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon
“Hey, Ian,” I say.
He turns fromElf. “Hmm?”
“Your picture’s great,” I say. “I mean it. But you can do better.”
“But—”
“The trick is to always be looking around,” I say. “Inspiration is everywhere.Artis everywhere.”
“What do you mean? Iamlooking.”
“You ever hear of the artist Beauford Delaney?” I ask.
“Um.”
“How about James Baldwin?”
“Are they football players?”
This reaction makes sense. Ian is, after all, just a kid.
“The first guy, Delaney, was a famous painter during the Harlem Renaissance,” I say. “Brilliant. We’ll google him. The other guy, James Baldwin, was a great writer.”
“Can you guys talk about something that isn’t art?” asks Bella.
“Sorry,” I tell her. “Last time, I promise.”
She rolls her eyes, then colors outside of Edgar Allan Poe’s lines, which I’m pretty sure is just to annoy me.
“One day, they were walking together in New York City after a big rainstorm. Delaney stopped and pointed at a pool of water by the gutter. He said, ‘Jimmy, look at that.’ ”
Bella rolls her eyes and eats another fry. Ian, though, is rapt.
“The writer,” I say, “he was like, ‘What am I looking at? A puddle? Big deal.’ But Delaney tells him, ‘No, look.Reallylook.’ Turns out, some oil and grit from all the passing cars had mixed with the rainwater, and it made a distorted mirror effect on the pavement that reflected all the city lights and buildings in a way that he’d never seen before.”
“That’s really cool,” says Ian.
“Inspiration where he least expected it,” I say. “Art right there on the street.”
Ian chews and smiles, and I could hug him. Bella hops off her stool and goes around the bar where she tapes her Edgar Allan Poe picture to the mirror next to a bottle of Tito’s vodka. I could hug her, too, even though I know she’d hate it.
“Oh, hi, Mommy!” she says.
Ian and I turn to find Grace standing in the doorway holding a beer and a takeout box. She looks around, confused, it seems, that the whole bar is watchingElf.
Zoe shoots Diet Coke into an icy glass with a soda gun. “Hey, Grace,” she says. “Welcome to the Baltimore Cinema and Draft House.”
“Come watchElfwith us,” says Bella.
Grace sits on the stool beside me and hands Zoe the takeout container. “Your nemesis made you a present.”
Zoe snatches the box off the bar and tears into it. “That handsome bastard.”
“So, what’d I miss?” Grace asks. Then she sees Ian’s Will Ferrell drawing. “Oh wow. That’s great. It looks just like him.”
Ian nods. “Thanks. I like it, but I think I can do better.”
Grace looks at me like,What have you done to my child, you nerd?and all I can do is shrug. We order cheeseburgers and Old Bay wings and one of the construction workers shouts, “You sit on a throne of lies!” Then we watch and laugh while Will Ferrell fights a fake Santa.
