Midnight in Brussels

by Rebecca Randolph Buckley

  Now she wondered what this latest dream could mean. She was expecting a call from Belinda regarding the results of the tests. That had been worrying Rachel. Maybe that was the reason for the dream.

  The phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Rachel, luv!”

  “Oh, Pete! I’m so glad it’s you. I’ve been so worried.”

  “No need to worry, doll. I couldn’t call because of where we were. No worrying, luv. Promise me.”

  “But I had such a horrible dream just now. You know how I feel about my dreams..”

  “Just be patient a little longer, doll. We’re making such progress with the gathering of the plant life. Found some we’ve not seen before. It is beautiful here. Maybe you’d change your mind about this place if you would come see it. Belem is very modern, luv. We could build a home here, there’s enough work to keep me here indefinitely.”

  Rachel was silent.

  “Doll, are you there?”

  “I’ve got another phone call, Pete, am expecting a call from Belinda. Can I call you back later?”

  “Yes, I’ll be here for a couple more hours.”

  “Okay, bye now.”

  Rachel pushed the call waiting key as she answered the knock at the door. Room Service was delivering coffee and toast.

  “Hello? Oh, good. Wait a minute, Belinda. Let me pour a cup of coffee and sit down. Hold on.” Her heart rate increased already knowing that the news was going to be bad. She couldn’t shake the feeling. She tipped the waiter and poured herself a cup of coffee. “Okay, so tell me what the doctor said. I’m all ears.”

  “Well, it’s as he suspected. Lymphoma. No doubt about it.”

  They both were silent. Both were tearing up. Both were ready to cry.

  “I’m coming home. I’ll leave today.” Rachel’s voice quivered, she couldn’t hide her feelings.

  “No you’re not. Now don’t do anything foolish. You stay there and write that book. I have plenty of people here to drive me nuts. My goodness, my mother is coming back at the end of the week; Paul is here; Dudley is already suffocating me and he takes Jake off my hands more than usual. So don’t you worry. I’m alright.

  “We’re trying to decide what to do about the pregnancy, Rachel. Paul wants me to abort, and so does the doctor. Sounds like it might be the best thing to do because they want to start the treatment right away. They don’t think I should wait till after the baby is born. What do you think, Rachel?”

  “Look, I know how much you want your baby, especially since you thought you’d never have any children after Baby Jake, but you do have Paul Junior now. Two beautiful boys. What’s most important is that you’re around to raise those two boys, you know? I—” Rachel couldn’t control her emotions. She couldn’t talk anymore.

  “I know … I know … but I just can’t bear to think that I’d be killing my baby girl. She’s a girl, Rachel. My girl.”

  They both wept.

  After a few moments, Belinda continued, “But I know I must think of Paul and the boys, they’re the most important people in my life and I can’t let them down. So, I will abort. I must. Thank you, Rachel, you’ve helped me decide. I’ll talk to you later, and I’ll be all right so don’t you worry. The abortion procedure is simple the doc says. So you stay there … and write that novel … you understand me?” Her sobs were intermittent.

  “Oh honey, I will … but I’ll be home as soon as Pete comes back, or maybe even before that. You take care. Love you.”

  “Love you, too. Bye.”

  Rachel closed the phone and sighed heavily. “How can one person go through so much?” She grabbed a tissue.

  How can Belinda have all this tragedy in her life time and time again and still manage to come through it all and be the wonderful, loving person she is, and the most talented and creative person that I’ve known? What is it that singles out one person to dump the hell of the earth on?

  First Belinda lost her father to the mines when she was very young. She and her mother both struggled all those years, her mother slaving to put her through college. Then Belinda had been brutally gang-raped and nearly died. Then she became pregnant by one of the rapists, and then had been faced with having to choose between a hysterectomy, aborting her second child after she was married to Paul, or spending several weeks in bed – she’d chosen the latter and luckily made it through to have a glorious second son.

  Now this. Every time life got better, something stepped in to threaten it.

  How does she get through it?

  Rachel needed to talk to somebody, but didn’t know who. Instead she decided to take a break and hop a train to Bruges. Yes, that’s what she needed, a break from the usual routine in Brussels.

  She quickly packed a bag with a couple changes of clothes and left the hotel. She took a cab the short distance to Gare Centrale and only had to wait fifteen minutes for the one-hour ride to Bruges.

  It was a lovely afternoon, the rain had stopped and the sky was sparsely dotted with fluffy white clouds. The landscape sparkled clean and green.

  Rachel took a deep breath and sighed. She felt relieved and uplifted when she rode trains. She didn’t know why, it was just a feeling she’d get. Better than a tranquilizer. In England she rode trains back and forth to London as often as her schedule permitted. She traveled by train all over the country doing research while getting R&R when it was needed.

  She loved taking trains to Paris, too. There was something about Paris that inspired her more than any other city in the world. She could go there feeling emotionally depleted and almost ill, and within a few hours would be feeling exuberant and alive.

  Over the past two years she had gone every two months, or as often as she could, to enjoy the house in Montmartre she and her friend Janet Corrigan, from the States, had bought together. Janet was there most of the time now, and Rachel would spend a couple of weeks in spurts in her favorite Montmartre section of the City of Lights.

  It dawned on her … that’s who she could have called. Janet. And maybe Janet had heard from Shellie - their previous roommate and cohort in Montmartre. Shellie was living in Switzerland now with Adrian and their little girl. What a fairy tale that had turned out to be!

  All three Americans – Rachel, Janet, and Shellie – had been in Paris at the same time, sorting out their lives, making decisions for their futures. All three of them had found their hearts’ desires when they were living in the fabulous house atop the hill.

  Rachel thought of the good times they’d had. She’d been there visiting, doing research for another novel. It was that New Year’s Eve when she and Pete were engaged. Adrian asked Shellie to marry him and go home to Switzerland, and Janet made the decision to stay in Paris to be with Bob – becoming partners in the construction business. What a good ending for all!

  Rachel jotted a note to call Janet and Shellie. She was suddenly missing them, and she was suddenly drowsy—must have been all the remembering that did it. She leaned her head against the train’s window pane and dozed off.

  Chapter 26

  The week had been an exciting one at the Kantcentrum for Amanda. She took to lace-making as if she had been doing it her entire life. In five days she had mastered the basics of making Binche lace, and she signed up for another class beginning the third week of August.

  She’d been in Belgium for over a month now, and she was feeling a direction beginning to form. Lace-making would be a part of her future, but she wasn’t exactly sure how, yet, though she had some ideas.

  After she finished class on Friday, she hurried to the B&B to pick up the two aprons she’d already made of natural linen and had attached wide rows of Binche lace to them. She was sure one of the lace shops just off the Markt would most likely be interested in buying them. She’d been feeling them out, talking to the proprietors and had decided which one she’d go to first.

  It was an exciting prospect to sell her first hand-made lace-bordered aprons. She had attached her own labels to them - em
broidered “Mandy Malone” on a two-inch piece of ribbon and had hand-sewn the labels inside the waistbands where the ties began.

  Not only was Mandy her mother’s favorite name for her, Mandy Malone was a name in one of the romance novels she’d read a dozen times back in Nevada as she sat day after day waiting for Arlie to come back home. She had fallen in love with the name back then, in fact she’d dreamed of disappearing like Arlie and changing her name to Mandy Malone.

  She never dreamed that that would be exactly what she would be doing more or less - that she’d be in Belgium, a foreign country, all by herself, finding her own way and learning how to make a living doing what she loved. And now she was about to use the name she had picked out months before.

  There were moments she thanked Arlie for disappearing. If he hadn’t, she’d still be living a lonely, drab existence in the trailer in the desert outside of Las Vegas. She wondered how she could have accepted living that way day after day, year after year.

  But now, aprons would be a start for her; she was thinking of making skirts and blouses and dresses, using the strips of lace she would create, combining them with silks and other fabrics. She’d already begun to accumulate pieces of material she felt would be perfect, and even found inexpensive items of clothing she could cut up and use as fabric. Years of making clothing out of scraps was surely an asset. She smiled as she thought of her mother and how proud she would be of her.

  After she sold the two aprons to the lace shop and took an order for six more, she hurried to the Craenenburg to tell Antoine the great news.

  Chapter 27

  In Bruges the first place Rachel headed after she checked into a small hotel near Markt square was the Craenenburg. This was her third jaunt to Bruges and she always found the Craenenburg a delightful place to sit and watch people on the square.

  The patio was already crowded, so she went inside the restaurant and sat at a table on the far wall. There was a young blond sitting at the neighboring table on the mutual bench that stretched along the wall, its back curving up at head height. The girl was drinking champagne and smiling.

  “Hello, that looks good. I think I’ll have one of those myself,” Rachel said to the girl as she made herself comfortable on the bench.

  “Oh, you’re American?”

  “Yes I am. And you are too?”

  “I’m an Arkansas transplant to Nevada and California,” Amanda answered.

  “I’m originally from California, but live in Cornwall now. In England.”

  Antoine arrived at the table to take Rachel’s order. “Ah, I see you two have met. May I get you something to drink?”

  “I’ll have champagne, too.”

  He sped off to open a fresh bottle.

  “So, my name is Rachel. Yours?”

  “Amanda or Mandy. Whatever you want to call me.”

  “Which do you prefer?”

  “I think I prefer Mandy. I think I’ll change my name to Mandy Malone in fact.” She grinned at the prospect of the name change. “Do you have to do anything legal to change your name like that? Do you know?”

  “Well, if it’s not to defraud the government, like skip out on taxes or whatever, I don’t think so. Writers use pseudonyms all the time. They still pay their taxes under their real names, though. Why do you want to change it?”

  “Here you go, champagne for the ladies!” Antoine poured the glass and topped off Amanda’s. “Anything else I can get for you?”

  “Not at the moment. This is perfect, thank you,” Rachel answered.

  He squeezed Amanda’s shoulder. “Anything more for you, luv?”

  “Nothing, I’m fine.”

  Rachel picked up on the familiarity between the two young people. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “No, no. Just a friend. A good friend,” she blushed. “Maybe more than a friend, but that’s all. We’re not, you know, we’re not intimate or anything. Actually, I’m married, but my husband disappeared on me over a year and a half ago. No one knows where he is. He’s probably dead in the Nevada desert somewhere. At least that’s what my sister thinks.”

  “What happened?” Rachel’s interest was piqued.

  “Oh, he just up and disappeared on Christmas Day, year before last. We lived outside of Las Vegas and he abandoned me in our trailer with no car and no money. My sister came and got me and took me home with her to live in California. She got me a waitress job there, in Bakersfield.”

  “Oh my gosh! I was born and raised in Bakersfield. Small world. So where were you working?”

  “KC’s Steakhouse. You know where it is?”

  Rachel’s eyes lit up, “Of course I do. Been there many times. But I imagine it’s changed quite a bit since then. Anyway, sorry I interrupted. Please go on.”

  “Well, I’d never worked before. So when I got that job with KC’s, I saved my money to come here. So here I am. And now I want to live here, don’t want to go back home. What brings you to Bruges?”

  Rachel leaned back and looked at Amanda with renewed curiosity. “Well, the story isn’t as dramatic as yours, that’s for sure. I’m just here to work on a novel that I’m writing.”

  “You’re a writer? My gosh, I’ve never met a writer. Wait till I tell Paula. She’s my sister.”

  “So you didn’t say why you want to change your name.”

  “Well, I want to open up a boutique. I’m learning how to make lace, and I design clothing. So I’ve named my shop Mandy Malone Designs. That is on my labels. I got the name from a romance novel. My mother called me Mandy, so I figured that would work. I’d still have my own first name. But my real name is Amanda Jefferies, my maiden name was Conroy. I like Mandy Malone. What do you think?”

  “Mandy Malone is a great name for a label. So when are you going to do this, open a shop?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’ve got to do something pretty soon, I’m running out of money. I’m making aprons to sell to the lace shops. Sold six of them today. That’s why I’m celebrating.”

  Rachel lifted her glass. “Congratulations!”

  The two days came and went too fast for Rachel, but she felt she had to get back to Brussels and back to work on her book. The friendship between she and Amanda appeared to have the makings of a lasting one. She was already fond of the girl.

  So before she left Bruges she invited Amanda to come to Brussels and spend a few days with her at the Metropole Hotel, told her about all the shops in the Old Town area surrounding the Grand Place, and told her it was a fashion Mecca for new designers. Amanda was eager to see it all, said she’d let her know when she could come.

  Chapter 28

  September was an unusually warm month in Belgium. Although from May to September warm weather prevailed, it was warmer than it had been the past few years. Everyone was attributing it to global warming. It was being said that the hot would be hotter and the cold would be colder in days ahead. The predictions of this happening later was happening sooner.

  Amanda had moved into a small flat in Antoine’s building after living longer than she had planned at the B&B. The van Nevels had given her a special rate, but it still wasn’t as inexpensive as a flat and wasn’t as close to the Markt area, and of course not as large. Plus, now she had her own kitchen.

  She was a floor above Antoine and had a view of the street below. The apartments facing Markt square were larger and more expensive and the tenants in those had been there for years, with no desire to move elsewhere. They would have to die before those flats would be available.

  At first Amanda thought it might be a bit awkward to live so close to Antoine and the girls, but it turned out to be perfect. They did spend a lot of time together, and she took care of the girls when the grandmother needed to run errands or needed a day off.

  Amanda had set up a sewing room in one of her three rooms and she worked day and night putting together a collection of clothing. She’d made up her mind. She was going to open Mandy Malone’s. She didn’t know how she would handle the legalities of
it all yet, or where the shop would be, but she still had time to figure it all out. She’d find a way, she knew she would.

  In the meantime, she needed to increase the income she was bringing in, the funding from her brother-in-law was running low and she didn’t want to have to ask anyone for help. Which reminded her, she needed to call Paula.

  She dialed and Paula answered.

  “Hi, Paula. Whacha doin’?” Amanda greeted as she sat on the sofa.

  “Oh, baby, it is so good to hear your voice. How are you doing in your new apartment?”

  “I love it. And I’m sewing up a storm. You should see all the stuff I’ve made, the lace and all.”

  “I bet it’s pretty. I sure would like to see you, hon. So what is your plan?” Paula asked. “I think you have to come back to the U.S. in six months, you know. I don’t think you can’t stay there over six months without a visa.”

  “I’m going to check that out next week,” Amanda said. “And if I have to come back for a visit, I will. That would be in January, wouldn’t it? Six months since I came here?”

  “That’s about right. So have you talked to Richard this week?”

  “He’s called a couple of times and left messages. We keep missing each other.”

  “You know he calls here all the time and comes over every time he’s in town. The guy really loves you, Amanda. He really does.”

  Amanda sighed. “But I’m not sure how I feel about him, Paula. And he probably wouldn’t let me do what I’m doing if I came back and married him. I don’t want to give this up. It’d be like living with Arlie again. And then there’s Arlie. We’re still married, so I can’t get married to Richard anyway.”

  “I’m sure Richard would take care of all that. He’d make it right. And I don’t think being married to him would be like being married to Arlie. You don’t really think that, do you?”