The Safekeep(12)

Isabel stood quickly and went to get her jacket from the hook by the back door. “It’s not up for discussion. Just do it,” she said, and arranged her collar. “I’ll be gone today. Don’t get in Neelke’s way, she’ll be busy. But…” She hesitated. Eva considered her with a frown. Her night scarf had slipped back and the line of her hair, now visible, came down in a widow’s peak, brown bleeding into bleach. Isabel cleared her throat, said, “Don’t let her roam.”

“Roam? Your maid? What, do you think she’ll—”

“I don’t think anything. I’m just telling you. If you see anything, if she, if she takes anything you think isn’t hers, just—”

“Oh!” Eva said, and then laughed. Put her hands over her mouth like she hadn’t meant to.

Isabel looked at her, teeth clenched, and Eva said, “Oh, it’s just that Louis had mentioned—” But Isabel didn’t want to hear what Louis had told her. She left to the sound of Eva’s “Isabel, no I—” and shut the door behind her, marched across the gravel. She took the car to the city. Saw the butcher about tomorrow’s order, picked a fabric for the new curtains in the study, then drove to Assen to visit an old friend of her mother’s. Tante Rian had no children of her own and lived in a big house that was all brown on the inside. She reused coffee grinds instead of making a new pot. Every now and then she would break silences by saying, Oh, you used to adore me when you were a child, you and your brothers all.

Today, Isabel sat on the couch and listened to Rian talk about an issue she had with an old neighbor, something about an oven dish that may or may not have been given as a gift before the war. The old neighbor wanted it back, and Rian thought it was so tiring, to still insist fifteen years after the fact. Isabel only half listened. She had left a silk shawl on a hanger in the entryway and she worried about it: she should have folded it into her jewelry box, the one with the lock. In the car, on the way back, the moment Louis said goodbye to Eva it stuck to Isabel’s memory, like a feather to a honeyed finger: Eva leaning back against the doorway, and Louis leaning over her, kissing her mouth, a hand on her breast, kneading, murmuring something, kissing her again. Isabel could see the slip of his tongue between their mouths. Eva smiled through it all. Her hands were loose on his side: up and down they went. Up, down.

Isabel had been up on the first landing, crouched, watching them between the slats of the railing. Louis whispered, Will you be good? And Eva whispered back, I’ll be incredibly good.

After he left, Eva stood there for a while, blankly staring at the wall. The smile was gone. Her mouth, kiss-swollen, was slack. She looked vacant. And then, as though with the snap of a rubber band, she was back in her body, and walking, and rounding the bottom of the stairs. She saw Isabel up on the landing and startled. “Oh God,” she said, and put a hand over her heart and laughed. “Oh, you scared me.”

It was early evening by the time Isabel got home from Rian, arms full of paper-bagged groceries. The shawl was where Isabel had left it, on the peg. Neelke’s bike was not outside: she’d gone home.

The house smelled clean. A breeze came through—the windows had been left open. Isabel found Eva in the drawing room, on the sofa, paging through a Bijenkorf catalog. The radio was on. She was in high-waisted trousers, hair in two short pigtails. Her legs she had folded under her. The bottoms of her socks were dirt-dark. She looked like a child, like she was making a child of herself. She looked up at Isabel and smiled. She did it slowly.

“Hello,” she said, and put the magazine aside. “Do you need any help with those?”

Isabel said “No” and readjusted the groceries. She realized now she had come into the room, and she had come to a standstill and had remained there: unmoving, staring. Eva said, “How was your day?” And Isabel said, “When did Neelke leave?” And Eva leaned forward and said:

“Oh, she’s just the sweetest thing, isn’t she? So shy, too, I said oh, let me help you when she was peeling the potatoes and she was so worried you’d not—”

“You helped her?”

“Well—” Eva leaned back. Her leg slipped out from under her. “Yes, why not? I’m here. I’m not doing much.”

On the radio a quick-beat song came on. It wasn’t a station Isabel ever listened to. “I’m not paying you to peel potatoes, I’m paying her.”

“Oh, come on, Isabel.” This was said with exasperation, like Isabel was being silly, like this was a recurring theme between the two of them—Isabel being silly, Eva suffering through it.

Isabel left the room quickly. She went to the kitchen to put the groceries away. Eva followed, shuffling steps. She didn’t lift her feet properly when she walked. She said, “Do you really not like Neelke?”

Isabel polished each apple with a towel before putting it in the basket. “Of course you do.”

“What do you mean?” She sounded mild. Isabel didn’t answer. She polished an apple, put it in its basket. A heat was coming up the back of her neck. Eva came down the steps into the kitchen proper. She asked it again: “Isabel. What do you mean?”

Isabel could imagine who Eva would have been in school: loud, happy, beloved. Not unkind, necessarily, but the kind who would still giggle with the rest of them for unknown reasons, pointing at someone. The kind who sighed over boys with good hair, over those with soft eyes. She would not have noticed Isabel, not in a good way.