Sleeping Brides Page 15

  “I have bad news,” I told him.

  He turned off his game, ready to listen. “The diner was out of churros again?”

  I had completely forgotten I was meant to pick up food at the diner. It was probably a good thing. Until I found a new job, we were now a one-income household. “No. It happened. The company went under.” I lifted my cardboard box as evidence.

  Anton frowned. “Just like that? No notice?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Is that legal?”

  I set the box down on the floor. “I’m not worried about legal. Mr. Hartono held on for as long as he could.”

  Anton couldn’t refute it. “He was good to you. And you were good to him. Don’t worry, my love. If there’s anything you need, I’m here for you.”

  “I could use some churros from the diner,” I joked, but Anton was on it.

  “Churros on the way,” he proclaimed, heading towards the door. “Anything else?”

  “Just you.”

  ***

  In the sunlight of the backyard, patches of red sprouted throughout Franklin’s pale fur. The patches were as bright as a Scotsman’s beard. As Franklin chased all that bumbled in the yard, I wondered if the red had always been there or if it was age. Franklin wasn’t elderly, but he was long past his puppy years.

  “Mama, I’m all packed. I have one last shift on deck, and then I’m homeward bound,” Rosalind said through the phone.

  I ran my hand along the fence, drifting throughout my yard like the vagabond I once was. “I can’t wait to see you. More than you know.” No truer words had ever been spoken.

  “Yeah, I got your text. What a bummer. I really thought the company would pull through. Poor Mr. Hartono. He’s such a good man.”

  “He is. He’s the one I worry about the most. That company was his life. I hope now he can have more free time for himself, but the transition won’t be easy.”

  “How’s Babetta holding up?”

  Babetta. Perhaps she was the one I should worry about more. “Not great. She called late last night. She’d been drinking hard, but Richie was with her. She’ll drown herself in wine and cheap whiskey, and then she’ll pick herself up and move on.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “I’ll find more work. I’m not worried.”

  “But it won’t be the same. You’ll miss it.”

  “I will,” I admitted, suddenly emotional.

  It didn’t get past Rosalind. “Mama, I can skip Amsterdam and come straight to you. Papa will understand.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “You haven’t seen him in years. I know you’re looking forward to it, and I’m certain Daan is too. You two have plans. Go get to know your papa better.”

  “It can wait.”

  It couldn’t. She had accepted a job with a cruise line as a deck officer, shortening her visit home from months to mere weeks. She barely had enough time in her schedule to see us both, and then she’d be sailing on the Caribbean.

  “You’ve waited long enough. I want this for you.” I did want it for her, but I also really wanted to see her. It wasn’t fair that Daan got her first.

  “I just wish the timing wasn’t so bad.”

  “I told you, I’ll be fine. I have Franklin. And Anton. I’m glad you’ll finally get to meet Anton in person.”

  “Promise you won’t choke me with your lovey-dovey bullshit. I’ve heard the way you two talk to each other. It’s pathetic. No couple talks that way. It’s unnatural.”

  “Please don’t say that to him. He plans to be your stepfather one day.”

  Rosalind huffed. “I’m not a child. I don’t think the term stepfather applies.”

  “How did you become so cynical?”

  “You call it cynicism; I call it common sense. It’s no secret I never joined you in your wilderness. I don’t fly free.”

  “You inherited that from your grandfather, along with your chestnut curls,” I said, thinking it odd that, even though I’d spent a majority of my life in our little house, she considered me the free bird.

  “Will I ever meet my grandfather? He was a professor, wasn’t he?”

  I hesitated, caught off guard. “I’m not even sure he’s still alive…” My phone beeped. “Do you mind if I take it?” I asked. “I think it might be Babetta. I want to make sure she’s okay.”

  “Do. Tell her I’m thinking of her.”

  “I will. Call me when you land in Amsterdam.”

  “Sure. Love you.”

  “Love you.”

  I switched the call over, but it wasn’t Babetta. It was her husband Richie. “Is Babetta with you?” he asked, frantic.

  “No, she’s not.”

  “Fuck.” He was breathing hard, walking down a street. I could hear cars passing him in the background. Richie hardly ever walked. “She’s missing. I can’t find her.”

  “The last I heard from her was last night when you were out drinking,” I told him as I ran into the house to grab my bag. I didn’t believe Babetta was missing, she was probably weeping into a bottle of wine in Tilburg, but I didn’t want Richie to keel over from a heart attack in his panic.

  “I wasn’t out drinking,” he stated. “She went alone. I got a call from her well after midnight, but she was mumbling incoherently.”

  “Same here,” I said, my stomach sinking. “But she told me you were with her.”

  “Well, I fucking wasn’t.” He was aggravated. He loved Babetta. He drank her in, the way petals drank in the rain. “Some prick of a barman rang me around three this morning from her phone. She left it behind, along with her keys. No one knows where she went. I’ve been up all night driving around searching. I was hoping she made her way to you.”

  “No,” I maintained, jumping into my car, “but I’m going to help you search. Don’t worry, Richie, we’ll find her.”

  ***

  We didn’t find Babetta.

  After a day of searching, Richie called the police. They asked a lot of questions. What did Babetta say to me on the phone? Was she having an affair? Was she suicidal? I honestly didn’t know the answer to any of their questions. Nothing about Babetta seemed unusual at work, but work had likely been the one place holding her together, her shield against unknown demons, until it fell apart. I should have known where Babetta was. She would have known, if it were I who disappeared.

  The police asked questions, and they searched for clues, but there was nothing, not even CCTV footage. Babetta had simply disappeared, dispelled in the morning light. It was difficult to process. I couldn’t believe she was just gone, so I drove. I drove around the farmhouses and the city mills and the busy streets, sure I’d catch a glimpse of her wild hair or the red of her lipstick. When I was tired of driving, I parked outside the bar where she was last seen—a furrowed drinking hole in need of repair—and I waited, certain she was inside.

  “I’m here, Babetta. You can come out now.”

  I didn’t want to go home. Everywhere was lonely without my sister, but Anton made it even more desolate. He refused to ask me about Babetta. I didn’t think it was a conversation he was comfortable with so soon after losing Owen. I understood, but I resented him for it, enough that I would have preferred to sleep on Babetta’s sofa, where I could talk about Babetta openly with Richie; but I stayed in my own bed, silent and afraid for my friend.

  “I know what will make you smile,” Anton heralded as he joined me in the kitchen a week after Babetta’s disappearance. “How about we go out to eat.”

  “I’m not in the mood to smile,” I said dispassionately as I fetched a cup from the cupboard.

  “But I miss it. It’s not like you to look so sad.”

  I slammed the cupboard shut, angered by his callousness, but when he flinched, it calmed me. It was not fair to take my fears out on him. “Eating out is a good idea,” I decided, but I didn’t smile. I couldn’t fake it, not with Babetta’s fate hidden.

  The following morning, while Anton was gone, I was in the
shower letting the warm water massage away the knots of my anxiety when I heard my phone ringing from the kitchen. I ignored it, but the person called back. Babetta, I wondered, and I ran downstairs in a towel to the kitchen, leaving the shower running.

  “Hello!” I shouted, afraid the caller would hang up.

  “Storme, it’s Daan.”

  “Oh.” I ached with disappointment. “I thought… Never mind. Why are you calling?” It was strange to hear his voice after so long, but it wasn’t the first time he had announced himself after lost years.

  “I’m at the hospital. I need you to come to Amsterdam.”

  “Is Babetta there?” I asked, my mind locked on her disappearance.

  “No. It’s Rosalind. We were walking near the canals and some kids were messing around. They accidentally pushed her, and she went down. She hit her head on a concrete step. She’s breathing, but they can’t wake her.”

  To say time stopped would be incorrect. Time did not stop. Everything stopped. Hearing Daan speak about the fate of our daughter, I did not exist. Nothing existed. There was only a void.

  And then that void disappeared, replaced by a light filled with the memory of Rosalind when she was seven. I’d left her in Babetta’s care while I went grocery shopping. Afterward, I found them at the park. Babetta was pushing Rosalind on a swing while she taught her simple Spanish words.

  “Cat is gato,” she said.

  Rosalind squealed with laughter as she swung. “That’s so silly,” she sang.

  “And turtle is tortuga.”

  More laughter. More playing. More sunshine.

  ***

  My little girl was a machine. Looking at her, at the wires and the tubes and the monitors that kept her alive as she slept, I experienced an emotion like fear, but full of an agony much more destructive than fear. This wasn’t a slight startle because I thought I saw a shadow outside my house. It wasn’t a seventeen-year-old version of myself begging Daan not to do the job that would land him in prison. This was incomprehensible.

  I could lose her.

  It was impossible to escape the thought, because it was the truth. If a hospital was anything, it was truth: The truth of our own mortality. The truth that those we loved were never safe. The truth that life was only temporary.

  Daan was gone, out dealing with his agony the only way he knew how, but unlike before, I knew he’d be back. I saw it in his eyes—he loved Rosalind, as a person as well as a daughter. Of course he did. She was probably the only soul walking the earth who had never given up on him. In that way, my daughter had joined me in my wilderness. She did fly free, risking her heart for the love of her elusive papa.

  A doctor came into the room. “We have her scan back,” he said, his fatigue forcing him to speak directly. “Her brain is showing normal activity. If she wakes, she should be able to lead a normal life.”

  “If she wakes,” I echoed distantly.

  “Injuries like these are hard to estimate. I’ve seen patients wake in days. I’ve seen patients wake in years. Some patients never wake.”

  After placing her scan results in her chart, the doctor quickly left, leaving me alone to confront my fear—the incomprehensible. Feeling the splinters within me crack, I rang Anton. I needed him. I’d called him earlier while in traffic during the drive up, but I couldn’t reach him. I was worried this call would end the same, but he answered.

  “My love, I’m so sorry I haven’t called you back.”

  He offered no explanation as to why, but hearing his voice was a comfort, like a blanket during the wail of a storm. “Did you get my message?”

  “I did. How is she doing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, tears flooding my eyes as I looked at my daughter. “She hasn’t woke…” I stopped. It was one thing to battle my fear within. It was another to say it out loud.

  “She will,” Anton assured me. “You have this powerful ability to stay optimistic in even the most impossible situations. It’s one of the many things I love about you. Stay strong for Rosalind. She’ll feel your strength. She’ll pull through.”

  It helped. “Thank you,” I said, wiping my tears away. “Are you on your way?”

  “I can’t. The deadline for the library is coming up. They need the busts by the end of the month.”

  “Fuck the library,” I said, surprising myself with the intensity of my emotion.

  Anton was patient. “I know this is a difficult time for you, but the mortgage on the house has to be paid. The busts are the mortgage payment. I need to stay.”

  He spoke logically, but nothing inside of me was rational. I wasn’t whole. I felt like I existed in a million different pieces, all working against each other.

  Anton took my silence as acceptance. “It’ll be alright. You’ll be home before you know it.”

  “I should go,” I said, shoving my frustration down. “It’s getting late, and I’m tired.”

  “I love you. Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Okay,” I said, and I hung up, stopping myself from saying what I truly felt.

  What I need is you.

  ***

  The days did not get easier. They got worse. Richie towed the motorhome up so that I had a place to stay. He visited Rosalind. I think it comforted him to think that if Babetta had more than disappeared, if she was dead, then she was likely watching over my daughter. It was because of Richie that I had privacy to rest my head, but I rarely slept. I clung to Rosalind’s bedside. When the nurses told me I could not stay and forced me to leave, I was aimless, wandering between the hospital and the motorhome like a tin can tossed between winds.

  One day, wandering wasn’t an option. I refused to leave Rosalind, to have her slumber in a cold, sterile room alone. “Visiting hours are over,” a nurse told me when I ignored the announcement over the intercom.

  I wasn’t a visitor. I was a mother. I had every right to remain by my daughter’s side, even if she was an adult. “She might wake,” I protested.

  “If she wakes, we’ll call you.”

  If. I couldn’t think of a more hopeless word. “I’d rather be here.”

  The nurse didn’t fight it, but sometime later, Daan showed up. He was ragged, his muscles thinning. I hoped it was because of the stress of what we were going through, and not a relapse into addiction. “The hospital called,” he said. “They thought you might need someone to collect you.”

  “I don’t need anyone,” I said, smoothing Rosalind’s hair back. “Just her.”

  “What about Anton?” he asked. “I can call him.”

  “He can’t come. There’s a mortgage to pay.”

  “That’s bogue.”

  I had my own frustrations regarding Anton’s absence, but Daan of all people was not allowed to share them. “He’s saving the house so that Rosalind has a home to return to. What’s bogue is a man who would ignore his daughter for fifteen years then bail right before her graduation.”

  “I did it for her own good,” he claimed. “Despite what I told you, I was still hooked. I didn’t want her to see me when I was high.”

  “So you stop the drugs, not your daughter,” I professed, refusing to pamper his bad decisions.

  “I’m trying. That’s what her visit was all about.” He paused, staring at Rosalind, struggling. “Do you blame me?” he asked. “Do you blame me for this?”

  “No,” I said, shocked. “Of course not. This was an accident. You didn’t do this to her.”

  His relief was that of a defector receiving a pardon. “We can’t stay,” he said. “The hospital would like us to leave. I’ve booked you a room nearby for the night. It has a bath. You can soak your feet in it. I know how much you like the feel of warm water on your feet.”

  It was more than an act of kindness. It was an act of love. And for that reason, I was hesitant to accept. “Will you be staying in the room too?”

  “No,” he said, not at all offended by my wariness. “I have my own place. The room is all yours. You need
to rest. Our daughter will wake. I know she will. And when she does, the hard work begins. That’s when she’ll need us most. Rest now, and prepare.”

  “Okay,” I conceded. “While Rosalind sleeps, so will I.”

  I slept, but I slept within an inner darkness, pulled into a hell that I could not escape. My dreams lashed out at me, as unforgiving as a bad trip. Lizards tore at my flesh. Death tore out my heart. I was prey to my own fear, until one afternoon when I woke, gasping. As breath returned to my body, a feeling overcame me, a powerful knowing, and I ran to her, to Rosalind. When I reached her room, her lashes fluttered, like a moth thrashing out of a web. Then her gorgeous blue eyes stared at me with disorientation and fear.

  “You’re okay,” I reassured her, grabbing her hand. “Everything is okay.”

  ***

  I called Anton from the waiting room. The large leather seats were empty, but they wouldn’t always be. I mourned with those who would soon fill them, the family and friends of the ill and injured, knowing their torment.

  “Storme,” Anton answered. “I was so happy to hear the news. I knew she’d wake.”

  He sounded foreign to me, a paradise I no longer knew. How long had it been since I’d last seen Anton? How long had I been gone? The math told me it was just under a month, but it felt longer.

  “It’s such a relief,” I said, spent.

  “I miss you. The bed is cold without you here. When are you coming home?”

  I didn’t reply, fending off a bad taste in my mouth. His inquiry bothered me. It shouldn’t have. Anton was an affectionate man, and he was waiting for me with great anticipation, but his needs always outweighed my own. “I’ll come home when Rosalind is ready to come home,” I nipped, but my exhaustion masked my temper.

  “I really miss you. I hope it’s soon. It’s hard to be apart.”

  Then come to Amsterdam, I thought restlessly.