The Safekeep(55)

Isabel stared at that lip until Eva was a blur of a person, a vague movement in the distance. And then she was onto the road and walked toward the stand of trees, and was gone.



* * *



Louis arrived in the early evening. He woke her up. She was on the couch still. In her house robe still. She had fallen asleep. Her face was paper-dry, her nose stuffed. He stood at an awkward distance from her, unsure of what to do. She sat up and pulled her robe closed tighter, tried to pull her hair together with a twist alone.

Louis said, “Are you ill?”

“She left,” Isabel said. “She is not here. She left.”

“Oh,” Louis said. And then sighed expansively and sat down in the armchair. “God,” he said, and laughed a little. “What a relief!”

Isabel went upstairs. Louis, before he left, said he would call her a doctor. He shouted up the stairs: the doctor would come by tomorrow. He shouted up the stairs: Will they have dinner soon? He shouted up the stairs: It had been a while since they had dinner. He said: “It’d be a nice chance to meet Mary.” He said, “You’ll love her.”



* * *



She was, in fact, ill. The doctor had come by and confirmed: ill, a summer cold, a fever. She spent several days throwing up and then shaking in her bed while Neelke sulked downstairs and occasionally brought her food: a clear soup, dry bread. It tasted of nothing. Neelke’s small hand when she pressed a wet cloth to Isabel’s forehead felt like nothing.

She was slow to recover. She’d wake up sweaty in the night, half in and half out of fevered dreams about mouths, about a soft body pressed to hers. She’d wake up and be sure there was a sound at the door—a knock, a startle. But the room was always empty, and the house was always empty. There was no one at the door.

Harsh winds whistled July’s end and into August. Louis brought the new girl home for dinner. He had called Isabel about it, and Isabel had not quite heard what he’d said, was too bleary and tired to follow his rambling: something about wanting Mary to see where he’d come from, something about an eye on the future. Isabel coughed over the line and missed some words. Louis then made a joke about promising to not leave Mary behind at the house. After the call Isabel wanted to go for a walk, announced to Neelke she wanted to go for a walk, and Neelke helped her into her coat and Isabel swayed and Neelke said: “It will be good to get out of the house. Fresh air.” She sounded doubtful. Isabel stood in the hallway with a head full of cotton. She had kissed Eva against that wall. She had kissed Eva in that doorway. The memories were heavy, empty things low in her gut and only angered her: that her own doorway could be taken away from her, that a childhood and a youth and a life lived through that doorway could disappear in favor of a single person. The blouse Eva had worn that day, the way she had done her hair.

Isabel walked to the end of the drive and around the stand of trees and then had to stop. She leaned against a tree. She pushed the heels of her hands to her eyes and breathed.

Hendrik did not join them. Over the phone he’d said, “Oh, I’m bored of it, Isa, how many more girls must we entertain this year? They come, they go, we never hear from them again. No thank you.” There was a rustling on the line, and then he said, a little distracted: “How did he break it off with Eva, anyway? Poor thing. She was too clever for him, anyway.”

Isabel had made a sound. She hadn’t meant to. Hendrik said, “Isabel?” and Isabel said, “I’m going to lie down, I have a headache,” and Hendrik said: “Are you still sick? Hasn’t it been a while?”

Mary was a reedy girl, sunken cheeks, a big red mouth. Her hair was done up neatly. Her dress was pretty. She didn’t speak Dutch, only English and French. She kept a purse to her midriff and didn’t touch anything in the house. She didn’t seem to look at anything directly on, only glanced. About the painting in the living room she said, “Oh, lovely, the dunes,” and Louis said, in his broken English, “Of course you have good taste,” and didn’t correct her at all.

She wasn’t at all like Eva. It should have been a relief but it wasn’t. Louis still looked at her like he wanted to go to his knees for her, like he wanted to tilt his chin and open his mouth for her. Isabel knew that look now. Knew how it looked on her own face, too, so similar to his. And the evening kept on, and Mary sat in the chair where Eva once sat. She held on to Louis’s arm, the way Eva once had.

No one had been there to see it. No one had known it was happening. Isabel, tired and woozy with a leftover fever, wondered whether it ever happened at all. Neelke had prepared a nice dinner for the three of them: potatoes, greens, meat. Mary asked, “Did you make this?” and Isabel replied in Dutch: “No.” Louis said, “She has someone who helps around the house,” and Mary said, “Oh, that’s nice,” and Isabel could no longer eat. Louis said, “You don’t look very well. Are you still sick? It’s been a while now, Isabel.”

When she went to the bathroom she overheard them having a low-voiced conversation. Louis saying, “Do you like it?” and Mary saying, “The food?” and Louis saying, “No, the house, the house,” and Mary saying, “Oh! Oh, it’s very nice.” She said, “But she lives here all alone? All the time?”

She misremembered Isabel’s name when they left, called her Isadora. Louis laughed at this, kissed his Mary on the cheek, and asked her again as they walked down the driveway: “Did you like the house?” to which she said: “It’s so far away from everything.”