You Have Me to Love by Jaap Robben

Author:Jaap Robben
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: World Editions
Published: 2019-05-20T14:06:27+00:00

13

I pull my clothes out of the rubbish bag and put them on the empty shelves of Mum’s wardrobe. When I’m finished I screw up the bag, go over to Dad’s wardrobe, and open the doors. His clothes are neatly stacked in their familiar piles. T-shirts on the left, loose around the neck where he used to hook a finger inside the collar and jiggle it up and down when he was too warm. Next to them are his trousers, and on the right, his jumpers.

I stick my arm between two of the piles and feel along the back of the wardrobe till I find his sunglasses. The lenses flash a sharp reflection and the chewed-up earpieces scratch my temples as I slide them on. Everything in the room takes on a nicotine glaze. In front of the mirror, I tip my head back and brush wisps of hair in front of my ears.

When I put the sunglasses back, I can feel something else lying there. It’s Dad’s watch. Mum must have put it there. The hands have stopped. I haven’t wound it in a long time. I slip it over my wrist and examine it.

Dad had tufts of black hair on his fingers. In the winter the hairs on his right hand were scorched off from putting blocks of wood on the fire. His fingernails were clipped too short and a scar ran down the side of his little finger. I can see it all so precisely, I begin to wonder if I really remember it, or whether I’ve seen it in a photo.

The shoebox we keep our photos in is up on top of Mum’s wardrobe. At the back there’s a pile of my baby photos, held together by a rubber band. At the front are the memories from their time together without me, memories I’ve looked at so often, it’s as if I was there. Mum sitting on Dad’s lap, fending off the camera with one hand—it’s like I could’ve taken that photograph. Same goes for the photo where he’s planting a kiss on her cheek. Or the one of them sitting stiffly side by side, Dad wearing a black suit and sporting a moustache, Mum pressing a bouquet of flowers to her chest, wearing a summer dress and the long earrings that still dangle from her ears sometimes.

Then there’s the snapshot where they’re leaning across a table in front of a darkened window, raising their glasses to the waiter who’s taking the photo. It’s the only one where you can see Dad’s hands. Wrapped around the stem of his wine glass is the little finger of his left hand.

‘What are you up to?’

Startled, I knock the box from my lap. I get down on my knees and start scraping all the photos together, accidentally creasing a few.

‘Answer me.’ Mum comes and stands beside me, her knees uncomfortably close to my face.

‘I was going to ask,’ I stammer, ‘if you wanted this box upstairs, too.’

‘You’ve got no business rummaging through it.

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