Henry
I’ve never bellied up to a bar with a couple of kids before, but that’s what Grace said to do when she texted twenty minutes ago. A pretty young woman named Zoe who has about fifty tattoos gave Ian and Bella high fives and shook my hand when we arrived.
“This is…this is okay?” I asked her as the kids climbed onto their stools.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “They’re honorary employees. If the cops roll up, though, you guys know what to do, right?”
“Punch ’em in the guts and run for the hills,” said Bella, monotone.
“Exactly.”
Another thing I’ve never done is sit at a bar that has a movie showing on all its TVs, but that’s happening now, too.
Ian and I were having a casual disagreement about the validity of submitting a portrait of Buddy the Elf for his art contest. I encouraged him to aim higher. “Think about the art we just saw. Elevated, right?”
“But it’s the best picture I’ve ever drawn, Henry.”
He set his work on the bar top as evidence, and it was hard to argue with a damn-near perfect rendering of Will Ferrell as Buddy, complete with the dumb smile.
“This conversation is even more boring than the museum,” said Bella, sticking a straw in her Sprite. “Zoe, can we watch Elf?”
“Oh yeah,” said Ian. “For inspiration.”
Zoe looked at the TV directly above us, which was playing SportsCenter. She grabbed a remote and toggled to Prime. “I shall make it so.”
A few minutes into the movie, people around us craned their necks to see.
Then a construction worker at the other end of the bar asked, “Hey, can we get Elf on this TV, too?” He was with a co-worker—their hard hats on hooks at their knees.
They laughed at the scene where Will Ferrell starts his trek through the Enchanted Forest. “Bye, Buddy,” one of them said, talking along with Mr. Narwhal.
The other joined in. “Hope you find your dad.”
Their joy was contagious.
“Can our TV sync with those TVs?” a lady asked. She was with a group of women exchanging white elephant gifts.
“Give the people what they want,” Zoe muttered, picking up the remote again. Then a waiter appeared from the dining side. “Yo, Z, the eaters want Elf, too.”
Now Elf is on everywhere, and Bella, Ian, and I are sharing a plate of crabby fries.
Bella is using a little box of crayons to color Edgar Allan Poe on a kids’ menu, and Ian is putting the finishing touches on Buddy’s elf hat.
The entire bar chuckles together when Will Ferrell walks into James Caan’s office.
A nearby table sings along with his singing telegram to his dad, then both construction workers say, “I like to whisper, too” in unison, which practically brings the house down.
“See, Henry,” says Ian. “Everybody loves Elf.”
I eat a fry, which is delicious. Then, through the window, I see Grace across the street.
She’s in front of the Italian place talking to a dark-haired, very handsome guy in a chef’s coat.
She laughs at something he says and gives him one of her Grace shoves.
Her face is aglow from the sunset, and I’m struck once again by how pretty she is.
I wonder if that’s a symptom of grief: constantly forgetting how lovely someone is.
The handsome chef laughs now, too. I don’t know who he is but it’s clear that she does.
“Oh look,” says Bella. “Mommy’s talking to Dom.”
“Is he, like, a friend of hers?” I ask.
Bella puts a fry in her mouth. “Yeah. He’s in love with her, though. Always has been.”
And now here’s another thing I haven’t felt in a long time. My chest tightens, a twinge of melancholy follows. Is this jealousy? I shake it off, though, because Grace and I are friends. Then I look just beyond Grace and this guy, Dom, and see something amazing.
Back at MICA, I used to put mental frames around things I’d see out in the world that looked like art. I do that now to this image of Grace and the chef. The Italian Embassy’s front window behind them reflects the setting sun and holiday lights from all over the neighborhood, and it’s breathtaking.
“Hey, Ian,” I say.
He turns from Elf. “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. Art is everywhere.”
“What do you mean? I am looking.”
“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. Really look.’ 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 watching Elf.
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 watch Elf with 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.