The Golden Tulip by Rosalind Laker

for it.
    This morning Francesca could sense that the new move of her taking Anna’s chair had upset everyone, even Hendrick, although it had been done by his wish. The tension was building and she steeled herself for the moment when someone’s tears would break forth. She hoped they would not be her own. Until now, in order to give some succor to her sisters and Maria, she had shed her own floods of racking tears in the privacy of her room and kept a brave face otherwise.
    The sudden loud sob came from an unexpected quarter. It was Griet who covered her face with her apron and fled from the kitchen. Hendrick did not look up from his plate. Then Sybylla exploded into hysterical tears, picking up her cup like a baby and smashing it down on her plate, spilling milk everywhere.
    “I don’t want Mama to be dead any longer!” It was the heart cry of the bereaved when after an initial state of numbing shock the empty gap begins to yawn. As Francesca sprang up to go to her, Sybylla added deliberately to her misdeed by picking up the basket of bread and throwing it across the room. But the attention she had expected from her father was not forthcoming. Instead of flying into a rage, he simply pushed back his chair and left the table to shut himself away in the family parlor, which he seemed to be making his place of retreat.
    It was the first of many such scenes with Sybylla. She would throw tantrums and lie on the floor kicking her heels at the slightest provocation. Maria, finding her former means of discipline no longer worked on the child, called on Francesca to deal with her every time. Aletta, who had been closest to Anna, became deeply attached to Francesca and they would sit talking together as they never had before. First of all, it was about Anna and their memories of her, finding at last that they could laugh about funny things that had happened, which made her come more alive for them than remembrances of a more serious kind. Later they began to confide hopes and dreams.
    They went together into the studio to look at the life-size portrait of Anna there. The studio had not been used for some time, because Hendrick had not been near it, and the half-finished painting of a mythical scene on the easel was as it had been on the day of Anna’s death. The two sisters stood side by side to look up at Anna, whose twinkling eyes always looked right into the eyes of the viewer from any direction. Her laughing face framed by the banner of her hair, the flowing movement of her gown and the glimpse of one foot in its pink satin shoe showing beneath the hem, conveyed her whole warm presence to them.
    “Let’s set up our easels and start painting in this corner of the studio with Mama’s portrait on the wall,” Francesca suggested.
    Aletta agreed eagerly. Nobody had encouraged them more in their art than Anna. This first step in beginning to paint again was like doing something for her.
    Among Francesca’s new domestic duties was the keeping of the household accounts. She had been well taught in all domestic matters and running the house was not causing her any headaches. On the rare occasions when she sought Hendrick’s advice, he would always give her the same reply.
    “Do as your mother would have done.”
    That was well enough, but when it came to settling bills and there were only a few stivers left in the housekeeping box she felt the time had come to get her father to work again. For six weeks he had spent his time shut away in the family parlor, where he drank by himself at all hours of the day, or else he went out to the taverns and idled his time away there. She spoke of the matter to Willem de Hartog, her father’s art dealer, when she called on him one day, a leather folder of Hendrick’s etchings under her arm.
    To reach de Hartog’s residence she had to cross Dam Square, which was the heart of this fan-shaped city of bridges that lived on and with water. Anna had always liked to buy vegetables and fish from