‘Of course, chow mein 35 with sole and oyster sauce.’
After the waitress has walked away with the menus, Hans leans back, grinning.
‘See, you only have to ask.’
Her father has been playing with the beer mats all this time, he’s built a house with them. The young waitress approaches with the drinks and a basket of prawn crackers. Her father quickly spreads the beer mats out across the table. The waitress silently places the drinks on them.
‘Lovely, thank you,’ Miriam says, still smiling. The girl nods and walks away.
Then Coco leans back too, looks at the spotless pink tablecloth, and again there’s that fresh sense of delight she’s been feeling since Monday morning. This time it’s not only the dinner to come but the conversation. It is as though her mother, the topic of conversation, is lying there barely touched in the middle of the clean pink tablecloth. Elisabeth de Wit—wonderful conversation material even without an approaching demise—will remain in this company’s thoughts all evening. The glasses are filled, the knives sharpened. Coco smiles and gazes ahead contentedly, looking forward to a predictable discussion, but one which will remain endlessly entertaining. Whatever course the story takes—a story in which she herself has a role to play—she will be the youngest, she will be the child, she will be innocence. Yes, this is what satisfaction feels like.
Before the first basket of prawn crackers is empty, they wonder, as they always do when Elisabeth is the topic of conversation, whether it’s autism or, at the very least, Asperger’s? It’s an old question, they’ve been there many times.
‘But there’s never been a diagnosis, has there?’ Hans asks.
‘It’s never caused her any trouble,’ her father says, ‘and Coco only went there one day a week and that was all right, so, well…’
‘There was never any discussion,’ Miriam begins, ‘about where Coco would live. Otherwise we would have had to mention it, of course.’
‘You did talk to her?’
‘I didn’t. Wilbert did, of course.’
‘It still seems odd to me,’ Coco says, ‘suddenly getting a five-year-old.’
‘I always said to Wilbert: Coco is welcome. Your daughter comes first.’
‘She always said that.’
‘It’s still a bit odd.’
‘Perhaps Elisabeth felt it was better too,’ Miriam says. ‘I don’t want to pass judgement. But it was quite a surprise that she agreed so readily. I still remember Wilbert going round to suggest that Coco should live with us. I was at the shop. I thought: this is going to be a nightmare. But no.’
‘No,’ Coco says, ‘I meant odd to suddenly get a kid.’
‘Oh, that. No. No, I didn’t find it odd at all.’
‘It’s not something you can just shrug off, you know,’ Hans says.
‘I’d known her for a long time of course. Wilbert would bring her to the shop if things got to be too much for Elisabeth, and I’d look after her.’
‘What would happen—when things got to be too much for Elisabeth?’ Hans asks.
‘Oh, a lot…’
‘Handy,’ Coco says, ‘having Miriam babysit.’
‘I was happy to.’
‘Staying home alone all the time with a toddler is quite dreadful, they say.’
‘She was working too,’ her father says.
‘Yes, part time.’
‘Why do you always stick up for your mother?’ Hans asks.
‘I don’t.’
‘Her lack of empathy may be a medical condition,’ Hans says, ‘but she’s an adult who is aware of that condition and should at least try to do something…’
‘No!’ Coco shouts too loudly. ‘That’s not right! Her trying is exactly what makes it so terrible! When she’d suddenly phone, oh Christ, that was terrible. Thought she should speak to me.’
Silence descends. Miriam and her father look at each other.
‘What?’ Coco asks.
‘We thought it was a good idea for her to phone you from time to time,’ Miriam says.
‘Was that your idea?’
‘Our idea.’
‘Yes,’ her father says, ‘Miriam thought it was a good idea.’
‘You thought it was a good idea?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘We can’t blame your mother for doing her best,’ Miriam says.
The young waitress lights the plate warmers and Coco says to her father, ‘You married her.’
‘That was a long time ago.’
‘Was she attractive?’ Hans asks.
Miriam says, ‘She’s still an attractive woman.’
‘She’s…’ her father says, ‘also a very easy woman in a certain way.’
‘What kind of a way?’ Coco asks.
‘She doesn’t expect much.’
‘Bah,’ Miriam says, ‘cancer.’
‘Are you going to call her?’ Coco asks.
‘Me?’ her father asks.
‘Yes,’ says Miriam, ‘you have to say something.’
The food is served by the young woman and the older woman. It doesn’t fit on the table.
‘We’ll bring over another little table,’ the older waitress says.
‘Chinese is always too much,’ Hans says.
‘I think it’s quite serious,’ Coco says. ‘She was carrying a whole bag of medication.’
‘You have to call her,’ Miriam looks at her father. Her father is filling his plate. The sole ends up on the extra table.
‘Enjoy your food,’ only the older waitress says.
‘She doesn’t have anyone, of course,’ Miriam says. She loads up Coco’s plate before starting on her own.
‘I could go and live with her,’ Coco says, joking, ‘then I’d be nice and close to the university.’
‘Coco,’ Hans says, ‘you aren’t responsible for her happiness.’
Coco is about to take a bite but lets the spoonful of rice and satay hover in mid-air. She doesn’t like Hans’s tone and she doesn’t want to have to say that she was joking.
She says it again, all serious now, ‘I could go and live with her. It’s a big house.’
‘Coco,’ Miriam says, ‘your mother is a grown woman.’ She talks loudly.
‘You don’t owe her anything,’ her father says, pointing his finger at her.
‘Listen to them,’ Hans says gently. Her father and stepmother lean forward, towards her. Hans lays a hand on her leg. Coco is surprised by her family’s bigotry. Is this her doing? She does love badmouthing her mother, but there are limits. She doesn’t think of her mother when she speaks, all she knows is that she doesn’t want to be one of these people.
‘She’s my mother,’ she says calmly, ‘and she’s dying.’
‘She’s your mother?!’ her father cries, ‘Miriam bloody brought you up more than she did!’
‘Wilbert,’ Miriam says, he gets a hand on his thigh too.
‘No one asked Miriam to bring me up,’ Coco says. ‘It was her own idea.’ There’s silence. Only her father eats.
‘Your mother,’ he says with his mouth full, ‘your mother…’
‘Wilbert,’ Miriam says.
‘Your mother shut you up, in your bedroom. When you were two. Two.’ He sticks two fingers in the air and looks at her. Coco can hardly hear what he is saying, all she sees is his angry glare.
‘You say that like it was my fault.’
‘Do you hear what I’m saying?’
‘Wilbert,’ Miriam says, ‘this isn’t appropriate.’
‘You’re lying,’ Coco says.
‘I’m not lying.’
‘Where were you then? How do you know?’
‘When I came home you were screaming in your bedroom.’
‘So you weren’t there, you’ve no idea what happened when you were out.’
‘Bloody hell, Coco, she locked you up. Two years old. She just locked you up in your bedroom.’
‘Didn’t you know?’ Hans is almost whispering. She crosses her legs
so that his hand slides off her lap.
‘What happened next?’ Coco asks, ‘when you found me screaming in my bedroom? What did you do?’
‘I thought she was over-exhausted. I stayed home for a few days.’
‘You stayed home for a few days.’
‘I closed up the shop, yes.’
‘A week?’ Coco asks.
‘A few days,’ her father says.
‘Four?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Three?’
‘Or two.’
‘Or just one day?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Just one day?’
‘You can’t shut shop for a week, Coco, you can’t.’
‘If you stay home for a whole day,’ Coco says, ‘how much turnover do you sacrifice?’
‘Well, what would it have been at the time? Business was going well then, a day closed, that would have mounted up, you know.’
‘If business isn’t going well, is a day of being closed all right?’
‘Then you can’t afford that, a day closed.’
‘Can’t afford a day closed.’
‘No, actually, you can’t.’
‘I’m going to live with her.’
‘Coco, please,’ Hans says, loud now, ‘you’re acting like a teenager.’
‘You’re only saying that to bug us,’ her father cries.
‘Darling,’ Miriam says in much too high a voice, ‘have you talked to anyone about this?’ She looks at Hans.
‘She’s talking rubbish,’ Hans says.
‘Bloody hell,’ Coco says, she shunts her chair back.
‘We’re only worried,’ Miriam says.
‘Why do people who say they want to look after you shout at you?’ Coco asks.
They have some good replies to this, which take a long time to explain. Coco doesn’t know what is worse—people talking too loudly or people talking too long.
Coco stands in the sitting room next to the dresser, the bedroom door behind her. He is sitting in his leather armchair, a glass of whisky in his hand, looking at her. She’s wearing just a tight white T-shirt now and a new pair of pink panties. The material is shiny at the front, transparent at the back. She turns away from him slightly, buttocks towards him and waits for him to make a sound, a sigh, a groan. Nothing. She turns back. He’s not moving. It’s like throwing a stone into the water without any ripples forming. Up until now it has been simple. Just be young and pretty and take something off and he’d follow, take over, and she’d utter small cries of astonishment. Now he is massive, he has become one with the chair he is sitting in and she is an uneasy pink pig. Pig’s arse.
On the way home on the bike, she’d said she didn’t want to talk about her mother for a while.
She had tried to sound sweet when she’d said, ‘Just let it drop for a while, will you?’
She arches her back. Buttocks out. Her stomach has got too fat for this pose.
‘Are you sure you don’t want a drink?’ he asks. He’d already asked earlier. ‘Just the one?’
She has stopped. It happened gradually. She simply drank less every day, at the beginning imperceptibly, nothing to worry about, but at a certain point she got down to a single glass a day at the most, and then that began to bother her too and she dropped the last glass.
‘It doesn’t agree with me, alcohol,’ Coco says, ‘you know that.’ He drinks too much. Every day he opens a new bottle of wine, but she’s never seen him drunk. He doesn’t change when he drinks. She turns away from him slightly again, so that he can see her buttocks through the transparent fabric.
‘Are you going to bed?’ he asks. She has been sleeping a lot over recent months. The days are getting ever shorter, sometimes the day ends at nine o’clock already. She manages to send herself to sleep earlier every evening, like a skilled monk who can speed up and slow down his heartbeat. She rotates some more.
‘Go and sleep,’ he says. She’s cold, her nipples are hard. She turns towards him. He looks into his glass again.
‘I was thirteen the first time I got drunk,’ she says. ‘At the school disco.’ She hears how childish the words ‘school disco’ sound and sees that that’s is the only thing Hans has heard—he doesn’t have a clue about the darkness behind it. ‘I couldn’t stop,’ she says, ‘I didn’t want to stop… I could do anything. I could think.’
He smiles. ‘Get to bed, will you?’
‘Mr. Polderman, my French teacher, took me home because I was too drunk to cycle. In his car… it was nice in that car. I could touch everybody.’
‘Touch?’
‘Do you understand?’
‘No.’
‘I wasn’t alone. I was … I was Mr. Polderman as well. Do you understand?’
‘I think so.’
‘Have you ever been drunk?’
‘I know exactly when to stop,’ he says, and it sounds like something he is proud of.
‘My knickers are transparent,’ Coco says.
‘I can see that,’ Hans says.
‘Only from behind.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Look.’
‘Yes.’
‘They pucker up strangely at the back,’ Hans says.
‘They’re supposed to.’ She bends over slightly and uses both hands to pull the fabric tight across her buttocks.
‘Look, that seam in the middle which is so puckered, it’s intentional. I’m not quite sure what the thinking was, though.’
‘Funny.’
‘Weren’t even that cheap.’
#
Elisabeth strokes the table. The old wood is scratched, there are dark patches where grease has soaked in, but the surface is clean. Elisabeth’s eyes are damp, she is moved by the table top that she has just cleaned thoroughly and which is now so smooth, almost soft, like skin. The surface feels like a whole even though so many layers are visible: the pale wood underneath, the varnish, the spots. She strokes all the different moments in time and thinks about the frames she has gilded: pale wood, red underlayer, gold leaf, patina. The sound of the telephone behind her blends in with the table top, as though it is an object too. She doesn’t move, carries on stroking, strokes the sound, before she … awakes? Yes, she seems to be waking up, but then in a new dream, because as slowly and carefully as she strokes the table, now she stands up, walks without haste towards the dresser, takes the telephone from it, as though she is doing this for the first time in her life.
‘De Wit,’ she says slowly.
‘It’s Coco.’
Her girl sounds light. Young.
‘My girl,’ she says.
‘Mum…’
‘Yes?’
…
‘I’m … coming to live with you.’
…
‘I’m coming to live with you, Mum.’
Elisabeth smiles, as though she’s heard a strange, new word: livewithyouMum. It’s because her daughter’s voice is different from normal. Usually she sounds raspy and a little too slow, now her voice is clearer, and faster.
‘I don’t want you to be alone—now that you’re ill,’ the clear voice says. Elisabeth hears what her daughter says, but what she hears better is a lovely sound that she doesn’t want to drive away.
So now she says, just as sweetly and just as fast, ‘But that’s not at all necessary, thank you very much. It’s really very kind of you, but not necessary. Is there anything else you were calling about?’ In the silence that follows she is afraid that her daughter’s clear voice has gone again.
‘Coco?’
But then her daughter continues, just as sweetly and just as quick, ‘Hans can drop me off tomorrow afternoon … I’ve got a big suitcase here. Be packed in a jiffy.’
‘Tomorrow afternoon?’ Elisabeth asks—tomorrow afternoon is soon, tomorrow afternoon is real—‘Hang on.’ There’s silence. Coco is waiting. Elisabeth has to say something.
‘Hans?’
‘My boyfriend.’
‘I know that.’
‘Yes?’
‘Handy having a boyfriend with a car.’
‘Great,’ her daughter says.
‘No,’ Elisabeth says.
‘What?’
‘It’s not possible.’
‘I want to.’
‘Oh,’ Elisabeth says.
‘I really want to.’
‘Oh,’ Elisabeth says.
‘All right?’ Coco asks.
‘But of course,’ Elisabeth says, because that’s a nice answer. Don’t think about tomorrow.
The stomach ache starts even before they’ve hung up. It’s the stomach ache she hasn’t had for the past twenty-three years. During the first few weeks after Coco was born she had it several times a day. Back then she didn’t know whether it was fear or heartburn. The doctor couldn’t find anything obvious. Her body slowly grew accustomed to it.
She’d come around one.
‘Or do you need to go out?’ Coco had asked. No, she didn’t need to go anywhere.
Elisabeth looks at the table, the phone still in her hand. The table had been so beautiful just now. The table that had revealed everything for a second. Now the wooden top is dirty again, worn. Everything gets broken.
‘Here I am,’ the daughter says. Yes, there she is. On her porch, a large woman with a case, exactly at the time she said she’d come. Elisabeth wants to say ‘yes,’ but she can’t breathe and just nods.
‘Heartburn,’ she says.
‘Here I am then,’ Coco says again. She looks young. She smiles the same way she did as a child. Elisabeth catches a glimpse of Hans’s matt-grey Mercedes driving off. A lovely colour, she’s never seen it on a car before. You need to give them compliments, children.
‘It’s lovely,’ Elisabeth says, ‘that matt-grey.’
Her daughter turns around and watches the car disappear.
She steps aside to let her daughter in. She presses herself into the wall to make herself small for that large daughterly body. The body doesn’t move.
‘Christ,’ Coco says, ‘this makes no sense.’
Elisabeth sighs and smiles.
‘Damn it,’ Coco looks at her feet. Elisabeth is still pressed into the wall.
‘What do you want?’ she asks her daughter.
Coco looks up. ‘I wish it was normal, me standing here.’
‘But it isn’t,’ Elisabeth replies at once, but then she adds, ‘Or is it?’
Craving Page 3
