Melanie Martin Goes Dutch Page 9

  “She wasn't fat,” I said.

  “Not at all,” Mom agreed. “She's always looked great and she always will. She'll probably look the same as ever.”

  I wonder if that could be true.

  “I'm glad the operation is over—the take-away part and the build-on part,” Cecily said. “You really think my mom is going to be okay?”

  “I really think so,” Mom said, and gave her another hug.

  I way dying to ask, “Are you sure you are okay?” but decided it would be more sensitive to ask later.

  Besides, by then, Dad and Matt had come back with the sandwiches and a bottle of water for the kids and a bottle of wine for the grown-ups.

  Well, we were all B.P.s (oink oink) and we ate every crumb and and drank every drop.

  Dear Diary,

  It's funny how Dutch is a tiny bit like English but also not at all like English—depending on how you look at it.

  Dad's guidebook says bread is brood (Brrode) and butter is boter (Bow Ter). Cabbage is kool (Kole) and sausage is worst (Vorst). Liver is lever (Layv Er), which is easy to remember, but who would ever want to order lever???

  Dad taught us to count to three in Dutch:

  1 een (Ayn)

  2 twee (Tway)

  3 drie (Dree)

  I may not be learning much Dutch (much Dutch— that's a rhyme!), but I'm learning other stuff. For instance, Amsterdam is farther north than New York City, so it stays light outside until very late, which means our summer vacation days last extraaaa loooonnng.

  Well, Mom wanted to spend all day at the Van Gogh Museum, so Dad said he'd take us for a bike ride and picnic and we'd meet her there later.

  Instead of buying picnic food at a big supermarket, like in America, we bought cheese at a cheese shop, fruit at a fruit shop, and bread at a bread shop, and we each took turns paying.

  We also bought a box of chocolates. Matt asked Dad, “Can I have one?”

  “Not before lunch.”

  “Can I poke a hole in one?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “But don't you want to know what's inside?”

  “I'm a grown-up,” Dad said. “I can wait.”

  At the picnic, Matt was chomping on his sandwich and wiggling his tooth. He said that he could push his tooth way over with his tongue so that the top of the tooth faced sideways. (Gross!) Then he asked, “Can you stick out your tongue and touch your nose?” All of us, even Dad, tried to touch our noses with our tongues (it must have looked pretty dorky). But none of us could do it. Then Matt said, “I can!” and he stuck out his tongue and touched his nose—with his finger.

  I didn't know whether to laugh or punch him, but then he said, “My tooth fell out! My tooth fell out!”—only it sounded more like “My toof fell out! My toof fell out!”

  A teeny drop of saliva splashed on me, so I said, “Say it, don't spray it. I want the news, not the weather.”

  “That is the news,” Matt answered. “I lost my first tooth!” He held it high and smiled a smile with a hole in it.

  Cecily said, “Put it someplace safe so you don't lose it twice!” He stuck the tooth in his pants pocket and she gave him a high five. Dad did too. So I did too.

  Dear Diary,

  Mom noticed the hole in Matt's smile right away, and Matt told her all about it, beaming away as if he were the first person in the history of the world to lose a tooth. Then Mom told all three of us to tie our shoes, and said she doesn't understand why shoelace makers can't make shoelaces that stay tied. She always says that. She says that if we can make rockets that go to other planets, we should be able to make shoelaces that stay tied.

  The Van Gogh Museum has over two hundred paintings, five hundred sketches, and seven hundred letters, and Mom said she was going to give us a guided tour. I was worried it was going to be a snooze, but since Mom is so into van Gogh, I decided to act interested. Well guess what? Vincent van Gogh's life was interesting, and his paintings are really really really good. We even got to see the paintings of sunflowers and irises that we had pieced together as puzzles.

  Here's the thing. If you step back, you see the subject that van Gogh painted, but if you step up close, you see a jumble of different colors. For example, when he painted his own skin, he didn't paint it just skin color. He used green, red, blue, yellow, black, and white. He saw things in lots of ways—depending on the time of day and on how he was feeling—which was often mixed-up and shaky, just like his colors and brush strokes. Some of his paintings actually seem to be moving. Stars twinkle and clouds swirl and flowers bloom or droop right before your very eyes.

  Unlike Vermeer's, van Gogh's paintings are not calm.

  I've been thinking: maybe my life is like a van Gogh painting. If I look at it up close, things sometimes seem not quite right. But if I step back a little, things usually seem pretty good!

  It is soooo pitiful that he sold only one painting and died at age 37. He didn't really even start painting until he was 27! I wish he'd sold bunches and kept on painting for years.

  By the way, the Dutch don't pronounce his name van Go. They say van Goff or van Hoff with that HHHGHHH gargly sound they all make. So if you were making a rhyme, you wouldn't say “Van Go was psycho,” you'd say “Life was rough for van Hoff.”

  Here's a poem I wrote:

  Today everyone loves his paintings and they sell for bazillions of dollars. A portrait he did of his doctor sold for $82,500,000—the most money anyone had ever spent on a painting. When van Gogh was alive, though, nobody appreciated him. It was as if he was a big loser. Even he didn't always appreciate his work— he didn't even sign most of his paintings!

  The only person who was nice to him was his little brother Theo. Theo had an art gallery in Paris and tried really hard to sell Vincent's paintings, but no one wanted them. Theo sent Vincent money anyway because Vincent needed it and Theo loved him. Later, when Theo and his wife had a baby boy, they named him Vincent.

  If Matt ever had a daughter, I wonder if he'd name her Melanie.

  Anyway, poor Vincent van Gogh ended up going crazy. He had a fight with a painter named Paul Gauguin, and Vincent cut off his own ear. Not the whole thing, but part of it. Some people think he did it because he said that no one liked him because he was a bad listener, so what did he need his ear for? But really he did it because he was mentally ill. Mom showed us a self-portrait with a big bandage around his head. Even though van Gogh ended up going to a mental hospital, he kept painting really fast and really well. Then in 1890, he shot himself in a wheat field. He killed himself—but it took him TWO DAYS to die!

  Six months after that, his brother Theo died too. Mom said, “Some say he died of a broken heart,” but Dad said, “Nonsense! He died of syphilis.” That's a disease.

  The van Gogh brothers are buried side by side in France, where they moved when they left Holland. Mom once visited their graves. She said maybe she'd take us there someday.

  If you ask me, the best van Gogh paintings are his self-portraits and old shoes. I also like a really creepy one of a skull with a lit cigarette in its bony mouth! Mom thinks the American Cancer Society should use it to help teenagers not smoke. I told her to get a poster for her classroom and she thought that was a good idea.

  “When van Gogh was alive,” Matt asked, “did he ever visit that other museum we went to?”

  Mom ate up that question. She said van Gogh liked the Rijksmuseum and admired Rembrandt's work.

  “They were both really good at self-portraits,” I said.

  “The best!” Mom agreed. She said that one reason van Gogh painted himself so often was because he wanted to learn to paint portraits but he couldn't afford to pay models. He was so poor that sometimes he painted on both sides of a canvas just to save money on art supplies.

  What amazes me is how nice Theo was to his brother. I can't imagine Matt working hard to send me money, or me working hard to send Matt money!

  I wonder if Theo and Vincent fought when they were kids.
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br />   Right now Matt is next to me on a bench, blowing on his arm making little farty noises. He's making them quietly so Dad doesn't get mad. Matt is also whisper-singing, “Oh where, oh where did van Gogh go? Oh where, oh where did he go go go?” He's trying to make us laugh and it's half working because Cecily is laughing and I'm trying not to.

  The problem with Matt is that he acts his age, which, unfortunately, is six and a half. Sometimes he acts like he's six going on two. Mom should yell at him more. If he were my kid, I'd give him a permanent time-out until he was seven at least.

  I told Cecily that in Italy, our favorite museum game was Point Out the Naked People, and Mom never even minded so long as we were paying attention to art. Italy has more nudie paintings than Holland, though. That might be because many Italian painters painted naked gods, goddesses, and Bible people, while van Gogh, for instance, painted real people—farmers and postmen and himself. (And you don't see too many real people running around naked, do you? Except maybe at certain beaches!)

  The museum game we're playing now is called Find a Bench and Sit Down Quick. Mom does not approve. She said, “How can you be more excited about sitting down than seeing paintings?”

  Sometimes Mom just doesn't get it.

  Signed,

  at a restaurant (it's taking forever to pay)

  Dear Diary,

  Guess what happened before we left the Van Gogh Museum? I went to the Dames room and I was washing my hands, and a gold ring was just sitting by the faucet. I didn't want it to fall down the drain, so I put it on. It looked pretty good, but I could imagine the conversation I would end up having with Mom if I wore it out:

  Mom: “Where did you get this?”

  Me: “In the bathroom. It's pretty, isn't it?”

  Mom: “Very. But it isn't yours.”

  Me: “Someone left it. Look, it fits.”

  Mom: “That's not the point.”

  Me: “If I don't take it, somebody else will.”

  Mom: “Not if we turn it in at the Lost and Found.”

  I thought about it and figured I might as well slide the ring off my finger. So I did. Then I went outside and said, “Do you think this place has a Lost and Found?”

  Well, we went there and the man took my ring as though it were nothing, as though I weren't making a personal sacrifice. He was all business, and at first I was half wishing I'd buried the ring in my pocket and ignored my dumb conscience. Finders keepers, losers weepers.

  Then a young woman came flying over, all upset and frantic. She started talking a mile a minute in French, and she said she'd left her ring in the bathroom (Mom translated). The Dutchman handed her the ring and pointed to little old me. Well, she was soooo happy, she kissed me on both cheeks and said, “Merci merci merci” (Mare Sea Mare Sea Mare Sea), and explained in French that the ring had been a gift from her grandpère (Grahn Pear), or grandfather. Then she thanked me one more time and dashed off.

  Dad said, “Cupcake, you made her day.”

  Mom just smiled.

  Bestest,

  Dear Diary,

  When we got back from dinner, the phone rang. I answered. It was Cecily's mom! Her voice sounded very quiet and faraway and she said, “Hello, Melanie, this is Mrs. Hausner.” I didn't say anything. I just handed the phone over to Cecily. Afterward I realized I should have said, “Hello, Mrs. Hausner,” or “How are you?” or something.

  I still feel bad that I hung up on her back when she was crabby and I didn't know why. I also feel bad that I haven't said a word to her about being sick. When I came back from Italy with stitches in my eyebrow, Mrs. Hausner asked all about it.

  Cecily is really happy now, and I'm happy for her. She said her mom told her that she is fine and that Cheshire Cat and Honey Bunny are fine too. “But you know what, Mel?” Cecily said. “I'd almost forgotten about them! When I'm at my dad's, I usually ask Mom about them, but this time, I didn't even think about Chesh or Hon-Bun. That's how worried I've been about my mom.”

  “I bet you're relieved now.”

  “You can say that again,” Cecily said.

  “I bet you're relieved now,” I said again, and Cecily called me a dork, and we both laughed because I knew she was kidding.

  “Cecily,” I said, “I know you're a private person and everything, but if you're ever really worried, you should tell me because I don't think I'm all that great at mind reading.”

  “Okay,” Cecily said.

  “Really,” I said. “I feel kind of bad that when we first got here, I wasn't, you know, more sensitive.”

  “Don't worry,” she said, and I was actually glad that she said, “Don't worry.”

  “You should tell me little stuff too,” I said. “Even no-big-deal stuff. Like when you got Caller I.D.” Then I thought that it wasn't exactly Cecily's fault that I kept hanging up on her mom, so I added, “And I'll try harder to listen better.”

  Cecily nodded and yawned and went to brush her teeth.

  Believe it or not, Mom and Dad and Matt are already fast asleep.

  Right before going to bed, Matt said that brushing his teeth was extra easy because he doesn't have as many as usual.

  Dear Diary,

  Cecily is brushing her teeth and I just heard her spitting, and it suddenly dawned on me that every single one of us forgot about Matt's tooth!!!

  What about the tooth fairy??? Do they even have tooth fairies in Holland? Or Dutch dwarves??! Did Matt remember to put his tooth under his pillow?

  I just checked.

  Matt remembered.

  Oh God, I mean gosh.

  His tooth is sitting there.

  This is

  Why?

  Because if there is no tooth fairy in Holland, that would be hard for Matt to take. Can you imagine being six and a half and putting your tooth under your pillow and finding it still there the next morning? That would stink!

  I have to do something. But what???

  Mission accomplished!

  I searched all my pockets and stuck all my coins under Matt's pillow. I don't even know how much money I jammed in there. I had a euro, which is the coin that works all around Europe. And I had a tiny old guilder and two dimes and one quarter. While I was shoving it all under Matt's head, he snuffled and mumbled something in a foreign language. Maybe Dutch! But he did not wake up.

  I, Melanie Martin, just saved the day. Or night. Or morning.

  Yay me! I feel kind of like that make-believe Dutch boy who poked his finger in the dike and stopped the flood.

  Dear Diary,

  Matt woke us up way early because he was soooo excited that the tooth fairy found him all the way in Amster Amster Dam Dam Dam.

  He showed us all his loot, and under his pillow, along with all the coins, there was a crisp American dollar bill! And his tooth was nowhere to be seen!

  I for one did not take away his tooth. Mostly because it didn't occur to me. Even if it had, I wouldn't have known what to do with it. Chuck it in the garbage? Keep it for all time? It's not like I have a collection of baby teeth. Especially not little-brother ones with ittybitty specks of dried blood on them.

  Anyway, Matt is smiling as wide as can be. I must admit, he looks pretty cute with that gap where his tooth used to be.

  I wish he hadn't woken us up so so so early, but for him it must feel like Christmas morning. He said he thinks the tooth fairy gave him more than one kind of money because his tooth was loose in more than one country.

  Mom and Dad are still fast asleep in their room, so Cecily and I told Matt to go back to sleep too. He said he'd try. But first he danced twice around the room with DogDog. He says DogDog won't stop licking him!

  Good night and good morning!

  P.S.

  (But don't count on it—hee hee!)

  Dear Diary,

  Mom tiptoed in while Cecily and Matt were still asleep. I waved, and she looked right at me, and then Matt, and she blew me een, twee, drie kisses. I whispered that I wanted to ask her something. We went into
her room and Dad was shaking a tower, so I snuggled into bed with Mom. She said she loved me and that's when I asked, “How do you know you're healthy?”

  “I know because I get regular check-ups called mammograms.”

  “So you promise you're okay?”

  “Pumpkin, I take good care of myself. But that's not the kind of thing anyone can promise because life does not come with guarantees.”

  I wish it did.

  TVs do.

  I'm glad I was able to ask her, though.

  Anne Frank wasn't able to ask her mom personal questions. She and her mom did not get along well. She and her dad did. And Anne hoped that someday she'd be a good “mumsie” herself.

  Today we're going to Anne Frank's house. It is now a museum called the Anne Frank Huis (Anna Frahnk House). I've read some more of her diary—by myself and with Mom. So far, Anne has been cooped up for over a year and a half. She wrote that when she looks out the window, all she sees are raincoats and hats and the tops of people's umbrellas. And that she misses good food and new books and the smell of fresh air. And that she feels like a “songbird whose wings have been clipped.”

  Reading her diary makes me feel guilty for ever saying I was bored and for not always appreciating my plain old regular life. Just yesterday, I signed off, “Melanie, A Culture Vulture with Tired Wings.” But think about it: Tired wings are no fun, but clipped wings are so much worse!

  I have decided never to complain or feel sorry for myself again for the rest of my life.

  Dear Diary,

  Breakfast today was We went down stairs and they ran out of cereal, so there was just grainy bread and gross cheese and gooshy yogurt.

  Even the Dutch word for breakfast is stupid. It's ontbijt (Ont Baid). Lunch is spelled lunch (Lunch) and dinner is diner (Dee Nay). But ontbijt! What kind of a dumb word is—