The Melting

by lize Spit

  It seemed strange to take a Gazelle home in the back of a car, so I was allowed to ride it home. I left on the two big wheels all by myself.

  As long as I was still in Nedermeer, it biked great. What a powerful feeling. I’d never felt anything like it. It reminded me of diving into the water with flippers on during the free swim at school—every kick had more effect.

  I assumed I’d get used to it quickly, that after a few minutes I wouldn’t be able to feel the extra power anymore, like with flippers—it wasn’t until I took them off that I noticed how tiny, pointed and inefficient feet actually are.

  But I didn’t get used to it. Back in Bovenmeer, biking along the houses I passed every day, I no longer felt powerful. I didn’t even feel tiny. I just felt strange, awkward—the fat handle grips barely fit in my hands. I could peek over the firs and hedges into other people’s yards. Now I could see everything—the trash, the piles of wrinkled clothes on kitchen tables, a hamster cage on the counter, women forcefully pushing the vacuum back and forth. All of a sudden, I saw the world I grew up in from a different perspective. I didn’t fit in like I did before. I was a Duplo man in a Lego house.

  After buying the bike, I had two options, same as Laurens and Pim. Either I could bike twelve kilometers a day to the high school in Vorselaar or I could go to the vocational school in Nijlen, less than three kilometers away.

  It seemed like a good joke—me wanting to study languages and Laurens wanting to study economics and the two of us having to bike twelve kilometers in a strong headwind to do so, while Pim—who wanted to do something with his hands, screwdrivers and brute force—could practically walk to school, and yet he was the one who learned how to fix up a moped in his first year.

  To learn the route to our new faraway school before the year started, we did a practice run with Laurens’s brother, Jan Torfs, who just went by “Torfs” because there were two other Jans in town.

  Torfs had gone to school in Vorselaar a few years earlier, but then he joined the army and only came home when he had to, and always in camo. He promised to show us the best shortcuts.

  In Laurens and me, he saw an unactualized version of himself. He filled our backpacks with rocks to simulate the weight of all the textbooks we were going to have to carry. We weren’t allowed to sit down on our seats for two kilometers, and if either of us complained that that’s what a seat was for, he’d make us crank up our gears. At the end of the day, reeking of sweat, our calves hard as stone, we knew the order of the towns we had to pass by heart, in both directions, including their postal codes.

  He showed us two routes. The first was the canal road, a straight shot along the dike with a steady headwind—good in the morning, when you aren’t quite awake yet and would rather not think.

  The second route ran through the fields. It was a poorly paved road full of deep holes, but in the straight stretches, you were protected from the elements by one Spanish-style villa after another.

  “If you’re planning on getting a flat tire, you’d better go for the second route,” Torfs said. “That way, you can ring the doorbell at one of the houses.”

  Laurens and I chose the spot where we would meet every morning at 7:30 sharp. It was halfway between our two houses, under the E313 bridge. We were going to have to travel this road every day for the next six years, passing exactly the same villas. So, following Torf’s recommendation, we devised a clear plan. If one of us was sick, we’d call the other at a quarter past seven. If we hadn’t heard anything and the other person was just running late, we’d wait five minutes tops.

  Most of the time it was easy enough—unless there was a strong headwind, raindrops pelting against our foreheads like grains of rice, strands of hair getting stuck in my mouth. On those days, Laurens and I dared to call Pim a wuss.

  “One day, we’re going to graduate from university and live in one of those big villas with a swimming pool,” I said.

  “Then we’ll hire Pim to come over and clean the gutters in the rain.”

  In reality, it wasn’t twelve kilometers. The distance had been exaggerated by our predecessors, by all the other kids who had travelled this same route every day. Laurens and I had just taken it over.

  Even though I generally preferred to be honest, sometimes, when I stopped by the bike shop for a repair and the owner asked me how many kilometers I biked to school each day, I’d say: “Twenty-eight. Fourteen there, fourteen back.”

  It was a lie, but part of it was true. Those meters were a lot longer with Laurens at my side.

  During our second year, it got even worse. The shortcuts didn’t bring any relief, because it wasn’t the monotonous landscape that was starting to get to me, but Laurens himself, who moved with it beside me like a fly on a car window. He talked about his mom a lot, about how unbearable she could be when she was on a diet. His pedals were rusty. The right one was jammed and made an audible crack with each rotation.

  Slowly, without ever having to say it out loud, we dared to admit it: biking to school together had never been about us. It was about the summer, when school would be out for two months and our new friends wouldn’t want to come all the way to Bovenmeer to hang out, and we’d be forced to fall back on our hometown, on the three musketeers, on each other. Our friendship was bait for Pim.

  After Jan died, we weren’t ashamed to bring up the topic of Pim anymore. We were constantly trying to outdo each other: who understood Pim best, who had managed to get something out of him, who knew how he felt when his brother died, how his life was unfolding far away from ours, who his new friends were, whether they were better than us.

  Laurens claimed that his brother was taking Jan’s accident extremely hard.

  “Losing a namesake is worse than, like, just losing somebody you know,” he said. He acted as if having a brother with the same name as Pim’s gave him more right to grief than me.

  I bit my tongue. Of course, I couldn’t tell him what I knew about Jan. As long as Laurens didn’t know the truth, he’d always be a step behind Pim and me.

  “Pim got a moped. A blue Honda,” shouted Laurens when I biked up in the morning on the day before the last day of school in 2002. I had my German and biology exams that day. I’d written the cases on my hand so I could study them along the way.

  For the first time, I was repulsed by the sight of Laurens waiting for me in the distance. I knew he’d waited there for me hundreds of times, that he would do it for four more years. I wanted to erase him.

  A moped. The chances of Pim wanting to spend time with us next summer were getting slimmer and slimmer. As far as we knew, he hadn’t made any friends at his new high school who’d want to hang out in a hick town like Bovenmeer, but if what Laurens said was true, the empty streets and the wide-open fields would grow on them eventually, and pretty soon there’d be a row of mopeds in front of the farm.

  “I’ve never seen him go by on a Honda,” I said, though I didn’t know what a Honda looked like and hadn’t seen Pim for a while.

  “It’s blue. A PS50K. I know these things. Guy stuff,” Laurens concluded.

  “Wanna play ‘Don’t say um’?” I asked. The narrow bike path widened out again. We could’ve easily ridden side by side, but we only sort of did. I started reviewing the German cases.

  “Okay. Give me a theme.” I didn’t care that Laurens was good at this game, if anything it was a reassurance—he was good at talking without thinking.

  “The theme is Carnival. The word you can’t say is Pim,” I said.

  Laurens started telling about the year the town parade was cancelled because of rain, and Pim fired the confetti gun in the classroom.

  I hardly listened to a word he said, but I couldn’t help but notice that my name was barely mentioned in the key sentences, that my presence at the Carnival festivities sounded even blurrier than I’d felt that day. I fired that confetti gun, not Pim.

  Suddenly, it was clear: Laurens got to choose who he focused his attention on and that choice determined h
ow his memories were shaped. He had always chosen Pim. If he had chosen me from the start, maybe I wouldn’t have grown up so out of focus.

  I started to pedal slower. Laurens kept talking. It was hard for him to stay behind me, but still he didn’t pass.

  The exams were held in Zonnewende, in a block of portable classrooms that were supposed to be torn down five years earlier to make room for a new school building. On the right was the big, empty playground, which always filled up as soon as the bell rang.

  It was an oral exam. I got a question about the pituitary gland.

  While I was explaining how it determined the body’s hormone production, I made a decision: I would walk out, get my bike and leave—no more waiting for Laurens. It would be a statement, one that he couldn’t just shrug off like it was nothing.

  After answering all the questions, I hurried outside. Laurens was already waiting for me at the bike rack. He was holding a cup of chocolate milk from the vending machine.

  “My exam was a piece of cake. But I still waited for you,” he said.

  When we got back to town, we parted ways a little earlier than necessary, at the dog hotel-slash-crematorium. The manager was out training one of her favorite dogs. She shielded her eyes against the bright sun with her hand so she could watch us wave goodbye to each other, as if she too had noticed that something had changed between us.

  On the morning of my last exam, I left home ridiculously early, at a little after seven. I cycled under the highway. Without us, the empty bridge just stood there awkwardly. There was nothing about it to suggest it was a meeting point.

  My limbs were tired but still I picked up speed, racing down the narrow bike path toward the road to school.

  As I rode up one side of the canal bridge and down the other, I still felt like I was doing the right thing, that I had to break free from Laurens.

  I looked back, hoping he would suddenly show up behind me and, at the same time, already annoyed that this could actually happen. But it didn’t. I passed the bridge, and the town slowly disappeared from sight. Laurens had no idea I’d left without him; he was probably still at home eating veal sausage on toast for breakfast.

  I thought about the phone hanging on the wall of the butcher shop and considered ringing the doorbell of one of those Spanish villas and asking to use their phone so I could at least give him a heads-up.

  But with every rotation of my pedals, it became too late for that.

  It was 7:30. Laurens would be waiting for me under the bridge by now, the cars and trucks racing by overhead, his shoulders slumped, his eyes glued to the horizon I wasn’t going to appear on.

  I thought about Carnival, about the Pink Panther suit Laurens wore to school every year. One year, Pim ripped off the tail. Laurens had announced with tears in his eyes that his grandma would sew it back on. The tail hung on the coat rack in the corridor for the rest of the day. The following year he came dressed as a butcher.

  I thought about the clicking of his right pedal.

  It was as if I didn’t feel guilty about Laurens as a person, but about every detail that made him whole.

  When I got to school, my legs felt exactly like they did the day Torfs had made us haul rocks in our backpacks.

  I wasn’t relieved, but I knew the worst was over. Laurens would be on his way by now. I started thinking of a good explanation as I parked my bike in the bike shed and waited for him to arrive.

  The bell rang. The exams started. He was nowhere to be found.

  I finished my test as fast as I could, filling in just enough answers to pass. It wasn’t until the end of the morning that I saw Laurens walking out of the Zonnewende block. I followed him out to the bike racks.

  Without a word, he tied his backpack on his luggage carrier. Summer vacation had officially begun. Normally, we would have celebrated this with candy and chewed jawbreakers until our teeth ached.

  All of a sudden, the elastic around his baggage rack snapped off and hit him in the face. He staggered, held his hand on his cheek, and stood there frozen for a moment, eyes closed. I forced myself to keep watching. It wasn’t blood that oozed out of the cut on his face, but a murky juice. He didn’t cry, but that didn’t mean anything.

  I biked home, roughly a hundred meters behind him. He didn’t notice me. Or maybe he did but didn’t say anything. His pedal clicked at a faster pace than usual.

  That’s when I understood that Laurens was the best friend I would ever have.

  3:00 p.m.

  I CLOSE MY eyes for a few minutes. I won’t fall asleep. I’ve been warming my fingers in my lap for half an hour. I left my mittens at home. They’re hanging on two separate hooks on the coat rack, waving to a deserted apartment that must be sweltering by now. I forgot to turn off the heat this morning.

  I study my lips in the rear-view mirror. They’re bleeding here and there. This always happens when I’m nervous. I gnaw on my lower lip with my front teeth until the skin starts to fray, and I start peeling it back piece by piece, until finally, like now, my lips are covered in patches of raw shiny flesh. Because of the cold, I don’t feel it so much. They’re just the scabs of old wounds. Lips recover quicker when you don’t smile.

  Right before I turn on the windshield wipers, the aluminum shutters over the Three Little Pigs start to roll up. Someone steps out from underneath them before they reach the top. I roll down my side window to get a better look. It’s Laurens. He turns a key and the shutters lower again behind him. He’s so fat. I guess that’s what happens to people who think it’s okay to soak sugar cubes in their tea and then press them against their lips to suck out the lukewarm Earl Grey—for the taste without the calories.

  I mainly recognize his gait—legs that would just refuse each step, but, once they’re hoisted up, have no choice but to land. His shiny shoes crunch in the snow.

  How many times had Laurens said he never ever wanted to be a butcher, that he didn’t want to grow up to be like his father? After he graduated high school—not in Vorselaar but somewhere else—he tried to study engineering, or that’s what I gathered from his public photos on Facebook. He was studying in Leuven, at the university, and living in student housing.

  When his father died two years ago, he moved home to help his mom with the business. Dad emailed us about it: the guy just collapsed on a meat delivery, right next to his truck. Coronary artery rupture. Dad also included a link to an article about the impact of red meat on cholesterol levels.

  At the side gate, another person appears: Laurens’s mom. She’s carrying a transparent bag with the shop’s logo on it, filled with what look like little plastic containers of leftovers. The handles are too long, so the bag drags in the snow. She takes small careful steps, holding her broad shoulders as straight as possible—the slightest jerk and her upper arms will pop out of her winter coat.

  She hasn’t aged much. She’s just a bit fatter around the middle, or it might just look that way in the dim light.

  They pause in the driveway for a moment to discuss something. They point at the road, the sky, the car. Based on their gestures, I presume they’re debating the best way to travel the short distance in this weather.

  Suddenly, my heart skips a beat. What if Laurens and his mom aren’t going to Jan’s party at all? What if they’re going to some other family gathering? What if I’m the only person crazy enough to show up to remember Jan today? I need Laurens to be at that party.

  Laurens starts scraping the ice off the windshield. His mom is already sitting in the car with the bag in her lap.

  Less than two minutes later, their BMW pulls out, leaving behind tire tracks and a snow-less rectangle in the parking lot. I slowly turn my car and follow. We drive to the end of the street and turn left. This is the way to the farm.

  I hardly look at the road. My eyes are fixed on the rear window in front of me, at the back of the two heads sticking up above the seats. The empty spot in the back seat on the right-hand side that was once mine. I used to love to rest my chin
on the passenger seat and watch Laurens’s mom’s tremor-free hands take us somewhere. When she was driving, the car never drifted across the median.

  For the entire route, I keep a close eye on the distance between my and Laurens’s car. I follow the rhythm of his brake lights. The lighting up, the going out. I don’t want to skid in their tire tracks. I don’t want this trip to end with me bumping into the back of their car. If I were going to hit them, I’d do it at full speed.

  Right across from the entrance of the church, in front of the glass bins by the cemetery, we turn onto the Steegeinde. If I had any doubts before, now I’m positive—they’re on their way to Pim’s. Our destination is at the end of this road.

  Laurens’s brake lights go on. He turns onto the property in front of me. The car comes to a stop by the fence around the old goose pen, which is still fenced off with poles along the sides of the driveway. I drive on a bit. I choose a spot under a fir tree with big, dark green needles where I can see who shows up without anyone seeing me. Wherever the darkest shadows fall in the summer must also be some shelter from the cold in the winter.

  Laurens steps out of the car. He glances over his shoulder, looking for the car that was just behind him. From where he’s standing, I’m invisible. The plastic bag full of plastic containers of salad dangles between him and his mother as they walk towards the back to the barn. That’s where the party is. Every once in a while, the faint red and blue spotlights send a stray beam across the courtyard, like the shadow of someone constantly tracing his steps.

  I will stay in the car until all the guests have arrived. Even those who show up fashionably late.

  For the first half-hour, people trickle onto the property one by one. When I see the shadows of a few women approaching, my heart starts beating faster. Elisa! I think at first. Until the figures come into focus and transform into other women with Elisa’s curves.

  Even though there’s a clock on my dashboard, I check the time on my phone three times.