Life is short

 

Having lost several days of my holiday to the US election and its aftermath, then another day to a wasted outing when our train was returned to Piccadilly because of another train broken down on the line ahead, I have tried to find solace in reading. I have loved everything by Ann Patchett ( ... reviewed here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here!) and 'The Dutch House' was no exception. Danny and Maeve live there, with a somewhat absent father and a rather more absent mother, cared for by Fluffy the nanny, and Sandy and Jocelyn the housekeepers. After their mother leaves for good their father marries Andrea and a tense stalemate sets in. When he dies suddenly it turns out that the whole kit and caboodle, the house and his business, now belong to her. Maeve is in college and Danny in high school by this time, she promptly throws them out. 

It is a beautiful, extravagant house, built by a Dutch family who had since all expired, that was bought with contents, including all their personal possession. Once the raccoon infestation in the attic is sorted out the place is preserved in its entirety, including the portraits above the mantle of Mr and Mrs VanHoeBeek. I thought that the house would become like a character in the book, but it didn't. Although there are many description of it, it looms large in their lives but not really in the story. Danny tells the story of the two of them, finding their own paths, but bonded by the fact of just having each other ... and the house. They sit in the car outside and smoke and talk, not to spy or even to unnerve Andrea, but simply because it is their place. I just love a good sibling story, I feel for people who don't have siblings, there is something unique about these people who you have spent your childhood with. Maeve is the protective big sister and tries to push Danny into becoming a doctor, using their father's education trust fund to put him through expensive medical school, but all he wants to do is follow his father into real estate. They muddle through life until Maeve has a heart attack and their whole lives start to turn full circle. As always, it can be so hard to put my finger on what makes good writing. I engaged with all the people and their relationships, and then she broke my heart and mended it again. It left me feeling that life is short and precious.

Here, in the aftermath of their departure from the Dutch House:

"Maeve was feeling better but I told her to go upstairs and sit down while I lugged what I had up three flights of stairs to her apartment. There was only one bedroom and she told me to take it. I told her no.
'You're going to take the bed,' she said, 'because you're too long for the couch and I'm not. I sleep on the couch all the time.'
I look around her little apartment. I'd been there plenty of time but you see a place differently when you know you're going to be living there. It was small and plain and suddenly I felt bad for her, thinking it wasn't right that she should be in this place when I was living on VanHoeBeek Street, forgetting for a minute that I wasn't living there anymore. 'Why do you sleep on the couch?'
'I fall asleep watching television,' she said, then she sat down on that couch and closed her eyes. I was afraid she was going to cry but she didn't. Maeve wasn't a crier. She pushed her thick black hair away from her face and looked at me. 'I'm glad you're here.'
I nodded. For a second I wondered what I would have done if Maeve hadn't been there - gone home with Sandy or Jocelyn? Called Mr Martin the basketball coach to see if he would have me? I would never have known.
That night in my sister's bed I stared at the ceiling and felt the true loss of my father. Not his money or his house, but the man I sat next to in the car. He had protected me from the world so completely that I had no idea what the world was capable of. I had never thought about him as a child. I had never asked him about the war. I had only seen him as my father, and as my father I had judged him. There was nothing to do about that now but add it to the catalog of mistakes." (p.98-99)

Stay safe. Be kind. Love your siblings.