Willem doesn’t realize he’s left them all hanging until Broodje says, “What’s going on, Willy?”
“Ahh, nothing. No, not nothing. Something big, actually.” The faces are expectant, even those of Wren and Winston, people he did not know of until tonight. “Kate and David run a theater company in New York City, and I’m going to be an apprentice there.”
“What does that mean?” Henk asks.
“I’ll train with them, build sets, do whatever is needed, and eventually, perhaps, perform. It’s a Shakespearean theater company.” He looks at Allyson now. “I forgot to tell you that.”
He forgot to tell her everything. He was terrified to. He is terrified now. The ominous silence hanging over the table isn’t helping. And Allyson having unraveled her feet from his ankle really isn’t helping.
Maybe they aren’t so in sync. Maybe what for him is good news, a reason to hope, is just too much too soon for her.
He vaguely hears people around the table offering congratulations.
But he can’t process it. He is looking at Allyson.
And Allyson is not congratulating him. She is crying.
• • •
Allyson sees Willem’s face, his panic, and she knows he is misreading her. But she is helpless to explain right now. Words have left her. She is emotion only.
And it is too much. Not Willem moving to American, not Willem moving a bus ride away from her. It’s that this happened at all. How it happened.
Allyson has to say something. Willem is looking so upset. The table is so quiet. The restaurant is quiet. It seems like all of Amsterdam is holding its breath for them.
“You’re moving to New York?” she says. She keeps it together for an entire sentence before her voice cracks and she dissolves into tears again.
It’s Winston who gently touches Willem on the shoulder. “Maybe you two should go now.”
Willem and Allyson nod, dazed. They offer halfhearted farewells. (It doesn’t matter; good-byes with these two aren’t to be trusted anyhow) and leave amid promises from Wren to call in the morning and Broodje to crash at W and Lien’s place tonight.
• • •
Silently, they walk to the bike racks outside in the narrow alleyway. Willem is desperately trying to think of something to say. He could tell her he doesn’t have to go. Except he does have to go.
This isn’t about her. It was catalyzed by her, and she’s woven up in it, but this is ultimately about him and his life and what he needs to do to make himself whole. He’s stopped drifting, he’s stopped being tossed around by the wind.
But he doesn’t have to see her. It doesn’t mean that. He’d like it to mean that. But it doesn’t have to.
Allyson is thinking about accidents again. Which aren’t accidents at all. Allyson’s grandma has a word for it: beshert. Meant to be. Allyson’s grandma and Willem’s saba could’ve had entire conversations about beshert and kishkes.
Except Allyson doesn’t know about Saba (yet) or about kishkes (officially speaking, though she knows what they are and how to listen to them and she will never ever stop doing this). And she doesn’t have the words to tell Willem what she needs to tell him.
So she doesn’t use words. She licks her thumb and rubs it against her wrist.
Stained.
Willem grabs her wrist, rubs his own thumb against it. Does the same to his own wrist, just to make it clear.