Girl in the Blue Coat(9)

“Don’t be late. It’s a good job you have,” Mama reminds me. She loves my job. She knows mine is the only steady paycheck in the house. “You don’t want Mr. Kreuk to question whether he made the right decision in hiring you.”

“He doesn’t.”

I just want a minute away from my parents, my work—a minute to close out the rest of the world. In my bedroom, I pull the window shades closed and open the bottom drawer of the bureau, feeling around in the back until I find it: a faded diary, from a birthday when I was nine. For a week I wrote faithfully, describing friends I liked and teachers who were mean to me. Then I abandoned it for five years and didn’t pick it up again until I met Bas, when I transformed it into a scrapbook.

Here is the school photograph he gave me, casually asking for one of mine in return. Here is the note he slipped in my books, telling me that my green sweater matched my eyes. He signed it B, and that was the first time I realized he preferred Bas instead of Sebastiaan. A nickname from the middle of the name, like a lot of Dutch boys do, rather than the beginning.

Here is a ticket stub from the first film we ever saw together, the one where I begged my best friend, Elsbeth, to come along, too, in case I got tongue-tied around Bas. This memento is doubly painful, because I don’t have Elsbeth anymore, either, because she is gone in a different way.

Here is a ticket stub from the second.

Here is the tissue that I used to blot my lipstick the night he first kissed me.

Here is the tissue I used to blot my tears the night he told me he would be volunteering for the military when he turned seventeen. Here is the lock of hair he gave me the day before he left, at his going-away party. I gave him something, too. It was a locket with my picture in it. That was how I could guess what German girls would do. I was so stupid then.

I close the book quickly, shoving it into the back of the drawer and covering it with clothes. I’m thinking of Bas. And without meaning to, I’m also thinking of Mirjam Roodveldt again. I’m annoyed with myself for it, for wasting time thinking about that missing girl from the pantry, who I know nothing about, who could only get me into trouble.

Except that I do know one thing about her: The film magazine on the shelf in the pantry—I’m almost positive that the photograph it was opened to was a scene from The Wizard of Oz, a movie about a girl who gets caught in a tornado and wakes up in a fairyland. I so desperately wanted to see it, but it hadn’t yet come to Holland when the war broke out. So I never saw The Wizard of Oz, but now I’m thinking of Judy Garland singing in Bas’s parlor while Bas told me he loved me on the sofa, and we laughed and laughed and memorized the words to her song.

Bas would have agreed to help Mrs. Janssen. I’m sure of that, without a doubt. Bas would have said that this was our chance to do something real and important. Bas would have said it like it was an adventure. Bas would have said, Obviously you’ll decide to help her, too; the girl I love would completely agree with everything I’m saying, because Bas wouldn’t know anything about the kind of girl I am now.

And what would I say in return? I would say, You think I would agree with everything you’re saying? You’re awfully full of yourself. Or I would say, My parents depend on me to keep us all alive. Helping Mrs. Janssen means endangering my whole family. Or I would say, Things are different now, Bas. You don’t understand.

I would give so much to be able to say anything to him. Anything at all.

Finding this girl is not who I am anymore. That action is soft; I am practical. That action is hopeful; I am not. The world is crazy; I can’t change it.

So why am I still thinking about Mirjam Roodveldt?

So why do I know that this afternoon, unless I manage to talk myself out of it, I’ll go back to Mrs. Janssen’s?





FOUR




Things that have changed about my country in the past two years: everything and nothing.

When I get on my bicycle after lunch, the Biermans’ shop assistant is selling vegetables to a customer, as though the store’s owner wasn’t just put into a truck and carted away, as though Mrs. Bierman’s world wasn’t just turned upside down.

Back at work, Mr. Kreuk has actual work for me, the kind my official job entails. There’s a funeral tomorrow, and I need to write a notice for the newspaper and arrange things with the florist. But at half past one, Mr. Kreuk comes to my desk and shows me the draft of the notice: I’d written the wrong address for the church.

“Are you feeling all right?” Mr. Kreuk is a round little man, with circular glasses that make him resemble a turtle. “You don’t usually make mistakes.” He blinks and stares at his shoes. We’ve known each other for almost a year, but he’s so awkward. Sometimes I think he became an undertaker because it was easier for him to spend time with the dead than the living.

“I’m sorry. I guess I’m a little distracted.”

He doesn’t pry. “Why don’t I handle the ad and the flowers? I have a few errands for you this afternoon: the butcher’s and then to Mrs. de Vries’s.” He winces while saying her name, and now I see why he’s given me a pass on the newspaper mistake. It’s an exchange for dealing with Mrs. de Vries.

“Thank you,” I tell him, and grab my coat before he can change his mind. I’ll deal with Mrs. de Vries later. First I’ll go to Mrs. Janssen.