Old Heart Read online

  My dear Ella,

  I must tell you that never in all these sixty years have I ever even thought of the possibility of your existence. What an awful thing for a father to say to his daughter. And yet it is true. At least I think it is. My friend Dickie Druyf says that somewhere on some level I must at least have wondered. He says that’s why I came to Veldhoven: to see you. Perhaps he is right. I don’t know.

  What I do know is that finding you, however accidentally, and now getting to know you is the most wonderful gift I’ve ever been given.

  Tom thought a good bit about how to sign it. “Your father.” “Your dad.” “Love, Dad.” All seemed presumptuous. In the end he signed it “Tom Johnson.”

  There was something about the way Ella stood up from a chair that was also like Tom’s mother, and her sudden, surprising burst of laughter that recalled his father’s brother, and her candor. One day she said, “So what do we do now?” There it was. There was the evidence of him in her. It was the exact kind of question he would ask, and he almost heard her say it in his own voice.

  “You mean now that we’ve exchanged pictures and life stories and all of that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not quite sure.”

  “I don’t know, either. Are you planning to stay here in Veldhoven?” And he wasn’t sure if it was an invitation to stay or one to leave.

  “I have planned that, but I may not be able to.” He told her about his application for residency, its denial, the letter Brooks and Christine had written, the hearing Jan Dekker had requested.

  This conversation took place on a Friday evening in a rather swank restaurant in Den Bosch, the next city up the train line. They shared a meal, a bottle of wine, and a certain familiarity born of their mutual honesty, which Tom was tempted to think of as intimacy (walking back to the station, she did take him by the arm, if only for a moment or two, and said the word “father” in both English and Dutch). Tom was afraid to think of it as affection and did not want to think of it as flirtation, although later he would have to admit that the evening had had something of the feel of a date about it.

  They had come on separate trains but made the mistake of sitting together on the return train. Someone must have seen them, so the next day there wasn’t any ambivalence at all when Ella said, “You must leave Veldhoven at once.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “She knows, and you must go. I am not asking you to leave. I’m telling you that you must leave. She is extremely upset.”

  “My God, Ella, why does she hate me so?”

  “She doesn’t hate you. She fears you.”

  “Fears me? Why would she fear me?”

  “She thinks you’ve come to take me away from her,” she said with characteristic candor and a bit of impatience as if he should have seen this.

  “But Ella, I couldn’t do that if I wanted to.”

  She looked at him and said tentatively, “My mother and I, we’ve had a difficult life together. For many years we did not talk.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Tom said quietly.

  “Of course you didn’t. You didn’t know anything. You have imagined all of it.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “No!” Ella answered almost shrilly. “You haven’t the right to know. You would have to ask her.”

  Tom was taken aback by Ella’s severity, and he realized that in focusing on Pim’s reaction, he had overlooked Ella’s, and hers was one of anger that to his surprise was directed at him but, also to his surprise was not directed only at him. “Do you know how hard it was growing up without a father or one who was a myth and with a mother who cared more about a lost memory than me?”

  “Oh, Ella, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I—”

  “Just go away. You have no idea the trouble you have caused here.”

  He did not have any idea. In fact, up until that moment, despite Pim’s reaction to him, he had thought of himself as a messenger of love and hope, a romantic emissary from the distant past. But now he recognized again in himself, as he had so often, a tendency or perhaps a need to turn life into a drama in three acts with villains and victims and heroes when he knew full well in his heart that no one is all of one of these and everyone is part of all of these. Now he also realized that he was somehow a threat not only to Pim but to her daughter and her family.

  Oddly, viscerally, selfishly, also he knew it was better to be a problem than an afterthought or a footnote. Still, or perhaps therefore, he went away. He was looking for the thing he could do for Pim and Ella, and here it was. He could leave, and he would have left that very day if it hadn’t been for the bank account he had to clear and Mrs. Waleboer’s need to find someone to watch the girls after school and the phone call he felt he owed Dickie, which after several failed attempts turned into a phone message that he would later think was too cryptic to be of any worth at all. So Tom didn’t leave for two days, and that was fortunate, or this story might have ended very differently.

  The morning of his departure he put his bag by the front door and stood in the living room looking at the street and waiting for the taxi. He put a couple hundred euros in an envelope, sealed it, wrote “Mrs. Waleboer” on it, and left it on the dining room table. He hadn’t told Jan Dekker that he was going. He planned to call the lawyer from the small hotel in Amsterdam near the Museumplein that he had booked for a day or two. When the taxi honked and he was stooping to pick up his bag, he found a small envelope addressed to “Tom Johnson” that had come through the mail slot. He slipped it into his breast pocket on his way out.

  In the taxi he thought about Pim standing disheveled at his door, holding his letter in her shaking hands. Through all these years she had become an abstraction to him, a theory, an idea. And then there she was, saying his name again, explaining something so desperately again, raising her brow in earnest again, crying because of him again. And her presence. Her physical presence—his sense of which, his memory of which, had become smeared or smudged by time—was instantly real and immediate, and he felt like a child looking through his fingers at someone who had never gone away. The silky, supple timbre of her voice only slightly diminished, her still-perfect posture, her high, smooth forehead, her long fingers, her eyes, which searched and seared his just as they had the last time he had seen her. Why was he going? But he had to leave, didn’t he? He would go someplace where he could think. Not here. He stared out the taxi window, where Veldhoven was giving way to Eindhoven. So many millions and millions of bricks. A world made out of bricks.

  Standing in line to buy a train ticket, he reached for his wallet, and the little envelope that was on the floor came out of his pocket with it. Inside was a small embossed card. On it were these words in neat typescript: “You have not done what you came to do.” That was all. He turned it over. He looked inside the envelope. It could only have come from Ella. No one else. Or Pim. But that seemed impossible. Both seemed impossible.

  “Can I help you?” the ticket clerk was saying.

  “Uh, just a moment, please. Een moment, alstublieft.”

  “Please step to one side, sir.”

  He leaned against the counter. Of course it was from Ella, but why hadn’t she said it in person? Because that would mean seeing him, and maybe she couldn’t risk that. But she certainly would not have changed her mind, would she? What could the note mean?

  “Sir, are you all right? May I help you?” It was a very tall young policeman.

  “No, no. I’m fine. I’m all right.”

  “Do you want to buy a ticket? May I assist you?”

  “Well, yes, except I suddenly don’t quite know where I am going.”

  “Are you a little confused, sir?”

  “Oh, I’m more than a little confused.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to have a cup of coffee. We have some here in our reception.”

  “Do you have tea?”

  He sat in a small office down a corridor. A dark-haired, dark-skinned woman wearing so
me kind of uniform opened the door with a key and handed Tom a cup of tea.

  She sat opposite him. “How are you feeling, sir?”

  “Better than an hour ago.”

  “May I ask your name?”

  “Of course. Thomas Johnson.”

  “You are an American?”

  “Yes,” he answered a little warily, afraid that requests for addresses and phone numbers might follow.

  “Mr. Johnson, are you traveling alone?”

  He would not mention Ella, he decided. Not when all he had to go on was the card. No, keep it simple. “I’m traveling alone.”

  “Can you tell me where you live?”

  “Well, that’s a little hard to say just now. Let’s just say that I am betwixt and between.”

  “Mr. Johnson, will you do me a favor?”

  “Of course, my dear.”

  “Will you count backward from a hundred? In English.”

  Tom put his cup down with a little clatter. “Are you evaluating me?”

  “I’m just trying to help you, Mr. Johnson.”

  “I live in Veldhoven. Dotterbeek 1. I moved in there on July 9.”

  “Of what year?”

  “This year.”

  “And what year is this?”

  “2007. May I please call a friend?”

  “I thought you said you were traveling alone.”

  “I am, but I have Dutch friends, and I’d like to phone one of them to come and get me.” He imagined Dickie’s phone ringing and ringing and going to the answering machine.

  But then a nurse was taking his blood pressure and making a phone call herself, and two paramedics were outside the door with a gurney. “Your blood pressure is a little high,” the nurse was saying. “We’d like a doctor to have a look at you.” And then he was sitting on the end of an examination table in a hospital gown. “Your blood pressure is quite high,” a young doctor said. “Do you take medication to control it?”

  “Well, I used to. I ran out, and I haven’t had a chance …” Tom was given a shot and some pills.

  “We need to watch your blood pressure for a while,” a nurse was saying. Then a social worker with a clipboard was asking him questions. She was kind and sympathetic and seemed genuinely concerned for him. He was guarded, especially when she said, “May I ask you who is Christine Panco?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We found her name and address among your things. Is she a relative of yours?”

  Tom didn’t answer.

  “Mr. Johnson, part of my job is to evaluate your mental state, and with someone your age it is routine to look for signs of dementia. Now, I’m not finding any until now, but you’re not helping yourself by not answering.”

  “I do not want to go home. Christine will come and get me and take me home. I do not want that.” He surprised himself by how forcefully he said the words and more so by how forcefully he felt them. He thought of Brooks and my mother, of phones ringing and wheels turning.

  When the social worker got up to leave, Tom said, “Are you going to call my family?”

  She smiled at him but evaded his question. “That is not a decision for me.”

  “Am I going to be released?”

  “The doctor is going to keep you here until your blood pressure is coming under control. It was dangerously high.” Then Tom was in a four-bed ward with a TV that droned in Dutch and a window that looked out on a drab street. He ate some hospital food and went to sleep almost immediately. He slept to the middle of the next day and was only vaguely aware of being given pills in the night. He had a dream about Pim riding a bike in a wood and wailing in anguish. He must have been riding behind her, but he wasn’t gaining on her. When he awakened, he knew what to do, and when the nurse came he asked if there was a library or a way he might send an e-mail. An hour later there was a laptop computer sitting in front of him. He sent this message to me: “Nora, I need your help. Somewhere I think in my old file cabinet is a folder marked ‘Sarah van Praag.’ In it I hope is an envelope addressed to Sarah that should be sealed and have a dated postmark. DO NOT OPEN THIS LETTER. It must remain sealed. Send it as is in its envelope to Pim de Wit, Evestraat 23, 5503 XM, Veldhoven, The Netherlands. Here’s the hard part. I don’t know where the file cabinet is. It may be where I left it in my study in Frenchman’s Lake, but it may have been moved or even placed in storage. See if you can find it. I know I’m asking a lot. Thanks, your Granddad.”

  In the afternoon the young doctor was there looking at his chart. “Better,” he said. Then the doctor was sitting on the edge of the bed. “You know about your heart condition, I think?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much do you know?”

  Tom told him. He described his conversation with Roger Daugherty, the diagnosis, the recommendation of surgery.

  “Hmmm,” said the doctor. “That would be riskier now. Your heart is weak. Probably weaker than—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Tom. “I don’t want surgery anyway,” although he felt a little lightness in his stomach and head.

  “So it is even more important that your blood pressure is controlled. Let’s see if it is staying down. If so, I’ll release you tomorrow.” The words gave Tom relief; he had feared the doctor would want to keep him. Now he imagined himself standing up from a wheelchair at the hospital door and walking away. He looked out the window at the colorless street in the rain and felt stupid for having neglected his medication, but he’d felt fine since he’d run out of pills and hadn’t known quite how to go about getting a new prescription. He had intended to ask for Ella’s help, but he hadn’t. Now he imagined Brooks and my mother on a plane, getting closer and closer to him. He saw the little blinking blip on the tiny screen advancing across the Atlantic, and his fear seemed to be confirmed the next morning when he asked the nurse who took his blood pressure and temperature if he could go home.

  “Ja,” she said. “Soon as the doctor looks at you. Your daughter is coming.”

  He felt a little weak. They were probably moving his stuff into Hanover Place already: his chair, some books, his old four-poster bed. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. He couldn’t quite imagine seeing Brooks, looking him in the eye, being sucked back into the whirlpool of his troubles and demands. Christine, however, Christine he suddenly realized he missed terribly.

  But it was not my mother who came through the door at half past ten that morning. It was Ella. In the car on the way to Veldhoven, they didn’t speak for a while. Finally she said tersely, “Something has changed. You mustn’t go yet. We haven’t finished.” Even so, he didn’t mention the note. It seemed too chatty to do so. “Oh, by the way …”

  He didn’t say anything, and all she said was, “Saskia Waleboer still has your place.”

  Brabant, Autumn 2007

  Tom sat in his room, waiting for something or someone. Ella? Not really. Not yet.

  The social services people? The IND? The Mutt-and-Jeff cops? Maybe. He had to admit that he was paranoid. He had to admit he often felt that in Holland social planners were peeking around corners or over the tops of clouds, that committees were meeting in windowless boardrooms, that conference calls were being made, and that someone somewhere had a file marked “Tom Johnson.” When he heard Mrs. Waleboer coming up the stairs in the middle of the morning with a man, he wondered if they had come for him before he wondered if she had a lover and then for a troubled moment if she could possibly be selling herself.

  But he couldn’t worry about her. For a time he couldn’t worry about anything but himself; he knew that he must not leave, but he knew practically nothing else. What had changed? He felt foolish: the guy who finally got the joke everyone else in the room had been snickering about. “Oh, I see. I haven’t really been free after all, have I? Perhaps I’ve never been free. Perhaps no one has. Freedom is an illusion, is that it?” Had the policeman almost taken him by the arm before? Had the social worker been waiting just offstage all these years? He even wondered about Jan D
ekker until the lawyer called to say that he had been granted a hearing in early November and his visa had been extended until then. Tom told him in turn what had happened, but not that he’d been in the process of leaving at the time. “Is that a problem? Will it influence the decision?”

  “It depends on what the doctor and the social worker write in their reports. Let me see if I can get copies.”

  After three days Tom went into the bathroom, closed the door, and looked at himself in the mirror. “Okay,” he said, “what do you know for sure?” He had done this first during a hard time in the war when he’d been depressed and lonely, and it had made him feel less lonely. He had done it throughout his life, but sparingly because he knew or perhaps feared instinctively that he was only allotted so many such encounters, and they were not to be wasted. “Well, for one thing you know that things don’t always turn out well. For another, you know that almost nothing is urgent and only death is final.” He took a deep breath and felt as if he were really talking to himself now, a self who had been away. “You know that life is both tragic and beautiful, that you are entitled to nothing, and that every day is a carefully wrapped present, including this one.” He went back to his room, sat with his palms upturned in his lap, and listened to The Marriage of Figaro; then he called Dickie. No answer. Tom was anxious to reconnect; he hadn’t even told Dickie about his aborted departure or about being in the hospital. He thought that the little concert being given in the park that night might be neutral ground on which to meet.

  In the end he was happy that he went alone; he felt a certain proprietorship he hadn’t felt before. People nodded to him. A couple of them spoke to him in English. The old American. He drank French wine, ate Dutch cheeses, listened to a string quartet play Mozart and Vivaldi, and answered the question no one had actually asked him. “I came here because you are a refined, cultured, genteel, and generous people.” He knew that wasn’t really why he’d come, and he knew that he only said or even thought such grand things after drinking wine. He’d had two, no, three glasses. Would he pay for them tomorrow? Did they make his heart beat faster and harder? The very fact that he worried was something; it meant he wasn’t just sitting around waiting to die, as he had been before or as he would have been at Hanover Place. Or was that also an illusion? Was all this just moving about and dislocation? What, after all, did he have to live for? One wounded, lonely friend or maybe erstwhile friend, a clean, well-lighted place, a lifetime of memories that would last only as long as he did. And had he really escaped anything at all? Sometimes it seemed as if he thought more about Brooks and Christine and the house on Frenchman’s Lake than if he’d never left.