Travails of a Trailing Spouse

by Stephanie Suga Chen

  “Yeah, seriously, I’m right there with you,” Sarah responded.

  “Anyways, we’re all really excited, and of course I am hoping for a little girl,” she said, and Sarah could picture it already – Chad and Ashley, Lucas and a baby sister; it was wonderful and beautiful and she was so happy for her friend.

  “We have other news, though,” Ashley started ominously.

  “Oh no, what? Are you having twins?” Sara said. “If they are girls, can I have one?”

  “Not twins, no! But, with the new baby coming, the apartment is just not big enough for all of us,” Ashley explained.

  “Ah, you’re moving,” Sarah said. “Boo! When?”

  “When our lease is up at the end of the month. We’ve already found a new place, a landed house up by the Botanical Gardens with its own pool and a big yard with room to run around. Y’all are of course welcome to come any time!” Ashley answered.

  Sara turned her mouth down in a sad face. “Aw, man! So soon!” she said. “But that sounds amazing. And we will definitely come to visit.”

  “It sounds fantastic, Ashley!” Carys said. “I’m sure you will love it.”

  Sarah nodded in agreement. She wondered if Jason knew; had CS told him already? She and Jason had finally started talking to each other after the week of silence, but it wasn’t back to normal, far from it.

  Just around the time all their fingertips had turned into prunes, they were called out to their individual treatments, Carys and Ashley opting for facials and Sara and Sarah going for a “couple’s massage”. When Sarah had asked everyone what treatment they had wanted so she could make the bookings, Sara had pointed out a special Thai massage listed on the spa’s treatment menu, describing it as stretching and bending and “not recommended for beginners”. Sarah was sort of intrigued; she normally didn’t get massages as she didn’t like strangers touching her body, but this sounded a bit more interesting. When she called to make the reservation, the woman on the phone asked if they wanted to be in the same room, and Sarah had agreed.

  As instructed, they put on shorts and T-shirts and were led out of the locker room by two female massage therapists dressed in crisp white uniforms, down a quiet hallway, to a room that had a raised wooden floor and a connecting bathroom. One of the therapists asked if they wanted any tea or water and left to get the drinks, telling them to just relax and do some light stretching.

  When she returned, she told them they would then be blindfolding the two of them. The Sara/hs looked at each other in surprise.

  “Is that necessary?” Sarah asked, wondering what they had got themselves into.

  The therapist answered, “Yes, ma’am, it is easier for you to focus this way.”

  Sarah looked at the other Sara, who shrugged and said, “OK, I guess let’s do it.”

  They accepted the blindfolds, which were made of light muslin cotton that let in some light, so not as frightening as the vision Sarah had conjured up in her mind. Over the next hour, she was subjected to a variety of stretches and even some throws, including one where her therapist stood back-to-back with her, lifted her off the ground, turned her to the side, and gently placed her back down. Sarah laughed through it all, commenting, “I am so curious what we look like right now.”

  Sara also snickered, saying, “I’m pretty sure I’ve never been in this position before. I’m not sure how this is possible, but my elbows feel like they are two feet above my head.”

  Sarah really wanted to take a peek to see how her friend was positioned, but her own arms were twisted around her body as her therapist rotated her neck in the opposing direction like an oddly-formed pretzel.

  As they lay on their backs during the ending, cool down segment, Sarah relieved when the therapists said that the “hard part was over,” Sara said aloud, “So… I have something to tell you as well.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re pregnant, too!” This time Sarah couldn’t resist moving her blindfold a little so she could see Sara’s expression. Her friend was lying calmly on her back, facing the ceiling, as her therapist massaged her calf muscles.

  “No…” Sara said, still facing up, not realising that Sarah was looking in her direction.

  “What’s up?” Sarah asked uncertainly.

  “So last week my old boss sent me an email, saying they needed someone to run a team in Sydney, where they are expanding their Australian operations,” Sara said, slowly.

  “Oh my God! Sydney? Did they offer you the position?” Sarah asked.

  “Well, at first she just asked if I was open to discussing it, so we set up a call for the following day to talk about it,” Sara said.

  “And…?” Sarah prompted.

  They talked for over an hour, her friend said; the position was very appealing to her and right up her alley. Sara had told her she would definitely be interested depending on what the compensation package looked like.

  “Then, yesterday I got the formal written offer,” she finished.

  “Ah! How is it? Better than your old salary, I assume?” Sarah said, removing her blindfold completely now.

  She could see Sara smiling as she responded, “Yes, quite a bit higher, and they’ll cover the move, of course, AND they’ll give us a housing and education allowance for the kids, and a trip home every year for the whole family, business class. That’s way more than John’s getting.”

  “Sara, oh my God! Seriously? That is so amazing! Are you going to take it? What did John say?” Sarah asked.

  “He was pretty excited actually, although they want me there, like yesterday, and he still has some things here he wants to finish up,” Sara said, saying that John had started searching right away on his company’s internal job board to see if he could find a new position in Sydney as well. But, she said, after Sara had told him the salary and benefits, and that the job was perfect for her – she had worked with a couple of the same people back in Denver, and had rolled out a similar programme for the Vancouver market a few years before – John had told her he was OK with moving without him having a job in hand, actually saying to her, “Maybe it’s my turn to take on the reins at home with the boys.”

  Sarah couldn’t hide her surprise, saying, “Wow! This is so incredible. So you’re going to take it, like, really, you’re moving to Sydney?” The Hendricks had taken a short trip late last year there and Sara had absolutely loved it, gushing about the weather, the playgrounds and the people.

  The therapists told them that they were finished and could head back to the changing rooms. Sara finally took off her blindfold and said, “Well, that was pretty cool. And yes, I think I’m going to take the job! We’re moving to Sydney!”

  As they walked back down the hall, they chatted more about what the job would entail, all the logistics that would be involved for another international move, where to live, schools for the boys, etc. Sarah asked, “So how long are you going to ‘give’ John to take a break for?”

  The other woman grinned, saying back, “Oh my God, I was ridiculous, wasn’t I? I mean, who talks like that, really, in this day and age?”

  Sarah patted her arm and said, “More importantly, though, are you going to get some ‘me time’ now?”

  Sara laughed out loud, “Yeah, John and I had a talk about that, too.”

  “What?! Oh my, what a big week for you!” Sarah said. “You confronted him, really?”

  Not exactly, her newly empowered friend said, but she had looked at him in the eye and made it clear that whatever was going on, wherever it was going on, needed to stop.

  Sarah was so impressed that for once she had nothing to say to Sara, someone whom, truthfully, she had often felt sorry for, thinking her friend needed help out of a borderline abusive marriage, and now it was the other Sara who was showing her how to take charge of one’s life.

  As they waited for Carys and Ashley to come back to the changing room, Sarah realised that during that one, short afternoon, just like that, the Crew had broken apart.

  chapter 29
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  IN LIMBO

  WITH CARYS MAKING a swift exit from Singapore, Ashley settling into her 3,000 square foot landed house, and the other Sara busy coordinating her move and her new job, Sarah found herself spending many mornings on her own, sometimes just sitting by the pool, ostensibly reading a book, but mostly just lost in her own thoughts. She had been in Singapore almost two years, and, in that period, had felt more conflicting emotions than she could ever have imagined.

  Singapore itself was a paradox, caught between the east and the west, the north and the south, as American as it was Chinese, which meant to say, it was neither of the two. It wasn’t trying to, of course; it positioned itself as a bridge between cultures, but partly because of all the linking and joining, and partly because it was just so small and new, it was left without a distinct culture of its own. Singaporeans would argue that it absolutely did have a culture – the food, the language, the kiasu (“can’t lose” in Hokkien) mentality of most of its people – but in actuality, all of these qualities could be found in other, larger countries, except perhaps Singlish, which seemed to Sarah to be really and truly, uniquely Singaporean (although, when they were in Malaysia later on, Jason would argue that Malaysian-English was pretty darn close).

  But as much as Sarah found many aspects of Singapore inauthentic, in particular anything related to American culture, one area that she felt she had the ability, and perhaps right, to opine on, she had to admit that there were so many unbelievable things about living here – finding any kind of food, from $2 chicken rice served wrapped in paper to a three-star Michelin restaurant; walking into any mall, or hawker centre even, and discovering a very clean bathroom; leaving your phone in a cab and having it returned just a few hours later; praying at the Buddhist temple located across the street from a legal brothel; being able to live your life completely in a bubble if you wanted, frequenting only stores and restaurants of your own country, speaking only your native language, making friends with only your fellow countrymen – this was all possible in Singapore.

  Indeed, Singapore had a love/hate relationship with foreigners, with the government releasing a white paper indicating that the country would need continued recruitment of new permanent residents and citizens in order to keep Singapore’s population from shrinking; at the same time, locals were growing increasingly resentful over the recruitment of foreign talent, many brought in to train and manage the local workforce.

  The education system was also quite closely managed and it was difficult for foreigners to enrol in the local school system, getting last pick of available spots and not guaranteed a space like citizens or PRs. Likewise, Singaporean citizens were not permitted to enrol in an international school unless there was express approval by the MOE, and that was only granted on a case-by-case basis. This, no doubt, contributed to the “us vs. them” mentality that she often felt when interacting with locals.

  She also hated how locals made assumptions about the United States, although, Sarah had to admit, most were fair – yes, gun crime was terrifying; yes, the US income tax rate was much higher than Singapore’s; yes, most American schools were not as competitive or stressful as Singaporean schools.

  When she was in a particularly bad mood, however, she would deliberately lock horns with locals having opinions about the US, challenging them in their thinking. Homicides by guns was a tiny portion of the overall causes of death in the US, she would argue; the media sensationalised the mass shootings, which in reality, were quite rare. She was fine with paying a higher tax rate, she would say, as many other things were cheaper in the US vs. Singapore – compare the cost of a car, a big house, a bottle of wine. As for schools, she would simply make a comment about Singaporean students being proficient in rote memorisation but lacking in creativity and end the conversation in a huff.

  She went for coffee with another group of Manchester mothers; they were from China, and they were very wealthy, in a different way from many expats, who had come for jobs and had salaries to spend but perhaps not sizeable savings. These women, most of whom had gained their affluence through small businesses grown over a single generation, bought brand-new condo units in Singapore sight-unseen, with 100% cash. They arrived with their children, usually one but sometimes two, but not their husbands, who stayed back in China to run the businesses while the mothers enrolled the little emperors and empresses in international schools to learn English in preparation for everyone’s eventual goal: a move to the US.

  Sarah had formed a casual language hour which met from time to time, where she would speak Mandarin and the other women would try to speak English, with Sarah correcting them when necessary, which, honestly, was quite often. Like many Asian learners of English, they could read and write quite proficiently, but when it came to pronunciation and conversation, they still had a way to go. Conversely, however, while Sarah knew that her Mandarin was far from perfect, the other women rarely corrected her unless she asked, leaving Sarah wondering if these sessions were really helping her improve her Mandarin at all.

  Naturally they were fascinated with Sarah, asking her questions about American culture, quizzing her on her Ivy League education. Two of the women had recently got braces at the same time, urged by their husbands, who told them that Americans all had straight teeth and that they wouldn’t fit in if they didn’t get their teeth fixed. It was true, Sarah thought; Americans did have a rather irrational obsession with teeth, but she didn’t know how to express this sentiment, with the right amount of humour, in Chinese.

  The women had their own issues with Singapore, complaining about how Singaporeans spoke Mandarin, worried that their children would learn both poor Mandarin and poor English. They would be relieved, however, when they discovered that the international schools catered specifically to the community of expat children in Singapore and were completely free of Singlish, and that, due to the number of Chinese nationals who had flooded Singapore in recent years, the advanced Chinese language classes at most international schools were, impressively, at a level that would satisfy them.

  They were generous, almost obscenely so, always offering to take Sarah to lunch or bringing back gifts from when they went back to China during school breaks and holidays. They were modest in many ways, like when Sarah asked how they had met their husbands and if it was love at first sight, and they covered their mouths self-consciously, blushing at the thought, but when it came to money, they were exceedingly open, asking unabashedly how much Sarah was paying for rent, and how much her husband made. When Sarah demurred, saying modestly that Jason didn’t go into science to make money, the lunch offers came even more vehemently, the other women insisting on “paying her back” for the English lessons, wanting to help their friend, the poor professor’s wife.

  She actually admired the women immensely, the sacrifices they were willing to make for the sake of their children – staying in Singapore for months at a time by themselves, managing their children’s upbringing, no small feat in today’s age of not only academics, but music, sports, and a slew of other after-school activities. Although they had seemingly unlimited amounts of money at their disposal, the language and cultural barriers made it difficult for them to live at ease. They were reluctant to hire foreign helpers with whom they couldn’t communicate (China was not on the approved list of countries from which a domestic helper could come), and who they feared might steal from them.

  In the children, whom Ruby and Eric would sometimes play with at the pool, Sarah could see the real implications of China’s one-child policy. While the children were spoiled beyond her imagination, given the best of everything, they carried the weight of not only their parents, but two sets of grandparents, who would visit often in turn, no doubt causing much consternation for the mothers. Sometimes Sarah would see a grandmother leaning over a child, sitting outside at the table by the pool, reviewing a workbook that was undoubtedly not assigned homework from his school, but given by the grandmother as extra learning. This only child, borne from two only
children, was the single point on which all eyes were focused; Sarah wondered how he or she could possibly function, let alone succeed, with this amount of pressure.

  Jason and Sarah went to a comedy show at a club off Arab Street, walking up the back staircase to the second floor and taking seats in the middle, not wanting to be called out by sitting too close to the front. The tickets included one drink each; Jason, to his credit, ordered a Coke and Sarah pushed the thought out of her mind that they were “losing” money by not ordering alcohol.

  As they sat sipping their drinks and looking around the room, Sarah suddenly asked Jason, “Do you miss Chad? You guys used to have such fun together and now that they’ve moved, we’ve hardly seen them. Unless you guys still hang out on your own?”

  Jason shook his head. “Nah, just a few texts now and then. He’s pretty busy, doing up the new house and stuff. And get this, he’s into gardening – now that they have a pretty decent-sized backyard. Last I heard, he’s spending weekends at the nursery, trying to decide between chili peppers and, like, basil, or something.”

  “Are you sad?” Sarah asked, curiously.

  Jason shrugged, not one to get overly emotional. “He’s got other things to do; it’s cool.”

  The night started out a bit tepid, with the MC attempting to warm up the crowd with some raunchy jokes, but the show quickly hit its stride with an Indian comedian doing a full bit on white privilege. He homed in on a Caucasian man sitting next to an Asian woman in the front row, easy fodder for the “yellow fever” jokes that he had lined up. He joked about religion, how nirvana was not the ultimate liberation from the cycles of rebirth, but was, in fact, being reborn as a white male.

  “You know why babies cry so much when they’re born?” he said. “Because as soon as they come out, they realise they aren’t white. WAAA! But have you ever seen a white baby boy being born? All smiles, baby, all smiles.”