Joseph O'Neill - Netherland

My mother said, “And there you have the…” Annoyed, she searched for the name. “The Statue of Liberty,” I said. “We can go there, if you like.” My mother nodded. “Yes,” she said. “We must do that.” After a moment or two, she said, “Let’s go on,” and we climbed back on our bicycles and continued up the bridge. We went forward side by side. My mother pushed the pedals steadily. She was tall and big and white-haired. Her skin wore a raw, slightly meaty flush. She was dressed in that combination of dark blue raincoat and college scarf and leather loafers that is, in my mind, the immemorial uniform of the bourgeoises of The Hague. Beyond the crest of the bridge we started the downhill glide into Manhattan. From the deck beneath us came the rhythmic chuckling of car tires. At the foot of the bridge, by City Hall, we entered the traffic; my mother followed me cautiously, a sweat of concentration gathering on her face. On Broadway she abruptly pulled over and stepped off her ride, and when I asked her if she was all right, she merely nodded her head and walked on, pushing her bicycle alongside her. This was exactly how she’d accompanied me when, as a fourteen-year-old, I delivered the NRC Handelsblad in the Boom-and Bloemenbuurt — the Tree and Flower District. On my first day on the job, she escorted me through the opening section of my round, going with me to Aronskelkweg, Arabislaan, and Margrietstraat until she was satisfied that I knew what I was doing. The challenge was to not get lost: I carried a piece of paper on which were sequentially set out the addresses of the drops, the sequence prescribing a route that, if transcribed onto a map, would resemble one of those densely marked puzzle mazes that penciling small children produce. Mama led the way. “I’m going back now,” she said after an hour. “Can you finish on your own?” I could, although it must be said that I was an unsystematic paperboy who generated many complaints. My overseer, a semiretiree who took great pleasure in handing over my weekly envelope of cash, was forced to take me aside and explain that these complaints— klachten —were no joke and that I had to take my work seriously. “Have you ever read the newspaper?” he asked me. I gave no answer. “You should. You’d learn a lot, and you’d understand why people get upset if they don’t receive it.” On Saturdays, when sports commitments prevented me from working, my mother substituted for me. She would cycle down to the newspaper depot, load up the heavy black saddlebag, and set off. I took this for granted, of course. My assumption was that it was the job of parents to do such things and that my mother was secretly overjoyed to fill in for me, even though this could require her to wander in the rain and cold for over two hours and certainly to humbly accept a lower station in life.

It was in the course of the paper-round that she met her gentleman friend Jeroen. “I was very curious,” Jeroen told me at the reception he hosted after the cremation. “Who was this woman who delivered the paper every Saturday? It was so mysterious. Don’t forget, she wasn’t much older than you are now. And so beautiful: tall, blond, athletic. Always well dressed. My type of woman. But coming to my door with the newspaper? This was intriguing.” We were in Jeroen’s flat in Waldeck, on the fifth floor of the notoriously long apartment block known to all as the Wall of China. It was just us two; everybody else had gone home. He unsteadily poured another shot of jenever. “After a few weeks of watching her come and go, I decide to make my move.” Jeroen lit a cigarette. “You don’t mind me telling you this, do you?”

“No,” I said, although naturally enough I was hoping he would skip certain details.

“So here’s what I do,” Jeroen said, a wide yellow-and-brown smile in his cadaverous face. Within three months he, too, would be dead. “I dress in my best clothes. Sports jacket, shirt, tie. I polish my best shoes. I put a goddamned handkerchief in my breast pocket. Then I wait. At four o’clock, I hear the garden gate open. It’s Miriam. Just as she comes to the door, I open it. ‘Thank you,’ I say. She just smiles and goes back to her bicycle. I run after her and open the gate. I’m on my way out, you see, that’s my story. I don’t want her to think I’m ambushing her. I introduce myself. ‘And your name is…?’ Miriam van den Broek, she says, getting on her bicycle. And then she rides off.” Jeroen laughed and adjusted his spectacles. “Perfect, I thought. She’s reserved but friendly. Like you,” he said, pointing his cigarette at me. “You see, with reserved people, it’s simple: you have to be direct. So the next week, I’m waiting for her again. I’ve had a haircut. I’ve brushed my teeth. Here she comes, up the garden path. I open the door and accept the newspaper. ‘Would you like to go to dinner?’ I say. I’m not messing around, you see. I’m too old for that, and I’m guessing she is, too. This is what I’ve learned on the subject of women: never delay. The more quickly you act, the greater the chance of success. She smiles and walks back to her bicycle. Then she stands there, like this, like a schoolgirl.” Jeroen sprang up and stood upright, his blue, frozen-looking hands gripping invisible handlebars. “‘Why not?’ she says. Why not. I’ll never forget it.” A convulsion of coughing overtook him, and he lowered himself into a chair. “The rest you know,” he said, exhausted. Which I didn’t, in point of fact. I had very little idea about what passed between them. I didn’t know, for example, why five years later he and my mother had put an end to things.

She had regained enough energy, on our return to Tribeca, to ask immediately if she might take the baby for a walk.

“Are you sure?” Rachel said.

“We’ll just go around the block,” my mother said. “Come, Jake,” she said, lifting the baby into the stroller.

After an hour or so they had not returned. This was worrying. Rachel said that I should go out and look for them.

I found my mother a couple of blocks away, looking distressed.

“What happened?”

“I got lost,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“All these buildings look the same,” I said, and I accepted her arm in mine and pushed the stroller home.

Now Chuck was driving us through Brooklyn. I heard myself tell him, “My wife is seeing another guy.”

He showed no surprise, even though it was the first time I’d raised directly the subject of my marriage. After a moment, he said, “What do you want to do about it?”

“What can I do?” I said hopelessly.

He gave his head a categorical shake. “Not can do: first figure out what you want to do. It’s Project Management 101: establish objectives, then establish means of achieving objectives.” He glanced at me. “Do you want her back?”

I said, “Let’s say I do.”

“OK,” he said. “Then you should go back to London. Right away. It’s a no-brainer.”

I thought, No-brainer? What would happen in London? A seduction with flowers? A ravishment? Then what?

“Otherwise,” Chuck, growing emphatic, said, “you’re in danger of having regrets. My bottom line is, no regrets.”

This was on Atlantic Avenue, by Cobble Hill, in traffic.

“It wouldn’t be the same,” I said.

“It’s never the same,” Chuck said. “Even if everything goes well it’s never the same. Right?” He tapped my knee. “Let me tell you something: these things have a funny way of working out. You know the best thing that happened to me and Anne? Eliza.”

I wanted to talk about my situation, not Chuck’s. I also wanted something other than the usual from him.

He concentrated on overtaking a bus. Chuck was a speedy, dodgy driver. “Anne and me,” he continued, “we’ve known each other since we were babies. She’s been with me through thick and thin. When we were living in Brownsville with Mike Tyson beating up people on the streets, she didn’t complain once. So we’re together for life. But my theory is, I need two women.” He wore the most solemn expression. “One to take care of family and home, one to make me feel alive. It’s too much to ask one woman to do both.”