Saturday morning Ria’s credit card is refused. She is in the hardware store in Brasschaat to buy the nails that her husband Paul has been nagging about for a week. A declined card has never happened before, it could just be a mistake. Ria calls Paul but he doesn’t answer, he must be doing odd jobs or cycling and then he doesn’t hear anything. No drama. She can scrounge up the four euros forty in coins from the bottom of her handbag. At home, Paul promises her Monday that he will settle that misery with the bank. His temper remains unacceptable.
On Saturday afternoon, their daughter Anne comes to visit with Billie, their sweet, woke granddaughter. During the lockdowns, Paul has amused himself with locking the outside doors that only open with the fingerprints of their daughter Anne, their granddaughter Billie, neighbor Alessandra and Ria herself. That was their cocoon during the lockdowns. Four women around one man, they laughed.
The quarrel between Paul and Anne is about inheritances, donations, time pressure. Her proud husband wants to do and determine everything himself, including his death. He has worked hard all his life as an IT professional and now wants to retire, he doesn’t want to hand out his money yet, while their daughter Anne rightly goes on about dizzyingly high inheritance taxes, of seventy percent, and wonders furiously why he is the retarded Belgian is so eager to give even more money and his daughter less.
Billie wants them all to match, Billie passes around the banana bread.
Saturday night. Anne and Billie just left. Paul has been totally unreasonable, really annoying. Ria never said it, but at times she feels a rage coming on. That Paul doesn’t give her and their daughter any rest. It’s high time for sherry. On Billie’s advice, Paul and Ria Stranger Things to look.
Paul is nervous. The quarrel has thrown him off balance, he scurries around like a stray dog. Ria has less trouble getting older. She still has so much in her own hands. In the evening she removes her ear device, the mini snail, from her ear and she is temporarily deaf, that’s all.
Finally Paul has gone to the kitchen to boil water. Ria turns up the volume on the television even more. Paul, the modern handyman who will install cameras himself, the old-fashioned man who uses a hot water bottle because he also did that as a child on the Kempen farmstead. Her husband Paul, who has made it so difficult for her so many times.
He stays away so long that she goes to look. She has dreamed away for a moment, she is completely gone for a fraction, she stands in the kitchen and looks around, sherry carafe in her hand. She doesn’t see him anywhere, the back door is closed. It takes a few seconds before she realizes it, she kicks something.
#Arguing #inheritance #donations #time #pressure