Asking for Love

by Robinson, Roxana;

  “Are you all right?” Mr. Fouad asked her. His voice was soft, as though he knew her very well, as though he knew secret things about her. His dark eyes were calm. He waited for a moment and then repeated the last words. “All right?” he asked again, even more softly. It was really a whisper, and he spoke the words as though they meant something else, something private that she would understand.

  Mr. Fouad, crouching so close to Nora, his legs spread over her, and his hands hovering over her face, seemed like one of her dreams, on this strange night, another of the flickering scenes she had seen as she opened and closed her eyes, drifting in and out of sleep: the black Egyptian sky, the dark, moving shadows, the men in white robes striding urgently through the streets. She felt mesmerized, as though it no longer mattered what she did, as though she herself were hardly in her own life. She felt as though her life had been taken over, and things now would be unpredictable and exotic.

  “I’m fine,” Nora said. She heard her voice: it was as low as Mr. Fouad’s. Her breath had turned erratic, as though she had been climbing stairs.

  Mr. Fouad smiled at her, upside down. He leaned closer. “Are you sure there isn’t something … that you want?” he asked. His hand dropped to her face and for a tiny instant she felt his long narrow finger briefly cup the curve of her chin. The touch was very light, and so gentle that Nora could not bear it.

  At once she sat all the way up, drawing herself very straight. Under her caftan, she could feel her breasts against the soft cotton of her nightgown.

  “I am perfectly fine, Mr. Fouad. I would like to sleep out here on deck. I am perfectly fine,” she said. She tried to sound dignified and self-assured, like a married woman. She looked directly at Mr. Fouad. He looked silently back at her. His eyes were startling, so close—they were so very deep, so quiet. And he seemed to know her, his hand had seemed to know her skin.

  “All right,” he said gently, as though she had asked him for something that he could give her, and he smiled again. He did not move, and there was another pause. He leaned closer, tilting his head, so she could see how it would be if they kissed. “You are sure?” he asked. His question, his voice, was gentle, deeply courteous. He was offering her a chance to confess her secret, to admit the truth.

  “I am sure,” Nora said.

  Mr. Fouad stood beautifully. He gave a small bow, still watching her. Nora nodded in return. Mr. Fouad turned and began walking away, his footsteps measured. Nora stayed upright long after she had lost sight of him in the gloom, sitting up until his footsteps lessened, until they were finally lost in the hum of the engines.

  Nora lay back down again, shaky, her pulse still hurtling. She pulled the quilt up around her shoulders and closed her eyes, though sleep was now beyond reach. She had done exactly what she should have done. She had behaved properly, like a married woman. There was nothing to feel ashamed of. Yet lying there, Nora felt frightened, bewildered. She was frightened not of Mr. Fouad but of her own confusion: nothing seemed now to make sense. She thought again of Mr. Fouad’s gleaming smile beneath his luxuriant mustache. His white teeth. The low, tender voice in which he had asked her, “Are you all right?,” and the butterfly touch on her chin. Nora wanted to weep, thinking of Mr. Fouad.

  She felt that she understood nothing. Her life seemed mysterious and unreadable. Nothing was the way she had imagined it. She had never imagined herself on this strange, old-fashioned voyage. She had not dreamed that she would marry a tall and courtly stranger. And she had not known that this courtly man, her husband, would never touch her body. She had not known that his only kiss, ever, would be a firm, neat one on her mouth. She had not known that his tumult would be over, that he would never invade her soil. She had not known that the line at the end of passion would be so clearly marked, that the life that lay before her would be so pale, so dry.

  The Favor

  Driving back to his mother’s house from the tennis courts, Roger rounded a slow curve just past the golf course and saw a woman at the side of the road. She was standing at the end of the sandy lane that led to the little club beach. Against the Caribbean sun she wore a turban and a terry-cloth robe. Her legs were white and stalky, and on her feet were plastic bathing sandals. As the car approached, her hand fluttered up, undecided: not exactly a flag, but different from a wave. Roger stopped the car and she came over, taking tiny steps across the hot sand.

  “Well, I suppose you’re in a terrible hurry,” she began.

  Roger shook his head. “Not at all,” he said politely. “What’s the problem?” Roger was forty-eight. He had hazel eyes and a narrow face. His cheeks were lined and his forehead was high; his hair was beginning to recede.

  “Well, my cah has broken down, you see,” said the woman. She talked very quickly, with an old-fashioned accent, stylized, rather grand. There was an outraged lilt to her sentences, as though it were a scandal that she had to say any of this at all. “I came ovah for a swim, and now it won’t start, don’t you see, and I have to get back home somehow.”

  Roger leaned across the empty passenger seat and opened the door for her. “Here, climb in,” he said. “Where do you live?”

  The woman pointed back the way Roger had come. “Parrakeet Peak,” she said, getting in.

  It was just past noon, blazing hot. Beyond the scrubby trees, the sun was reflected by the ocean and sent back up into the shimmering air. Settling herself into her seat, the woman now took a good look at Roger.

  “Aren’t you a Pickering?” she asked, accusingly, as though he were trying to sneak his family past her.

  “Roger Conrad, hello,” he said, giving her a grave nod as he backed the car and turned it around.

  “Oh, you’re Roger Conrad,” said the woman. “I used to know your fohthah.”

  “Did you,” said Roger, pulling back out onto the road. “Now, where is it again that you’d like to go?”

  “Parrakeet Peak!” said the woman, surprised that Roger had already forgotten.

  “And just where is that, exactly?” Roger asked.

  “Oh, it’s way back in, near the Janeways’,” said the woman, waving her hand in a long-distance gesture.

  Roger started back toward the clubhouse. The road here ran along the wide white beach, which was edged with a line of palm trees. The trees leaned haphazardly toward each other, scattering shaggy leaves on the fine sand. Across the road, the golf course rolled its smooth gray-green mat across the rising slopes. Beyond the golf course there were low inland hills, covered with dense jungly growth. A few isolated houses were scattered along the crests and ridges. The island was very dry, and next to each house was a whitish open patch—a concrete catchment for rainwater.

  The club owned a thousand acres in the southeast corner of the island. Except for the shorefront and the golf course, the club land was uncleared, covered with dense wild scrub. Most of the rest of the big island was open. Brown cattle grazed across broad, peaceful fields of pale grass, where sugarcane had once grown.

  Roger’s parents had chosen this place, years ago, for its clean white beaches, the low pretty houses, the golf, and their kind friends there. When Roger was little, the family had come every winter after Christmas. He remembered those times as green, warm, easy. The life of the island was brilliant and foreign to him: the hot spiky growth and the brilliant flowers, the dry swift lizards. The black, black people, with their loose bright clothes and syncopated speech. Roger and his younger brother, Steven, had spent their days outside—on their bikes, or snorkeling in the easy washes around the small coral islands. Paddling slowly through the lucid surges, magically powered by his limber flippered feet, he heard his breathing loud and hollow in his ears. Roger felt privileged to be in this exotic place, following the silvery underwater life, the schools of wary fish, shifting and glittering before him; he felt like a fortunate traveler from another planet.

  In those days the weather was steady, the sun benign, the rains brief. In the evenings, his parents went out to parties on w
ide stone terraces. His mother wore flowered dresses, a white sweater over her smooth brown shoulders.

  Roger had not been back in nearly twenty years, but it seemed now that little had changed. The original premise of the club had been simplicity—the houses were modest, and there were no telephones. Now there were some new houses, bigger than the old ones, but still no telephones. The club seemed just the same: a cluster of low stucco buildings, clean, cream-colored, freshly painted, set into the low bluff above the long, perfect crescent of the beach. Vigorous foursomes in bright clothes moved across the golf course in the dazzling sunlight. In the evenings, in the club dining room, with its high thatched ceilings and polished stone floors, Roger’s mother waved and smiled at her friends. These were women who looked like her, in flowered dresses, with white earrings and necklaces. The women were with pink-faced men in colored trousers, men who looked like Roger’s father. It seemed, all of it, just as Roger remembered it: gentle, pleasant, protected.

  Roger drove along slowly. The club roads were narrow, made of uneven concrete slabs. On the inland side the brush was hacked short for a scant yard, then gave way to heavy tropical growth, spiky-leaved and hostile. As Roger’s car came around a corner, a honey-colored mongoose, soft and bright-eyed, raised his head at them, then rumpled into invisibility among the gray-green leaves.

  “I have to get back, you know, because I have to meet the architect. And the decorator.” The woman shook her head. “It’s so difficult to get things done down here. Of course I haven’t been here for five years. I’ve been in Palm Beach. It’s up along here on the right.”

  Roger turned the car inland and started up the long spine of the hill. This road was one he did not remember, though he and Steven had biked around most of these narrow lanes. In those days his family had stayed at the clubhouse. It was before they built their house.

  “I’m at the top of the hill,” said the woman. “The highest point on the island. You can see the sun rise and see it set from our house. I joined this club forty-five years ago but I didn’t buy a house until years later. I wanted this one, and I waited until it came on the market. Wiggy Newcombe called me up and said, ‘Cynthia, your house is for sale.’ I couldn’t believe it.” She looked at Roger expectantly, then asked, “Didn’t your fohthah join about the same time we did?”

  “And my mother,” said Roger, nodding. “That sounds right.”

  “I used to know him well.”

  “Ah,” said Roger. This seemed unlikely.

  “I knew your mothah, too, but not as well. She wasn’t a golfah. Your fohthah was a golfah.”

  “He was,” said Roger.

  “But your mothah wasn’t a golfah, was she.”

  “She plays golf,” Roger said.

  “I don’t remember it,” the woman said flatly. “Are they down here, your parents? Is that where you’re staying?”

  “My mother is here,” said Roger. “My father died last summer.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” said the woman, turning in her seat to look at him. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry to hear that. Your fohthah was such an attractive man. A terribly attractive man.”

  “He was,” said Roger.

  “Give your mothah my sympathy, would you? I don’t know that she’ll remember me. Cynthia Harrison. I used to see her at parties. Tell her I’m terribly sorry about your fohthah. I’d love to see her,” she went on unconvincingly. “Will she be here long?”

  “We’re leaving tomorrow, actually,” Roger said.

  “Tomorrow, oh, that’s too bad. Oh, I’d love to have seen your mothah,” said Mrs. Harrison, now more confident. She patted her white turban. Her hands were large, and the joints of her fingers thick. She wore deep red nail polish, and her skin was milky. A faint dusting of freckles, like nutmeg, went up the backs of her arms. There were traces of dark lipstick on her mouth. She had an aura of faded and dreadful glamour.

  “I used to see your fohthah at Saratoga, too,” said Mrs. Harrison. “He loved it there.”

  “Yes,” said Roger.

  “Do you go to Saratoga too?”

  “No,” said Roger.

  “It’s a beautiful spot,” said Mrs. Harrison. “Right along here. Turn left again. It’s really rather spectacular. We can see the sun rise and set from here. You’ll have to come in and see the view. I’ll just be a minute. I’ll have to find my man and send him back down to the cah. Can you take him down? It’s right on your way. Because it won’t start.”

  Mrs. Harrison’s house was like all the old ones: low white stucco, with a palm-thatched roof. A tree with violent purple blossoms stood by the front door. On the garage roof squatted three black men wearing shorts and sunglasses. Mrs. Harrison rounded her hands into a megaphone and called up to them.

  “Hoo-oo!” she called. “Where’s Mar-tin?”

  The men looked at her and shook their heads. Mrs. Harrison turned back to Roger.

  “Wouldn’t you know the roof had termites. I wasn’t here for five years—that’s why it’s all such a mess. I’ll get Martin. Rose will know where he is. Because he has to fix the cah. It won’t start.”

  She made her way across the scrubby lawn in her transparent plastic sandals. On the other side stood a small whitewashed cottage; a radio inside blared ragged music. Mrs. Harrison stood outside the nearest end. Elbows pressed tight to her chest, she put her hands to her mouth.

  “Ro-ose!” she called through the music. Rose did not appear, and she tried again. “Ro-ose!” Her voice was high and impatient. Roger looked up at the men on the roof. One of them, in yellow shorts and reflector sunglasses, was looking at Mrs. Harrison’s narrow back, her bathrobe and turban. He was laughing.

  Rose came out of the other end of the cottage. She was black, with an injured expression and a large middle. She wore a loose paisley dress and a white apron.

  Mrs. Harrison, not seeing her, leaned into the window full of music. “Rose!” she called despairingly.

  “Hello!” shouted Rose, right behind her.

  “Oh, there you are, Rose,” said Mrs. Harrison, turning around. “Where’s Martin?”

  Rose shook her head with finality. “Don’t know.”

  “But I have to find him,” Mrs. Harrison pointed out. “I need him to fix the cah, you see.”

  “Don’t know,” said Rose again. She looked at the ground and jumped her hands up and down under her apron.

  Mrs. Harrison did not answer. She turned her back on Rose and walked toward Roger. “It’s no good telling them anything,” she said loudly. “They don’t listen to a word you say.” She gave Roger a fretful smile. “Now come inside and let me show you the house.” Roger started to speak, but she held up her hand. “You have to see it. It’s the best view on the island. Come in for one minute. I know you need to get back.”

  Roger did not need to get back. No one was waiting for him, and it might be useful to see inside of Mrs. Harrison’s house. Roger was here to help his mother put her house up for sale, and seeing other houses would give him a better idea of the market. He stepped inside.

  A large open room led through a wide doorway to a terrace beyond. The ceiling was high and airy, the struts and beams exposed. The sight of this—the orderly right-angled pattern, the architectural skeleton—reminded Roger suddenly of the structure of his parents’ house here, and of the night he had first seen the plans of it.

  This had happened in the big gabled brick house in Greenwich where Roger had grown up, and where his mother still lived. It was Roger’s senior year at Middlesex, and he and Steven were both home from school for Thanksgiving. Before dinner that evening their father called everyone into the library, which was his room. It stood off the big, square front hall, and was a narrow room with two tall windows. The walls were paneled in dark wood, and there were high built-in bookshelves. A fire was burning, and the room was warm and lit up. The whole house smelled of the roasting turkey. Roger’s grandparents were coming, and the air was full of anticipation.

&n
bsp; Roger, Steven, and their father were all wearing ties, blue blazers, and gray flannels. Roger’s mother, Charlotte, was in a dark green dress. She sat on the leather Chesterfield sofa, and the black Lab, Troy, had crept surreptitiously up next to her. The dog smiled widely at the boys, his eyes narrowed in happiness, his rose-colored tongue hanging out. Their mother, too, was smiling, and their father, who seldom smiled, was jingling his keys in his pocket. He did this when he was either pleased or annoyed, and tonight he was pleased.

  “Ready?” he asked the boys. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered and thick-waisted. He had a high beaked nose, fierce eyebrows, and a florid complexion. At his temples were bushy gray tufts of hair. He was mostly bald, in a gleaming, powerful way.

  Roger and his brother nodded alertly, though they did not know what it was they were ready for. An easel stood in front of the fireplace, a white linen napkin draped over the top of it.

  Their father looked at the easel, then back at the boys.

  “Get that dog off the sofa,” he said irritably. Troy was strictly forbidden to sit on the furniture, but only Roger’s father enforced this rule.

  “Troy,” Charlotte said. At her tone, Troy’s face turned mournful and his body became immobile. “Troy,” Charlotte said again, loudly. She pushed at him, carefully. Everyone watched while Troy climbed reluctantly down and curled up dolefully on the rug.

  “All ready?” Their father asked again, brusque. “Stand up straight, you two!” Roger and his brother moved their shoulders dutifully.

  Their father lifted up the linen napkin. “Look at that!” he said proudly. On the easel was a drawing of a house, the boys had no idea why.