Girl in the Dark (5 page)

My mother still lived in the house in which I was born, quite a nice bungalow with a garden in a suburb of Amsterdam. My father had passed away ten years earlier, shortly after he'd retired. He had been looking forward to all the traveling he and my mother were going to do, the hours he was going to spend gardening, and the books he was going to read. He wasn't even halfway through
Anna Karenina
when he collapsed. Heart attack. Two days later he was dead.

My mother liked me to stay in her house when she was away on vacation. Since I'd have to stay home with Aaron for a few days anyway, and the weather happened to be good, I didn't mind this time. All I had at home was a six-by-ten-foot roof terrace. Not enough to keep a young child occupied. In my mother's garden there was room for a kiddie pool, in which Aaron could splash to his heart's content with his plastic whale collection while I tried to work under a parasol.

The garden was great, but the house made me nuts. My mother was terribly finicky about her things. She made me throw a big quilt over the sofa when Aaron was there. “I only buy the very best quality,” she said. “As long as you take good care of it, it'll
last you forever.” Every item, therefore, had its own maintenance routine. There was a special soap for the kitchen floor, wax for the wooden dining table, cleaning product for the Swarovski collection, polish for the stainless steel stove, special conditioner for the sofa and chairs; the cleaning arsenal took up the entire hall closet. My mother had left five pages of instructions for me so that her precious things would receive the attention they deserved.

When the weather was nice, the garden outweighed all the trouble. Besides, Aaron loved the aquarium—the ridiculously outsize aquarium that had appeared in the bungalow's living room simply out of nowhere one day a few years ago. Aaron hadn't been born yet. I had just finished my studies and felt the world was my oyster.

“I didn't know you liked fish,” I'd said to my mother.

“There's a lot you don't know,” she'd answered.

And this wasn't even your ordinary aquarium; it was a saltwater setup with enough bells and whistles to rival the equipment in an intensive care unit. The fragile ecosystem of corals, tropical fish, and sea anemones had to be kept at a constant temperature, not to mention the need to control the salinity, the water's pH, the weekly water change, the special vitamins that had to be administered. My mother had a man come in, naturally, to do the lion's share of the work.

“What's wrong with a nice goldfish in a pretty bowl?” I'd asked.

“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, anticipat
ing 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.”