The Safekeep(16)

She found it under a cabinet: as though it had been placed on the table and had then fallen and rolled out of sight.

Who would do that, Isabel wondered, and felt that she knew already.



* * *



Eva was downstairs, writing a letter. Isabel sat at a distance, positioned to watch her. Neelke was upstairs, scrubbing down the bathroom. Every now and then Eva would glance up to see whether Isabel was looking at her, and when she found she was, Eva looked down again quickly, flushing. This went on until Eva stopped midway through a sentence and looked up and said into the space between them:

“You know you don’t have to—” And then cut herself off. Isabel waited for her to finish her sentence. She didn’t.

“I don’t have to what?” Isabel said.

“Nothing.”

“What don’t I have to do, Eva?”

Eva’s mouth closed. Her name spoken by Isabel sounded odd to Isabel’s ears, badly placed. Eva said, “Never mind, never mind,” and folded her letter and went to the garden. Isabel turned in her spot in the armchair: she could still see Eva through the window. Eva looked over her shoulder, marched down the long path. She reached the end, then stopped. Lingered. She stayed there, standing, and Isabel thought, Something is wrong, and it took a moment for the thought to catch up with her sight: Eva was shaking. Her shoulders, her arms. Visibly so—terribly so. Then she bent over and held herself, and went down to a crouch, and Isabel got out of her chair, went to the window, and held the curtain further aside and—

She was laughing. Eva was laughing. A hand to the ground to steady herself. It did not stop.

Isabel stepped back. It felt like a déjà vu, like she had seen this before, and had been here before. But she hadn’t. There was nothing for Eva to laugh at. Nothing but Isabel, should she want to laugh at Isabel.

She turned away from the window. A moment later, Eva was gone. She stayed gone for hours, hours, and it was nearly evening when she returned—looking sun-pinked and dusty. She entered quietly, uneasily, and as she was taking off her shoes in the hallway Isabel came to her and said: “You can’t just leave like that.”

Eva did not look up at her. “Oh?”

“What if—” Isabel started, and didn’t know how to finish. She recalled, with a sudden stark brightness, how Eva stood at the end of the drive and laughed. Her face had been twisted in a grimace.

She looked normal now. Tired. Her hair had frizzed up in a mess. She appeared to consider Isabel—how Isabel kept her hands fisted at her sides, how she stood so much taller than Eva. Her gaze went down, up.

“Did you worry?”

Isabel did not enjoy being looked at. She made herself stiff, said, “I did not worry. It is—not proper, for a guest, to just—to—”

Eva’s smile was the smallest thing, a sad pull of a lip. She said, “I’m going to wash up. When is dinner?”

It took a moment for Isabel to answer. “In an hour.”

Eva went upstairs. Neelke had made a mashed potato dish with pork slavinkjes and green beans. Isabel occasionally took her dinners with Eva in the dining room. Eva had been excited for her company at first—spent an evening peppering Isabel with questions, a child asking, What does that mean, what does that mean! What did Hendrik do for a living, and what did that mean, and what did her father do, and what did that mean, and when did they move, and what was Isabel’s favorite subject in school, and did she have good friends in the city, and did she have a boyfriend, a liefje, would she ever want to—

Isabel either didn’t answer, or answered in a way so dull that Eva let go of her line of inquiry. The thought of Eva knowing about Johan turned her stomach over, something unsavory about it, something unwell. That first dinner ended in a long stretch of silence. Eva said once, “Don’t you have anything you want to know about me?” To which Isabel said, “No.”

After that the dinners turned into sober affairs. Eva, every now and then, either out of habit or out of desperation, would still ring out into the silence with a question. What year was the house built, do you know? To which Isabel said: I haven’t a clue.

Tonight was even quieter. Eva pulled apart her meat, ate half, pushed the rest around her plate.

Isabel watched her at it. “That’s disrespectful.”

Eva put down her fork. She seemed to be considering a thought. Then said, “Does nothing bring you joy, Isabel?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“A simple one,” said Eva. She sounded resigned.

Isabel took a halted breath. An answer was at the back of her throat—she would speak it, she knew. If she did not stop it now she would speak it. She ate her potato and swallowed and still, words came. Unbidden, they still came: “What does it matter, what brings me joy. What a question, what brings me joy. And who are you, to think I have no—To assume I—”

“Oh, then tell me.” Eva leaned forward, toward Isabel. Something about her lit up, a moment: like Isabel had given her an inch there, and she wanted more. “If I have it wrong, then tell me, really, tell me what—”

“Nonsense,” Isabel said, and took her plate to the kitchen. She stood at the counter, arms locked. There was a crack in the ceramic of the sink, fixed last winter, and the filler was a different color: a gray lightning bolt of a shape. She rolled the word joy around her head like an insult. She knew no one who spoke of it, of joy, unless in jest. Hendrik saying what a joy at an especially long line at the bank; Rian saying what joy do you bring me today and herding her into the house, and telling her about a neighbor who’d been rude and a woman at the store who’d been rude, too.