You'll Thank Me for This

by Nina Siegal

  “Awwww,” Lotte said, as if Karin had been telling a love story.

  “Wait, so now it’s, like, a whole wolf family?” Margot said. “How many?”

  “I don’t know,” Karin said, although she did know. “Maybe, like, six or seven?”

  There were seven. Karin had seen photos of five wolf cubs born in June. Her father, if he were still alive, would have definitely come out here to take pictures of them. That had been his thing. And she would have come with him, definitely.

  “So there’s, like, a wolf pack out here?” Margot asked, her eyes bulging out, totally exaggerating. “In these woods?”

  Could Margot and Lotte have missed the boat on this whole story? The story was, like, everywhere. Karin had spent the summer dodging the subject every time she mentioned her upcoming dropping to an adult. “Ah, Roodkapje, Roodkapje, waar ga je heen?” (“Red Riding Hood, Red Riding Hood, where are you going?”) they’d start singing, the song from the Dutch Little Red Riding Hood movie everyone watched.

  “See?” said Dirk, now very satisfied with himself even though he had said literally nothing.

  “Yeah, but they wouldn’t hurt people.” Karin kind of wanted to take some wind out of his sails. “It’s not like Little Red Riding Hood. Wolves eat sheep or deer. They would only attack you if you tried to hurt their babies.”

  “I don’t know,” Dirk said, darting her a look. “I see three pretty tasty Roodkapjes right here.”

  “O-M-G, you guys are not serious,” said Margot. “We’re not going out there to be eaten by wolves! I’m about to turn back right now and go home.”

  Karin turned to Dirk. “You don’t need to scare everyone. I read the family had probably moved on by now anyway. They have to get somewhere warm by winter.” This was a lie, but no one was fact-checking.

  Dirk just lifted his chest and leaned his head back and howled, “Aahwooooh! Aaahooowh!” at the top of his lungs. “Maybe he’ll howl in response…”

  All of them waited to hear if there was an echo to his howl. There was none.

  “Literally?” said Margot, giving him an exasperated look. “I can’t believe you are literally trying to get the wolves to speak to you.”

  Dirk looked at all three girls, with the range of expressions on their faces, and a wide grin grew on his face. “You guys are too easy,” he said. “Are you also afraid of the Wolfman? Because that’s who I turn into late at night, when the moon is full.” He looked up toward the sky, but they couldn’t see the moon because of the clouds, and if it was up there, it probably wasn’t full. “I come out here to see my old friends Freddy Krueger and Ghostface too.” With that, he reached out to grab Margot, and she jumped.

  “Don’t!” she said. “You’re totally scaring me.” But instead of acting scared and pulling away, she tucked herself under Dirk’s arms and tried to wrap herself in them, like a blanket.

  He welcomed the invitation and put his big, wrestling-team arms around her shoulders, then slid them down to her waist. “Don’t worry, little Margot. I’ll make sure no wolves eat you!” He was laughing, and Margot clearly enjoyed the embrace, but her face pretended to have a pouty expression.

  Lotte, seeing the two of them flirting in this way, puffed out “Whatever” and marched off toward the car. Karin claimed to have forgotten something in her backpack, though no one was listening anyway, and scampered off too. She didn’t even bother pantomiming that one. As soon as she walked over to Lotte, the two of them leaned against the minivan and watched as Dirk and Margot tussled playfully with each other.

  Lotte said softly, “Once, my family went camping in the South of France in the summer and we heard wolves howling the whole night through. I was so happy that we had a cabin and not just a tent. And in the morning, when we woke up, everyone was talking about how the wolf had come to our camping area and made off with someone’s pet rabbit. I don’t even understand why someone would bring a pet rabbit camping with them. How stupid is that?”

  “That does sound kinda stupid,” agreed Karin.

  Karin and Lotte continued to lean against the car in silence. Right now she could really use her cell phone. She could check Instagram or find out what was trending on YouTube or even look at a Google map. But no. They just had to stand there like idiots next to each other with nothing to say.

  Their eyes wandered up toward the sky. It was really overcast but not entirely covered. Some clouds looked like hillsides and others like shorelines. There was a tiny bit of light cresting over one of the clouds, like it was hoping for an entrance.

  Rutger, who had walked off a distance to talk on his phone, bounded back over to them, his hair flapping on his head like a toupee. “Great, they’re on their way!” he said. “They said they’d be here in about ten minutes. I’ve got their blessing to let you go ahead. Otherwise it’ll be too late when you get to the campsite.”

  Without a word, Dirk hefted his backpack over his shoulder and walked off down the bike path. The girls looked at one another quizzically and Lotte shouted after him, “Why are you going that way?”

  Without turning around, he shouted, “I thought we decided this was the way to go.”

  “We didn’t decide anything,” said Lotte, but it was no use. Dirk was the only boy in the group and so he thought he would appoint himself the leader, and now the three of them either had to follow and catch up with him or else forfeit the only requirement of the dropping: to stay together as a group.

  “Come on,” Margot said to the other girls, a girlfriend wannabe. “That way is as good a way as any.”

  Chapter 4

  Reflections on

  the Lake

  Grace looked up at Martijn, whose eyes were absently following Riekje’s movements as she got the final gear for the trip into the old Volkswagen. The Scout leaders had had a debriefing with all the parents involved in all the droppings, and now the second car—and Martijn—were about to leave the Scout Clubhouse.

  Why was it that whenever they were alone, without Karin or his kids, or some other kind of company, she felt a kind of generalized anxiety, with her heart racing?

  “I’m really sorry about this morning,” he said to Grace, leaning down to kiss her goodbye.

  Her reaction, completely involuntary, was to flinch and pull away. As soon as she’d done it, she wished she could take it back. She knew he would pick up on this, and it wouldn’t help. “I know,” said Grace, putting a hand on his arm, trying to compensate. “I’m sorry too.”

  His face fell. “Oh, so it’s like that?” he said. “Really?”

  During the fight this morning things had become too heated. She’d told him that he didn’t have to be so angry; he’d screamed that he wasn’t angry. She’d thought to show him his face in the mirror, so red, eyes glaring. He would be able to see that he was, indeed, angry. But when she had pulled him toward the mirror, he’d pushed her. Shoved her, actually, right up against the kitchen cabinets. She was sure he hadn’t tried to hurt her, but the handle of a cabinet door had sliced through her shirt.

  She reached up and drew his face toward hers, trying to be tender. She felt Martijn’s soft lips meet her own, and she stayed there for a moment, letting the sweetness of this connection linger, the tingle of lust they still had between them. “No, of course not, honey.”

  He pulled back gently and studied her eyes. Then he walked out of the cul-de-sac where the cars were parked and toward the Scout Clubhouse. She dutifully followed him, footsteps crunching in the pebbles of the path.

  He turned back toward her, looking defeated. “It’s a mess right now, but we can sort it out,” he said. “You know I didn’t mean all that this morning. I certainly regret what I did; I feel sick about it. I’m not like that. I never want to hurt you.” He moved closer, putting his arm around her shoulder and drawing her face to his kiss. “I want it to be better with us.”

  The embrace, after so much tension, made her chest feel heavy, and she knew she might cry if she didn’t hold it back. She sw
allowed and looked up at him.

  “Look, I don’t want to get into it again. Let’s let it go for now,” Grace said, trying to keep calm, her voice controlled. “All I want to say is that I think it would help if we got a little counseling together. It would probably only take a few sessions. What we have is so strong, Martijn. But sometimes it becomes too intense. It scares me. I feel…anxious.”

  She hoped that this show of her vulnerability would crack open a door to him. That he would tell her the last thing he wanted was for her to feel anxious around him. But he shook his head. “Grace, come on,” he said. “It hasn’t even been a year that we’ve been living together. If we need therapy now, what does that say about our future?”

  “It doesn’t matter what it says,” she answered. “Nobody is counting. I mean, it says that we care about the relationship we have and we want to make sure we get off to a good start. To make sure that we set off on a good footing. That we embark with the wind in the right direction—”

  “And other metaphors,” he cut her off, but with a smile.

  Martijn’s attitude toward therapy actually infuriated her. Was it the same aversion men had to asking for directions? If you had to ask for help, it meant you were weak? Grace was the kind of person who loved consulting anyone who might know something better than she did. She had stacks of books on her bedside table on all kinds of improvement categories—You as Your Best Self, How to Find Common Ground with Anyone, Loving Unconditionally, What Makes a Happy Stepmom?, Dealing with Anger in Your Relationship. It was rather an embarrassment, actually, but on the other hand, why be ashamed? She was a woman who wanted to be the optimal version of herself. Martijn told her she was “too Oprah.”

  In any case, at this very moment, Grace desperately did not want to get into a marital dispute, if this could really be classified as such, right here at the Scout Clubhouse, just before her husband left to volunteer for her daughter’s camping trip. Especially since he was putting himself out there to show how much he cared about Karin, it would be a disgrace.

  “It’s not that I don’t believe in therapy; I’m sure it can be good for some people,” he volunteered, without her having to say what she had been thinking. “It’s just that I think we can do this on our own. You just have to understand that I’m a little bit damaged, and, well, my kids are a little bit damaged too. And sometimes we just need you to give us the benefit of the doubt.”

  This logic had its self-effacing element, Grace understood, but it also cut in the opposite direction. It blamed her, didn’t it, for not being patient and forgiving and generous enough. Was that really how it was?

  She could go to therapy alone, of course, if he refused to come. She had heard people say that as soon as one side disarms, the battle necessarily ends. But what if she laid down her own defenses and his agitation remained? She’d trusted Martijn with everything until now; she’d put so much into his hands, her very life, and Karin’s life too.

  “So you’re saying I’m not patient enough?”

  Martijn spoke more softly. “No, no, no. It’s just—it’s me. I’m just dealing with a lot right now. I’ve got a lot on my plate, as you like to say. I’m trying to deal with a few too many things at once.”

  “With what?” Grace genuinely wanted to understand. “With us? With work?”

  He looked around, as if he was assessing how much to reveal in this public place.

  “Please,” she said. “Can’t you just tell me if there is something outside of the marriage—outside of us—that is putting pressure on you? If I knew what it was, maybe we could address it together. Before you go, couldn’t you just articulate, a little, what is making you feel so stressed?”

  He nodded and motioned her toward the lake. They walked together, their bodies aligned and their hands adjacent, without touching. Grace felt that if he would just take her hand, reassure her a little bit, she could make it through without worrying. But he didn’t.

  Once they’d gotten some distance from the others, she said, “Okay, are you ready to tell me what is going on?”

  He shook his head, lowering it to gaze at the ground. He looked back up into her eyes, his own shiny with moisture, if not tears. “I know I can’t live up to your standards, to what you really deserve, Grace, to what…”—he hesitated, and she knew what he was about to say—“to what he might have been able to give you.” They both knew that Martijn was referring to Pieter, but he wouldn’t say the name out loud. “I feel that I’m not the man I should be for you. And never will be. I’ll never be enough. It frightens me.”

  Grace, for the briefest moment, felt pity for Martijn. He was being really vulnerable here. It was quite a thing for him to say, actually. And she wanted to give him the answer he was seeking—that of course he was enough, she loved him just as much as or more than she had loved Pieter, and he was what she wanted. But unfortunately he was right, on a fundamental level. Neither she nor Karin would ever be able to love him the way they had loved Pieter. Pieter had been her first, true love and Karin’s biological father. What could she do about that? It was impossible for her to lie to him.

  Martijn stood there, looking simultaneously plaintive and afflicted. Grace saw in the wrinkles of his face, his beautiful green eyes, the desperation in his expression, that he contained a deep well of resentment toward her and maybe even a measure of fear. This was the expression of a man who had married a woman who wouldn’t completely adore him in the way he wished. And she knew in her own heart, no matter how hard she tried to wish it away, that he was right.

  But then, mingled almost immediately with her empathy for Martijn, came another, and equally powerful, emotion, that of scorn. There was something of a manipulation behind this show of vulnerability. Wasn’t it a little ridiculous of Martijn to be envious of her feelings for a man who was dead? For a man with whom she’d spent half her lifetime and a man she’d lost to violence? For Karin’s actual father? This was an unreasonable expectation, was it not?

  And after that, a third, stranger feeling: that all of this was an act. A kind of emotional tactic, to cast blame her way and to deflect from his own failures as a husband. After all, wasn’t it he who had been avoiding contact with her, staying up late in his office, refusing to even eat dinner with the family or address the way the boys were basically bullying her daughter?

  No. She brushed the thought away. He wasn’t being manipulative. He was trying to be genuine, but he just wasn’t very good at it. Grace loved Martijn—it had to be love, what she felt for him, didn’t it?—not a passionate love but a quiet, contented, knowing kind of love that she hoped meant stability for her and for Karin. Couldn’t that be enough?

  That was what she had thought going into the marriage. After almost a year of sharing a home, trying to raise three kids together who belonged not to the two of them but to other parents from other histories, it was hard. That was all. It was fucking hard. And they didn’t have that baseline of a history and foundation to fall back on. All they had was who they were, deeply flawed and hurting individuals with a bunch of bad habits that shone brightly under the floodlights of cohabitation.

  Grace turned away and continued to walk, through the playground, down the pebble beach, and toward the lake, which was remarkably still on this autumnal evening. The surface of the water, so dark and free of ripples, created a perfect mirror of the other shore, a ring of small summer cottages with boating docks out back, now shuttered for the season. The mirror of the water also revealed to her a suddenly threatening sky, heavy with gray clouds.

  She thought how forlorn this playground and beachfront was, remembering how just a few months ago this same lake had been full of laughing children, gliding off the metal slides propped on wooden docks farther out in the water. How the little kids, in their flower-patterned bathing suits with their candy-colored water toys, had splashed and paddled close to the shore. Summer had been here not so long ago. How quickly they’d reached a far more desolate season.

  Martijn h
ad followed her to the edge of the lake, and he was watching her from a few yards away. She could feel his gaze on her, waiting for her to say something else, to give him a sign. Was it neediness he was trying to convey?

  She knew that this was the moment for her to reassure him that he was enough. That was the right move now, the only way forward. But the best she managed to offer was “Martijn, I hate that you feel you’re not enough. I don’t want you feeling that.”

  She could see from his expression, angry and defeated, that it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

  “Are you sure that there isn’t something going on with you?” she asked. “Something that doesn’t have to do with me, or us? I don’t know. I just have this feeling that something isn’t right. You spend so much time in your office upstairs, and it seems like your energy is not really focused. Something is making you, well, edgy. Can you tell me what it is?”

  Martijn took a few steps toward her and put his hands on both her shoulders from behind. “You’re so good at sensing things. It’s true. There is something that’s been bothering me—not about us, just work,” he said. “It’s not worth discussing because it’s almost over. Let’s just let it go for now. I’ll tell you about it when we’re back home.”

  So there was something. Something outside of the two of them. Maybe he was going through a moment and they would get past it.

  “Okay,” she said, turning to face him. “I’m so glad you can tell me at least that. Let’s use this night apart to calm down, and we can talk about it all with more sensible heads tomorrow. Let’s take this opportunity to think things over.”

  “Think things over?” he asked, as if she’d meant it as a kind of threat. “About our future?”

  “Just a little breather, to figure out where we stand,” she said. “You’ll be out here under the night sky in the forest air—that will help. I’ll go home, relax, unwind, maybe binge-watch some nonsense on TV. Let’s just think about ourselves and what we can do better, and tomorrow maybe we’ll have more energy, so we can think about ways that we can find our way back to each other.”