Girl in the Dark (6 page)

“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 on 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?”

He did not respond, but it was good to feel him close to me, to sniff his deep-caramel smell, and to listen to his breathing. He fell
asleep in fifteen minutes. I decided to let it go. Carefully I lifted him into his bed and stroked his tousled brown head.

“I love you so much,” I whispered, hoping that he'd hear it and know it was the truth. “More than anyone else in the world. You do know that, don't you?”

I cleaned up the remnants of yet another failed meal and searched the hall closet for the appropriate carpet-cleaning product to remove the vegetable stains from the rug. I found one, too. While the smelly foam was doing its work, I pondered the mysterious R. Boelens. I knew just a few things. That he'd purchased the aquarium in 1990 from Van de Akker in Amersfoort. That the aquarium had been consigned to my mother in 2003. That there was something terribly wrong with him. Something that apparently had to be kept hidden, like a spot that won't come out of the carpet and you cover up with a piece of furniture.
Who was R. Boelens?
I stood still outside the door of the study, which was still under lock and key, and wondered if I should try to open it. I knew, of course, that I didn't have any right to poke my nose in my mother's hidden things. I also had to ask myself if it was a good idea to risk a war with the only dependable babysitter I was able to count on. Once upon a time I had managed to wrestle myself free of her. But that freedom was long gone. I needed her, dammit; I needed her a whole lot.

I stood there for a while with my hand on the doorknob. I could try jimmying the lock with a piece of wire. I could call a locksmith and pretend I'd lost my key. Then it suddenly hit me. Hadn't Van de Akker said that the aquarium had won some sort of award from the Netherlands Society of Seawater Aquarians in 2001? I turned on my laptop and Googled it, together with the name Boelens. I got two hits. The first was a list of the society's
members. R. Boelens's name was somewhere halfway down the page. Ray Boelens, name and address. He lived in a small village near Amersfoort. I knew where it was but didn't remember ever having been there.

The second hit was an address list for the Maastricht Soccer boys' youth team. That Boelens was only eleven years old. Him I could cross off.

I said the name out loud a few times. “Ray, Ray Boelens. Ray.” The name sounded familiar, although I had no idea why.

The Hopper Institute was made up of several units, Mo explained. We were on our way from the medical unit, where a doctor had listened to my heart and taken blood for an HIV test, to the orientation unit.

There were two social workers in charge during the daytime; Mo was one of them. Besides hanging out in the ward—Skip-Bo was a favorite game in here, Mo said—you were expected to spend a certain number of hours a day working a job and going to therapy. You were also allowed to work out in a gym and sign up for different activities, such as the theater club or the gardening committee.

At the start, though, I'd be staying mostly in the orientation unit, where I could get used to the place gradually, and where they could observe me and examine me. And then from here they'd figure out which unit I was most suited for. “The institution is divided into units for the various disorders; for instance, people with autism have different needs than people who are psychotic,” said Mo.

The institution's corridors were painted in muted colors. Back at Mason, we often played with color. A shrink would show me a
color and then I'd have to name it. It could be a real, actual name, like brick red, but it could also be a made-up name, like hubbahubba, which turned out to be the only pretend name I could ever think of. If you asked me, the walls in here were like the tail fin of an
Arothon hispidus
.

“You'll be taking your meals in here for now. Usually a sandwich or soup and salad for lunch, hot meals at night. Tuesday is french fry day.”

Mo took out an ID pass and waved it at a gray plastic sensor. There was an electronic whine and then the doors swung open. “Here's the ward,” said Mo. “Think you can handle it?”

The patients, or the
criminally insane,
were sitting at a long table eating their lunch. They ate neatly, with fork and knife, and passed one another the cheese or butter or mustard. All of them looked up when I walked in.

“Boys,” said Mo, “say hello to Ray Boelens, the new resident.”

I looked down at my shoes. Worn, brown lace-ups my mother had bought for me at the start of my prison sentence, eight years ago.

“Ray-nus,” said a familiar voice. “That's our
Raynus
.”

I felt my face getting hot.

“You know each other?” asked Mo.

“Sure do. Raynus with the bunged-up anus,” said my former cellmate Eddie. “I'll tell you all about it sometime, boys.” I heard laughter. It alarmed me.

“Ray.” Mo said my name the right way with extra emphasis. “Would you like to shake hands all around, or rather not?”

“Come on, man, sit down.” A heavyset guy with a silver lightning bolt stud in his ear pulled out the chair next to him.

“That's nice of you, Hank,” said Mo.

I sat down and Mo took an empty chair across from me.

“Brown or white?” The lightning bolt guy waved the bread basket under my nose. It held tasteless, industrial sliced bread. “The crust and the inside, they're almost the same.
Dégoutant,
” Pierre would have said.

“Brown.”

“White bread's so constipating, right, Raynus?” asked Eddie.

“So, Raynus,” said a young man with gaping upturned nostrils you could easily push a marble into if you were so inclined. I hated that my old nickname was already catching on. His eyes bulged so wide that the whites showed all around the irises. “Let me guess: you couldn't keep your paws off the little girls.”

“I believe that isn't one of your strongest points, either, Melvin,” said Mo. “Now, why don't we all let
Ray
here eat in peace?”

I made myself a peanut butter sandwich. Not because I was in the mood for peanut butter, but because the peanut butter was the only thing within reach. I tried to get my knife to spread the stuff smoothly on the bread, but my hand was shaking. They'd all see it and then they'd know I was scared.

“Did you guys watch
America's Next Top Model
last night?” asked a man with a small mustache.

Then to my great relief they all started talking. There were two opposing camps. One side was rooting for Erica, the other for some girl named Beverly. I ate my sandwich and then made myself another one with liverwurst, because that plate had come to rest close to me. The peanut butter jar had flown.

“Which one's your favorite, Ray?” asked Hank, the lightning bolt guy.

“I've never watched that show,” I said. “I'm more interested in Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel.”

“Let me give you a little tip.” Hank leaned his colossal body closer. He stank of stale tobacco and had a fine scar running from
the middle of his top lip to the bottom of his nose. He whispered, “You're for Beverly, get it? That would be best, at least for now.”

After lunch Hank said he was going to a social skills training session, but was first going to have a smoke in the yard. “Wanna come?” he asked.

I looked at Mo questioningly. He said that was fine. “But after that you may want to go back to your suite for a rest.”

The yard was a cheerless gravel patch running parallel to the common room. You could see inside through the glass. Two men were clearing the lunch dishes. In the middle of the yard was a big bucket overflowing with cigarette butts. Hank offered to roll me one, but I declined. The smell of smoke was already horrifying; I couldn't imagine how disgusting actual smoking one would be.

A camera clicked around at us. I looked up and heard it zooming in on us.

“Listen, Ray,” said Hank. Now that I was standing next to him, it was even more noticeable how big the guy was. He could easily make mincemeat of me with a well-aimed fist.

“I've been here awhile, so I'm going to help you a bit with the unwritten rules. You'll be taught the official rules by Mo and the other goons who run this place. But I'll tell you what really counts if you want to have a nice time in here—who to stay away from and what to say and what not to say, what you have to do in order to get a leave, or permission to have visitors, especially a certain
kind
of visit, if you know what I mean. You're lucky you have me to guide you. “

I nodded.

“As far as what you've done, I don't give a shit. We've all had our
moments of weakness, but you seem like a nice boy.” He tossed his cigarette butt in the pail and emphasized, “
Real nice
.”

At that point Mo stuck his head outside. “Coming?”

Hank put his big hand on my shoulder. “Remember what I told you. I'm one of the only ones you can trust in here.”

Mo said, “I really appreciate your offering to show Ray the ropes, Hank.” But not even a minute later, as we were walking back to my room, he said, “Watch out for that guy.”

That confused me. How was I to size up Hank? There was no scale on which to weigh him, so I could decide: too much or too little. Or: just right.

My mother sometimes said, “You're a good sort, Ray.” But most of the time she'd yell at me. “Don't be such a sucker, Ray. Can't you see that your friends are using you? They make the trouble, and you get stuck with the blame. Or they'll needle you until you snap and then they can laugh their heads off. You're like a bad TV show. A runaway train. You're always just steamrolling ahead, you don't seem to have any brakes, no inner warning system, nothing. You do such dumb things that to this day I can't figure out what the hell is wrong with you.”

Thinking of my mother yelling at me made me have bad memories. Some people down the street had a dog. It was a mean little pest that growled at you and would go for your ankles if you got within its reach. They let that dog roam free and sometimes it even came into our backyard.

I was scared of it. My friends said, “Bet you can't hit that dog with this rock, Ray. Wanna bet? Bet on your momma?”

“What about her?” I asked.

“We're going to pull your momma's pants down so she'll be standing in the middle of the street with a naked cootie. Unless you hit that dog.”

I was very sure that I didn't want my friends to see my mother naked. I took the rock from them. It was round and smooth; it felt good in my hand.

“Throw it! Throw it!” they shrieked in my ear. There were at least seven kids crowding me. I couldn't think clearly.

The dog was trotting along a grassy patch about fifteen yards from where we were standing. It was sniffing at a Popsicle wrapper on the ground, still on its leash.

“Throw! Throw it!”

I raised my arm. The rock fit perfectly in my hand. I bent my wrist back slightly.

“Throw! Throw!”

I hurled the rock forward as if my hand wasn't a hand but a catapult. It was my best throw ever. The rock sailed through the air and hit the dog right between the eyes.

The little dog didn't make a sound. It took a few wobbly steps and then its legs gave way. There was a moment of silence.

“Run!” yelled one of my buddies. “Ray killed Bonnie!”

Within seconds they'd all scattered, and I was alone with the dog. I didn't know what to do. The sun was shining and the dog looked like it could jump up and nip at my ankles any moment, but five minutes later it was still lying in the grass, not moving, next to the Popsicle wrapper. It wasn't such a big deal. I decided to go home and play with my Lego Technic.

That night the neighbor came to our door. I was already in bed, but the yelling woke me up. Then I heard my mother's footsteps on the stairs. She flung open the door to my bedroom and screeched, “Is it true you threw a rock at that dog's head?”

“Yes, Mom.”

She stormed up to my bed and started shaking me. “Have you lost your goddamn mind? How the hell did you get it in your
moronic head to do such a thing? Not a day goes by that you don't manage to do s
omething
incredibly stupid. What am I going to do with you?” She collapsed on the edge of my bed and began to cry. I started patting her hair; I didn't know what else to do. She had very soft hair, the color of the sand on the North Sea Beach, my mom.

But she slapped my hand away and stomped out of the room. I listened to her angry footsteps on the stairs and then heard her talking to the neighbor. I stared at the poster of the universe pinned to the wall above my bed and recited, “Mercury is closest to the sun, then Venus, then Earth,” but I knew something was terribly wrong.

Two days later my mom told me that I'd be living at the Mason Home, that it would be good for me. They would be able to give me the help I needed.

“But I don't want to be away from you, Mom.”

“You'll thank me for this someday. Trust me.” Since she said it with a smile, I assumed that she was right.

But after all the time that had passed, I still wasn't grateful. I asked myself how long it would take before I was finally able to thank her.

“I want to go to my cell,” I said. “I'm tired. And sad. But mostly tired.”

“Fine,” said Mo. “You can stay there until dinner.”