Anne’s eyes pop wide open. “Are you serious, Bep? Maurits?”
“Yes. That’s the one.” Bep’s glance is shy as she replaces the lid on the tin of Hotel Koffiesurrogaat. Her eyes are cool lakes.
Anne feels a giddy grin on her face. “Oh, Bep. You must be beside yourself.”
“Yes. I know I should be,” Bep agrees.
And now Anne feels a tiny secret thrill. Bep getting a proposal of marriage is one thing. Bep refusing a proposal of marriage? That’s something else again. She tries to trim the eager curiosity from her voice. “Are you thinking of telling him no?”
Bep plugs the percolator into the electric socket. “Maybe,” she says, and then she stops and looks at Anne with blunt trepidation. “Would that be such a terrible thing?”
“Terrible? I—” Anne shivers. “I don’t know. Are you sure he’s going to ask?”
“Pretty sure.” Bep nods. “I mean, I think he’s hinting at it. He’s saying things like at our age his parents were married with two children.”
“Do you love him?”
“That’s a complicated question.”
“Is it?” Anne wonders. “I wouldn’t think so.” In Anne’s mind this is the only question that truly matters. She suspects that her parents married less for love than for the requirements of society, and look what happened. Pim stuck in an arrangement for the rest of his life with Mummy. A respectful arrangement maybe, but still Anne can never imagine settling for something like that. She knows that love is waiting for her out there somewhere. A heart that will match her own in every detail. And she doesn’t want Bep to settle for anything less either.
Bep, however, shakes her head. “He always tries to be good to me. Do I wish he had a little more ambition? That maybe he would want more than just a job as a laborer for a concrete company? I don’t know. My father thinks he’s perfect material for a husband.”
“And certainly it’s good that your father approves.”
“And he does. Very much so.”
“Though, on the other hand, your father is not the one who’s going to be married to him,” Anne points out. “You are.”
“Funny,” Bep says with her lips in a straight line. “That is exactly what I said, too. Though Papa didn’t think it was so amusing. He says Maurits is honest and a hard worker and if he wants to marry me, shouldn’t that be enough?”
“Yet I still can’t help but return to the most important question: Do you love him, Bep?” Anne asks again.
This time Bep expels a heavy breath as the percolator begins to pop. “I don’t know. Yes. In a way. Of course I do, in a way.”
“But. Not in the way you want to,” Anne suggests. “Not in the way you want to love someone you’re going to marry.”
Bep loops her hair behind her ears. “I’m twenty-three, Anne. I know you’re only thirteen. You’re probably still much too young to really understand the sort of pressure that puts on me. My mother is continually making her ‘jokes’ about her eldest daughter, the ‘Old Maid.’”
“But certainly that’s no reason to say yes if you’re not sure. Because your mother makes jokes.”
“Maybe not,” Bep says dubiously. “But where exactly is the long line of suitors for me to choose from?” She locks her gaze onto Anne’s. There is a certain small terror in her whisper. “Maybe Maurits will be my only chance.”
Anne blinks. “Only chance?” She doesn’t understand. “Only chance for what?”
“For a husband, Anne. A family. For happiness,” Bep says, and then her eyes go bright with tears. A breath catches in her throat, and Anne can only step forward and embrace her like a sister, gripping her tightly, trying to absorb the shiver of Bep’s sobs. “Bep, Bep,” she murmurs. “Don’t tear yourself to pieces. You will make the right decision when the time comes. Have faith in God that you will. Have faith in yourself.”
Bep swallows her sobs, nodding, and Anne allows her to slip from Anne’s embrace.
“Yes,” Bep agrees. “Yes, of course you’re right. When the time comes,” she says, fumbling for the handkerchief in the pocket of her shift, “I’m sure I’ll know.”
A voice comes from the corridor. “Anne?” Margot steps into the kitchen threshold and then stops as abruptly as if she’s bumped into a wall. “Oh. Excuse me.”
“That’s all right,” Bep replies quickly, clearing her throat of its thickness, hiding away her handkerchief. “Anne was just showing me how your mother taught you to brew coffee. Quite informative.” She forces a smile.
Margot observes the scene for a moment, then says, “Anne, we should be going. It’s almost time to help Mummy with supper.”
“But it’s still early—” Anne starts to protest, till Bep cuts her off.
“No, no,” Bep insists, sniffing. “You go, Anne. I was so late back from lunch, I have plenty of work I need to catch up with.”
For an instant Anne considers arguing the point, but then instead she reaches over and plants a loud kiss on Bep’s cheek. “I’ll see you soon,” she tells Bep, who flashes her a sharply grateful smile as the percolator steams, a smile that vanishes as quickly as it appears.
Outside, Margot wants to know, “What was that all about?”
“What was what all about?” Anne replies with faux innocence. She does a quick survey of the street, a habit now, just to be sure that there’re no fascist types ready to initiate hostilities over the yellow star sewn to her climbing jacket.
“You know exactly what. Why was Bep upset?”
“Just a personal matter,” says Anne as blithely as possible. She always savors any opportunity to have one up on Margot. “I really can’t say anything more.”
On the walk home, though, she cannot help but wonder about something. The truth is that she has never drawn the same line as Bep has just done with such rock-hard assurance: husband, family, happiness. Of course, she assumes that regardless of what she might have had to say on the subject to fluster Mummy, she will have all those things someday. But even if she doesn’t, even if she forgoes the first two, the third has always floated freely, independently, in her mind. She will fall in love, doubtless. Of course she will. The war will end—how can it last forever? Eventually the English will arrive and the mof will be kicked back to his dirty little abode across the border. Jews will be free again, to be simply themselves, and she will find the one out there somewhere whose heart beats as hers, that much she assumes. But happiness? She has never planned on happiness coming from marriage or motherhood, but from something else. From something special inside. Mummy said that in Hebrew her name means “Favored by God,” and she believes it. She believes that God is keeping a unique secret for her; keeping it hidden from everyone including herself, until the time is ripe for her to discover it. The essence of Annelies Marie Frank.
One afternoon after classes, Anne enters the front office of her father’s firm and finds another girl occupying Bep’s desk, lounging on the telephone with a lazy voice, but when the girl spots Anne, she quickly cuts the call short.
“Hello,” says Anne with polite curiosity as she sets down her book satchel and hangs her jacket on the coat tree.
“Hello,” the girl answers with a not-unpleasant expression. “I guess you’re one of the daughters. I know there’s one younger and one older, so you must be the younger.”
“I must be,” Anne says. “My name is Anne.”
“I’m Nelli. One of Bep’s sisters.”
“Ah,” says Anne. And she sees it now. The resemblance. This girl looks to be a few years Bep’s junior but has the same high forehead and the same rounded chin. The same pinkish, bow-shaped lips and fluffy waves in her hair. But her eyes are different. They are larger, bolder, hungrier. Searching through her handbag, she produces a packet of French cigarettes and leans her head to the side as she ignites the tip with a bullet lighter.
“I don’t think Bep likes people to smoke at her desk,” Anne informs her.
“There are plenty of things I do that Bep doesn’t like,” Nelli says. “Just ask her. I’m sure she can give you a list.”
Anne looks around. All the desks are empty. “Where is everybody?”
“In the office down the hall,” Nelli replies without interest, and blows smoke. And then she says, “So it’s true. You’re Jewish.”
Anne feels her spine stiffen as she becomes acutely aware of the star attached to her blouse. “Yes,” she answers calmly. “Why do you bring that up?”
Another shrug from Nelli. “No reason. Only that you’re prettier than I expected. You could really pass, I think.”
Pass? “For what?”
“For Dutch,” says Nelli.
At that moment the office door opens and in steps Margot in a hurry. “Sorry I’m late,” she announces, removing her coat. Anne glares at the star sewn to Margot’s jumper, too, but Nelli now looks uninterested. “I agreed to tutor some of the younger pupils in French after classes. Where is everyone?”
“In Papa’s office, apparently. Margot, this is Nelli, Bep’s sister.”
Only now does Margot seem to notice the girl. “Oh. Hello. I’m Margot.”
“So I heard,” Nelli replies, expelling smoke. “How nice to meet you.”
“You know Bep doesn’t like people smoking at her desk,” Margot points out.
“Hmm.” Nelli nods. “I think I read that in the newspapers.”
Margot blinks, confused. “You what?”
But before Nelli says anything more, there’s some noise down the hall as the door to the private office opens and voices tumble out. Bep is the first one to return to the front office. Immediately her expression purses into a frown. “Nelli! What are you doing? Put that out, please,” she demands.
Nelli huffs sourly but does as she’s commanded, crushing out the cigarette in the saucer of a teacup.
“Don’t make a mess,” Bep scolds. “Take that cup and saucer into the kitchen and clean them, please. What are you up to anyway? You should be working. Have you finished with those invoices I asked you to file? No. I see you haven’t. I suppose, as usual, I must watch every move you make.”
“A pity you haven’t anything better to do,” Nelli tells her sister as she begins to page listlessly through the stack of unfiled invoices.
“Well, if you want to get paid for your work here, then I suggest that you find something better to do than loafing with a cigarette. We have an image to uphold in the front office.” Bep is gathering folders from the filing cabinet, and she slams a drawer shut as if to punctuate her sentence. Only now does she glance over at Anne and Margot. “So you’ve met my sister?”
“Yes,” says Anne blankly.
Bep nods and cradles the file folders. “Miep has left some work on Mr. Kugler’s desk for you two with a note.” And then to Nelli she pleads, “I beg you not to make me regret bringing you in,” before she marches back toward Pim’s private office, her flat heels clomping on the wooden floorboards.
“She’s not very large, but she still sounds like an ox in shoes when she walks, doesn’t she?” says Nelli.
Anne is offended. “That’s a terrible thing to say. Especially about your own sister.”
Nelli only shrugs. “You’re right,” she says wryly. “You’re right. I must be a terrible person.”
“Anne, let’s not dawdle,” Margot intercedes, setting her school satchel down beside Anne’s. “I want to be able to finish the work Miep left for us before we go home.”
Anne blinks away from Nelli. “Well, you’re the one who was late.”
“And you’re the one who likes to dawdle,” Margot counters, heading under the arch toward Kugler’s side of the office.
Nelli expels a breath. “Aren’t big sisters simply an impossible pain in the rump?” she wonders aloud.
Anne can’t disagree with this. But she finds that she doesn’t want to agree with Nelli either. “Excuse me,” she says formally, and follows Margot.