Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister Page 12

  Notice Ruth, and how she’s left out of this. How can Iris not have considered before that Ruth’s being slow of tongue might not necessarily mean she is slow of feeling? Ruth on a low stool, even farther in the shadows, her roaming eye tracking up and down a bit of unadorned plastered wall. Notice Ruth, with her hands twisting on her knees, as if by dint of force she might fix her legs properly at last and make them work like legs. Ruth with her brown hair that no one has bothered to trim, and a pucker between the brows like a dimple in a potato. What does Ruth know of death, thinks Iris, and for that matter, what do I?

  Notice Clara, the girl of the moment, caught in all this attention and hating it. The shock of grief can only partly obliterate Clara’s lopsided temper. When she can escape from a bleary relative, she trails away. Iris sees Clara lower her glance and prepare to give a dozing great-aunt a kick in the ankle. But Clara feels Iris’s eye upon her and keeps both feet on the floor.

  Notice the Master and Caspar, and how bothered they both are, despite their masculine strength. The Master trembling with some kind of panic. Henrika’s death brings up in him the need for verities, for the classic tales of the scriptures. Her death is the memento mori that time must also catch him at his crime: Painting interiors with beautiful merchants’ daughters or wives, nothing worthy about them except exactitude—he’s abandoned both sacred inspiration and cautionary fable. Look how he scratches his brow with a palsied hand not entirely wiped clean of paint! A few flecks of skin drift off. He isn’t listening to that chattering neighbor. He’s too deep within himself.

  Notice Caspar.

  Caspar, a blessing of a human being, with his expression as open as a convex mirror. How he follows the Master, seeing to his left elbow, muttering someone’s name in his right ear, smoothing the way through the social currents for his teacher and his employer. Caspar the good apprentice, Caspar the reliable friend, and also

  Caspar the handsome man.

  Oh, Caspar, thinks Iris. Oh, well.

  She watches him when she can bear to look at him again.

  He is so—what is the word?—so right. So rightly formed. The good-sized shoulders, the capable chest. And then the tapering waist, the comfortable bottom, the well-turned calves, the thighs, the energetic feet. And the face, nested in all that glossy hair. The blunt who-cares nose, the wind-raw lips, eyebrows always askew, unmatched. A face with charity and mockery displayed in equal measure. Look at him, now tending to Clara, with all the affection of a courtier! What other man his age would care about the well-being of a girl? He is brushing her cheek with his hand, he is fiddling with her hair. Clara won’t smile at him—how could she on this, the burial day of her mother?—but she does look at him and speak softly, and no one else, not even Iris, has gotten her to utter a word today.

  Iris stands. She has to hold onto the edge of the chair. She must make Caspar speak to her or she’ll die. They’ll be opening up Henrika’s grave and tossing Iris’s own dead body right in with her unless she talks to Caspar at once, and makes Caspar look at her, and notice her somehow. If she isn’t to be noticed she’ll disappear from the room and perhaps never return. She’ll evaporate like morning mist. She’ll be as gone as the household imp seems to be.

  She floats across the room. She is like a soulless spirit abroad from the depths of the Haarlemsmeer. “You have the power to charm our poor Clara,” says Iris to Caspar.

  He glances at her. “Charm isn’t the word, I think,” he says, but he winces at Iris, the most of a smile he can manage given the terms of the day. A smile nonetheless. So that’s all right, then.

  “Iris,” says Margarethe. “You’re needed in the kitchen now.”

  “I’m talking to Caspar,” says Iris.

  “Iris,” says Margarethe, a tone that can’t be ignored. So Iris turns away from Caspar, but not before catching his hand for a moment in her own. “Iris!” says Margarethe.

  In the kitchen, a lot to be done. Iris isn’t familiar with funeral customs of Haarlem, but today the abstemiousness of Calvinism, never fully embraced by the van den Meers, is being ignored entirely. There are bowls of oysters soaking in vinegar, and a brace of hares to unfasten from the spit, and a spill of produce from the cold cellar to be used in various ways. Margarethe, having made her silent procession about the salon, returns with rapid feet down the step to the kitchen, and there she sets a couple of hired girls and her own daughters to tasks. Caspar shows up in the doorway looking for a firkin of water. He’s assigned to scrubbing potatoes before he knows what’s happened.

  “This is a sumptuous feast to prepare at the last minute,” he says, observing Margarethe at the center of the whirlwind.

  “People only die at the last minute,” says Margarethe tartly, but Iris—clever Iris!—knows that her mother means more than this. And so does Caspar.

  “These are potatoes that could have been scrubbed last night,” says Caspar. “You aren’t slack in the matter of household duties, Margarethe. Why this unseemly haste?”

  “They are potatoes newly ordered in,” says Margarethe, “this morning, if you must know. And likewise the bread that’s about to burn if I do not—just this minute—Ruth, move your clumsy carcass from that stool, can’t you see I need access to the oven—”

  “What is this about?” says Caspar.

  “At the last minute,” says Margarethe, “van den Meer let it be known that he expected his colleagues to escort potential investors to his home to mourn the loss of his dear wife. Haven’t you seen that the portrait of Young Woman with Tulips has been given pride of place in the hall?”

  “He’s removed the portrait of Henrika?” says Caspar.

  “I had thought a painter would be more observant,” says Margarethe wryly. “The beetroots, Iris, don’t forget those.”

  With the house full of guests, Iris hasn’t noticed the switch either. “But—surely they’ll expect to see Henrika above the sideboard!” says Iris. “This is her house and that painting is the best token of her memory! It’s not a time to trawl for investments!”

  “You have no idea about this, and why should you, silly girl,” says Margarethe, and relents a bit and adds, “as no more do I. But I should think that the best token of a parent’s memory is her beautiful child. Besides, Cornelius tells me that there’s even more money to be made in the tulip market this year, due to a strong season in the Exchange in Amsterdam. Cornelius and his partners must be protected against the potential loss of their shipment of bulbs. They hadn’t yet been able to place the portrait in a venue that would guarantee discussion and snare investors. Timid Henrika had become uneasy about the painting of Young Girl with Tulips, and she had changed her mind about allowing its use for a commercial gain. So it’s only sensible to take advantage of this sad but necessary gathering . . .”

  “This is vile and corrupt,” says Caspar.

  “A father must take care of his daughter,” says Margarethe. “You’re a silly boy and don’t know the ways of the world. Henrika would have expected no less of Cornelius.”

  “And a mother must take care of her own too, I suppose,” says Caspar, but darkly, pitching a potato into the fireplace.

  “Are you referring to me? I should say so. There is plague in Utrecht, I’m told,” says Margarethe, “again. Again, mind you. This is a prosperous country and a fine time to be alive for all who will live to tell the tale, Caspar. I won’t be thrown out on the street to watch my daughters starve, or waste away with the pox, or dribble their insides out with bloody flux. And who are you to talk? You take care of yourself, I’ve noticed, in any way that comes to hand, thanks to the Master.”

  “I am paid for services rendered,” says Caspar sniffily. “I have a trade.”

  “Hah, is that what they call it, a trade,” says Margarethe. “I believe that you are good at your ‘trade.’”

  “Mama,” says Iris. She doesn’t catch the drift of meaning, but she’s offended at the tone.

  “Let her accuse me of low morals,” says Ca
spar bitterly. “It’s only from guilt that she finds the strength to make such claims of others.”

  “There’s too much work to be done to waste time in talk. If you can’t help, then be off,” says Margarethe.

  Iris glances. Caspar refuses to move. “I’m concerned for the well-being of your daughters, though not of you,” he says. “I stay to assist them.”

  “Then let the girls sit on their stools and do their chores without the wagging of tongues,” says Margarethe, but with a wave of her spoon she includes Caspar among the girls. Iris waits to see him leap up in anger, but he holds his tongue and merely works the harder.

  All afternoon there is coming and going, and little chatting among the kitchen help except to learn what task is next. The lamps are lit as evening draws near, and platter after platter of delicacy goes out to the guests, and empty platters are returned.

  Mid-evening, Clara stumbles into the kitchen and settles herself near the fire.

  “If you’re going to be in the way, you might as well help,” says Margarethe.

  “I’m tired,” says Clara. “I’ve been standing at attention all day, silent unless spoken to by some hideous old man who wants to tell me I am more beautiful than the painting of me.” She peers into the flames and scowls.

  “Oh, I’ll wager that makes the Master swell with pride,” says Caspar, snickering.

  “The Master left hours ago,” says Clara. “Didn’t you notice?”

  “He must be offended that his painting is newly hung for such an occasion,” says Caspar.

  Clara says, “I don’t know what you mean,” but before Caspar can explain, Margarethe says, “Clara, stir the pot while you sit there, save me the extra steps.”

  “I don’t know how,” says Clara, “and I’m too tired.”

  “There is no lesson needed in the stirring of the pot,” says Margarethe. “Pick up the spoon and stir it.”

  “I’m not a kitchen girl,” says Clara. “I haven’t stirred pots before.”

  “Do not anger me,” says Margarethe. “I am working my fingers to the bone to help your poor bereaved father, and while you are in the kitchen you are in my domain. If I tell you to stir the pot, child, them stir the pot you will, if I have to beat you over the head to make it happen.”

  Caspar and Iris exchange glances. Clara sits up straight. “This is my home,” she says. “I will not stir the pot for you or anyone else.”

  “Margarethe,” says Caspar in a voice that betrays nothing of his earlier antagonism, “Margarethe, the girl’s mother has been interred this morning. Charity, Margarethe.”

  “Charity works both ways,” says Margarethe. She picks up a smoothed dowel she has been using to roll out pastry. “Clara? Will you stir the pot?”

  “I will not,” says Clara.

  Plague and

  Quarantine

  The cold snap continues. The days are bleached into sameness by a cloud cover that never varies. Iris, when out on tasks for the household, watches the stolid Dutch at their business, maneuvering over the streets that freeze up into icy ruts every might. The Dutch are buttoned and swaddled against the winter, as stoic and skeptical as their cows. If they believe in imps and demons, within the household walls or outside the city proper, they betray no such faith.

  Feeling both older and newer these days, Iris thinks of herself at last as both English and Dutch—English in her hope of catching a glimpse of the magical world living cheek by jowl with this one, Dutch in her impatience with Clara’s fecklessness. Iris admits it: Clara is beginning to seem maudlin. At any rate, her crying morning, noon, and night doesn’t make her father pay more attention to her, and it seems only to irritate Margarethe.

  “On the streets of Amsterdam, Clara, the carcasses are laid out to be taken to the churchyard,” says Margarethe one day. “The plague comes and goes like a foul beast in the night, and Haarlem itself has known its ravages. Must I take you on a walking tour of the devil’s handiwork in order to make you stop your sniffling? My own husband was dispatched with a blow to the skull, and even silly old Ruth didn’t sob the way that you do. And Iris did as she was told, she dried her eyes and got on with it. Why can’t you do the same?”

  “Because I don’t have a mother to tell me to do so,” says Clara, wiping her eyes and her nose. “She isn’t here to tell me to do as I’m told!”

  “Well, I’m here,” says Margarethe, “and I’ll have to do.”

  Clara looks alarmed and angry at such a notion. But, so Iris observes, the anger at any rate has the effect of stilling Clara’s tears.

  Margarethe’s remarks about the plague aren’t idle. Those who work in the tulip sheds linger about the doorway to the kitchen, waiting for Margarethe to pass out cheese, bread, and pickled herrings. In return Margarethe collects news about the latest sufferers of the plague. “We shouldn’t seem ungrateful for our room and board here,” she says to her daughters. “Were we tossed onto the streets again, there to find lodging and food in some more despicable spot, we’d undoubtedly put ourselves in the path of contagion. God has seen fit to secure us here, and we must praise God for His providence.”

  “God took away Henrika and her baby so that we might be safe?” says Iris.

  “Hush your voice,” says Margarethe. “God might be listening to such doubt and punish us all.”

  “But I’m not clear on this point,” says Iris. “God spoils other good lives to save our sorry ones?”

  “I’ll whip you into understanding if I must,” says Margarethe.

  Iris bows her head as if suddenly full of enlightenment. The prospect of Margarethe becoming pious alarms her.

  The winter days crawl on. Comes the feast of Saint Nicolas. At Clara’s instruction, the girls all set out their wooden shoes on the hearth. Margarethe sniffs. “You think that Sinter Klaas and his sooty helper, Zwarte Piet, will know that two ugly, hulking English girls live here? I wouldn’t dream of treats if I were you.”

  “Mama in heaven will have told the good saint about Iris and Ruth,” says Clara confidently.

  “So we’ll learn,” says Margarethe.

  And in the morning a small selection of sweets, nuts, and toys is found lodged in each wooden shoe. “But I received nothing more than you did,” says Clara to Iris petulantly.

  “Nor I more than you,” says Iris. “Sinter Klaas has a fair hand.”

  “But I am the daughter of the household, and you are servants,” says Clara.

  “Oh,” says Iris, brought up short. What to say? “Well, since we’re all friends under this roof, whoever received a greater portion would have been bound by friendship to share it. So it’s helpful that the favors are smartly divided already.”

  Clara looks disgruntled at this but holds her tongue.

  * * *

  Christmas arrives, and then Epiphany. “Now we get to select a king,” says Clara. “Whoever discovers a bean baked into the morning cake.” She’s the lucky one, but her face falls when Ruth finds a bean in her portion too, and so does Iris.

  “It is the feast of Driekoningen,” observes Margarethe. “All three kings are honored here.” Ruth sits up, proud to be a king. Iris and Clara fight over which one will have her face blackened as Melchior. But it scarcely matters, as Clara still won’t leave the house, so Iris and Ruth trot off to join other children in the Grotemarkt at their strange songs about Herod and the Magi. Clara is a pouting Melchior from the front window.

  The weeks of midwinter are endless. The mornings are locked in frost and fog, sometimes even curtained in snow. Too many days in a row the girls are kept inside. Though Clara teases and taunts the Fisher girls, she’s pleased to have the company. But Iris and Ruth become impatient. When the weather lifts, they spend long days at the studio, leaving Clara behind.

  Without Henrika’s vigilance about education, Clara grows bored.

  Margarethe scrupulously ignores her, and makes a practice of sending the girls out to do small tasks more and more often.

  One day Iris i
s shucking her cloak in the hallway when she hears Margarethe remarking to Clara, “It isn’t my job to keep you amused. And housework is not amusing, I’ll grant you that, but it whiles the hours away. But you will set yourself above housework, won’t you? And for the moment I let it go.” Iris tiptoes forward and peers to see Margarethe pushing a broom ostentatiously around Clara’s feet and saying, “What delicate tender feet you have, too wonderful to stand upon to do some work and help us laboring folk.

  The day arrives when Clara mutters to the pewter mug on the breakfast table, “I’ll come with you tomorrow on your tasks if you like.”

  If there really had been a household imp—of any origin, Dutch or English—it must be long gone, for now is the time it should rattle its bones, chomp its teeth, flare its nostrils, scream with surprise. None of that. Iris notices nothing but cold, thick silence. She holds her breath. Ruth turns to look at Clara. Van den Meer pauses in his breakfast, holding a piece of bread aloft. His eyebrows lift.

  “Come with us if you like. It makes no difference to me, none at all,” says Margarethe. “It wasn’t I who imposed this quarantine on you.” But Iris senses a shudder of satisfaction running across her mother’s shoulders.

  The following morning, as soon as she can peel herself away from the warm hearth, Margarethe wraps herself in a cloak. Clara, nibbling her nails, stands ready. The last time she was away from the house was her mother’s burial, when she was voiceless with grief. And before that it was years . . .

  They set out toward the center of town, a quartet, Clara gripping Ruth’s hand and looking this way and that. Margarethe’s intentions are modest ones—a few onions here, a bit of lace there, a new candle mold from the smithy. “We traipse after you like ducklings,” says Iris happily. “Even though Ruth has a hard time keeping up. Come on, Ruth, use your big, strong legs. Clara, look at that dog going after the goose!”

  “No,” says Clara, entranced, “the goose is going after the dog.”