Chapter 17
The Old Bank Hotel is one of the nicer hotels in Oxford, a place where Mebel feels instantly at home.
She feels more like herself as well, now that she has dressed herself in a Hermès silk dress and YSL shoes.
She spent more time working on her makeup, and though her hair remains stubbornly flat since she chose not to spend two hours blowing and primping it into the usual puffy hairdo, she feels appropriately glamorous.
The hotel offers a fancy English teatime every weekend afternoon, so they opt for that. The sandwiches and petit fours are served on tiered trays, which delights Luciana, and for the first few minutes, the conversation is minimal as they focus on the aesthetic food placed before them.
“So, whose decision was it to come all the way here?” Mebel says as she works her way through a cucumber sandwich.
“Mine,” Hannah says at the same time as Sammy. They look at each other.
“Actually, it was Pa’s idea, remember?” Sammy says.
Hannah shrugs and bounces Freydis on her knee. Or maybe it’s Aegilfu. After such a long time away from the twins, Mebel finds it even harder to tell them apart.
“It was your idea?” Mebel says, turning to Henk.
He clears his throat, looking embarrassed.
“Pa misses you, Ma,” Sammy says. “Right, Pa?”
Henk straightens his suit and tugs on his shirt collar. “Well, I was talking to Sammy and I said, ‘I wonder how your mother is doing.’ And then—”
“I suggested coming here and seeing for ourselves,” Hannah says.
“Right,” Henk says.
“And how is Wendy?” The words are out before Mebel can stop herself. The moment they are, she feels such a virulent wave of anger toward herself that she almost pinches her own leg. Why had she said that? They’re having a perfectly nice time, and now she’s gone and ruined it all.
Henk blanches.
“Aduh, Ma,” Sammy says, “does it matter? She’s not in our lives anymore.”
“She’s not?” Mebel says.
Henk shakes his head. “I made a mistake.” He opens his mouth as though to say more, but then he glances up at Hannah, then looks meaningfully at Mebel. “Can we talk about this later?”
Mebel is about to say, Yes, of course, when she stops herself.
That’s what the old Mebel would’ve done.
The old Mebel would’ve swallowed her anxiety, ignored her own stress signals, and agreed that, yes, of course they can table the conversation until later so that nobody else feels uncomfortable.
And now that Mebel thinks about it, she feels annoyed at Sammy for questioning her.
Does it matter? Of course it fucking matters!
This is her marriage she’s talking about.
“I’d rather talk about it now,” Mebel says.
Henk tenses up, and Sammy looks irritated. Before he can say anything, Mebel turns to him and says, “And, yes, it does matter. Maybe not to you, but it matters to me, and I think having it matter to me is enough for it to matter in general.”
Sammy’s mouth drops open.
“Papa, what is Ama talking about?” Luciana says.
Sammy glances down at his daughter, then back at Mebel. “I really don’t think we should talk about this in front of the kids.”
Mebel looks into Luciana’s wide eyes and trusting face and extends her arm to the little girl.
“Come here, darling.” Luciana does so, climbing up and sitting in Mebel’s lap.
“We are talking about marriage, sweetheart. They are all complex and deep, and sometimes people make mistakes, and it’s important to talk about them,” Mebel says, and directly meets Sammy’s eye, “instead of brushing them under the rug and pretending everything is okay. Do you understand?”
Luciana shakes her head. “Not really.” She jumps off Mebel’s lap and goes to her mom. “Can I have screen time, Mama?”
“Sure.” Hannah takes out a tablet from her handbag and hands it to Luciana with obvious relief.
Sammy is shaking his head, looking even more irritated than he’d looked moments ago. “Can you take them to the room?” he says to Hannah.
Hannah glances at Mebel, and Mebel gets a hint of…
something. She has always regarded Hannah as the ideal daughter-in-law—obedient and respectful.
And she still sees those qualities in Hannah now, but at the same time, there is a flicker of something underneath.
A sense of curiosity. It’s because of me, Mebel realizes with a start.
She senses a change in me and she is curious.
“Okay,” Hannah says to Sammy.
“Wait,” Mebel says. “Do you want to stay?”
Hannah’s eyes widen like a trapped rabbit, and she looks back and forth from Sammy to Mebel, obviously afraid to say something wrong. “Um,” she says after a while. “Would you like me to stay?”
“I think you should take the girls up,” Sammy says through gritted teeth. “This is not a conversation that is appropriate for them.”
“First of all, we’re talking about relationships, which is simply a part of life,” Mebel says. “And second of all, Lulu isn’t even paying attention, and the twins are too young to understand anything. So I don’t see the problem. If you want to stay, Hannah, you can stay.”
Mebel and Sammy both turn to face Hannah, who looks like she wishes the ground would open up and swallow her.
Mebel decides to put the poor girl out of her misery and adds, “Listen to Mami, I want you to stay.” There.
She has played the mom card, which trumps the husband card, and Hannah visibly relaxes, settling back in her seat and picking up a scone.
With that little derail settled, Mebel turns her attention back to Henk. “So? What is happening with you and Wendy?”
Henk scrunches up his mouth and scratches his chin, a nervous tic Mebel has always hated.
“Nothing is happening between us,” he says, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, as though Mebel has made the whole thing up in her head and he is now here to wake her up from her self-made nightmare.
“Did she dump you then?”
“Mami,” Sammy sighs.
Henk’s hyperfocus on his lap tells Mebel enough. She snorts. “Right, so she left you. Why? Did she find someone else? Someone her own age, perhaps?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Henk snaps.
“It does to me!” Mebel snaps back. “Because what you are telling me is that if she hadn’t left you, you wouldn’t be here right now. You’d still be off in your own little happy world without a care for me.”
“That’s not true,” Henk says. “Of course I care about you. I’ve been worried sick about you.”
Mebel frowns. “Why would you be worried about me?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Henk says. “When Sammy told me you’ve moved to England to attend culinary school—I mean—what is that all about? I thought you’d lost your mind, Mebel. I didn’t even know what to tell our friends. They’ve been asking about you, and—”
“Our friends?” Mebel laughs. “Why don’t you tell them the truth? That you left me for a woman forty years our junior and I decided to come to England to go to culinary school so I could win you back.”
For a moment, Henk’s eyes widen. Then his expression softens, melting into affection.
“And, Mebel, I want you to know how much I appreciate that you did that. I made a mistake. You are the love of my life, the one woman I want to be with forever.” He reaches out and takes Mebel’s hands into his.
“You moved all the way here just to learn how to cook so that I would take you back. That’s an incredible sacrifice, Mebel.
And I see you. I see how much you have done for me over the years, and I love that. ”
Mebel gazes down at his hands wrapped around hers.
They feel so foreign, and she realizes it’s not because she’s been away for months now, but because they haven’t held hands in the last…
what, two decades? When they were dating, they held hands all the time, so much so that it became something they did without much thought.
Then they had Sammy, and they held his hand, or they held his diaper bag, and somehow, they stopped holding each other’s hands.
And now she feels his hands so acutely that the touch is overwhelming.
And not in a good way, her mind whispers.
She has to resist the urge to pull her hands out of his grasp.
The thing is, it’s not just the hands. It’s Henk’s expression of love.
No, not of love, but of sympathy. And he melted only when Mebel said she’d come here with the sole purpose of winning him back.
Because that’s just it, isn’t it? Henk loves seeing Mebel as someone whose sole purpose in life is to please him.
Everything she has done her whole life has revolved around meeting Henk’s needs.
She can’t remember the last time she had an opinion of her own that wasn’t shaped by him.
And now, after over two months away from him, Mebel feels like she’s finally thinking clearly for the first time in her life.
“Actually,” she says, “I would like to stay here and finish my course.”
Henk smiles the smile of a doting parent whose child has just said something immensely adorable. “Oh, Mebel. Why? It’s not worth your time.”
“My time?” Mebel says with a snort. “My time back home is spent going to salons and perusing new clothes and finding new things to gossip about. It’s really not that valuable. But I am making it valuable here. I’m learning an actual skill.”
Henk’s smile becomes a tad less adoring. “Don’t be silly. An actual skill? What are you going to do with that skill? Work as a cook? You think you can make a good living doing that? Look at your lifestyle. It’s not going to support even a tenth of what you’re used to.”
Mebel’s gaze flicks for a split second to Hannah and Sammy, who are watching them with rapt attention. “You’re right,” she says finally.
Henk breathes a sigh of relief.
“Working as a chef isn’t going to pay me much,” Mebel continues, “but I think the settlement from our divorce will tide me over.”
Sammy groans out loud. “Mami—”
“Divorce?” Henk cries. “Don’t be crazy, Mebel. We’re not getting divorced.”