Nothing Ever Happens in Breda

Nothing ever happened in Breda. 

Josephine had that realization much earlier, not long after arriving in the provincial Dutch town. A gentle bolt of excitement had jolted through her body back then, as she packed up her bags following her marriage to Joost to follow him back to his hometown.

It had been what people call a whirlwind romance, yet falling into every category of predictability. They met through friends in common in college. The courtship was brief and he showered her with spring tulips throughout. By the next fall, they were married. 

“He’s perfectly wonderful!” exclaimed her mother Julie when she met him for the first time, the same day they announced their engagement. Josephine now saw what he had represented, what her mother had wanted to see. Someone to keep up the tradition, someone who fit into the box with ease. Her father’s name was Joseph, her sister’s name Jolene. Joost just blended seamlessly into the theme mother had created. 

Breda was a fiery tapestry that first autumn. Joost had started his apprenticeship as a high school history teacher and Josephine paced around the home, dusting every surface and rearranging the Delft pottery set gifted by her mother in law for the joyous occasion. After long days getting his teacher-in-training hours at several schools around town, Joost had still found the time to take her on excursions around town. He would point at buildings and explain times gone by with honeyed wonder gushing out of his eyes. She would stare at him fondly and squeeze his hand, aligning her steps with the quickening of his voice as he boasted about the town’s illustrious past. Things had happened in Breda, at least in the past. 

But it wasn’t long before he ran out of things to say. Everything had been ogled, thrice over. His index finger ran out of momentum and they strolled past monuments in silence, an impenetrable abyss between them. 

“When will you give us a grandchild?” would ask her mother during their weekly calls. Her tone was playful, but Josephine also discerned an underlying hint of reproach melded into an underlying expectation. Mother had both her and her sister young, Jolene was even conceived in her last semester of college. Mother liked to boast about taking her finals while five months pregnant; a most modern approach when pregnant students would simply drop out of college like flies. Mother fashioned herself a feminist. One who got a degree in art history that she only used to boast, as she did about her perfect family: Joseph, Jolene and Julie. Everything was fuel for her long-winded stories at neighbors’ soirees. Mother’s life had been dedicated to childrearing and homemaking since that fateful graduation date — the same day she went into labor. Both an end and a beginning. Or perhaps two ends, Josephine thought.

No, she did not want to follow into those footsteps. That is why she had chosen to study something practical, a career-maker: accounting. She just had not considered that numbers would not be transferable across borders. In the nether Netherlands, there were no jobs without Dutch. Then the winter came in Breda, and the shrill cold had never lifted. The sore echo of thankless homemaking still reverberated through her body. She tried to keep busy between the confines of her starter home —courtesy of his parents— but no amount of baking and decorating could dampen the restlessness inside her.

She began to despise Breda. The town felt constricting like a village, with codes, schedules and routines to be followed. Failing to do so encouraged reprimands in Dutch, and the blankness in her eyes in response elicited icy stares. Joost was her only anchor, an increasingly stoic social connection to her environs.

Spring came again but the tulips did not. Joost had ticked the marriage box and closed that chapter. He was far too preoccupied with taking up his new post at a high school some twenty minutes from home, right outside of town — by all means considered a rural setting. She did not complain, for that shortened the time shared together under one roof. A few more calls from her mother came through insisting on grandchildren. Josephine started scrubbing the kitchen harder and harder, watching her hands swell up from the repeated rough motion. She did not want that for herself. By early summer, she’d made a decision: she would get a IUD and tell no one, because she was alone. All one. And wanted to keep it that way.

Ten years later Josephine stood in the same kitchen. It sparkled, but for no one to notice, not even her as she hazily stared at her own reflection on the oven’s metallic handle. She was speechless, as always, but even more so. Something had finally happened, back home, sending the aftershocks all the way to Breda. Her sister had called with the news. It was enough to make her feel something close to elation. 

She knew it was a death before she even picked up the receiver; there was no other reason for Jolene to phone her.

“It happened overnight, in her sleep. The funeral is next weekend”.

Josephine knew it was appropriate to cry and be distraught at the news, but she felt otherwise and could not bring herself to feel guilty for it. The thrill of freedom washed through her — she would never have to endure the weekly reproaches ever again. At the funeral she felt compelled to try to simulate grief, while a cozy tinge of relief bubbled inside of her. There were few —forced— tears from Joseph, Jolene and herself. Most had come from her friends, women her age who were coming to terms with their inevitable demise.

However, the same doldrum from the Breda winter followed her, settling in two days after the wake. There was a new sense of normalcy that her father and sister were uncomfortably complacent in. She would have to take matters into her own hands.

She itched to return to her lair. Placing her hand on Joost’s arm, she said “It’s time” and he understood exactly what that meant. He packed up their bags and within thirty minutes they were driving back to the Netherlands. Restless in the car, Josephine though of her poor plants, and worried that Joost’s incipiently senile mother would forget to water them. She didn’t have much to herself, begonias, oleander, nightshade and others were her life. She fed and nourished them, even bred them for the garden show obsessed crown. While for her mother in law, Joost was her life, and Josephine was made to pay dearly for any discomfort he endured. Once the woman had come over for dinner and her son made a passing comment on the soup not being served hot enough. The next week, when they returned from an overnight trip to Amsterdam, her prize-winning begonias were dead. 

Josephine had learned to forgive her for her cloying son —she understood she’d done her best with a modest rural upbringing and a lush for a husband. This time, she would never forgive her if even one of her plants succumbed in her absence. It was, after all, her own mother’s funeral.

She was not expecting to see her when she opened the door as Joost found a place to park. But there she was, doubled over in surprise to see Josephine walk in. She hovered over the bay window overlooking the back yard, where Josephine’s plants were carefully stacked for winter. It was dark and she only saw shadows, but could feel the wilting shapes of her previously lush jungle

“Oh dear, what a scare!” said the woman, putting a hand to her chest. She neared her to meet her gaze, contracting her face into a frown when the connection had been made, “I’m afraid I have some bad news”. 

Josephine searched her gaze and saw a hint of glee that sent a heated jolt of anger coursing through her veins. The old woman patted her hair as she explained that mysteriously, most of her plants had died even though she’d followed the indications to a T. “It must be some some plant disease spreading in here, my dear”. 

Josephine said nothing, instead she approached the carnage. She reached out and placed a hand on her favorite oleander. It felt cold to the touch.

Joost walked in, slicing through the tension in the atmosphere. Mother and son started a conversation in Dutch, one she had no energy to try to follow. The anger was taking hold of her. None of her facial muscles reflected it, the quiet before the quake.

Something in her had known to expect a disaster of this magnitude one day, and she had propagated most of her plants and placed them under grow lights in the basement. Josephine darted to the basement as the pair continued with their conversation, she had to make sure that the harpy of her mother in law hadn’t sabotaged this crop. Pushing the door open, her eyes adjusted to the dark and the neon lights of the lamps to admire her luscious, verdant forest. Relieved, she closed the door behind her and approached each plant, reassuring it, cooing gently as she fussed over leaves, buds and soil. She misted them, gently, as a farewell. The anger had dissipated, it was no longer tightly in her chest, but had spread evenly throughout her body. 

Josephine grabbed the pruners and stood, immobile, reflecting about how nothing ever happens in Breda. Ten years flashed through her eyes. She yearned for that feeling of freedom once more.

“Dinner is served,” said Josephine, interrupting the ongoing conversation in Dutch to set down a stew. She decided to present it in the beautiful Delft pottery, a wedding gift from her mother in law.

“Thank you dear,” replied Joost, as his mother pounced mercilessly on the dish with only a grunt.

“Hmm, what is this recipe my dear?” she said. “You must share it with me, it’s delicious”.

She smiled wide. “It’s my mother’s special recipe, I’m glad you like it.”

There it was, the freedom, the elation, washing over her body once more. Never again would she have to hear her voice.