August 2024
Willem
WILLEM WAS WRITING the progress notes from his one o’clock session when the buzzer sounded. Frans Ringnalda’s little round eyes appeared on the video screen, too close to the camera—as if he were trying to see Willem. He was always ten minutes early.
Frans suffered from general anxiety, a disorder treatable with medication, but Willem had wanted to try therapy first.
Willem pressed the button to unlatch the front door and went through the waiting room, to the hall. He allowed thirty minutes between sessions, time he used to update his notes and mentally reboot. Thirty minutes prevented patients from running into one another.
“Your office is an oasis of peace,” Frans said, as he always did when he arrived for a session. He flopped into the plump Italian leather armchair facing Willem’s desk.
“How have you been?” Willem asked.
“I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Tell me about it.”
Frans scratched at his wrists as his eyes scanned the room: the blank walls, Willem’s empty desktop, the two ficus trees in bronze pots flanking the windows, and finally the ceiling. He looked everywhere but at Willem. Frans seldom made eye contact, a habit that made Willem feel invisible and unable to connect with his patient in the way he should.
“I had the dream again,” Frans said, addressing one of the ficus plants. “I was driving, and the brakes failed, but I woke up before I crashed.”
The dream symbolized Frans’s lack of control over his life. At least he was dreaming it less often.
“How did the dream make you feel?”
“Panicky at first, but then I was okay with it.”
“Why were you okay with it?”
“Suddenly I knew it was only a dream.”
“How did you know?”
“It wasn’t my car.”
Frans explained that the car in his dream was a sporty convertible with a powerful engine, not his sort of car. In his waking life, he drove a hatchback, a hybrid. Willem turned the conversation to problems Frans was experiencing at work.
They were twenty minutes into the session when the door flew open. Willem gave a start. Frans clutched the armrests so hard his knuckles turned white.
Hendrik was standing in the doorway, dressed in baggy pajama bottoms, his skinny chest bare. The hair on his head stuck up in woolly tufts.
Willem rose. “It’s okay. This is my father, Hendrik Veldkamp,” he said, omitting his patient’s name out of respect for his privacy.
“Pleased to meet you,” Frans said, his voice warbling.
Hendrik’s eyes narrowed with suspicion at the peculiar little man in the chair. Then he twirled, taking in the room. “What have you done with my workshop?” He peered closer at Willem. “Who are you?”
“Your son Willem.”
“No, you’re not.”
Willem’s hands briefly clenched. “Why did you come downstairs?”
“I’m looking for Louisa.”
On most days, Hendrik was lucid. He read and comprehended scientific journals, followed the global news, and enjoyed his hobbies. He took strolls alone in Beatrix Park and found his way home. On good days, the family’s secrets were safe, but his condition would worsen in time. A danger lurked in the shadowy past, drawing nearer, the risk on a bad day Hendrik might say the wrong thing to the wrong pair of ears.
“She’s not here, Dad.” Telling Hendrik that Louisa was dead would lead to an emotional scene he didn’t want to play out in front of Frans.
Hendrik said, “I’ll look in the basement.”
Willem watched him shuffle from the room. When the door closed, he turned. “I apologize for the interruption.”
Frans scratched his forearms.
“How do you feel about what just happened?” Willem asked.
“I think I’ll go, Dr. Veldkamp.” Frans rolled up his left sleeve, exposing white skin streaked with red. He was going to scratch the skin raw.
“Shall we reschedule? Same time tomorrow?”
“I’ll check my agenda when I get to the office,” Frans said, avoiding eye contact.
After escorting his patient to the front door, Willem walked back to his office, his fists buried in his pockets. He had probably seen the last of Frans, unless his patient complained about Willem to the Healthcare Disciplinary Board. Frans had an aversion to confrontation, but he had a history of lodging frivolous complaints about products and services. Online, of course.
Hendrik’s deteriorating health was a bigger concern. They couldn’t risk putting him in a care home until he could no longer communicate—a state Willem wouldn’t wish on anyone.
A familiar but nearly forgotten sensation washed over him. His thoughts blanked, his skin tingled, and his chest tightened. He struggled to breathe. By the time he identified the feeling for what it was, it was too late. His foot shot out. Made contact. The wastebasket skimmed the carpet, bounced against the far wall, and rolled back a few feet.
Relief was instant. He inhaled, pulling air deep into his lungs, and exhaled slowly, the tightness letting go. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. But relief was short-lived, and he started shaking. He swore. He hadn’t experienced a loss of control in years. Why now, for God’s sake? Gradually the shaking subsided and his heartbeat slowed.
He retrieved the wastebasket and rotated it, looking for damage. There was only a small dent no one would notice if it faced the wall.
He collapsed in his chair and rested his head on the desk. Two years ago, the biggest hurdle to starting a private practice had been money. Around the same time, Hendrik had been diagnosed with a degenerative nerve disease. He wanted Willem close by in case Katja needed help caring for him, so he’d proposed that Willem move into the family mansion and set up his office on the ground floor.
It had seemed like a win–win situation, especially since Jurriaan lived in the neighborhood too. Hendrik paid the cost of converting the former workshop into office space and a small apartment for Willem. Hendrik and Katja had the top two floors to themselves; and Willem, the ground floor. The piano studio in the basement belonged to Louisa, as much a shrine as her empty grave in Zorgvlied cemetery. Willem had convinced himself he could handle the emotions living in the house might trigger, but now he wasn’t sure.
His desk phone rang, jarring him back to the present.
“Good afternoon. Dr. Veldkamp speaking.” He noticed too late that the caller was phoning from London, and he braced himself.
“Willem? This is Jeanette Bruin. Have I caught you at a bad time?”
“It’s fine. A patient just left.”
Dr. Bruin was Dutch. She had earned a doctorate in clinical psychology in the UK and now worked for the National Health Service. They had met at a psychiatric conference in Amsterdam a few months before. On impulse he’d invited her to dinner, drunk too much, and spent part of the night in her hotel room before he came to his senses and left. Not his finest hour.
“You sound stressed,” she said in her warm, caring voice, reminding him why he had found her attractive in the first place.
“It’s been one of those days. What can I do for you?” He hoped he had been clear at the hotel.
“I want to apologize about the way we parted. What I said.”
Willem thought for a moment. “Do you mean about my expletive deleted briefcase?”
She laughed.
He hadn’t blamed her for swearing; he’d deserved it and worse, but in that brief moment she had given him a peek behind the facade. He saw a side of her that made him run out of the hotel and not look back.
“Apology accepted.”
A silence fell.
“You’re not making this easy,” she said.
“Sorry, what am I doing?” But he knew what he was doing, or rather, what he was not doing. He was not encouraging her.
“Remember the family reunion I mentioned? It’s next week in Amsterdam. Will you have dinner with me on the sixteenth? Then I can apologize in person. I won’t be back in town for a while.”
Why couldn’t she leave things the way they were? Now he had to disappoint her a second time, and he’d had his fill of disappointing people a long time ago.
“I’m sorry, Jeanette, I’m busy the whole week.”
She was intelligent enough to read the subtext.
After a silence, she said, “I was afraid you might be, but you can’t blame a girl for trying. Goodbye, Willem.”
He heard a click.
The day could only get better, he thought, before remembering tonight was Katja’s annual bash. In a moment of weakness, he had promised to attend.