Room for a Stranger

by Melanie Cheng

  Andy bit into a rice paper roll. It was cold and fresh and the prawn was sweet. His father did the same. With their mouths full they had no option but to watch the family in front of them, frolicking in the turbulent sea. Andy wiped his mouth with a serviette.

  ‘Do you remember teaching me to swim?’

  ‘You were scared of the water.’

  ‘Everybody’s scared. At first.’ Andy tried to sound authoritative, but his words were swallowed by the wind. He wondered if his father knew what power he had over him—how his entire self-worth could dissolve with as little as a word, a pause, an inflection in his father’s voice.

  ‘You were right to be scared. The sea is dangerous and unpredictable.’

  As he spoke, Andy understood that when his father saw his cousins leaping and yelping in the water, he didn’t see carefree summer holiday fun—he saw recklessness and stupidity.

  ‘Everything is dangerous,’ his father said. ‘Wind. Water. Heat.’

  Babies, Andy thought.

  ‘Even birds,’ his father added.

  Just then a seagull landed on the patch of sand beside their towels. It eyed the chicken wings on Andy’s plate. His father shooed it away.

  ‘You can’t live in fear of everything,’ Andy said, his voice wavering. ‘I learnt to swim eventually.’

  ‘Because I taught you.’ Andy’s father frowned at the ocean. ‘Accidents are never really accidents. Think of a plane crash—you can always trace it to something. A tired pilot. A screw somebody didn’t tighten properly. A seagull in the engine.’

  Andy didn’t like where all this talk was heading. He was grateful to see Winnie and the children climbing back up the beach.

  ‘Not everything is preventable,’ Andy said as the twins announced their arrival with a splash of water and sand.

  48

  Lately, Meg descended into sleep, and dreams, quickly. Tonight she dreamt she was lying on a hospital gurney instead of a bed. Four round lights shone like perfect moons above her head. She was having surgery, but she was awake. When she looked down at her abdomen she saw that her skin had been peeled away like a banana’s. There was blood everywhere. It was splashed across the blue sheets and the white walls and the masks of the surgeons, who were not surgeons at all but unnamed members of Andy’s family. There was music—the same ‘Over the Rainbow’ that they had played at her mother’s funeral. When the song finished there was a wail, but not from Meg. She felt an extreme hollowness—as if she had emptied her bladder and bowels simultaneously—before Andy’s family passed around what was presumably a baby, swaddled in a white waffle blanket. She could feel liquid oozing from the hole in her abdomen and from between her legs and from the corners of her eyes. The man she assumed was Andy’s father held the bundle out to her, as if it was her turn in some sombre game of pass the parcel. Meg took the package hungrily, relishing the feel of warm limbs and soft flesh against her breasts. But when she removed the blanket, it wasn’t a baby that she saw. It was a parrot. An African grey parrot with a bright crimson tail.

  Meg woke with a start and saw that her sheets were soaked with blood. The trickle between her legs had been real. This was not remarkable in and of itself. She’d had countless dreams of searching for a toilet only to wake up with a bursting bladder. What really surprised her was that when she touched her cheek, she found it was wet with tears.

  It was five am. She would never get back to sleep now. She got up, put on her dressing-gown and shuffled down the hallway to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she peeked under Atticus’s blanket. Unlike her, he was resting peacefully.

  She called the GP at eight-thirty, as soon as they opened. The receptionist said they’d had a cancellation and could fit her in at nine o’clock. Meg slipped on the same summer dress she had worn to go to the beach with Patrick. She took a straw hat from the hook in the hallway and walked out the front door.

  By the time she reached the surgery she was breathless and sweaty. The air conditioning was a relief. She filled a tiny paper cup with water and sat down near the children’s play area. She’d forgotten to take Panadol before her walk and now her knees were throbbing. She rubbed them. There was silver tinsel framing the noticeboard and Bing Crosby crooning ‘White Christmas’ over the speakers. A baby with a snotty nose was chewing blocks of Lego on the mat at her feet. A woman about Meg’s age with plastic tubes in her nose wheezed on the seat beside her.

  Just then a man came out of room number four with a pile of papers and a poker face. There was no telling what had passed between him and the doctor. Meg remembered sitting in the room with her parents when the neurosurgeon had told them that Helen would never walk again. As the doctor spoke, she’d felt the gravity and finality of his words and wished that she’d plunged her fingers into her ears and screamed lalalalala to drown him out, like she used to do when Helen annoyed her. But it was too late. She’d heard her sister’s fate, and once she’d heard it, it couldn’t be taken back.

  Minutes passed. The snotty baby was now munching on a teething rusk and the wheezy lady was flicking through a magazine. Soon the doctor would poke his weary face around the door and yell for Miss Margaret Hughes. Perhaps right now he was reading the ultrasound report, his heart sinking at the prospect of a cancer diagnosis before morning tea. Or perhaps he would call her in, completely unprepared, and read the report for the first time in front of her. She wondered what he would do when it was over. Would he lie and tell her everything was going to be okay? Would he put his hand on her arm and say she’d had a good innings? Either way, she would never know. Because when the doctor finally called her name, Meg had disappeared.

  49

  Winnie called the lawyer’s office as they drove home. Everybody in the car could hear the receptionist’s bored voice through the speakers. There was an appointment free the next day and Winnie said they’d take it. After she’d hung up they discussed logistics. She would accompany Andy’s dad and act as his translator. Craig would come too, to lend his legal expertise. Nobody said so, but Andy assumed he would stay home and look after the kids. He watched his father’s body relax once it had all been organised.

  In Australia it was Winnie who behaved like the older sibling—arranging appointments, taking control. Andy remembered the two deep lines, like cracks, that had appeared on Winnie’s forehead the last time she’d visited Hong Kong. There were no signs of those lines in Australia.

  When they got home the twins were asleep. Winnie carried Maddie and Andy carried Marcus to their matching beds. Andy’s father excused himself and took a shower, presumably to wash away the sand that had, despite his best efforts, crept inside his clothes. Andy lay on the double bed with the peacock bedspread, ignoring the ‘Jesus Loves You’ poster above his head. He wondered what Mrs Hughes was doing. He imagined her in the kitchen, drinking tea as Atticus paraded across the table. But perhaps he underestimated her. For all he knew she could be lying naked under her cream-coloured sheets with Patrick.

  Andy presumed his father would sue for financial compensation. He tried to estimate how much the Rose Street house was worth. In Hong Kong only multimillionaires lived in houses, but Mrs Hughes didn’t seem wealthy. The bungalow was run-down, and she’d once told Andy she’d been waiting two years to have a knee replacement through the public health system. Perhaps Ming would know—his father owned multiple properties in Melbourne. But it wasn’t just the financial stress Andy was worried about. There was something fragile about Mrs Hughes—he’d seen it in her eyes the first time he’d met her. And it wasn’t because she was old. He knew that fragility was not an inevitable consequence of ageing—his own grandmother had been fierce right up until her death at eighty-five. But Mrs Hughes was a different woman from his poh poh. The stranger with the knife had already left her shaken—he didn’t know how she’d cope now if she were burgled by a friend.

  When his father returned from the shower, Andy closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. H
e listened to the pad of bare feet, the metallic click of clothes being hung in the wardrobe. Most of all he listened to his father’s sighs and groans as he moved about the bedroom. When he heard him leave, closing the door behind him, Andy opened his eyes. The curtains were paisley orange and the room had an apricot glow. Listening to the muffled sounds outside the room—the clatter of plates, the TV, the low rumble of adult voices—he had the impression there was more than just a timber door between him and his family. He felt like an insect trapped in amber, imprisoned and alone.

  When he fell asleep, he dreamt of Mrs Hughes’ funeral. Somehow he’d been invited even though everyone at the church was furious with him. It was an open casket and, one by one, guests took turns to say their goodbyes. When Andy reached the front of the line he felt a stabbing pain between his shoulder blades. He fell forwards over the coffin and came face to face with the body. Except it wasn’t Mrs Hughes’ face that looked up at him from the casket—it was his mother’s. She was dressed in a silk cheong sam—the red one Andy recognised from her wedding photos—and her hair was swept up in a bun. In spite of the pain in his back, he felt a rush of euphoria. He’d never seen his mother look so peaceful. It may have been the work of the mortician, but Andy thought he even saw a faint smile on her painted lips.

  He woke up when his father slid into bed beside him. It was dark and the house was quiet.

  ‘What time is it?’ Andy asked.

  ‘Eleven. We tried to wake you for dinner, but you were fast asleep.’ Andy’s father sat up and fluffed his pillow before laying his head on top of it. ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘No.’

  His father turned onto his side then, with his back to Andy.

  Andy concentrated on his breathing. He counted to three in his head. ‘I don’t think you should see the lawyer tomorrow.’

  His father didn’t respond—was it possible he’d fallen asleep that quickly? Andy had never told his father what to do before. The only protest he’d ever made was in the form of a pout and tightly folded arms. His insolent words hovered now like big black balloons above the bed.

  ‘Whether she knew it or not, that woman put your life in danger.’

  Andy had expected anger, but his father’s voice was calm. If there was ever a good time for a confession, Andy thought, it was now, lying in the dark, talking to the ceiling, blind to his father’s reactions. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He listened to his father’s breath as it grew slow and heavy with sleep.

  50

  Meg was breathless when she got home from the clinic. She collapsed on the lounge in the front room and stared up at the ceiling. Atticus was perched on a branch of the small brass chandelier.

  ‘Why did you come back?’ she asked, but for once Atticus was speechless. He flew down and perched on her knee. ‘You’re not going to be rewarded for your loyalty, you know. You’re only going to be abandoned.’ She scratched the back of Atticus’s neck and he regurgitated some seeds into her lap.

  Atticus had often vomited on Helen, but Meg couldn’t remember him ever doing it to her before. Patrick was right when he’d told Andy it was a bird’s way of showing affection. Meg had read it in a handbook about African grey parrots. She took a packet of tissues from her handbag and wiped the vomit off her skirt.

  ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary,’ Atticus chirped.

  Meg picked the parrot up, cradled him with both hands and walked to the front door. Outside, she launched him into the air. She’d seen people do the same with doves and pigeons, but Atticus’s wings only fluttered briefly before he came to rest on the birdbath. He dipped his beak into the murky water and shook his wet head.

  ‘Go on!’ Meg said and waved her arms. ‘Shoo!’

  Just then a man carrying a newspaper under his arm walked past the house and looked at Meg with a puzzled expression. She sat down on the steps of the porch. When she was sure the man was out of earshot she mumbled, ‘You may be smart, but you don’t know what’s good for you.’

  As if in defiance, Atticus flew down from the stone bath and walked up the gravel path towards her. He bobbed his head up and down in a rhythmic dance, his pale yellow eyes gleaming.

  51

  At five am Andy got out of bed and walked to the kitchen. He switched on the kettle and sat down on the dog-haired couch. He didn’t hear his aunt creep down the hallway in her slippers.

  ‘Trouble sleeping?’

  Andy nodded.

  Winnie pulled two mugs down from the cupboard. ‘Coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes please.’ Andy watched his aunt empty a tablespoon of ground coffee into a glass plunger. ‘I was going to make an instant one,’ he said, ‘but this is much better.’

  When the kettle had boiled, Winnie filled the plunger. Seconds later, the smell of roasted coffee beans filled Andy’s nostrils.

  ‘It needs a few minutes to brew,’ Winnie said, turning to face Andy and leaning her back on the counter. She was barely recognisable without her hair done—she looked smaller, less intimidating. They stared at each other in the dark until Andy couldn’t bear the silence anymore.

  ‘Auntie, please, convince Dad not to go to the lawyer.’

  Winnie frowned. ‘Your dad is like me—as stubborn as an ox. We get it from our father. You remember how grumpy your yeh yeh was before he got dementia.’ She turned back to the coffee and gave it a quick shake before slowly and carefully pushing down the plunger.

  Outside, the sky was lightening. Andy could just make out the shadow of the cubbyhouse, the hanging rope ladder.

  ‘Here,’ Winnie said and handed him a coffee.

  ‘Thanks,’ Andy said, taking the mug with both hands. He moved to make space for his aunt on the couch and she sat down beside him.

  ‘You need to tell him what happened. He’s your father. He needs to know.’

  Andy traced the mouth of the mug with his finger. ‘I can’t. He’s not like you.’ Andy thought of his uncle throwing the twins high in the air. ‘I look at your family and wish things could have been different.’

  Winnie laughed. ‘You think I know what I’m doing? Most of the time I’m terrified. I have absolutely zero control over my emotions.’ She stared at a point in the distance as if remembering something. ‘One minute I’m playing with them like a good mummy, and the next minute I’m flying into a mad rage, screaming.’

  Andy thought of his mother, and the feather duster she’d used to beat him. ‘I think you’re doing okay.’

  ‘I’ve made plenty of mistakes.’ Winnie put her hand on Andy’s arm. ‘Just like your parents. Bigger mistakes, probably.’

  He searched his aunt’s face. It wasn’t like her to be self-deprecating.

  ‘I should have driven to Melbourne to visit you.’

  Andy remembered seeing Winnie that day at the café, laughing and drinking. He recalled how alone it had made him feel after everything that had happened with Kiko. But he didn’t want his aunt to feel bad. ‘I’m not your responsibility.’

  ‘I don’t mean it like that—you’re not a burden. I just mean I should’ve been thinking about people other than myself.’

  It struck Andy that his aunt spent most of her days thinking of people other than herself—cooking and cleaning for the family, looking after the twins, ferrying them to and from their various after-school activities.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, patting his knee before standing up, ‘you should tell him. It might even feel good to get it off your chest.’

  Andy didn’t go back to bed straight away. He watched the sun creep across the floorboards. He knew his aunt was right. Secrets were like cancer—they could devour people. He wished he were more like his father. His father would never swallow a bottle of sleeping tablets. He’d been through worse things than Andy—a sick wife, the death of his parents, the collapse of his cleaning business—and he’d weathered it all, like an old tree through a storm. But Andy wasn’t like his dad. He was weak. Not weak with illness like his mother, or weak with old age lik
e Mrs Hughes—just weak. A coward.

  When the sunlight was lapping at his feet, Andy washed his cup in the sink and tiptoed back to bed. His father was still asleep, and somehow Andy managed to doze off. When he woke it was to children screaming, adults shouting and the violent slamming of doors. His father came into the room, looking frazzled.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Andy said, sitting up.

  Andy’s father was dressed in a shirt and pants, but his hair was wet and he was carrying a towel. ‘Your aunt and uncle are fighting. I don’t think we can stay here much longer.’

  ‘Really?’ Andy wondered if this meant his dad would have to cancel today’s meeting with the lawyer.

  ‘We’re putting pressure on your aunt’s marriage by being here. After the appointment this morning, we’ll go back to Melbourne. I’ll follow things up from there.’

  Andy felt something hard and cold, like a stone, form in his stomach. ‘Dad, I have to tell you something, about the old lady.’

  ‘Save it for the lawyer.’

  Andy could hear his pulse in his ears—loud and fast and fierce. ‘But you don’t know the whole story.’

  Out in the hallway, the twins were fighting over a toy. There was a shriek and a thump followed by an unsettling silence. Andy’s father opened the bedroom door and peeked outside. Seeing nothing of concern, he closed the door.

  ‘Your aunt doesn’t know how to raise children,’ he whispered when he turned back to Andy. ‘She’s not firm enough with them. She loves them too much.’

  52

  It was late afternoon. Meg was lying on a towel beneath the jacaranda. Above her, purple flowers lowered their tiny purple heads. She closed her eyes. Ever since the ultrasound, she’d been feeling overwhelmed. The other day she’d turned the radio on and a piece of classical music, one she hadn’t even known the name of, had prompted a flood of tears. She spent most mornings on the couch in the front room with a book, watching Atticus hop from bookshelf to mantelpiece to windowsill, feeling the roughness of the book’s pages beneath her fingertips and the softness of the cushions beneath her toes. It was exhilarating and exhausting.