The Safekeep(29)

Isabel’s shame turned itself over into something more familiar: anger took its worn seat. “I am not,” she started, a tight hiss, “the sort of person who—”

“Oh, not now,” Eva cut her off, and glanced over her shoulder to see whether any of it had been overheard. She whispered: “Not now, Isabel, please.”

“I—” Isabel halted. She was tired. She had not slept. She tried to summon the haziness that possessed her last night: the heat in her belly, how badly she had wanted, for a moment. She couldn’t. Eva was someone else now: distracted from her, not caring for her. Looking away from her, worried about other people.

She didn’t have anything else to say. She bustled by Eva, held her breath as their arms brushed, and when Hendrik asked the room at large if anyone wanted some “nice things” from the baker’s, she said: “I’ll come with you,” and marched herself out the door.



* * *



Hendrik drove them to the city. At the baker’s, awaiting their turn, Hendrik said: “This should be a fun weekend, hmm.”

Isabel was inspecting the display. The sweet things were nauseating to look at: shiny, gelatinous. A fly had got behind the glass. “How do you mean,” she asked, though she knew what he meant, whom he meant.

“Just that she’s so silly, isn’t she?” Hendrik’s turn was next, and he rattled off their order.

Isabel said, “She isn’t silly.” She said it too seriously, too quietly, and Hendrik didn’t hear her and he said, “Hm, what?” and so Isabel had to repeat herself, louder:

“She isn’t silly.” Isabel was blushing. She meant to say: She is horrid. She meant to say, I think she’s stealing from me, and then thought of the kiss and blushed more angrily. Hendrik accepted their bagged order from over the counter.

“She isn’t?” he said. He wasn’t looking at her but he put on a tone: light, as if she could be tricked into thinking he wasn’t paying attention.

“Never mind,” she said, and went to take the bags from him. She insisted on carrying them to the car. Hendrik only held a single baguette aloft.

On the drive back he said, out of nowhere: “So we’ve decided on Paris. I wanted to let you know. We’ve decided—” He stopped himself. It really was a beautiful day, the sun beating off the road in a blur. “His mother is… well, you know how it is. You remember. So we’re going, soon. Before the autumn. I don’t know for how long, of course, but Isabel, listen, I want—I want you to know that you can come visit. I want you to know that Paris isn’t—”

“No,” she said. “I can’t just leave. I can’t just do whatever I want, I can’t—” And immediately another flash of last night came to her: her mouth slippery on Eva’s, her hand on Eva’s thigh.

Hendrik lifted a hesitant hand to her shoulder. “Hey,” he said.

“I’m fine.” She reemerged. She felt bare suddenly.

Hendrik took his hand away. “It won’t be indefinitely. It’s not permanent.”

“I know. Let’s talk about something else.”

He thought about this for a while. Then, “Oh, hello, how did your big night with Johan go!”

The crops in the field to their right stood young and knee-high. The horizon beyond, uninterrupted and endless. “Fine,” Isabel said.

“Well? Must I save the date? A summer wedding, an autumn wedding?”

“Stop,” she said, and he turned to her in humor, ready to poke more—and noticed she was serious. He retreated, and they drove on in silence for a while.

“He is nice to you,” Hendrik said eventually. “Isn’t he? Because if he’s not, then—”

“He’s fine,” Isabel said. “Johan is… fine.”

Two swallows, twirling up against the bright sky. Hendrik said, “Will you ever tell me anything, Isabel?”

She looked at him, quick. Her heart beat fast. She wondered, frantically, what it would be like to tell him. Hendrik’s eyes were on the road. He sighed, said, “Very well, then.”

Behind the house, on the lawn, Eva and Sebastian were playing badminton. They’d unearthed the net somewhere, found two rusty rackets.

“What in God’s name,” Hendrik said. He and Isabel crowded close at the kitchen window to watch them. The game was being played badly and in some kind of hysterics on Eva’s part. She missed a hit and lay herself down in the grass in reply while Sebastian bowed to accept his victory. He was smoking a cigarette out the corner of his mouth.

Hendrik shouted out the door, “I leave you alone for one second!”

Sebastian waved, said they were out of ways to entertain themselves. Eva got up. She tried to wipe a grass stain from her knee, pouting at it. Hendrik gave Isabel a look that somehow communicated the word silly, and Isabel—Isabel turned away. And then, all too quickly, it was all of them inside, preparing for lunch, dancing around each other: putting plates on the table, then cutlery. Eva was keeping a distance in a way that no one else would notice, and Isabel, spiteful, did the same. Hendrik said, “Where did the small bread knife go?” And the question echoed in Isabel from a muffled distance: Where did any of the things in the house go when they disappeared? She thought, I will tell him about the list, and could feel none of the indignant anger from before: only the same muddled sense of loss, as if she herself had been taken and placed where she did not belong. She was woozy with the thought a moment, and then Sebastian put a hand to her arm and asked her to get the glasses that he couldn’t reach, so she did. Eva, at the round table, was peeling an apple. She cut it into four parts. She placed a part on each of their plates.