Girl in the Dark (15 page)

She spotted me as soon as she stepped through the sliding doors into Arrivals Hall 1. I don't know if she was surprised; if so, she didn't let on. Our eyes met coolly. One of my mother's bridge friends, Lina, who shared her passion for spa treatments was with her. They had been friends for years.

When Lina caught sight of me she elbowed my mother and began waving enthusiastically. “Isn't
this
nice! You're so lucky, Agatha. It would take a serious bribe for my Carla to come meet me at the airport.” Lina threw her arms around me and planted a big kiss on my cheek. “Hello, darling! How nice to see you again. Where's that dear little boy of yours?”

“Day care.”

“Come, Agatha, give your daughter a hug!”

Stiffly my mother air-kissed me three times, in the Dutch manner.

“What a surprise, huh, Mother?” I said deliberately.

She shot me a sour look.

“Let's walk to the car. I'll drive you home.”

“Wonderful,” said Lina. “The taxi drivers these days barely speak Dutch. Let alone of knowing the way. This is nice, isn't it,
dear?” She poked my mother in the ribs again. “You don't know how lucky you are, having such a thoughtful daughter.”

“I certainly do,” said my mother sarcastically.

After Lina had said an effusive good-bye, making me promise I'd come over with Aaron, my mother asked, “So what was this supposed to be all about, Iris?”

I started the car again. “Did you enjoy your vacation, Mother?” I asked sweetly.

“Of course not. How can I relax if you're nosing around?”

“Actually, I wonder how
you
can relax knowing your son is in an institution for the criminally insane.”

“So you know.”

“It wasn't all that hard to figure out.”

My mother stared out the window. I didn't have to see her face to know she was fuming.

“Did you really think you could keep the fact that you had a son a secret forever?”

“Until you started sticking your nose in my business I managed to pretty well, actually.”

“How
could
you, of all people? You are always harping on and on about responsibility.”

“I don't owe you an explanation, Iris. You have no idea what it was like. What I had to go through.”

I parked in front of my mother's house and turned off the engine. “Can I help you with your suitcase?”

“I can manage,” she said icily. She got out, wrested the trunk open, and hauled her suitcase out with some difficulty.

I followed her to the front door.

She turned all three locks and went inside. The suitcase wobbled dangerously as she pulled it over the threshold. “Did I invite you to come in?”

“I don't need an invitation, Mother. I'm your daughter and you're not getting out of this conversation.”

She sighed. Outwardly cool and collected. As always.

“There's a reason I have chosen not to tell anyone. I'm sorry you've found out about Ray, but I would like to leave it alone.”

“Why? I already know the worst parts, so what's there to hide?”

“Just leave me alone. And leave Ray alone, too.” She walked into the living room and pulled the throw off the couch. Then she started folding it in the neatest possible way.

“I won't. On the contrary, I'm going to have a look at his case, to see if there are grounds for appeal.”

“What?!”
My mother looked at me in disgust.

“Ray asked me to help him. And since he's my brother, I am going to do just that. It's bad enough you've washed your hands of him all these years. At least there's one member of the family who's interested in what happens to him. Besides, as his attorney I can visit him as often as he wants. And we must have quite some catching up to do, wouldn't you think?”

“I don't know what you
think
you're doing, but let me tell you this: Ray isn't the nice cuddly brother of your dreams. I mean—I assume you know
why
he's locked up.”

“It remains to be seen if he is guilty.”

“You don't know him, Iris. Ray can seem very sweet and cute, but he's dangerous. As a child he was quite irrational.”

“Was that before or after you dumped him in the institution?”

“Don't forget I was very young when I had him. He was just impossible. You think Aaron's difficult? You should have seen Ray. I couldn't handle him at all.”

I had a hard time believing there was anything my mother couldn't handle. But I did feel sympathy for her, for things to get so bad that she had to send her child away. I gazed at her face.
The hard lines around her mouth. Why couldn't she show me any emotion?

“Still, you should have told me. Didn't I have the right to know I have an older brother?”

“Funny, isn't it—it's always got to be about
you
. Don't you think it hurt
me,
to have to give up my son? Because I do love Ray. I have always loved him and will always love him. Having to part from him, do you hear that, Iris,
having
to, was very painful for me. But no, instead of trying to understand my feelings, you immediately turn it around to yourself. You're acting as if I've done something terrible to you.”

“Won't you just tell me a little more? Maybe then I can understand where you are coming from.”

“It's a chapter I've chosen to close and you will just have to respect that.” She turned around and rolled her suitcase into her bedroom without a backward glance.

I wasn't willing to give it up, and followed her. “Have you ever visited Ray? In prison or at the institution?”

“I've been to the prison, yes,” she said stiffly. Her suitcase lay open on the bed. Her clothing, in the gaudy shades women in their sixties tend to be partial to, was arranged in neatly folded piles. Off to the side I spotted a flesh-toned bra and lace-trimmed hip briefs. Apparently she'd had everything laundered while still at the hotel. It didn't surprise me.

My mother must have seen me stare. She snatched up her underwear with a catty gesture and stuffed it in her underwear drawer.

“But do you visit him still? He's terribly lonely, did you know that?”

My mother walked over to the closet with a stack of T-shirts in her arms. Standing with her back to me she said, “Let me refresh your memory. He
murdered
someone—what am I saying?—
two
people, a mother and child. You needn't feel sorry for him.” She turned back to the bed, rummaged around in her suitcase, extracted a wrapped gift from the bottom, and tossed it in my direction. It landed at the foot of the bed. “Here, I got you something.”

It was clearly a bottle of booze. I peeled off the thin giftwrap and read the label of some obscure Slovenian concoction. “Well, thanks.”

“Local specialty, they told me. I also have something for Aaron, but I'd rather give that to him in person. If he's still allowed to come here, that is, now that you know what a horrible creature I am.”

“Feel free to use Aaron to compensate for Ray as much as you like. He doesn't seem to have any objections.”

“Nor do you, actually.”

“You're right.”

We were both silent.

“There's a chance that your son, your own flesh and blood, is in a mental institution after being wrongly convicted. Doesn't that bother you?”

She shook her head. “You don't know Ray. You have no idea what you're saying.”

“Maybe not knowing him means I can be more objective.” That wasn't true, of course. I wanted to believe in Ray's innocence just as fervently as my mother wanted to believe he was guilty.

“You have no idea, Iris. No idea.”

“I'd still like to find out.”

My mother walked into the adjoining bathroom to throw what little laundry there was in the hamper. When she returned, she said, “Please leave him alone. Just stay out of it—and out of my past.”

“Is anyone out there?” I banged on the cell door. “Hello?”

No answer.

I looked around hoping to find a way out. All I saw was four white walls and a small barred window that looked out on a strip of grass. Apart from that, the small space had a door with two little shutters—closed. I banged on the door again. Nothing.

I thought about what would happen if I used up all the air in the cramped space. It was already happening; with each breath I felt my lungs getting less oxygen. Breathing would keep getting more difficult, and in the end I knew I would suffocate.

My aquarium's air pump had stopped working once. I discovered it at three in the morning, when I was about to leave for work. I always checked the aquarium and recorded the levels at that time.

The first thing I'd noticed was the silence. The water wasn't bubbling, and I couldn't hear the pump's constant buzz. I peered into the aquarium to find the fish. They weren't darting through the anemones and weren't grazing on the coral. That's when I saw them. They were floating at the surface. Their mouths open wide.

I had to save my fish. What was my own life worth, if they
perished? Luckily I still had an old pump lying around, which I was able to use as a stopgap measure. “Hang on a little longer!” I remember saying that to them, even though fish can't hear, all they can sense, at most, is the vibration. Maybe I was saying it more to myself than to the fish. “Hang on a little longer.” I installed the old pump and soon the water began bubbling again and the fish went about their business again as if nothing had happened.

My fish never lacked for anything. I made sure of that.

In the solitary cell there was no backup pump, no escape route. Nothing.

“Is anyone there?” I called again. “Please, is anybody there? I have to get out of here. I'm suffocating!”

I heard footsteps in the corridor. The little shutter slid open and I saw an unfamiliar face. “Everything all right in there?”

“No,” I panted. “I can't breathe. I . . .” I clutched at my throat. “Please open the door. The oxygen is almost all used up.”

“Impossible,” said the face. “Look up at the ceiling. Do you see those white vents? Fresh air comes out of there. So you
can't
suffocate.”

“It's not working,” I said. “I can feel it isn't working. I'm suffocating. You want me to die.”

“You're having a panic attack,” said the face. “Try breathing in and out, nice and calm. And if after that you're still not feeling better, I'll ask the doctor to give you something to relax you, okay?”

“You planted drugs in my room so you could lock me in here. And now you're going to let me die. It's a trap. I've been lured into a trap.”

“Calm down. Remember what I said. Look at the vents in the ceiling.”

“It's not working. It isn't working.”

“Do you want me to leave the hatch open? Then you can breathe through the opening if that'll make you feel better.”

The face disappeared again and I stood on tiptoe so that my mouth could reach the hatch. I was like François, Maria, Hannibal, Peanut, Raisin, King Kong, and the others. I sucked in the scanty oxygen with my mouth wide open. Waiting for the backup pump.

After a few hours I had a cramp in my legs and a stiff neck. I sat down on the floor; I no longer cared that much about dying. It seemed a perfectly acceptable option.

They brought me a meal. The bigger shutter was pushed aside and a plastic plate of spaghetti was set down on a ledge with some plastic utensils and a cup of water.

I jumped to my feet. “Hey!” I yelled. “Hey, is anyone out there?”

Nobody replied. The hatch rammed shut.

I sank to the floor holding the plate of spaghetti. Tomato sauce dripped onto my white pants. It left a nasty red stain. Red on white.

Just like Rosita, when she was dead. She was wearing her white top, the top with the thin straps, that let you see her boobs—nipples and all. She always dressed too lightly for the weather. It wasn't very hot the day Rosita died. But Rosita would rather turn up the heat than put more clothes on. She'd have preferred walking around naked all day, she said.

The white top was torn and covered in red spots. Her miniskirt was smeared with blood, too. There was so much blood. Blood everywhere. I got dizzy looking at it and kept having to close my eyes because it was so hard to look at.

Anna was wearing a little pink dress. It had been on sale at H&M. Only, there was a big wet stain right across her tummy. Her eyes were open. They had an expression I couldn't place. Fear?
Surprise? I saw the blue irises with the pretty darker edge all around. But her eyes weren't shiny anymore.

Rosita's eyes were half-closed. Her mouth was slightly open, as if she were laughing. Even when she was dead she was still laughing. I had no idea why. Was she making fun of me? Was she
still
making fun of me?

There was blood on the ground all around them, like fried eggs with broken yolks. The blood wasn't very liquid; it was gluey, and it stuck to my shoes. My shoes left tracks on the beige carpet.

“Do you really want such a light color with a young child in the home?” the man in the store had asked us. He assumed we all lived together, maybe even thought I was Anna's father. I liked him for that reason. “We also have some lovely brown-flecked shades.”

But Rosita didn't want any dark colors in her house. “Beige is chic,” she said. “All the rich folks that live in the big houses have it. And if it gets dirty, we'll just buy a new one.”

The carpet had cost almost six thousand euro, including installation. It took half of my savings.

And the carpet was ruined.

There was a smell of rusty iron in the air. It wasn't very pungent or strong, but it made my stomach turn. I never knew blood had an odor before.

I stared at the plate of spaghetti in my lap and couldn't think of what else to do but just start eating.