Chapter 23 The Last Faculty Meeting #2
Knowing Jolanda, it was hard for Jimmy to imagine Mr. and Mrs. Lammers as the epitome of uptightness Jolanda described, but Jeroen and Els Lammers were still processing that their daughter was in a long-lasting lesbian relationship.
Then, suddenly, Jolanda and Mieke were having a baby—a child they would somehow share with a man who wasn’t interested in an actual marriage.
Yes, Jimmy and Mieke’s civil ceremony would constitute a legitimate marriage—in the sense that the child would be born of parents lawfully married to each other—but Mr. Lammers foresaw, in his lawyerly way, a sea of possible legal wrangles ahead.
And Mrs. Lammers, in her pussy-whipping way, could not countenance a married couple who didn’t intend to live together.
“At breakfast, Jimmy, you have my permission to throw up—just don’t go out and console yourself with one of those poor women in a window or a doorway,” Jolanda told him.
Jimmy didn’t tell her how he’d consorted with Berta in Vienna—consoling himself, no doubt, for how much he missed sleeping with Mieke and Jolanda.
Both Jeroen and Els Lammers were as tall as Jolanda. Before they were seated at breakfast, Jimmy felt apprehensive about how short he was. “If the child is only your height, a girl would likely be happier than a boy,” Jeroen Lammers told Jimmy.
“Girls are also happier when they’re taller, Jeroen,” the pussy-whipper told her husband, not looking at Jimmy, who had no doubt he would have been happier as a girl—as either a tall girl or a short one.
Given the critical opprobrium emanating from the Lammers, Jimmy’s newfound confidence surprised him.
It was a storyteller’s confidence; it came from writing.
Jimmy told them his two-moms story. It was a long story, and he told all of it; he barely ate any breakfast. His two moms were the heroes of Jimmy’s story.
“Yet I wish I knew my birth mother. I wish I could spend time with her,” he told the Lammers. “My child should spend time with Mieke and Jolanda—he or she should really get to know them,” Jimmy said.
“Your mother—the one who wanted you, the one who raised you—works as an obstetric nurse,” Mrs. Lammers kept reiterating.
“I suppose she’ll want to be on hand when the child is born.
” Jimmy assured her that his mom would want to be there for the birth; his having a child had been his mother’s idea, Jimmy reminded Mrs. Lammers.
“I already like your mother—both of them,” the pussy-whipper told him.
No one threw up at breakfast, not even Mr. Lammers.
Jolanda twice sneaked a peek at them in the café, but she wouldn’t interrupt them—not while Jimmy was talking.
Jolanda had already taken Claude and Chantal on a tour of de Wallen.
Fortunately for Jimmy, Jeroen Lammers reserved his lawyerly scrutiny for the foreseeable shortcomings of Dutch law.
The child would be a dual citizen of the Netherlands and the U.S.
; Dutch citizenship didn’t expire, regardless of how long the child lived abroad.
“You just need to renew the child’s passport,” Mr. Lammers said.
He was more critical of the divorce plan.
It was Jolanda’s idea that Jimmy and Mieke would get divorced when the child was three or four.
Divorce was permitted only in the case of a jail sentence of four years or more, or in the case of abuse, neglect, or adultery.
“It’s simplest for the husband to admit to adultery,” Jeroen Lammers told Jimmy.
“Hopefully, this compulsory lie will one day no longer be required,” the lawyer said.
(It seemed likely to Jimmy that he wouldn’t have to lie about the adultery—not if he and Mieke were married for three or four years.)
As for Jolanda’s relationship with Mieke, lesbian couples could make “cohabitation contracts,” but these arrangements were not “legally recognized,” Mr. Lammers told Jimmy.
There was no mention of civil unions or same-sex marriage in their conversation.
If Jimmy remarried, and a child or children came of this subsequent marriage, it could affect the future custody of Jimmy and Mieke’s child—or so Jeroen Lammers speculated, in his lawyerly way.
“Friendships last longer than many marriages. Friends stay friends—it’s the lovers who split up,” Jimmy said to Jolanda’s father, who remained skeptical of his daughter’s unusual relationships.
By the time Jimmy was reunited with Claude and Chantal, Claude had recovered from the red-light district, where Jolanda said he’d burst into tears.
Claude thought the prostitutes on display needed to be rescued from their sexual enslavement.
Jolanda didn’t dispute that some of the women in the windows and doorways probably were in need of being rescued, and Claude’s emotional response to them only made Chantal love him more.
Jolanda said she needed a break from the lovey-dovey cooing in French that was nonstop between Claude and Chantal—and from their wedding plans, which were open to dispute.
Claude favored a New Hampshire wedding, to avoid his mother’s extravagant aspirations; Chantal dreaded exposing Claude and his mother to the overbreeding Beaudettes, who didn’t speak French, who just changed diapers.
Chantal hoped that not many Beaudettes would venture to Paris for her wedding; Claude hoped to escape his mother’s manipulations in New Hampshire.
Jimmy just wanted Jolanda’s help to mail his letters to Israel and New Hampshire.
“You’ll be back in New Hampshire before this letter,” Jolanda said.
That night, Mieke’s mother took them all to dinner at a restaurant—maybe on the Rokin, near Dam Square.
Or maybe it was a restaurant on Dam Square, near the Rokin—Jimmy wouldn’t remember.
Both Mieke and Jolanda had forewarned him about Mieke’s mother, Bente.
“She flirts with young men—she’ll definitely flirt with you, Jimmy,” Mieke told him.
“If Bente gets out of hand, just say the penis word, Jimmy—it’s the same word in Dutch, German, and English,” Jolanda reminded him. She’d already told him the story of Mieke’s father; he’d abandoned Bente before Mieke was born. Mieke had grown up without a father—it had been just her and Bente.
The flirting was fine with Jimmy. Bente just stared soulfully at him—her hand on his thigh, under the table. “Thank you, Jimmy,” she whispered, as if his knocking up Mieke had been an ordeal.
“Moeder! Both hands on the table,” Mieke said. (The mother word in Dutch sounded like “mooder.”)
Jimmy liked Bente. She said the baby should be born in Amsterdam, where Mieke would have all the doctors and nurses she needed.
“I’m the one who’ll need a nurse, Jimmy.
I hope your mother will come and be my nurse,” Bente told him.
Jimmy thought his mom might like coming to Amsterdam.
Honor Winslow knew how to be a nurse to babies, and to mothers.
Early the next morning, Chantal went to the Anne Frank House alone.
When she returned to the hotel, she went to bed for the rest of the day.
That was why Claude asked Jimmy to go with him when he went; he knew better than to go alone to the old canal house on the Prinsengracht.
Jimmy cried there as much as Claude did.
They cried for Anne as a kid, and for Anne as a Jew, but Jimmy cried for her as a writer, too.
After seeing the enslaved women in their windows and doorways in the red-light district, and given his experience in the Anne Frank House, Claude was emotionally on edge at Jimmy and Mieke’s civil ceremony.
Following their vows, Claude saw that the married couple were given something, but he didn’t see exactly what it was.
He asked Jolanda, but she was crying. “It’s a trouwboekje! ” she blurted out, still sobbing.
“Not a trouwboekje! Poor Jimmy and Mieke!” Claude cried.
“It’s just a booklet, Claude. Their marriage certificate is in the booklet,” Jolanda told him.
It was that kind of wedding. Both Jimmy and Jolanda kissed the bride, and Bente kissed Jimmy a little too hard.
Jimmy thought he bit his tongue, but Mieke was sure her mother had bitten him.
“Don’t forget the penis word if you need it, Jimmy,” Jolanda reminded him.
Under the circumstances, it was not the kind of wedding night a groom might choose to remember, but James Winslow was as happy as he’d ever been.
He would never forget that night, or how many times he imagined he would be coming back to Amsterdam in the future.
The child was the one who mattered the most, and the three of them were in sync about the baby.
The name for a boy would be Jimmy’s choice; a girl’s name was up to Mieke and Jolanda.
Jimmy chose Leo. (He’d not told Little Mirror; he knew Kleiner Spiegel would be disappointed if Jimmy had a girl.) Mieke and Jolanda said a girl should be named Vienna.
“Because Vienna is a pretty name for a girl, and because it’s where we did it! ” Jolanda shouted.
Jolanda’s father begged to differ, in his lawyerly way. “Technically, Jolanda, only Jimmy and Mieke did it,” Mr. Lammers said, but Mieke and Jimmy just shook their heads; they knew Jolanda was part of the doing it.
“All three of us did it, Daddy—this child took all three of us,” Jolanda told her father, with Mieke and Jimmy now nodding their heads.
There was no doubt about it—this child would have one dad and two moms, Jimmy was thinking.
Claude and Chantal had stopped arguing about where to get married; they went on murmuring in French, and kissing.
“It won’t matter where you do it, Claude—I’m going to raise a ruckus,” Jolanda had told him.