Traveling with Pomegranates (23 page)

Before we leave the museum, I wander back to Leonardo da Vinci’s
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne
. When I stood before it earlier, I found myself looking at it from Anne’s perspective, not Mary’s. I was unsure if and how it belonged with the other, more paradigmatic events in Mary’s life that I had recorded.

I inspect it again—Mary sitting in her mother’s lap reaching for Jesus, who plays beside her skirt. Behind them are craggy hills and a lone tree. There is an easy intimacy between the two barefoot women. Mary gazes down at Jesus, but Anne stares at her daughter with an enigmatic smile reminiscent of Leonardo’s
Mona Lisa
—the same smile, only better. I try to read Anne’s expression. Wistful, bittersweet, knowing. She seems moved by the thought of her daughter as an adult and a mother herself.

I wonder if, perhaps like Picasso’s
Girl Before a Mirror
, it captures the reunion. What I know is that, for me, it is the most personal of all the paintings in the Louvre. The aging mother reaching for her grown daughter. The way she tries to make a lap for her younger self.

I’ve only been in Paris long enough to glimpse the cityscape and order onion soup. I’m sitting on the bus with the Fun Girls again, only this time they are my mother’s age and much more uninhibited. We’ve just had lunch at a brasserie and are headed into the heart of Paris when Trisha picks up the bus microphone and introduces us to St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris.

“Jon-vi-ev,” she says, with a French pronunciation. It sounds musical. I like the name. To me, it suggests a self-assured woman. If I had a name like Genevieve, I would know exactly who I am and what I’m supposed to do. A Genevieve, it seems to me, could paint a self-portrait, would know how to say: this is who I am.

The bus chugs along Rue de Rivoli. “Coming up, you’ll see an entirely gold statue of Joan of Arc,” Trisha tells the group. “It’s situated not far from where she was wounded during an attack she led against the English in 1429. She was only seventeen. Can you imagine?”

No, I can’t
.

I turn toward the window and see the gilded statue come into view in the middle of a large intersection known as Place des Pyramides. Joan sits on her horse, clasping the reins in one hand and holding a flagpole with the other. Seeing her reminds me of when I was twelve and took horseback riding lessons, trotting and cantering on a horse named Harry. The fact that Joan and I both sat on saddles is about as far as the similarity goes. Before those lessons I’d never been on a horse, and I would discover there’s a reason truck engines are measured in
horse
power. Riding back to the stables one day, Harry was spooked by a tractor and took off. At first I was terrified, but then it became thrilling. Something came over me—a small rush of bravery. I held on with my knees and got control of the reins, gradually slowing him to a trot. A picture of me on Harry that my mother snapped afterward was tacked to my bulletin board for a long time.

As we leave the Joan statue behind, I write a reminder in my journal to find this picture when I get home.

“Joan was burned at the stake in Rouen and became a saint in 1920,” Trisha is saying.

Somehow Joan’s sainthood had escaped me.
Saint
Joan.
That
we do not share.

Trisha goes on to tell us that Joan heard voices. St. Margaret, St. Catherine, and St. Michael all conversed with her about her mission to save the French from the invading English. Joan also thought God spoke directly to her about it and declared she wasn’t afraid of her mission because she was born for it.

That is what I want—to know what I was born to do.
What I wouldn’t give to hear voices about now.

Just before we came to France, I read a poem by David Whyte with four lines that nearly stopped my heart:

Tonight, when I climb into bed in our hotel room, I will realize those lines are my “St. Michael” voice, spelling out my mission: find the world to which I belong.

After a quick stop at the hotel to unload luggage, our group is off again on a long walk to St.-Germain-des-Prés, followed by a boat ride on the Seine River.

At the Pont de l’Alma, we board the
Bateau-Mouche
, an open-air boat which literally translates as “fly-boat.” I find a place next to my mother among the bright orange seats. My point-and-click camera inexplicably broke back at the hotel, so I fiddle with my manual 35mm and practice taking some pictures: dozens of boats floating like cork lures; the BATEAUX-MOUCHES sign in tall, white letters; Mom and Terry gripping the scarves around their necks.

The Seine divides Paris into two banks, and the boat cruises right down the middle of the city, past some of the most famous monuments. We pass the Place de la Concorde, the Egyptian obelisk, the Tuileries, and move toward Pont Neuf and Notre Dame. The wind and sun make me forget my jet lag. The light creates soft strobes on the river, so different from the light on the Aegean, which had a way of blazing against everything it touched.

As Terry leans toward Mom to discuss the afternoon schedule, a woman in our group, whom I met just hours ago, asks a question—
the
question, really: “So, Ann, what do you do?”

I search my memory for her name among the many introductions from earlier but can’t place it.

“I work for a magazine back in Charleston.”

“Oh, a magazine—what kind?”

“A women’s magazine. I work on both sides—advertising and editorial.”

“So, do you write like your mom?”

A few months ago, I finally decided to take my editor up on her offer and wrote a couple of articles. As a member of the staff, I felt like I ought to contribute something. But write like my mom?

“No, hardly,” I tell her. “I mean, yeah, I do some writing for them. A few articles and profiles. But I wouldn’t say I’m a writer. You know, I should probably stick to answering the phones.”

The woman, whose name I still cannot remember, squints at me. “What were your articles about?”

“They were just personal experience pieces. I wrote one about my dad and one about Earth Day.”

“Well, I bet you’ve got your mom’s talent.”

She obviously suffers from delusions. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I say. And laugh.

If I went into writing, I would inevitably be compared to my mother. Even this woman is thinking I have talent like her. I realize there are a million subjects to write about and writing can take so many forms—fiction, playwriting, journalism, essays, poetry, TV commercials—but still I fear comparisons are inevitable. I imagine the silent indictments if I failed. “Wow,” people would say, “the apple fell way, way,
way
far from the tree.”

Mom has been writing since I was a year old. Throughout my youth her presence as a writer grew in my mind—from those first book signings she did in the greeting card section at Belk department store while I sat beside her reading my Judy Blume books, all the way to the crowds that lined up more recently with their copies of
Dissident Daughter
. When she spoke at my college, I overheard the amazing things my professors said to her about her book. Her career makes me proud.

When I search myself honestly, I know my mom’s success as a writer isn’t really the deterrent to my own attempts at writing. No, my hesitation comes down to this: writing is what my mother does; I need to find what is mine. I’ve just assumed that what is mine would be different from hers.

As the boat circles the Île Saint-Louis and heads toward the Eiffel Tower, I recall that I
liked
writing those articles. Sitting at my desk after dinner, typing out a tangled mess of thoughts around an idea, an image, or a line of poetry, then shaping and tinkering until I had a draft—there had been a particular satisfaction in it, like I was in some sort of “flow,” content and challenged at the same time. I would lose all track of time. It would grow late as I worked. Scott would fall asleep. The soft-watt bulb in the lamp on my desk would be the only light on in the apartment. Just me alone with the words. I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was doing, but I felt more connected to myself when I finished.

It reminded me of the feeling I had writing my prize-winning story in seventh grade, back when I was sure I would end up a writer. My story was about a girl and a horse. It was very
National Velvet
-y in theme, though I’d never read the book. I even worked on my story through recesses. When my English teacher called me into the hall, I thought I was in trouble, but she informed me I’d won the writing competition. I didn’t belong in the Science Club, Pep Squad, chorus, or modern dance class, but writing stories . . . that had felt like mine.

The problem, I discovered, is that it isn’t enough just to
like
writing. I stare at the water of the Seine and run through all the reasons a writing career is a bad idea for me. For one thing, it’s not practical. I’m not thirteen anymore. What twenty-three-year-old says: I’m going for job security and a steady income—I’ll become a writer? The truth is I need to pay the bills. There’s a point at which you have to be realistic.

Not to mention the matter of talent. If I was cut out to be a writer, wouldn’t I be better at it? Wouldn’t it come easier? Wouldn’t I have majored in English instead of history and applied for a graduate program in creative writing? I’ve heard Mom say that a person can learn the craft, but that’s only half of it; a writer needs some innate capacity that can’t be taught. Did I have it?

After the solitary writing process at my desk was over, I would feel reasonably satisfied with my articles, at least until the realization dawned that people would actually read them. Then, feeling exposed and self-conscious, I would regret they ever saw print. I could not read my newly published articles without hearing trumpets go off in my head announcing how bad they were.

Which brings me to what may be the most serious of all reasons a writing career for me would be plain ludicrous: it requires far too much confidence. Why would I choose a career that’s notorious for its
rejection letters
? I don’t want to lose faith in the words I wrote on the scroll of paper that I left in the cave at Eleusis (“I will return”), but another big rejection and I don’t know if I would get back.

As we approach the Eiffel Tower, I read the digital numbers on the countdown clock, which tracks the days until the year 2000. Seventy-nine. The sight of it calls up the forecasted chaos of Y2K. Computers crashing, warnings of failing airline traffic control, Conan O’Brien’s “In the Year 2000” skits.

Propping my elbows on the boat rail, I focus and click on the countdown clock.