The Safekeep(70)

“It’s all right. Go.”

Neelke stood, hesitant, one hand on the door handle. She had made the kitchen a lovely place. Isabel could cry at it: at how a room could be made, and left behind, and turn terrible by way of absence. How a space could miss a person. How a person could stop—

“Good night,” Isabel said.

Neelke waited several seconds, then left. Isabel listened to the new silence: the fire, the hum of the pipes. In the dining room, the vitrine was empty. A dark sheet of glass, and behind it—nothing. A shard, a single piece, and nothing.



* * *



Isabel had known Johan would show up eventually and then he did. Isabel would not let him in. He stood outside by his car parked on the gravel, his hands in his pockets and talking loudly at the house. There was a waver to his stance, and Isabel could imagine it: he’d been drinking with his friends in the city—then passed by Isabel’s on his way back to his mother’s. Isabel stood in the doorway, half inside, the door open just enough to answer him through it. If he came closer she would shut it.

“So you’re not coming outside,” he said. He sounded angry about it, or maybe he was being sarcastic, or was hurt. “You’re afraid of me now?”

“It’s not a good time, Johan,” she said.

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” was his answer. “Your kitchen girl said you were sick.”

Isabel tightened her hold on the door handle. “I was.”

He made a sound. “You look fine to me now.”

“I’m better. Yes.”

He laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh. He leaned back against his car. He wasn’t leaving quickly, not easily. He looked up from under the fall of his hair. “I thought we had a nice time,” he said. “Didn’t we have a nice time, Isabel?”

“You should leave,” Isabel said, and Johan said, “Wait wait wait—” and made as though to go up to the door, and Isabel made to close the door—and he stopped. One foot up the step. The door was now only open a crack. Johan scoffed, took a step back, said louder than before:

“This hair doesn’t suit you at all. Very unflattering.”

“Why are you here?”

“Why am I—” He cut himself off with another laugh. He was moving, pacing. He had the energy of a poked animal—something that looked like annoyance but felt like danger. “Do you think you have options, Isabel?” he said, louder than before. “Do you think they’re lining up? At your age? With your—” He sucked his teeth. “Tread carefully. I might leave. I might not come back.”

“Yes,” Isabel said, heart beating fast.

“Yes? Yes what?”

“Don’t come back.” She wanted to say it more clearly. It came out soft, and she didn’t know whether he heard it at first, but he did: turning to the door with a sharpness, a wide-pupil eye. She saw only a sliver of him, was peering at him through the door crack.

He was silent. Then, “You wasted my time. You played with me.”

“Please leave.”

“Is that so?” He came to the door. She could smell the alcohol. “I don’t think I will,” he said, and Isabel closed the door quickly and he was there in a few strides—was banging on the wood. His shape was blurry through the glass panel. Isabel locked the door with fumbling hands and the sound of the key seemed to anger him more: rattling the handle, shouting to be let in. He called her arrogant, and a bitch, and asked her to come out, and said he only wanted to talk, and then put on a sweet voice again. Then—quiet.

Isabel was rooted to the spot for a moment. She couldn’t see him anymore. She thought he was going to the car at first, and then realized—and ran. To the kitchen. She got there just in time, just as he was rounding the house and coming up to the back door. She locked the door and yelped, startled, when he tried to rattle that door, too. She stepped away.

“Why don’t you send out that girlfriend of yours instead?” he called through the window, his hand an oily stain on the glass. He looked a terror like this, hair mussed, face red. He said, “She was much nicer than you. Nicer to look at, too. Send her out, I want to say something to her. Send her out. Send her—”

Isabel went to the living room and closed all the curtains and stood in the middle of the room. Johan stood outside for a while. He shouted some more terrible things. Isabel turned on the radio as loud as it went, and then covered her ears, shut her eyes tightly.

It was a long time before she opened her eyes, uncovered her ears. The noise had stopped. On the radio, a song: it was a bop, a lyric that went, I’d bounce to you, I’d bounce bounce bounce!

Isabel pushed aside the curtains to peek. It had passed the dark turn of evening, and the pale twilight was only a very far strip. Johan’s car was gone. Johan was gone.

That night, Isabel did not fall asleep in her own bed. She did not change out of her clothes. She lay herself down in her mother’s bed and did not think of it as Mother’s bed. She got under the sheets and held the pillow tightly to her face.

She dreamt of dark homes with the lights off and people banging on windows and doors wanting to get in. She was very young and Eva was very young, and she was outside, crying. Someone’s voice was loud and whispered at the same time, and Isabel crawled under a table. Eva called her name. Isabel covered her ears. She startled awake, choked by the top button of her dress. She couldn’t get it to open. She couldn’t get it off. She pulled, and pulled, and the dress tore and she shimmied out of it—gasping, gagging.