by S. L. Lim
‘Can you please keep your mouth shut, Kat? This does not concern you!’ Evelyn rounded on her daughter. Kat gave the smallest of shrugs, then rose from the couch and walked to her room. ‘Well, Shan, are you going to apologise?’ She spread her palms out, defeated. ‘I … You are never wrong, are you? You never have to say sorry. Always –’
‘Oh, for Chrissake. Henpecked to death.’ Shan clenched his fingers in the air; curiously, he also seemed to be avoiding everybody’s eyes. ‘Whinge, whinge, about this, whinge about that. I’m going to go and get some work done, because somebody has to. It’s not all … four-course dinners and expensive dresses.’ Yannie heard the familiar thump of his feet against the floorboards. A door banged, and the house reverberated.
In the ensuing silence, Evelyn turned to Yannie and said, ‘Can you go outside, ah? Can you … go into the garden? Don’t worry, ah – he will be calm very soon.’ Yannie nodded wordlessly and scuttled off.
On her way, fumbling with the door to release the lock, her toe nudged against a soft, round, disc-shaped object. It was the fallen crumpet. She leaned to pick it up, her fingers indenting the spongy surface. Evelyn swept up behind her, said ‘Huh!’, snatched it out of her hand, and tossed it into a bag with a sharp rustle of plastic.
She stepped out into the courtyard. The wall of trees only partially concealed the sound of cars outside. Over the neighbour’s fence leaned a single frangipani tree. Yannie picked up a flower, yellow in the middle but going brown at the edges. She wondered who the flowers belonged to, once they had fallen over the wall.
‘Hello, Auntie Yannie.’ Kat had come outside. The girl sat down beside her, folding her legs in a way that was casually agile. She was wearing a sparkly zip-up jumper, with a cartoon on it. ‘Sorry that my dad is being kind of a dick. He doesn’t like having people over.’
‘Nor do you, from what I heard last night.’
To her credit, Kat did look sheepish. ‘Oh, I’m sorry about that, Auntie Yannie. I didn’t mean for you to hear. You shouldn’t feel like you’re not welcome.’
‘I’m sure you didn’t.’ Yannie crossed one leg over the other. ‘I’ll be gone very soon, anyway.’ I sound like my mother now, she thought. At least I mean it literally, logistically, as opposed to a gratuitous allusion to my own death.
‘Hey, don’t be like that!’ Kat pouted. ‘I just said that I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said, I was just pissed off … the wedding was tiring, you know? It’s fun dressing up, but it takes seriously ages.’ She leaned forwards, fiddling with her painted toes. ‘I actually really like having people stay over. For one thing, the food’s better. Mum pulls out the stops when there’s visitors around. We don’t normally get breakfast like that. Usually it’s, like, cereal, stuff like that.’ Kat cocked her head. ‘You know, you sound kind of like you have a British accent. How come you speak that way?’
‘I went to British schools back home. That was one thing my parents did – listened to the BBC, as well. That’s how we were supposed to learn to speak “proper English”.’
But Kat had already lost interest in the story. ‘Uh-huh. It’s so weird having a cousin who’s married – it makes me feel ancient, you know?’ She noticed Yannie’s look of incredulity. ‘No, actually! I’m super stressed. I keep asking myself, what have I done with my life so far, you know?’
‘Kat, you’re fifteen. What do you think you should have done by now?’
‘Oh, I don’t know … something that not everybody does.’ Again Kat seemed to be tuning out of the conversation. ‘Anyhoot. Time to go back inside and catch up on all the sleep I missed last night. Stupid cousins.’ Jumping to her feet, she turned in a way that was half a twirl – it seemed to be for Yannie’s benefit – and stepped back inside the house. After a moment, Yannie followed.
In the corridor she nearly bumped into Shan and drew back with instinctive fear. But he smiled at her jovially and said, ‘How are we today?’, as if it were the first interaction they’d had that morning. She stared at him silently, idiotically. Then Evelyn, appearing magically behind him, called out: ‘It’s such a beautiful day! We must take you round to see one of the beaches. And then on Monday, we can take you to visit Shan’s new office.’
Shan nodded and smiled and slipped an arm around Evelyn’s waist. She beamed at him. It was as if the incident with the crumpet had never happened, or not in this universe: an alternative dimension, outer space.
*
Evelyn found her in the bedroom afterwards. ‘I hope what happened earlier didn’t bother you too much,’ she said cheerfully. As if she, Evelyn, had been just an observer, and the events of the morning held no implication for her at all. ‘Shan is under so much pressure with work at the moment. So much stress. I worry about his health – hypertension. He was very disappointed …’ She clamped her mouth shut. ‘I’ve asked him to step back, but he is married to his job. Even more than me, ha-ha. He cannot survive without it.’
‘I understand.’ Yannie smiled to show that it was nothing. ‘And you must be so busy now that Kat is getting older, there is so much stress with their schooling at this age. Now I’m intruding on your privacy.’ She hesitated. ‘I can go back to my hostel today – I’ve imposed on you so much –’
‘No, no.’ Evelyn was so vehement both of them blushed, made eye contact, then looked away again. ‘Please, really! You are family. And it’s no trouble at all. Do you know, I’ve been feeling very guilty – all these years and we have never visited you, ah. I asked Shan, but he has so much work, and once Kat was born it was too difficult to fly …’
‘That’s all right. I was looking after my mother, anyway. She was so frail – she might not have wanted Shan to see her in that condition.’ She would have mortgaged her soul for a visit from her son, who never came. He was the one she wanted. I could change a thousand adult nappies, but I couldn’t change that.
‘No, no, we should have come, we should have come.’ Evelyn seemed almost overwrought. ‘Actually, now that you mention Kat, there is something I must ask. I have been thinking about … almost a business proposition.’
Yannie waited.
‘You see, with Kat …’ Evelyn broke off. ‘We have given her everything. Maybe too much. Music, swimming, dance classes. But now she will not listen, she has developed her own mind. My own parents were so strict, always study, study, study – but that’s how I made it into Allwick’s, in the end. We try to give her some perspective, but with Shan’s business doing so well … it’s just words, you understand. She thinks it’s normal to live the way we do. And there are bad influences – alcohol, boys, maybe even …’ Evelyn’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Maybe even drugs. With her exams coming up, I worry about what is going to happen in her future.’
‘I’m sure she will do very well.’
‘Well, I will just cut to the chase. I was wondering … This will seem like a strange idea –’ Evelyn looked questioning, anxious – ‘if you could – if you have the time – if you can stay with us and teach her. Doesn’t matter how long – longer is better. Five months, six months. Maybe even one year. No, let me finish –’ Evelyn raised a hand before Yannie even had a chance to protest. ‘I have heard it on the grapevine, you are good at what you do. An excellent tutor. Uncle Keng was so impressed when his son got into the LSE – his son is not very bright! And I think, because of you, yourself – well, you have not had the easiest life …’ She paused tactfully. ‘Kat refuses to work and I cannot persuade her. She sees me as lacking authority, because I have been so fortunate. But you – maybe with your perspective, you can help keep her on track with her studies … stop her wandering off into cloud cuckoo land. I would be grateful, ah.’
Yannie opened her mouth and then closed it again. ‘Wow. Evelyn, I’m honoured. I’m just a tourist, though. I don’t know how long I’m allowed to stay, with my tourist visa …’
‘We can fix that, don’t worry!’ Evelyn beamed. ‘We will help you with Immigration. They try to scare you off, but
there are rules, and you can fill in the forms. We can vouch that we will take care of you –’ she paused delicately – ‘well, financially speaking. All these things are quite doable. And it would be very nice to get to know each other better – after all, it has been twenty-over years, you are my sister-in-law!’ She looked at Yannie with disarming earnestness. ‘It’s such a waste that we haven’t got to know each other well after all this time. So I just thought –’
‘I’d love to.’ Yannie looked straight back into Evelyn’s eyes, smiling. There was something odd about the sensation, and it took her a moment to realise what it was. She didn’t have to move the different parts of her face in simulation of gratitude; she really was pleased. ‘I haven’t studied the syllabus here, so I don’t know how much help I can provide – as a tutor for Kat, you know. But I will do my best – and it will be a wonderful opportunity!’
The words sounded too formal for the situation. But it was true – it really was the best thing that had happened for a while. They smiled at each other, just a little too broadly – like partners in a crime that had yet to be conceived. Like family, even.
And then, as if nervous, needing to dissipate the sudden intimacy, Evelyn said, ‘Oh, I must go now and tell Kat!’ She walked quickly down the hallway, seeming to accelerate with excitement as she reached Kat’s door.
As Yannie watched her go, her conscience twinged.
2
The Honeymoon Period
Yannie took less time to acclimatise to a house that wasn’t hers than she had feared. When she’d first arrived, she felt like an intruder in their little unit: a foreign body lodged in the side of their compact, indivisible planet. Actually, the women of the family welcomed her with open arms. On weekends, Evelyn insisted they go shopping together – a process which, though infantilising, Yannie came rather to enjoy. It was quite a thrill, looking in the mirror and seeing her face perched precariously on top of an unfamiliarly clad figure. Evelyn picked out clothes for her and insisted that she try them on, standing by the mirror with lips pressed together, murmuring ‘Hmmm…no’ or ‘Oh yes!’ when the effect she’d imagined was realised or exceeded. Half the time Yannie demurred, at which point Evelyn would insist on buying the gauzy top or the scarf with a pattern of ivy curling round the edges. A brief tussle with wallets would ensue, in which Evelyn would invariably triumph.
Those first few weeks they couldn’t do enough for each other. Like a new couple, or slightly insecure schoolfriends, they agonised over anticipating each other’s desires, pleasures and dislikes. They cooked fancy meals for each other, googling recipes and seeking out unfamiliar ingredients. Evelyn prepared Thai salads with roasted rice powder, Vietnamese rolls with pickled daikon and mint leaves, and crispy objects Yannie could not identify but nonetheless knew that she wanted more of. As the weather got cooler, Evelyn made Western dishes she had learned at university in England: roast beef with gravy, baked rosemary potatoes in their jackets. ‘Lots of people think Western food is just chips and sandwiches, but there’s much more,’ she said. Yannie thought it was the finest food she had ever eaten.
For Evelyn she made laksa paste from scratch, and steamed kuih with palm sugar which she set in fancy moulds. She liked to cook and it was a treat to do so with acres of granite benchtop space, expensive ingredients and Wüsthof knives. Evelyn said: ‘It’s like getting a taste of Shan’s hometown. It’s like going home, but better.’
If the food was nice, the companionship was even nicer. Evelyn, Yannie realised, had invited her to stay on a whim more than anything else. Perhaps she wanted backup for the days when she felt herself fading, overcome by her husband’s masculine certainty, Kat’s robust teenage insouciance. Maybe she’d been feeling fragile in the emotional updraft of the wedding, the changes it portended in her own, impermanently nuclear family: waking up the next morning, maybe she had wondered what she’d done, opening the house to a virtual stranger. But to their mutual surprise, she and Yannie got on very well. There was a natural intimacy between them, an unearned familiarity which surprised the both of them. As time went on, Yannie let her caustic side emerge, and was pleased to learn that Evelyn found her funny. Love was one thing, but liking was another – it made such a difference to be liked. ‘Don’t choke on your own derision,’ Yannie said on impulse to Kat one afternoon, as the girl snorted with laughter at her mother’s choice of outfit. Kat broke off mid-snort: and Evelyn, too surprised to hide her feelings, turned to Yannie with a look of simple gratitude.
For Yannie’s part, once you got past her lady-of-the-manor act, Evelyn was a generous and stimulating companion. She was meticulously clever: clearly Allwick’s had not made a mistake in hiring her all those years ago. ‘Nonsense,’ she’d said adamantly, when a theme park attendant pointed to a sign disclaiming liability in the event of disability, death or dismemberment. ‘It’s your duty of care, do you understand? You can’t disclaim your way out of a duty.’ The man had sulked but was especially careful in checking Kat’s seatbelt afterwards.
Kat, despite her initial aversion to having a stranger in the house, took to lurking round Yannie’s room in the afternoons. At first she refused to talk but merely slouched around, affecting boredom. Soon, however, her need won out over her ego, and she began to greet Yannie with open affection. She would hover in the doorway, chattering interminably about her friends and her teachers and the music she liked, and the movies she wanted to see but was too lazy to go out for, so she’d have to download them. As a student she was bright but, as Evelyn said, unfocused. She came to ideas quickly and discarded them even faster. She was hardly ever home – Yannie’s own mother had looked with suspicion upon any activity which entailed leaving the house, but Kat seemed almost to come and go as she pleased. Yannie took to exploring her study when she was out. She was fascinated by the volume of objects Kat had managed to accumulate over the course of a lifetime shorter than that of Yannie’s hair dryer back home. There were creams to undo the effects of other creams which you put on your face. There were books upon books, and CDs by the dozen – Yannie didn’t think that kids bought them anymore, but Kat took pride in being ‘old-school’. (‘It’s just a bit more tangible, you know? It gives you more of a connection with the artist.’)
Even more daunting was the diversity of skills Kat possessed, seemingly without any great effort: softball, contemporary dance, origami, Grade Seven piano. She had to be scolded and coaxed into practising the instrument, yet when she did, the music rippled out like water. She sang clearly and melodiously, too, in spite of claiming that her singing voice was terrible. ‘Anyone can learn – sing the middle note,’ she encouraged Yannie. But when Yannie tried, the noise which emerged was painfully atonal, and Kat laughed.
Kat had laughed at Yannie’s musical tastes before. It was odd, the way Kat talked about music. Whichever band you mentioned, Kat had a powerful opinion, usually expressed in binary terms: bands were either great, or they were terrible. ‘Oh God, please, turn it off! You’re hurting my eardrums!’ Of those bands she admired, every part of them was glorious: the press photos, the T-shirts, the small booklets which came with their CDs. But if you asked her to explain why one was good and another horrible, she had remarkably little to say.
‘OW! What are you doing? Please, Auntie Yannie, turn that off! You don’t actually like that song, do you?’
‘Well, yes,’ Yannie said honestly. ‘That’s why I’m listening to it.’
‘But it’s Miley Cyrus! Do you even know who that is?’
‘I don’t know. I just liked the tune, that’s all.’
‘Oh my God.’ Kat snorted with hilarity, which Yannie did not like, and then laughed at herself for snorting, which Yannie liked more. ‘Like, I have to save you from yourself. Take a look at this.’ They went through YouTube, looking at pictures of the singer with her undies hanging out, swinging inexplicably back and forth on an industrial implement, wearing very few clothes. At the end of it all Yannie was forced to admit that yes, this Miley
Cyrus character was quite ridiculous. But she still enjoyed the song and did not think that Kat had given her any reason why she should not.
Kat was wonderful to look at. She reminded Yannie of a perfect racehorse, a professional athlete. Every movement eloquent and lovely. She was always hungry, yet remained ever slender; always running about, but never getting tired. When her mother admonished her to study more, put sunscreen on her face, and eat less ice cream and chips, Kat only laughed.
‘With a diet like that, you’ll have to watch out for diabetes next time,’ Yannie said once, watching Kat douse her French fries in the sauce of her sundae. ‘There’s a propensity for type 2 on our side of the family.’
Kat didn’t blink. Without even pausing the conveyer belt of hand to fries, fries to caramel, caramel to mouth, she said: ‘That’s because your side of the family lives in a Third World hovel.’
But periodically she would go on a health kick and drink organic protein shakes, which she swallowed with pinched nose and a lie-back-and-think-of-England expression.
Evelyn was devoted to Kat. She obviously adored her daughter, which sometimes manifested itself in affectionate realism regarding Kat’s foibles. This tended to occur when the foibles were minor (say, spending too long on the computer), and when Evelyn was already in a good mood. At other times, she would go black and silent, and Yannie would have to work hard at oblivious jauntiness in an attempt to cheer her up. Kat was a headstrong child, it was true, but this blackness of Evelyn’s could be induced by actions which were not obviously delinquent, at least in Yannie’s eyes. In one case, Evelyn fell into an hour-long funk when Kat refused (with some derision) to wear a skirt her mother had selected for her. It wasn’t just sulking – from the outside, it seemed like it was genuine grief. Yannie wanted to say, Your children are people as well as being your children. But she strongly suspected that this advice would not be well received.
