“So, wait? You were going to ask me?”
The grin is back. “Was there any doubt? But it pleases me no end, Willem, that you asked me. It shows you’ve been paying attention, which is what a director wants in an actor.” She taps her temple. “Also, very clever of you to move to the States. Good for your career but also it’s where your Lulu is from.”
I think of Tor’s letter, only today the regret and recrimination is gone. She looked for me. I looked for her. And last night, in some strange way, we found each other.
“That’s not why I want to go,” I tell Kate.
She smiles. “I know. I’m just teasing. Though I think you’ll really take to Brooklyn. It has a lot in common with Amsterdam. The brownstones and the rowhouses, the loving tolerance of eccentricity. I think you’ll feel right at home.”
When she says that a feeling comes over me. Of pausing, of resting, of all the clocks in the world going quiet.
Home.
Fifty-two
But Daniel’s home. That is a mess.
When I get back, the boys have left, and there is crap everywhere. It looks like how Bram used to describe it in the old days, before Yael arrived and asserted her brand of order.
There are bottles and ashtrays and plates and pizza boxes and every dish seems dirty and out. The whole place smells like cigarettes. It’s certainly not a place that a baby should live. I’m momentarily paralyzed, not sure where to start.
I put on a CD of Adam Wilde, that singer-songwriter Max and I went to see a few weeks ago. And then I just go. I empty out the beer and wine bottles and put them in a box for recycling. Next, I dump the ashtrays and rinse them out. Even though there’s a dishwasher now, I fill the sink with hot, soapy water and clean all the dirty dishes, then dry them. I throw open the windows to air our the place, and sunshine and fresh air come blowing in.
By noon, I’ve collected the bottles, tossed the cigarette butts, washed and dried the dishes, dusted and vacuumed. It’s about as clean as it was on its best day with Daniel, though when he comes home with Abraão and Fabiola, I’ll have it spotless. Ready.
I make a coffee. I check my phone to see if there’s any word from Linus, but it’s sitting on my bed, dead. I plug it in to charge, setting the coffee on my shelf. The envelope is still there, with the photos of me Yael, Bram, Saba, Olga. I run my finger along the crease of the envelope, feel the weight of history inside. Wherever I’m going next, these are coming with me.
>“You lived here back when it was a squat?” I ask, trying to reconcile the middle-aged vrouw with the young anarchists I’ve seen in pictures.
“Oh, yes. I knew your father.”
“What was he like then?” I don’t know why I’m asking that. Bram was never the hard one to crack.
But Mrs. Van der Meer’s answer surprises me. “He was a bit of a melancholy young man,” she says. And then her eyes flicker up to the flat, like she’s seeing him there. “Until that mother of yours showed up.”
Her dog yanks on the leash and she sets off, leaving me to ponder how much I know, and don’t know, about my parents.
Fifty
The phone is ringing. And I’m sleeping.
I fumble for it. It’s next to my pillow.
“Hello,” I mumble.
“Willem!” Yael says in a breathless gulp. “Did I wake you?”
“Ma?” I ask. I wait to feel the usual panic but none comes. Instead, there’s something else, a residue of something good. I rub my eyes and it’s still there, floating like a mist: a dream I was having.
“I talked to Mukesh. And he worked his magic. He can get you out Monday but we have to book now. We’ll do an open-ended ticket this time. Come for a year. Then decide what to do.”
My head is hazy with lack of sleep. The party went until four. I fell asleep around five. The sun was already up. Slowly, yesterday’s conversation with my mother comes back to me. The offer she made. How much I wanted it. Or thought I did. Some things you don’t know you want until they’re gone. Other things you think want, but don’t understand you already have them.
“Ma,” I say. “I’m not coming back to India.”
“You’re not?” There’s curiosity in her voice, and disappointment, too.
“I don’t belong there.”