She has taught herself tricks when the panic overtakes her. Focusing on the clouds floating above like grand barges. Counting backward from a hundred. Or simply bawling her eyes out. She could easily do that now, but she does not wish to sob in public, so instead she chooses to concentrate on the progress of a long-legged spider up the lamppost. Spinning his silky filament, Mr. Longlegs. Higher and higher on a silvered thread. Anne breathes in deeply and exhales slowly. She swallows hard, and the clutch of dread begins to loose its grip. Her pulse retrieves its usual tempo. Wiping a clammy sheen from her brow, she slings her schoolbag back over her shoulder. Like the clouds above her head, she is on the move, herself again. The emptiness safely locked away.
• • •
The rows of modern sandstone apartment buildings radiate in symmetry from the central star of a tall yellow tower called the Wolkenkrabber. The Cloud Raker. A twelve-story jut of concrete masonry, steel, and glass scraping the cloud bellies as it anchors a commons of well-groomed turf. The afternoon smells of the bread in the ovens of the Blommestein bakery with a trace of pithy river air. This is the Merwedeplein, which Anne likes to call “the Merry.”
Her home is number 37. Four rooms, a kitchen, a bath, and a water closet, plus a room upstairs, which they rent to a bachelor tenant. It’s an airy flat, with a wonderful little platje—their narrow, tar-pebble terrace that’s as good as any lakeshore for sunbathing in the summer. Anne bounds up the stairwell from the doorway and meets her mother, who’s dressed in her housecoat, a look of glum disappointment on her face. She is a stolidly built lady, her mother, with a broad brow and the easy smile of the Holländer family, though she seldom smiles these days. “Anne.” Mummy frowns. “I need to speak to you for a moment. Come sit down.”
The sea-green French doors of the living room are open. Plunking her book satchel down on her mother’s camelback sofa without argument, she plunks herself down as well and exhales her annoyance, head tilted toward the more arrogant side of obedience. Old Mrs. Snoop must have absolutely sprinted home to telephone Mummy and inform on Anne. She watches her mother seat herself in the club chair opposite, ankles crossed, and waits for it, the downpour of scorn and criticism.
But instead her mother says simply, “You’re growing up.”
Anne blinks.
“I know that,” her mother tells her. “Only days away from thirteen, and how that happened so soon I can’t begin to guess. But it’s clear; you’re becoming a young lady. You think I don’t understand,” she says, “but you’re wrong. I understand very well. I was once thirteen, too, believe it or not, and I thought that your oma Rose, bless her name, didn’t understand a single fig’s worth about me. At that age I wanted to try new things. I wanted to be like your uncles and get in trouble once in a while. Break a rule or two. But since I was the girl, well . . .” Mummy releases a breath. “It was unacceptable at the time. My mother watched me closely to make sure I stayed firmly within the limits of what was proper.”
“Really?” Anne says. She must admit that she is surprised. Oma Rose, may she rest in peace, always liked to tease Mummy over her addiction to propriety. Anne’s mother shakes her head with a wry smile, pursing her lips.
“Oh, I know. You think that your oma was always on your side, that she liked to have her jokes about how Her Majesty Edith must have everything just so, but believe me, she was much, much stricter than I have ever been. I wasn’t even permitted to speak in the company of adults unless spoken to first. Can you imagine that, my dear daughter?”
Anne must admit, “No, I can’t, Mummy. I think I would explode.”
“Yes,” her mother agrees, still with her dry smile. “I think you would. So I am not that way. I try, Anne, I do try to allow you and your sister as much latitude as I am able. And it’s not as if I haven’t suffered plenty of criticism as a result. Many of the other ladies think that I’m far too modern with you, far too permissive. But I say time passes, the world changes. So when you tell me that you simply cannot tolerate brussels sprouts, I let you have another helping of roasted carrots. When a boy rings our doorbell and asks to take you for a walk or for an ice cream, I hold my breath and don’t object. When you want privacy, I try to give it to you. And when you have something you think is important to say, I do try to listen, regardless of what you choose to believe. But,” Anne’s mother says finally, “I am still your mother, and I am still responsible for your well-being. That, my dear girl, will never change, no matter how grown-up you become.”
Anne gazes from the sofa. She is trying to figure this out. Her mother’s eyes are moons. She tries to imagine Mummy evolving someday into a sweet grandmother, just like Oma, but her mother’s face has thinned since the moffen have come, and her skin is rumpled around her chin. There is no sweetness in her face. Her thick head of lustrous caramel-colored hair, of which she’s always been so proud, is pinned neatly with an amber comb and threaded with silver. Her mother’s hands have been folded in her lap all this time, in the proper position, but now they fidget. She strokes her hair as if to smooth an errant strand, a sure sign that Mummy is either about to say something that will start an argument or is deciding not to say something that she knows will start an argument. “I don’t want to be harsh,” she tells Anne. “As I said, I know that you are growing up. But for now I must insist on this: You cannot smoke, Annelies. After all the illnesses you’ve suffered since you were small, you must realize how harmful smoking will be to your respiration.”
“So Mrs. Lipschitz reported,” says Anne heavily. Finally they are at the root of the matter, and she can barely keep herself from rolling her eyes. At least it’s the smoking she’s in trouble over and not, amazingly enough, the boys.
But there’s a tick in her mother’s expression, and she looks a bit confused. “Mrs. Lipschitz?”
Glaring at the sofa’s velvety upholstery. “She told you I took a puff off that boy’s cigarette on the way home from school.”
“Anne.” A frown immediately collapses her mother’s expression. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re saying. I’m talking to you because I found these in your desk cubby,” she says, removing one of the thousands of blue, red, and white Queen’s Day cigarette packets dropped over Holland by the British Royal Air Force. A map of the Dutch Colonial East Indies on the front of the packet and on the back the Dutch tricolor. VICTORY APPROACHES, the slogan proclaims. Anne suddenly laughs, slapping the knobby knees poking out from her skirt.
“What?” her mother demands, her expression tensing. “What’s funny?”
“Oh, Mummy, those are Papa’s. He gave them to Margot as a souvenir.”
Her mother’s eyebrows knit together when she frowns, causing her eyes to look beady and too close-set. “Margot?”
“Yes, the good daughter,” says Anne. “Don’t you know that she’s collecting cigarette cards of the royal family?”
“No. I didn’t know that.”
“Well, she is. Mr. Kugler is always saving them for her,” Anne says, the relief of her laughter losing steam. “Ask her if you don’t believe me. Ask Pim.”