Asking for Love
Stories
Contents
Leaving Home
Sleepover
Slipping Away
The Nile in Flood
The Favor
Do Not Stand Here
Asking for Love
Mr. Sumarsono
Halloween
The Reign of Arlette
Breaking the Rules
Family Restaurant
The Nightmare
White Boys in Their Teens
King of the Sky
About the Author
About the Author
Roxana Robinson (b. 1946) is the author of five novels, most recently Sparta; three short story collections; and the biography Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Best American Short Stories, among other publications. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Robinson teaches in Hunter College’s master of fine arts program and is president of the Authors Guild, the nation’s oldest and largest professional organization for writers.
Leaving Home
Every summer when I was growing up we made the long drive from outside Philadelphia, where I was born, to the village of Devon, in western Massachusetts, where my father’s family had lived for a hundred and fifty years.
The road to Devon turned off the river road, dropping suddenly down the riverbank, then leveling abruptly for the ancient covered bridge. Our car bumped sedately as it entered the bridge. This was dark inside, with huge crisscrossed beams. Going slowly and majestically through the nineteenth-century gloom, we could hear the hollow wooden echo of our passage.
This ceremonial crossing of the river was the moment I waited for. When we came out of the dark tunnel of the bridge I said contentedly, “Now we’re in Devon.”
“Now we’re in Devon,” my father always answered.
We drove up Devon’s one steep street, over the railroad tracks, and past the small, neat shops that my grandmother had used: Bates the butcher, the dry goods shop, the grocery store.
“Wallace’s is closed,” my mother said. The grocery store was always closed by the time we got to Devon.
“We can stop at the farm for eggs and milk,” said my father.
The farm belonged to Cousin Thomas, who was the only Thatcher still farming. Four generations ago the family had split: Thomas’s great-grandfather had stayed in Devon, and my father’s great-grandfather had moved to Boston. Thomas’s line had stayed farmers, and the men in my father’s line all went to Harvard. They were Episcopalian ministers, like my father, and judges and teachers and lawyers. Now the Thatchers lived all over the Northeast, but they had kept the land. The cousins, more distant with each generation, still came to Devon in the summers.
Cousin Thomas’s farm was at the foot of Devon Hill. There were two big, gloomy hemlocks along the road, and a pond below the house for the flock of bossy German geese. The white clapboard house was symmetrical in front, with square pillars and a deep and generous front porch. In back, the house meandered, with lopsided additions. It was built around 1800, and now, in 1970, the shutters sagged, the clapboards showed cracks, and it needed paint.
We pulled into the driveway, next to the house. A flock of bantams with shaggy boots fussed in the weeds.
“Coming in with me?” My father turned sideways to talk to me; I was in the back seat. I could see his Thatcher nose, pointed and severe, his pale blue Thatcher eyes and limp blond Thatcher hair. I have Thatcher looks, like his, and when I was little I liked this. I liked people saying, “Well, I can see you’re a Thatcher.” It made me feel a part of something larger than myself, part of a gentle tribe, a network that was invisibly spread across these Massachusetts hills. But the year I was thirteen, looking like a Thatcher made me uneasy. Looking in the mirror, I felt like a fraud, as though I were wearing a Thatcher mask I couldn’t take off. I looked like a Thatcher but I knew in my heart I was not one.
The Thatcher family was famous for integrity: those judges, headmasters, ministers, were all high-minded and principled. They were models of rectitude. The Thatcher genes carried not just blue eyes but virtue, and when I was thirteen I had become aware that I was deeply deficient in virtue.
My mother turned and smiled at me over the back seat. My mother wore round flesh-colored glasses, which made her eyes pale and vulnerable. She had straight brown hair, very fine, held to one side with one bobby pin. She never wore makeup. Her clothes were unworldly: baggy woven skirts, sturdy comfortable sandals, limp tan cardigan sweaters. Appearances did not matter to my parents; the material world was unimportant. I knew that I ought to feel this way too, I wished that I felt this way, but I did not. When I was thirteen I was deeply, and shamefully, concerned with appearances.
“Go in with Daddy,” my mother said, smiling. “You always do.”
But that year I didn’t want to go into the farmhouse with my father, though I didn’t know why. Avoiding my mother’s eye, I looked out the window at the dense green sea of corn rising up Devon Hill.
“Maybe Cousin Gloria will be there.” My mother offered me the cousin closest to my age, but I didn’t answer. My mother said kindly, “Go on. Don’t be shy.”
This sounded condescending, and I said crossly, “I’m not shy.”
“Then what is it?” asked my mother.
There was another silence.
“Sounds like shy to me,” my father said, brisk and certain. My father was certain about everything. “Better come in.”
“I’m not shy,” I said again, crosser. “I don’t want to go in, that’s all. I don’t care if Gloria is there. I don’t care about Gloria. I hate Gloria.”
And now there was a terrible silence in the car. I had spoken a word that was never used in our household. The sound of it hung in the air—the short explosive syllable, with its fierce aspirate beginning, the powerful black vowel at its center, and the sharp closure, like a hissed threat. The shock of it quivered among us. It was as though I had thrown a rock through the windshield, and we now sat staring at the star-shaped fracture, the damage.
My mother gave a long sigh, her face sorrowful. “I hope that’s not true, Alison,” she said quietly. She sounded wounded, as though I had struck her in the face, and I knew that was how she felt. “I hope you don’t really hate your cousin.”
There was another thunderous silence. Brutally, I had betrayed my mother and disgusted my father. My father looked straight ahead now, the back of his neck rigid. My mother watched me, full of concern. They waited for me to answer.
I looked out the window. It was too late to take back the word, which I’d never meant to say in the first place. The word had come out before I thought, and now I would have to pay. I had no defense, no excuses. I never did. I could never argue with my parents: they lived in a separate moral universe from mine. They never swore, or spoke unkindly, or had uncharitable thoughts. My parents were guided by virtue.
I sat in the back seat and wished that God, for once, would take my side and erase the sound of the word from family memory. I told myself that it was just a word, but I was without conviction. I stared out at the jostling sea of green corn, waiting.
In the front seat, my mother sighed again. She said gravely, “What is it that you ‘hate’ your cousin for?”
I didn’t hate Gloria. I hardly knew Gloria.
The farming Thatchers had five children: two boys, Tom and Charlie, and three daughters, Gloria, Karen, and Joanne. I hardly ever saw them. I spent the summers at the tiny club down at the lake, with its two soggy red-clay tennis courts and old shingle-sided boathouse. The farming Thatchers didn’t go to the club. Their children were never seen fooling around out on the rafts, or playing tennis on the bumpy courts, or sitting on the tiny muddy beach with sandwiches and soft drinks. Tom and Charlie, in blue overalls, spent their days on slow, thundering tractors, cutting hay and plowing fields, lifting a laconic hand if someone waved from a passing car. I don’t know where the girls were, but it wasn’t down at the lake.
“I didn’t mean I really hated Gloria,” I said slowly.
My father turned sideways again. “Then maybe you should not have used that word, Alison.” He did not, of course, say the word himself. “That word is very strong,” he said. “You should think carefully before you use it. If you don’t mean it—and I hope you didn’t—then it’s not a word you should use.” He paused. “I hope you don’t really feel that emotion toward your own cousin.”
I didn’t answer. I stared out the window again so I wouldn’t have to look at my mother. My mother, her eyes shining through the colorless glasses, watched me steadily. She was ready to forgive me.
There was a long pause. I knew what would happen. If I didn’t answer, if I didn’t admit to my crime, we would sit here in silence for the rest of the evening, for the rest of my life. The black sound of the word I had used would hover over us forever. I closed my eyes. The weight of this bore relentlessly down on me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
My father nodded slowly, without looking at me. His face was bleak, and frozen by disapproval. His mouth was drawn in on itself, and his pale blue eyes were hooded and distant, as though I were someone he had never met. It would be hours before he approached friendship, even acquaintanceship. My mother leaned across the car and patted my shoulder. She gave me a brave smile, but her eyes showed damage: She had been wounded.
“I’m going in,” my father said. His voice was remote. He got out and shut the door.
I looked sideways at my mother, who nodded urgently at me. She waved me toward the door. I waited a moment, for pride, then got out.
My father stood in the rutted driveway, taking a deep breath of Devon air. I moved tentatively next to him and he turned away, stepping up onto the side porch. A clothesline hung above its railing, wooden pins staggering along its length. Inside the house I could hear a radio—a trashy singer yearning to a sunset-colored melody.
My parents listened only to classical music. Once, in the car, I was rolling the dial along the radio band. I stopped it at a popular-music station, just for a second, as though I were just pausing to shift my grip on the dial. At once a hot red blare of sound filled the car, and at once my father reached over and clicked the radio off. He looked straight ahead, his mouth closed and tight. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t dare turn the radio back on, even for the news.
My father’s footsteps thundered on the porch floor, and I heard chairs scraping inside. We went into the dark mudroom, where in one corner lay a mud-colored dog blanket, flattened and hairy. Faded jackets hung on the wall, tipped-over rubber boots on the floor below them. My father raised his hand to knock, and the kitchen door opened.
“Well, if it idn’t Cousin James,” said Cousin Florence, her sharp blue eyes seizing on my father. Cousin Florence stood outlined in the doorway. She was small and fierce, with pale red hair pulled straight back into a ponytail. She was thin, with a pointed nose, and small deft hands. She wore a housedress, and over it a faded flowered apron. She folded her lean arms and tilted her head cheerfully to one side.
“Hello, James,” Cousin Thomas said, stepping forward and smiling. Cousin Thomas’s nose was Thatcher, and his cheekbones, but he was half a foot shorter than my father, his body small and dense. His denim overalls were loose and waistless, like a clown’s suit.
Thomas hugged his elbows, but my father put out his hand. Thomas unclasped himself and they shook hands slowly, smiling at each other. Cousin Thomas turned and grinned at me.
“Well, come on in,” he said, amused and pleased, and waved us past. The mudroom smelled rank, but I took a deep breath before I stepped into the kitchen.
In the middle of the kitchen was a table covered with red-and-white-checked oilcloth. Battered wooden chairs stood unevenly around it: in two of them sat girls. I saw them out of the corner of my eye. I stood with my head cocked in concentration, my eyes fixed on my father’s face as though I had to read his lips.
The farming Thatchers had dinner early, and we had arrived in the middle. Food filled the plates, and in the center of the table stood a pie-shaped piece of sweating yellow cheese. An overhead hanging lamp lit up the table; the rest of the room was shadowy.
“Come sit down, James,” said Florence. She stood in front of the stove, her fisted hands set on her hips. She wore thin white socks, limp around her ankles, and her brown oxfords had a dull pale bloom of scuff at the toes.
My father smiled gently. “I’m afraid we can’t, Florence. Diana’s out in the car, and we’re meeting Ted at the house. He doesn’t have a key, so I’m afraid he’s waiting there. And it looks as though we’re interrupting your dinner, so we won’t bother you any more than to ask for a few eggs and some milk. We’ll bring the can back in the morning.”
“A few eggs,” said Cousin Florence. She moved to a table where a wide, cracked bowl stood. It was heaped with brown eggs, bits of feather stuck to them. “How many is a few?” Florence asked my father, twisting to eye him.
“Oh, two, I suppose,” my father said, not sure.
“Six,” I had to prompt him, in a whisper.
He looked down at me. “Six?”
I nodded and he repeated it to Florence.
Florence looked at us and shook her head, grinning.
“Sure now? Six? Or two?” she said.
My father smiled. “Six,” he said, nodding. Florence turned again and began to count eggs into a wrinkled brown bag. “Gloria, get the milk,” she said, her voice suddenly peremptory. The older girl slid off her chair, staring at me. Joanne, the youngest, in pajamas and a turquoise bathrobe, sat at the table, watching. Her curly hair was in a fine tangle and she held a comic book, forbidden in our house.
“Give them the can,” ordered Florence.
Gloria went to the old-fashioned high-legged refrigerator. She took out a tall, silvery milk can and carried it carefully to my father, ignoring me. Gloria had Cousin Florence’s small face and her restless blue eyes. Her elbows were pointed. She wore a white lace-edged blouse, unironed, and baggy jeans tightly cinched with a narrow plastic belt.
“That be enough milk?” Florence asked loudly. This was meant as a joke: the can was so full Gloria could hardly carry it.
“I think it will be just fine,” my father said, polite.
Gloria came and stood directly in front of me, too close, invasive.
“Hi,” she said. She lifted her chin suddenly and scratched under it.
“Hello,” I said coolly.
Cousin Florence held out the bag of eggs to me.
“Don’t forget the eggs,” she said energetically. “All two of them. Or was it six?” She laughed again, staccato. She looked at me more closely and frowned.
“Happened to your hair? Caught in the mowing machine?” She looked at my father, then back at me. My father smiled.
I said, “I had it cut.”
Cousin Florence laughed briefly. “I can see that.”
“Well, thank you very much, Cousin Florence,” my father said. “Thomas.” He bowed his head. “And you all are well? The boys? The farm?”
“Pretty good,” Cousin Thomas said. Cousin Thomas had a nice smile, small and true. He put his hands comfortably inside the bib of his overalls, like a muff. “Things are pretty good. I can’t complain. And you?”
“We’re pretty good ourselves.” My father nodded goofily, like a marionette. “Well, thank you again for all this,” my father said, holding up the eggs like a prize. “I’ll bring the can back tomorrow.”
Cousin Florence flapped her hand at him. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Children can bring it back. Right, sister?” She stared at me again.
“Come at milking,” Thomas said, smiling at me.
“Thank you,” I said, smiling stiffly back. I knew he meant this as a treat, and when I was little it had been one. But now what I remembered was the row of dirty-haunched Holsteins with their slimy noses, the concrete gutter behind them clotted with green manure. The heavy-bodied flies everywhere.
When we were back in the car, my mother asked, “How are they all?”
“They were fine,” my father said, backing the car out of the driveway. Our house was at the top of the next hill; we would be home in minutes. “Thomas was cheerful. He always is.”
“He’s good-hearted,” said my mother. “So is Florence. I hope she didn’t give you all their milk. She’ll never tell you she needs any for herself.”
“I wonder if she did do that,” my father said, slowing the car down. “I wonder if she gave us all their milk. Maybe we should go back.”
I sat in the back seat, the cold milk can against my chest. It was freezing, and I could feel the milk sloshing back and forth, nearly spilling each time. I closed my eyes, hoping that my father’s conscience would not demand that he go back to the farm and reopen negotiations.
“Did she just give you the can from the fridge?” asked my mother. “Did they pour any off into a pitcher?”
“No,” said my father. “They gave us the whole can.” He turned the car in at a driveway to turn around. We set off back up the hill to the farm again. This time I didn’t go in.
Our house in Devon was built by my grandfather. It was massive and rustic, with rough, dark-stained clapboards. There were huge stone chimneys guarding each end of the roof, and clusters of tiny-paned windows that huddled in groups under the eaves.
My brother, Ted, was waiting for us on the front porch, his knapsack beside him. He had hitchhiked here. Ted always hitchhiked, not in a dashing, carefree, gypsyish way but in an ascetic, puritanical way, as though he disapproved of the comfort and expense of other kinds of travel. My father shook Ted’s hand and my mother hugged him. I stood off to one side, and when Ted was finished with my parents, he turned toward me and I lifted my hand in an awkward wave.
“Hi there,” Ted said. He was eight years older than I was, serious and remote. He talked very little, and practically never to me. He was going to be a concert pianist, and he practiced six hours a day. While he played, his mouth went down at the corners, like my father’s. I was afraid of Ted: I knew he disapproved of me. I knew that he could tell that I was vain and selfish, superficial, brutal, a false Thatcher.
While the others unloaded the car, I opened the house. This meant unlocking the back door from the outside and the front door from the inside. I always wanted to be the first person to enter the house in the summer. Carrying the key, I ran through the summer twilight. My bare feet knew the long springy grass of the unmown lawn, the narrow, rocky path down the side of the house, the splintery gray steps up to the back porch. The woods came right up to the back porch, and at night the raccoons made their secretive way up the steps to the scraps left out for them.
I set the key into the heavy lock, twisted it, and pushed open the door. The kitchen was cool and gloomy, deeply silent. The refrigerator door stood coldly open, declaring its metal racks empty. The big green back-porch rockers sat tipsily on top of one another in an uproarious still life. In the dark pantry, glass-fronted cupboards rose up to the ceiling, stacked with my grandmother’s fluted white Wedgwood china. The rooms, as they always did, smelled of wood and wax. After the pantry’s gloom the dining room was a burst of light, with its pale, shining birchwood floor, its long wall of French doors facing the lake. In the living room the huge blackened granite fireplace was flanked by oak bookcases. A giant iron cauldron stood to one side, for firewood. Facing the hearth were overstuffed chairs in their baggy slipcovers, and the faded chintz sofa. The house was unchanged since my grandmother had arranged it.
My bare feet made no sound on the polished floors, and moving through the silent rooms, I felt as though I were walking into the dense center of my family. I was breathing air that my family had breathed, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my father. I was seeing the same images—these same chairs in their baggy slipcovers, these old china lamps, this Toby jug on the mantelpiece—that my family had seen each summer for generations.
Usually I liked this moment. Usually I felt as though I were somehow swimming into my own past, as though the whole liquid, transparent past of my family enveloped me, warm, comforting, nourishing. But this time it felt different. This year the house felt strange. The air seemed dense and heavy, and the rooms felt claustrophobic. I went straight to the front door without stopping, and when I unlocked the door and pulled open the heavy slab of oak, I stood still in the doorway, facing out of the house. The cool evening air, smelling of ferns and woods, swept into the house like a blessing.
The next morning I went, early, down to the lake. The air was fresh and minty, and the narrow downhill path through the birches was soft and padded with leaf mold. The wooden boathouse was empty, and the floor echoed hollowly beneath my heels. I walked out onto the deck and took a slow breath, looking around. The lake, ringed by low, wooded hills, was calm and light-filled. I could smell the weathered, sun-baked planks beneath my feet. The air was still, and there was no sound anywhere. In the middle of the lake, far out on the shimmering water, two fishermen sat motionless in a flat-bottomed rowboat. A filmy white mist traced the green shoreline. I walked to the edge of the deck and looked down: the water was yellow-green and translucent. A narrow fish hovered over the sandy bottom, its fins rippling like transparent flags. The early sun was warm on my bare legs, and I sat down between the stiff wooden arms of the ladder. I closed my eyes: I could feel the summer about to begin.
By the weekend I had met everyone my age who was there that year. Calvin Edgerley, fourteen, whom I already knew, was staying with his grandmother. This year Calvin’s older cousin was there too, Trowbridge Small. And one afternoon we rode our bicycles over to Betsy Jordan’s, whom the boys knew.
The Jordans’ house was new. It was low and sleek, made of brick. Betsy’s mother opened the wide white-painted door. She had short blond hair, curled, and she wore a flowered terry-cloth shift with ruffled edges.
“Hi, kids, come on in,” she said cheerfully. “Betsy’s here somewhere.” She called behind her: “Betsy!” She turned back and smiled at us. Her lips were clear curves of raspberry. “She’s doing her summer reading, so she’ll be thrilled to see you.”
Betsy Jordan was wearing blue-jean cutoffs and a tank top. She held a book negligently in her hand, a finger stuck between the pages. Betsy was short and rounded, with neat limbs and easy gestures. Her face was covered with dark freckles and her hair was sleek, like an otter’s. She was completely relaxed, and I could see that she knew, just by instinct, how to be. I stared at her with admiration. At once I felt myself too lanky, long-boned, wrong.
“Hi,” Betsy said. “Want something to drink?”
In the kitchen we got Cokes, which were forbidden in our house. We went back to sit in the living room, and I looked around. We sat on low built-in sofas covered in bright red jittery prints. There were low glass tables with metal frames, and the white wall-to-wall rug was thick, like the fur of an animal. On the shiny white shelves against the wall were a stereo system and a huge television set. The white brick fireplace was raised off the floor. All of this seemed perfect to me, exactly the way a house should be.
Trow, in tattered blue jeans, his hair falling across his eyes, sat next to Betsy. He leaned against her shoulder and pointed at her book.
“So, whatchou up to, Bets?” he asked.
“Villette,” Betsy said mournfully. “Brontë.”
“Like it?” Trow asked, grinning.
Betsy snorted lackadaisically and shook her head slowly. “Hate it,” she said. “Hate it.” She used the word casually, as though it were no different from any other.
“Wait’ll you get Middlemarch,” Trow said, raising his eyebrows, grinning. He shook his head. “Woo-woo!”
“Middlemarch,” Betsy said, wrinkling her nose. “Please. We read that last year. I hated it too.”
I listened admiringly. At home I went to a church school, and no one talked like this. My parents did not allow complaints about schoolwork.
“What do you have?” Calvin asked me. Calvin had a long, comic’s nose, pale skin, and fine dark hair.
“Walden,” I said.
“Henry David Thoreau-up,” said Calvin, and laughed loudly.
“Where do you go?” Betsy asked me.
“Farmington,” I said, proud. “I start this fall. Where do you?”
“Concord Academy,” said Betsy, and I nodded knowledgeably.
They were all older than me and already at boarding school. They told me elaborately how terrible it was. I listened, entranced. I could not imagine what it would be like. I was hoping for a new life, coarse and raucous: loud radios, friends who swore. I hoped we would all laugh behind the housemother’s back, uncharitably, without remorse.
Sitting on the jazzy red sofa, with a Coke bottle in my hand, listening to them criticize the grown-up world, I was proud. I thought we looked like a photograph of teenagers in a magazine. This was what teenagers did, I thought, and I myself was doing it. I was one of them, a member of this elect and glamorous group.
Of course I knew that there were things I had to conceal from them, things that would reveal me as an impostor. For one thing, there was the fact that I liked to read. I had already read the Brontës, on my own, and I liked the books on the summer reading list. For another thing, there was my hideous, unacceptable old house and my virtuous, unacceptable family. But I thought I could keep my two worlds apart, and that I could keep these things hidden. And in the meantime, here I was, sitting in this golden group, holding a Coke. Two boys sat next to me, clowning. Betsy rolled her eyes languidly, and the boys laughed. I felt I had entered a charmed land. I thought that I had never been so happy. I thought my new life had already started.
Later in the month, I lay one afternoon in the big canvas hammock on the porch. I was reading Walden, and from time to time I put my hand underneath the hammock and gave myself a slow, peaceful push against the stone parapet. Below me, the wooded hillside was quiet, and the lake was calm. Far out in the middle was a single figure, paddling slowly in a silver canoe.
When I heard the knock on the front door I stopped reading, wondering. No car had come up the hill. My mother’s footsteps crossed the polished floor.
“Why, hello!” my mother said to someone, effusive. “Come right in.”
I heard a muffled, unidentifiable voice.
“She’s right outside,” my mother said. “Come with me. She’ll be so glad to see you.”
I sat up, appalled. I was wearing stained green shorts and an old, too-tight jersey. Worse, I was here in the house: the huge, blackened fireplace, the humped, flowered, monolithic chairs, the faded oriental rugs, the absent television. There was no Coke in the refrigerator and never had been. I was caught, trapped, in these clothes and in this house.
“Alison,” my mother called, “you have a guest.”
The screen door opened and Gloria stood there, a bundle in her arms.
“I come to play,” she announced, and smiled, showing her flat front teeth.
I stared at her.
“I brought my bathing suit,” Gloria added, holding up the bundle.
“Good,” said my mother brightly, looking at me. “That’s good. You can go down to the lake together for a swim. How about that, Alison?”
I was speechless.
The afternoon had, in a stroke, turned bleak and endless. Hours and hours lay before me, locked in Gloria’s company. I would have to talk to Gloria. I would have to listen. And Gloria’s presence, I knew, would ruin me. Everything I had built up, all the teenagerness, whatever borrowed glamour I had managed to acquire from the group, would all be destroyed by Gloria’s presence. My true colors would be revealed, and I could never recover from this. Even if no one saw me, even if no one knew, a contamination would take place. I would be subtly expelled. The others would make plans, they would do things together, and they would not call me. They would expect me to spend the day with Gloria. It was the end of my new life.
Gloria looked diffidently at my mother. “Ma says I’m not to go to the boathouse, because it costs you. She says we can go down into the woods.”
My mother looked awkward. “Oh,” she said, blinking behind the colorless glasses. “Oh, that doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about that.”
“No,” Gloria said firmly, shaking her head. “Ma says I have to swim from the woods, I can’t go to the boathouse.”
There was a pause, and my mother nodded. “All right. There’s a path that goes down to the lake on our property.” She thought for a moment. “How old are you, Gloria?”
“Nearly twelve,” Gloria said, proud.
I would be spending the afternoon with an eleven-year-old.
“And are you a good swimmer?” asked my mother.
“Not real good,” Gloria said cheerfully.
“All right, then,” said my mother. “Ted can go down with the two of you. Just to be on the safe side. He can take a book. The two of you can swim.” She stood, smiling, surrounding us with warmth and approval.
Where would we swim? I wondered bitterly. Back and forth in the shallows, trying not to touch the muddy, squishy, loathsome, monster-filled bottom? By this time, that side of the lake was in shadow, and the water would be chill. And there was no clearing on the bank, nowhere to spread a towel, nowhere to sit but nettles. Ted would be no help; he would bring his book and say nothing.
We changed into bathing suits in my room. Gloria’s suit was babyish, with smocking across the front and rows of ruffles across her rump. We went down the path, me in front. “The briers are bad this year,” I called back in a grand way. I was trying to suggest some kind of superior knowledge, a connoisseurship of briers. I hoped Ted would answer, but Gloria did.
“Yee-ah,” she said. She giggled loudly, then screamed as a thorn ripped a white line along her arm. “Ow,” she explained. I turned off onto the faint trail down to our landing. The briers were worse here. Behind me Gloria shouted good-naturedly at each hostile touch.
At the water’s edge, we put our towels down on bushes. Ted, who didn’t care, sat down with his book among the brush.
“I’ll go first,” I said. I began to wade cautiously out into the cool water. Goose bumps appeared suddenly up and down my arms. The lake bottom was famously awful, and cold black ooze came up between my toes. I stepped on slime-covered rocks, slippery and unsteady. I kept my head down, trying to see into the sunless green depths.
Behind me Gloria screamed loudly with every step. “Oh my God,” she said, over and over.
When the water reached my waist, I looked up. The silver canoe I had seen before was coming in from the middle of the lake. It was a new aluminum one, with a girl paddling. It was headed past us, toward the boathouse. The girl wore a sleek black tank suit, like Betsy’s.
I started walking more steadily through the cobbly ooze, pushing urgently through the water, toward the canoe. The girl was watching me. She slowed her stroke and slightly changed her course. As she came closer I could see the flicked-up nose, the sleek wet head. It was Betsy.
I waved at her, lurching, trying to hurry through the heavy water. I could hear Gloria, now way behind me, shrieking in the shallow water.
“Betsy!” I called.
Betsy paused, her paddle lifted. Out where she was, the lake was still lit by the long late-afternoon light. The canoe was radiant on the glassy water, and long silver loops slid off the paddle.
“Betsy! It’s me!” I called. “Alison!”
I threw myself forward into the water and began swimming. Betsy hesitated, then turned the canoe toward me with a long, strong stroke that sent the boat skidding across the water. I swam toward her, flailing my arms and splashing wildly. When I reached the canoe, I kicked myself up out of the water in a flurry, rising up and reaching for the gunwale. I grabbed it as though I were drowning, as though I were desperate and the canoe were a lifeboat.
“Go,” I said urgently. “Just go. Quick.”
Without asking, Betsy began paddling again. The canoe, clumsy with my awkward weight, swung back away from shore and headed for the boathouse. I clung to its cold, pale side and stared at the normal life going on at the boathouse: the bored lifeguard lounging in his canvas chair, his white hat pulled down over his eyes. Small children shouted in the shallows.
I didn’t once look behind me, where Ted would be sitting among the bushes, his head now raised from his book, watching me, unsurprised. I didn’t look back to see Gloria, who would be standing in the muddy shallows, quiet, no longer shrieking, staring at her cousin. Hanging on to the smooth, chill metal, my teeth chattering, I fixed my gaze ahead, as though I could put my family behind me forever, as though I would never have to look at them again.
Sleepover
“Lean over,” her mother said, scrubbing at the child’s milky skin. Bess bent her head over the sink, stretching her leg out straight behind. She craned her head around, trying to see the back of her own knee. Bess was seven.
“Would you be able to see it yet?” she asked her mother. “Could you see the red? I think it itches.”
“You probably didn’t even get it,” her mother said. “This is just in case.”
“But I was near it,” said Bess. “I saw it. I might have touched it and not remembered. I might have touched it before I saw.”
“There,” said her mother, and stood up. The back of Bess’s knee was covered with calamine lotion, a great, chalky, pink-white island. Bess straightened and then bent her leg, lifting her foot behind her in a slow, hypnotized gesture as she felt the tautness of the dried lotion on her skin. She looked up at her mother and smiled, her eyes focused inward, concentrating on the sensation. “It feels like a balloon when you touch it. Tight and squeaky.”
Her mother screwed the top back on the calamine lotion. “I used to spend the summer covered with this stuff,” she said. “I used to get poison ivy every day.”
“Every day?” asked Bess, distracted from her back-of-the-knee experience. “Every single day?”
“Maybe not every day,” said her mother, “but nearly.” She turned suddenly theatrical, and her voice dropped, urgent and mysterious. “Ve-ry nearly,” she whispered to Bess, the words—absurd, nonsensical—transformed by her delivery into code, a message about unknown danger. Bess laughed, her mouth slightly open, her eyes unguarded. She watched her mother’s face as she would a movie screen: rapt, expectant, ingenuous, waiting for splendor.
The bathroom, flooded with late-afternoon light, was suffused with a feeling of intimacy. Bess leaned easily against the porcelain sink with its deep blue stain. Everything in this room was familiar to her. Everything here was part of Bess’s life within her family, everything proof of her mother’s presence. Here was the soupy oval of soap in its dish, the soft, fraying towels, hanging neatly folded on their long wooden bars. Her father’s huge terry-cloth bathrobe stretched its heavy folds on the hook behind the door; on top of it was her mother’s pink cotton robe, with a white lace frill along its entire front. The pink tiles with their darkened lines of grout, the faint moldiness of the translucent shower curtain, the peeling paint on the window frame over the bathtub—everything suggested steam, warmth, privacy. Here was safety.
Bess, staring at her mother, waited for more. This was an unexpected image: her mother as a child in the long summer evenings, galloping through thickets of dense green, immersed in her own secret plans, heedless of risk. Bess hoped for more gypsy, more wildness, more of this strange vision of her mother as unreliable, irresponsible. Someone with a secret life.
Bess waited, watching the smooth oval of her mother’s face, the neat rim of bangs that covered her forehead, the two thin beautiful lines that marked where her smile would be. She was hoping for more of this, but her mother was finished. She put the calamine bottle back on the shelf and with a soft multiple click closed the medicine cabinet door. She turned away, and Bess, seeing the signs, began to hop.
“It itches,” Bess said warningly. “Already. I remember that Sammy pushed me. He might have pushed me right in it.”
“If it itches in the night, tell Daddy to put some more pink lotion on.” Her mother left the bathroom, switching off the light as though Bess were not still in there. She started downstairs. Bess followed sullenly, stepping stiff-legged onto each step and leaning resentfully into space until gravity forced her onto the next.
“He doesn’t do it right,” she called to her mother, who was now in the kitchen. Her mother didn’t answer. Bess reached the bottom step and sat down on it. She fit herself into the corner, her shoulder beneath the railing, her feet side by side on the riser. She called again, louder, “Daddy doesn’t do it right,” and listened for her mother’s answer. Bess could hear her mother’s voice. She was talking on the telephone, the voice rising and falling, the tone private. Bess knew that particular voice. She hated it. Now, if Bess walked into the kitchen, her mother would turn her back. As though the person she was talking to were so important that her conversation could not be interrupted, even by the sight of her daughter. When her mother talked in this voice she laughed in her throat, playing with the twisted cord of the telephone. Sometimes she leaned against the wall, as though she were no longer going to hold herself upright, as though she had given in to something.
“DADDY DOESN’T DO IT RIGHT, I SAID,” Bess shouted, as loud as she could, but the private voice in the kitchen went on. Bess leaned against the wall, hooking her wrists over the railing. Once, when she answered the telephone, “Hello who is it please?” she had heard a man’s voice, friendly, familiar, as if he knew her. “This is a friend of your mother’s,” he said. “May I talk to her?” Hating the voice, Bess had given the phone to her mother, who had smiled and turned her back, playing with the cord.
That night, George, Bess’s father, made dinner. He stood at the stove, his back to the children. He was tall and broad, and his body was slack, as though he were held loosely together by his clothes. He had taken off his jacket when he came home and was cooking in his gray flannels and white shirt, his sleeves rolled up.
“Come and get it,” he said to the children behind him. He began spooning things onto a plate. “Here it is, the World’s Most Honored Meat Loaf.”
“Meat loaf again,” said Bess in a neutral voice. Behind her father’s back she made a wild face at her brother. Sammy was five. He rolled his eyes back energetically, putting his hands at his throat, strangling himself. Bess laughed.
“Come on,” said George, a warning note in his voice. “Children, come on.” He turned and held a plate out to Bess. She did not put her hand out to take it. “Bess, that’s your plate.” He towered, impatient. Bess waited as long as she dared, then raised her hand to take it. The meat loaf sizzled disgustingly in its hot fat. The frozen peas would be still cold in the middle, and the frozen french fries would be mushy.
“Where’s the ketchup?” she asked accusingly, and George turned and looked at her.
“Where would you imagine the ketchup was, Bess?”
Sulkily Bess lowered her eyes. “In the fridge,” she finally said.
“Right,” said her father. “Here.” He handed Sammy his plate and they sat down at the round pine table. The room was small, and the table stood next to the window. The sky outside was dark. When their father cooked, dinner was always late. Bess began to swing her feet under the table; her father and Sammy began to eat. Sammy ran a small metal car back and forth over the tablecloth in a short explosive pattern. Under his breath he made engine noises.
“Don’t,” said George, without interest. Sammy lowered his eyes and continued, more quietly, to roll the car up and down by the side of his plate. George looked at Bess. They had the same high forehead and straight-across eyebrows, though Bess was fairer than her father. Her hair was nearly blond, and her eyes were blue, like her mother’s. Bess sat with her hands under her thighs, swinging her legs under the table.
“Bess?” said George in a warning voice.
Bess slumped heavily against the back of her chair, her spine rounded deeply as though it could never straighten again. She raised her chin and waited as long as she thought was safe. When she heard her father draw in his breath to speak again, she answered.
“What,” she said.
“Is there some reason that you can’t eat your dinner?”
Bess delayed again, then shook her head slowly, her fine hair swinging back and forth, making a neat triangle across each cheek in turn.
“Then would you do it?” said George. He had both hands braced against the edge of the table, as though he were ready to throw the table over. He leaned forward at Bess, unfriendly. Bess didn’t answer. “Would you please do it, Bess?” he said, his voice thin and knify. “Would you eat your dinner?”
Bess dropped her head suddenly, her bangs brushing the meat loaf. She began to sniff, and her shoulders rose, then fell.
“Bess,” said George, “what is it?” His voice was not kind. He put one hand out toward her across the table. Bess sniffed again, her head still down.
“My knee hurts,” she said in a trembling voice. “I have poison ivy on it.” She raised her face now, her mouth drooping and shattered, her eyes wounded. There was a long pause. “Mommy put pink lotion on it,” she said, her voice wavering. “But it still hurts.”
George leaned back in his chair. “I’m sorry your knee hurts, Bess,” he said. “You will still have to eat some dinner, however.” He stared at her through his large horn-rimmed glasses. “When did she do that?” Now his voice was different, and Bess retreated.
“Who?” she asked.
“Your mother.”
“Don’t say it like that,” said Bess.
“When did she do it?”
“Before she left,” said Bess. “This afternoon.”
Sammy ran the car up and down beside his plate. He kept his eyes down and made whispering sounds for the car. “Room,” he whispered, “rooom.”
“Before she left,” said George. He folded his arms and leaned back in the Windsor chair, its narrow spindles creaking against his weight. Behind him, on the white stove, pots stood disorderly on the burners. The oven door was still open.
Bess hunched her shoulders and pushed them against the edge of the table. “She said if it itched in the night, you would put the pink lotion on.”
George laughed unhappily. “She did,” he said. Bess stared at him, and he sobered. “She’s right. I will.”
“What if it still hurts, though?” asked Bess.
“Then I’ll put even more lotion on it,” said George severely. “Your mother will be back tomorrow. You can show it to her then.”
Bess swung her legs under the table. “Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow,” she said in an infuriating singsong.
Sammy broke in before George could start. “Bess,” he said in a patronizing voice, “don’t hunch.”
She looked at him, furious. “Sammy,” she said vindictively, “don’t munch. Don’t punch. Don’t sunch. Don’t lunch.” She laughed in a high, annoying manner. George pushed his chair back and stood up. He did not look at the children. He picked up his plate and took it to the sink. He stood with his back to them and scraped off the leftovers into the disposal.
“Not the meat!” Bess said. He did not answer. “Not the meat, Daddy! Mommy gives that to Charleston.” Charleston, the springer spaniel, had come in with the smell of dinner and was standing, polite but interested, in the doorway, his ears alert.
“Daddy,” said Bess, but more cautiously.
George turned around, the rinsed plate in his hand. “What I do and what your mother does are two different things. When your mother is here, she does things her way. When she isn’t, I do them my way.” He stared at Bess. “Do you understand?”
“Okay,” said Bess. “Okay, Daddy. Okay.”
George left the room, and the two children sat on alone. The table now looked abandoned. The thick blue tablecloth still had crumbs on it from breakfast, and there were some dark spots on it. The children’s messy plates lay in front of them, and their half-empty milk glasses. No one had told them to put their napkins in their laps. Sammy, his mouth full of meat loaf, put his head down on his arm, stretched out flat on the table. Chewing steadily, he closed one eye and rolled the car up and down. “Rooom,” he said quietly, “rooom.”
George went into the living room. It was long and narrow, with french doors opening out onto a terrace. A big deep sofa stood in front of the fireplace, flanked by overstuffed armchairs. The colors were handsome and comforting: deep reds and browns. When they had first moved here, his wife had created this small world: She had had curtains made; she had covered the furniture and bought rugs. Big swatches of material had hung confusingly in layers over the arms of chairs and sofas, for months, it had seemed, before the final choices were made. His wife had seemed to have an inner vision of what she wanted, something precise, lucid, beautiful. This had seemed a wonder to George, her certainty, her care. He had felt deeply grateful, fortunate to have a wife with such power, such conviction about this place, the core of their life. He had pretended to complain to their friends about the length of time it took, the cost of it all. Really he was using this as an excuse to draw everyone’s attention to her skill, her grace, her love for him. He was respectful and proud.