Asking for Love

by Robinson, Roxana;

“What is it?” Mother said. “Would you fill a pitcher of water, Susan?”

  “Kate and I are not having lunch,” I said, running water into the big blue-and-white pottery pitcher.

  “And get the butter dish. Of course you’re having lunch,” said my mother. She was standing at the old wooden kitchen table, making a plate of deviled eggs. She was messily filling the rubbery white hollows with dollops of yolk-and-mayonnaise mixture. The slippery egg-halves rocked unstably, and the mixture stuck to her spoon. She scraped it into the little boats with her finger. I watched with distaste. In a ranch house, I thought, or in New York, this would not happen. In New York, food would be prepared on polished man-made surfaces. It would be brought to you on gleaming platters by silent waiters.

  “I told you Kate and I are not having lunch,” I said. “We’re taking a picnic to the pond.” I put the pitcher on the table.

  Mother turned to me. “We have been through this already, Susan. We have a guest for the weekend, and I want you girls to be polite to him. He is a stranger in this country, and I expect you to extend yourselves. Think how you would feel if you were in a strange land.”

  “Extend myself,” I said rudely, under my breath, but loud enough so my mother could hear. This was exactly the sort of idiotic thing she said. “I certainly wouldn’t go around hoping people would extend themselves.” I thought of people stretched out horribly, their arms yearning in one direction, their feet in another, all for my benefit. “If I were in a strange country I’d like everyone to leave me alone.”

  “Ready for lunch?” my mother said brightly to Mr. Sumarsono, who stood diffidently in the doorway. “We’re just about to sit down. Kate, will you bring out the butter.”

  “I did already,” I said virtuously, and folded my arms in a hostile manner.

  “We’re having deviled eggs,” Mother announced as we sat down. She picked up the plate of them and smiled humorously. “We call them ‘deviled.’”

  “De-vil,” Kate said, speaking very loudly and slowly. She pointed at the eggs and then put two forked fingers behind her head, like horns. Mr. Sumarsono looked at her horns. He nodded pleasantly.

  My mother talked all through lunch, asking Mr. Sumarsono mystifying questions and then answering them herself in case he couldn’t. Mr. Sumarsono kept a polite half-smile on his face, sometimes repeating the last few words of her sentences. Even while he was eating, he seemed to be listening attentively. He ate very neatly, taking small bites, and laying his fork and knife precisely side by side when he was through. Kate and I pointedly said nothing. We were boycotting lunch, though we smiled horribly at Mr. Sumarsono if he caught our eyes.

  After lunch my mother said she was going to take a nap. As she said this, she laid her head sideways on her folded hands and closed her eyes. Then she pointed upstairs. Mr. Sumarsono nodded. He rose from the table, pushed in his chair, and went meekly back to his room, his shoes creaking on the stairs.

  Kate and I did the dishes in a slapdash way and took off for the pond. We spent the afternoon on a hill overlooking the marshy end, watching the mallards and arguing over the binoculars. We only had one pair. There had been a second pair once; I could remember this, though Kate could not. Our father had taken the other set with him.

  Mother was already downstairs in the kitchen when we got back. She was singing cheerfully, and wearing a pink dress with puffy sleeves and a full skirt. The pink dress was a favorite of Kate’s and mine. It irritated me to see that she had put it on as though she were at a party. This was not a party: she had merely gotten hold of a captive guest, a complete stranger who understood nothing she said. This was not a cause for celebration.

  She gave us a big smile when we came in.

  “Any luck with the mallards?” she asked.

  “Not really,” I said coolly. A lie.

  Kate and I set the table, and Mother asked Kate to pick some flowers for the centerpiece. We were having dinner in the dining room, my mother said, with the white plates with gold rims from our grandmother. While we were setting the table my mother called in from the kitchen, “Oh, Susan, put out some wineglasses, too, for me and Mr. Sumarsono.”

  Kate and I looked at each other.

  “Wineglasses?” Kate mouthed silently.

  “Wineglasses?” I called back, my voice sober, for my mother, my face wild, for Kate.

  “That’s right,” said mother cheerfully. “We’re going to be festive.”

  “Festive!” I mouthed to Kate, and we doubled over, shaking our heads and rolling our eyes.

  We put out the wineglasses, handling them gingerly, as though they gave off dangerous, unpredictable rays. The glasses, standing boldly at the knife tips, altered the landscape of the table. Kate and I felt as though we were in the presence of something powerful and alien. We looked warningly at each other, pointing at the glasses and frowning, nodding our heads meaningfully. We picked them up and mimed drinking from them. We wiped our mouths and began to stagger, crossing our eyes and hiccuping. When mother appeared in the doorway we froze, and Kate, who was in the process of lurching sideways, turned her movement into a pirouette, her face clear, her eyes uncrossed.

  “Be careful with those glasses,” said my mother.

  “We are,” said Kate, striking a classical pose, the wine glass held worshipfully aloft, like a chalice.

  When dinner was ready mother went to the foot of the stairs and called up, “Hoo-oo!” several times. There was no answer, and after a pause she called, “Mr. Sumarsono! Dinner. Come down for dinner!” We began to hear noises from overhead as Mr. Sumarsono rose obediently from his nap.

  When we sat down I noticed that mother was not only in the festive pink dress but that she was bathed and particularly fresh-looking. She had done her hair in a special way, smoothing it back from her forehead. She was smiling a lot. When she had served the plates, my mother picked up the bottle of wine and offered Mr. Sumarsono a glass.

  “Would you like a little wine, Mr. Sumarsono?” she asked, leaning forward, her head cocked. We were having the dish she always made for guests: baked chicken pieces in a sauce made of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup.

  “Thank you.” Mr. Sumarsono nodded and pushed forward his glass. My mother beamed and filled his glass. Kate and I watched her as we cut up our chicken. We watched her as we drank from our milk glasses, our eyes round and unblinking over the rims.

  We ate in silence, a silence broken only by my mother. “Mr. Sumarsono,” my mother said, having finished most of her chicken and most of her wine. “Do you have a wife? A family?” She gestured first at herself, then at us. Mr. Sumarsono looked searchingly across the table at Kate and me. We were chewing, and stared solemnly back.

  Mr. Sumarsono nodded his half-nod, his head stopping at the bottom of the movement, without completing the second half of it.

  “A wife?” said my mother, gratified. She pointed again at herself. She is not a wife and hasn’t been for five years, but Mr. Sumarsono wouldn’t know that. I wondered what he did know. I wondered if he wondered where my father was. Perhaps he thought that it was an American custom for the father to live in another house, spending his day apart from his wife and children, eating his dinner alone. Perhaps Mr. Sumarsono was expecting my father to arrive ceremoniously after dinner, dressed in silken robes and carrying a carved wooden writing case, ready to entertain his guest with tales of the hill people. What did Mr. Sumarsono expect of us? It was unimaginable.

  Whatever Mr. Sumarsono was expecting, my mother was determined to deliver what she could of it. In the pink dress, full of red wine, she was changing before our very eyes. She was warming up, turning larger and grander, glowing and powerful.

  “Mr. Sumarsono,” said my mother happily, “do you have photographs of your family?”

  There was a silence. My mother pointed again to her chest, plump and rosy above the pink dress. Then she held up an invisible camera. She closed one eye and clicked loudly at Mr. Sumarsono. He watched her carefully.

/>   “Photo of wife?” she said again, loudly, and again pointed at herself. Then she pointed at him. Mr. Sumarsono gave his truncated nod and stood up. He bowed again and pointed to the ceiling. Then, with a complicated and unfinished look, loaded with meaning, he left the room.

  Kate and I looked accusingly at our mother. Dinner would now be prolonged indefinitely, her fault.

  “He’s gone to get his photographs,” Mother said. “The poor man, he must miss his wife and children. Don’t you feel sorry for him, thousands of miles away from his family? Oh, thousands. He’s here for six months, all alone. They told me that at the U.N. It’s all very uncertain. He doesn’t know when he gets leaves, how long after that he’ll be here. Think of how his poor wife feels.” She shook her head and took a long sip of her wine. She remembered us and added reprovingly, “And what about his poor children? Their father is thousands of miles away! They don’t know when they’ll see him!” Her voice was admonitory, suggesting that this was partly our fault.

  Kate and I did not comment on Mr. Sumarsono’s children. We ourselves did not know when we would see our father, and we did not want to discuss that either. What we longed for was for all this to be over, this endless, chaotic meal, full of incomprehensible exchanges.

  Kate sighed discreetly, her mouth slightly open for silence, and she swung her legs under the table. I picked up a chicken thigh with my fingers and began to pick delicately at it with my teeth. This was forbidden, but I thought that the wine and excitement would distract my mother from my behavior. It did. She sighed deeply, shook her head, and picked up her fork. She began eating in a dreamy way.

  “Oh, I’m glad we’re having rice!” she said suddenly, gratified. “That must make Mr. Sumarsono feel at home.” She looked at me. “You know that’s all they have in Indonesia,” she said in a teacherly sort of way. “Rice, bamboo, things like that. Lizard.”

  Another ridiculous statement. I knew such a place could not exist, but Kate was younger, and I pictured what she must imagine: thin stalks of rice struggling up through a dense and endless bamboo forest. People in brown suits pushing their way among the limber stalks, looking fruitlessly around for houses, telephones, something to eat besides lizard.

  Mr. Sumarsono appeared again in the doorway. He was holding a large leather camera case. He had already begun to unbuckle and unsnap, to extricate the camera from it. He took out a light meter and held it up. My mother raised her fork at him.

  “Rice!” she said enthusiastically. “That’s familiar, isn’t it? Does it remind you of home?” With her fork she gestured expansively at the dining room. Mr. Sumarsono looked obediently around, at the mahogany sideboard with its crystal decanters, the glass-fronted cabinet full of family china, the big, stern portrait of my grandfather in his pink hunting coat, holding his riding crop. Mr. Sumarsono looked back at my mother, who was still holding up her fork. He nodded.

  “Yes?” my mother said, pleased.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Sumarsono.

  My mother looked down again. Blinking in a satisfied way she said, “I’m glad I thought of it.” I knew she hadn’t thought of it until that moment. She always made rice with the chicken-and-Campbell’s-cream-of-mushroom-soup dish. Having an Indonesian turn up to eat it was pure coincidence.

  Mr. Sumarsono held up his camera. The light meter dangled from a strap, and the flash attachment projected from one corner. He put the camera up to his eye, and his face vanished altogether. My mother was looking down at her plate again, peaceful, absorbed, suffused with red wine and satisfaction.

  I could see that my mother’s view of all this—the meal, the visit, the weekend—was different from my own. I could see that she was pleased by everything about it. She was pleased by her polite and helpful daughters; she was pleased by her charming farmhouse with its stylish and original touches. She was pleased at her delicious and unusual meal, and, most important, she was pleased by her own generosity, by being able to offer this poor stranger her lavish bounty.

  She was wrong, she was always wrong, my mother. She was wrong about everything. I was resigned to it: at ten you have no control over your mother. The evening would go on like this, endless, excruciating. My mother would act foolish, Kate and I would be mortified and Mr. Sumarsono would be mystified. It was no wonder my father had left: embarrassment.

  Mr. Sumarsono was now ready, and he spoke. “Please!” he said politely. My mother looked up again and realized this time what he was doing. She shook her head, raising her hands in deprecation.

  “No, no,” she said, smiling, “not me. Don’t take a picture of me. I wanted to see a picture of your wife.” She pointed at Mr. Sumarsono. “Your wife,” she said, “your children.”

  I was embarrassed not only for my mother but for poor Mr. Sumarsono. Whatever he had expected from a country weekend in America, it could not have been a cramped attic room, two sullen girls, a voluble and incomprehensible hostess. I felt we had failed him, we had betrayed his unruffled courtesy, by our bewildering commands, our waving forks, our irresponsible talk about lizards. I wanted to save him. I wanted to liberate poor Mr. Sumarsono from this aerial grid of misunderstandings. I wanted to cut the power lines, but I couldn’t think of a way. I watched him despondently, waiting for him to subside at my mother’s next order. Perhaps she would send him upstairs for another nap.

  But things had changed. Mr. Sumarsono stood gracefully, firm and erect, in charge. Somehow he had performed a coup. He had seized power. The absence of strut did not mean an absence of command, and we now saw how an Indonesian diplomat behaved when he was in charge. Like the Stop! gesture, Mr. Sumarsono’s reign was elegant and sophisticated, entirely convincing. It was suddenly clear that it was no longer possible to tell Mr. Sumarsono what to do.

  “No,” said Mr. Sumarsono clearly. “You wife.” He bowed firmly at my mother. “You children.” He bowed at us.

  Mr. Sumarsono stood over us, his courtesy exquisite and unyielding. “Please,” he said. “Now photograph.” He held up the camera. It covered his face entirely, a strange mechanical mask. “My photograph,” he said in a decisive tone.

  He aimed the camera first at me. I produced a taut and artificial smile, and at once he reappeared from behind the camera. “No smile,” he said firmly, shaking his head. “No smile.” He himself produced a hideous smile, then shook his head and turned grave. “Ah!” he said, nodding, and pointed at me. Chastened, I sat solemn and rigid while he disappeared behind the camera again. I didn’t move even when he had finished, after the flash and the clicks of lenses and winding sprockets.

  Mr. Sumarsono turned to Kate, who had learned from me and offered up a smooth and serious face. Mr. Sumarsono nodded, but stepped toward her. “Hand!” he said, motioning toward it, and he made the gesture that he wanted. Kate stared but obediently did as he asked.

  When Mr. Sumarsono turned to my mother, I worried again that she would stage a last-ditch attempt to take over, that she would insist on mortifying us all.

  “Now!” said Mr. Sumarsono, bowing peremptorily at her. “Please.” I looked at her, and to my amazement, relief, and delight, my mother did exactly the right thing. She smiled at Mr. Sumarsono in a normal and relaxed way, as though they were old friends. She leaned easily back in her chair, graceful—I could suddenly see—and poised. She smoothed the hair back from her forehead.

  In Mr. Sumarsono’s pictures, the images of us that he produced, this is how we look:

  I am staring solemnly at the camera, dead serious, head-on. I look mystified, as though I am trying to understand something inexplicable: what the people around me mean when they talk, perhaps. I look as though I am in a foreign country, where I do not speak the language.

  Kate looks both radiant and ethereal; her eyes are alight. Her mouth is puckered into a mirthful V: she is trying to suppress a smile. The V of her mouth is echoed above her face by her two forked fingers, poised airily behind her head.

  But it is the picture of my mother that surprised me the most
. Mr. Sumarsono’s portrait was of someone entirely different from the person I knew, though the face was the same. Looking at it gave me the same feeling that the stopped escalator did: a sense of dislocation, a sudden uncertainty about my own beliefs. In the photograph my mother leans back against her chair like a queen, all her power evident, and at rest. Her face is turned slightly away: she is guarding her privacy. Her nose, her cheeks, her eyes, are bright with wine and excitement, but she is calm and amused. A mother cannot be beautiful, because she is so much more a mother than a woman, but in this picture, it struck me, my mother looked, in an odd way, beautiful. I could see for the first time that other people might think she actually was beautiful.

  Mr. Sumarsono’s view of my mother was of a glowing, self-assured, generous woman. And Mr. Sumarsono himself was a real person, despite his meekness. I knew that: I had seen him take control. His view meant something; I could not ignore it. And I began to wonder.

  We still have the pictures. Mr. Sumarsono brought them with him the next time he came out for the weekend.

  Halloween

  I was alone in the house.

  Usually I take Kate trick-or-treating myself, but this year she had been invited to go with a friend. Kate was, as always, a fairy queen, with rouge-pink cheeks and an aluminum-foil-covered cardboard crown. She wore a white lacy blouse and a long, tiered skirt of mine. Over her shoulders and clasped at her throat was a cape, made from another of my skirts, this one striped and ruffled taffeta.

  When Kate was ready I knelt down in front of her, pulling up her lacy collar and settling the cape around her neck. She was excited and would not meet my eye. She waved her wand back and forth in an imperious figure eight.

  “Palambanami,” she said mysteriously, making a dot in the air with the wand.

  “You look beautiful,” I told her.

  “Mananunu,” she said, fixing me with a cold, queenly gaze.

  “I hope you have a lovely time,” I offered, but she turned away. She looked out the window into the darkness, seeing things that mortals could not, and making cabalistic signs in the air.