But now I’m spilling the emotions I work so hard to keep bottled. “Bas died. I loved him.”
Her face softens, but her eyes are still suspicious. “I’m sorry. But we don’t have any pictures of him. Whoever Bas is. We don’t have pictures at all. A fire damaged our records a few weeks ago.”
“I’ll go.”
She hasn’t let go of my arm. “I don’t think you should. I think I should take you to the principal. You are trespassing.”
My wits are slowly returning. I twist my arm so she’s forced to drop it, and brush past her again. “I need to go.”
“Stop. What’s your name?”
But she won’t report me. Who could she report me to? A Jewish woman wouldn’t want to draw attention to herself for any reason, even to report a crime. She doesn’t have any recourse.
“Stop,” she says again, but it’s halfhearted. I continue toward the exit, and she doesn’t do anything. I can feel her eyes on me, though, watching as I walk out the doors of a building that reminds me too much of things that hurt to remember.
The cold wind slaps my face as I pedal home, brings me back to my senses, makes me furious with myself. All I had to do was find a picture, and I failed. I should have come with my bribery coffee and a well-practiced story. I could have said I was looking in on a girl I used to babysit for, or who used to live next door. I come up with stories every day. I should have done that, but I didn’t, and now I’ve ruined one of the few leads I had. Stupid. Amateur. Careless.
I run a few more errands for Mama, and then when I try to get home, soldiers have blockaded the streets I would normally take. They’re having a march, another one, a chance for rows of them to peacock through the streets in their helmets and black boots. They sing, too. Today it’s “Erika,” a song about German girls and German flowers. It crawls like a maggot into my head and gets stuck, unwelcome lyrics and music playing on a loop.
By the time I finally get to my front door, I can barely stand. A velvety aroma hits me as I walk inside. Mama is making hot chocolate. Why? I’ve told her that the little we have left should be saved for a celebration. Mama isn’t the type of person to think of errant celebrations, at least not anymore.
“Hot chocolate—did I forget someone’s birthday?” I unwind my still-damp scarf and hang it on a hook near the door. If I were younger, I would curl up with the chocolate and tell Mama about my hard day. If I didn’t have to keep this house together, I would tell my parents that I’d been asked to do a job that was too big for me and let my mother pet my hair.
“We have a visitor,” Mama says. I can’t tell if her smile is the real one or the false one she makes because her lips have forgotten how to smile naturally. It looks almost real.
Only then do I notice the figure in the chair seated across from my father—the hair, the freckles, the slightly crooked nose—and my heart jumps and falls at the same time.
Bas.
But of course it’s not. I’m lonely enough to let myself believe that for one second, but I’m not hopeful enough to let myself believe it for any longer. It’s not Bas. It’s Ollie.
SIX
Ollie. Olivier. Laurence Olivier, when Bas was feeling silly, after the English film star. Bas’s serious older brother, who looks almost like him, except his hair is not as red and his eyes are not as blue, and now that I’m seeing him sitting with my father, I’m realizing he doesn’t look very much like Bas at all, actually; it was just a trick of the eyes and the heart.
Ollie was finishing his first year of university when Bas died; now he must be nearly through his studies. They were never close. Bas was quick to laugh, and Ollie took himself so seriously. At their house on Saturday evenings, Ollie would heave dramatic sighs every time he thought Bas and I were disrupting his work. I haven’t seen him since the memorial service, the horrible, body-less memorial service, where Mrs. Van de Kamp clung to Ollie and cried, and I felt sick to my stomach because I wanted to cry, too, but didn’t feel I deserved it. I tried stopping by the Van de Kamp house once, early on, but Mrs. Van de Kamp made it clear that she didn’t want to see me, and honestly I couldn’t blame her.
But here is Ollie Van de Kamp now, sitting in my front room, losing a game of chess to my father. “What brings you here?” I ask as he stands to greet me, kissing me formally on the cheek.
“My mother. She was just wondering about you, and I told her the next time I found myself in your neighborhood, I would stop in and see your family.”
“And a wonderful surprise it is,” my father says, “because Ollie is terrible at chess and he’s agreed to play for money.”