Searching for Sylvie Lee

Wednesday, April 6

The next morning, Helena is more polite to Sylvie. She apologizes for the “confusion” over the previous day’s seafood-rich meal and tells Sylvie that there will always be enough food for her in the refrigerator. She provides Sylvie with a public transportation pass that she has pre-loaded with enough money for her to travel as she needs to and gives her a peace offering in the form of a basket of toiletries, including a shower gel that Sylvie loved as a young girl.

Sylvie helps the nurse to care for her grandmother, who is indeed dying. Sylvie shows photographs of her parents and Amy, and Grandma begins to cry, saddened that she will never see her daughter again or meet her other granddaughter. At Grandma’s request, Sylvie helps her grandmother to tint her hair and apply makeup. Her grandmother is pleased with the finished product and asks Lukas to photograph her. Helena, however, is livid. She tells Sylvie that there was no need to give the old woman a makeover as she was dying and accuses her of only returning to claim the family treasure. Sylvie points out that the treasure does rightfully belong to her and her mother, as Helena is not Grandma’s daughter. Helena asks if Grandma called and asked for Sylvie to come and is angry when Sylvie says yes. Helena claims the treasure as hers because she cared for the woman all these years, but Sylvie counters that Helena enjoyed Grandma’s free housekeeping and babysitting services. Sylvie does not understand Helena’s hatred.

As a child, under Grandma’s supervision, Sylvie used to play with the jewelry, which was passed down through the generations in their family, which had been wealthy before the Communist revolution. Helena saw the jewels once, and after, Grandma had waited until Helena was out of sight before hiding them again. Only Sylvie was allowed to see their family inheritance. It had been Grandma’s way of signaling that Sylvie alone was her (close) blood relation. Now that Sylvie has returned, Grandma is firm in her desire to pass the treasure on to Sylvie so that Sylvie can bring it back to her Ma and Amy. Grandma hopes that it will help her daughter and granddaughters financially and suggests Sylvie hide the jewels so that Helena cannot find them. Grandma, who has observed Helena all these years, finds the woman to be unduly bitter.

Jet lagged, Sylvie takes sleeping pills by night and amphetamines by day. Lukas notices that she seems exhausted and unhappy. They go on a picnic, where he encourages her to take some time for herself and relax. He suggests she take cello lessons from their old classmate, Filip. Although she protests that Amy is the musical sister, the idea appeals to her.

Friday, May 6

Amy is upset after their “dispiriting” talk with the police. Helena and Willem are at work, so she goes to Lukas’s garage apartment to ask him about Sylvie. He is on his way to meet Estelle, and Amy asks to tag along. While the three of them are together, Amy hears people making fun of them in the background, and Estelle apologizes for the behavior of the villagers. She explains that it is an old, small, very white community, and life was difficult for Sylvie and Lukas as children. The two were often taunted and were the targets of racist bullying. At lunch, Amy asks why Helena dislikes Sylvie so much. Estelle is not sure, as Sylvie was always a good girl. Lukas seems as though he is about to cry. He thinks Sylvie might just be taking time to herself to sort through her troubles alone, but Amy is not convinced, nor does she think Lukas truly believes this is the case.

Amy receives an email from Jim, who has gained access to the apartment and is surprised by its state. Amy responds, asking him why he failed to mention his trip to the Netherlands. She urges him to check and share Sylvie’s credit card receipts so that they can track her movements. He does not reply.

Saturday, April 9

Sylvie and Lukas head to Amsterdam so that Sylvie can begin her cello lessons with Filip. They take Lukas’s scooter, and although the air is bitingly cold, Sylvie feels happy and alive. The Netherlands is beautiful, and she feels a spirit of possibility in Amsterdam, even though she is nervous around water: She cannot swim. Distracted by thoughts of her unhappy marriage, she recalls a party where Jim failed to notice how distressed she was at being hit on by another man. Still, she is captivated by her return to a place that feels very much like home.

Filip has grown into a handsome man, unrecognizable from the skinny boy Sylvie knew as a child. He is similarly struck by the sight of Sylvie as an adult, and Lukas warns her that he is a notorious womanizer. Filip jokingly flirts with Sylvie, but his demeanor shifts when Lukas leaves, and Sylvie is struck by his professionalism and obvious musical expertise. She feels awkward, ill at ease, and musically ungifted, but she is also intensely drawn to him. She is relieved to hear that, although he has a daughter, he and his ex-wife are divorced. He loans Sylvie a cello so that she can practice, and she and Lukas set off on his scooter.

At home, Sylvie practices the cello in the attic, but she is once again distracted by thoughts of Jim. He’d been having an affair, and although she is angry with him, she also misses him. She, Grandma, and Lukas stage a break-in to cover for the missing jewelry that Grandma secretly gives to Sylvie. Sylvie wears gloves and ransacks the house while everyone is away, and the police arrive on the family’s return. Because there is no proof of the jewelry’s existence, the police are dubious and tell Helena that she cannot claim a loss that she cannot prove. She is livid.

Later, Sylvie tells Filip about the break-in, and he asks who was to inherit the jewelry. Sylvie sees the fragility of their story and worries. Noticing a menorah, she asks about it. He is surprised that she knows what it is, but she explains that many of her friends in New York are Jewish. The two share stories of enduring racism as young people in a country rife with both antisemitism and hostility toward Asian immigrants.

Sylvie practices her cello in part because it irritates Helena to hear her scratching away atonally. Sylvie also “revels” in the novelty of poor performance, thrilled to pursue something for fun and not out of a desire to be the best at it. She is attracted to Lukas (who is only a distant relation, after all) and to Filip, and for the first time, she wants nothing from either relationship. Her current feelings are markedly different from how she felt in the early days of her relationship with Jim, when she had been hyper-focused on marriage and the future. Now, she just wants to enjoy the feeling of attraction. Although she could tell that each man found her desirable, neither acted on their feelings. She is truly happy, perhaps for the first time since childhood.

Friday, May 6

Amy is cycling back to the Tan’s home alone, having left Lukas and Estelle. She is nervous on the bicycle and notices how comfortable the Dutch are on their own bikes: People of all ages and fitness levels ride bicycles here. As she passes a café, a man yells something at her and hops onto the back of her bicycle. Horrified, she realizes that he has caused her to go off course and that she is about to cycle straight into a canal. He grabs the handlebars and steers them into a tree to avoid the water. When he realizes that she does not speak Dutch, he apologizes in English. He explains that what he has just done is a typical way that Dutch men approach pretty girls and asks her out. A New Yorker, she is dubious of strangers, and he can read her hesitation. He invites her to a large, public concert and tells her his name: Filip. He is a cellist.