Carla Neggers - Cut and Run

Wilhelmina had transplanted four begonias into fresh, clean pots and put them in the windowsill in her living room. The sun was shining. It was a fine day in Delftshaven, and she was content. She had arrived home the day before and would go to Antwerp in the morning to settle her brother’s affairs. She missed him. She had seen so little of him over the years, but she’d always known he was there in Belgium with his diamonds, with the memories of their shared past. Now he was gone.

She had spent her last night in New York with Juliana, and they’d had dinner with Catharina and Adrian and learned more about J.J. Pepper, whom Wilhelmina found quite reassuring. A needed presence in her niece’s life, to be sure. At least this J.J. explained all the old clothes.

Juliana had come to her before dawn and awakened her, sitting on the edge of her bed. “Were you and Hendrik de Geer lovers?” she asked directly.

“You’re impertinent,” Wilhelmina told her.

“He loved you first, and then my mother started to mature, and he fell in love with her, too. That’s what he meant, isn’t it?”

“Go back to bed.”

“I can’t sleep.” She sighed, her eyes shining even in the dark. “I feel like playing the piano.”

“At three o’clock in the morning?”

She nodded.

“Well, then, let me get my robe. We’ll play a duet.”

“ You play piano?”

“I used to. Lately it keeps coming back. I don’t know why; I sometimes play at the church. During the occupation, when times were particularly difficult or frightening, I would sing sonatas to myself, to occupy my mind so I wouldn’t worry so much about what would happen to us all, about failing my responsibilities. Rachel and I would sing all the time. She had such a wonderful, clear voice, Rachel did. We didn’t have a piano. I’d pretend to play on the table, and Rachel would pretend to catch my missed notes. Your mother thought we were so crazy! She was always cooking. She could lose herself in her cooking at any time. She never complained about hunger of anything else as long as she had something to cook, if only potatoes and seeds and beets.”

They’d played for hours, and Wilhelmina made no apologies for her missed notes, her awkwardness. Juliana was delighted. “You should get a piano!”

“Bah. The neighbors would complain.”

But now she almost wished she did have a piano. She never fell asleep when she was the one doing the playing!

At the airport in the morning, Wilhelmina had kissed Juliana goodbye and told her, “Yes, Hendrik and I were lovers, but only for a little while. I always suspected what kind of man he was-I just didn’t think he could ever hurt us. If I could have seen what he’d do, I’d have slit his throat in the night. After what happened, I tried to find him and kill him, but now…I think he suffered more by living.”

“And you, Aunt Willie? Are you lonely?”

“I’ve had a good life, Juliana. No, I’m not lonely. But you must come visit me.” She smiled. “Bring your mother.”

“Oh-I almost forgot. Mother sent these.”

It was a box of butter cookies. Inside was a note. “Willie, Adrian and I talked last night. I told him everything. It felt so right! I’ve been crying ever since, for his goodness, for Mother and Father, and little David, and Mr. and Mrs. Stein, the children, even for Hendrik, for everything…at last. The burden of guilt isn’t gone, but it’s lessened. I know Mother and Father wanted me to live, as I would do anything-too much?-to protect Juliana. Dear sister, forgive me. You never drove me away. I left because I couldn’t stay; that’s all. And because of Adrian. He’s made me so happy. Enjoy the cookies. C.”

Wilhelmina had enjoyed the cookies tremendously. She’d eaten most of them on the plane; there was only one left.

She went to the wooden box she kept on the hearth and dug out an old black and white photograph. The edges were crinkled and yellowed, the quality of the photograph not terribly good, but she didn’t care. She balanced it against a lamp and looked at it a long while.

It was of Rachel and Abraham, Johannes and Ann, Hendrik and herself, and Catharina, a mere child, at a skating party before the war. She’d once considered cutting Hendrik out of the picture, but in so doing she would have cut out a part of herself.

She went into the kitchen and made herself a cheese sandwich and a pot of tea and ate the last butter cookie.

“Get your butt down here.”

It was four-thirty on Wednesday afternoon, and Juliana had picked up the phone on the first ring, dazed and filled with compulsive energy. She’d had a monumental day of practice. The Chopin had jelled in her mind, and she regretted having to let it go, even for a second, and yet she knew she needed the break. She’d be better off for it, and so would her music. Although she was pleased to hear Len Wetherall’s voice, there was another voice she’d have rather heard. She wasn’t sure when she would. Or if. But she tried to understand. He’d been through a lot; he needed to be alone.

“Len-what do you mean?”

“I mean you’re already thirty minutes late, babe.”

She was surprised. “I’m not fired?”

“Hell, no. You’ve got an audience, angel. Folks’ve been reading the papers. World’s most beautiful concert pianist rescues mother and Dutch aunt from the clutches of killers.” He laughed. “I like that. You’re a curiosity. Now you got to wow them so they keep on coming back.”

Wow them. Juliana smiled: the world of J.J. Pepper wasn’t so different from her own. “Who should I come as?”

“Come as yourself, babe. That’s all you can ever be.”

She tinted her hair green and put on J.J.’s white organza tea dress, circa 1919, and her own full-length white mink coat and hat, white boots and white gloves, and she took a cab.

Len met her at the door. “Whoa,” he said, grinning.

“I wouldn’t show up at Symphony Hall in Boston looking like this, but here, it feels right. I’ve got a lot to learn about jazz and pop,” she said, “but one day soon I hope to record some of my favorite-” she grinned “-tunes.”

“You going to stick to early evenings and catch-as-catch-can between concerts?”

She nodded. “But I’m cutting back on the number of concerts I do a year. I don’t want to do so many any longer-but I can’t give this up, Len.”

He let his relief show. “That’s great, babe, because I don’t want to have to give up J.J. Pepper, either. She’s fun and spacey-and talented as all get out. I’d like to keep her around, so long as that’s what she wants.”

“It is.”

“What’s Shuji say?”

“It’s not up to him; he knows that. He doesn’t understand, and he’ll never like jazz, but he’s not going to abandon me because of it.”

“That’s okay, then. You don’t need him to understand?”

“No, I don’t,” she said. “It’s okay.”

When she’d finished her first set, she knew she’d wowed the crowd because Len told her when she came to the bar for her Saratoga water. Only then did she notice the applause and whistles and hoots of appreciation-and that she’d kicked off her shoes. She’d let go in a way she never did when playing Carnegie Hall.

Len nodded toward the other end of the bar. “You’ve got company.”

Sipping her water, Juliana looked down the bar and became very still.

Matthew Stark.

“Say the word, I’ll toss him.”

“No, I’ll take care of him.”

Len grinned. “Thought you might, babe, thought you might.”

She ambled down and leaned against the bar next to Matthew’s stool, feeling the sweat trickling between her breasts. She could almost talk herself into believing it was his fingertips.