by Tiffany Tsao
On that concluding note, Yudi sliced off the tumpeng’s tip to present to his father—the oldest male and the grandfather of the birthday boy, and so the most important person there. The eating and drinking commenced in earnest.
It was a lovely speech: positive and confident and graceful. You’d never have been able to tell what a ruckus Marina’s half-Caucasian heritage had caused among Yudi’s family when he was first dating her. Nor would you have been able to tell that Opa and Om Benny had looked down on Yudi’s family for being part Javanese (as if no drop of native pribumi blood coursed through our own veins). It would have taken a keen eye indeed to notice the subtle grimaces that Opa, Om Benny, and Yudi’s parents made as Yudi mentioned the different races that had mingled in the creation of his little family unit.
But perhaps I only imagined the grimaces. Perhaps they were making faces about something else. Looking back, I’m more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, not to entertain my suspicions to their fullest, as both Estella and I were guilty of doing that night, now that I know the influence our conversation might have had on the events that followed. I wish I’d held my tongue instead of marveling with Estella, under our breaths as we ate our yellow rice and suckling pig, how Yudi perplexed us: What a genuinely loving and supportive husband he seemed, but how the sporadic bruises on Marina’s body hinted otherwise. They appeared every few months: peeking out from the outlines of a sleeveless blouse like a naughty tattoo; now and then flowering on her ankle; once around her left eye, plastered over poorly with heavy makeup and a feeble excuse. We shouldn’t have been so presumptuous, I tell myself now. Marina was always physically fragile, more prone to injury than most.
It was difficult not to think such thoughts, though. There was something about that evening, that party—who knows what—that brought it out, tuned it up high and shrill, that particular quality of our family and all the families with whom we associated. Estella put her finger on it when she turned to me and asked, “Remember that pond in Sweden?”
I nodded. When we were in our early teens, Opa and Oma had rented a large holiday house in the Scandinavian countryside for all their children and grandchildren. The surface of the nearby pond had just frozen over. We grandchildren squatted, mesmerized, at its edge, peering through the ice to the tangle of algae and branches and dead leaves beneath—to the dark creatures in languid motion among the sunken debris.
That was all she needed to say—Remember that pond—and I understood. We sat at the table, watching: the people supposedly nearest and dearest to us and each other clinking glasses and passing around food, eyes glittering and mouths wide and laughing; the children darting in and out and in between, tugging on grown-ups’ arms and pant legs, cramming tidbits into their mouths and licking salty fingers before running out again into the garden. We caught flashes of the murky depths. Looking at Tante Lilly, Om Gerry Sukamto’s second wife, one couldn’t help but recall Tante Hannah—his first wife, divorced and replaced one day out of the blue, about whom the Sukamtos never spoke. In the brushing of Om Peter’s fingertips against the shoulder of his longtime “friend” Om Andy burned tenderness mingled with resignation about what could never declare itself out loud. Around the slim waist of fifteen-year-old Pauline Sukamto clung a different silhouette, penciled in by the rumored visit to the abortion clinic in Bangkok. Sprawled over the length of a sofa was our cousin Ricky, tangible in his absence. He was in the middle of his second incarceration in a rehab clinic in Colorado.
It could drive you crazy, this double vision, one world layered on top of the other, neither of them reality.
Out of the corner of my eye, I detected motion at Estella’s elbow. It was our father, wineglass in hand, the faintest trace of pink about his ears. He didn’t talk much with people at events like this because they bored him, and people left him alone because he bored them. When he was young, he had been witty. Estella and I knew this because Ma told us when we were kids, always, for some reason, while she was getting ready to go out. As she sat at her vanity in her pink dressing gown, attending to her makeup and hair, we would teeter around in her Manolo Blahniks and drench ourselves in assorted perfumes.
“Your father wasn’t always how he is now, you know,” she would tell us over the rattle of the hair spray can. “He was so clever, so charming. But that was before you were born. Marriage.” Her delicate white bosom would raise and lower itself in a wistful sigh. “Such a disappointment.” (Our mother did an admirable job of keeping up facades in every other part of her life. Only when it came to our underwhelming father did she admit Estella and me backstage.)
Tycoon Daughter Weds. So read the headline of the society magazine clipping tucked into the pages of their wedding album. Estella had kept the album in her room, and we knew the story well: Twenty-one-year-old Sarah Sulinado, one of the most prominent beauties of Jakarta high society and the second-youngest child of Irwan Sulinado, founder and head of Sulinado Group, was united in marriage to Rudy Wirono, the eldest son of a journalist. The article’s polite neglect of our father’s details made all too clear that young Sarah had tied herself to a nonentity.
We never knew the man capable of wooing a wealthy, sophisticated heiress. Or the man strong-willed enough to insist on “Estella” for his daughter’s name, even though his wife had complained that it sounded too much like “es teler.” (“Why don’t you just call her ‘chocolate pudding’ or ‘pineapple tart’ while you’re at it?” she’d reportedly fumed.) To us, Ba was a mild-mannered being, whose pale skin never tanned no matter how much he golfed and whose disposition, even when he was inebriated, never caught the warmth and vivacity of the fine vintages he collected. He’d started working for the family shortly after he’d married our mother. What his job was before, we didn’t know; he would always answer our questions about it with a wistful “That’s all in the past.” Nothing was left of his former self, as far as we could see, except for an acerbic aftertaste that lingered in remarks he made when drunk.
“Bored at your end of the table, Ba?” I asked.
He responded with a watery smile and patted Estella’s hand. “Of course not. We’re all having so much fun,” he asserted with the barest hint of sarcasm. Then he took a sip of wine so small and quick that it might have only happened in my imagination. It took me until I was eighteen to realize our father had a “problem” and what his trick was for disguising it: One hardly ever saw him bring the glass to his lips. A diligent observer might have noticed how much alcohol he could imbibe in the course of an evening, but our father was never interesting enough to hold anyone’s attention for long.
Our mother glided over, her low-backed silk dress clinging to her gaunt yellow frame, her shoulder blades swan’s wings on the verge of bursting out of her back.
“Have you seen Tante Caroline?” she asked. “She looks fantastic.”
Estella and I turned to look at the same time. Tante Caroline—the second-eldest Sukamto daughter, and our mother’s age—was whispering something to her husband. The skin across her cheekbones was stretched taut and gleamed unnaturally, like the skin of a newly healed burn.
“Her face is so radiant, so young-looking.”
Ever the good daughter, Estella gave our mother what she was looking for. “She doesn’t look as young as you, Ma. And you haven’t had work done.”
Our mother beamed coquettishly. “Why, thank you, darling.” She squeezed Estella’s arm. “How are you doing? Are you tired? If you want to go home, just let your father or me know and we can leave.”
A year and a half had passed since Leonard’s death and our mother still treated Estella as if she were made out of bone china. It was her way of purging herself of guilt, just as she purged herself of other things she didn’t want inside her.
Estella managed a smile. “I’m all right, Ma.”
I patted our mother’s hand, which was more like a talon, and smiled too.
“Did you enjoy dinner?” I asked sweetly, even as Estella saw throug
h me and frowned.
“Yes! I’m stuffed,” our mother asserted, rubbing the concavity of her belly.
Our father’s alcoholism was consistent, whereas it was impossible to predict when Ma’s eating disorder would strike. These past few months had seen it in full shine.
A spoon clinking against a glass brought conversation to a gradual halt. It was Gerry Sukamto, red in the face, steadying one hand on the table to help him rise to his feet. A panicked Tante Lilly clutched at his belt, trying to pull him back down. “A toast! To Pak Irwan!” he cried, raising his glass in the direction of my grandfather, who sat at the end of the table, dozing off. At the mention of his name, preceded by the formal honorific “Pak,” Opa’s ears perked up and he raised his head.
“Gerr,” Tante Lilly whispered, “Gerr, not now.”
“Pak Irwan,” Om Gerry roared again, brushing his wife off. Already, all the guests looked uneasy. By rights, it was Yudi’s father, Putra Handoyo, who should have been the object of such a gesture. Or at the very least, he shouldn’t have been overlooked. The expression on his face betrayed a failed attempt at graciousness.
Om Gerry continued, “Pak Irwan, you were the best of friends with my father when he was alive. And you were the best of business partners. My father held you in the highest esteem. The day before he died, he called me to his side. ‘Gerry,’ he said, ‘I want to tell you something. When I am gone, remember Pak Irwan and his family. We have been friends for a very long time and they have been very good to us. Don’t let the friendship between the families die. Even when I’m gone, it must continue.’ ” Om Gerry’s voice broke. He pulled a folded handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his eyes before resuming. “Pak Irwan. You are a good man. We are grateful for your friendship. May our families remain friends and partners for many, many more generations.” He raised his glass. “To Pak Irwan!” Helpless, we all followed suit.
Our chorus of half-hearted affirmations was cut short by a frantic gurgling. It came from Opa. He was violet with rage, trying to speak.
When the word finally came, it was barely audible: “Liar.” A hiss. He repeated it more loudly. “Liar!” And again, his voice ascending into a madman’s shriek. “Liar! Liar! How dare you, you snake! Lies! Lies! Nothing but lies!”
With a sudden jerk, he pushed his chair back from the table and tried to struggle to his feet.
“Lies! Lies!” he continued to cry as Om Gerry’s face turned the color of cigar ash. New Oma, Om Benny, and our mother attempted to calm him, but to no avail. Finally, they managed to bundle him off into the next room. Om Gerry lowered himself into his chair, his spirits considerably dampened.
“Told you so,” Tante Lilly whispered. “What’s the point?”
Only Yudi’s father seemed more at ease than before, the faintest of smug smiles around his puckered mouth. Gradually, conversation resumed.
Catching my eye, Estella nodded in the direction of the doorway. Excusing ourselves to our father with murmurs about fresh air, we exited toward the garden and made our way across the lawn to the pool.
“What was that about?” Estella mused.
“Do you really need to ask?” I replied.
But even as I tried to brush the incident aside, the history behind Opa’s outburst pursued us as we walked away from the house.
The affair was convoluted to begin with, but now, thanks to Opa’s condition and the death of Om Gerry’s father, Opa Andries, it had become impossible to resolve. Back in 1995, Opa Andries had asked our opa for a special favor in return for a cut of the net gains the favor would bring about. Not long afterward, however, Opa Andries had died—of a brain tumor the size of a baby’s fist.
Om Gerry upheld his father’s part of the bargain—or so he claimed. Opa said the sum was far below the agreed amount. It was entirely possible that Opa was right: Gerry Sukamto was prone to duplicity, even with those whom he considered allies. Yet it was also possible that Opa was mistaken: Perhaps the Alzheimer’s had already begun to set in.
The agreement had never been written down, and lacking proof, Opa had no alternative but to accept the sum Om Gerry offered. But the grudge remained. It sank its teeth into Opa’s memory and refused to let go, holding fast to the disintegrating scraps.
His children prudently paid no mind, more than eager to relegate the incident to the nebulous past, for the favor had been of a dubious nature: convincing villagers to relinquish their land. Opa had probably done no more than assign the task to some eager underling, who in turn had enlisted the cooperation of either local thugs or police. Even if this sort of thing was common practice when it came to clearing land, exposing wrongdoing was all the rage in Indonesia nowadays. Our family didn’t want to deal with a news story, a court case, or both. Scandal was to be avoided at all costs.
As if trying to distance herself from the knowledge of these events, Estella quickened her pace. I was forced to break out of my saunter in order to keep up, but as we neared the pool—designed to resemble a tranquil lagoon—she seemed to relax. Rocks both imitation and real surrounded the kidney-shaped body of water. At the far end gushed a waterfall. Short spiky palms and feathery ferns gave the whole setup a primeval feel. Something made ripples at our feet: a lone frog, swimming repeatedly into the pool wall in an effort to reach dry land.
With one fluid movement, Estella drew three photos from her purse, and I walked over to one of the garden lights to better examine them. Given our silence and how we had slipped away from the party, anyone would have thought we were engaged in espionage.
“The first one is from London,” she said, looking over my shoulder.
The large family excursions we took during our childhood tended to blend into each other, but I knew which trip she was referring to. Estella and I must have been seven or eight at the time. Our parents had allowed all of us children to stay by ourselves in our own suite. I remembered Christina accidentally tearing down a curtain during one of our rowdier games, and Ricky ordering sirloin steak and hot chocolate from room service three times a day.
And I remembered Tante Sandra. The image I held in my hands was instantly familiar, right down to the outfit she wore: blue velvet bell-bottoms and a high-necked blouse of emerald green. Her hair was long and wavy, and her makeup dramatic—smoky eyes and electric-pink lips, complemented by large gold hoops in her ears. The photo had her standing in front of Buckingham Palace next to one of its iconic guards, and I could practically hear her voice lowered in a mischievous whisper, daring us to poke him from behind. A mixture of adrenaline and adoration flooded my body, as if I were a child again, reliving that moment.
“Brings back memories, doesn’t it?” said Estella. “She would’ve been nineteen. Take a look at the next one, from two years later. It was taken when she was twenty-one.”
Twenty-one—no mistaking that. The photo showed her about to blow out the candles on an enormous chocolate-frosted creation heaped with whipped cream, chocolate curls, and maraschino cherries. Black forest, I surmised—one of Oma’s specialties. In the center was a pair of candles, one a squat “2” and the other a “1.” There were more candles, skinny and striped, staked around the cake’s perimeter, as if more flames meant more festivity. Our aunt seemed subdued, especially in comparison to the first photo, though she was still wearing makeup and had clearly taken the trouble to curl and blow-dry her hair. She was smiling, but there was the slightest trace of a furrow between her eyebrows.
“I don’t remember this,” I remarked. “Were we there?”
“I don’t remember either,” Estella admitted.
That was the problem with large families: too many birthdays.
“Now look at the last one,” instructed Estella.
I did. My eyes were immediately drawn to the photo’s bottom right-hand corner. Sure enough, it was as Estella had said: six orange numbers indicating that the picture had been taken on March 21, 1984. Well after Tante Sandra’s death, and yet there she was, beyond a doubt—standing against a b
ackdrop of jagged reddish cliffs. But something about her was off, though I couldn’t place what. It wasn’t that she looked older than she did in the second photo. In fact, she looked almost identical because of the angle of the shot—minimal makeup, hair around the same length but not overly styled, that same smiling yet faintly troubled expression on her face.
“Where did you find this?” I asked.
“In one of the shoeboxes with a lot of other photos. Random ones—all taken at different times in different places. But it’s the only one of Tante Sandra like this. I looked through all of them.”
“Where was it taken?”
“I don’t know. A desert, from the looks of it.”
“Have you shown it to Ma?”
“Yes. I pointed out the year too. She said what you said: The date settings on the camera must have been wrong.”
“It’s not unlikely. Did you ask Ba what he thought?”
Our father was more prone to lapses in discretion. As a consequence, he sometimes told us the truth.
Estella nodded. “He didn’t seem to think the date was any cause for suspicion either.”
“So why do you?” I asked, studying the photo again, and as I did so, I found myself answering my own question. The longer I gazed at our aunt, the more justifiable my sister’s misgivings seemed to become—as if I were being pulled into line with her way of thinking, her point of view. The sense that something was off about the picture strengthened, and I attempted to figure out exactly what was wrong with it, what was wrong with her. It came into focus, and I quickly articulated it, as if I were worried it would disappear once more.
“What’s that mark on her neck?” I asked, pointing to a purple blotch above our aunt’s left collarbone. I leaned in closer and squinted, trying to discern whether it was part of the photo or a flaw in the way the film had been developed. It was hard to tell for sure.