Craving Read online

  Coco waits until her father and Miriam have finished saying goodbye to her mother. She wants them to leave, but they don’t. She hears her mother call out something about coffee again.

  Coco reluctantly goes into the small kitchen.

  Her father knocks on the radiator and says, ‘You need to get the air out of this.’

  Her mother says, ‘Or would you rather have tea, Miriam?’

  Miriam says, ‘I just wanted to say: I think it’s really awful for you, with the illness and everything. If we can do anything to help, it goes without saying that we will.’

  Coco feels sick. You can’t mix everything, she thinks. Some things really don’t taste good together.

  ‘So it’s coffee then,’ her mother says.

  ‘Not for me,’ says Coco.

  ‘Lovely.’ Miriam sits down.

  ‘You can both go now if you want,’ Coco says. ‘It’s just the bed business I couldn’t do on my own and Hans is busy at work. Really great that you could help, but you can go now if you want, you know. Martin’s coming in a bit too.’

  ‘She wants coffee,’ her mother says.

  ‘If it’s no trouble,’ Miriam says.

  ‘Do you want coffee or not?’

  ‘Aren’t you having any?’

  ‘Trouble with my stomach.’ Her father goes into the sitting room.

  ‘He’s restless,’ her mother says, ‘he always was. Coco, do you want coffee too?’

  Coco wants to get out of the kitchen, wait until her father comes back, sorts it out. Her father doesn’t come back.

  Her father is sitting on the bed.

  ‘Is that all right,’ Coco asks, ‘the two of them alone?’

  Her father says, ‘Miriam is very good with people.’

  ‘You’re relaxed.’

  ‘They’re adults.’

  ‘Is she really going to stay for a coffee?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen them for so long together.’

  ‘On your birthday?’

  ‘That’s different, more people. This is … this is … a Barbie and a Sindy.’

  ‘A Barbie and a Sindy?’

  ‘I used to have Barbies but also a Sindy. Sindy had a much bigger head. If you saw Sindy on her own it wasn’t that strange, but with Barbie next to her that head suddenly looked really crazy, and Barbie’s head much too small. It’s a bit like that with Mum and Miriam. When they’re on their own, they’re not that strange, but together …’

  Her father laughs.

  ‘Don’t you think?’

  ‘Great for Hans,’ he said, ‘that conference in Seattle?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That he’ll be the keynote speaker, that’s pretty special.’

  ‘He’s what?’

  ‘Keynote speaker. Right? I bumped into him yesterday in Hoogstins Bookshop, he was having coffee with Eelke. Cool, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Being keynote speaker.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’

  ‘I’m not sure … whether I knew.’ She is alarmed. The sudden realisation that she should have known hits her. Hans has been talking about the conference for months, but his words were elusive, like when her father talked about turnover. Each day he’d announce what had been sold, whether the result had been good or disappointing.

  She’d learned to smile at the right moment like her stepmother and say, ‘Oh really?’ whenever he’d sold two espresso machines in a single day.

  She thinks of the times Hans had talked about the conference and wonders whether she even said, ‘Oh really?’

  #

  ‘Nothing is as nice as fresh sheets,’ Coco says as she pulls the fitted sheet over the mattress. Elisabeth doesn’t say that she should have put on an underlay first.

  She is sitting on the sofa next to the bed, looking at her daughter as though she’s five years old again and wants to help fold the wash but only makes it worse by helping.

  ‘Do you know that Dad said you locked me up in my bedroom when I wasn’t even eighteen months old?’

  Elisabeth hears her daughter’s attempt to sound breezy. So she replies just as breezily, ‘Did he say that?’

  ‘Yes, he said that.’

  ‘That father of yours.’ She does her best to fit in with Coco, over and over. The previous evening she’d even tried to eat more, if only to show her that they weren’t that different after all, though she knows otherwise.

  ‘It’s not true is it?’ Her daughter looks at her.

  She doesn’t reply fast enough. Now there’s no going back. ‘Your father wouldn’t make a thing like that up. Why would your father make up something like that?’

  ‘You locked me up?’

  ‘Do you remember anything of it?’

  ‘So it’s true?’

  ‘But can you remember it?’

  ‘Mum, you locked me up when I was a year and half?’

  ‘Times were different, you know,’ Elisabeth says, trying to sound like the hairdresser.

  ‘You don’t lock up a one-and-a-half-year-old child.’

  ‘You didn’t cry any louder when you were in your room. You really didn’t. It didn’t make any difference.’

  ‘A year and a half?’

  ‘Would you pass me that plastic bag?’ She points under the bed. Coco bends down and gives her the bag from the chemist’s.

  ‘A year and a half?’ she repeats.

  Elisabeth gets the morphine plasters out of the bag and puts them next to the sofa.

  ‘Did Dad say a year and a half?’

  ‘You mean he’s lying?’

  ‘Lying? How do you figure that one out?’

  ‘You’re avoiding the subject.’

  ‘Am I?’ She unfolds the information leaflet.

  ‘Yes, you are. Can’t you do that later?’

  ‘Oh sorry, is it bothering you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Elisabeth puts everything back in the bag.

  ‘The pain’s not that bad really. Methinks.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Methinks.’

  Her daughter looks at the bag.

  ‘Well, put it back.’ She gives her daughter the bag. ‘Then we can have a nice chat. Just ask me, I don’t have any secrets. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Why would you lock up a child of a year and a half?’

  Elisabeth wants to give her an honest answer, but her thoughts have already digressed. ‘A playpen is a kind of lock-up too, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mum, I asked you something.’

  ‘You need to put an underlay on.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You need to put on an underlay underneath the fitted sheet. Yes, I’m just being honest. You want me to be honest, don’t you?’

  ‘Why did you lock me up?’

  Elisabeth searches for something true she is happy to share. She has a good memory. She says, ‘I put cushions down everywhere. In your room. All the cushions from the sofa and the big ones from the old easy chairs. I used belts to tie cushions to the corners of the cupboards so that you couldn’t bump yourself. I left you three bottles. Two with water and one with freshly-squeezed orange juice. You liked that. I broke up biscuits into small pieces and put them in plastic bags. At the time you didn’t eat well unless you could get the food out of small plastic bags yourself. You liked that.’

  Her daughter doesn’t say anything.

  ‘And there were toys,’ Elisabeth says, ‘cardboard cubes, from big to small, that fit inside each other. A wooden lighthouse with coloured rings. A book with animals that made sounds. A big cow that mooed when you pressed her belly.’

  ‘How long did you leave me there?’

  Elisabeth looks at the paler strands in her girl’s hair and then her eyes descend to the fleshy neck.

  ‘I liked to kiss your neck,’ she says. ‘My face fit perfectly into the space between your throat and your shoulders. You smelt so
lovely as a child.’ They don’t know that you love them, you have to tell them. Again and again. ‘I love you. That’s what I’d say when I tucked you in at night. Bye-bye little girl. I love you.’ Elisabeth’s gaze wanders off. She looks out of the window and thinks about the matt-grey Mercedes. Then her daughter tears the sheet from the bed.

  ‘Are you angry now?’

  ‘Why would I be angry? You have to put an underlay on, don’t you. Explain it to me, Mum, why would I be angry?’

  ‘Because I locked you up. You’re angry because I locked you up, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, don’t you think?’

  ‘You weren’t at the time. Not at the time, you know. You were angry when I didn’t lock you up too. You were always angry. It didn’t make any difference.’

  ‘And you blamed a child of one-and-a-half for that?’

  ‘No, darling, you don’t have to feel guilty about it—you couldn’t help it.’

  ‘I don’t feel guilty!’ Coco says. ‘What do you expect?!’

  Elisabeth has that strange feeling in her chest again. Perhaps it’s indigestion. Her daughter walks away, out of the room.

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘I’m fetching an underlay!’

  She hears the heavy footsteps in the corridor, on the stairs, the landing. The creaking doors of the big old linen cupboard upstairs. On the inside of the cupboard door there’s half a Donald Duck sticker. Coco stuck it there a long time ago. Elisabeth tried to get it off, but his legs and part of his tail wouldn’t come off. There’s a bit of paint missing where his body used to be. Footsteps descending. Coco seems calmer when she comes back into the room. She makes the bed in silence and then sits down on it. Her girl runs a hand through her hair.

  ‘Are you growing your hair out?’

  ‘It’s just been cut.’

  ‘Oh, that’s it then, I knew there was something different.’

  ‘I should be studying.’

  …

  ‘I said: I should be studying.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with your hair?’

  ‘I’m not talking about my hair. I’d like to have my desk here.’

  ‘Of course,’ she says, ‘your desk here,’ because now she wants to understand everything for a while. She is already nodding.

  ‘Do you think I could borrow Martin’s van?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, because you can always borrow Martin’s van and he’s so helpful and Elisabeth says what her daughter wants to hear: ‘Do you want his number?’ and even, ‘Or should I call him for you?’

  Something went wrong between her and Wilbert after Coco’s birth and now everything is over and Wilbert has gone and Coco is here. Wilbert started giving her funny looks and Coco gave her looks like that too, later. She only got strange when she became a mother and she knows she can’t blame the child, although the reason she can’t seems harder and harder to grasp and she already regrets that Coco’s desk is coming here.

  #

  ‘It turned into a bit more,’ Coco says. The desk is in the hall. Boxes and bags are waiting on the pavement. Martin is looking for somewhere to park the van.

  ‘Yes,’ her mother says.

  ‘We were driving anyway.’

  ‘Yes, now you have the van …’

  ‘… it’d be a shame not to use it.’ Her mother looks at the bin bag in her hand.

  ‘Clothes,’ she says.

  ‘Clothes,’ her mother repeats.

  ‘I’ll take some of it up now.’ She carries the bin bag up the stairs, turns around on the second step, ‘Can I bring anything downstairs for you?’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Things you want downstairs. Since I’m going anyway.’

  ‘Yes, you might as well…’

  ‘Now I’m going anyway.’ Her mother keeps her gaze focussed on the bin bag in her arms. Coco would rather her mother didn’t watch her bring everything in and says, ‘Go and sit down, go on.’

  ‘Yes,’ her mother says, ‘I’ll have a nice lie-down.’

  Coco hears that the word ‘nice’ isn’t her mother’s word.

  The desk is on the landing. Martin and Coco pause to catch their breath.

  ‘Is it going to fit in your bedroom?’ Martin asks.

  ‘Tight.’ The door to her mother’s bedroom is open. It’s the biggest and prettiest bedroom on the first floor. It is empty without her bed. They both look in. Coco waits.

  ‘Just say the word,’ Martin says. ‘Where do you want it?’ Coco waits.

  ‘Next to your bed?’

  ‘Not much room.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Just say the word.’

  ‘Let’s put it in Mum’s room for a while,’ Coco says, ‘then we’ll see about it later.’ They carry the desk in.

  ‘How’s business?’ Coco asks.

  ‘It’s a bit of a slog without your mother.’

  ‘Busy?’

  ‘She’s actually the only one who can do the gilding,’ Martin says. ‘She was teaching the others, but no one is good as her.’

  ‘She’s not your normal woman.’

  ‘The best framer in the city, that’s what she is.’

  ‘She’s not easy either, obviously.’

  ‘Don’t believe she ever took a day off sick.’

  ‘Dad always used to get furious when she said: “They’re happy with me at my work.” She’d say that.’

  ‘And we are.’

  ‘“No one at work has a problem with me”, she’d say.’

  ‘We never have had either.’

  ‘She was the one to tell me how they’d argue. I don’t remember it anymore. But then he’d say she wasn’t right in her head and then she’d say it again: “No one at work has a problem with me”.’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘Craftswoman, of course.’

  ‘And patient with people. Never lost it with any of the interns. Very good teacher.’

  ‘Teacher?’

  ‘Do you want coffee?’ her mother shouted from downstairs. Martin was already walking away.

  Martin is sitting on the edge of her mother’s bed. They are talking about their work, using words that Coco doesn’t know. Pretty words. Rabbit-skin glue. Champagne chalk. It’s as though she can smell the framer’s shop, which she visited just once or twice only as a child. Just like normal people, Coco thinks.

  ‘You don’t have to see me out, stay in bed.’ Martin hugs her. It doesn’t look unnatural, though Coco is sure she’s never seen her mother hugging anyone before.

  ‘I’d like to come back, once all this business…’ Her mother makes a dismissive gesture along her upper arm where a morphine plaster has been applied. ‘I’d like to come back. It would be all right if my hands didn’t shake so much. If I could sit down.’

  ‘Is there any post I should take for you?’ Martin asks.

  ‘Coco,’ her mother says, ‘could you fetch that pile of papers from the dresser?’

  Coco gets the post. In her haste she sees envelopes from official bodies, insurance company, social services, but also a postcard. ‘Thinking of you. Hans and Janine.’ The neighbours.

  She waits for her mother to sort the post into administrative and personal matters, but she says, ‘Do you want a bag or is it all right like this?’ Martin takes the whole pile and glances at it. He reads the postcard unabashedly.

  Her mother’s post disappears into the grubby canvas bag he always has with him. The postcard too.

  ‘You do a lot for Mum,’ Coco says.

  ‘All the paperwork is for Martin,’ her mother says.

  Coco thinks about the postcards she used to send to her mother when she was a child. ‘A postcard isn’t paperwork, though, is it?’ she says, ‘That’s something different from admin. Mum, you can’t get someone else to handle your private life.’

  Her mother gives her a lengthy look, as though she hasn’t understood her, but then she says, ‘Martin should know which people have shown int
erest, for the funeral, if he’s going to be the one organising it.’

  ‘Funeral.’

  ‘Martin always takes care of everything. Don’t you worry.’

  #

  Elisabeth’s hands are resting on her stomach. She feels every vibration under her skin. The hands rest there with the same expectation as during her pregnancy—that movement is on its way, that the child will swim towards the hands, that it will turn there, twist, push, roll. Movements that get stronger every day. But later, when the child was supposed to be somewhere else, the hands stayed there and there was always a vibration, a shudder, movement. The child had never gone away. Elisabeth closes her eyes and feels the miniscule movements underneath her fingers. Then a bang. Something falls upstairs. She hears Coco swearing.

  ‘Stay away,’ Elisabeth whispers. Upstairs something large is pushed across the floor. Elisabeth sits up. Will come in a minute. Will want to talk. She hears a door and she is already sighing, that will be her. No footsteps follow.

  I just want to lie down for a bit. Can’t a person just lie down? It’s quiet again now. What is she up to? Elisabeth throws off the covers, sits on the edge of the bed.

  Will need coffee for sure. What a lot of coffee that child drinks. Everything runs out quicker with her in the house. Where has she got to?

  Elisabeth struggles to her feet and grips the rollator. She rolls it across the room, lifts it over the doorstep, goes along the hall, listens from the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Coco?’ No reply.

  ‘Coco?’ Again nothing. She must realise it’s tiring, that shouting.

  ‘Coco?!’ Does she want coffee or not? It’s much too cold in the hall.

  ‘Cooocooo?!’ Finally a door and footsteps.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’ Coco stands at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Do you want coffee or not?’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Is it such a difficult question?’

  ‘Have you already put it on?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are you putting coffee on?’

  ‘If you want coffee.’

  ‘Do you want to have coffee …? Together?’

  ‘Do you want coffee?’

  ‘I’d be happy to have some coffee, but I’m studying. But if you already have some or you’re putting some on …’