The Safekeep(30)

“Oh, aren’t you sweet,” Hendrik said, and ate his slice in one big bite. And then, with his mouth still full: “Where did you learn to play badminton so well? Or are you an autodidact? Either way a natural.”

He was making fun of her. He was making fun of her the way he had that night at the restaurant. Isabel thought it had gone over her head then. She had been wrong. Eva knew what he was doing and was caught off guard by it; tried to smile still, and couldn’t.

Isabel said his name. Once, and in warning: “Hendrik.”

He didn’t expect it—gave Isabel a confused look. Sebastian spoke up with a quick “Hendrik only teases because he’s the worst player of us all.” He leaned back and was amused, and said in his low voice: “You know we’d summer with a family in Geneva and one of my cousins, a menace, insisted we play and then would toss the shuttle as far off as he could. So most of the afternoons were spent not so much playing but with me looking for the damn thing. The son of the hotel owner took pity on me, gave me private lessons. So he wouldn’t have to scavenge the garden for shuttles, mostly.” He said, “Now I am proficient.”

Eva smiled at him, closed-mouthed.

The table went quiet.

Isabel picked up her slice of the apple. Again she felt exposed: her harsh reply to Hendrik, his confusion. Isabel brought the apple to her lips. The fruit was tart and sour. Eva, Isabel imagined, must have gone to sleep last night and woken up this morning with only a vague recollection of what happened in the night, in the short space between the two doors, and thought to herself: How very embarrassing. Why did I do that? So embarrassing.

The day barreled on, stops and starts. Fast the one moment, slow the next. Hendrik in his childhood room, on his bed, saying, “Hello, bed.” Sebastian shaking out the sheets, a billow of dust. Footsteps up and down the stairs, a house full of snatched conversation: Sebastian and Hendrik, humming voices in the study; the rush of someone turning on the tap upstairs; Eva and Hendrik smoking out in the garden, talking slow and serious. He was overtly nicer to her now, and she allowed it.

The four of them went for a walk through the fields. Hendrik wanted to wade into the high corn, Sebastian told him not to because snakes might live between the stalks. Eva said, “Snakes, what nonsense!” and then disappeared between the green, yellow head bobbing above. Isabel said, “No, don’t—” which no one heard, because then Eva gave a shout and ran right back out, swatting all around her, saying, “Something—oh, something brushed my—” Which had Hendrik in tears.

Isabel stared at the back of Eva’s head on the walk home. When she turned to say something, her profile was smiling, cheeks tight. She had gone bright in the hours since Hendrik and Sebastian’s arrival: a bird puffing, preening. She was making herself funny, interesting. Clumsy.

Embarrassing, Isabel thought, and as though on cue Eva cast a quick glance back at her. Isabel held it a moment. Hendrik asked Eva a question, and Eva blinked, said, “Hmm, what?” Hendrik had to ask his question a second time.

Isabel fell back. Sebastian came to walk beside her, hands clasped behind his back. The silence was companionable, at first. Then Sebastian said, “You’ve heard about my mother.”

It wasn’t a question. Isabel took a moment to say, “Yes.” And, “I was sorry to hear.”

He, too, turned his reply over in his mind for a while. “You were there, when your mother… when she fell ill, no?”

Isabel nodded once. He said, “I think about her all the time. It’s odd, I would go days without thinking about her before. Now I worry. It’s as if I’m there already, in mind. But I’m not. I’m…” He paused. Isabel wanted him to not say anything anymore, wanted him to join the others. He didn’t. He said, “She’s still lucid. She might get better yet.”

Ahead, Eva took Hendrik’s arm and briefly leaned into him.

“You’re leaving soon,” Isabel said. “Hendrik said before summer’s end.”

He wiped the back of his hand over his forehead. It was a hot evening. “Unless she improves, yes. Isabel.” He said her name as if imploring. “Did you find—When did you find that you—” He was halting. He had never spoken to her like this, uncertainly, seeking. “When did you decide that there was no—that it was hopeless, that you knew she would—”

“I don’t—” She closed her mouth. Tried again, voice lower. “You should speak to Hendrik about these things.”

Another beat of silence. Sebastian recovered his stoic self. All calm, he said, “In fact, Hendrik said to ask you. That you would… He wasn’t there, at the end, was he?” Sebastian looked at her. “You were.”

Isabel did not answer. We are not the same, she thought. We are nothing alike, she thought. He had Hendrik, and Hendrik was coming with him. She had been alone. The room where her mother died had stood empty for years. Eva slept there now. A picture of her own mother on the nightstand.

Isabel said, “Excuse me,” and doubled her speed, overtook the murmuring Hendrik and Eva and walked ahead of everyone: a fast-paced step toward home.



* * *



Wine was poured before dinner. Wine was poured during dinner. All of them clustered at one end of the long table, conversation moving quickly and loudly from Could you pass the— to So you said you grew up in— to Where’s the big spoon, I could’ve sworn it was—