Sleeping Brides Page 16

  When I didn’t respond, he added, “So how is everything going?”

  “As good as can be expected.”

  “You don’t sound too happy.”

  My patience for small talk ran out. “I lost my job, my best friend is missing, and my daughter is in the hospital. How am I supposed to sound? This is really hard, Anton. I feel like I’m going through it alone.”

  This time, Anton went silent. It’s what he did when he was upset.

  “Say something,” I implored.

  “I really have nothing to say,” he replied, brooding.

  “Fine, then don’t say anything at all,” I roared, and I slammed my phone shut.

  ***

  “Do you remember those hilarious British soaps we watched in Wales?” Rosalind asked, sitting up in her hospital bed. Her chapped lips were twisted in a wry smile. I had never known a smile so pained or so beautiful.

  “I don’t think they were meant to be hilarious,” I exposed.

  “I couldn’t understand half of what they said, their English was too strong, but I laughed so hard.”

  I reached for her remote. “Maybe we can find them again. I think one of the British channels is aired here.”

  Rosalind stopped me. “No TV. The screen hurts my eyes.”

  I’d forgotten the injury made her sensitive to light. I had never had a head injury. I wished I had so that I could understand what she was going through. “How about the radio?” I suggested. “Maybe there are soaps on the radio.”

  “Mama, I was only trying to cheer you up. I thought the memory would make you laugh. I know how hard all of this is for you.”

  “It was hard, but you’re okay now. I don’t need cheering up, not as long as you’re awake.”

  “I don’t mean me. I mean everything else. You’re going through a lot right now. The hospital is going to release me in a few days. I’m going to start my new job, as planned. I have to know you’re okay before I go.”

  I was shaken. “But you’re still recovering.”

  “The swelling is gone. So are the bruises and stitches. I slept through my recovery. I’m fine. The doctor has already faxed a medical release to the cruise line.”

  “I don’t like this. You should come home and rest a few more weeks.”

  “I’ll lose my job. They’re not easy to come by. If I ever want to be a captain, I have to learn to swim rough waters.”

  “The point of being a captain is so you don’t have to swim. That’s what the boat is for.”

  “I’m going, Mama. So please tell me you’ll be okay. With Babetta missing and your break-up with Anton—”

  “I didn’t break up with Anton,” I insisted. “Who told you I did? Your papa?”

  Rosalind was bewildered. “Oh. No. I just assumed… I haven’t seen him or heard you talk about him.”

  “There’s a reason for that.” I filled her in on everything that had happened, from his decision to stay home to our last phone conversation.

  Rosalind wasn’t happy. “What does he expect? You’re allowed to feel sad. You can’t be the fucking fire all the time. Does he have no compassion?”

  “It’s not like that,” I said, afraid I had misled her. Anton and I were having troubles, but he wasn’t cruel.

  She continued her rant. “You’re right. It’s not about compassion. It’s selfishness. He’s romantic, he’s good-looking, and he’s hard-working—but Anton is selfish.”

  I was sorry I’d brought it up. It wasn’t what Rosalind needed. “He loves me. As long as there’s love, we’ll figure the rest out.”

  Rosalind wasn’t finished. “I know he loves you, but love is not a justification for Anton’s behavior. Mama, you helped him through his darkest hour. But now that you’re going through yours, where is he?”

  ***

  Where is he?

  It was a good question. I loved Anton, but love wasn’t always enough. It should have been, but I needed a sense of security from him. I needed to know he would be there, no matter what. I wasn’t sure he would.

  Or maybe I was being too hard on him, my mind ripped apart by the sorrows that trailed me. Anton may have been acting in his own interest, but he was holding on, despite our difficulties. I was the one doubting our relationship, pushing him away. I owed him more than that. We owed each other more. There was history between us. It meant something.

  Tucking myself into a private corner of the hospital, I called him and left a voicemail. “It’s me. I’m sorry for the tone of our last conversation. It’s been hard, but not just for me. For you too. This whole year has been one tragedy after the other. But we’ve gotten through it. If we can survive this, we can survive anything. Let’s start planning for Italy. Let’s make our engagement official. I need some happiness. You make me happy. I know it, and I want everyone else to know it too.”

  Anton didn’t reply, but I didn’t expect him to, not over the phone. When it came to serious discussions, he preferred to talk in person. He would stay silent, using his silence as bait to lure me home.

  After Rosalind was released from the hospital, she stayed two nights with me in the motorhome. It was hot out, so we opened the windows and fanned ourselves across the musty furnishings, Rosalind on the brown sofa while I took the cot. We had no inclinations to walk, only to chat and to rest. She asked about the coke lines Daan and I used to snort, and I answered truthfully, sharing with her shades of myself I had long erased. Daan joined us briefly to say goodbye, bringing a deck of cards with him to show off the games and tricks he’d learned in prison, and I had a brief glimpse of what almost was.

  The day Rosalind left, I went with her to the airport. I did not want her to go. It was a risk for her to be traveling so soon. I was proud of how brave my daughter was, of the resilience of her spirit, but I prayed she used that bravery wisely. The plane flew off, bringing Rosalind closer to her dreams, and I returned home to my lost lover.

  It was late by the time I arrived. The one light coming from the house was from Rosalind’s room. I was glad Anton had remembered to keep it on in my absence. He knew how important it was to me, which reinforced how important I was to him.

  “Anton!” I called out, not caring that I woke him. Realizing how much I’d missed him, I was flooded with an urgency to be in his arms. All I wanted was him. “Anton, I’m home.”

  I was home, but he was not. Nor, as I soon discovered, were his clothes or his television. He’d left, taking everything of his with him.

  Denying the emptiness around me, I ran to the backyard to make sure Franklin was okay. He sat miserable in his doghouse, his food half gone. Lacerated, I stayed in the yard, afraid to go inside, to confront the betrayal. It was cruel for Anton to leave me, but more so to do it without an explanation or a goodbye, as if everything we’d gone through together meant nothing to him, that I was so easy to brush off, the way a farmer flicked away a blade of grass. That was the betrayal—the silence. Anton had left in silence, he’d given up, another disappearance.

  ***

  Richie was convinced Babetta was dead. It was too hard for him to believe she had ran off, that he had been but a pawn to her all these years. I understood. I wished Anton was dead. It would make coping with his abandonment much easier. It was a cruel wish, but what was love if not cruel? We were fed strawberry stories, distorting love into an ideal no person could live up to. That was why there were so many heartbroken, why so many of us were sullen.

  I did not believe Babetta was dead. She was lost, to herself as much as to those who loved her, but not dead. Then again, who was I to know what was real and what wasn’t. I had thought Anton’s promises were real, that when he said he’d cross mountains for me, he’d meant it. I was a fool to believe so, and I was probably a fool to believe Babetta was still alive.

  Daan came to visit me. When I heard a knock at the door, I shivered, certain one of the lost had found their way home, but it was Daan, a man I had once considered my king. Though it had been less than a fortnight sin
ce he had said his goodbyes to Rosalind in the motorhome, he looked healthier than he did before. His skin had color, and he’d gained weight. That was Rosalind’s influence. She healed him.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked when I answered the door, harsher than I felt. I was glad to have the company. There was no one else left.

  “Rosalind asked me to check in on you.”

  “And you agreed?”

  “I owe it to her.”

  “I suppose you do.” I moved aside to let him in.

  “And I owe it to you,” he added, speaking with his disorderly confidence. “You raised her well.”

  “Maybe she raised me. She has an insight I lack.”

  “You talking about that artist fucker?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “So the bastard really left.”

  Daan was in no position to judge, but I was no longer willing to defend Anton. “I guess he didn’t love me without my smile.”

  “I’ve always loved you, and I don’t think you’ve smiled at me once since I went to prison,” Daan reminisced, speaking in familiar tones.

  “No,” I said solemnly. “I haven’t.” He shouldn’t have mentioned the past. It coordinated too closely with Anton. Raw and hurting, I’d been handed a gun. “Why did it take you fifteen years to find us?” I demanded, tearing into him.

  “Prison changed me. When I came out, I was worse than when I went in.”

  “Is that why you told me to stop visiting?”

  “It wasn’t a safe place. You’re too naïve.”

  I was insulted. “Naïve?”

  “You trust in people.”

  I glanced at the glass figurine Anton had immortalized me into. It remained on the mantel. I knew he wasn’t coming back, but I hadn’t brought myself to get rid of it. I should have destroyed the damn thing. “I don’t trust in people anymore.”

  Daan was angry for me. “If I ever run into the fucker, he’s gonna eat my fist.”

  “Why do you even care?”

  “I love you, baby. You’re family. You carried my blood inside you and you raised her. I may not be your man, but I’ll always look after you. I’ll always come back to make sure you’re okay.”

  “More pretty words from a pretty man,” I alluded, even though Daan was far from pretty. I still found him attractive, but he was hard and reckless, and it had damaged him.

  We talked, avoiding memories of the past that involved us, because they ultimately shifted back to his own betrayal. I focused on Rosalind, on what it was like to raise her, the incurable curiosity she possessed and the disturbing tantrums she could throw. I mentioned her desire to meet my parents, and my struggles whether that was a connection I was willing to make. In turn, Daan painted out his life after prison, the drugs and the crime. Nothing explicit, but I had already figured that. Daan was too lyrical to be explicit.

  “What made you come back?” I asked.

  “The same reason why I held onto your letter. I knew you were my fate. I was just having trouble getting here.”

  When our talk ran dry, I allowed Daan to stay the night, to hold me in his arms, our bodies awake while our clothes lay on the floor. I was transported back to my adolescence, when nothing felt as good as Daan’s arms. I wasn’t as naïve as he believed me to be. The night would not last, and I didn’t want it to, but I did want the hours to move backwards to a more harmonious time, when I was whole. I wanted my adolescence to heal me.

  “Your beauty is your downfall,” Daan said to me in the morning, holding my face in his hand as we lay in stillness. “It attracts the wrong men.”

  “You were never wrong,” I told him. “Your choices were, but not you.” He scowled, but it wasn’t directed at me. It was self-inflicted. “What?” I asked.

  “There’s something you should know.”

  Such preludes were never good, but I braced myself with amnesty. Whatever sins he was about to confess, at least he was here to tell them. “Go on.”

  “I’m married.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. My emotions were numbed by the recent weeks. “Newly?”

  “No. A year after I got out of prison.”

  The year I waited for him, like a mistress waiting for her soldier. Suddenly, I was outraged, killing any forgiveness I was willing to offer.

  Daan witnessed my transformation and wisely got out of bed to dress. “She was an addict, like me,” he tried to explain. “I loved her, but not the way I love you. I never cared if she got hurt. She was part of everything I was trying to protect you from.”

  It explained his absences and his behavior, like fragments of a corpse put back together, but I was in disbelief. “Why don’t you wear a ring?”

  “We could never afford them. That’s what this tattoo is for,” he said, speaking of the line around his finger.

  “I thought that was just some prison thing. Does Rosalind know?”

  “No. I can’t bring myself to tell her.”

  I hated that he could still hurt me, that there was no immunity to him. “Why are you telling me now?”

  “I don’t know. I felt I needed to after… this.”

  “You mean after you made me your whore.” I was reminded of Sem, of everything Daan had claimed to defend me from. “You’ve stuck me in a window.”

  “No,” he insisted. “If anything, it’s the other way around. She may be my wife, but she’s the whore. You’re my soulmate, baby. You’re my family.”

  “Then why didn’t you choose me? Why didn’t you choose us?” I seethed.

  “I told you—I was high. I was no good.”

  “You need to leave,” I told him, shaking with anger. “And this time, don’t come back.”

  “I get it. You’re pissed, so I’ll go. But the reason you’re so mad is because you care. You love me. We’ll be together again, baby. You’ll see.”

  “Go!” I screamed.

  He was gone, but I was left soaking in my disbelief. Unraveled and naked, as if I’d just made love in a field of spikes, I wandered downstairs to the front room and ran my hand along the glass figurine. It was a rare thing. The affection Anton had put into it was evident by its precision. There would never be another like it.

  I picked the figurine up and I smashed it against the mantel. Glass flew around me like a crystal rain, but a jagged shard remained in my hand, a razor.

  Your beauty is your downfall.

  The fire turned me to steel—cold and indifferent. As steel, I pressed the shard to my cheek, and I felt my blood spill.

  Men were dangerous. They were soul takers. There was so little of my soul left, I couldn’t risk loving again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Parasol

  Thirteen Years Later

  “Fly out here,” Rosalind pleaded over the phone. “I miss you.”

  I looked at a photo on the fridge of me standing next to my daughter on a Mediterranean cruise—her first voyage as the captain. “I hate that most of our conversations are over the phone,” I reflected. Lightly, I ran a finger over the photo, tracing the scar across my cheek, and then I touched the actual scar. Thirteen years had taken the despair away, but not the scar.

  “Then come to Brazil.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I told her. “I could barely handle the flight to Spain when I joined you on the Mediterranean. I can’t imagine flying all the way to Brazil.”

  “You’ll love it,” Rosalind ensured me, convinced my mind was already made, that I was being disagreeable by habit. “The riverboat is a lot less intimidating than the ocean liners. And the Amazon—it’s lush and exotic and breathtaking.”

  “I’m sure it is,” I replied. “I don’t want to get your hopes up, though. I may not get the time off work.”

  “Forget the job. You’ll be retiring in a few years. Leave now. You hate it there.”

  “It’s more than a few years before I retire. Try a decade, plus some. That’s a long time to wait for benefits. There are bills to pay.”


  “Let me pay them. Sell the house and come live with me.”

  “On your ship?”

  “Yeah. I’m Captain. I’ll get you a nice stateroom. We’ll be vagabonds of the sea.”

  I would never sell the house, I would never surrender the light in Rosalind’s room, but I was touched by her offer. “You’re a good girl,” I praised. “I’ll think about Brazil. Love you.”

  “Love you too. Give the old boy a good scratch behind the ears for me.”

  I hated when our conversations ended. It would be weeks before we had another. Fortunately, as I leaned against the fridge, unsure of what I’d do with my Saturday, the phone rang for a second time that morning.

  “Miss Cloet,” a familiar voice greeted me, aged and proud. “This is Deddy—Mr. Hartono. I’m calling to ask if you would meet me for coffee.”

  I hadn’t heard from Mr. Hartono since the day the shipping company closed down. “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  “Yes, very much so,” he said with satisfaction. “I’ve rebuilt, Miss Cloet, like I promised. My new company is strong. I’d very much like to have you back.”

  ***

  I did not know what position Mr. Hartono intended for me, but I hoped it wasn’t data entry. Rosalind was correct, I did hate my job, but I had fought to build my way up. I very much wanted to work for Mr. Hartono again, but I couldn’t return to a minimum wage, no matter my loyalties to the man.

  Part of my doubt was alleviated when I walked into the lobby of the hotel in Den Bosch where Mr. Hartono had arranged for us to meet. Gilded chandeliers hung from the ceiling, coiled and elaborate. The carpet was oriental and plush. It felt wrong walking on it, like coal tossed on top of cashmere. A museum wall would have better suited the carpet, with its rich embroidery. I was early for the meeting, so I sat on a patterned sofa near a window that overlooked the medieval canals, and I thought of Rosalind on her ships.