The Penalty for Holding

Chapter 2-2

Instead, Quinnie sat in his room, smarting from bruises and bruising words, wiping his eyes with his forearm. After a while, having tired of sulking like Achilles in his tent, Quinnie emerged from his bedroom to hear male voices coming from his mother and stepfather’s bedroom.

It was the Afghan rug merchant, Kamel, and some of his workers putting down an Indian carpet. They were not part of the party staff and in theory could’ve, should’ve come on another day. But it was typical of Sydney that everything had to be done all at once perfectly, regardless of the cost to others. How had she described him—willfully selfish? Tree, meet apple.

Such moments, though, provided what passed for comic relief in the household as Kamel, revealing considerable butt cleavage, and his cohorts strained to shove the thick, cream-colored rug under the bed.

“You do realize you’re going to have to move it,” Quinnie offered.

“Ah, young Master Quinn. A Happy New Year to you.”

“And to you, too, Kamel. So, you realize you’re going to have to move all the furniture and center the rug or Sydney’s going to flip.”

Kamel sighed. His men, who spoke no English, looked puzzled.

“I’ll help,” Quinnie said with a smile.

Afterward, they admired their teamwork.

“You have a good heart, Quinnie,” Kamel said. “Just like Mrs. Syd. She a wonderful woman.”

He brought out his iPhone to show Quinnie pictures of his mother, posing at her company’s headquarters with Kamel, his wife and their baby. Sydney was cradling the child, smiling. Quinnie didn’t know that Sydney.

But Kamel was a decent man from a war-torn country with troubles of his own. Quinnie couldn’t destroy his illusions. He handed the phone back to Kamel, smiling.

“Yes, we’re very proud of her,” was all he said.

The success of Sydney’s party did nothing to assuage her anger toward Quinnie. For days, she gave him the curtain coming down, barely speaking to him except to issue curt criticisms.

He bore all this with something approaching grace, which he had acquired after years of trying to please her followed by years of tantrums and acting out. Now he did as he wanted. The way he figured it, you could be loved the way the world loves, with strings attached, or you could suit yourself. Quinnie had chosen the latter, often meeting Sydney’s criticisms with a smile that was sure to deepen her unhappiness. At least, that’s what he counted on.

Still, he had to be careful. His stepfather, who was often away, was not above taking a strap to him when he was there. Quinnie might flirt with the boundary of parental tolerance, but he wouldn’t cross it.

He finally achieved a fragile truce at the end of the school term, though not without some outside help from an unexpected visitor. All the Novak girls were smart, talented, and good-looking. But the statuesque Selena was the most independent-minded and expressive of the three. No wonder the slim, controlling Sydney described her older sister only in the most critical of terms.

“Honestly, she’s so opinionated and full of herself,” “El Syd”—as Chandler called his wife behind her back at such moments—said at dinner one night shortly before her arrival.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Quinnie said with a smile. “From her emails, she sounds like fun.”

He said this as much out of spite as out of a desire to express what he truly thought. He knew how to push his mother’s buttons.

“Who asked your opinion?” she said. “You’re as bad as she is. You two should get on famously.”

And indeed they did. From the moment she arrived with a baseball glove and a football for him—”I know you like both,” she said with a smile—Quinnie was sold on Aunt Lena. For one thing, unlike his mother—who was often too exhausted except for her company friends—Aunt Lena had a lot of energy and liked to do stuff, he observed happily. She had been the editor of the Far East edition of Rumours magazine—she now headed up the New York office—and seemed to know everyone and everything. But if he were brutally honest with himself, something he tried not to be too often, he would have admitted that loving Aunt Lena had the bonus effect of unsettling his mother and stepfather, both of whom were intimidated by her.

“Aunt Lena, what’s New York like?”

“It’s like Jakarta, kiddo—only with potable drinking water courtesy of the Croton Reservoir and an infrastructure that actually lets you get around town, even on foot.”

“Of course, though the cities are about the same size, New York has ten times the murder rate,” Chandler chimed in, fiddling at the dinner table with his iPhone, iPad, iSomething. Chandler had a big job with the multinational company that Quinnie’s mother worked for and was now a consultant. That was all Quinnie knew or cared to.

Aunt Lena, however, was not one to be overawed. She looked hard at Quinnie’s “father”—she often pronounced the word with an exaggerated emphasis that made his mother blanch—and said, “Whenever people say anything about New York, I like to remind them that on a very bad day, when we saw the worst of humanity, New York showed the very best. New Yorkers acted with courage, purpose, and without self-pity.”

“Always on a soapbox, Lena,” Sydney said, sighing as Chandler colored.

Quinnie merely smiled triumphantly and took a sip of Coca-Cola. He liked to make it last as he was only allowed to drink Coke—nectar of the gods, as his mythology teacher might say—on special occasions like this. Yet another reason to love Aunt Lena. So when she asked him to be her date Saturday night—”You can tell all your friends you’re seeing an older woman,” she offered—visions of Coca-Cola danced in his head.

“Mind your manners,” his mother warned. “Be careful what you say—your aunt doesn’t need to know all our business—and for God’s sake, watch what you eat.”

“I will, Sydney,” Quinnie said, already dreaming of a night of gossip, cheeseburgers, fries, and free-flowing Cokes at B.A.T.S.

With its blond wood and green leather upholstery, B.A.T.S.—or the Bar at the Shang, as in the Shangri-La Hotel—was a decidedly grown-up place. Already it was overflowing with the expat crowd bopping to a band that did serviceable Adele covers. Quinnie was in his element, taking it all in from the dining area in his new navy blazer and khakis, and nodding his head to the beat as he sipped what he hoped would be the first of at least a couple of Cokes.

Given the way Aunt Lena was savoring her Cosmo and singing along to Set Fire to the Rain, the prospect seemed good. Quinnie watched as three dainty young women teetered in on four-inch heels—China dolls in satiny pastels, their hair piled high—and signed a book before mingling with the crowd.

“Aunt Lena, how come we didn’t sign the book when we came in?”

“Because, kiddo, we’re not here to entertain gentlemen,” she said.

Quinnie blushed, sensing there was something wrong with what these pretty, young women were doing. His aunt didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t press her for details—for which they were both grateful.

Aunt Lena waited until Quinnie was in the throes of his rare cheeseburger, sweet-potato fries, and second Coke—a third would follow, along with Aunt Lena’s second Cosmo—when she dropped her bombshell.

“Quinnie, how would you like to come live with me in New York?”

“Me? Really?”

He was stunned. New York—home of the Yankees, a chance to watch and play American sports in American arenas. Still, he would miss his team, his schoolmates, Nemin, Adhi, Sumarti, Gde, Gaucho, Jakarta—just about everything, he thought.

Well, not quite everything. The idea that he would be leaving his mother and stepfather bothered him not a whit, except to make him wonder why it didn’t. Maybe it did, just a bit. Why didn’t he love them? Why didn’t they love him?

“Your mother and I were talking, and it seemed to both of us that with your athletic ability, you’ll need an American high school and an American university.”

What she was too kind to mention was what he had, unbeknown to her, overheard.

“I just can’t do it anymore, Lee. He’s growing up, becoming a man and he’s getting more and more difficult to handle. Chan and I, of course, have tried. But he’s just so hostile. It’s a terrible thing to say you don’t love your own child, but I don’t love him.”

“Oh, Sydie,” Aunt Lena had said. “Then how could you ever hope that he would love you? How will he ever grow into a man who can love and be loved?”

“I don’t know. Maybe if you were to take him…”

Tears, hot tears then. It was one thing to suspect she didn’t love him. It was another to have the confirmation from her own lips.

“Think it over,” Aunt Lena was saying to him.

“I don’t have to,” he said. “Yes.”

He was packed within days, even though he wasn’t leaving for two weeks. But as the date approached, Quinnie realized he had allowed what—or rather whom—he hated to blind him to what he loved.

He cried when he presented Nemin, Sumarti and Gde with the tokens of his affection—a miniature tea set for Nemin with thimble-size cups in a red, blue and yellow-colored dragon motif, a symbol of protection, and Louis Vuitton wallets for Sumarti and Gde. Actually, they were some of Jakarta’s famous knockoffs, but the stitching was fine and he had insisted on paying for them with his own money. He gave Adhi a new soccer ball. And Gaucho—oh, leaving him was the greatest stab to the heart—a big box of doggie biscuits.

“Such a thoughtful boy,” Nemin said to Sumarti in Bahasa. Apparently, not everyone thought he was so difficult.

He treated his baseball team to pizza from the Shang.

“Don’t forget us,” the manager said, shaking hands at the end of their pizza party.

Forget you? Quinnie thought. Someday, I’ll return like Barack Obama, a favorite son triumphant.

But to his mother and stepfather, he had nothing to say or give.

Rather, on the day of departure, he sat calmly in the back seat of the SUV, waiting for Aunt Lena to take leave of Chandler and Sydney.

“Quinnie,” Aunt Lena whispered, leaning into the back seat, “please get out and say a proper goodbye to your mother and father.”

“I’ve already said my goodbyes,” Quinnie said.

“Quinton Day Novakovic,” Aunt Lena said, using his full, legal name. “You get your butt out of this car right now and kiss your mother and father goodbye.” Here she paused before adding more softly, “Quinnie, we don’t know what will happen in this world. Don’t leave things this way.”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Lena. I love you. But I won’t do that, not even for you.”

Aunt Lena looked sheepish as she stood by the car with Sydney and Chandler. Perhaps she now had an inkling of what Sydney meant by “difficult.” Maybe she was regretting her offer to take him. She seemed weary, and it was only seven A.M.

“Take care of yourselves,” he heard Sydney say with surprising emotion.

But it was not enough to melt him.

“Goodbye, Sydney,” he called out, waving from the car. “Goodbye, Chandler.”

They rode to the airport in silence as the intermittent rain that punctuated the rhythm of Jakarta’s days and nights fell. Soon the dry season would be in full swing, ushering in a wave of tourists. Quinnie was glad for the quiet as it gave him a chance to take in every mosque, canal, and shanty. Even the fatuous billboards with the politicians standing stiffly—their chests puffed out like pigeons on a perch—filled him with longing. This was his home, his native land, and Quinnie had no illusions about what was to come. Someday another place would lay claim to his affections, and Jakarta—indeed, all of Indonesia—would recede, even as it receded now in the rearview mirror.

Perhaps sensing his regret, Aunt Lena brightened at the airport.

“We’ll have a few days to relax in Singapore and Hong Kong before we have to start thinking about a new school for you. And you’ll need new clothes, too. It can get pretty cold in New York.”

He had never seen snow, he thought as he strapped on his seatbelt. A video droned on about new improvements to Eagles Airlines. The plane leaked. Ironic, he thought, using the last new word he had learned in his English vocabulary lesson.

“It is ironic that the plane is leaking as the airline’s video boasts of improvements.”

His English teacher would be proud. His English teacher: She, too, was part of the past, while his future lay ten thousand miles ahead. Aunt Lena took note of the leak and smiled at him.

“It’ll stop when we’re above the clouds,” she said.

They began to taxi.

“Well, here we go,” she said, squeezing his hand.

She crossed herself. Quinnie followed suit. They hurtled down the runway, the green fields, and red-tile roofs passing in a blur that would fade to blue.