The Cut Out Girl

by Bart van Es

  “It was like being the guest of honor at my own funeral,” says Lien.

  * * *

  —

  MA’S REACTION IS THE OPPOSITE of Albert’s. She is furious. Taking pills and abandoning your husband and children is an insult to everything she believes. After all the sacrifices that people have made for her, how could she be so selfish? What kind of person would do such a thing?

  What kind of person? Yes, that is the question. What kind of person is she when you cut out what surrounds her, when you cut out the scientist husband, the synagogue, and the comforts of a prosperous life? Does she really belong to the Van Esses, or to the world of Jewish ritual, or to something entirely different that she has yet to find?

  Her attempt at suicide was a terrible error, she can see that, and she promises her older children, aged eight and twelve, that she will never do anything like that again. But to go back now to the coffee mornings and the kosher cooking, to go back to leaving questions unanswered, that she also will not do.

  In the years that follow, Lien works at her problems. There are various unsuccessful therapies, such as time spent in analysis, with the psychiatrist sitting in a chair behind her as she lies there on his couch. It frightens her that she cannot see him.

  “This man who started to kiss you,” he asks, “am I right in thinking he is the man who saved your life?”

  The sessions of psychoanalysis do not help her and they are abandoned, but there are other approaches that do. Lien finds solace in meditation, in the teachings of Buddhism, in Humanism, and in discussions with new groups of friends. What is it, she asks herself, that she really wants from life? What is it that she believes? Is there a pattern to history from which we can learn?

  Wanting to be stronger as a person, Lien decides to return to work. With Albert it is not easy. He does not see why anything has to change, and because of this, life at home starts to fill with tension and with petty rows. This is hard on the children, who, as so often happens in these situations, tend to blame themselves.

  * * *

  —

  IT IS THE SPRING OF 1979 when the phone rings. Pa has lung cancer. Years of work with asbestos and many more of heavy smoking did not leave him with much of a chance, and by the autumn he is dying in the hospital and she is seated beside him on a visit as he lies there in bed. There is whiteness all around him, his face leaner than ever now that the cancer is eating him up.

  She sits there and they speak of nothing. In all the years since she first came to stay with the Van Esses they have rarely been together alone.

  Lien passes him a plastic cup of water that he holds and then spills with his blotched hands.

  She does not say “Thank you” or “I love you” or “Something did happen when you tried to kiss me like that in the Frederikstraat when I was twenty and it changed things forever for me.” This family does not speak of such things. But then, what family does?

  “I’ll come and see you next week again,” Lien tells him.

  “Yes, do that,” he says, almost without breath.

  And then, three days later, Ma calls to tell her that Pa has died.

  * * *

  —

  AS EXPECTED, a white envelope edged with gray drops through the letter box a week later. This will be the card with the funeral arrangements, but when she opens it the text cuts into her stomach like a knife:

  HENDRIK VAN ES

  husband of

  Jannigje van Es-de Jong

  Dordrecht, 8 November 1906—Dordrecht 20 October 1979

  Ali and Gerard

  Kees and Truus

  Marianne and Pierre

  Henk and Dieuwke

  Geert Jan and Renée

  Grandchildren and Great-grandchildren

  They have listed all of Pa’s children and their partners, but her own name is missing from the card. It is so unexpected that she can hardly believe it. Her fingers feel weak.

  But it is not a mistake, far from it. The instructions are clear: there will be official mourning cars for Ma and the children, whereas Lien must travel with the aunts, uncles, and other family members that follow behind. Pa was firm on the matter: Lien was not to be shown to the world as his child.

  Albert cannot see the point of making a fuss about the arrangements. After all, she was his foster daughter, which is different, and what does it matter what car you ride in or whether you are listed on some card? If need be it can be discussed at some later moment, but now is hardly the time. At the reception, he chats quite happily with the other mourners, staying longer than is necessary, while Lien shifts awkwardly between the tables of sandwiches, wondering when she might leave.

  For Lien, it is obvious now that their marriage is over: she has changed but he hasn’t. In the big house that they have bought to get more space from each other they avoid contact, have separate routines. She had wanted to explore the big questions, to meet different sorts of people, but he is set, unrelenting, in his ways. From his perspective, Albert cannot see why she makes things so difficult, why everything could not stay as it was at the start. In 1980 he leaves the household, taking a nearby flat, while she remains at home with their youngest son as they make plans to sell their beautiful villa, which sits at a sharp V-shaped junction where two roads meet.

  * * *

  —

  SO HERE SHE IS, aged forty-seven, a divorced woman making a fresh start. Lien had qualified as a social worker on the day of her marriage, but it is only now, at the start of the 1980s, that she begins to work full time. She takes a job with Eindhoven Social Services, and once the villa is sold buys a modest house in a livelier part of the city. It is in a planned estate known as the White Village, designed in the 1930s by Willem Dudok, where busy playgrounds full of children blend in with terraces that have Art Deco curves. Neighbors here put yellow NUCLEAR ENERGY? NO THANKS! stickers on the quirky porthole windows that sit in the long identical lines of front doors. This makes it a kind of blend of the style that she shared with Albert and the messy, communal warmth that she remembers from her childhood in Dordt. Her life here is not straightforward—the work that she does with families is difficult; her children have their problems as they grow up—but this existence is something that she has chosen and, for the first time in more than a decade, Lien feels that she belongs.

  A few years later she embarks on a new relationship. He is someone she and her family have known since she first moved to Eindhoven, a widower named Bernard, who is known to everyone as Ber. Although he is three decades older, it does not feel like it. Still youthful looking, he has swept-back silver hair and wears shirts buttoned to the top without a tie. An amateur actor and director, Ber has a passion for art, books, opera, and also for the big questions in life. What she loves most is his childlike enthusiasm, the way that he can talk for hours, for example, about the characters in a play. As he prowls the stage in some piece of modernist German theater, he seems eternally young.

  By the summer of 1987 she and Ber have been a couple for four years. Then all of a sudden, in the midst of rehearsals for his latest production (The Wedding by Elias Canetti), he becomes dizzy and gets headaches: it is a brain tumor. He has just a few months to live. Given the difference in their ages, she was always likely to outlive him, but the change is far more rapid than she could have imagined. Once the doctors have decided that intervention is impossible, he is moved to a hospice, at first spending his weekends at home with Lien. By the start of the autumn he cannot remember her, and needs feeding, mouthful by mouthful, as he lies blankly in bed, where he is visited by many friends.

  It is with Ber on her mind that Lien drives to Dordrecht one morning that August to see Ma. The house that Ma rents is part of the big new estate in the south of the city, one of the many great building projects that Pa helped to establish. Number 15 Algolring is a four-bedroom, yellow brick end-of-terrace house, well maintaine
d by the housing association and by a man who comes to do the garden once a week. In her early seventies, Ma is entirely healthy, kept vibrant by her interest in politics, her love of the grandchildren, and a firm determination to keep a clean, nice-looking house.

  Lien has invited herself for coffee. She never feels terribly welcome when she phones to arrange such visits, though Ma is very warm with Lien’s children and also with Albert, with whom she has kept in touch. Lien’s divorce, about which Ma was very disappointed, has not been forgiven, but the cautious distance between them runs much further back than that. Lien sometimes wonders what Pa said about that moment in the Frederikstraat, after which she left home for over a year. Was Lien’s exclusion from the card and the ceremony of Pa’s funeral related to that?

  Ma stands at her big plate-glass window as Lien drives her Volvo into the cul-de-sac and then edges it backward and forward, trying to park in a smallish spot. Eventually, Lien opens the car door, clutching her bag and a bunch of white tulips, and smiles as she waves the flowers while walking up to the front porch. Ma waves back and then hugs her as she enters. She is at her best at such moments, being the hostess, welcoming people into her home. There is an easy joy in the way that she compliments Lien on the choice of tulips, in the way that she takes her coat and hangs it on one of the hooks in the hall. The house smells of coffee and lavender. Lien feels her toes on the spotless blue carpet after removing her shoes.

  “I have just put the coffee on,” says Ma, heading into the kitchen, where the machine is making faint coughing sounds.

  “And there is cream cake from the bakers—they do it nicely there,” she adds while unwrapping the tulips, whose stems she cuts with a pair of scissors on the worktop before arranging them in a vase.

  Ma breathes a little heavily as she stands there working.

  “Can I do anything to help?”

  “You can put those on the dining table,” comes the answer as Ma moves toward the fridge.

  So Lien carries the vase of flowers, first into the hallway and then into a long room that is filled with light, thanks to the big windows at either end. Turning, she sees Ma through the serving hatch, which connects to the kitchen. Ma is whisking milk in a pan on the stove.

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” Ma calls without looking around.

  Lien wanders across to the seating area. There are two fairly new dark brown sofas, a glass table, plus an armchair with an extendable leg rest that matches the sofa set. Against the wall is a unit of built-in shelves and cupboards in dark wood and glass. As always, Lien walks over to it and looks in at the lit-up glass menagerie of hedgehogs, swans, rabbits, owls, and poodles, which cast little rainbows of broken light.

  Ma enters with a tray on which two shop-cut triangles of cake sit on separate saucers. Glossy circles of egg-yolk-yellow apricot nestle among the folds of cream. The cups have happy domestic scenes printed on them, with apple-cheeked mothers serving trays of coffee and cake. They are like miniature portraits of Ma in her prime.

  Using the glass jug from the percolator, Ma fills the cups and adds frothy milk, which she spoons across from the pan. In her own she puts two cubes of light brown sugar. Then, after a few mouthfuls of the rich cake, they begin to talk about Dordrecht and the family circle: changes to the bus timetable, restructuring at Geert Jan’s workplace, the health of her friends, how Lien’s children are doing. It is all perfectly friendly, but it is Ma who runs the conversation and there is no mention of Ber.

  “Do you have plans for your birthday?” Ma asks after a moment of silence.

  It is common for Lien to host a lunch or a small drinks party to mark the occasion, although Ma (who now rarely travels far beyond Dordrecht) often does not come.

  “I won’t do anything this year. Fifty-four is nothing special and with Ber in hospice it doesn’t feel right,” says Lien.

  They talk a little more about other upcoming birthdays, where they will see each other, and then, after a second cup of coffee, it is clear that the visit is at an end.

  There is a hug and three kisses and then Ma stands again at the big window as Lien edges the car backward and forward to exit the parking space. Once she is clear, Lien gives a final wave. Then there is a high whine from the engine as she reverses down the narrow street.

  * * *

  —

  THE WEATHER IS PLEASANT that September, with sunny days and temperatures in the midtwenties. Before and straight after work, Lien goes to Ber in the hospice where he lies, suddenly immensely old looking, in a raised surgical bed. No conversation is possible, so she sits there holding his hand, looking out at the gardens and welcoming visitors.

  Every day, Ber’s daughter, Miep, calls from Israel, asking for news on her father’s health. Then, as the situation worsens, she fixes on a week to fly over and see him for what must be the final time. Lien and she get on well together, but there is little point in them both sitting there for so many hours, and besides, it will be good for Miep to have some time with her father alone. So for one weekend Lien has a bit of free time.

  As it happens, it all works out nicely. The weather is still gorgeous and so Lien suggests to a friend that they book a hotel at the seaside and go walking together for a couple of days. After all those months in the hospice it is just what she needs.

  For this reason, on September 7, Lien is walking across the dunes with the wind in her face looking out at the Van Speijk lighthouse, which has stood on the sands of Egmond since 1833. Its copper turret blazes in the sunlight, and as they come closer, they make out the golden mermaid on its weather vane. By the time they get back to the hotel’s little foyer, the two of them are happy with tiredness. Then, just as they are about to head up to their bedrooms, they are greeted by the welcoming cheers of two old friends. This birthday gathering, planned in secret, comes as a complete surprise.

  One of the friends is Esther van Praag, the sister of her stand-in foster father, the man who would have been there with his wife to look after her if anything had ever happened to Ma and Pa. Esther has known Lien, as a kind of niece really, for a very long time.

  The other woman, who rushes up to embrace her, is Took.

  A widow for decades now, white-haired and nearly eighty, Took Heroma is still as vibrant as ever. She envelops Lien with a feeling of wonder, just as she did when Lien was a little child. There is that sense of her as a great personage—a former parliamentarian, a former delegate at the United Nations, a former member of the Labor Party’s governing board—but there is also an intensity of contact as she asks her, with both hands resting on Lien’s shoulders, about Ber.

  The glasses for the wine are set out ready on a table in the bar and they have made a restaurant booking, an easy five minutes’ walk away down the street. Lien is completely happy: the talk is on all her favorite topics, the food is perfect, they laugh till they are short of breath.

  * * *

  —

  BER PASSES AWAY that November. His life is celebrated at a large and beautiful funeral, in which Lien plays a full part. There is sadness but also a sense of completion—a life well lived and a duty done.

  Then, early in the New Year, there is another Van Es birthday: a party in a house in Dordrecht with wine and children and slices of cake. Lien arrives, gives her flowers to the hostess, and mingles among family and friends.

  Ma is there, seated in an armchair. Something is wrong, though, because when Lien gets closer she stares darkly and turns her head. After a bit, Lien plucks up the courage to approach her, perching on a sofa to one side.

  Ma’s voice, normally so forceful, comes through very soft.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” she says, turning to look into space. The two of them are so close together, almost touching, but they sit there locked in silence, cut off from each other and from the hubbub all around.

  “But what is the matter?” asks Lien, frightened.


  You can see that it pains Ma to speak.

  “I only think it’s very dishonest,” she says at last, with her jaws locked together. Her words barely make sense. Then she adds, “I heard all about it from Took,” and Lien understands after a few seconds that this is about her birthday party, which she had told Ma would not be happening but was organized anyway by Esther and Took.

  Explanation is useless. Her failure to mention the party after it happened, it seems, is enough of a betrayal, and Ma, seeing the whole thing as a conspiracy, believes nothing that Lien says. When Lien will not move to sit elsewhere, Ma lifts herself with an effort and tells one of the other children that she wants to be driven home.

  * * *

  —

  THAT NIGHT LIEN writes a letter. It is the “terrible letter” that Ma tears to pieces after reading it only once. For Lien, it is a letter of explanation: of the birthday party, of how important Ma is to her, and of how much she loves her, but also of her mixed feelings toward Pa. Of that moment in the Frederikstraat when he tried to kiss her she says nothing, but she does say that she always loved Ma more than she loved him. Lien thinks that this will resolve the situation, but such letters are dangerous. Letters such as these are not read in the way they were intended. Their recipients will pull the most jagged phrases from them and the rest will flow unnoticed through their hands.

  If I look for a moment from my grandmother’s perspective I think I can see the source of her anger, though this is not to say that her actions were right. She had no vocabulary for trauma. To her, Lien, as she returned from Bennekom, was just a difficult and rather sullen child. Later, Lien’s attempted suicide and divorce went against everything that Ma believed in. She found Lien self-indulgent. Moreover, Ma was saddened by the state of the modern world. And then for Lien to go out and be secretly happy with Took of all people and to write a letter of explanation in which Pa was treated with a lack of respect, this ignited an anger that had for a long time burned low.