Saving Charlotte

by Pia de Jong

  Then, very carefully, Charlotte staggers to her brother, placing one foot carefully after the other, her hands stretched out in front of her. “You can do it,” Jurriaan encourages her. Concentrating, she wobbles ahead until she arrives and lets herself topple into his arms.

  I walk up and hold both of them as close to me as I can. We cry and laugh, roll all over the floor, stopping and starting, laughing and crying all over again.

  Later that day the boys secretly decorate Charlotte’s high chair. Their voices babble in the kitchen until they allow us to enter. Once I lift Charlotte into her chair, Matthijs puts the red knitted baby hat on her head. She claps her hands. Robbert holds a match to the single candle on the cake. We sing for her.

  Hip, hip, hip, hooray!

  Hip, hip, hip, hooray!

  Behind the kitchen window I see Mackie rushing out into the street. With big arm gestures he chases off a man who wanted to lean a bike against our house.

  The girl in the alley totters outside on her high heels and grabs the man by the hand. She points to Mackie and then taps her head.

  Hip, hip, hooray!

  Charlotte blows the candle out. She now stands upright on the chair and claps her hands as her dress dances around her legs. Then she loses her balance. Just before she falls on the marble floor, I catch her.

  “Charlotte is now one year old,” I tell Sammy, whom, as usual, I encounter when I least expect it. He sits on my bed, propped up between the pillows. He twirls his soccer ball into the air. “A whole year,” I say. “Twelve months, three hundred sixty-five days, fifty-two weeks . . .” I begin to stammer, getting confused by all the numbers, forgetting their order. He tosses his ball faster, higher every time.

  “Didn’t you just turn nine?” I ask him. “Did you celebrate your birthday? Have they sung for you? Did you get presents?”

  But when I turn around he has disappeared. Where are you, Sammy? I look for him everywhere in the bed. I tear off the blankets, the sheets, the cover, but nowhere do I find him. I lost him, I know. He’s not coming back. Never again.

  The next morning I find a piece of crumbled plaster on my nightstand. When I hold it, it turns to dust between my fingers.

  Early in the morning the blond girl rings my bell. When she sees me, she points to my striped sweater. She wears a similar one. “We are twins,” she says. We both start to laugh, then we hug.

  “May I come in?” she asks, walking in. “I have a present for your girl.”

  Her flip-flops slap on the marble floor. She continues to the living room and stands still. Everywhere are stuffed animals, balls, books. Gingerbread crumbs, cups of lemonade with bent straws. Amid all the chaos Charlotte sits like a Buddha on the ground. She’s actually become a bit plump.

  “I worried so much about her,” the girl says as she sits down next to Charlotte and pulls her close. Not carefully, as most people do with babies, but roughly. As if Charlotte is not a baby but a sturdy five-year-old.

  “You know how I knew she was healed?” she asks. “I approached the church where I so often lit a candle for her. But just as I was about to go in, I saw a regular customer of mine. We chatted, and I completely forgot about the candle. The next day the same thing happened. Then I understood that it was no longer necessary to pray for her.” She puts a box on Charlotte’s lap. “I did not dare to give this to her when she was still sick.”

  She helps Charlotte tear off the paper in long thin strips. Inside a huge box is a puzzle made of one thousand pieces. One of those jigsaw puzzles my mother and my aunts used to put together on a table that my father set up for them in the living room. It’s far too difficult for a one-year-old.

  “This is the world,” the girl says, pointing to the picture on the front. “The big wide world, where she can now fly.”

  “Thank you, Cindy,” I say.

  She suddenly sits upright. “Cindy?” she says, reaching for the chain around her neck.

  “Oh, sorry,” I hastily say. “I thought that was your name.”

  “It was my sister’s name,” she says. “She died, of breast cancer.” She pauses, looking bewildered.

  Suddenly I feel so much for her. I put both my arms around her and hold her close. “I’m sorry,” I say. “How awful.” Then I remember something. “You once told me that you knew even before she herself knew that she was pregnant.”

  She looks away from me. “Her little boy lives with her ex-husband,” she says curtly. “He does not want me to see him.”

  She jumps up and walks to the door. “Sorry, gotta go,” she says. “I need to change my clothes and stuff. Work, you know.”

  She stops at the doorstep and looks across the alley at the red-light window with the queen-sized bed next to the table with the big box of condoms and the smaller box of tissues. As she puts a hand in her pocket, her hip slides forward naturally. She no longer is an ordinary girl anymore. She is the timeless whore, about to offer herself to any man for money.

  “One last thing,” she says to me. “There’s something I’ve wondered all this time. Why do you let your children grow up around people like me?”

  Now that Charlotte is better, I can walk freely again. I feel like someone who has been bedridden for a long time. Still not fully recovered, but strong enough to venture out to some places.

  But wherever I find myself, part of me is always in that hospital on the outskirts of Amsterdam. In that large infirmary where children of all ages lie, hoping to get better. And in the small rooms where the very sick ones linger on the threshold of a mysterious place.

  “What you have is called paralyse d’amour,” the physical therapist announces, peering over his glasses. I sit on a treatment table in a room with fluorescent lighting. In the past half-hour he has lifted, turned, and prodded my arm. With every touch he seemed to hit a raw nerve.

  I consulted him to find out what is wrong with my arm. From the very first moment of her life, Charlotte found her favorite spot in the crook of my elbow. Now I am unable to move my arm.

  “A beautiful name for something so painful,” I say while I rub myself. “Why is it called that?”

  “It is most common among lovers,” he says. “They finally see each other, after waiting a week, on Friday night. He wraps his arm affectionately around her, she nestles up against him, and thus they fall asleep. The next day his arm is numb.” Then he looks over at me. “Tell me,” he says, “what have you been doing with that arm?”

  It is late August. Summer is slowly fading into fall, but the heat of the past few months still lingers in our house. We are listless. We hear on the radio that this may be one of the last beach days of the season.

  “Let’s go to the sea,” Robbert says. We pack up our towels and sun lotion, gather the kids, and take off.

  At the beach we gaze out through a mist hovering over the water. The boys run leaping into the surf while Robbert follows them. The breeze is bracing. I sit down with Charlotte, curling up on our beach blanket and holding my hand protectively over her face.

  The beach is empty except for two riders on horses. Gulls wheel wildly in the wind above us. Off in the distance sailboats form blurry silhouettes against the horizon.

  By noon the sun heats up the sand. I take Charlotte to the surf and dangle her feet in the cool water. Whenever a big wave comes in, I lift her into the air. She squeals with delight.

  After a while, when she tires, I call to Robbert that I will find a shady spot behind the dunes. He waves and continues to play with the boys in the surf.

  Holding Charlotte close, I start walking. My feet sink deeper into the loose sand with every step. Only a year ago she was as feathery as dandelion fluff in the wind. Now she feels heavy.

  I look back and watch Robbert running into the surf, his knees high, his hands holding each of the boys. They look alike, all three, with their blond hair, their long legs, their exuberance. They dive into a gathering wave. For a few long seconds they are submerged in the vast shroud of the sea. Then they emer
ge, laughing and shaking water off their heads in the bright sun.

  It is almost five o’clock, but it’s still warm. My red summer dress clings to my skin. The hair on Charlotte’s neck is damp. At the end of the beach where the dunes begin, I turn around. Robbert and the boys have become dots. My dots.

  Charlotte enjoys the rhythm of my walking and sways along. A squirrel crosses the path in the dunes in front of us. A blackbird sits on a branch, fluttering away as we get closer. There are no other people, just the two of us.

  The beach grasses ripple in the breeze. Seashells crunch under my shoes. Then silence again.

  I put my arms around Charlotte. Every moment of her life she has been with me. In quiet hours we flowed into one another. Salt and sweetness, tears and milk.

  When she raises her head, her cheek touches mine. Her skin is soft, like bird’s down. Far ahead, half hidden behind a grove of trees, a pond with bluish water glows in the light.

  I stretch myself out on the sand and lay Charlotte down beside me. She looks around and picks up a twig.

  The wind is cooler; the late sun paints the dunes golden. The bush beside me is ripe with crimson berries. She licks her lips and so do I. They taste like sea.

  Softly I sing her name. That one name only: Charlotte.

  Twelve years later

  I sit by the window of my house watching snowflakes fall. If a single snowflake catches my eye, I try to follow its path as it swirls in the wind, but I always lose it halfway down.

  The phone rings. It is my father. “Congratulations on your birthday,” he says. “Have you seen the snow? When you were born, it snowed just as hard.”

  I know this story by heart—he has told it so many times. The doctor was snowed in, so my father had to drive over to pick him up. When the doctor finally arrived, he was so nervous that my father sat him down in a chair to calm him. I was the first baby he had ever delivered.

  “Have you already bought the cake?” my father asks. “Better go get it now. It will snow even harder, and the children will come home soon.” He pauses. “You are going to get cake, aren’t you?”

  “I will, I will,” I promise.

  I place my palm on the cold window, take it away, and look at the outline of my hand on the frosty pane.

  “I do not feel so good,” he says. “My arm aches. And I’m constantly cold.”

  My father is eighty-three. Always been as strong as a bear. I don’t remember him ever being sick.

  “There is some sort of flu going around,” I tell him. “My arm aches as well.”

  “Thanks,” he says. “That somehow is a relief.”

  “You know what?” I say in an attempt to cheer him up. “I will email you a picture of Charlotte in a white dress and a straw hat. A summer angel, in the heart of winter.”

  “I look forward to that,” he says.

  “Bye, now, Dad.”

  “Be good, sweetheart,” he replies.

  Later that afternoon I cut the chocolate cake I brought home, trudging through the freshly fallen snow. Flowers are delivered by a boy with freckles. A cup of lemonade tumbles to the floor, leaving yellow stains splashed on the wall. My children sing for me, again and again, their voices high and loud. Amid the chaos and laughter, the phone rings.

  “It’s Grandma,” Charlotte says. “She wants to talk to you.”

  “What’s up?” I ask my mother.

  “Papa . . .” she says, then stops. I immediately realize what has happened.

  That evening the five of us drive through the still-falling snow to my parents’ house. In the back seat sit three sad children.

  My father died that afternoon “between two cups of tea,” as my mother tells us again and again. When she found him, his head had fallen to the desk, on top of the newly printed photo of Charlotte. His last kiss was for her.

  “I have something to share with you,” I tell Mackie.

  He is rummaging outside in the street, dressed only in shorts and plastic sandals. Over his shoulders hangs his mother’s brown woolen cape. With his bare hands he picks up the neck of a broken whiskey bottle. Then he finally looks up. “Well, then, tell me.”

  “I can’t do this on the street,” I say. “You will have to come inside.”

  He hesitates. The only times he has been in my house were after the births of my children. He dressed up for those occasions.

  “Please, come with me,” I say, and walk into my house.

  He follows me, reluctantly, into my kitchen. There he stands, with his wiry gray beard and his fluffy hair. Mackie, my faithful gatekeeper, my protector. He shifts his weight from one foot to another, cracking his knuckles.

  “You need to sit down,” I say, and I pull up a chair beside him. He looks at the chair as if it is a trap into which I am trying to lure him. He does not move. Then he wraps his arms tightly around his chest and stares at me, horrified.

  “You’re going to move,” he says flatly.

  “I knew you would guess,” I say.

  “Where to?” he asks.

  “Far away,” I say. “Too far for you to continue to watch over us.”

  He remains motionless. Then lowers his head, turns around, and leaves.

  During the next few weeks we empty the house, room by room, until nothing is left. All the things we gathered over the years go in boxes. The boys’ treasured dinosaurs, which they have outgrown. The many precious crayon drawings, clay projects, and all their baby pictures. Charlotte’s little dresses, her summer hat. The love letters Robbert and I wrote when we met. We pack up our whole life to ship it to another continent. When all is done, I sit down on the wooden floor. Mice scratch behind the wallpaper, as if no time has passed since that rainy day in November so many years ago. I put my hand against the wall, rough to the touch. The house is still quirky, but I know now, so am I. Maybe that’s why, in the end, we got along so well. We came to recognize each other.

  For the last time I look across the alley. The blond girl dances behind the glass window. Her eyes are half closed; her glossy red lips glow in the afternoon sun. The strap of her pink bra has dropped from her shoulder, but she does not attempt to straighten it. Fine lines around her eyes and mouth have hardened her face. She barely resembles the young girl I first saw so many years ago.

  I go out and knock on her window. Startled, she turns the music down and shuffles to the door.

  “I have come to say goodbye,” I say. “We’re leaving the alley.”

  “You mean you are moving?” she says.

  I nod. Her dyed air is growing out, leaving dark roots where she parts it.

  “Gosh,” she says. “I did not think you’d ever leave. In a weird way you have become my family.” She fumbles with her headphones. A man walks by, not giving her a look.

  “You too have become like family,” I say. “I think of you as the little sister I never had.”

  She is not as thin as she used to be. A bulge of pale skin presses over the edge of her jeans.

  “Are you going far away?” she asks.

  “I am,” I say. “But I promise I will visit you whenever I’m back.”

  As we stand facing each other, I cannot avoid looking at the bed behind her. The nightstand with the condoms and tissues. The bulb above it, hanging from a cord in the ceiling. I want so much to take her out of this small place where she spends so much of her time.

  I wrap my arms around her, in order not to show her my tears. When I see another man approaching in the alley, I pull her soft skin even closer.

  But she sees him as well and squirms out of my grasp. “Hi, sweetie,” she teases him in her lilting hooker’s voice. “Here you are.”

  “One more thing,” I say quickly, before letting her go. “I never thanked you.”

  “Thanked me?” she asks. “What for?”

  “For the candles you burned for Charlotte, back then, when she was sick,” I say. “That was such a special thing to do.”

  We both watch the man, who has stopped to lock
his bike, which has a plastic child seat.

  The girl opens her mouth, but just as she’s about to say something, he walks over to her and grabs her wrist. “Hey, you,” he says.

  “Hi,” she says. “Come in—I’ve been waiting for you.”

  On the stairs of the house where Rutger once lived, a fat orange cat is stretching in the sun. The velvet curtains no longer hang from the window. A new resident has put up shutters. The once-green door is painted a dark brown. The house no longer resembles the one I dreamed of as a child.

  All five of us huddle together, our suitcases next to us.

  Then Robbert closes the heavy door, turns the three locks for the last time, and we climb into the cab.

  “Mama,” Charlotte says as we drive away. “Look behind us.”

  I turn around and see Mackie. He is standing in the middle of the street, waving goodbye to us. Both of his arms are flailing in the air, high above his head. He still swings them as we turn the corner. I leave him standing there all by himself.

  We now live in another city, in another country, far from the Amsterdam neighborhood where all this once took place. My life has slowly resumed its familiar rhythms. I again take for granted what for a long time was missing—the orderly progression of time. I have confidence that there will always be a tomorrow, a next week, a new year.

  Time has softened most of the pain. My sensitivity to certain words has disappeared. The word death no longer makes me shiver. A bench in the park is again a place to rest and no longer a life raft to cling to.

  Some things, though, have changed forever. Never will I put a Band-Aid on a scrape without thinking of blood tests. And a wicker basket will never again be just a basket made of reeds.

  My life is once again filled with everyday things. What shall we eat tonight? Where will we go for summer vacation?

  But it never returned to the way it was before Charlotte’s illness. At unexpected moments fear tightens my throat. I then, like a wounded animal, pull myself back into my bedroom and fold my fingers around the lapis lazuli, as if in prayer.

  There are secrets I will never fathom. For a year I put my own life on hold for the sake of my daughter. In return, she gave me the greatest gift I ever received: a new beginning. I now have a life that suits me. One of intention and meaning.