Willem
WILLEM RECEIVED THE ball in midfield and dribbled toward the shooting circle, a Bloemendaal defender sticking to him like a shadow. The score was tied, but there were eleven minutes left in the hockey match. The game could go either way. Bloemendaal had trounced Artemis earlier in the season, the worst defeat Willem’s team had experienced in the A pool. He was determined to beat them this time.
Bas, who played a forward position, appeared a few yards ahead. But before Willem could pass the ball, he felt a hard shove in the back. He stumbled wildly and a split second later crashed on his left shoulder, his hockey stick flying. The referee’s whistle shrilled.
Willem opened his eyes in time to see the referee wave a yellow card at the Bloemendaal defender. Anxious faces peered down at him. An airplane roared low over the trees toward Schiphol Airport. His left arm was bent at an awkward angle under his body.
“Are you okay?” Bas asked.
Willem sat up and cautiously felt his left arm. He opened and closed his fist and bent the arm at various angles, trying hard not to let on how much it hurt.
“Is it broken?” a teammate asked.
“Come on, Willem. We need you,” said the goalie.
Willem knew from experience what a broken bone felt like, and in his opinion the arm was only sprained, which was disastrous enough. He looked up at his team’s anxious faces and at the ground next to their feet. Where was his stick?
Wouter, their coach, jogged up, huffing and puffing. “Can you move the arm?”
“It’s fine.” The last thing Willem wanted was to be benched.
“I’ll help you up,” Bas said, pulling him to his feet.
“Hold on, Willem. Get your arm looked at,” Wouter said. “I’m bringing in Floris.”
What was the coach thinking? Floris was a fast runner, but he froze up at crucial moments. Artemis needed Willem if they wanted to score in the remaining time.
“I can play,” Willem said, though he wondered if he could. He’d had plenty of practice hiding injuries and pretending they didn’t hurt, but how could he swing a hockey stick with only one arm?
“Floris,” the coach yelled and motioned for him to enter the field.
“Floris, Floris, Floris” … Coach’s voice echoed in Willem’s head, the words swelling, growing larger until they were too big. An invisible band tightened around his chest, making it difficult to breathe.
The Bloemendaal defender watched from a few feet away, looking stupidly content with his yellow card. A lousy five-minute suspension was a small price to pay for eliminating Willem from the match. The boy looked smug and not at all sorry. Triumphant was more like it. He was tall and wiry. Fit. A fast runner. He should have run.
Willem lunged.
“No,” Bas shouted, grabbing at Willem’s shirttail.
Too late.
Willem reached the defender in a few strides. He couldn’t stop himself. He punched the startled player in the nose. Blood gushed. Tears gushed—even more satisfying than the blood. But not satisfying enough. Willem’s heart thundered in his chest, the storm roared inside his head. He barreled into the boy, knocking him backward to the ground. Willem landed on top, felt his opponent’s sharp ribs. Whimpering, the boy didn’t even try to defend himself. The coach bellowed. Two pairs of hands grabbed Willem before he could slug the boy again, and yanked him to his feet. He flailed and jerked, forgetting his hurt arm.
“Steady,” Wouter said, his voice low with a rough edge.
The two referees held Willem fast: a wiry man who was stronger than he looked and a heavy-set woman with a grip like one of Hendrik’s vises.
“For Christ’s sake, Willem,” Bas said, shaking his head.
Willem’s arm felt suddenly as if it were on fire, and the fight whooshed out of him. The referees’ hold loosened. He looked across the field at the spot where Hendrik and Jurriaan sat with the other parents behind the sideline fence, partly hidden by a banner advertising the Rabobank. Bas’s girlfriend, Kara, and her friend, Deborah, stood farther back, drinking from cans. From that distance, Willem couldn’t make out the spectators’ expressions, but he could imagine his father’s: shame.
Hendrik and Jurriaan attended all his matches. If it was a home match, the three of them cycled to the hockey club, which was next to the Amsterdam woods. If it was an away match, they went by car. Jurriaan watched from the sideline, jumping and yelling when he got excited. Hendrik always sat quietly, looking bewildered, even though he knew the rules; he had memorized the rule book. But he was more suited to chess, sometimes mulling over the board for hours before making a move. A hockey match was too fast and confusing, the swinging sticks, the ball racing along the field or bouncing off the goal posts or shooting into the net.
A man in a suit, no tie, probably the defender’s father, stormed onto the field. He bellowed at the female referee, jabbing his finger in Willem’s direction. Willem caught a few words: maniac, out of control, dangerous. She should tell him to take stock of his own kid.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the dreaded red card, thrusting it angrily in the air. No substitute allowed. Not with a red card. The dad yelled some more, and then the referee suspended Willem from next week’s match too. He felt sick when he saw the disgust on his teammates’ faces. He had let them down. It wasn’t fair since the other player had started it. He trudged off the field.
Play resumed, with Willem slouched on the bench, trying to act as if he didn’t care about any of it.
Bloemendaal scored another goal in the last two minutes.
Willem plodded across the field to where his team huddled, listening to Wouter give the debriefing.
They had not played like a team. They had made mistakes. They had given away the ball time after time. Fighting would not be tolerated.
No one looked at Willem, not even Bas. Probably no one was more pissed off with Willem than Bas, who never got angry enough to throw a punch.
The huddle broke up, and Willem shuffled toward the gate where Hendrik and Jurriaan waited. Bas stopped to talk to Kara and Deborah, his back turned to Willem. Deborah kept peering in Willem’s direction. She had red-gold hair and tan freckles like Katja. According to Bas, she had a crush on Willem. She was nice, but she giggled at everything he said, and worse, she smelled faintly of mothballs.
Willem counted himself lucky that Katja had declined his invitation to attend the match, to witness his fall from grace.
“How’s the arm?” Hendrik asked.
Willem shrugged.
“You’re too old to get in a fight.”
Those were harsh words coming from Hendrik, and Willem’s face flooded with heat.
“I didn’t start it.”
“You finished it, though, didn’t you?”
Willem looked at Bas’s back, still squarely turned toward him. Deborah’s green eyes darted away.
Jurriaan slung his arm around Willem’s neck. “I’m sorry that Artemis lost. Want to share my soda?”
That afternoon, Louisa summoned Willem to her piano studio.
She rose from the piano bench, smoothed her skirt, and seemed to float toward him.
Now he was in for it.
For the past six months she had been away more than she’d been home, giving concerts in North and South America, and in a few days, she was leaving to teach summer school in Italy at Lake Como. If only she had left a few days earlier, or the hockey match had been a few days later.
She stood silently before Willem, their eyes almost level with each other’s. He was now taller than she was, which made him feel … He searched for the word: empowered.
“I guess Dad told you what happened.” Willem’s voice cracked despite his newfound bravado.
“He should have, but the coach called me.”
Good old Wouter. He had wasted no time.
“They want you to write a letter to the disciplinary committee, giving your side of the incident. They might expel you from the club.”
“They can’t do that.” Or could they? His heart beat wildly.
Louisa shrugged. “Take it up with Hendrik. He knows the rules better than anyone.”
Willem tried to imagine life without hockey: the afternoons of practice gone, the Saturday matches gone, his teammates gone. Bas gone.
“Which arm is it?” Louisa asked.
His mouth went dry. “My left.”
He tensed as her fingers lightly brushed his forearm. After a few moments, her hand dropped to her side.
“Willem, dear, as I’ve said countless times, when you misbehave it reflects on the family. What will people think when they read Louisa Veldkamp on the posters outside the concert hall? Will they think about the greatest living pianist or about an out-of-control teenager?”
“Mom, no one will—”
“Besides, these phone calls disturb my concentration.”
She made it sound as if she got such calls all the time.
“I couldn’t help it—”
“Save it, Willem.”
“I’m trying to explain. Sometimes I get so angry, it takes over—or wants to.” He paused and scanned her face, searching for a gleam of understanding, but her expression was immobile, like wax. Still, he pressed on. He had something to say and was determined to get it off his chest. “When that happens, I do bad stuff. Stuff I can barely remember doing. Like a dream, kind of. Afterward, I feel better. Normal. And I’m sorry afterward, you know, for what I did. Don’t you ever feel that way?”
She gave him an icy glare.
“Definitely not, Willem.”
His heart sank. He had been stupid to think she would admit to a weakness or help him.
“Take off your shirt,” she said.
“What for?”
“I want to take a look at your injuries.”
“I’m fine, Mom. Really.”
“I’ll help you.”
She had that I-won’t-take-no-for-an-answer tone. He let her pull the T-shirt over his head. Her eyes ran over his shoulder and down his arm. He flinched when she poked at a rib, but there was nothing to see except for a red streak: no bruises or swelling. Not even a scratch.
“This might hurt a little. I’m going to check if your bone is broken.” She squeezed his forearm, at first gently—then her grip tightened.
“Jeetje, Mom,” he said, dancing away. “May I go now?”
“I’m not done.” She grabbed hold of his arm again.
He yanked free and strode to the door, afraid of what he might do if he stayed even a second longer.