After dinner, they all headed back to the beach bar; CS attached his phone to the sound system to play his own music and asked the bartender to pour 14 Jaeger bombs, ordering everyone to throw them back one after another. The girls gathered together, partly so as not to make Carys feel like a seventh wheel, but mostly because their husbands were off horsing around out of sight on the dark beach.
The three women tried unsuccessfully to get Sara drunk – she was a lightweight and didn’t drink much, claiming she had only been drunk once in her whole life. They ordered kamikaze shots and lemon drops, but she held stubborn, nursing a tall, fruity cocktail for most of the night. Later, Chad and Ashley wowed them all with some truly spectacular dance moves, this a rare night that Ashley was participating whole-heartedly in her husband’s antics.
As they walked up the beach back to their rooms, it was only a little past midnight but it felt much later; the island was still and quiet, and the sea and sky black. The Hendricks and Lees relieved the young girl who had sat all night out on their outdoor chaise, the kids not making a peep the entire time.
At check-out the next day, the wives held their breath as their bills were presented, not knowing how much damage had been done at the bar last night. A moment of silence passed as they looked at their totals, then at each other, relieved, saying, “That doesn’t look so bad.”
It wouldn’t be for another month when they were back in Singapore that they would all receive emails asking for payment for additional charges that had not been transferred from the beach bar to their main tab, ranging from $60 for Carys to $250 for the Sanderses, emails having the long subject line: “THANK YOU FOR STAYING WITH US - UNPAID DRINKS BILL FOR STAY.”
chapter 27
UNREACHABLE
SARAH HAD JUST dropped the kids off at school when she received a message from Sara, who wasn’t working that day, asking if she could come up to her apartment “ASAP”. Sarah assumed that it was another Aileen-related emergency; Sara and her helper were like an old married couple, always bickering about something, like the time Aileen told Sara that she shouldn’t cut Jakey’s toenails at nighttime, resulting in a fight that extended for days, with Sara sending a similarly urgent message like today asking if Sarah could talk. This time, however, when she pushed open the Hendricks’ door, which was rarely locked, Sara greeted her in a breathless state, saying to her, “I can’t reach John.”
“What do you mean?” Sarah asked. “Is he travelling for work?”
“Yes,” Sara said, “and he was supposed to arrive back this morning from India, but I just read that a Merlion Air plane, flying in from Bangalore, just skidded off the runway at Changi Airport, and one of its engines caught on fire.”
“Oh my God, was anyone hurt?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know, I’m freaking out,” Sara said, picking up her phone. “He’s not answering any of my calls or messages; I’m going to call the airline.”
Sarah reached for the Hendricks’ TV remote, switched on the local news channel and saw that there were reporters broadcasting live from the airport, the crawler at the bottom of the screen stating that MA Flight 122 from Bangalore had caught fire, but thankfully no injuries had been reported yet.
“Do you have his flight itinerary?” Sarah asked. “Can you call his assistant?”
Sara, still holding her phone to her ear, responded that John didn’t have an assistant; his company ran very lean, even managers several pay grades above John booked their own travel. She couldn’t access his work email from their home computer and she didn’t know his personal email password; she gestured helplessly to the open laptop on the dining table.
“Crap,” Sarah said, racking her brains for any other ideas. “Does he usually take Merlion Air?”
“I don’t frickin’ know!” her friend exclaimed, setting her phone down on the counter and putting it on speaker, the hold music mixing with the TV broadcast.
“It doesn’t look too bad,” Sarah tried to reassure her, focusing on the TV screen. “Even if he was on that flight, it looks like there weren’t any injuries.”
The news programme was showing footage from earlier that morning of the Singapore Civil Defence Force putting out the blaze, and it reported that the fire had been completely extinguished in a matter of minutes and that all passengers had been safely evacuated. The scene switched to a live feed showing the plane, sitting at the end of a runway, with no apparent activity going on around it.
They watched the scenes loop a few times while waiting for an answer on the phone; after about 10 minutes, Sara put her hands on her head and said, “God, I just can’t take this any more!”
Sarah had never seen her friend this upset. Even when she was exasperated about Aileen or complaining about John being gone, she had always kept an even keel. Trying to help, Sarah switched off the TV, picked up her own phone, and sent John a message through every program she could think of – text, email, social media, chat and messenger programs – asking if he was OK and to please call his wife as soon as possible. She then looked up the main number for John’s company’s office in Singapore and followed the menu options, but was unable to get a live person on the phone, so she left a brisk message to have someone please call her back regarding the whereabouts of one of their employees. As she was leaving the admittedly strange message, she heard a voice finally pick up on Sara’s phone.
Sara quickly scooped up her phone, switching it to the handset mode, yelling into it, “Yes, I’m here, I need to check to see if my husband was on that flight that just caught on fire.” She frowned, undoubtedly being told that they could not provide any passenger information.
“Please, his name is John Hendrick; it’s an emergency, can you make an exception?” Sara pleaded. Another pause.
“Tell him that you know he was on the flight; you just need verification,” Sarah whispered.
Sara put the phone back on speaker, repeated what Sarah had suggested to the airline agent, but to no avail. Again she was told that passenger information could not be provided without verification; if she wanted to, she could go down to Changi Airport, to Merlion Air’s main ticketing office in Terminal 4, present her identification and their marriage certificate, and only then would they release his flight information, if he was indeed on that flight.
Sara grabbed a pen and took down the information, gave the person on the other end of the line a terse thanks, and ended the call.
“They want my marriage licence? This is crazy.” She looked at Sarah. “Do you think I should go down there? Am I crazy?”
“What about any of his colleagues; can you get a hold of any of them?” Sarah suggested.
“Good idea,” Sara nodded, scrolling through her contacts to see who she could call. “I am so pissed right now, I can’t even tell you,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, he told me his company is super nuts about security, never giving me his passwords, but what do I do in an emergency?!”
Sarah saw that all of her friend’s frustrations of the past 18 months, maybe longer, had been building up to this moment; even though the news station was reporting no injuries, and it was possible John wasn’t even on the flight at all, the fact that John was unreachable had finally caused Sara to snap.
“I mean, this is insane, right? Who doesn’t tell his wife where he’s going, what flight he’s on, what hotel he’s staying at, ever? Am I crazy?” Sara asked again.
Sarah, whose own husband travelled perhaps once or twice a year on a faculty retreat or scientific conference – and she and the kids often tagged along for the latter – could only shrug her shoulders. When she had been working and on the road often, sure, she provided Jason with all her travel information – her assistant’s number was on his speed dial, he knew all her passwords, he had access to her calendar – but she didn’t want to make her friend more upset by mentioning it.
“When he gets home, we’re going to have a talk,” Sara continued, her worries turning into anger.
“Au
drey!” she said suddenly, recalling the name of the woman who had been at their condo pool the first time the Sara/hs had met, whose husband also worked at the same company as John. She dialled the number and again brought her phone to her ear.
“Audrey? Hey, it’s Sara Hendrick,” she said, visibly relieved that the other woman had answered the call. She was about to say something, when she paused, pulling the phone from her ear and seeing another call come in.
“Audrey, I’m so sorry about this. It’s my husband on the other line, can I call you right back?” Without waiting for a response, she pressed the screen and shouted into the phone, “John?! Are you OK? Were you on that plane? I’ve been going crazy here.”
Sarah motioned that she was leaving and would call her later. Giving her friend some privacy, she walked out of the apartment and headed back down to her own.
Later that night, the Lees and Sanderses made plans to get drinks together. Sarah suggested one of the Manchester Park restaurants that had recently changed management, transforming from an Italian bistro into a Spanish-style tapas bar. Chad came home from work late that day, and since everyone had already eaten dinner, he said he would go grab a quick burger at the hotel bar beside the condo first. Not wanting him to eat alone, Jason offered to go there to keep him company (bro-mance still going strong, Sarah noted), so Sarah and Ashley waited 45 minutes or so, then met at the condo lobby and walked over to the outdoor lounge of the new Spanish restaurant together.
They sat down and ordered two glasses of wine, expecting Jason and Chad to arrive shortly. After another half an hour, however, as they started to wonder why the men hadn’t shown up yet, Ashley’s phone rang.
“Hello, where are you guys?” she said into the phone. “OK… Why?” she asked, then realising that she had been hung up on, she shook her head and said, “Chad says we have to leave, right now.”
Sarah, confused and worried about having already been served drinks without paying, got up uncertainly and followed Ashley out of the lounge. They headed straight for the exit, where they could see Chad and Jason arguing with the host and a man who appeared to be the chef of the restaurant.
“What’s going on?” Ashley asked them, as they approached.
“Nothing, these guys don’t deserve our business,” Chad said, turning and shouting towards the two men, “Nice move for a new restaurant.”
“Please leave now, or I will call the police,” the chef was heard saying.
“Go ahead, call them.” Chad reversed his steps, his eyes raging. “What are you going to tell them? That we asked politely to have some bottles disposed of?”
Ashley pulled him back, but even as she pushed him out of the restaurant, he kept on shouting, “Are you calling them now? Are you? I’ve had some dealings with the Singapore police, and you know what? They aren’t going to do anything!”
Jason, who had been waving his hands aggressively, appeared to want to also shout something, but Sarah hissed at him to drop it, grabbing his arm and directing him out to the street. It was clear from his demeanour that he had taken advantage of the short time he and Chad had been together by drinking who knows how many beers.
Jason tried to explain what had happened, but he was slurring his words so badly that Sarah asked Chad to please take over. Chad said that he and Jason had walked into the restaurant carrying beer bottles from the hotel bar, which they had finished drinking on the short walk over, intending to ask at the host stand if they could dispose of them. Before they could even ask, however, the host started berating them for bringing empty bottles into his restaurant. Chad started arguing back, which brought out the chef, who defended the host, even as Jason tried to explain again what they were trying to do.
It was all fairly innocuous, Sarah supposed, but she and Ashley were tired of the antics from their husbands, and scolded them for causing a scene, Ashley saying to Chad, “Can you just calm down, please!” She herself had only just finished mediating her lawsuit with Jeslyn Lim over the dog and was hoping to avoid any more legal troubles in Singapore from here on out.
Chad, still riled up from the exchange and actually not appearing that drunk, shot back, “Ashley, just one bit of support for me, can you give me that? Not since the day we met, not ever, not one tiny bit.” He turned and walked away in the direction of the mall, genuinely pissed off at her.
Sarah was furious, but saved her lecture until she and Jason got back home, where she first closed the kids’ bedroom door and then their own, so she could go at him at full volume.
“What part of ‘Stay out of trouble’ do you not understand?” she screamed at him. “Are you trying to get us kicked out of Singapore? To sabotage our life? After we’ve left everything to move here?”
At first, Jason tried to yell back, repeatedly saying it wasn’t his fault, but it was clear the alcohol had affected him to the point where he couldn’t form a coherent sentence, much less put up a defence.
Even as she knew it was fruitless to argue with him when he was drunk, the floodgates had opened. Sarah laid everything out – calling Jason second-rate in every aspect of his life, as a scientist, as a husband, as a father. She shouted that he was still obsessed with hanging out with the “cool kids” like Chad and Ian, that he had never once taken responsibility for his own actions, content to float along the water without steering the ship. They had moved their family all the way to Singapore, for his turn to advance his career, and here he was, treating it like summer camp. As the words flew out of her mouth, she knew she was being spiteful and unkind, saying things that could not be later unsaid, but she didn’t care. She was beyond mad; she was utterly disappointed in the partner that she had chosen.
“I’m too good for this,” she spat out. “I’m too good for you.”
Sarah spent the night in the guestroom, explaining to Eric the next morning when he appeared by her side, “Daddy was snoring too loudly.” Despite Jason sending her emails several times a day, apologising profusely and promising not to get drunk ever again, she gave him the silent treatment for an entire week, speaking to him only when she required a response regarding a logistical detail of their children’s lives. The saddest part, she thought, was that the kids didn’t seem to have even noticed.
chapter 28
EXODUS
THE WOMEN PLANNED a spa day and overnight at the Cove Hotel on Sentosa as Carys’s goodbye send-off; she had already passed her students’ files to the relief teacher who would be taking over her classes for the last quarter of the academic year. Sarah booked two rooms using points she had accumulated over the years and never seemed to have the opportunity to use, and was thrilled at check-in when she was told they had been upgraded to suites.
The suite was truly impressive, with a separate living room decorated in deep purples and shiny metallics, floor-to-ceiling windows framed by heavy, velvet curtains, looking out to the glistening sea. The bedroom had thick, soft carpeting and opened up into an enormous bathroom, whose centrepiece was an oversized oval-shaped tub set on a raised marble block.
They admired the rooms as they set their overnight bags down, Sarah asking, “Can I just move in here permanently, please?”
Sara echoed the sentiment, playing with the light switches and saying, “Seriously! What is this place? Do you see the purple light glowing from underneath the bed and nightstands?”
“Someday, girls, someday,” Ashley said, and while the others laughed, they all knew that she was the only one who could actually afford to live in a place like this, all the time, just like Coco Chanel at the Ritz in Paris.
They headed down to the spa, which was as plush as the hotel rooms, each full-length locker lined in velvet containing not only the usual robe, slippers and towel, but also an amenity kit of sunblock, eye cream and moisturiser. As they lowered themselves slowly into the very, very hot plunge pool, Ashley asked Carys how she was feeling about going home.
“I’m OK, I really am,” she said, pretty convincingly. Sarah wondered if Ashley had,
at any point, tried to persuade Carys to not get divorced, or at a minimum, to stay in Singapore so Noah could at least spend more time with his father.
Sarah learned that after the miscarriage, Carys had sat down with Ian and told him he had two choices: he could either agree to an “amicable separation” (his words), which to Carys meant she and Noah would move back to the UK, where Ian could visit with him once a year or so when he was back in town, or an “unamicable separation” (her words), which meant Carys and Noah would stay in Singapore, allowing Ian to see his son regularly, but in return, Carys would divulge, loudly and without restraint, to everyone they knew and anyone else who would listen, what a lying, cheating, piece of utter rubbish he was.
He would not be allowed to have his cake and eat it, too, and Ian, being the man he was, and knowing that his wife had really given him only one option, chose option number one. Now, submerged in the steaming pool with a cool towel over her eyes, Carys really did look quite at peace with herself.
They had only been in the hot tub for a few minutes when Ashley said, “I think I need to get out,” standing up and reaching for her towel.
“Is it too hot?” Sarah asked, at the same time Sara exclaimed, “You’re pregnant!”
“Are you?” Carys and Sarah said, at the same time. They all knew that Ashley wanted to have another baby soon, but she hadn’t dropped any hints about being pregnant until just right then.
“Yes!” Ashley said, face beaming. The girls congratulated her, asking why she hadn’t told them earlier.
“I’m only about 10 weeks along, I just had my first ultrasound and everything looked all right, though.” She looked at Carys apprehensively, but the other woman reassured her, “I’m sure everything will be fine.”
“Wait, were you pregnant the other night with all the nonsense about the beer bottles?” Sarah asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t know it yet! But, boy, was I pissed at Chad. I can’t have him going around acting like this any more; he’s soon to be a father of two!” Ashley said.
Travails of a Trailing Spouse Page 19
