Travails of a Trailing Spouse

by Stephanie Suga Chen

  Sarah had been a mentor throughout college, but had found the experience consisting almost entirely of taking her mentees to the movies, the circus, and other various shows, followed by dessert at a local diner. She supposed that was the point, just to spend time together, but under the constraints (set up for the safety of participants, she knew) of the mentor programmes she had been involved with, such as only being able to meet in a group setting with other mentor-mentee pairs, she had been unable to make meaningful connections and had lost touch with both the girls she had supposedly “mentored”.

  Now, as a foreign, unemployed housewife, she suspected she was not the ideal profile for the Roslin House Mentorship Programme. If volunteering was a path she wanted to explore, she would have to go about it a different way.

  One day in early July, one of the first clear days in over a month, Sarah was browsing the web when she happened to land on a site called CAUGHT!, which was mostly user-submitted photos and videos of people caught on camera doing unsavoury things such as kicking their neighbour’s dogs, urinating in public, or texting while driving. Today, she noticed a video that had been posted earlier that day, titled, “Video surfaces of brawl among group of expats at Orchard Tower”. The short text below the video indicated that it had been taken on the night of Chad’s birthday dinner, at around 5am. The video was only 10 seconds long, and had been taken from an odd angle, as if the person taking the recording had been very short or had been holding the camera at waist-level.

  In it, Sarah could see in the background the glowing sign of Henry’s bar, intermittently covered by figures jumping on each other. It was too dark to see any of their faces clearly, but Sarah counted at least five men and none of them looked like Chad or Jason, although she couldn’t tell for sure. At the very end of the video, a dark T-shirt-clad torso filled the frame, then another figure fell on top of the torso, first a belt buckle, then a shirt, arms, finally a face – eyes half closed, wide nose, stubbled chin. The video ended abruptly there, as if the person had stopped filming to avoid getting hit. Sarah immediately forwarded the link to everyone, including their lawyer.

  Jason replied to all, writing, “Holy crap, that’s the guy that Chad spilled drinks on!”

  “Really? Are you sure?” Sarah wrote back.

  “Yes, pretty sure. He had a very big nose. CS – can you confirm?” Jason replied.

  As she waited for a response from Chad, all of Sarah’s anxiety over the case returned. If Chad knew the guy who had fallen on him, was his involvement in the brawl more than just accidental?

  chapter 19

  PARTNER YOGA

  CHAD RESPONDED TO the email, saying, “Yeah, mate, that was definitely him.” But everyone agreed that they didn’t see Jason or Chad in the video at all, and Chad could not confirm if it was that same man who had fallen on him specifically. Carys thought, based on the angle, that the cameraperson was standing in front of where they had walked; either that, or the video was taken before Chad and Jason had been pulled into the ruckus.

  Sarah spoke to Chew Soon Lee on the phone. The lawyer had checked with his contacts at the police department and it appeared that a new IO had been assigned, probably the reason they still had not heard anything from the police, almost five months since the arrest. Neither Carys nor Ian had been contacted, either.

  Something about the incident still gnawed away at Sarah – why had it taken so long for Carys and Ian to notice that Chad and Jason had been pulled in? Had Chad been jumped on by the man on purpose? Had he fought back? Had her husband also joined in? If so, could there be another video out there showing more to the scene? Although the lawyer had said that his sources confirmed that no injuries had been reported, from the video it did look like some solid punches had been thrown. And where in all of this was the woman whom Carys had reported seeing, the original instigator of the brawl?

  Sarah discussed her concerns with the other Sara as they were in a cab on the way to the ferry terminal where they would board a boat to Bintan Island in Indonesia for a weekend yoga retreat that Sara had convinced her to go on. Sara-without-an-H was trying to reconnect with her inner yogi; she had practised yoga regularly before her sons were born, and this retreat was a way to pick it back up again, some much needed “me time”, if you will. Sarah, on the other hand, had only been to a few yoga classes at the gym; she was not very flexible and so found it not only hard but also uninspiring, but she agreed to tag along in the spirit of friendship and to get a bit of “me time” as well. Furthermore, she wasn’t the one whose passport was being held by the courts, she told Jason when she said she was going on the trip. He, of course, had no objection, walking her down to the lobby and helping load the bags into the taxi’s boot. Thankfully, with a seasonal shift in the wind, the haze had suddenly vanished a few days earlier.

  “Well, what else do you think could have happened that night?” Sara asked.

  “I don’t know; could Chad have purposely punched the guy because he was pissed about what had happened earlier with the drinks? Or vice versa?” Sarah speculated.

  “But didn’t Carys say she saw the guy accidentally fall on Chad?” Sara said.

  “Yes, but maybe she didn’t see exactly what happened. And she and Ian still haven’t been called back to the police station to give their statement.” Sarah wondered if perhaps they should have insisted on having something entered on record that morning.

  “Anyways, I should just stop thinking about it. Let’s enjoy our weekend!” she said.

  They met the rest of the group at the boarding area to the ferry, about 20 in total of mixed ages, mostly women, led by a rosy-cheeked Singaporean named Jenny and her assistant for the weekend, Dawn, a tall woman in a tank top, which showed off her lean biceps. After the 75-minute journey, they arrived at the main Bintan ferry terminal, cleared immigration, and piled into two mini-buses for a long and rather bumpy ride to the eastern side of the Indonesian island.

  Upon arrival at the beach hotel, Jenny wasted no time, instructing everyone to quickly drop their bags in their rooms, change into yoga clothes, and meet her at the deck area in 15 minutes. It proceeded about as Sarah had expected – a lot of slow inhalations and “elementary poses”, as Jenny called them, which Sarah clumsily muddled her way through. They learned that Dawn had been a dragon boat rower at school, thus explaining her well-defined arm muscles; she was also incredibly flexible, able to bend down with straight knees so far that her palms could actually wrap around the front of her toes, as Sarah struggled to even reach past her shins. To her credit, the other Sara was a model pupil, clearly not missing a beat after a four-year hiatus, breathing fluidly and holding each pose steadily.

  After the afternoon yoga session, they headed straight to an early dinner, with Jenny making a big show of serving Sarah a big plate of fried chicken. Sarah inwardly rolled her eyes, passing the chicken around as almost everyone eagerly grabbed a piece.

  When they had signed up for the “all-vegetarian, all-yoga weekend”, Sarah had emailed Jenny separately, asking if it were possible for her to order something non-vegetarian, on her own dime, to which Jenny had politely responded back that it might be “disruptive” to the other guests. Sarah had thrown up her hands, saying to Jason, “I’m being discriminated against because I’m not a vegetarian!” Eventually, Jenny had relented, and after seeing how the fried chicken dish was received by the others, Sarah saw that her wanting something non-vegetarian was not at all disruptive, but in fact, quite welcome.

  After dinner and a slightly longer break, the group met again after sunset in a grassy area in front of the beach for yin yoga – a slow-paced style of yoga with longer holds, sometimes up to five minutes. The sky was clear that night so Sarah lay back and stared at the twinkling stars, trying to clear her mind and not think about how she wished she was doing anything else but what amounted to basically stretching for the next two hours.

  At night, back in their hotel, Sarah sent a note to Jason saying that after five hours of yo
ga that day, she felt she had filled her quota for the year. Even the other Sara admitted that it was too much for her as well, suggesting that they fake food poisoning and skip the morning session.

  The two Sara/hs lay side by side in their twin beds, chatting about how hard it was to find something one was truly passionate about. Sara had experienced a similar disenchantment with her telecom job after Ethan had been born; thinking that nutrition and health might be an angle she wanted to pursue, she had gone ahead and taken an online course to get her Health Coach Certification. After shelling out a few thousand dollars and going through six months of coursework, however, she had yet to have a paying client.

  As Sarah drifted off to sleep, listening to the sound of the waves hitting the beach outside, she chastised herself for being such a downer on this beautiful tropical isle, on a weekend away without her husband and kids.

  The morning session started bright and early with sun salutations, too many to count (“Just keep going!” Jenny encouraged), then some more practice, breakfast, then a session on meditation, during which Sarah fell asleep. She woke up, embarrassed. Jenny assured her that it was completely fine, but suggested that she not lie down the next time. Later that night, Sarah would use that very technique, lying on her back, arms at her sides, palms up, to fall asleep – it would be the most valuable thing she took away from the yoga weekend.

  The afternoon of the second day was scheduled as free time, and Dawn offered to take whoever was interested to a small cove where the waves were calmer, she said, to go stand-up paddle boarding. The two Sara/hs thought they would give it a try, putting on life jackets and heading out into the sea, paddling first on their knees and then trying to stand up. Sara actually did an admirable job, given it was her first time ever, holding her small frame quite steady while navigating slowly around the inlet.

  Sarah, however, fell into the water as she was attempting to stand up for the first time. It was an action she would continue to repeat through the rest of the session, though she would get better at falling, jumping away from the board so as not to knock against it as she went in. Meanwhile, Dawn, on her own board, paddled out a few hundred metres from the shore, set her oar down on the board, and did a perfect headstand, not getting a drop of water on herself.

  After an hour of this, with the other Sara also experiencing a few times the joy of falling headfirst into saltwater, they paddled back to shore and returned their gear, happy to be back on solid ground. As they sipped coconuts on the deck, Sarah finally brought up John, a topic she had been avoiding all weekend.

  “So, what’s going on with John? Has he gone on any solo trips lately?” she started.

  “Actually, he’s leaving tomorrow night, a few hours after we get back,” Sara answered.

  “Really? For how long?” Sarah asked.

  Sara responded that John’s firm had a company-wide shut down in July, when all non-essential employees took two weeks off, and since she still had to work, she agreed to let John go off for the whole time to the Philippines. Sarah just couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  “Two frickin’ weeks? How can you let him, I mean really, Sara, don’t you ever just want to scream?”

  “Well, what do you think I should do? Like, just confront him?” Sara asked, open to advice.

  Sarah suggested she start by asking him point blank if he was sleeping with prostitutes, to which Sara asked, “But what if I don’t want to know the answer to that?”

  And therein was the difficulty, Sarah knew. Talking to her husband about it would solidify everything Sara suspected, unravelling it all into a big, stringy mess.

  “Well, assuming he says yes, what would you do then? Ask him to stop?” Sarah said, cautiously.

  “Maybe. But what if he said he couldn’t?” Sara said.

  “Couples counselling?” Sarah suggested.

  “Ugh, I know John definitely would NOT go for that,” Sara said. “Do you think Jason would?”

  “Hm, he might surprise us, remember the vasectomy conversation?” The two giggled at the memory – at one of the first dinners the two families had together, Sarah had mentioned that she had met another expat wife who said she had made her husband get a vasectomy before he started a new position at his company that required him to travel to China for months at a time, saying to him, “I’m not naïve; just don’t make any children out there.”

  John had remarked, “Well, that’s not a good sign of trust, is it now?”

  This was before Sarah had found out about John’s own extra-curricular activities, and she had said, “Yes, but I suppose it’s realistic. He clearly doesn’t have any issues with his manhood!”

  Then Jason had shocked them all by volunteering, completely unprompted, “I’d have a vasectomy, if it were important to Sarah,” to which Sarah said to him, “Easy there, tiger. You’re not planning on taking any overseas posts without me, are you?”

  On the final morning, Jenny and Dawn led the group in partner yoga, and the two Sara/hs tried various poses like stretching back-to-back in an “arching heart”, feet on the other’s back in a “double downward facing dog”, and other similarly amusing formations. Sarah sent a photo to Jason and the kids, one showing Sara-without-an-H lying on her back, four legs and arms sticking straight up, supporting Sarah-with-an-H in an airplane pose, captioning it, “Look at Mommy flying!”

  After she got back, Sarah brought up the marriage counselling conversation with Jason. Did he think they needed counselling, she asked. He looked at her, a little stunned, but answered, “Maybe. Probably doesn’t hurt to check in with someone, I guess.”

  They hadn’t had any huge blow-ups since the now-infamous Lee Hsien Loong fight, but the arrest still hung over them heavier than the haze ever had, and they seemed to be living their lives in parallel, Sarah passing off the kids to Jason when he got home from work, then retreating into the bedroom. After the kids went to sleep, sometimes not finding much to talk about, they had just been parking themselves in front of the TV and watching whatever show or movie Jason had queued up on Netflix, Sarah having her laptop open in front of her, breaking the “one screen at a time” rule she had always subscribed to.

  Their nights out with the Crew had become strained as well, with Sarah feeling like she had to police Jason’s drinking, keeping tally of how many beers he had drunk, or reminding him with a sharp look to slow down. She had become an unpleasant version of herself, harping on her husband for drinking too much, hating how Jason acted when he tipped over the edge, apologising to everyone around them, even as her friends told her honestly that no one but her was bothered by it.

  She messaged Gina, her friend with the husband who had brought home the giant ham, asking if she knew of any American marriage counsellors practising in Singapore (Sarah knew it sounded horrible, but she also knew that neither Jason nor she would be able to stand being talked to and judged by someone with a heavy Singaporean accent).

  Gina responded with a few names, adding, “This is a good thing you’re doing; it really is.” Sarah knew her friend was right, but couldn’t help wondering if they had made a big mistake by moving to Singapore. A year ago, she could not have envisioned she would be dealing with her husband’s arrest nor considering marriage counselling.

  chapter 20

  RUMOURS

  SARAH COULD HARDLY believe it – her baby Eric was about to turn three years old. He was already a little man, strutting around in his red glasses and charming all the security guards, who called him “The Professor” and asked him for high fives every time they saw him. One morning, he came into Sarah and Jason’s bedroom even earlier than usual; it was still pitch dark outside when he tapped Sarah gently on the arm and put his face up close to hers, whispering, “Hi, Mommy, can I get up now?”

  She was grateful that he hadn’t just screamed from his bed, which is what he usually did, even after they had converted his crib into a toddler bed and he could come and go as he pleased, so she snuck out quietly, grabbing a pair o
f shorts and a T-shirt from the drawers and getting dressed in the bathroom while brushing her teeth at the same time.

  “Do you need help changing out of your pyjamas?” she asked Eric, before realising he was already in regular clothes. “Did you change out of your diaper, too?” she asked, shocked.

  “I did!” her baby responded.

  “And did you brush your teeth?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes?” Eric answered, uncertainly.

  “Did you, really?” Sarah asked, dubiously.

  “Yes,” Eric said again, smiling shamelessly.

  “Silly boy,” Sarah said, poking him in the belly.

  “I’m tricking you, Mommy,” he said. He hadn’t yet discovered sarcasm, but he would soon enough.

  Sarah didn’t want to risk waking Ruby by going into the kids’ bathroom so she told Eric he could brush his teeth later, and suggested they go down to the café and get a chocolate croissant, to which he happily agreed.

  Eric was simply delightful in the mornings, full of giggles and kisses, which she extracted from him repeatedly and unabashedly. On their way to the lifts, Sarah stopped to admire the pool, artistically illuminated in a way that would rival any resort hotel. But as they turned the corner, they saw a figure lying in the doorway of the unit just across from the lifts. It was a man; he was curled up in a foetal position, and Sarah was relieved to see that he was at least breathing, his body moving up and down rhythmically as she and Eric approached.

  “What the man?” Eric said, and Sarah stifled a laugh. Jason had had a habit of saying, “What the…” and then trailing off, which Eric had started copying; after Sarah asked both father and son to please stop saying that phrase, Eric cleverly started adding “man” at the end of it, likely after hearing Jason say, “Aw, man!” In this case, it was actually somewhat fitting; Sarah responded, “Shhhh, let’s just go around him.”