It takes me a minute to understand who he’s talking about, what he’s talking about. “The boat?” I ask.
He nods.
Back in India, Yael barely spoke of Daniel. I figured that they weren’t in touch anymore. With Bram gone, why would they be? They never liked each other. At least that’s how it seemed to me. Daniel was flakey, messy, a spendthrift—all the things that Yael loved in Bram in less extreme form—and Yael was the person who swept in and upended Daniel’s life. If there wasn’t much room for me, I can only imagine how it felt for him. It made sense to me why Daniel moved half a world away a few years after Yael showed up.
“There wasn’t a will,” Daniel says. “She didn’t have to do that, but of course she did. That’s your ma for you.”
Is it? I think about my trip to Rajasthan, an exile that turned out to be what I needed. Then I think about Mukesh, not just canceling the camel tour and delaying my return flight at Yael’s behest, but also dropping me off at the clinic that day, when everyone seemed to be expecting me. I’d always assumed my mother was so hands off, taking care of everyone but me. But I’m starting to wonder if perhaps I misunderstood her brand of caretaking.
“I’m beginning to get that,” I tell Daniel.
“Good timing, too,” he says. He scratches his beard. “I didn’t offer you coffee. You want coffee?”
“I wouldn’t say no to a coffee.”
I follow him into the kitchen, which is the old kitchen, all chipped cupboards, cracked tiles, ancient tiny gas range, cold-water-only sink.
“Kitchen’s next. And the bedrooms. Maybe halfway was a bit optimistic. I’d better get on it. You should come live with me. Help me out,” he says with a loud clap of his hands. “Your pa always said you were handy.”
I’m not sure if I’m handy, but Bram was always drafting me for help with some home-improvement project or another.
He puts the coffee on the stove. “I gotta get into gear. I’ve got two months now, so tick-tock, tick-tock.”
“Two months until what?”
“Oh, shit. I didn’t tell you. I only just told your ma.” His face breaks out into a smile that looks so much like Bram’s it hurts.
“Told her what?”
“Well, Willem, I’m going to be a father.”
As we drink coffee, Daniel fills me on the big news. At the age of forty-seven, the perennial bachelor has at last found love. But, because apparently the de Ruiter men can never do things the simple way, the mother of Daniel’s child is Brazilian. Her name is Fabiola. They met in Bali. She lives in Bahia. He shows me a picture of a doe-eyed woman with a lit-from-within smile. Then he shows me an accordion folder, several centimeters thick, his correspondence with the various government agencies to prove the legitimacy of their relationship so she can get a visa and they can be married. In July, he is going to Brazil in preparation for the birth in September, and, he hopes, the wedding soon after. All going well, they’ll be in Amsterdam in the fall, and return to Brazil for the winter. “Winters there, summers here, and when he is old enough for school, we’ll reverse it.”
“He?” I ask.
Daniel smiles. “It’s a boy. We know. We already have a name for him. Abraão.”
“Abraão,” I say, rolling it over my tongue.
Daniel nods. “It’s Portuguese for Abraham,”
We both are silent for a moment. Abraham, Bram’s full name.
“You’ll move in, help, won’t you?” He points to the blueprints, the one bedroom that will be made into two, the flat that once housed the two brothers, and for a spell housed all three of them before it was just Daniel all on his own. And then, not even him.
But now we are two here. And soon there will be more. After so much contracting, somehow, inexplicably, my family is growing again.
Thirty-four
JUNE
Amsterdam
Daniel and I are on the way to the plumbing supply shop to pick up a shower body when his bike gets a flat tire.
We stop to inspect. There’s a nail lodged deep into the tube. It’s four-thirty. The plumbing store closes at five. And then it’s closed for the weekend. Daniel frowns and throws his arms in the air like a frustrated child.
“Goddammit!” he curses. “The plumber’s coming tomorrow.”