Girl in the Dark Read online

“Oh, stop.”

  “Or a dog? One of those cute little dachshunds.”

  “Sure, and all the fussing and coddling that goes with it? To this day, I can’t believe it when I hear adults yelling ‘Good job, little poopie!’ at their dog as it takes a shit in the middle of the street in broad daylight. Not for me, thank you very much.”

  I couldn’t decide if the aquarium suited my mother. It seemed unnecessarily complicated, but so was the Swarovski collection, which had to be kept gleaming, and the wooden kitchen counter that needed to be oiled every month.

  After Aaron was born I began to see the plus side of the colossal fish tank. Whenever Aaron wouldn’t stop crying, which happened a lot, I’d drive to my mother’s house and park him in front of the aquarium in his infant seat. It seemed to calm him down. The aquarium was his favorite “game”; he loved it even more than Tickle Me Elmo or his Playmobil airplane. He could sit for hours watching the waving coral and brightly colored fish.

  For his third birthday, my mother had given him a saltwater fish encyclopedia. Ever since then I’d had to read that book to him every night. Aaron could point to any fish and declare with a delighted expression on his face: “Look, a sailfish blenny.” Or: “Doctorfish!”

  Sitting in my mother’s backyard, I worked on Van Benschop’s case. I’d been shocked by “Pissing Peter’s” hard-core images. I had scanned the DVDs and then tried to forget them as quickly as I could. Especially since it was clear from the film that the “young woman” was at first hysterical and later completely apathetic. But a contract is a contract, even if Van Benschop didn’t seem able to produce it. I did my best to concentrate on creating sound and fluent legalese.

  I was just writing the conclusion, in which I invited the plaintiff’s attorney to come in for a settlement discussion, when I heard Aaron calling me.

  “Mommy! Mommy!”

  I realized I had stopped watching him and that he must have gone inside. His voice sounded distressed. I ran inside, anticipating a shattered display cabinet or an enormous stain on the carpet that no cleaning product in the hall closet could ever remove. I found Aaron sitting in front of the aquarium. Where else?

  “What’s the matter, love?”

  “Kee-Kon is dead. Kee-Kon is deh-he-d.”

  King Kong was Aaron’s favorite fish. A large, dark blue doctorfish with a bright yellow tail. It was floating at the surface on its side, its mouth hanging open, as if it were still trying to get one last gasp of oxygen.

  A dead fish was a disaster. It meant the entire tank would have to be tested and cleaned. It had happened a month ago. It was the only time I’d ever heard my mother complain about the aquarium.

  “Deh-he-e-ad,” Aaron wailed again.

  “I know, darling. That’s so sad.”

  “I wanna hold Kee-Kon.”

  “No, we’re not going to do that.” I decided I’d better call the aquarium guy, who went by the name Maurice. Maurice was an ace seaquarian, as he termed his profession. I’d met him on two occasions while visiting my mother. He wasn’t exactly the chummy type, but he’d surely know what to do. I found his number written down in waterproof marker on a piece of tape affixed to the top of the aquarium.

  Maurice’s voice mail picked up. I tried calling my mother but couldn’t reach her, either. Every year she and her friend Lina tootled off to some Slovenian health resort, where she had her bowels cleansed, her blackheads squeezed, and her eyebrows plucked, and was expected to swim one kilometer a day. I pictured a stern Eastern European lifeguard standing at the edge of a swimming pool with a pole in her hand, shouting at my mother to keep swimming. Even though my mother hated the spa, she went back every year.

  It appeared I’d have to figure it out myself. I lifted the aquarium’s heavy lid and used a net to scoop King Kong out of the water. It was looking a bit mottled, its color rather more faded than the deep blue it had been when I’d last seen it swimming around.

  “I wanna!” yelled Aaron. “I wanna hold him!”

  “Sweetie, fish aren’t supposed to be held. Especially not when they’re dead.”

  I carried King Kong into the kitchen, wrapped it in some paper towels decorated with little kittens, and stowed it in the fridge. My mother had sent the last fish that died, Hannibal, to the veterinary department at Utrecht University. I couldn’t remember if it had produced any results, but no doubt King Kong, too, would have to be autopsied.

  “See him! I wanna see him!”

  “He’s in the fridge, Aaron,” I said. “Let’s go do a puzzle, okay?”

  “I want Kee-Kon!”

  “Remember that shark puzzle? The one with the big scary shark with its mouth wide open so you can see all its teeth?”

  “Kee-Kon.” But luckily he accepted my hand and walked with me into the living room.

  Attention. I had to give him more attention. One of the day care mothers had once said to me that the reason I had problems with him was because I was trying to do too many things at once. “If you just accept the fact that you can’t do anything else except play with him, not even read the newspaper, nothing, you’ll see that it gets a lot easier.” But who in the world had time for that? Besides, the same woman had also told me that when her son had a temper tantrum she parked him under a cold shower. She said it as if she was proud of it.

  Still, I decided to follow her advice. For the next two hours. Both Van Benschop’s legal case and the dead fish in the refrigerator could wait.

  Aaron and I were just putting together the shark puzzle for the third time—seventy-five pieces that had to be arranged in a special sequence according to Aaron’s directions, when the phone rang.

  “Hey. I’m on a camping trip,” a male voice said without further introduction. I assumed it must be Maurice.

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “What should I do?”

  “What should you do? Don’t ask me. I told your mother I’d be away this week. Call an aquarium dealer.”

  “Can you recommend one?”

  “Call Sea Water World Van de Akker, in Amersfoort. That’s where your mother’s aquarium came from.”

  Mr. Van de Akker turned out to be most helpful. He immediately offered to come over after he closed the shop.

  “You’ll come all the way from Amersfoort?”

  “Sea aquaria are serious business. Can you make sure to have the logbook ready at hand?”

  “Logbook?”

  “If it’s still being kept, that is.”

  “I’ll look for it.”

  I tried my mother again, this time to ask her how to find the logbook. This time she did answer. After she’d said hello, I heard a loud crackling noise.

  “Mother?” I tried. “Can you hear me? Could you please tell me where I can find the logbook for the aquarium?”

  I heard my mother saying something, but it was totally inaudible.

  “Mother?”

  There was a loud buzz, and then the call was lost. I tried her again but got her voice mail.

  I’d have to find the logbook myself.

  Apart from her phobia regarding permanent stains, cracks, dents, and scratches, my mother hated it if you touched her things. As far back as I could remember, she had a room in her house designated as her study, although I could never work out what exactly it was that she was studying, and the room was always under lock and key. Not even my father was allowed inside.

  Once, when I was a kid, in an unguarded moment—I think my mother was in the bathroom—I stuck my head around the door of her Fort Knox. What I’d seen had been disappointing. A desk, a chair, and an enormous armoire. The armoire was crammed with big file boxes. I stepped inside and wondered about their content. I tried to picture my mother as the head of an international crime syndicate, though it was hard to reconcile that with her immaculate perm and her shiny polished shoes. When my mother had caught me in there, she’d been livid. She’d even given me a spanking.

  “What are you hiding in that room? What’s so terrible about the
child wanting to peek inside?” my father asked her. It was one of the only times I remember him actually arguing with my mother.

  “You have your office. Iris has her school. Is it so much to ask, for me to want a place of my own, too?” She retreated to her room and we heard her lock the door.

  “Let her go,” my father said to me. “We’ll break in at night sometime, while she’s asleep.” But of course we never did.

  From that day on I kept a watchful eye on my mother, but I never caught her red-handed. I had resigned myself to the idea that the time she spent in that room was for bookkeeping or embroidery. If I wanted an exciting life, I’d have to make one for myself.

  The logical place for anything to do with the aquarium would be somewhere in its own vicinity, it seemed to me. I opened the cupboard that held the fish food and pH-testing strips, as well as the replacement filters, the trace minerals, and the brush for cleaning algae. No logbook. I did find the manual for the protein skimmer. On the cover, in neat handwriting, it was marked R. Boelens.

  Boelens was my mother’s maiden name. But her first name was Agatha and her middle name Antonia. A. A. Boelens. Not R. Boelens. My grandfather’s and grandmother’s names were Truus and Jan, but they had passed away a long time ago.

  “No logbook,” I said to Aaron. Not that he understood what I meant. “Let’s have a look in the bookcase? And in the hall closet? Or, what do you think of looking in the kitchen cabinets? And then, if we can’t find it, you know what we’ll do?” I picked Aaron up and pressed my nose to his. “Then we’ll go have a look in Grandma’s secret room. What do you think of that?”

  “Kee-Kon. I wanna see Kee-Kon.”

  “Maybe we’ll find stuff that’s even more exciting than a dead fish.”

  I found the logbook in the back of a drawer under the aquarium. This, too, was marked with the name R. Boelens, in the same handwriting. I leafed through it quickly. The logbook had been kept since 1990. For thirteen years R. Boelens had kept meticulous track of everything to do with the aquarium. What fish had been purchased, what fish had died, the water’s salt content, the temperature. But halfway through 2003 the handwriting changed. Wasn’t that the year the aquarium had appeared in my mother’s house? Even in the new handwriting, the acquisition of fish and their demise continued to be calmly recorded, as were the water test and temperature notations. The handwriting was a bit sloppier, however.

  I had never heard of an R. Boelens. I thought he might be an uncle who had gone into a nursing home. Or perhaps my mother had taken over the aquarium from someone with the same last name. But in any case, it was weird.

  It was six thirty—I was just feeding Aaron his dinner of mashed potatoes and pureed green beans—when Mr. Van de Akker arrived.

  “Ah, lovely,” he said in a reverential voice, as if he were in church. “Truly one of the country’s most impressive sea aquaria in private hands. Tsk. I recall that it won the Netherlands Society of Seawater Aquarians’ first prize in 2001. I have to say, the aquarium was stunning back then. But it still is pretty spectacular.”

  “Wasn’t it purchased at your store?”

  “Yes,” he said proudly. “He was one of my most loyal customers back then. You look like him. But your son even more so.”

  “Kee-Kon,” said Aaron, who had toddled up behind me. “Kee-Kon deaaaad.”

  “Like who? R. Boelens?”

  “Of course.” Van de Akker stared off into space. “Terrible, what happened. Truly terrible.” He took a step closer to the tank and peered at one of the sea anemones. “May I have the logbook, please?”

  I handed him the notebook with the cardboard cover. Of course I was dying to ask him what, exactly, had happened, but it didn’t seem like the right moment.

  Van de Akker scrutinized the last page. “The numbers are good; I can see that some fresh live rock was added six weeks ago. Another of our little friends died not long after. That could mean the water was contaminated. But in that case it should have affected the other fish, too.”

  He took out a thermometer, or something that looked like one, and lowered it into the water. He read out the results. “The water’s salt content is fine. So that’s not it, either.”

  “Would you like to see King Kong?”

  “See Kee-Kon,” Aaron emphasized.

  “Yes, you can see King Kong, too. Once you’ve eaten your dinner. So go sit down and finish it.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “No!”

  I grabbed him by the arm and lifted him into his chair. “First you eat, then you can see King Kong.” I said it in a calm and friendly voice, the way a good mother should.

  The telephone rang. I picked it up but could hear nothing but crackling on the other end. It had to be my mother. “Hello?” I said a few times. The reply was a high-pitched tone. I put the receiver back on the cradle.

  In the meantime Aaron had climbed out of his chair and walked back to the aquarium. “No!” I said sternly. “Finish your dinner first.” I picked him up and firmly put him back in his chair.

  Aaron started bawling. I immediately regretted not letting him have his way. But I had to be consistent. Once you’ve laid down the law, it’s important to stick with it. Every book on child-rearing tells you the same thing.

  “Stay in your chair. Do you hear me? You stay there until your plate is empty.” I could hardly hear myself speak over Aaron’s yammering. I wished I had a remote control to switch it off.

  I walked to the fridge and took out the paper towel bundle containing King Kong.

  “Here you are,” I said to Mr. Van de Akker, loud enough to be heard over the racket Aaron was making.

  He put on a pair of reading glasses and examined the fish.

  “Sorry about the noise.”

  “No worries,” he said, at an equally amplified volume. But I noticed his neck was starting to show red patches. He didn’t seem the type who could tolerate much noise. He surely hadn’t chosen to work with fish for nothing.

  The telephone rang again, adding to the pandemonium. I picked up the receiver and immediately hung up. Aaron was howling even louder. I went up to him and tried to say in as dignified and stern a voice as possible, although I really wanted to scream, “You really must stop. If you don’t stop, I’ll make you stay in your room and then you’ll never get to see King Kong again. Do you hear me? Stop it!”

  He just stared at me, glassy-eyed, and went on shrieking. Like a machine.

  I grabbed his arm—a bit roughly, I have to admit. “Stop it! For God’s sake, stop it!”

  His eyes still had the same glazed look, without a trace of fear or anything even resembling awe. That made me even more furious.

  “Okay, then. You’re going to your bedroom!” I lifted him out of his chair. He began flailing his arms around wildly. First he swept his plate of food onto the floor, and then he started hitting and kicking me.

  “Sorry!” I yelled at Van de Akker. “I’ll just be a minute!”

  Aaron kicked my hips black and blue and bit into my right shoulder. But I wouldn’t let go. I threw him into his room and slammed the door shut. Unfortunately my mother hadn’t provided this door with a key, or I’d have locked him in. I heard him throwing stuff around.

  I opened the door. “Enough! Stop it! Don’t touch anything!” We had come to the point where I was no longer able to control myself. I stood, yelling at my child hysterically, even with Mr. Van de Akker in the next room.

  I slammed the door shut again, pressed my hands to my temples, and took a deep breath. I was being consistent, for Chrissakes. And it still wasn’t working. Why didn’t it work for me? What was I doing wrong? And then I thought the thought no mother was ever supposed to have: What if Aaron simply didn’t exist? What if I had just gone home the night he was conceived, what if I had had that abortion anyway, what if another sperm had been just a little bit quicker and I had had an easy child?

  On the other side of the door I could hear Aaron raging o
n unabated, in a frenzy of paper-ripping, head-banging, and shrieking. As if there was a wild baboon in that room. Too late, I said to myself. I squared my shoulders and walked back into the living room.

  “Well,” I said to Van de Akker, who was kind enough to pretend nothing was the matter. We could still hear Aaron howling, but were able to conduct a conversation at a normal volume. I forced myself not to burst into tears of fury and humiliation and asked, “Were you able to discover anything?”

  “I’m not completely sure. It could be due to a bacterial infection. If you have no objection, I’d like to take a sample of the water and send this one”—he nodded at King Kong—“to the lab for examination.”

  “Fine,” I said. “That sounds like an excellent idea.”

  The shrieking stopped abruptly, as if someone had finally found the off switch. I found myself able to breathe again.

  “Okay, then.”

  “About R. Boelens,” I said. “Who is that, and what happened to him?”

  “Don’t you know?” Van de Akker took off his glasses and peered at me quizzically.

  I shook my head.

  He hesitated. “I don’t think I’m the right person to tell you. I, ah . . .”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said firmly. “I can’t talk about it.”

  “I don’t understand. The guy is clearly related to us. My son looks like him, you just told me.”

  “I suggest that you discuss this with your mother.” He ran a hand through his hair nervously. “As far as the aquarium goes, it’s probably best to replace twenty-five percent of the water and filter the rest of the contents a few times. I’ll call you as soon as I have the test results.” He suddenly seemed to be in a hurry to leave.

  “Is R. Boelens dead?” I tried one last time.

  Van de Akker did not reply.

  Aaron’s bedroom was a battlefield. He was lying down in a corner with his thumb in his mouth. He looked very vulnerable. Just minutes ago I could have murdered him, but at that moment I felt nothing but that treacherous maternal love.

  “Hey.” I stretched out next to him and pulled him close. “What was that all about, little man?”