“I am. She is wonderful.”
“That she is; the improvements she has made in the education for girls are remarkable.” The two of them launched into a conversation about educating girls that I only partly followed. My shame over what I did to bring my daughter here rose in my throat, but I had to swallow it down. What is done is done and no one is truly worse off for it. By selling the painting and sketches I took from the train, I brought Marie-Celeste here and secured us a lease for the new year. I gave enough money to her parents that they have settled their debts and they are considering moving to a new village. Her former fiancé found himself a new girl and Marie-Celeste told me she worries for her but that she feels like she can do nothing. I tell her she cannot focus on that. All she can do is send prayers. Jo has not asked about my finances. She has her guilt as well and I let her believe that the accounting work I have picked up with a local tulip dealer is covering everything. Brick by brick I will build a life for my daughter and me, and I am trying not to resent Jo’s inability to help. She has her own priorities, and I respect them, but I also now have my own.
I am left to pack up most of our things in the boardinghouse when Jo sets off once again, this time for Germany. I’ve saidgoodbye to our final boarders, some of whom have returned year after year and become almost like family to me. The distinguished Mrs. Ballot is as spry as ever and has visited for a month every year to spend time with her local paramour. I will even miss the families with their hordes of unruly children, whom I have seen grow into equally unruly young people. But now I have my own family, and when Jo is gone, I spend as much time with Marie-Celeste as possible, wandering the countryside around Bussum and taking the train into Amsterdam, the largest city she’s ever been to, having never spent any time in Paris.
For all she teases about the people here, she does adore a Dutch pancake, a tiny cloud-likepoffertjesprinkled in powdered sugar. We purchase them from a street cart, watching them fluff up and brown in their distinctive dimpled brass pans.
We’re devouring our second serving of them on a bench in Vondelpark, watching the wealthy residents take their afternoon strolls, when a man crosses over the path in front of us and pauses.
“Look who it is,” he sneers.
My daughter gazes on him with the same curiosity she has for everyone she meets.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Israels,” I say evenly.
His waistcoat buttons are misaligned, and his eyes have the glassy, unfocused look of a man who has not been to sleep in some time. “Ladies.” He attempts a courtly bow that nearly sends him sprawling. “You simply must hear about the most extraordinary vision I had last night as I worked.” He fumbles in his coat pocket, producing a handful of crumpled sketches.
“The outline of dreams, you see,” he murmurs as he smooths out one of the sketches to reveal a series of interconnected concentric circles. “It continues in an unending loop.”
My daughter giggles. It is the kind of absurdity that she delights in. But Israels, even in his current state, is not a man used to women laughing at him.
“Who are you?” His focus shifts to my daughter, lingering too long on her delicate young body. I want to wrap her cloak tightly around her and shield her from his gaze. But she is unconcerned. She has no idea of my history with him. She extends her hand out to him boldly.
“I am Marie-Celeste.”
“Nog een hoer?” he questions under his breath, and thankfully the girl’s Dutch is not yet good enough to pick up on the meaning of his slang. He has asked if she is just another whore, a cutting reference to my past.
“She is my daughter.” I am surprised at this declaration and clearly Marie-Celeste is too. It is the first time I have introduced her so directly. In Bussum everyone assumes she is a relation who has come to live with me as my ward, but I have not discussed her as my child except with Jo. “We must go.” I stand and hold tightly to her arm, pulling her up from the bench as she continues to stare at his sketches.
“Stay.” He tugs on my arm too tightly to bring me back to the bench.
“I am sorry. We cannot. We are expected somewhere. But it was lovely to see you again, Mr. Israels.”
He doesn’t have the strength to be much more forceful. It’s clear he needs to fall into the nearest bed, his own or someone else’s.
“Good day, sir.” I hustle the two of us down the path.
“Who is he?” Marie-Celeste asks. “How do you know him?”
I fill my lungs with the crisp late-summer air and try to put it into the right words.
“When we first arrived here in Amsterdam, Jo made his acquaintance. She was very lonely then, a new widow. He is an artist and they had much in common.”
“Were they lovers? Jo and this man?”
I should not be taken aback. Marie-Celeste is nearly a grown woman.
“They were,” I say honestly. “For some time. It was very tumultuous. I think that she hoped she could tame him somehow, and he is the kind of man who is untamable, in my opinion. He always said he could not marry her. His excuse was that he did not want to play second fiddle to her dead husband and her brother-in-law’s legacy that possessed her. But I believe he was unwilling to give up all the other women and the attention they gave him. But they went on and on and it nearly drowned her on many occasions. It took everything she had to break free from him.”
“Is Jo happy in her current marriage?”
“I think she is often content and often frustrated, but from what I can tell that is the state of most marriages.”
“Have you ever wanted to marry?”
“No,” I say much more quickly than I expected to. It is a truth I have not spent much time considering, but a truth nonetheless. A man in my house, despite the obvious benefits in our society, seems like a burden best avoided for me. But I try to temper my answer. I still want this young girl to believe in all the possibilities. “I have not been lucky enough to fall in love.”
“And Jo was in love with that man?”
