Dear Mr. M

  “When it comes to things like that, you’re a lot cagier than I am,” Stella had said. At first, Laura had objected to that qualification, because most of its connotations seemed negative to her. But later, at home, in front of the bathroom mirror again, she had to admit that Stella was right. She had smiled seductively at her mirror image, and now she saw it herself. “You definitely are a cagey one,” she said to herself out loud—then burst out laughing.

  “You’re right, Herman,” Stella said now. She looked at him with her lovely, innocent eyes, Laura saw, and now she saw something else too. Stella beamed—there was no other word for it, it was like she was illuminated from inside by some invisible source of light or heat. “It tastes a lot better than I thought. How can that be?”

  “I was just thinking,” Laura said. “When we get home, shall we all go to the hospital and visit Lodewijk’s mother again? Like, the day after tomorrow? Or else early next week?”

  She might have been imagining it, but it looked as though Lodewijk froze for a moment inside his knitted sweater. She didn’t have much time to think about that, though. Herman and Stella seemed not to have heard, they were still looking only at each other.

  “But school starts again next week,” Ron said.

  “Well, so what?” Laura said. “We can go after school, right? When are the visiting hours? We’ll buy some nice things to eat and a book—a whole bunch of magazines,” she corrected herself quickly. “What do you think, Lodewijk? It’s a good idea, isn’t it?”

  “She’s not in the hospital anymore,” Lodewijk said.

  Now everyone, including Herman and Stella, looked at him.

  “She’s at home,” Lodewijk said. “They can’t do anything more for her at the hospital. She told them she wanted to go home.”

  “But…,” Laura began.

  “The neighbor lady’s taking care of her now,” Lodewijk said. “At first I felt bad about coming along with you guys, obviously, but when I said I’d stay home my mother wouldn’t have it. She said I should just go and enjoy myself.”

  “Jesus,” Michael said. “That was big of her.”

  “You know what’s funny?” Lodewijk said. “Or no, not funny, more like ironic. That neighbor lady has lived in the apartment next door ever since we moved in, but we always thought she was a horrible old witch. Lived there all that time alone. No husband. No children. About sixty, I guess. And way too tall, maybe that was why, that’s what I always figured. A woman who’s two heads taller than you, no man would go for that. But whatever, right at the start, as soon as my mother fell ill, the neighbor lady offered to help. And she didn’t just offer to help, she was really there whenever you needed her. Since my mom came home, she’s even started cooking for us.”

  “You see that sometimes,” Stella said, “that people who you don’t expect it from suddenly turn out to have a really warm heart.”

  “And you know what else I think?” Lodewijk said. “It’s so weird. A kind of premonition. When I left last week, the way my mother looked at me. I was already at the door with my backpack on when she asked me to come and give her another kiss. Even though I’d just done that. She’s already so weak, but she threw that skinny, swollen arm of hers around my neck. She squeezed as hard as she could. ‘My sweet boy,’ she said. ‘My sweet, sweet boy.’ It was only when I got to the bus stop on my way to the station that I realized it. She was saying goodbye to me. She won’t be there when I get back. She wanted me to go away so she could die in peace. Like an old cat that crawls under the kitchen counter. So I wouldn’t have to be there when it happened. And at the bus stop I thought: I can still turn around and go back. I can stay with her. But I got on that bus anyway. I’m here with you guys, instead of with her. And so do I feel guilty all the time now? In some ways, yes. In other ways, though, I hope I was right. That she really will be dead when I get home.”

  No one said a word. Stella, who was sitting closest to Lodewijk, laid her hand on his, but Lodewijk looked at Michael.

  “Have you still got that bottle of gin around somewhere?” he asked. “I think I feel like something stronger than tea tonight.”

  What the kitchen counter resembled most was the stadium field after a rock concert. Here there were no empty cans, though, no shards of glass and shredded sheets of black plastic, but filthy pans, plates, cutlery with the caked-on remains of mashed potatoes, scattered butt-ends of endive and globs of dried-up mustard—Herman hadn’t even thrown away the potato peels. But the garbage pail was still pretty much brimming over, Laura saw when she lifted the lid.

  “That’s what you get when boys try to cook…,” she said, fishing a wooden spoon out of the garbage.

  Stella had already pulled on the rubber gloves. “Oh well, it was a sweet thought,” she said. “What’ll we do, just start anywhere?”

  After the boys had polished off the rest of the gin, Ron got his guitar and Michael came down with his saxophone. Herman had been sitting in the easy chair by the stove the whole time, his legs wide, smoking one Gitane after the other.

  “I did the cooking,” he said. “Tonight I’m exempt from kitchen duty.”

  At the first notes from Michael’s saxophone, Laura caught Stella’s eye and gestured to her to come into the kitchen.

  “Did you really like that Unox sausage, or were you just pretending to?” Laura asked. She was standing behind Stella, a little to the left, so that she didn’t have to look her friend straight in the eye; she did her best to make her voice sound normal, but didn’t quite succeed.

  “What do you mean, ‘just pretending to’?” Stella had moved all the plates and cutlery from the sink onto the counter and sprayed a stream of green detergent into the tub of hot water.

  “You should have seen yourself,” Laura said. “And heard yourself. ‘Oh, that’s delicious!’ I mean, I know how you always look at every can and jar to see how much artificial flavoring has been added. Everyone knows that. No one believed you. Only Herman, maybe.”

  “I was just trying to be nice.” Stella started in on the first plate—according to the same method as always, Laura knew: first she scrubbed off the caked-on remains with the scouring pad, then ran the dishwashing brush over the plate, and finally she rinsed off the suds under the cold tap that she left running beside the dishpan the whole time; glasses she held up to the light before putting them in the rack. “He doesn’t help out much, okay. He’s lazy, but he’s also not used to it, you can tell that. If you just ask him to help out, he does it, really. And cooking tonight, that was all his own idea. So then why sit around and whine about a Unox sausage.”

  Laura took the first plate from the rack. She raised it to right in front of her eyes, examining it for a spot of endive or mashed potato that Stella might have missed—but found nothing.

  “But there’s a big difference between not whining and acting as though you’re being served haute cuisine, I guess. And the look on your face when you said it…It was really too bad you couldn’t see yourself.”

  Stella was running the brush slowly round and round the next plate, but now she stopped. She turned halfway and looked at Laura.

  “Can I ask you something, Laura?”

  It was one of those moments when you cross a certain line unawares, Laura realized only too late. Suddenly you’re on the other side and can’t go back. Laura would think back on this moment often, later, the moment when she, without knowing exactly how it had happened, found herself somewhere she didn’t want to be.

  She could feel her face growing hot, and cursed herself. It had all gone too quickly. She knew the question that was coming next, and she knew that she could never lie as long as she was looking straight at Stella.

  “Do you like Herman, Laura?”

  Straight through the dish towel, Laura pressed her fingers hard against the edge of the plate she was still drying, but when nothing broke off, she dropped it instead.

  “Oh, shit!” she said.

  The plate didn’t break into dozens of shard
s on the tile floor, not the way she’d hoped. Instead, it broke neatly into three fairly even pieces, which remained lying at her feet.

  “He’s too skinny for me,” she said, bending down to pick up the pieces. “And those rubber boots. I don’t know, but somehow I always find myself hoping that I won’t be there if he ever takes them off.”

  She stood up, and now she did look Stella in the eye.

  “He’s just not a boy for girls,” she said. “Not obviously, I mean. Not the first one you think of when you think about boys.” She didn’t blush when she said this—because it was the truth. “He’s not my type,” she added. “Maybe he’s yours. As far as I’m concerned, you can have him. Enjoy yourself.”

  And then she really did have to turn away. She turned her back completely, then tried to take as long as she could to stuff the broken pieces of plate into the packed garbage pail.

  As soon as they had gathered at the bus stop the next afternoon with their bags and duffels, it started raining softly. Only a drizzle at first, but a few minutes later they saw the rain rolling in curtains across the fields from the direction of Retranchement. There was no shelter for them to huddle beneath, they did their best to keep dry under the trees on the deserted village square. Laura closed her eyes and listened to the rain rustle through the leaves. She had gone upstairs early the night before, but barely slept a wink all night. Downstairs in the living room she’d heard Michael on his saxophone and Ron playing his guitar, punctuated occasionally by laughter, and also the sound of someone throwing up into a bucket in the little hallway between the kitchen and living room. At breakfast that morning Lodewijk had been quieter than usual, and after pushing away the plate of bacon and eggs David had made for them, he stood up with a groan and said, almost in a whisper, that he was going out for a breath of fresh air.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Stella asked.

  Lodewijk closed his eyes and shook his head—a shake barely perceptible to the naked eye, followed by more groaning, as though the slightest movement caused him pain. “No, just leave me,” he whispered.

  The attic was divided into three bedrooms, separated only by thin wooden walls. In other words, you could hear everything: snores, sighs, farts—and the friends always left the doors open till way past midnight in order to go on talking. The girls had a room to themselves; David, Michael, Ron, and Herman slept in the big room in two beds and on two mattresses on the floor. Lodewijk had the smallest room all to himself. It was only big enough for a single bed. Sometimes he would complain loudly that the others were making too much noise.

  “Maybe there are people here who would kind of like to sleep!” he shouted—but he didn’t actually close his door.

  It was almost light out when the others finally came upstairs. Laura turned to face the wall and heard Stella—or at least she assumed it was Stella—come into the bedroom, then the sound of a zipper: a drawn-out sound, the sound of someone doing their utmost to open a bag as quietly as possible.

  Somewhere in the hallway or outside the door there was whispering, but she couldn’t make out what was being said—let alone by whom.

  “She’s asleep,” Stella whispered back.

  The zipper was closed again, the planks in the wooden floor creaked softly when Stella took the few steps that brought her to the doorway. Now Laura heard a soft squeaking, a sound she hadn’t heard that whole week, but she knew immediately what it was.

  They’re closing the door! Except for the soft squeaking, she heard only the pounding of her own heart beneath the blankets. They’re closing the door so I can’t hear what they’re going to do…

  With a short, dry click, the door closed.

  Laura counted to ten, her heart pounding faster and louder, then rolled over slowly—the bed, too, creaked at the slightest movement.

  Gray daylight was coming through the red-and-white checkered curtains of the attic window, touching the floor—and Stella’s bed, where her travel bag lay atop the blankets. Without making a sound, Laura lowered her feet to the floor. A few seconds later she was at the door and pressing her ear against the wood.

  At first she could make out no distinct noises, then came a shuffling and the sound of one of the other doors opening and closing again.

  “You want to take your bag with you, Lodewijk?” The voice was Herman’s, he didn’t seem to be trying to speak softly at all. “Maybe you still want to brush your teeth or something?”

  “Shh!” That was Stella. Laura pressed her ear to the wood so hard it hurt; for a long time there was nothing, until suddenly she heard David’s voice.

  “The bed all the way at the back, Lodewijk. The one that’s still all messed up, that’s Herman’s. Are you feeling any better, or do you want a bucket beside the bed?”

  But there was no reply; a little later still the two doors closed, one right after the other, and then everything was still.

  Laura remained with her ear to the door for another half hour, then went to the window and pushed aside the checkered curtains. It was fully light out now, over the garden lay a thin mist; in the distance, beyond the branches of the apple tree, the sky was turning pink and purple. Laura felt her eyes sting. Don’t, she said to herself, but her lower lip had already begun to tremble.

  “Oh, goddamn it!” she said. “God, god, god, goddamn it!”

  —

  “You think that bus is really going to come?” Herman asked. “Or is it the way it always is with public transport, that they think: Aw, who’s going to take a bus on a day like today? You know what, let’s just stay in the garage.”

  Laura watched as Herman wandered over to the bus stop, his hands in the pockets of his jeans; then she looked at Stella, who was acting as though she hadn’t heard Herman.

  They were putting up a good front. At breakfast, too, Laura had watched for signals, for outward signs like blushing or bags under their eyes, or something much clearer than that, scratch marks or hickeys. But there was nothing. They acted normal—everyone was acting normal. Maybe that was it, she’d thought, that they were all doing their very best to act normal.

  They were hushing it up. They were keeping it under wraps. It had been tacitly agreed that no one would talk about it. A tacit agreement among all those present, except for Laura. David had not given her even one meaningful or conspiratorial glance when she finally came down to breakfast, the last one to appear—a role usually reserved for him. In fact, he hadn’t looked at her at all, he had gone on much longer than necessary with smearing his slice of brown bread, first with butter, then with peanut butter. Laura heard the wood in her chair creak when she sat down—that’s how quiet it was—until Michael asked David to pass the butter. The silence and the acting normal could mean only one thing, and that was the conclusion Laura quickly drew: they were sparing her, at least they were trying to spare her, but precisely by sparing her they were confirming exactly what Laura was afraid of.

  Or wasn’t that it at all? Here on the village square, doubt suddenly struck. Were the others all standing together, had they all moved away from her, or had Laura herself gone and stood a few yards from the biggest tree, the better to see Herman as he walked through the rain to the bus stop? She’d had less than two hours’ sleep, her eyes were half shut, and in the pit of her stomach something zoomed, an empty, hungry feeling, even though she’d eaten a bigger breakfast than usual. Could she be imagining the whole thing? Were her senses in a tizzy from lack of sleep, was she seeing things that weren’t there? After all, everyone had acted normal, at the breakfast table Herman and Stella had exchanged no more glances. Or did the absence of such glances point to the very worst? She didn’t know what to think. After breakfast everyone had gone to pack their bags, she had straightened up the house and mopped the floor, even Herman had helped out: he had carried the dishes the others had dried to the living room and spent a lot of time neatly arranging things in the crockery cupboard with the glass doors.

  “Laura?” he had called out at one point. br />
  And when she approached, her heart pounding, he held up a coffee cup for her to see; she had tried to look straight at him without lowering her eyes or averting her gaze—without bursting into tears.

  “Hmm?” she said.

  “The cup I broke while I was drying it? The cup that used to belong to your grandma?”

  “Hmm?” she said again, because she hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about.

  “I glued it. Good as new, isn’t it?”

  —

  Now Laura looked at her friends as they huddled under the tree. At Stella. Did Stella know about the cup? Or had Herman kept it a secret from her?

  “What day is it today?” Herman shouted from the bus stop. “Saturday, right?”

  Everyone turned to look at him. Everyone but Laura, because she had already been keeping an eye on him for the last five minutes. “On Saturday, the bus only comes once every three hours,” Herman shouted. “We’ve been standing here like idiots for half an hour.”

  And then it happened. A car came from the direction of Retranchement. A green car, Laura had no idea what make it was, but that didn’t matter anyway, because Herman was already holding up his hand. He raised his thumb.