Melanie Martin Goes Dutch (17 page)

Dear Diary,

Mom told Dad that she was going to Rembrandt's house, and that Dad should rent a canal bike with us, stay away from topless beaches (!), and meet her in two hours at the Rijksmuseum. (She knew 2 museums in 1 day would be 2 much 4 us.)

“Kids, be good,” Mom said.

We said we'd try, but I think being good might not be my specialty.

A canal
bike
is a boat that you pedal with your feet.

I thought pedaling down the canals would be as fun as clip-clopping down the streets. But our bike-boat was a four-seater, and Matt immediately said, “Cecily, sit with me.” Cecily looked right right right at me. It was like she expected me to say something, but I didn't know what. I almost said “No, sit with me!” but I didn't want her or Dad to say “Matt asked first.” Well, she sat with Brat Boy, so guess who got stuck in the second row with Dad (no offense to Dad or anything)?

This is
not
how I pictured our trip!

Matt started pretending he was a tour guide (ha! a shrimpy one with freckles and a loose tooth!). He was talking with a Dutch accent and making stuff up about every bridge. Under one, he said, “Zees is a luffly example uf Dutch archeeetecshure.” Cecily encouraged him by laughing her head off.

I didn't laugh once. To be honest, I ignored Cecily
and I called Matt a nitwit. I even whispered that the canals were full of starving pointy-toothed alligators that, if Matt fell in, would take bites out of his heart and eat his guts right up.

Matt looked scared, and said, “You're mean,” and for half a second I worried that I was. But then Cecily mumbled something to Matt, and he said, “Alligators like hot places, not cold places,” and he smiled at Cecily and stuck his tongue out at me. Then he made his hands into snapping alligator jaws and started pinching me, saying, “My fingers are pinching machines.”

I don't know how much longer I can stand this! Matt is a dumdum and Cecily is part bunny, part tiger, and I had an urge to push them both overboard into the alligator-infested (not) water.

Well, I wanted to go to Pizza Hut, but Dad said no, so we went to a fish restaurant and I had spaghetti and it was okay, but my tomato sauce had too many lumps in it.

P.S. That's my name without the L and that might be my personality too.

P.P.S. Did I tell you that our luggage didn't come this morning either? This is day four!! Even Mom and Dad seemed surprised.

P.P.P.S. Matt saw my P.S. and P.P.S. and started making peepee jokes.

Dear Diary,

Cecily and I just had the

We had it in the Rijksmuseum, which is like the Metropolitan Museum back home. It is a “must-see” that is huge and quiet and full of tourists and old paintings.

It is not a very ideal place to have a fight, but it's not like I started it on purpose.

Here's what happened.

We met Mom in the entrance or
ingang
(In Hahng),

which is spelled like “Come in, gang!” Then we headed upstairs to the Rembrandt section. Mom was talking about how Rembrandt was the greatest painter who ever lived and how he kept getting better and better and how she was glad she saw his house and sketches and how he painted piles of portraits of himself, from when he was young to when he was old. Mom said that some of his self-portraits are so honest, you almost feel impolite when you look away. She said he left a whole “autobiography in paint.”

I said, “I wonder if an artist who paints self-portraits is like a writer who keeps diaries.”

I thought Mom would like that question, but she just said, “They didn't have cameras back then, so painting was a way to record what people and things looked like.”

She showed Cecily and me this “masterpiece” of Rembrandt's mother reading the Bible. The mother's face is all ghosty, so I said, “It's not all that good.”

Cecily disagreed. She said to look at the tiny wrinkles on her hand and the gold threads on her bonnet. She said she thought the painting was “haunting.”

Haunting? Pleeeease!

Next Mom showed us this other masterpiece of these guys who ran a clothing business. I said, “What's so great about six funny-looking men with funny-looking white collars and funny-looking black hats?”

Cecily said to look at them looking at us. “It is hard to turn away from them, isn't it, Miranda? They seem so real, I half expect them to start talking to us.”

I almost said, “If they start talking, maybe they'll tell you to stop talking.” (I didn't say it, though. I just thought it really loudly.)

Finally, Mom took us to see the most famous masterpiece of all, this giant painting called
The Night Watch
. Mom said a bunch of soldiers hired Rembrandt to paint them, but instead of doing a group portrait with everyone all the same size, he painted an action painting with some soldiers big and up front, and others small and in the background. “Unfortunately,” Mom said, “the soldiers did not like it at all.”

“Me neither,” I said. “And it's too big.”

Mom looked so exasperated that I almost felt bad
for her. It was like she couldn't figure out where she'd gone wrong raising me.

Cecily loved the painting. “Check out the man's hand!” she said. “The light on his palm and his fingers makes his hand stick out like it's 3-D. It's like he wants to shake
our
hands!”

“Exactly,” Mom said. It was a miracle she didn't add, “Melanie, why can't you appreciate Rembrandt like Cecily? And doesn't she look
lovely
in royal blue?”

Well, I looked around and I did appreciate some of the other paintings, like
The Holy Family at Night and The Jewish Bride
. I was even about to say so, but just then Matt came running over. He said that he and Dad saw a cool painting of children teaching a cat to dance (“Jan Steen,” Dad said) and another of bundled-up skaters (“Avercamp,” Dad said), but his favorite was of this guy's chopped-off bloody head served up on a tray. (Gross!)

“This guy,” Dad explained, “was John the Baptist.” Mom smiled. She loves when Matt and I pay attention to art—even if it's only because a scene is bloody or a statue is naked.

She led us to a small room that had paintings by Jan Vermeer in it. While Mom dug out paper and colored pencils from her backpack, she told us that Vermeer painted in the 1600s and died when he was 43. “He painted really well but also really slowly,” she said. “There are fewer than three dozen of his paintings still around.”

“How many is that?” Matt asked.

“Thirty-six,” Cecily said oh so helpfully.

Mom told us to sit on the floor and pick a painting and draw it.

Well, two were of ladies reading letters, but I didn't choose them.

Matt picked
The Little Street
, which shows a brick building on a quiet street with ladies sewing and scrubbing. I chose
The Milkmaid
, which is a lady calmly pouring milk into a bowl next to a bread basket while light streams in from the side. I hoped that looking at that calm lady might calm me. And I figured that would be a good thing.

Cecily chose
The Milkmaid
too.

“Great choice,” Mom said. “Look how serene she is.”

“What I don't get,” Dad said, “is how Vermeer could paint such inner peace when he had eleven mouths to feed.”

(What I don't get is how my father can refer to children as “mouths to feed”!)

“I know,” Mom answered. “Poor man, he always had money troubles. He died in debt.”

“I thought he was famous,” Matt said.

“He became famous long
after
his death,” Mom explained. “In fact, he's never been more famous than he is right now. We live in a busy, stressful time, so maybe we
need
his quiet scenes.”

Then she told us kids to stay put because she and Dad were going to go look at
The Night Watch
again. “We'll be back in five minutes,” Dad said.

Five
minutes to look at
one
painting!

Well, we started sketching away and trying to feel Vermeer's inner peace and everything, but after about three seconds, Matt said, “I'm done.” Cecily complimented him even though, believe me, Matt's picture was no prizewinner.

Meanwhile, Cecily and I kept sketching and coloring, and for some reason, I felt like we were in a race. Inner
peace
was turning into outer
war
.

I was trying to get my picture right—the light

pouring in from the window and the milk pouring out of the jug and the lady's rosy cheeks and the bread's crackly crust.

I was about to say, “I'm done,” but Baby Matt let go of his baby tooth and said, “Cecily, I like how you're doing her dress.”

Cecily said, “Thanks,” and kept coloring the green, blue, and yellow folds of the milkmaid's dress. So I kept coloring too. I even stood up to see how Vermeer made the folds by using different shades of color and different thicknesses of paint, and I tried doing that even though all I had was pencils.

I was about to say, “I'm done,” when Young Mr. Art Critic said, “Cecily, you do skin really well.”

She said, “Thanks,” and kept shading the milkmaid's smooth strong arms.

I figured as long as Cecily kept sketching, I'd keep sketching too. But I have to admit, I was having a really hard time with the twisty little stream of milk that caught and reflected sunlight.

Well, Mom and Dad finally came back, and Mom said, “Oh Matt, that's wonderful,” (when his picture
obviously stunk) and “Very nice, Melanie,” (when mine wasn't just very nice, it was
excellent
).

Then Mom looked at Cecily's picture and said, “Cecily! That is luminous!”

She actually said “luminous”! Mom has never once called any of my pictures luminous!

It made me soooo mad! When I'm with Cecily's mom, I get criticized. When Cecily is with my mom, she gets complimented.

Even Dad complimented Cecily's sketch. “It looks like that jug will never run out,” he said. “It looks like that milk will keep flowing forever, just like in the real painting.”

I should have kept my big mouth shut (duh duh duh), but I didn't. I couldn't. I said,