The Safekeep(67)

She polished it. It took hours.

Four bookends: a ballerina on each end, leaning in.

Haasje. The stuffed animal had a worn belly. Isabel placed it in the dip of a bowl, and the bowl held it like a bed. The beads-for-eyes stared up, blank, until Isabel turned off the kitchen lights. She left the room and closed each door between her and the kitchen—as if the thing might get up and return to her in the night.



* * *



Nothing ever changed about Tante Rian’s home. Isabel hadn’t been in a while and nothing had changed: not the dust on the shelves, not the placement of the vases, not the dredge of old coffee in the coffee maker—brown filter paper curling at the edges.

Rian had a lot to say about Isabel’s hair. She tutted and called her foolish and reassured herself that it’d grow back and then had a lot to say about how Isabel hasn’t been by for some months. She also had a lot to say about how no one else has come to see her in a while, how she was being forgotten, and how different it used to be when Isabel’s mother was still alive. When Isabel was young. “You used to adore me,” she said, half to herself, wobbling over to the kitchen. The house smelled like boxed air. “You and your brothers all! Tante Rian this, Tante Rian that. You brought me drawings you made. I still have them, you know. All of them I kept. Do you believe me? Do you want to see?”

“I remember,” Isabel said.

Then Rian had a lot to say about the oven dish, the one she had or hadn’t been gifted before the war. She had run into the old neighbor at the market earlier that week. The woman had brought up the dish, and Rian had ignored it, just “pretended I didn’t hear her, just as if I didn’t hear her at all, I just bought my cheese. That’s what I did. Thank you, sir, I said to the cheese man. And when I got home I said to myself, Rian, well done. Well done. You didn’t let her get the better of you, well done.”

Isabel joined her in the kitchen. It was narrow, barely fit two people. It was built into the side of the house some ten years ago. The old kitchen, the maids’ kitchen, had been remade into a downstairs bedroom: Rian couldn’t go up the stairs anymore. She hadn’t been up to the second floor since the forties.

Isabel watched Rian reach up for two cups. Her fingers were swollen at the knuckles. Isabel started, “So she—” Then stopped. Then asked, “She gave you that dish, you said?”

“Yes, yes,” Rian said. She poured out the coffee.

“Gave it in what—in what capacity?”

Rian didn’t seem to understand the question. “What?” she said. “Gave, gave it, she gave it to me to keep.”

“To keep.” Isabel accepted the coffee. It was lukewarm. The pot had been made before she’d arrived. “Where did she go that you had to keep it?”

Rian looked at her now. Looked up with watery eyes. They were small and the color of rust. She had put makeup on, as she always did when Isabel visited: rouge, a faded lip. It made her reaction look startled, flushed. Her cup made a sound on its saucer. “Go?” she said. “Where did anyone go, Isabel. It was war, it was hunger. We were starving, we were living on rations. Do you know how much we had to eat each day? Two slices of bread, one glass of milk, no meat—barely! People came to the door to beg and I had nothing to give. No one had anything to give. What time did I have to pay attention to anyone else? People left, people came, people ran away or hid away, I don’t know. I did not keep track of where people went. But I kept that dish for her, you know. Because she was a friend. She wasn’t here and I kept it for her.”

“So was it a gift?” Isabel asked. “Or were you keeping it?”

Rian turned away from her. She walked back to the living room, said, “You’re playing with words now. What does it matter, gifting, keeping? She gave it to me. It was a terrible time. She was gone for years. Oh!” It came out an exclamation. “Oh, I don’t want to talk about it!”

Isabel, half in and out of the kitchen, wanted to say: You bring it up every time I’m here. She didn’t. She still had the saucer in hand, the cup by its ear. Her breakfast sat sour and high in her stomach. Rian had her back to Isabel. She was arranging a plant on the windowsill, turning it—turning the faded leaves to the light. Isabel had upset her.

After a while, Isabel said, “I’ll warm the pastries.” She had brought pastries.

“Yes,” Rian agreed, and continued to fiddle with the plant.

The pastries smelled fresh, sat prettily in their paper bags, had egg-washed coats of shine. Isabel stood there a moment. It was a bright day, sunny, but the light no longer felt like summer. She wore her hat. She had a jacket on in the car. A shiver ran through her now, so sudden and so strong her teeth chattered.

She held herself. Outside: a pear tree, arms wide, a circle of rotting fruit on the ground. Isabel opened a cupboard and considered Rian’s oven dishes. She had five: two of clear glass, two of decorated white glass, one ceramic. She could not guess which one was the kept dish. Rian did not cook for herself. She had a woman who came and cooked, meals that were kept in the icebox and heated, reheated.

They ate their pastries in silence. When Rian spoke again, it was to say: “A nice cup.” She meant her coffee. She drank the last of it.

Isabel said, “Yes.” She said, “Yes, lovely.” She didn’t say much else of it for the rest of her visit. She went home and avoided making eye contact with the door or with the hearth or with the box of things. She opened the cutlery drawer and it rattled. She wrapped half of everything in a cloth and made a package out of it. She took all that was fragile and rolled old newspapers around each item. She knocked her palm on a nail sticking out of the side of the box and bled onto the inky paper, and only later—when she washed her hands—did she notice the wound: a red line, irritated.