Dear Mr. M (20 page)

The week after they got back from Paris, David suggested that he and Laura stop for a drink at an outdoor café in Vondelpark. “I need to talk to you about something,” he said.

They were on their way home from school; they often cycled back with a larger group as far as the corner of Stadionweg, where they would split up. David and Stella usually biked the last stretch together: Laura lived at the edge of the park, David in the city center, on Looiersgracht.

“What'll you have?” David asked, trying to catch the waitress's eye.

“Do they have Pernod here? Probably not.” Laura smiled at him a bit naughtily, but David didn't smile back.

“I wanted to talk to you about that too,” he said.

Finally, they both ordered beer; Laura thought David would start in right away about her affair with the history teacher, but he didn't.

“I've been thinking about Zeeland,” he said. “Actually, I wanted to ask you something. Ask you first, to hear what you think, and the others after that.”

“Well?” In two weeks' time they were planning to go back to the house in Terhofstede, with the same group; this time, though, a few things would be different. Two days after they got back from the field trip to Paris, Lodewijk's mother had died. And this would be the first time that a “couple” would be there: Herman and Stella.

“It's your house,” David said. “Your parents' house, but still. Mostly your house. However you look at it, it's up to you to decide who goes along and who doesn't.”

Laura didn't say a thing, just looked around to see if their beers were coming.

“So what do you think about Herman and Stella?” David asked. “I mean, it
was
pretty weird, the way it went…at least I thought so. I mean, Herman's my friend, but I thought the whole thing was out of line. That's what I told him too.”

“What did you say to him?” Laura asked, suddenly concerned. She considered David her best friend, the kind of best friend you'd never get involved with romantically, and therefore all the more reliable. David was just a sweet guy, maybe a little too sweet; he always wanted to do the right thing by Laura, but despite all his good intentions it seemed as though he tried to protect her too much, the way a parent might shield a child from shocking or bad news. That made her feel claustrophobic at times, but she never dared say so.

“I told him he should have waited till we got back to Amsterdam,” David said. “With Stella, I mean. I thought it was out of line to do that in your house. In your parents' house.”

“But why? What's so out of line about hooking up with my best girlfriend?” Laura tried to make it sound as normal as possible—calm, collected, as though it made no difference to her—but there was no way she could get the underlying sarcasm out of it; David must have heard it too.

“Exactly that: your best girlfriend. I think that's weird, you don't do things like that. That's not being respectful of other people's feelings.”

Laura felt a sudden flash of heat at the base of her throat; she had to do her best now to make sure that heat didn't reach her face. “What feelings? What do you mean?”

“Laura, I'm your best friend. There's no need to try to fool me. I saw it with my own eyes. And I probably wasn't the only one. The way you looked at Herman. How you tried so hard not to let anyone see that you liked him. I watched it happen, the way you completely fell apart when he and Stella—”

“Fell apart?” Laura felt the tears welling up in the corners of her eyes, she covered her face with her hands in an attempt to hide them from David. “What are you talking about?”

Then she actually started crying. David rose from his chair, then reconsidered and slid his chair around the table, a little closer to her.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't want…This is exactly what I didn't want. Does Stella know what you think about this? How you feel, I mean? Have you two ever talked about it?”

“Oh, that fucking bitch!” Laura said. It was out before she had even thought about it—but it was precisely what she thought.

“Yeah,” was all David said; he raised his arm as though to put it around her shoulders, then let it drop.

“I wish she was dead,” Laura said. It was a thought that had never come up in her before, not that explicitly, but she sensed that some other force—some other voice—was expressing her feelings perfectly, without a single thought beforehand. In any case, it came as a relief, as though she had finally stuck a finger down her throat and vomited; the queasiness was over now. She stopped crying, wiped the tears from her eyes, and smiled at David. “I
wished
she was dead, for a while there,” she said. “It's better now, actually.”

And David smiled back; that was what made him her best friend, Laura realized again, he didn't say the wrong things, he didn't say, for example, that you couldn't say things like that about your best girlfriend.

“All things considered, it just seems wiser to me if Herman and Stella didn't go along to Terhofstede this time,” David said. “I already hinted at that to Herman, but I haven't said anything to Stella. Herman understood, I think. But of course it's up to you.”

“What did he understand?” Laura suddenly felt icy inside—her crying jag seemed a thing of the distant past, centuries ago, as though she had never cried in her life.

“That it might be difficult for you. He hadn't meant to hurt you, he said. If it bothered you, he was willing to stay home. That's a possibility too, of course, that Stella goes along but not Herman.”

“
Hurt
me?” Laura spoke very quietly, she was completely in control, she told herself. She looked David straight in the eye. David, her “best friend,” but then a best friend who believed too fully in his own goodness—in his own good intentions. There was no way she could get angry at him, he would never understand that, but not being able to get angry at him made her even more furious. “What did you say to him, exactly?”

“Laura…” David slid his chair back a little, so he could get a better look at her. “Laura, I didn't tell him anything except what was already clear as a bell. Everyone saw it. Herman's not blind either. He understood right away, that's what I thought was so good of him.”

So this was the price one paid for having a best friend, Laura realized. You also had to accept it when they ruined everything for you. Out of the goodness of their heart. Out of
pity.
She thought she really might have to vomit at any moment.

“I have absolutely no problem with Herman and Stella coming along,” she said. “Absolutely no problem whatsoever.”

“Laura…”

“Don't ‘Laura' me. It's my house, isn't that what you just said? My parents' house? Okay, then Herman and Stella are very welcome there too. End of discussion.” She stood up, their beers still hadn't arrived. “I'm going. See you at school tomorrow.”

They were sitting on his living room couch. Landzaat had his arm around her shoulders; on a low table at their feet was a bottle of red wine, two glasses, and a dish of peanuts.

“What do you feel like?” he asked. “A movie? Or shall we go get something at that restaurant we went to last time?”

It was the Friday evening before the fall vacation began. Laura and her friends would be leaving for Terhofstede the next day. That morning the history teacher's wife had left with their daughters for a holiday park in the woods; he was going to join them there tomorrow.

“I don't know,” Laura said.

It was the first time she'd been to his house, a house that in no way went against her expectations. For, in fact, she'd had no expectations at all. At least none that made a difference now: well-filled bookcases with hefty biographies of Alexander the Great, Napoleon and Adolf Hitler, a stereo installation with tall, black speakers, framed photographs of the Landzaats at a beach somewhere, Jan Landzaat building a sandcastle with a pail and shovel; also a few pictures of older people, their own parents probably, and a photograph of the teacher standing beside his wife on the stairs of some building, he in a suit and bow tie, she in an ankle-length bridal gown, both of them smiling.

“We don't
have
to go anywhere,” he said. “We could just stay here.”

He hadn't shown her the rest of the house. The bedrooms. She wondered whether she would get to see them, or whether he would try to limit her presence here to the couch.
The bedroom,
she decided; she wasn't going to settle for the couch.

“I don't know,” she said again.

The role of indecisive young thing fit her perfectly; let the older, more experienced male take the initiative. She lifted her legs up and tucked them under her, stuck the tip of her thumb in her mouth for a brief moment. “I'm kind of tired,” she said.

“You've barely had any wine,” the teacher said. “Are you hungry? I could fry some eggs, we can eat them here, then talk a little or watch some TV. Does that sound good?”

She shrugged. His fingers were toying with her hair now, close to her ear. It wasn't unpleasant, but at the same time she suspected that he knew all too well what women and seventeen-year-old girls liked and didn't like—or he'd picked it up from some magazine or book, the erogenous zones and how to tinker with them best. Jan Landzaat was an experienced lover, as she had noted on the two occasions when he had taken her to a hotel along the highway outside Amsterdam. Too experienced, maybe. Studiously experienced. He took his time, he was no slouch. He knew what he was doing, she had nothing specific to complain about, but still, it always felt more like gymnastics than ballet, more like a point-perfect exercise on the balance beam than a dance that drew you in, than movements that could thrill. He was patient, attentive, he waited for her—the first time there had been a few misunderstandings as he looked at her with big, questioning eyes, whether she was there yet, whether he himself could start in on the final cartwheel before the landing. Laura looked at the history teacher's grimace of effort. She saw everything: a blue vein pounding on his left temple, the glow of the nightlight beside the hotel bed reflecting off the saliva on the long teeth in his half-open mouth, his somewhat-too-large Adam's apple bobbing up and down as though he were struggling to swallow something—a chunk of meat, a herring—that was stuck in his throat. At such moments, doubt struck. At first she had been curious about the body of a grown man, but after a few times the teacher's gymnastic routine seemed mostly ridiculous. She thought about Stella's stories about Herman—about his clumsiness. In her sophomore year Laura had had a boyfriend, Erik, who was now no longer at the Spinoza Lyceum. They were both very young, of course, and one evening—they were sitting beside each other on the bed in her room, Laura had turned off the light and lit two tea warmers—he confessed to her that he was completely ignorant, that she was the first girl he had really kissed, and that he was embarrassed by his inexperience. Laura took his face between her hands and whispered sweet words in his ear. Comforting words. It didn't make any difference, she thought he was sweet, he should just relax and surrender to her completely, then everything would turn out fine. It was glorious, she thought, Erik's tender, virginal fumbling; when she closed her eyes she thought of a snowy landscape, a landscape without footsteps, a gentle rise covered in fresh snow where no one had walked before, while she led his hands and fingers to where she wanted them. Other boys had followed, boys like Erik, who all thought that girls like Laura—girls who were much too pretty—would be put off by boys who didn't know the first thing about sex. And, one by one, she reassured them.
Let me do it. Close your eyes. Do you like it when I do this? And this? You don't have to swill your tongue around like that, it's not homework, look, just the tip, like this, and real softly, come on, take some of this off, this only gets in the way.
She helped them take off their sweaters and T-shirts, to loosen their belts—sometimes it made her feel like a mother undressing a little child, but that only made it more exciting.

“I have to go to the toilet,” Laura said; she put down her glass of wine beside the plate of peanuts.

“End of the hallway, second door on the left,” Mr. Landzaat said.

The toilet turned out to be a full bathroom as well. Before sitting down she inspected her face in the mirror above the sink. This evening she had gone for the no-makeup face, she saw the red blotches on her cheeks, probably from the wine. No personal items were out in the open, she would have to look inside one of the cupboards or drawers to find out which perfumes and creams the history teacher's wife used. In a glass on the sink was one toothbrush—the toothbrushes belonging to Mrs. Landzaat and the girls were doubtlessly in a glass too at the moment, but in the bathroom of a cottage in the woods.

Laura hiked up her black leather skirt, lowered the toilet seat, and sat down. She closed her eyes tightly and suddenly wasn't sure she'd be able to let Mr. Landzaat lead her to the bedroom later on. She stood up, flushed the toilet just for appearances, and looked again at her red, blotchy face in the mirror. She longed intensely for clumsiness, for boys like Erik—like Herman.

A hair had fallen in the sink, she saw as she opened the tap and splashed cold water on her face. A long, black hair, her own. Mrs. Landzaat was a blonde. After a bit of a struggle, Laura succeeded in sliding the black hair away from the wet bottom of the sink and picking it up between her fingers.

She was about to toss it into the wastebasket under the sink when she stopped and reconsidered. Actually, it wasn't so much an act of reconsideration as a flash of inspiration, maybe even a brilliant one.

Holding the long, black, wet hair between her fingertips, Laura looked around the bathroom. On the inside of the door, two terry cloth kimonos hung on a hook; Mrs. Landzaat had probably figured that the kimono was too bulky for a week's stay in the woods. When Jan Landzaat entertained underage students here at home, nice girls who thought he was a cool teacher, he probably—after some playing around in the shower—let the underage student put on his wife's kimono, only to peel it off her again in the bedroom.

Laura hesitated between the pocket sewn onto the kimono and the collar, then slid the hair under the collar. Sooner or later Mrs. Landzaat would turn up the collar of her kimono and pull out the hair. A pensive look would appear on her face.

“Laura? Are you all right? Everything okay?”

His voice outside the door; how long had she been in here, anyway? She stepped over to the sink and turned on the tap.

“I'm coming,” she said. “Be there in a minute.”

And then, as she pulled back her hair and looked at her own smile in the mirror, she had another idea—an idea that was perhaps even more brilliant than putting the black hair under the collar.

She hadn't put on any makeup, but she had left her earrings in; little earrings, two gleaming gray pearls her mother had given her a few months back, for completing her sophomore year with such solid grades.

She took off one of the earrings. She leaned down and put it on the floor behind the toilet. Then she stuck a finger down her throat.

“Laura?” Jan Landzaat called from outside the bathroom door. “Laura?”

“I'm not feeling very well,” she said when she opened the door at last. “I think I'd better go home.”