Aunty Lee's Delights

by Ovidia Yu

  “Who are you?” Aunty Lee asked. Suddenly she was by the woman’s side, exuding the calm authority animal handlers display when dealing with nervous, possibly dangerous dogs. “I’m Aunty Lee. This is my shop. What’s your name?”

  “Carla Saito,” the stranger replied.

  In the silence that followed this announcement, Nina heard Lucy Cunningham whisper to her husband, “Why did Laura Kwee ask us to meet her here tonight if she’s not coming?”

  3

  Where Is Laura Kwee?

  “Come and sit down,” Aunty Lee invited Carla Saito. Without seeming to have moved, Nina had a place setting ready and crowned with a bowl of bubor cha cha. Aunty Lee steered the tall, thin woman toward it with a firm grip just above her elbow and got her seated.

  “Carla Saito . . . Is your name Japanese? Where are you from? Why are you looking for Laura Kwee? Do you know Marianne Peters too?”

  Carla Saito looked at the bowl in front of her. “What is it? I don’t eat meat.”

  In response to a nod from Aunty Lee that no one else noticed, Nina brought a little pot of (calming and restorative) chrysanthemum tea that she now put with a matching cup in front of the unexpected guest. “No meat,” Aunty Lee said. The hot tea seemed to help and Carla Saito started to answer Aunty Lee’s questions. She was American (her surname came from her Japanese father) and she had arranged to meet up with her old friend Marianne Peters in Singapore—only Marianne seemed to have disappeared.

  “I was just going to wait. I mean, I came in a few days earlier than planned, so I thought maybe she was busy or out of the country or something. I thought I would just wait. She has to surface sooner or later, right? But then Marianne just didn’t show up. I tried to ask her family but they said she’s away, out of the country. Then just this afternoon I heard about a woman’s body that was found—”

  Aunty Lee nodded vigorously. “I also heard! A woman’s dead body found on Sentosa!”

  “And I suppose I just panicked. I started imagining all kinds of horrible things—I know it sounds ridiculous but if—”

  “Why did you come here to look for her?” Aunty Lee asked. Her face was kind and concerned, her complexion so beautifully fine that even the papery wrinkles that appeared as she smiled spoke of gentle affection rather than age. But then Aunty Lee sniffed and looked puzzled. She looked at Carla Saito, who was sipping from her glass of chrysanthemum tea, then leaned in slightly closer and sniffed again. For a moment Aunty Lee looked more like a sniffer dog than a human cook.

  “What is it?” Carla Saito asked.

  Aunty Lee looked delighted to be asked. “You smell healthy,” she said.

  Carla Saito shook her head. “I’m far from healthy. It’s not just jet lag. I’ve been so stressed, I haven’t been sleeping. Even if I could I swear there are bedbugs in the sheets and—”

  “You have healthy blood,” Aunty Lee interrupted. “Just now you said you don’t eat meat. Are you vegetarian?”

  Carla Saito was surprised out of her problems. “Yes—well, actually I’m a vegan. But since coming here, I don’t know—food isn’t always labeled, at least not in English, and I can’t figure out how to explain to people, so I’ve been eating mostly apples and bananas—”

  “You just have to go near the temples to eat,” Aunty Lee told her. “Near temples, sure to have hawker center or food court with vegetarian food. Do you eat onion and garlic?”

  “Onion? Yes, sure . . .” Carla Saito glanced quickly round the room. No one else seemed surprised by this. Selina was rolling her eyes after giving up on trying to get Nina to stop Aunty Lee. Harry Sullivan was listening with detached interest—and helping himself to more wine. Carla could have used some of that wine or ideally something even stronger, but she went on sipping her tea. It was warming her faster than she thought possible and she realized how cold she had been. She hadn’t been eating enough, of course, and her blood sugar and circulation were probably down.

  “I put some ginger in,” Aunty Lee said, sounding as proud of herself as if she had been actually mind reading. “That should warm you up. Then, after that, you can eat some vegetarian food.”

  “It’s not just vegetables, you know,” Carla Saito said, wavering between caution and suspicion. “Just because you take the chicken or the pork or whatever out of the pot, it doesn’t mean the vegetables inside are vegetarian.”

  Surprisingly it was Lucy Cunningham who spoke up. “Some traditional Buddhists are vegetarian on the first and fifteenth day of the lunar month. And most eat vegetarian on the first day of the lunar new year, which was last week. That’s why you can probably get a wider range of vegetarian food than you get in Europe, for example.”

  “Right! Right! True! True!” Aunty Lee said, as though praising a smart student.

  “Lucy reads up on stuff like that and tells me,” Frank said. He looked pleased. “Some of it actually sticks, believe it or not.” His wife gave a polite smile but seemed preoccupied. There was definitely something bothering her, Aunty Lee thought, and normally she would have probed further. But at the moment she had more fascinating fish to fry.

  “You do look familiar,” Frank continued to Harry Sullivan. “Any relatives we might know?”

  “No brothers, no cousins. Sorry, mate.”

  “Trace far back enough, we all have common ancestors,” said Frank Cunningham. “Whether it’s the apes or Adam, eh?”

  “As long as we keep reproducing, we’ll all be related!” Harry Sullivan said. “Of course there’s no guarantee of that. Not with all these left-wing gay activists running around saying men should marry men and women should marry women and babies can be aborted, no questions asked—”

  Harry was looking at Carla Saito as he spoke, but it was Frank Cunningham who responded.

  “Reminds me of a story I know—”

  Lucy Cunningham shook her head but did not even try to stop her husband.

  “An old cowboy sat down at the bar and ordered a drink. As he sat sipping his drink, a young woman sat down next to him. She turned to the cowboy and asked, ‘Are you a real cowboy?’

  “He replied, ‘Well, I’ve spent my whole life breaking colts, working cows, going to rodeos, fixing fences, pulling calves, bailing hay, doctoring calves, cleaning my barn, fixing flats, working on tractors, and feeding my dogs, so I guess I am a cowboy.’

  “She said, ‘I’m a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about women. When I shower, I think about women. When I watch TV, I think about women. I even think about women when I eat. It seems that everything makes me think of women.’

  “A little while later, a man sat down on the other side of the old cowboy and asked, ‘Are you a real cowboy?’

  “He replied, ‘I always thought I was, but I just found out I’m a lesbian.’ ”

  Frank Cunningham roared with laughter as he delivered his punch line. Following his cue, Mark Lee and Harry Sullivan laughed too. Selina Lee and Lucy Cunningham appeared not to have heard anything, and Cherril Lim-Peters said:

  “I don’t understand. How can a man be a lesbian?”

  Aunty Lee knew it would be no use trying to get Carla Saito to say more—at least not before she got some nourishment inside her. Aunty Lee could tell the girl had not eaten for some time—her body was exhausted and on guard.

  Nina brought out a tureen of hot and sour soup (defrosted in the microwave, as it was an emergency) that she placed in front of Aunty Lee.

  “You try this. You will like it. Then you can tell us all about why you are looking for Laura Kwee and why you are running around Singapore in the middle of the night without eating properly.” Aunty Lee ladled out a generous bowlful of the soup and pushed it in front of Carla Saito expectantly.

  “What’s in it?” Carla knew she would probably eat it no matter what the answer was—now that she was sitting down, with the worst of her immediate fears allayed, she realized how hungry she was.

  “Mushroom sto
ck. My own homemade mushroom stock. I use shiitake and wood ear both. Then got bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, and fried tofu. You said you can eat onion and garlic, right? For seasoning, there’s onion and garlic and my homemade vinegar and homemade chili oil as well as pepper and hot sauce. Is it too hot? If too hot, you should take some rice . . . Nina?”

  Nina was already on hand with the rice.

  “And, Selina, why don’t you try phoning Laura Kwee again.”

  “Aunty Lee, I told you Laura already said she won’t be coming tonight.”

  “She doesn’t have to come. I just want to talk to her.”

  Selina tried Laura’s cell phone again. Again there was no answer.

  Mark and Cherril were the only ones still at the table in the inner room discussing wine. Or rather, Mark was talking about wine and Cherril was listening, all agog, prompting him with questions. Nina had already started clearing the table, though Selina had not yet touched her dessert. Selina would have to speak to Aunty Lee about training the girl better. She avoided Aunty Lee’s desserts as a matter of course, not just because she was worried about her weight but because all that coconut milk was seriously unhealthy. But it was still only right that Nina should have asked her before removing her untouched bowl. The Cunninghams, carrying their bowls with them, were walking around the shop looking at the paintings and jars of food on display. Harry Sullivan, having abandoned his dessert but taking his wineglass and a bottle with him, had positioned himself at the table beside Aunty Lee and the strange woman.

  “No need to panic,” Harry said. “Bodies are found in the ocean all the time. Just because your friend doesn’t answer her phone doesn’t mean she’s dead! Look, here’s Selina. Selina, you just heard from Laura, didn’t you? And she said she just heard from Marianne? Selina, tell this worried young lady that Marianne’s fine.”

  Selina nodded. “Yes. Not more than an hour ago. I don’t know where your friend is, but she’s fine.”

  Still, she took her phone outside to try again. She had a few choice words for Laura Kwee herself.

  Laura did not answer her cell phone. At some level Selina had expected this. She was angry with herself for not having foreseen it. But then Selina always expected the worst of people. Her giving Laura a chance to redeem herself had been part of her attempt to show people—show Mark, really—that she could put things behind her and move on. Mark insisted on seeing her as unforgiving, said that she held on to grudges. Of course Selina had argued him down and made him take it back, but the words still stung. She kept coming across examples that proved how wrong he had been to judge her, and it frustrated her that Mark just held up his hands in mock surrender and said he had apologized, the case was closed. It was not just about saying sorry and forgetting it, Selina thought resentfully. Mark had not understood why he was wrong. He had just grown tired of talking to her and wanted to drop the subject.

  “Anything wrong?” Harry Sullivan appeared on the five-foot way. Selina wondered whether he was already leaving and tried to remember whether he had paid for his evening.

  “No—Laura Kwee’s still not answering. I just left a message for her to call me back.”

  “Not likely she’ll call back if she’s not answering, is it?”

  “At least when they ask me again where she is, I can say I’ve tried again.”

  Harry lit a cigarette before continuing. “The whole wine-tasting business is like a ritual, isn’t it? Like the Japanese tea ceremony? It’s very interesting to see how Mark manages to marry it with the serving of food. Can’t be easy.”

  “It’s not.” Selina felt slightly placated.

  “And your friend Laura, well . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Laura isn’t very used to drinking, is she?”

  His wickedly conspiratorial whisper made Selina laugh. She instantly felt better. Most of Selina’s life was spent suspecting and trying to sniff out conspiracies rather than being included in them. Of course, Harry Sullivan was right. Laura Kwee had been very silly at the last dinner and was probably still embarrassed. The only person this reflected badly on was Laura herself, not the organizers of the gathering, as any reasonable guest could see. Selina also liked the way Harry made her feel. They were not exactly flirting—Selina would never do anything like that—but she felt part of a larger, cosmopolitan world when she was around him.

  “I hope you didn’t mind the things Laura said to you last week,” Selina said. “She didn’t mean anything by them.”

  “Oh, I think she did,” Harry said unexpectedly. “That’s why they only came out of her when she was drunk. All the rest of the time it’s repressed inside her. Probably good for her to let it all out once in a while. And today she was probably just too embarrassed to turn up.”

  That was true. It was such a mature way of looking at what had happened that Selina decided to adopt it herself. But she would still make sure that Laura Kwee knew how angry she was. No one would have cared if Laura decided not to show up, but she had phoned saying she would be there, indeed that she would be there early in order to help . . . For the first time a quiver of worry crossed Selina’s mind. It was not like Laura at all not to show up. Laura liked to be in on things, carrying stuff and arranging stuff so that she could make people think she was active and busy and needed. It just wasn’t like her not to turn up for an event like this evening’s.

  But as Harry Sullivan had just pointed out, Laura was probably embarrassed. She had really behaved very badly at the previous gathering, especially to him. “Oh, were we supposed to wait for you to talk about it? But I’ve already finished all my wine!” Laura Kwee had said to general laughter at the first dinner when Mark tried to draw their attention to the slightly sharper, woodier-tasting wine he had chosen in order to complement the richness of the laksa gravy.

  Mark had only shaken his head slightly at Laura’s words. To him, she was an idiot, but he knew that she meant well. The best thing to do in such circumstances was to just let things go. Arguing with idiots just made you look like an idiot too. But Laura had apologized so tearfully and profusely afterward that Mark and even Selina had been placated.

  It was pleasant outside, away from the talk and all the activity that went on around a meal, Selina thought. Even the ashy nicotine odor of Harry’s cigarette did not annoy her as much as it usually did.

  “We should see what’s happening inside,” Harry said.

  Inside, the conversation of most of the guests had shifted from the lesson in wine appreciation that had been planned, with only Mark and Cherril continuing talking softly about the wine business at the other end of the table.

  Carla Saito found she was explaining things to herself as much as to these strangers . . . these kind strangers. The soup was delicious. Her body, contentedly digesting quality nourishment for the first time in a week and a half, finally relaxed.

  “I came to Singapore to meet my friend Marianne Peters,” she said. There were some nods of recognition.

  “Can’t be a close friend if she didn’t tell you she was going to be out of Singapore!” Harry Sullivan said.

  Carla did not dignify that with an answer. “I thought maybe something came up. I was just going to wait. She knew where I was going to be staying, so I thought if I just waited, she would get in touch. But then this morning, when I was in the taxi, the radio was on—”

  Aunty Lee thumped her palm on the table in delight. “You heard about the body, right? I also heard about the body!”

  Aunty Lee was only too happy. “They say that she is unidentified, so anybody who knows anything please get in touch. We should phone them and say that Laura Kwee is missing—Laura Kwee and Marianne Peters, both missing.”

  “No, they’re not missing!” Selina snapped. “Aunty Lee, you’re just being dramatic for nothing. I told you Laura Kwee texted me. She said she couldn’t come. She didn’t say she was being thrown into the sea or anything. And she said that Marianne told her she wasn’t coming either. So please stop ta
lking rubbish and wasting all our time! If you’re so worried, why don’t you call the police? Come on, Mark. Are you finished? We should start clearing up.”

  “I did call the police,” Carla Saito said in a small voice. “But they couldn’t tell me anything. I thought maybe if I could just find out something about the body they found . . . at least I could set my fears to rest.” She looked at Selina, who was checking the bag of leftovers Nina had just handed her. “Do you know what time Marianne phoned Laura Kwee to say she wasn’t coming?”

  “Must have been sometime today,” Selina answered. “Anyway, nice meeting you. Good-bye.”

  “I should be going too.” Harry Sullivan stood and gave an enormous stretch. “Give me a ride out to the main road?” No one took the hint.

  “Marianne came for the first wine dining session,” Aunty Lee said. “She signed up for all five of them, right, Selina? She and her brother, Mycroft, and his wife, Cherril. But then only Cherril is still coming. The others didn’t want to come back after that first time.”

  “They’re busy,” Cherril said quickly. “I mean Mycroft is busy. Something came up. You know what Mycroft is like. He never stops.”

  “Did Marianne know when you were coming to Singapore?” Aunty Lee asked Carla. “She’s away, right, Cherril?”

  “She went on some kind of diving holiday with friends. I think she said they where going somewhere in Sabah . . . Seaventures at Sipadan or something like that. But the phone signal isn’t very good and there’re no phone chargers there, so she’s not taking calls. She said she’ll let us know when she’s coming back.”

  “Surely she must have said how long she’s gone for.”

  “A lot of people took extra leave because of the Chinese New Year, so she may not be coming back until after the weekend,” Selina pointed out.

  “Aren’t her parents worried they haven’t heard from her?” Aunty Lee asked Cherril.