Meanwhile
November 1997
London, England
“Uh, Buffy, are you sure you’re okay?” Dawn’s voice filtered through the closed bathroom door. “Because if not, we can always do this later.”
Buffy sat up on her knees, fighting the urge to throw up in the toilet again. “No,” she answered weakly. “No. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
Dawn opened the door to watch as Buffy stood on shaky legs before moving to the sink. She turned on the faucet and dampened a wash cloth. Dawn leaned against the door frame, arms crossed, as Buffy ran the wet cloth across her brow. She then grabbed her toothbrush and slathered on some tooth paste before frantically attempting to erase the taste of bile from her mouth.
“Like hell you’re gonna be fine,” Dawn finally said when Buffy spit out the paste and rinsed her mouth out.
“Dawn,” Buffy said, annoyed. “I’ll be fine.”
Dawn looked at her disbelieving. “And how long has this been going on?”
Buffy sighed, “Only a couple of days. It started the day Will left for the US. It’s probably just something I ate. It’ll pass. It’s never lasted more than a few minutes at a time.”
Dawn raised her eyebrow, looking very much like her brother, but she didn’t press the issue any further. “Okay. If you say you’re feeling better, fine. I believe you.”
“No, you don’t. You’re just humoring me.”
“Maybe. So, are we going or not?”
Buffy nodded, “Yes, we’re going.”
Dawn smiled, “Good. I have a paper due tomorrow and I still haven’t picked a painting to write about.”
Buffy’s eyes widened in alarm, “Dawn!”
The younger woman laughed, “I’m kidding. Really. It’s not due until next week.”
Buffy released a breath, “You scared me for a moment.” She sighed, “But even then, that’s not very long.”
Dawn shrugged, “It’s not a big deal. It doesn’t take me long to write papers.”
“Whatever you say. Just don‘t try calling me at four in the morning the day it‘s due begging for my help.” Buffy checked her appearance quickly in the mirror, making sure she didn’t look like she just spent time puking her guts out. Brushing a few errant strands of hair behind her ears, she considered herself presentable. “So, are we ready to go?”
“You bet.”
“Okay, so you have to pick out something between 1400 and 1700, right?” Buffy asked Dawn as the two girls entered the National Gallery.
“Yep. I figured, who better to ask than the Renaissance Ph.D.-in-training,” Dawn said with a smile and little skip as she came up side by side with her sister-in-law.
Buffy gave a giggle at Dawn’s enthusiasm. Even though the younger woman was in her early twenties, she still held a certain child-like innocence about her. It was contagious.
“Well, are you wanting to do something that‘s more well-known?”
Dawn shrugged, “I don’t know.”
Buffy shrugged her shoulders, “I guess it depends on how much digging you’re willing to do in a week’s time.”
“What do you mean?”
“The more well-known the artist and the work of art, the more likely you’ll be able to find sources. On the other hand, the less well-known the artist is, the more likely you’ll be digging and digging, getting more and more desperate with the passing time. Believe me, I know,” Buffy said, thinking of the hell she went through with her Egyptian Master’s thesis.
Dawn shook her head, “Let’s go with easier.” She looked down at her pamphlet, “What about Raphael? He‘s got to be easy to find stuff on.”
Buffy grimaced, “Um, not really.”
“Huh? But you just said the more well-known-”
“I know. I thought he would be, too. But, he…isn‘t. Doesn’t even have a monograph with his work.”
“Well, okay, then. I guess I won’t be doing him.”
“Let’s just go see what we see. How about that?”
“Okay. I can do that.”
Later
“Wow,” Dawn breathed as she and Buffy stopped before one of the famous paintings that the gallery displayed. “The detail is amazing.”
Buffy nodded, “I know. I’m not an expert in Early Netherlandish painting, but I’m a little familiar with this one.”
Dawn looked at the identification plaque beside the painting, “The Arnolfini Portrait. Jan Van Eyck.”
“Yep.”
The painting was slightly smaller than three feet by two feet, causing Dawn, as she was an artist herself, to gawk at the immense detailing. “Was he a miniaturist or something? I mean, how did he manage to get so many tiny little details on such a small panel?” She leaned in as close as she could without a docent telling her to back away. “Look at her sleeves; at the…what’s it called?”
“Dagging? I’m not sure either,” Buffy said, leaning in to study the artfully cut sleeves.
“So, how much do you know about this painting?” Dawn asked, crossing her arms as she looked at her sister-in-law.
“Well,” Buffy cleared her throat. “I know that it’s considered one of the most complex and original paintings in western history.” She pointed to the convex mirror in the background of the painting, below the graffiti-like inscription, ‘Johannes de Eyck fuit hic. 1434.’ “The mirror’s a little bigger than they really would have been in real life, but take a look at the details van Eyck painted. We have scenes of The Passion aligning the mirror. And then, within the mirror, we of course have the reflection of the scene before us. And we can even see the artist himself. It’s sort of like Velasquez’s Las Meninas, but more complex and contains a true reflection. Do you know that one?”
Dawn nodded.
And Buffy continued explaining the painting, getting in full art-historian-mode, “We can tell what time of year it is by looking at the tree just outside the window. Summer. The two main subjects of the painting are very well dressed, but they are not nobles.”
“How can you be sure?” Dawn asked.
“Their clothing is expensive, that’s for sure. Fur-lined…even though it’s summer. But, despite the expensiveness of the clothes, they’re still…I don’t know,” she struggled for the right word, her hands gesturing wildly. “Restrained. Usually, when we deal with portraits of nobles, we see way more jewelry than we see here. And decorations and patterns on the fabric itself. Here, the woman wears a simple necklace and a couple of rather plain rings. And their clothing, well, you can see, is rather plain,” Buffy said, pointing out the details as she went along.
Dawn suddenly gave a little giggle, startling Buffy.
“What?” Buffy asked.
“Oh, nothing, really. It’s just -” she pointed to the woman’s left hand. “-The artist is so meticulous in all the details, but look at her hands. I mean, really, her fingers are freaky.”
Buffy studied the hand, looking at what Dawn was saying, before laughing along with her. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“Speaking of funny hands,” Buffy said, as the two giggled on their way to the next painting, “have you ever notice the Mona Lisa’s pudgy hands?”
END CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE