“But you kiss, don’t you?”
“Well . . . yes. I guess that makes us boyfriend and girlfriend. Are you all right with that?”
“Yeah,” she said, stuffing her hands in her pockets with an expression that now read: I knew it.
“So,” I said, trying to change the subject, “let’s talk about something else. Like, say, boyfriends.”
“Boyfriends? I only have one, Dad.”
“Wait a minute, what?”
“Mom knows. She lets me.”
Touché. Game, set, match.
“Go on and set the table, would you?”
“And now I’m going to set the table,” she said, turning on her heel and leaving the room.
That night, after dinner, we finally broached the topic of the argument at school. It had all started with a humiliating situation. The kids came in from recess to find the chalkboard reading, “I may be annoying, but you’re flat-chested, Bea Harper!”
“I hate it, Dad. I hate everyone at school. They’re all so stuck up. I want to leave. I want to go back to my old school!”
I promised I would talk to her mother about it. And I suggested that while we “tried to fix all this,” she should try to find the silver lining. It didn’t sound like the kind of place where I’d want to be, either, I thought. I’d talk with Clem about it, though I predicted what her response would be: “I’m not willing to risk Beatrice’s future because of one bad year. She has a chance to have a great life, and it’s my job to keep her from ruining those chances.”
IT’S ONE OF THE aspects of our relationship where Clem and I never agreed. To her, my way of seeing the world was “juvenile.” I thought you should do what you want, follow your instincts and see what happens. “You can’t leave anything to chance!” she’d say. That was the mistake 90 percent of families made, she said. She thought securing a quality education was the most important thing a parent could do for a child. I’m sure it had to do with her own upbringing. Her dad was a drunk, a bridge worker in Haarlem, and her mother spent most of her time playing cards in a café. Clem had had to work for everything she’d gotten, paying her way through school, fighting for every inch, until she finally reached her dream job as an attorney at a big law firm.
“You ever wonder why they call me the dictator—the bad guy? Because I’m the one who’s there every day, pushing them,” she’d said.
“First, I had to deal with your failures. Then, I had to deal with your successes. You’ve become such an egomaniac. You spend twenty-four hours a day staring at your navel. And that may be good for a musician. But as a father and a husband, you’re not worth a shit.”
She had hurled that monologue at me about a year ago, while we stood by a police car and Niels got his lip butterfly-stitched by a paramedic—after I’d punched him in the mouth. I’d never seen her so pissed. I thought she was going to punch me herself. And I wish she would have. I deserved it.
Niels Verdonk, the man whose lip I’d just busted open, was a well-known architect in town. His design studio was in the same Prinsengracht building where Clem’s law office was, and they’d met at a garden party there one night.
We broke the news in a textbook way to the kids, a long discussion that any family therapist would have met with approval. Despite that, watching Jip and Beatrice absorb the news was maybe the hardest thing I’d ever had to witness in my life. Beatrice was in denial for weeks. She figured we were just angry at each other, and that we’d be over it in a couple of weeks. Jip started wetting the bed. That’s when I understood why couples stayed together for the children and even rationalized infidelity. “Look, Clem. Have your fling with Niels, do whatever you want. Just don’t break up our family, okay?”
At that moment, I’d have preferred to not have had kids. It would have been better to be a twenty-four-year-old guy and suffer the pain in solitude. Maybe I would have taken a long trip, gone traveling. Maybe I would have gotten drunk every night. Gone to every party in town looking for hookups. Slowly regained my self-esteem. Instead, I set out to destroy myself.
I became addicted to pain. I was bent on torturing myself. That was around the time I stopped playing music altogether. I couldn’t manage to play a single note, thinking about where Clem might be, what she might be doing, whether she was with Niels. . . . The hardest part was saying goodbye to my kids at the door where I used to wipe my feet. To have your children ask you why the hell you couldn’t come in. To turn around and find yourself on a lonely road in a city you no longer recognize. In a world that seems hostile now, at every turn.
I started to follow her, first to work, then to bars and cafés where she hung out. Sometimes I watched as she and Niels met for lunch. They’d kiss and hold hands. And worse, sometimes I’d follow them to his apartment and wait outside in the rain while I imagined them inside making love. I kept up that sick game until they caught me. A neighbor had seen me standing outside Niels’ apartment a couple of times and must have told him. One afternoon, he came out a side door and caught me by surprise before I could sneak away. He told me to leave, and that he never wanted to see me around there again. I started to get agitated. It was a lot to take in, never mind that I’d had one too many beers. I grabbed him by the throat and told him the real crime was seducing another man’s wife. He was a foot taller than me and slammed me up against a wall. But I was the one fueled by rage, and I started swinging left and right. The rest played out like something out of a movie. The neighbors called the cops. Clem came down and was hysterical, screaming that I was crazy. Niels said he wouldn’t press charges, but he didn’t want to see me hanging around again or his lawyers would eat me for breakfast. Pat and a couple of other close friends tried to help me. The contract I had with FOX went to shit, and in a way I was glad. I couldn’t string two notes together. I decided I needed to get away from everything. Even if it meant enduring the pain of separating from the kids. At that moment, I was no good to anyone, a detriment to everyone all around me. So I ran away. I found the house on Tremore Beach and realized it was exactly what I needed. To heal. To let the wound close. And maybe I had been a shitty husband and father, who only worried about his work, and who later only worried about his own fragile ego when he should have been there for his kids when they needed him most. How I would have wanted to be stronger, to endure my pain in a more dignified way. But things are the way they are, and I was trying to fix them the only way I knew how—not the way you see them played out in Hollywood movies, where the hero has an iron will and always knows the right thing to do.
THE WEATHER AT NIGHT had cooled, and I decided to light the fireplace. We didn’t really need to, but Jip had wanted to use it since the day they’d gotten here. While the fire warmed us, Beatrice strummed the ukulele. Jip and I lay on the rug, coloring and drawing dinosaurs. “This is a Triceratops, Dad. This is a Stegosaurus. And this is a Brontosaurus . . . When it roared, it sounded like thunder.”
For a moment, as I watched Jip draw and listened to Beatrice play, I allowed myself to imagine them twenty years down the road: Jip leaning over a professional drawing table; Beatrice holding a violin instead of ukulele, surrounded by other musicians, playing with orchestras around the world.
“Are you going to stay here forever, Dad?” Jip asked me as we drew an army of dinosaurs.
“You mean Ireland?”
Jip nodded without looking up from his work.
“Well, no, not forever,” I said. “Just until I finish a few things.”
“And then you’ll move back to Amsterdam?”
“I suppose. Or maybe some other town.”
It could be another city, after all. Someplace far enough from Niels and Clem, somewhere we didn’t share the same circle of friends. Somewhere farther south, perhaps. Close to Maastricht or Breda. A house with plenty of land, maybe on the beach. I could mow my lawn, paint my fence, get to know my neighbors. Maybe they’d be cool, like Leo and Marie.
“. . . either way, I’d make sure I was close to you.�
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“Will Judie come with you?” Jip asked, as if reading my own thoughts.
“Would you like her to?”
He nodded and smiled. Across the room, so did Beatrice.
“Please, dad, convince her!”
“Yeah,” Jip added as he played with a toy dinosaur on my back. “Please!”
“Well, I don’t know if she’ll want to come. She’s happy here with her store and her life. Maybe she wouldn’t like the idea.”
“She’ll like it. You just have to ask her nicely. She’s your girlfriend, isn’t she? You do make a good couple. Everybody says so.”
“Oh, yeah? Who’s ‘everybody’?”
“Leo and Marie. They were talking about it on the boat.”
I laughed as Jip made a menagerie of plastic dinosaurs crawl over my shoulders.
“Besides, it’s not right for you to live here all by yourself. It’s not right,” Beatrice said, as if reciting a well-rehearsed speech. “Mommy has Niels, and you have Judie. That’s the way it ought to be. Not like Grandpa who’s all alone.”
The reference to my father shook me. I looked up. Beatrice had turned to focus her eyes to her ukulele but her cheeks were bright red, as if she knew she had touched a nerve.
But I didn’t say a word. This thirteen-year-old girl had made me think. About myself. About my father. About the fact we weren’t so different at this moment: hurt, in hiding, waiting for answers to fall from the sky, perhaps.
Beatrice’s thoughtless strumming on the ukulele became familiar chords.
“Somewhere beyond the sea . . .” she sang,
“Hey, I learned to play that when I was about your age. . . .”
“My lover stands on golden saaands . . .” she sang louder, craning her neck.
I stood up and sat at the piano. My longtime companion who’d become my nemesis.
I leaned in without pomp or ceremony. Jip sat on my lap, and I gave him a metronome to play with. If all my old professors could have seen me, they’d have thrown up into their top hats. But what did I care?
We started to play together.
“What other songs are in that book?” I said, nodding to the songbook we’d bought along with the ukulele at Judie’s store. “Anything from the Beatles?”
“ ‘In My Life’?” Beatrice said, reading the index.
“There are places I remember . . .” I hummed.
“Who are the Beatles?” Jip asked.
“Your mother hasn’t played you any of their songs yet? Christ Almighty . . . That’s it, I’m officially taking over your musical education.”
“How’s it start?” Beatrice asked.
“Don’t worry about the riff. I’ll pick it up on the piano. You just play the chords.”
“Okay, cool.”
“What should I do, Daddy?” Jip asked.
“Hmm, let’s see. Okay, Jip, you have to keep the rhythm going, tapping just like this: one, two, three, four. . . . It’s easy. Just keep doing that.”
Music wasn’t Jip’s talent, but he knew how to keep the beat.
After a couple of false starts, the Harper Orchestra began its overture. What a great moment . . . The fussy old piano put on her party dress and began to move with style. Beatrice played the ukulele fearlessly, with personality. The two of us sang the lyrics together.
And just like that, we were a team again.
Someone once said if you want to know whether you truly love or hate a person, you should go on a trip together. And to that I’d add: If you want to truly see into someone’s soul, you should play music together. That afternoon, the three of us saw into one another’s souls. It seemed only appropriate that it was a Beatles tune. I got goose bumps as I surreptitiously tried to wipe the tears that swelled in my eyes at witnessing these beautiful creatures, my children, here with me, after everything we’d gone through. They’d weathered the storm their parents had rained down on them, and greeted the sunshine with a smile.
That night, a strange wind blew outside. My headache, which I hadn’t felt all day, suddenly returned. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock . . . like an old-fashioned clock.
I closed my eyes and waited for it to pass.
FOUR
I MANAGED TO SLEEP for a few hours, but eventually, the pain returned and awoke me with a sudden stab that made me yell out, “Oh, God!” I lay in my bed, disoriented. There was a storm swirling outside. A storm that shook the house just as it had the last time. And that’s when I knew it: I had returned to that unknown place.
The ache recoiled, like a venomous snake that has just struck its prey. It settled back into the depths of my head with a dull, moderate throb, the ticktock that had become my cellmate. I was covered in sweat, but I lay still, in the middle of my tussled bed. I didn’t want to move, and I didn’t want to be there. I closed my eyes and tried to fall back to sleep, but I couldn’t. The storm, the night sweats, the headache, all of it conspired to keep me awake.
Not to mention the pounding. On the door downstairs.
This can’t be happening. Not again. I’m not getting up, it’s just another bad dream.
But I had heard it. It was hard to hear over the howling wind, but clearly the noises were coming from downstairs. With my heart already pumping hard, I listened close. In my mind, the tiniest sound—a creak of the stairs, the wind, the house settling—became the sign of a killer who had broken in. Suddenly, there was another thud downstairs, this time clear and strong. There was no denying it anymore: I was awake and this was happening. I immediately feared that the kids had heard it, too, and if I didn’t get up to see what it was, they would. And that would definitely be worse.
I opened my eyes wide.
Is that you again, Marie?
I thought back on my last conversation with Judie. Was I having one of those lucid dreams she told me about? It seemed impossible. Everything around me felt tangibly real. I could feel the sheets beneath me, my pajamas drenched in sweat. I reached up and touched my head, feeling my disheveled hair on the soft pillow. Outside, the wind raged and shook the house. But wasn’t that normal in Donegal?
Forget it. Just go back to sleep.
I tried taking three deep breaths and told myself these bad dreams would vanish as quickly as they’d appeared. I lay perfectly still in the silence for about a minute and heard nothing, only the storm outside. Wind, rain, the rumble of distant thunder. Now sleep, I told myself. One sheep, two sheep, three shee . . .
There it was again! A solid, forceful thud. The sound of a door slamming open.
I jumped out of bed this time. If this was all a dream, as Judie said, then it was the most vivid dream I’d had in all my life. That’s when I remembered the notebook.
I felt the carpet beneath my feet, my toes wiggling through the blue wool fibers. Yes, this seemed real. I reached for the closet door handle and noted the cold metal in my hands, the texture of the worn brass between my fingers. You’d have to be high on mescaline to perceive this kind of imagined detail. It was as real as real could be.
I opened the closet door and was greeted by squeaking hinges and the wafting scent of mothballs someone had scattered before I moved here. I fumbled around in the dark for my black coat. The small notebook Judie had given me was in the pocket where I’d left it, along with a lighter and a scrunched up Kleenex.
Dreams don’t feature rumpled tissues, do they?
I sat on the edge of the bed and turned on the lamp on my nightstand. I laid the red 3M notebook with the spiral binding on it to write. I even noted the price tag still affixed to the cover: seven and a half euros. A pencil was wedged inside the spiral ring. Yellow with black lines and a pink eraser on the end. I pulled it out, opened the notebook, and began to write:
A storm woke me again tonight. And there may have been some pounding on the door, too. I’m not sure. I’m going to go take a look. It all feels real. This pencil in my hand. The feel of the paper beneath my fingers . . . It all just is. NOTE TO SELF: confirm that the notebook cost 7,50
€.
Just when I started to doubt that I’d heard anything at all, when I had finally convinced myself this was all a dream, I heard another noise downstairs. It sounded like something being dragged. A door slammed at the same moment as a burst of thunder crackled, and I couldn’t tell where the noise was coming from. I wrote down one last thing before getting up.
I’m afraid, and my fear is real. I’m going to take a look downstairs. I heard something moving.
Jip and Beatrice were asleep in their rooms. I didn’t turn on their bedroom light but in the half-light I could see their delicate forms breathing under the covers. I carefully closed their door and headed downstairs barefoot. A draft of cold air blew up from the living room, and I could feel goose bumps spreading beneath my pajamas.
Everything downstairs was draped in shadows. The windows were black and blue squares in the dark. Stormy wind and raindrops jingled against the glass. A thud made me swing around toward the entryway, where the door was standing wide open.
The door was open a sliver, banging against the frame. So that’s the noise I’d heard. And that’s the source of the icy draft.
What if Marie’s on the other side of that door? Alive? Or dead?
I took a deep breath and approached the door.
Let’s get this over with. . . .
I was shaking by the time I reached the entrance hall, either from the cold or fear. My keys were dangling from the lock. I could have sworn I’d locked it before going to bed, like I always did.
I was tempted to close it and go back to bed. But I didn’t. If this was real, I needed an explanation. If it was a dream, I needed to understand what it meant, once and for all.
I whipped the door open as if trying to surprise the person or phantom that might be hiding on the other side. A gust of icy wind and rain blasted my face. If I’d had the notebook in my hands, I’d have written: The rain’s cold. The wind is real. I can hear the ocean crashing in the night. The air is redolent of salt.
In the hallway closet, there was an old pair of rubber galoshes. I stuffed my bare feet into them and put on my thick, yellow anorak. I grabbed my keys from the sinister-looking hook and stuffed them in my jacket pocket. I flipped the switch for the outside lights.
The Last Night at Tremore Beach Page 11