The Safekeep(8)
“Pardon?” Louis said, and Isabel started with a quick:
“Who is she, Louis? Who is she, where did she come from, do you even know her, how long have you known her, who’s to say she is who she says she is, that she’s not trying to—”
“Keep your voice down!” Then: “Trying to what?” He looked at her, bewildered. She didn’t know how to finish that thought, now that it had been cut off. She breathed high in her chest, and he just looked at her. The silence stretched. Then he said, “You’ve been alone for too long. You’ve not been around people for too long.”
“I’m not alone.”
“The maid doesn’t count,” he said. “Saying hello to the baker twice a week doesn’t count.”
She could feel a flush rising. There was no reply she could give that wouldn’t confirm the awful way he saw her: sometimes she went for tea at the Van den Bergs. Sometimes called with Hendrik. Small moments, too small for someone who lived with others; who went to work, who went to bars, who had girlfriends who decorated his apartment for him. Hung up gauzes for him.
“So what now?” she said. “I’m to play hotel for every girl you bring home, just because you think I’m in need of—”
“Not every girl,” he said, adding an emphasis like it meant something. Isabel looked at him, hoped he wouldn’t elaborate. He did all the same: “I like her, Isa. A lot. I think I…”
“Oh, God,” she said, and turned away, pressed the heel of her hand between her eyes. The swirling dredge of a headache. They were quiet for a while. Then Louis said:
“It won’t be that long.”
“How long?”
“Look, I have to go ahead, arrange some—It doesn’t matter. I’ll be a little while is the thing, if I do well enough and they want me to finalize the negotiations; they’ve—they’ve put an awful lot of trust in me, Isabel. A promotion could be, it could mean—”
“When,” Isabel said. “Will you be back?”
He swallowed. “July.”
“July first.”
“Isabel.”
“July first.”
“The first week of July, let’s say, yes.”
“God,” Isabel said again. A month. Even Hendrik, when he visited, never stayed longer than a few days.
Louis rose, scraped the chair back into place. The wind pushed wildly against the windows. Louis said, “You will be nice to her.”
“I will be nothing to her,” Isabel said, and when she cast him a glance he seemed tired with her. Seemed to have tired of the conversation, and her company, and then he left her. He would be staying, for the night, and would leave in the morning, make for the coast, be on the ferry before the day’s end.
Isabel stayed in the kitchen for a while longer. She lit a small fire, pulled a chair near, and sat there to dry. There were low voices in the dining room, then a giggle, then a playful hushing. Footsteps up and down the stairs. Once she had dried, Isabel went through the cupboards and the drawers and the cabinets and made sure there were no missing things. She thought, perhaps, one teaspoon had gone, but wasn’t sure anymore how many they had in the first place. She counted them: twelve. Laid all the spoons out on the table from biggest to smallest. That’s when Eva leaned into the room, hand on the doorpost, and said:
“I just wanted to say thank you. I appreciate it so much that I can stay here. You really have no idea.”
She had put on the voice again. Isabel looked up at her with an even gaze. “It wasn’t my suggestion,” she said.
“No, I know,” Eva said, and smiled like that was a good thing. A kind thing. Like she was having a conversation with a different person, someone who was nice to her. “It’s so warm in here! Lovely. What are you doing? Are you polishing the spoons, in the middle of the night?”
“No,” Isabel said, and offered no other explanation.
“Well,” Eva said. “Well. Well, good night then, Isabel. Can I call you Isa? Louis does. Like we’re sisters. We almost are, no?”
Isabel didn’t answer. She collected her spoons and put them back in the drawer, kept her back to the door. Eventually, Eva left. Did so with a soft “Well, good night,” and sounded less sure now. We’ll see about that, Eva had said at the restaurant, and she had been someone else in that moment. Someone whom Isabel could only think of indirectly, vaguely. A pinprick of a person.
She waited for the shuffling upstairs to die down, then went up herself. The corridor was shadowed, lights off, but a strip of light shone from under one door: her mother’s old room. Inside, the two lovers were talking, laughing quietly.
Isabel showered in stilted movements, had to rebraid her hair several times, got into bed, and seethed. The chimney breast from downstairs ran through her room and warmed the space just enough. Still she shook under her sheets. She stayed awake for a long time, listening to the sounds from down the hall. Once, she thought she heard a hum. Once, a gasp. She ran hot, and then cold. Eventually, the house quieted, and there was nothing to listen to but the slowing of the storm.
She woke up early, exhausted, the back of her hand pinched red.
* * *
It was Uncle Karel who had found the house for them in the winter of ’44. It was the tail end of war and a famine tore through the west of the Netherlands. The three siblings were sent ahead: on a boat heading east, huddled with other children their age—strange children, children who coughed like it was a secret, behind the lapels of their jacket. One girl showed Isabel what was in her suitcase: a doll and a pair of shoes and a fork, a plate. The foster family would feed her, she said, but they did not have enough forks. Isabel had thought it was a made-up story, and she disliked made-up stories. She had gotten angry, said, “Nonsense, who doesn’t have enough forks?” and didn’t speak to the girl for the rest of the trip.