Impractical Uses of Cake

by Yeoh Jo-Ann

  He has forgot what it’s like to share a bed. It’s a nightmare. He goes to sleep hoping he won’t flail about and kick her, and then wakes up wondering if he did. He wakes up cold in the dead of the night, the covers snatched away, and he has to pry them away from her gently, so gently that he wants to scream. He goes to sleep hoping she won’t flail about and kick him. She does. It’s like sleeping with a goat—he remembers thinking this years ago. Still the same cloven-footed terror in the bedroom, my girl.

  “Why are you smiling to yourself?”

  “I like casserole.”

  “You’re making that cauliflower thing? Oh, yes.”

  This morning, he woke up to find her close, her nose only centimetres from his, her head nestled in the recess between their pillows. How strange, how surreal, that she was here, in this bed, in his bed, in this home he had made for himself so that he could be alone. How strange, that he wanted her here. He thought of the years in between them then and them now, all submerged by this moment, and it made him gasp for air.

  He puts the casserole in the oven and sets the timer. Forty-five minutes and dinner will be ready.

  There used to be one set of drawers in the man’s bedroom. Now, there are two.

  The second set is for the woman’s things. It surprises her that she has enough to fill two out of the four drawers.

  The man is not surprised. It is he who has filled them, slowly, slyly. It is he who has, over time, carefully selected and planted every item so that nothing stands out, so that everything feels and looks like everything else even though no two items are identical.

  The man is very pleased with himself.

  X

  THE STUDENTS HAVE become relentless in their pursuit of enlightenment— they will take anything the teachers throw their way: random titbits on any subject, advice on sleep, nutrition and the best kind of pen to use, repeated entreaties not to spot questions and to “answer the question that is asked, not the question you would have liked to be asked”, all of which they eagerly lap up and then invariably ignore.

  Hilda and Rohan, who have waited outside the staff room for twenty minutes in order to intercept Sukhin on his way to the canteen for his afternoon cup of tea, feverishly scribble into their notebooks: “Don’t forget about Polonius. Or Horatio.”

  Sukhin smiles grimly. He has said this about a hundred times in class, and now, now, two days before the bloody paper, they are writing this down.

  “Which acts should we focus on, Mr Dhillon?” Hilda’s voice is a small, harassed whisper. A whisperlet. She braces herself for a put-down but cannot prevent herself from hoping that Mr Dhillon will soften, pity her, say something that will give them some inkling of what the exam question will be. Rohan has insisted that it must be her who asks the question (“Mr Dhillon looks like the kind of guy who can’t deal with crying girls”).

  He sighs. This is going to take a while. “They’re all important. You have to think about the play as a whole—what each act reveals about every character, what patterns appear when you lay all the acts down next to each other. It’s Shakespeare; everything is cleverly linked because he can. For example, take Act III, Scene 3—”

  He allows Hilda and Rohan to walk with him to get his tea and they sit with him in the canteen while he drinks it. More students join them, then still more, and Sukhin finds himself giving an impromptu seminar on divinity and morality in Hamlet.

  In another corner of the canteen, next to a girl who looks close to tears, Dennis is looking through her frantic workings of a problem he set as homework two months ago.

  Their eyes meet and Dennis makes a face. Sukhin bares his teeth.

  Exam season. Driving teachers mad twice a year since institutionalised education became a thing.

  But now it’s also the perfect excuse to keep Jinn around, to put off the move to Punggol.

  “I’m going to help you move,” he told her yesterday, trying to sound as casual and pleasant as possible, “but give me a couple of weeks. The students are going mad, I’m going mad—and then I’ll need to mark the scripts. Two weeks, okay? Meanwhile, help yourself to my books. Go nuts.”

  Jinn doesn’t protest—he suspects she rather likes being back under a solid roof. And the books must sweeten the deal: the entire wall on one side of the flat, floor to ceiling, and as much of the bedroom wall space as possible have been conquered by bookshelves; his study is a massive bookshelf in three and a half walls (he left the window as is, but was very much tempted to close it off). The corridor separating the kitchen from the study is one big bookshelf (Sukhin likes to think of it as a bookshelf turned into a corridor), broken up only by the need for the door to the study. Even the balcony has a bookshelf; the kitchen has two—why waste space? His mother isn’t a fan of his take on interior design; she’s asked him too many times where he plans on putting up all the family photographs, and “what about the portraits of the children when they graduate?” Photographs? Portraits of the children? Sukhin’s books, which occupy every bit of space in every bookshelf, which have begun to creep over the furniture and are plotting a takeover of the sofa, are the only friends he has chosen for himself. It is a never-ending source of comfort to him that every book he has ever had the pleasure to claim, every single one, lives here with him.

  Now that Jinn is also here, Sukhin is often overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with what, he doesn’t quite know.

  But he likes having her around. Even if she mixes up the jam lids and he found the marmalade lid on the apricot preserve jar this morning.

  She’s been watching him.

  While he prepares dinner. While he sorts out the laundry. While he cleans his records and wipes down the bookshelves. While he vacuums and mops and disinfects the kitchen floor with lemon juice. While he reads. While he pretends to work and is thinking about a book he wants to go back to reading. While he puts on his shoes before he leaves for work. While he takes off his shoes and puts them back on the rack when he returns.

  She watches him openly, not bothering to hide her curiosity. He tries not to look at her—if there’s anything more disquieting than knowing she’s watching him, it’s watching her watch him.

  She’s doing it again, right now.

  It’s Sunday night and he’s ironing his clothes for the week ahead. Sukhin really likes ironing—he likes watching all the wrinkles disappear, lining up the seams, making sure all the pleats perfectly align.

  Jinn has been at the kitchen table with one of his books since they cleared the dinner dishes. She’s just made a cup of tea and is sipping it while watching him iron, the book overturned on the table to mark her page. Under her scrutiny, he feels like he should say something, tell a joke, share ironing tips. He also feels like telling her to use a bloody bookmark.

  “You’re very neat.”

  “I like to be.”

  “You’re neater than I remember.”

  She goes back to the book. He goes back to his black pleated trousers, wondering exactly what she remembers.

  “Mum, do I need fresh crab?” Sukhin is at the deli section of the supermarket, examining the rows of tinned seafood, phone to his ear. “Or is the canned kind okay?”

  “Hello?” Doris is a little breathless—the phone rang while she was upstairs. Sukhin and her husband have told her many times, take it with you, it’s a mobile phone, but out of habit she still leaves it on the kitchen counter, next to the cookbooks, where the old telephone used to sit. She thinks she heard something about crab, but it’s Sukhin, so she can’t be sure.

  Sukhin grits his teeth. “The crab. Does it need to be fresh?”

  Doris shakes her head. How does he manage to teach anything? Always saying things without a head or a tail. “What crab? What are you making?”

  “Bakwan kepiting, Mum. Why do you think I asked for the recipe on Sunday?”

  Ah yes, and he wrote everything down in his notebook and made her repeat everything while their dinner got cold.

  “Fresh crab, fresh crab. Alw
ays fresh crab.”

  “Okay—so I can’t use canned crab at all for this? Ever?” Sukhin picks up a can of Alaskan crab meat and reads the ingredient list: Alaskan crab meat. Seems straightforward.

  They are in her territory now. Time to put him in his place. “Sukhin. Canned is canned; fresh is fresh. If you wait ten years, does this change?”

  “Right. Yes, Mum.”

  “And did you think your grandmother’s recipe would have canned crab? Do you know where your grandmother’s from?”

  “Penang.”

  She corrects him. “Telok Bahang in Penang. Your great-grandfather was a fisherman. Your grandmother is a fisherman’s daughter.”

  “Yes, Mum. Okay.” Sukhin wishes he could have just texted his mother— but neither of his parents reads a text message the day it is sent.

  “Do you think your grandmother’s recipe for bakwan kepiting would use canned crab?”

  “No. No, Mum.” He should have gone straight to the wet market.

  “The next time your Ah Mah cooks her bakwan kepiting, I’m going to tell her you thought maybe she uses canned crab. Maybe you’ll get half a bowl.” Doris pauses. “Why are you cooking bakwan kepiting?”

  Sukhin isn’t prepared for this. “I’m making it for a friend” is the shortest and least informative honest reply he can muster.

  “Is this the friend you’re helping to move house?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  Doris smiles. There’s definitely something going on. “Well, it’s a difficult dish. Let me know if you need help. Just call, yah?” If her son means to cook his way to a woman’s heart, he is going to need her help.

  “Yes, Mum. Thanks.”

  He hangs up. Doris spends the rest of the afternoon thinking about how she will entertain her future grandchildren—is there a box of Sukhin’s old toys around somewhere?

  Jinn has decided on Punggol—prematurely, in Sukhin’s opinion. They’ve only been there twice to look around, but for some reason she has become fixated with the idea of living along the river.

  “But we haven’t looked anywhere else,” he said. “And it’s mostly open. Where are we going to build the house?” The boxes he picked out for her are still at his parents’ place, set aside from the rest of the family stash, sighed at by his father every time he passes them.

  “I don’t think I’ll need a house.”

  He thinks of all the hours he’s spent online researching cardboard furniture, all the sketches he’s made for her new and much-improved cardboard igloo. It was going to be grand—modular, strong, modifiable, collapsible.

  “But where will you sleep?”

  “In the open,” she tells him. So much for a solid roof keeping her here. In the pretty park the National Parks Board so meticulously maintains. “It leads all the way to the sea,” she says, “did you know?” Yes, he does, though he can’t understand why this is any reason for living along the Punggol River. Then again, he lives near the sea and it makes him happy—no, that’s too strong a word, but it’s a good feeling—knowing there is that stretch of water only fifteen minutes away.

  “What about showering and all that?”

  “Toilets everywhere—didn’t you notice? I’ll manage.”

  And when it rains, her plan is to sleep under one of the many pavilions in the park, typically used by people taking walks along the river as a rest stop or momentary respite from the elements. Kim Seng, leader of the veggie pirates, has offered her an old bicycle. She will trade her suitcase for a backpack—one of the Free Kitchen volunteers is keen to swap; he has a massive one lying in his storeroom that hasn’t seen daylight since his uni days.

  Everything is planned and logical, but Sukhin looks at her and thinks, she’s mad. It’s a welcome thought—over the week and a half that she’s been around, he has alternately confused and terrified himself by imagining life with her, not just for a couple of weeks, but for the rest of his life. He’s quite sure he isn’t in love with her—and he’s a teacher of English literature; of course he can recognise the signs of a man in love. He feels none of the heady rush, the constant desire to be with her, that gripped him when they were young—in fact, much of his ruminations involve plans to reclaim some of his personal space—perhaps he will give her the study so he can have his living room back, or can he turn the balcony into some sort of reading hole for her? And now, listening to Jinn’s plans for Punggol and pronouncing her mad, he is relieved. His internal logic is clearly intact. It must therefore be logic that compels him to return, over and over, to the thought of having her live with him indefinitely. Of course it’s logical—it will cost her nothing, it will cost him very little more in terms of household expenses, it will mean he won’t have to travel to check on her, it is far easier to cook for two, it will even increase the utility of his books and that ridiculous sofa.

  “What do you think?”

  “Makes perfect sense. I’ll drive you there next weekend—the bicycle should fit into the boot.”

  It doesn’t. After many, many attempts to fit the bicycle into the boot, in as many different positions as a bicycle may be imagined to occupy in that fixed, finite space, Sukhin decides to put Jinn and her backpack in a taxi and cycle to Punggol Park himself.

  “See you in a couple of hours.”

  Congratulating himself on this very sensible decision that will clearly contribute to his goal of keeping somewhat fit in order not to become decrepit before he’s seventy (which seems a decent age to start creaking— the origin of decrepit being the Latin “crepare”, i.e. to creak), he sets off. The conditions are perfect for a morning ride—slightly overcast, just a bit of a breeze—and it’s too early for the picnicking crowd to have descended upon East Coast Park and its paltry strip of beach. He’s decided to take the longer route through the parks and along the eastern coastline instead of cutting through housing estates—after days and days of marking poorly written, terrifyingly inane exam scripts (“The energy level of this paragraph reverberates like an engine, forcing the reader to climb with it”), cycling, just being outdoors, will be a treat.

  It’s a better machine than he expected from something that looks so old— Kim Seng has obviously taken good care of it. It’s a heavy single-speed, but everything works and nothing rattles, and he reaches the beach in under ten minutes, just slightly over the timing he clocks with his own bike. The weekend horde isn’t out in full force yet, but there are enough of them— and enough of them who ignore the signs warning pedestrians to stay off the cycling paths—to turn the ride into something of an obstacle course. Except, of course, that Sukhin would rather decimate these obstacles than avoid them. To make it harder for him to resist the urge to run people over, Kim Seng’s bike doesn’t come with a bell—making it necessary for Sukhin to shout for people to get out of his way. But he finds a way to derive some enjoyment from this.

  “Run, dumbass, run out of my way!” To a speed-walking woman in a blinding pink tracksuit.

  “Get onto the grass, you cow!” To a pudgy man walking his very small dog.

  Normally, Sukhin detests shouting, but this feels okay. In control, rather than out of it.

  “Fuck off, dimwit! Read the sign!” To a jogger cutting across the cycling path.

  “Go away, you fuckwit! That’s not cycling!” To a rollerblading teenage boy.

  The looks of frozen horror on their faces before they scramble off the cycling path to flee a verbally abusive madman on a bicycle—Sukhin hasn’t had this much fun in a very long time. Maybe he should pursue this as a serious hobby. With a helmet camera.

  A while later, there’s no longer any need for shouting—he’s finally past all the parts of the park that keep it crowded: the hipster bit with its mandatory Starbucks, the fast-food belt with its enormous kid-magnet playground (the designer must trace his lineage to the Pied Piper), past the seafood restaurants, past the massive hawker centre, where he stops for a cold sugarcane drink. The sun is higher now and the sky has cleared up, but
it isn’t sweltering—yet. This is actually really nice. Sukhin looks out at the sea, at the vessels in the distance and the soft swelling waves and the wide expanse of water water water, and he can feel his mind unscramble and lighten. He straightens his shoulders and lifts his head a little higher.

  We carry too much weight to move, or think, gracefully.

  He doesn’t know where this thought comes from—a book, a poem, something someone said?—or where it’s trying to lead him. But it must explain Jinn’s new grace, her unhurried movements and her decisiveness, all uncomplicated by any consideration of current obligations or future regret. He recalls her reaction weeks ago to the destruction of her cardboard home—no angst, no fist-waving, just a calm, collected acceptance of what was. He thought of the scene for days, stricken by the loss of what he’d come to think of as the locus of her, while she turned her attention to settling into his flat for the time being and started planning for Punggol.

  If her grace and clarity come from weightlessness, what of him—what weight does he carry? Or is he carrying too much weight to recognise it for what it is?

  Is this what people call a paradigm shift, or the beginnings of one? Sukhin makes a mental note to return to this. Maybe it’s time to think a little further ahead, instead of just getting through the days, the hours. Seek enlightenment or purpose or whatever. He snickers. It’s a little funny—the thought of enlightenment coming to a man who just called a stranger a fuckwit for rollerblading on the wrong path. To be fair, though, it’s precisely the people who will call other people fuckwits for rollerblading on the wrong path who are in desperate need of enlightenment. If he were a divinity with a fixed quota of people to enlighten, he’d go straight for the twisted, angry ones— higher returns on investment and greater marginal social benefit. Like Jinn of old—totally twisted, often angry. Disproportionately pleased and displeased, swinging in and out of anger and joy and resentment and excitement. When a boy in one of her classes at university said something snarky about girls from her old school, she raged for a week, then poured sugar into his motorcycle’s fuel tank.