Aunty Lee's Delights

by Ovidia Yu

  “Marianne told me that the real reason she went to Washington was to commit suicide.” She looked hard at Aunty Lee, searching for a reaction. Aunty Lee opened her eyes and looked satisfactorily startled.

  “Why would she do such a thing?”

  “Because she didn’t want to upset her family, her parents. But she felt she just couldn’t go on living here the way they expected her to. She could not live with what she had become in their eyes. She thought that if she died over there, they would put it down to depression or even think it was an accident or something . . . Anyway, they wouldn’t blame themselves for it. I thought I had stopped her from considering such thoughts. I thought I saved her when we met. I thought it was like magic, that that’s what brought us together.”

  Carla Saito paused, then added, “That’s the real reason she was in Washington. She didn’t want to kill herself in Singapore because of her family. In spite of everything, she cared very much for her family.”

  “You didn’t tell the police that?”

  “It wasn’t relevant.”

  “Surely it would be just as bad for her family wherever she killed herself,” Aunty Lee pointed out gently.

  “But it would not be something they would have to remember every time they had to look at or pass by the place where it happened. And she said that if she died so far away, they could believe it was an accident or something if they wanted to.”

  Aunty Lee reflected that whatever Marianne’s reasons for wanting to kill herself, she had not wanted to hurt her family.

  In spite of the shock of learning of Marianne Peters’s death, Carla Saito now seemed more in control of herself than she’d been on her previous visits to Aunty Lee’s Delights. At least knowing that the worst had happened took away the raging uncertainty. Aunty Lee knew from her own experience, however, that the physical reality of death had not yet sunk in. In Carla’s case, it would take even longer than it usually did because so much of her relationship with Marianne had been spent apart from each other. Even if Carla’s mind knew that Marianne Peters was dead, her heart would continue waiting for the next phone call, the next blip on the computer screen that announced that her friend was online and waiting to hear from her. It was like being suspended in purgatory with occasional glimpses into hell.

  “Do you need to tell anybody what happened?” Aunty Lee asked. “Won’t anybody back home be wondering where you are?”

  “There’s no one to worry. I quit my job and sold my place. I wanted to tie up all my loose ends, in case I ended up never going back. I suppose I will, though, sooner or later. Meanwhile I haven’t done anything about getting a ticket yet.”

  Aunty Lee filled Carla’s cup of tea from the thermos. It was chrysanthemum tea, said to be calming; Carla Saito might be speaking slowly, but the way her eyes moved constantly over the table and around the room even as she spoke suggested there was a lot of tension beneath the surface. Right now it was blanketed by grief and exhaustion, but Aunty Lee was not going to feed it in any way if she could help it.

  “You were telling me about meeting Marianne in Washington. You said you didn’t want to say anything earlier in case it got her into trouble with her parents?”

  Carla looked at Aunty Lee. “She spent a lot of time in your café, didn’t she? She said she liked it there, that it was like her second home. And she liked you.”

  “I hope so. I think she did. Otherwise she wouldn’t have come.” Aunty Lee smiled. “Marianne didn’t do what she didn’t want to do.” She could tell Carla was not ignoring her query so much as working herself around to a starting point.

  Carla shook her head slightly but seemed to agree. “You knew her family, right? You knew her when she was growing up?”

  “Not really. By the time I married my late husband, she and her brother were already almost teenagers. I think she was eleven or twelve. Her parents were friends of my late husband and his wife. Mark would remember her better. You met my stepson, Mark, at the café that night, didn’t you?”

  Carla Saito remembered and dismissed the subject. “I wish I’d told her to forget her family, let them think she was dead, and just stay with me in Washington.”

  “Should her family blame themselves?”

  “Because she’s dead now? Of course not. Marianne didn’t kill herself. How can you even think that? Didn’t you read about how she was found? Wrapped in plastic bags?”

  Aunty Lee fluttered her hands apologetically. “No, no, no. That is not what I meant. Forgive me, I am an old lady and sometimes I don’t put things very well. I mean, were they responsible for how Marianne was feeling when you first met her in Washington?”

  “No. Or maybe yes. I mean, they were responsible in that they created the environment and everything. Marianne said it wasn’t their fault. She said traditional Indian families in Asia are always overprotective, especially of their daughters.”

  Aunty Lee would have thought that traditional families everywhere in the world were protective of their daughters.

  “I know I talked her out of killing herself that time. I told Marianne if she was going to die anyway, why not just run away, disappear, and start over? Just as bad for her family as if she killed herself, true, but not as bad for her. She would have a new start and they would feel better about it in time. I did not tell you that earlier because I wondered or hoped that something had happened to make Marianne freak out and run off just to get away from them. Her family had that effect on her. So I wanted to speak to family members or someone who knew the family—Laura Kwee and you in this case—to help me find out whether anything had happened in the Peters family just before Marianne vanished.”

  “Laura Kwee?” Aunty Lee asked.

  “That’s why I was looking for her. She told Mari that someone offered us the use of his holiday chalet on Sentosa. Because he’d booked it for a special two-week stay, but his friend had to cancel. He knew she was a lesbian because Laura had found out and told him. Mari was so mad at Laura, so this was like a peace offering. He said she could go look at the place and then decide. But she pretty much decided right away because she said it couldn’t be any worse than this place”—Carla waved her hand to encompass the room—“plus it was free and much bigger, and being in a chalet on Sentosa meant that we wouldn’t be holed up in a room all the time in case someone saw her and told her parents she was in Singapore. But after that, I never heard from her again. And she never canceled the reservation, so I came here to wait for her.”

  “Marianne said it was a man who offered her the chalet on Sentosa? Are you sure she didn’t mention a name?”

  “I don’t think she said it was a guy, but from the way she talked about it, that’s the impression I got. Oh, it was a guy all right. Mari said she thought Laura would have liked her to turn down the offer so she could go to Sentosa with him herself, but she was still angry with Laura, so she was going to accept. She said I shouldn’t be so suspicious of people.”

  “Suspicious? Were you?”

  Carla Saito rubbed her already red eyes. Without makeup, the shadows beneath them were dark enough to look like bruises. “Not any more suspicious than I was of anyone else. That’s the worst of it, right? I was always warning Marianne to be careful, she never believed me when I told her people were interested in her. And then, when this perverted bastard came along, I didn’t sense a thing. I just let her walk right into it.”

  “Stop being so self-centered,” Aunty Lee said.

  Carla looked taken aback. “What?”

  “This is not about you. It is about whoever persuaded Marianne to go to Sentosa with him. He is the one we should be thinking about. You can spend the rest of your life wondering whether or not you should have been more suspicious, but is that going to find the man who might have killed her?”

  “You really think there’s any chance we can find who did this to her?”

  Aunty Lee looked at Carla. For once, she saw no cynicism or sarcasm in her features, only a forlorn person hungering
for hope. Aunty Lee desperately wanted to feed that hope, but she was always wary of making promises to demons and she was not yet certain this tense young woman was not harboring a demon within her.

  “I don’t know whether there is a chance,” Aunty Lee said honestly. “You are still young and strong. You can go away and move on with your life, but an old lady like me, I know that I cannot go on with my life without trying to find out the truth.”

  Whether she was a demon or not, the answer worked for Carla Saito.

  “I want to find out too.”

  “Then tell me everything that Marianne Peters said to you about this person. And anything else she mentioned over the last few months. I want you to tell me everything you remember, down to the smallest detail.”

  In life as in recipes, it was often the smallest pinch of contrasting flavor—the lightest splash of seasoning savored undetected—that made all the difference to a dish.

  Carla Saito pressed a few keys on her phone then handed it to Aunty Lee, who waved it away without trying to read the text message.

  “Better you read it to me. By the time I find my spectacles, I have forgotten what I wanted to read.”

  “ ‘Don’t have details yet but may have much better place for us to stay.’ I called her back right away, of course, but she said she couldn’t talk. She was with people. She said she would call back but she didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police all this?”

  “I knew the police were going to suspect me. They were already asking why I came to Singapore because nobody believes I would fly out here just to see Marianne. If I told them about us, I was afraid they would just blame everything on me and stop looking for the real culprit.”

  Aunty Lee thought about this. “They’ll do their job.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “This is Singapore. Most of our murders here come from domestic disputes and nightclub fights. They will suspect you first because you and Marianne were having a relationship. If you are innocent, they will move on to the next suspect. That is how it works here. By the book and step-by-step.” And of course they sometimes got help from concerned citizens, but Aunty Lee did not mention this. Even in school there were always extra tutors and exam aids to help students ace important tests.

  “Do you think her family will mind if I go to the funeral?” Carla asked.

  Aunty Lee did not know. She did not even know whether there was going to be a funeral at all. What was the correct procedure for burying a murder victim?

  “I will talk to them. But there’s no reason why you should not be there. You can come with me.”

  “Marianne and I did quarrel, you know. Before I came out. That’s why I thought maybe . . .”

  “Maybe she changed her mind.”

  Carla Saito nodded. “It was stupid. I thought she was being too idealistic. Like all the freedom-to-marry, vegan, freegan stuff. I lived in all that. I knew she was just struck by how new it was to her to be involved in a relationship with another woman and feared that it wouldn’t last. I wanted us to be comfortable together. But as it turned out, it lasted for her all the rest of her life, didn’t it?”

  “You triggered the search,” Aunty Lee said to Carla Saito. “That made all the difference.”

  “No, it didn’t,” Carla said bitterly. “At least to Marianne it makes no difference at all.”

  11

  Meal Planning

  “Ma’am. It is wrong.”

  “What are you talking about, Nina?”

  “She said the way they love each other, like husband and wife . . . That is wrong—right?” Nina said.

  The problem with people, Aunty Lee thought, was that you never knew what was going to surface when you stirred a stick in the mud. Of course, some people thought the best solution was to leave aside the stick and enjoy a calm surface. Most of the time Aunty Lee agreed with this. Even the best stock left some questionable debris settled at the bottom of the pot. But then even the best stockpots needed a thorough scrubbing out regularly. The key, of course, was knowing when to let settle and when to scrub.

  “What is wrong to you may not be wrong to them,” Aunty Lee pointed out.

  “But if everybody thinks like them, then there will be no more babies, then what will happen?”

  “I didn’t have babies. Do you think I’m wrong too?”

  This was not the answer Nina had expected. But this issue was too grounded in her core beliefs to be surrendered so easily.

  “Ma’am, that is different. You got married. So if it is God’s will, He will send you babies to bless you. People like them, they don’t even want to get married. That is wrong.”

  Aunty Lee thought Carla Saito and Marianne Peters would very likely have married—and had a happy marriage—if they could have done so. Things were changing. They just had not changed fast enough for Marianne Peters. That, however, was not the issue inside Nina’s head. But what went on between Marianne and Carla was no more Nina’s business than Nina’s beliefs were Aunty Lee’s. She had heard Nina’s attitude before, though expressed by other people and directed at other targets. The “desperate decency of the respectable poor” held true at all levels.

  “We are going to close the shop for a while. One week, at least. I want you to e-mail all the people on the mailing list and tell them. And phone everybody who left orders with us. Tell them we’re very sorry, but we’re going to be closed for—better say two weeks.”

  “Ma’am! We cannot do that!” Nina forgot her philosophical problems with lesbians, given this practical dilemma. “Don’t close the shop! What will people say? If you don’t feel well, then I will prepare for them the orders—and I will look after you, of course, ma’am. But you cannot close the shop!” To Nina, who had been helping Aunty Lee since the establishment of Aunty Lee’s Delights and who knew how quickly a business could fail, this was madness.

  “Nonsense. Nobody is going to starve to death if we close the shop for a few days. And we’re going to be very busy. First we are going to make two big yam cakes for the Peterses. Even if they don’t feel like it, they should eat, and they are going to be getting visitors over. And tell them that if they let us know when they are arranging the wake and service for Marianne, we will provide all the food. At such a time they shouldn’t have to think about food, but people still have got to eat.

  “Then,” she continued, “we are going to get in touch with the people from the last wine dining and tell them that since they cannot leave Singapore yet, they can come to our place to eat . . . say between eleven a.m. and three p.m. every day. Then they can come for a late breakfast and lunch, and, if they want, take something away for tea and dinner.”

  “But why, ma’am?” Nina had whipped out her iPad and was already entering notes to herself even as she objected. “It is sad but it is nothing to do with us. Better we just help Aunty and Uncle Peters at their house. I can make for them one big pot of curry; anytime they are hungry, they can eat with rice or bread or naan.”

  Aunty Lee nodded at the food suggestion but said, “It is our business. Marianne and Laura had nothing to do with each other until the wine dining business. And that phone of Laura’s was left outside my shop. Whether or not these people had something to do with what happened, they are part of this business now and they have to eat!”

  The Peters family accepted Aunty Lee’s offer and curry gratefully. Mycroft Peters brought over a note from his mother saying how touched she was.

  “And she said we probably have enough plates and glasses and things. But if possible, you should bring your own helpers because the blasted maid has disappeared.”

  “Komal?” Aunty Lee remembered the small dark girl who had been with the Peters family for several years. “Did you make a report?”

  “No. Not yet. The same day we got the news about my sister, she just took off. Father said she might have been scared by the police or superstitious about Marianne. Anyway, he said no point doing anything about it now,
she may turn up in a couple of days. Until then we can manage on our own. Cherril is helping Mother take care of things.”

  “If we can be of any help . . . I could send Nina over. Here she has only got one old woman to look after.”

  “Thank you. I will let Mother know. Anyway, I should be getting back. The police are at our place looking through Marianne’s things. They seem to think she may have been seeing somebody without us knowing. We told them it was impossible, but I suppose they have to follow procedure. I think Mother asked me to bring her note over to get me out of the house in case I lost my temper with them and got arrested.”

  Aunty Lee looked thoughtful. “You used to have a temper. As a small boy.”

  “I suspect my mother thinks nothing has changed.”

  “And you?”

  Mycroft paused. “I think Cherril has been good for me,” he said, surprising Aunty Lee. “When I flare up about something and she doesn’t understand why, she makes me explain it to her. In detail. Over and over until she understands why I’m angry. And by then I understand why I’m angry and somehow I’m not angry anymore.”

  Aunty Lee smiled to herself. Cherril Lim-Peters was smarter than she looked.

  After Mycroft left, she told Nina, “I wish we could find that girl somehow.”

  “Do you think something happened to her too, ma’am?”

  “I don’t know. But I would like to make sure she is all right. Too many people are disappearing.”

  “Like her boss say maybe she is just scared by the police, so she run away? Where some people come from, the police are not like in Singapore.”

  Aunty Lee knew that was true. Sadly, she suspected Singapore police were not like their HD-TV American crime-solving colleagues. They were human beings without any supernatural or extrasensory abilities and they got tired and made mistakes. It was a good thing for all concerned, then, that Aunty Lee, whose investigative skills were ultradeveloped from years of being kaypoh and who, being truly kiasu, never stopped just because she was tired, was coming into the game.