August 16, 2004
Willem
LOUISA LAY ON the gritty linoleum floor in front of the stove. Hendrik, who was kneeling beside her, blocked Willem’s view of her upper body. One pale leg was bent slightly at the knee, resting on its side, the other stretched out straight. He picked up her hand and pressed his thumb against her wrist for several moments, then bent down and laid his ear against her chest.
“Louisa. Can you hear me?”
Jurriaan stood nearby, visibly shaking, the bloody hammer dangling in his hand, a wet stain down his pajama bottoms. Willem blinked, unable to process what he saw, and tried to remember who had done what.
“Louisa,” Hendrik repeated.
Willem held his breath.
One of her trainers twitched.
He exhaled in relief. He had hated her for years—and sometimes had fantasized about her death in random accidents. A plane crash or a car accident or a fall down the stairs. But she was his mother, after all.
He tried to recall what had happened after he grabbed the hammer, but the next thing he could remember was bending over the sink while Katja rinsed the porridge off his face with shockingly cold water.
He crossed the kitchen, slipped the bloody hammer from Jurriaan’s hand, squatted, and laid it on the floor.
“Mom,” Jurriaan wailed.
Willem pinned his arms, held him back, kept him from throwing himself onto their mother.
“Take Jurriaan upstairs,” Hendrik said. “Give him one of Louisa’s sleeping pills.”
Jurriaan struggled against Willem’s hold.
“We’ll take care of her, Jurriaan,” Katja said, her voice quavering. “Go upstairs with Willem.”
Jurriaan twisted his neck around, peering over his shoulder as Willem hustled him through the kitchen door and up the stairs.
Jurriaan sat down, robot-like, on his bed while Willem fetched the sleeping pills and a glass of water from the bathroom.
“Here. Take these.” Willem gave him two.
“Is Mom dead?”
“No, she’s just tired.”
Jurriaan nodded. “I wet my pants,” he said, looking miserable.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll get you clean ones.”
“Another T-shirt too,” Jurriaan said. His was spattered with blood, like flecks of red paint.
Willem peered down at his own shirt, which was dark blue, making the spatters difficult to see. The blood was already dry. Stiff. He balled up their shirts and stuffed them into the wastebasket. He found a clean pair of shorts for Jurriaan and T-shirts for them both.
The pills didn’t work instantly. Willem perched on the edge of the bed, reassuring his brother that their mother was going to be all right. It took a good ten minutes for Jurriaan to fall asleep.
Hendrik must have called the emergency number, and Willem wondered if an ambulance would arrive with its siren wailing. Once Louisa regained consciousness, she could tell the doctor—or the police—who had struck her with the hammer, unless she had amnesia or didn’t want to admit to the world what went on in her perfect family. Someone would be in big trouble, maybe Willem, but it would be much worse if she didn’t keep breathing. He clung to the thought that her foot had twitched.
Downstairs, the kitchen was transformed. The blue tarp from the shed was spread flat on the floor. It was caked here and there with clumps of dried mud, some of which had disintegrated into little piles of dirt on the linoleum. Louisa’s face was turned, and he could see the wound an inch above her ear. Blood matted the hair at her temple and smeared her cheek, but the bleeding had stopped, which must be a good sign. And the hammer had vanished. But why the tarp?
“Jurriaan’s asleep,” he said.
“Good,” Katja said.
“Is an ambulance on the way?” he asked.
She looked at Hendrik.
Hendrik said, “Okay, Katja. On the count of three. One, two, three.”
Willem watched as they rolled Louisa’s limp body onto the tarp. Her face flopped toward Willem, making him jump. Her lips were parted as if in surprise, and her eyelids slitted, the whites visible between her eyelashes. Panic thrashed in his chest. Why didn’t they answer him about the ambulance?
“Take off her shoes and socks,” Hendrik said to Katja.
She loosened the laces and slipped off the trainers, and Hendrik dropped something shiny into one of them. Katja pulled off Louisa’s ankle socks and stuffed them into the shoes.
They were making her more comfortable, Willem thought, and his panic eased.
But when Hendrik covered the bloodied face with the tarp, Willem’s stomach heaved. That’s what you did to dead people. He lurched down the shadowy hall to the toilet and fell to his knees. He retched, stomach acids burning his throat. The tile floor felt like broken glass. When he was finished, he sat back, heart pounding. The room was claustrophobic. Spinning. Rain pelted the small window that was set high in the wall. He pushed himself to his feet, leaned against the sink, and rinsed out his mouth. He trudged toward the light spilling in from the kitchen.
Hendrik and Katja were drinking whisky at the table. In the center of the floor lay an elongated bundle bound with rope. Katja raised her eyes, and in that moment, Willem knew he had become just a lump of living flesh to her, nothing more. There was only one reason she would look at him like that. His gaze shifted to the bundle.
Hendrik cleared his throat. “Now listen carefully, son. This is what we’re going to do. We’ll report her missing tomorrow.”
Missing? Confused, Willem looked at the tarp and back at Hendrik. He started to interrupt, but Hendrik spoke with such authority that he kept silent, listened, tried to take it in.
“Nothing’s going to bring back your mother, but I won’t have a son of mine branded a murderer or sent to prison. Your mother wouldn’t want that either. I’ll make her body disappear—permanently. Tonight. After dark.”
“What are you going to do?” Willem said, and glanced at Katja, whose eyes were fixed on Hendrik.
“It’s better you don’t know.” Hendrik stood up and began to pace, his hands clutched together behind his back. He was wound up tight, the same way he got when perfecting an invention. “Everything’s going to be all right, Willem.”
Katja nodded her head like a bobbling dashboard ornament.
Willem knew if anyone could cover up a murder, it was Hendrik. He wasn’t much of a dad, but he was a brilliant inventor, happiest when solving a difficult problem. And for the first time, Hendrik wasn’t looking away.