Girl in the Blue Coat(18)

That’s not what really happened.

I’m not ready to think about the last time I saw Bas.





SEVEN





Wednesday


I just don’t understand.” Mrs. de Vries bows her head, as if she can’t even look at me because she’s so disappointed. “I asked for Amateurs.”

I stare at the green-and-white cigarette pack in my hand, trying to arrange my face into an appropriate expression of understanding, when what I really want to do is slap her. I have found her two packs of cigarettes. In 1943, in this absurd country of ours, I have managed to find her two packs of cigarettes—not just cigarette paper and tobacco to roll, which are hard enough to get ahold of, but actual cigarettes—and she’s upset because these don’t have the right label on them?

“I couldn’t get that brand, Mrs. de Vries. I’m sorry. I tried.”

“Honestly, you would think I’d asked for the moon. I don’t understand what makes it so difficult. I wrote down for you exactly what I was looking for.”

She did ask for the moon, very nearly. I had to try four different contacts; eventually I got these cigarettes from a woman who gets them from a German soldier. She says he’s her boyfriend and he gives them to her; I think she might steal them. I also think he’s not her boyfriend but someone paying her for what she does in the bedroom, but I don’t ask questions. And I only go to her when I don’t have any other options.

Now my temples are pounding. I don’t know whether to yell or laugh at Mrs. de Vries. Her worries are so pedestrian, so soothing in an absurd way, like a holiday from all the things that real people have to care about. One of the twins tugs desperately on Mrs. de Vries’s skirt while the other, the one who always looks naughty, like he has something to hide, tries to poke his head into my bag to see what else I may have brought.

“Stop that,” Mrs. de Vries chastises the skirt-puller. “We’ll have tea as soon as Hanneke leaves.”

“Mrs. de Vries.” I try a new approach to keep her on track. “If you don’t want these, I won’t have a problem finding someone else who does.” The minute hand on her grandfather clock ticks another notch toward the top of the hour. I have somewhere to be.

“No!” She grabs the cigarettes, clutching them to her chest, only now realizing I don’t have to give them to her, that she could be left with no cigarettes at all. “I’ll take them. I just thought… if there were any others.”

What does she think, that I’ll slap my hand to my forehead and say, “But of course! I forgot that I actually did have the brand you wanted. I’ve just been hiding them from you”?

“Mama, it’s crowded in here,” the naughty twin says, staring at me and poking his tongue between his lips. “I’m tired of it being so crowded.”

“I’m leaving soon,” I assure him. Horrid child.





The Municipal University of Amsterdam is where I might have gone, if the war hadn’t started. I wouldn’t have taken it seriously. It just would have been a way to pass time until Bas’s mother thought he was old enough to inherit his grandmother’s wedding ring. Bas would have gone here, too. What would he have studied? He never talked about his career dreams; he wasn’t the type to look more than a few months in advance, and I can’t picture an adult Bas. It both bothers and reassures me that, in my mind, he’ll always be seventeen.

The university doesn’t have a central location; its buildings are scattered through the city. But everyone knows the Agnietenkapel. It’s one of the oldest buildings in Amsterdam, a convent from the fifteenth century, and the address Ollie gave me is on the same street.

I’d planned on changing clothes before I got here, clinging to some vague memory of the vanity I used to have when going to parties, but Mrs. de Vries has made me late and I don’t have time. I’m in a mauve wool dress that I inherited from Elsbeth, which fits me well but is such a regretful color that she and I used to call it the Tonsil. Her grandmother had given it to her. Elsbeth was relieved when it was too small and she got to give it away to me. It used to feel like a joke between us, whenever I wore it. Now it feels like a practicality: It’s hard to buy new clothes, so I wear all the ones that fit me, even the ugly ones, even the ones that remind me of better times.

This supper club will be a roomful of boys carrying chewed-up pencils in their pockets—they’re probably studying architecture, like Ollie is—and girls citing philosophers I’ve never heard of. On the rare occasions I run into one of my old friends who did continue on to college, I feel both inferior and dismissive. None of them would survive on their feet if they had to. I’m defensive about everyone in Ollie’s supper club before I even knock on the door.

Ollie peers through the window on the door, and I show him my jar of pickles when he opens it. I meant to bring something better but ran out of time to make anything. Instead I’ve brought the canned goods that a grocer gave me as a secret present this afternoon. Nobody in my family likes them anyway.

Ollie isn’t wearing the jacket and tie I expected. His clothes are even more ragtag than mine are: rolled-up shirtsleeves smudged with graphite as if he’s spent the day at a drafting table.

“Welcome,” he says in a cautious voice that makes me wonder if I’m truly welcome at all.