Asking for Love

by Robinson, Roxana;

  John frowned and looked ahead again. “I just don’t feel right about leaving for the night.”

  “But Julia’s not even at home,” I protested. “She’s staying with a friend.”

  “Still,” John said. “She may wake up and call home. I don’t want her to feel she can’t reach me.”

  “But you could give her this number.”

  John sighed again. “This is a small community,” he said. “Everyone knows this number. I don’t want to make a public announcement about where I’m spending the night. And I don’t want Julia to have to call me at a stranger’s.”

  “I’m not a stranger,” I said, hurt. “Julia knows me. But okay, if you don’t want to give her the number, give it to Hannah. If Julia calls home, Hannah can tell her to call here.”

  “Sarah, look,” John said, his voice authoritative. He was getting down to it. “Julia is my daughter. I feel responsible for her. I know you feel differently about your daughter, but this is the way I feel. We do things differently: that’s how it is.”

  John’s tone was lofty. He was withdrawing to a higher elevation where the Good Parents were. I could see he thought that only he and Agnes belonged there, that I should be kept in the outer darkness with the rest of the Bad Parents. This enraged me, and I said something that surprised me.

  “Is it really Julia you’re expecting a call from in the middle of the night?” I asked.

  John turned away at once, and his lips drew together dismissively. He pushed his tortoise-shell glasses farther up on his nose with a long finger.

  “Sarah,” he said, “my feelings for Agnes have nothing to do with my feelings for you.”

  “Oh, good,” I said heatedly. “And what are your feelings for me?” I asked without thinking.

  John paused, and cleared his throat. “Well,” he said uneasily, “you know it’s hard for me to say these things.”

  “Yes,” I said. At first I had thought—I had hoped—that he would answer the way I had spoken, at once, and with feeling. But John said nothing, and the pause lengthened. Then dread began to rise up in me, and regret: I should never have asked.

  John frowned, and then swallowed. I could see he was working. Finally he looked at me. “I feel, well, I feel very warm toward you.” He paused. “At least, I feel very warm, myself, when I’m with you.” He looked proud.

  “Very warm,” I repeated. I felt sick, shamed, and I turned my face away from him. John put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Really, very warm,” he said, earnestly.

  I looked at him, speechless and despairing. I could see that we had not been exploring each other at all. We had been in different countries all along, speaking to each other in different languages. I could see that John was nowhere near the leap, and I was no longer sure he wanted to make it.

  “Do you still want me to come up?” John asked. “I’d like to.” He stroked my shoulder in a tentative way.

  I stared at him. I waited for a moment before I spoke, choosing my words.

  “Sarah?” he said, stroking my shoulder gently, tenderly.

  His hand on me felt exquisite, and it distracted me from my pain. I sat still, and his hand moved from my shoulder to my neck. I felt so miserable that I closed my eyes. For a moment I let myself pretend that things were all right, that nothing had happened, and that we would go on and do what we both wanted. Feeling his hand on my bare skin, slow and possessive, knowing, gentle, I didn’t want it to stop.

  Maybe I was looking at this wrong. Maybe I was mistaken about John. Maybe this was the only way that he could move away from Agnes, obliquely, undeclared. Maybe he needed to make a safe place with me before he could break away from Agnes. Maybe this was the only way he could approach the leap. John’s hand, moving so gently along my collar bone, with other parts of me longing for its arrival, made these thoughts seem sensible.

  I thought of the room I’d gotten ready for us, the smooth worn sheets on the bed, the white curtains lifting in the breeze off the water. I had left a light on, its glow invisible in the afternoon sun but deepening and growing with the twilight, so that when we opened the door, our world would already be golden. I remembered the light left on. I thought of walking down that hall alone, entering the room alone, to turn off the light.

  “Yes,” I said, “come up.”

  The house above us was dark, and we climbed the steps quietly. Reaching the top, I pulled open the screen door and turned the handle of the glass-topped inner door. It resisted, and I peered into the dim living room, full of mysterious shadows. It was silent, and I tried again: the door had been locked. Of course I didn’t have a key—no one here locks the door during the summer. There is only one key to our house, and it lives on a shelf in the pantry. Of course Melissa knows that. I thought of her face as she turned the key in the lock.

  “Well,” I said, making my voice cheerful, “this is a nuisance. Melissa must have watched a scary movie and she’s locked the door. Let’s try the kitchen.”

  But Melissa had thought of the kitchen, and she had thought of the side door. The last possibility was the door onto the front porch, which she might not have bothered with: the porch is self-contained, and no steps lead off it. To reach it I’d have to climb the stone foundation at its highest point, but with John’s help I could do that.

  We clambered down the steep, needle-covered slope in the dark, and the house rose high above us against the sky. John braced himself, bending his knees. He laced his fingers together, making me a stirrup. Gingerly I set my foot in it: feeling the small cradle of muscle and bone beneath me I felt suddenly heavy, excessive. This would never work, I thought. I could feel that I was too much for him, and I hopped apologetically on one foot.

  “Go on,” John urged, “go on.”

  I lunged up. I could feel John taking my weight, I felt his shoulders settle against the strain. I teetered in his hands, groping for a purchase against the cold rusticated stone. He didn’t flinch, and I felt him solid and comforting beneath me. Perhaps it would work after all, I thought, and I pushed myself slowly erect against his cupped palms. I stood shakily upright and reached over the parapet. I felt the rough bark of the log railing above it as I searched for a grip. The railing itself was too high, but I set my hands around it and pulled, and I felt John pushing from below. My progress was uneven and wobbly, and I couldn’t tell whether this was because of me or him. As I scrabbled, raising one knee against the rough surface, a light went on in the living room.

  Melissa’s silhouette appeared on the other side of the glass door. I tried frantically to drag my knee all the way up on the wall. Please, I thought, oh, please.

  The door opened and Melissa stepped partway out onto the porch, holding the doorknob protectively so she could close herself in again.

  “What are you doing out there, Mother,” she said, and the word in her mouth was a curse.

  I pushed desperately against John’s hands, trying to rise, but I felt his hands shaking. Now I could tell that the unevenness came from him. I could feel that this was too much for him, and he was giving way, giving up. As he wavered, I took a great breath, trying to fill myself with air, to make myself weightless. I tried to gather myself together and hurl myself up the wall. I tried for a wild, miraculous skyward leap.

  But to leap, you need open air before you, and to spring, you need a solid place beneath your feet to start from, something stable, absolute. Before me was hard stone, and beneath me were John’s trembling hands. I could feel his whole body trembling, wavering. I tried to pull myself up by my arms, but I found that I was starting to cry. The strength in my arms and hands was leaving me, and I was no longer sure of what I was able to do.

  “What are you doing out there, Mother?” Melissa said again. Her voice was terrible, an accusation, a hiss. She asked the question as though she had no connection with what I was doing, with my struggle against that brutal stone.

  Below me I felt John’s shaking hands finally part. He stepped away, letting g
o of me entirely. My foot plunged down and I felt the chill air and the emptiness beneath me. I was only halfway up, and my arms weren’t strong enough to pull me any farther. The heart seemed to have gone out of me. I had no answer for my daughter; there was no question I dared ask anyone.

  Mr. Sumarsono

  Oh, Mr. Sumarsono, Mr. Sumarsono. We remember you so well. I wonder how you remember us?

  The three of us met Mr. Sumarsono at the Trenton train station. The platform stretched down the tracks in both directions, long, half-roofed, and dirty. Beyond the tracks on either side were high corrugated-metal sidings, battered and patched. Above the sidings were the tops of weeds and the backs of ramshackle buildings, grimy and desolate. Stretching out above the tracks was an aerial grid of electrical power lines, their knotted, uneven rectangles connecting every city on the Eastern Corridor in a dismal industrial way.

  My mother, my sister, Kate, and I stood waiting for Mr. Sumarsono at the foot of the escalator, which did not work. The escalator had worked once; I could remember it working, though Kate, who was younger, could not. Now the metal staircase towered over the platform, silent and immobile, giving the station a surreal air. If you used it as a staircase, which people often did, as you set your foot on each moveable, motionless step, you had an odd feeling of sensory dislocation, like watching a color movie in black and white. You knew something was wrong, though you couldn’t put your finger on it.

  Mr. Sumarsono got off his train at the other end of the platform from us. He stood still for a moment and looked hesitantly up and down. He didn’t know which way to look, or who he was looking for. My mother lifted her arm and waved: we knew who he was, though we had never seen him before. It was 1961, and Mr. Sumarsono was the only Indonesian to get off the train in Trenton, New Jersey.

  Mr. Sumarsono was wearing a neat suit and leather shoes, like an American businessman, but he did not look like an American. The suit was brown, not gray, and there was a slight sheen to it. And Mr. Sumarsono himself was built in a different way from Americans: he was slight and graceful, with narrow shoulders and an absence of strut. His movements were diffident, and there seemed to be extra curves in them. This was true even of simple movements, like picking up his suitcase and starting down the platform toward the three of us, standing by the escalator that didn’t work.

  Kate and I stood next to my mother as she waved and smiled. Kate and I did not wave and smile: this was all my mother’s idea. Kate was seven and I was ten. We were not entirely sure what a diplomat was, and we were not at all sure that we wanted to be nice to one all weekend. I wondered why he didn’t have friends his own age.

  “Hoo-oo,” my mother called, mortifyingly, even though Mr. Sumarsono had already seen us and was making his graceful way toward us. His steps were small and his movements modest. He smiled in a nonspecific way, to show that he had seen us, but my mother kept on waving and calling. It took a long time, this interlude; encouraging shouts and gestures from my mother, Mr. Sumarsono’s unhurried approach. I wondered if he too was embarrassed by my mother; once he glanced swiftly around, as though he were looking for an alternative family to spend the weekend with. He had reason to be uneasy: the grimy Trenton platform with its corrugated sidings and aerial grid did not suggest a rural retreat. And when he saw us standing by the stationary escalator, my mother waving and calling, Kate and I sullenly silent, he may have felt that things were off to a poor start.

  My mother was short, with big bones and a square face. She had thick dark hair and a wide, mobile mouth. She was a powerful woman. She used to be on the stage, and she still delivered to the back row. When she calls “Hoo-oo” at a train station, everyone at that station knows it.

  “Mr. Sumarsono,” she called out as he came up to us. The accent is on the second syllable. That’s what the people at the U.N. had told her, and she made us practice, sighing and complaining, until we said it the way she wanted: Sumarsono.

  Mr. Sumarsono gave a formal nod and a small smile. His face was oval, and his eyes were long. His skin was very pale brown, and smooth. His hair was shiny and black, and it was also very smooth. Everything about him seemed polished and smooth.

  “Hello!” said my mother, seizing his hand and shaking it. “I’m Mrs. Riordan. And this is Kate, and this is Susan.” Kate and I cautiously put out our hands, and Mr. Sumarsono took them limply, bowing at each of us.

  My mother put out her own hand again. “Shall I take your bag?” But Mr. Sumarsono defended his suitcase. “We’re just up here,” said my mother, giving up on the bag and leading the way to the escalator.

  We all began the climb, but after a few steps my mother looked back.

  “This is an escalator,” she said loudly.

  Mr. Sumarsono gave a short nod.

  “It takes you up,” my mother called, and pointed to the roof overhead. Mr. Sumarsono, holding his suitcase with both hands, looked at the ceiling.

  “It doesn’t work right now,” my mother said illuminatingly, and turned back to her climb.

  “No,” I heard Mr. Sumarsono say. He glanced cautiously again at the ceiling.

  Exactly parallel to the escalator was a broad concrete staircase, which another group of people were climbing. We were separated only by the handrail, so that for a disorienting second you felt you were looking at a mirror from which you were missing. It intensified the feeling you got from climbing the stopped escalator—dislocation, bewilderment, doubt at your own senses.

  A woman on the real staircase looked over at us, and I could tell that my mother gave her a brilliant smile; the woman looked away at once. We were the only people on the escalator.

  On the way home Kate and I sat in the back seat and watched our mother keep turning to speak to Mr. Sumarsono. She asked him long, complicated, cheerful questions. “Well, Mr. Sumarsono, had you been in this country at all before you came to the U.N. or is this your first visit? I know you’ve only been working at the U.N. for a short time.”

  Mr. Sumarsono answered everything with a polite unfinished nod. Then he would turn back and look out the window again. I wondered if he was thinking about jumping out of the car. I wondered what Mr. Sumarsono was expecting from a weekend in the country. I hoped it was not a walk to the pond: Kate and I had planned one for that afternoon. We were going to watch the mallards nesting, and I hoped we wouldn’t have to include a middle-aged Indonesian in leather shoes.

  When we got home my mother looked at me meaningfully. “Susan, will you and Kate show Mr. Sumarsono to his room?” Mr. Sumarsono looked politely at us, his head tilted slightly sideways.

  Gracelessly I leaned over to pick up Mr. Sumarsono’s suitcase, as I had been told. He stopped me by putting his hand out, palm front, in a traffic policeman’s gesture.

  “No, no,” he said, with a small smile, and he took hold of the suitcase himself. I fell back, pleased not to do as I’d been told, but also I was impressed, almost awed, by Mr. Sumarsono.

  What struck me was the grace of his gesture. His hand slid easily out of its cuff and exposed a narrow brown wrist, much narrower than my own. When he put his hand up in the Stop! gesture his hand curved backward from the wrist, and his fingers bent backward from the palm. Instead of the stern and flathanded Stop! that an American hand would make, this was a polite, subtle, and yielding signal, quite beautiful and infinitely sophisticated, a gesture that suggested a thousand reasons for doing this, a thousand ways to go about it.

  I let him take the suitcase and we climbed the front stairs, me first, Kate next, and then Mr. Sumarsono, as though we were playing a game. We marched solemnly, single file, through the second-floor hall and up the back stairs to the third floor. The guest room was small, with a bright hooked rug on the wide old floorboards, white ruffled curtains at the windows, and slanting eaves. There was a spool bed, a table next to it, a straight chair, and a chest of drawers. On the chest of drawers there was a photograph of my great-grandmother, her austere face framed by faded embroidery. On the bedspread was a
large tan smudge, where our cat liked to spend the afternoons.

  Mr. Sumarsono put his suitcase down and looked around the room. I looked around with him, and suddenly the guest room, and in fact our whole house, took on a new aspect. Until that moment I had thought our house was numbingly ordinary, that it represented the decorating norm: patchwork quilts, steep, narrow staircases, slanting ceilings, and spool beds. I assumed everyone had faded photographs of Victorian great-grandparents dotted mournfully around their rooms. Now it came to me that this was not the case. I wondered what houses were like in Indonesia, or apartments in New York. Somehow I knew: They were low, sleek, modern, all on one floor, with hard gleaming surfaces. They were full of right angles and empty of allusions to the past: they were the exact opposite of our house. Silently and fiercely I blamed my mother for our environment, which was, I now saw, eccentric, totally abnormal.

  Mr. Sumarsono looked at me and nodded precisely again.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Don’t hit your head,” Kate said.

  Mr. Sumarsono bowed, closing his eyes.

  “On the ceiling,” Kate said, pointing to it.

  “The ceiling,” he repeated, looking up at it too.

  “Don’t hit your head on the ceiling,” she said loudly, and Mr. Sumarsono looked at her and smiled.

  “The bathroom’s in here,” I said, showing him.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Susan,” my mother called up the stairs, “tell Mr. Sumarsono to come downstairs when he’s ready for lunch.”

  “Come-downstairs-when-you’re-ready-for-lunch,” I said unnecessarily. I pointed graphically into my open mouth and then bolted, clattering rapidly down both sets of stairs. Kate was right behind me, our knees banging in our rush to get away.

  Mother had set four places for lunch, which was on the screened-in porch overlooking the lawn. The four places meant a battle.

  “Mother,” I said mutinously.