Saving Charlotte

by Pia de Jong

  He frowns. “Whether you believe it or not does not matter,” he says. “This man is ahead of his time.”

  Mussels—he must have eaten mussels. I turn my head, afraid that I will throw up.

  “You cannot just give up on your daughter,” he says. “You owe it to her to do everything you can.”

  “I do not give up on her,” I tell him. “And I do a lot.”

  He crosses his arms. “I really do not understand why you do not seize the opportunity. You can at least call him. What can you lose?”

  “We’re leaving now,” I tell Jurriaan, and I walk away as quickly as I can.

  “You’re making a big mistake,” Peter snaps at me. “A very big mistake.”

  The next morning when I am taking Charlotte for a walk, the sky darkens. A few fat raindrops fall, splattering on the sidewalk; then a crash of lightning. I duck into the first shop to find shelter. Inside, I kiss raindrops from Charlotte’s cheeks. Only then do I notice I’ve landed in a bookstore.

  As long as I am here, I might as well start searching for books about grief. Soon I find a shelf full of them in the science section. Books about understanding grief and recovering from it.

  A tall man with a friendly face walks over to me. His red woolen sweater had a hole in the neck that has been sewn up. I wonder who repaired it. His mother? A girlfriend? Or this friendly-faced man himself?

  “Can you find what you want?” he asks.

  “Well,” I say, “not quite yet. I’m looking for a book about grief. For my young sons. In case the worst happens.”

  He glances at my hand, still shielding Charlotte’s head. He somehow seems to understand.

  “Come with me,” he says. “I may have what you need.” I follow him though the store like a child behind her father. A father who is going to make everything all right.

  We go to the children’s department, where we step over a stuffed toy giraffe. He takes me to a shelf in a faraway corner. “This is what I was looking for,” he says as he picks up a book. “Read this to your sons. It is a picture book about a frog, a duck, and a badger who find their friend, a blackbird, dead in the woods. They realize he’ll never fly again, but then they each share their dearest memories of him. Children always love stories about animals.”

  I start to thank him for his help, but he brushes it off. “That’s what I am here for,” he says. I wish I could lay my cheek against his sweater, this man with whom I took refuge from the rain today. But I need to go home to my boys so I can read the story to them this evening.

  I follow him to the checkout, where he wraps the book in two plastic bags. “Because of the rain.”

  When I get home, the boys, their hair stiffened by sand and dried rain, huddle against me. I so much love them the way they are now. Two carefree boys tumbling over each other. I cannot bring myself to disturb their happiness. I put the book away. There still is time.

  That evening, with Charlotte in my sling, I walk to the playground in the little square near my house. The mist in the air wets my hair. The place, so crowded during the day, is deserted now. Gone are the kids with their laughter, their fingernails full of sand, their cheeks sticky with sweat and licorice, and gum on the soles of their shoes. A fat reddish cat rummages among the bushes. I lean against the oak tree and listen to twigs cracking.

  The rubber seats on the swing sway gently in the breeze. How often have I pushed my boys here? Higher, Mama! Higher!

  Charlotte looks at me expectantly. I sing her name, so softly only she can hear. Charlotte. She is her name. No matter whether her life will be short or long, her name will remain. It distills her essence.

  I touch her cheek with the tips of my fingers. She is so tiny, her body so delicate, and yet she fights so fiercely.

  “If it becomes too hard for you,” I tell her, “I won’t ask you to go on. I won’t beg you to do what you cannot handle.”

  Her eyes gleam in the evening light, framed by her pale face. She cannot be captured in words, nor in paint. She is a jewel, a star fallen from the sky. A secret revealed to me.

  A tall, bony woman walks by. Her bare feet are stuck in oversized sandals that slap on the stones with every step she takes. She picks up a discarded beer can and tilts it to see if there are a few drops left. She shakes them into her mouth, licks the top of the can, and lets it fall from her hands. Tomorrow morning Louis, his hand on his aching back, will pick up the can and drop it into the trash. This square is his territory. So long as he rules here, children won’t hurt themselves on empty beer cans.

  Charlotte has fallen asleep in my arms. I walk away, careful not to slip on the wet leaves.

  The woman now leans against a lamppost, blowing smoke rings. When I pass her, she waves her hands in the air, as if shooing bees from her hair.

  At home, I fall asleep with my clothes on. That night in my dreams I lick Charlotte into shape, like cats do with newborn kittens.

  W ithout warning he appears in my living room, the man who lives a few blocks away from me. I sometimes run into him at the bakery, where we chat a bit. What on earth is he doing in my house? How does he even know I live here? Did he follow me? He must have seen the door was ajar and walked in.

  Suddenly I am on high alert. I call the boys, who stop playing. Matthijs spills his juice. I look at Charlotte, who is sleeping on the yellow couch. She breathes gently, covered with a woolen blanket. Fear creeps up my neck.

  He is tall, almost two meters, with broad, coat-hanger shoulders. His shirt is made of extra-fine-quality cotton, and his jacket is woven from the finest wool. The sort of man who goes to the best barbers so frequently that no one notices he’s had a haircut.

  “Well,” he says cheerfully, “I just thought, they must be home. Where else would they be?”

  “Listen,” I say, “you can’t just walk in like this. Besides, I can’t see you now. I am busy.”

  Matthijs, wearing his favorite checked shirt, comes close to me and clings to my leg.

  The man walks over to Charlotte. To my horror, he bends over, his tanned face uncomfortably close to hers. I’ve always found his attitude disturbing. Even when chatting in the bakery he evoked sex. Not sex that comes with love, but lecherous, posessive sex.

  “She lies there so beautifully,” he says.

  “Shhh, you’ll wake her up,” I say.

  He pulls her blanket aside.

  “Don’t,” I say. “Leave her alone.”

  He ignores me. “I wonder,” he asks as casually as he can manage, “how much time does she have?”

  I remember he once told me that he had a pacemaker. He had grabbed my hand and pressed it to his heart so I could feel its strangely metronomic ticking.

  “How long do you have?” I ask.

  He leans further over her, his face touching her skin. She must smell him now.

  “So sad,” he says, “to see a child that will soon die.”

  His words are a punch in my stomach. Or, worse, a punch in Charlotte’s stomach. What’s this all about? What’s the purpose of this sickening comment?

  “Get out,” I say.

  He stands upright, looking at me with a face that feigns injured innocence.

  “Get out,” I repeat. “Right now.” I grab his arm.

  “Oh, you mean it,” he says sarcastically.

  “Do I mean it?” I scream. “I never want to see you again! Don’t even think of coming close to her. Out!”

  Dazed, he looks at me. He seems uncertain, quickly glancing around the room. The boys watch, aghast. Charlotte cries.

  Then he walks away. When he reaches the door, he turns on his heels and faces me. “You used to be so sexy,” he says. “And look at you now.”

  I close the door behind him and wait until my heart stops pounding.

  Jurriaan lifts Charlotte onto his lap. Matthijs moves beside them and puts his hand on her forehead. They look at me with wide-open eyes. They do not know me like this. I want to reassure them, to say that everything is fine, but I am s
till much too angry to do that.

  I lock the door, turn off the doorbell. I do not want to be disturbed again by people like this horrible man, with his morbid curiosity disguised as empathy. I take the phone off the hook. I know one thing for sure. If I want to help Charlotte, I will not be polite anymore, or do things purely out of habit to please others. It’s all about her, about us.

  Today I dug a deep moat around our house, our medieval castle, and pulled up the drawbridge. From now on, everything will be different.

  The impenetrable cocoon into which the five of us retreat is made of ancient bricks, of wood and iron. Inside it is warm, lined with wool and down. Only the voices of sopranos penetrate the walls.

  The boys love it, this timeless life without rhythm, rules, or a fixed routine. We eat when we are hungry, sleep when we are tired. We live like there’s no tomorrow, take each moment as it comes.

  Everyone reacts in his or her own way to what we are doing. My brothers’ sons make drawings that we hang on the wall in our bedroom. A friend drops a homemade poem in an envelope through the letterbox every week. Robbert’s mother, who always sought solitude, locks herself further in her own world. She takes long walks along the river, where she quietly sings the name of her granddaughter, Charlotte, over and over, like a prayer.

  Our house no longer disdains us; it works with us. This house has been waiting for you, Rutger told me the first time I visited him. Only now do I understand what he meant. The house blends into our family. It offers Jurriaan a secret place in the hall closet for his beloved dinosaurs, Matthijs a corner under the narrow stairs where he can draw undisturbed. It gives Robbert tranquillity to ponder the secrets of the universe. Now, when it is important, the house thickens its walls; it dims the bright light shining off the street so Charlotte and I can hold each other in peace.

  The house is exactly as I imagined it that first time we entered it so many years ago. The room with our bed where boys who look like Robbert jump up and down. In my arms a girl who looks like me. The only difference from what I imagined then is that now through my daughter’s skin shines a mysterious blue light.

  In my half-sleep I hear Robbert scurrying through the house. I listen to the familiar sounds while Charlotte nestles in my arm. Late in the evening he is always searching for things to inspire him. He browses through books, magazines, and his beloved art catalogs.

  After a little while Robbert comes to the bedroom, careful not to bump into anything in the dark. He lies down behind me and wraps his long arms around both of us. He breathes fast, while I feel his heart beating against my back. He wants to tell me something and seems to be searching for the right words.

  “I’m awake,” I say. “Tell me what’s up.”

  “I found something important tonight,” he whispers. “A blog about a child somewhere in America. A black boy born with the same disease as Charlotte.” He pulls himself even closer to me. “And here is the most incredible thing. The boy is still alive.”

  “Alive?” I repeat, in a voice I hardly recognize as my own.

  “Yes,” Robbert says. “I told you it was incredible, but it is true.”

  “How old is he now?” I ask.

  “Eight,” Robbert says. “His grandmother tells his story on that blog. I saw a photo too. A cute kid with lots of brown curls under a cap, holding a soccer ball under one arm. His other arm is in a cast.”

  I let Charlotte slip out of my arms and sit up. My heart is now thumping as well. Suddenly I am excited about an eight-year-old boy far away on another continent. I want to meet him, see his face, look into his eyes.

  “What else do you know about him?” I ask.

  “Only a few things,” Robbert says. “His parents were teenagers when he was born. Like Charlotte, he had blue spots on his skin, and they too were told that their child had no chance to survive. Because they were so young, they could not deal with the situation. So they took him to his grandmother, who lived in another state. They did not tell her about his leukemia, or his grim prospects. The grandmother never took him to a doctor, since she could not afford health insurance. But then, when he was eight, he broke his arm on the soccer field and his coach brought him to the emergency room. Then something amazing happened. When the nurse entered his name in the computer, they realized who he was. The doctors called each other in disbelief. This healthy kid with his broken arm turned out to be the lost boy, the baby who was supposed to have died eight years ago.”

  My thoughts scatter in all directions. I try to focus on the implications of what Robbert is telling me.

  “So he was not treated,” I say. “And he survived.”

  “Exactly,” says Robbert. “He went into spontaneous remission.”

  I feel like crying and screaming at the same time. I am so energized I could go outside in my pajamas and run a marathon on my bare feet.

  “I have to see him,” I tell Robbert. “I can’t go back to sleep. Show me that blog.”

  “I really can’t,” Robbert says. “I am completely exhausted.” He looks at his watch. “It’s three in the morning, and I have to get up at seven. I need some sleep. We’ll find him tomorrow, I promise.”

  “Tomorrow is fine,” I say, and lie down next to him.

  While I try to calm down, I listen to his breathing, becoming quieter, slower, more regular.

  Just when I think Robbert has fallen asleep, he says, “Remember, this is just one case. N = 1. Not enough to prove anything. One data point says nothing at all.”

  The next day, after Robbert has left, I search the Web. But to my complete frustration, I can’t find the grandmother’s blog. That entire day I keep trying. It must be somewhere. After all, Robbert found it. But where is it?

  “Could you please come home early today?” I beg Robbert. “I need to find this boy.”

  But when he gets home, the children need all our attention. It’s not until late that evening that we can finally sit down. I watch eagerly while Robbert types in the same words that I had typed in earlier. Boy, congenital myeloid leukemia, eight, remission, grandmother. Nothing appears on the screen.

  “How is this possible?” Robbert says. “Yesterday I searched a bit, and the grandmother’s blog just popped up.”

  “Maybe add broken arm,” I say. “Soccer game.”

  Still nothing comes up. We try for an hour, break for some tea, then try again.

  “I don’t understand it,” Robbert says. “He was right there last night, looking at me from under his baseball cap.”

  “We just have to search longer,” I say. “We will find him.”

  But after midnight we give up. The little boy just seems to have disappeared, before he even arrived. But I cannot let go of him. The image Robbert described to me of him is so vivid, it is as if he is sleeping between Charlotte and me. He seems so close I can almost touch his skin, smell the grass under his shoes. When I’m about to fall asleep, I realize I am missing something crucial. Something so important I can’t believe I did not think of it earlier.

  “What’s the boy’s name?” I ask aloud, waking up Robbert.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I try to remember, but I can’t.”

  I am again wide awake. Through the window, I watch the stars, the moon, the shadows above the canal with its night-blue water. I am floating above all of them, weightless. I realize that the miracle boy with his broken arm is the answer to prayers I dared not make. I remember Robbert once telling me about the universe being wider and bigger than I could ever imagine. Somehow I am tumbling into that unimaginable space, and yet at the same time I suddenly have a sense of direction. I have to find a small kid who must be somewhere in that vast universe.

  When I eventually do fall asleep, he appears to me. The boy with the dark brown curls and a broken arm. He puts his hands on either side of my head and turns my face toward him. He looks undaunted, as only an eight-year-old boy can be. Ready to conquer the world.

  “So there you are,” I say. “I was looking for yo
u in the wrong place. Why did I even think I would find you in my computer?”

  He smiles at me with huge eyes, looking exactly as I imagined. “Hey, a soccer ball,” he says, picking up the Ajax ball my boys left on the floor and bouncing it up and down. “Glad to meet Charlotte’s mom,” he says. “Wish we could chat a bit, but I gotta go. I have a soccer game this afternoon, and Coach is very strict about being on time.”

  “Oh, no, not so fast,” I say. “I finally found you. You cannot leave just like that.”

  But he does not seem to hear me anymore and skips away.

  “Wait,” I say before he disappears through the door. “There’s one thing I need to know.”

  He stops and turns around. “Well, then?” he asks.

  “What’s your name?” I say. “You cannot leave before you tell me your name.”

  “I’m Sammy,” he says. “It’s actually Samuel, but no one calls me that. Only my grandmother when she is mad at me.”

  “Sammy,” I repeat after him. “Of course. Such a perfect name for you.”

  The next morning, looking out the window, I see a toddler in a pale blue jacket skipping down the alley. Flop, flop, his shoes slap on the asphalt. His girlish mother, her ponytail bouncing on her shoulders, runs after him, until she grabs him and holds him high in the air. I watch them until they disappear around the corner.

  The blond girl across the alley dances around her room. Then she holds on to the doorpost with both hands and arches her back into a bow. Above the waist of her leather shorts the edge of a black thong shows. No pink bra today, but a purple tank top that tightly hugs her breasts. When her ponytail almost touches the ground, she closes her eyes. I too close my eyes and surrender to a soprano singing a harrowing aria. I spent a whole day looking in vain for Sammy. Instead, in the middle of the night, he found me.

  It’s raining when my doorbell rings.

  “Quick, quick,” says my friend Eline when I open the door. “Don’t let this get wet. Then all my work is for nothing.” She holds a papier-mâché doll under her coat. “I made it especially for Charlotte.” She hands the feather-light doll to me. “It’s the good fairy,” she explains. “You have to put her in a place where you will often walk past her.”