by Ovidia Yu
It was that little laugh that made Aunty Lee decide she detested this man the same way she detested the little smiling faces that people used to end unpleasant text messages, like “We read over your menus and find they are not suitable for us :).” That smiling icon was confusing. Aunty Lee was never certain whether it meant “I’m joking” or “I’m happy” or “I’m just smiling at you for no reason even though I never smile at anyone I meet in person.” Now the unpleasant young man was transposing the most annoying part of text messages into real life.
“And you’ll perform the operation yourself?”
“I’ll take very good care of you. You’ll be better taken care of than you would be in any hospital, believe me. It will be personalized care specially tailored to your needs.”
“What guarantees do I have that it will work? What if I pay through the nose for this procedure and my knees end up worse than ever?”
“Oh, don’t worry. Once we take you on as a patient, we guarantee that you will be happy with the results. Of course you will have to be reasonable. There is a possibility, I will admit that—no operation can be one hundred percent guaranteed—that is, there is a possibility you may not be satisfied with the results immediately. But if you are patient we will keep going until you are happy with how it feels. That is what I can guarantee you. And for sure you will be better off in many ways than if you decide against doing the procedure. Are we agreed?”
“Just one more thing—but this is important. I want to know where you get the body parts from. I heard Indian prisons sell dead bodies of rapists and drug addicts to medical schools to teach anatomy. I don’t want you to put some Indian drug addict’s cartilage in my knees. Are you sure you are using Chinese people’s body parts?” Aunty Lee tried to look prejudiced and racist.
Another smirk from Dr. Yong. Apparently he anticipated such racism.
“Remember that China woman you asked about at the party that day? She’s not my girlfriend. She’s a business contact. She is the one who can guarantee the body parts are hundred percent Chinese.”
By now Aunty Lee was walking her guest/blackmailer out of the front door. She hoped he would not notice there were no trees, rambutan or otherwise, near the porch of her house and wonder at Nina’s message. Fortunately his phone rang, even as he said: “Don’t worry, Mrs. Lee. You can leave everything to me.”
He glanced at the ID and ignored it. There was a bleep as a text message followed. What it said made Edmond autodial someone and shout: “What shit are you talking! How can the power be off?”
Aunty Lee could hear a woman’s voice on the line, also shouting, but could not make out her words. She heard enough to tell it was English—not Wen Ling, then.
“What’s happening?” Aunty Lee asked eagerly, but she had been forgotten.
Edmond stumble-ran across the driveway with the phone still clamped to his ear. He dropped his keys before he could unlock his car. His hands were shaking too hard to drive and he sat for a moment, ignoring the man in a long-sleeved T-shirt and broad-brimmed sun hat trimming the hedge beyond. He dialed again.
“What the hell did you do?”
Aunty Lee walked to her “gardener” in time for them both to hear Edmond shout, “They turned off the power supply at the house. Everything. You’re supposed to keep everything running!”
Though Edmond Yong was not paying any attention to them, Aunty Lee and Salim remained apparently engrossed in the bougainvillea hedge till he had backed out of the driveway and the car disappeared in the direction of the main road.
“The police force not paying you enough, is it?”
“Nina was worried. She doesn’t trust that man. She said you were alone in the house, thought he might try to drug you or kidnap you or something.”
Aunty Lee was touched. She was touched too that the officer had taken Nina—or Edmond Yong—seriously enough.
Back in the library, they found Nina had already thrown out the remaining puffs (a sign of clear displeasure). She said to Aunty Lee, “You are not seriously going to let that man go anywhere near your legs!”
Aunty Lee did not answer. She had returned to her favorite seat facing the portrait of ML Lee above the serving hatch through which Nina had listened to the interview with Dr. Yong. What would ML have thought if he, instead of Nina, had been listening?
“Did you hear that young fart call me ‘old people’?” Aunty Lee demanded of the portrait. “And imply people think I poisoned you?”
ML Lee smiled out of his portrait, saying nothing. He might have found a replacement for his deceased first wife in Aunty Lee but she had no intention of replacing him.
She had been sitting there for almost an hour by the time Salim and Nina returned.
“How are your legs feeling?” Nina asked Aunty with exaggerated sweetness.
“I am feeling much better,” Aunty Lee replied. “I think maybe I will go out tomorrow and join that gym your friend works at.”
“I don’t like that man. I don’t like him coming here.”
“Because he threatened me? I don’t think he’s going to do anything. He just wants to scare me because he wants to work with me. Some people think fear is only way to make people behave.”
“And he says our food no good but he keeps on taking and eating. All the time he is talking he is eating. But, madam, if you suspect Dr. Yong, how can you even think about going for operation under him?” Nina wailed. Her Filipina accent was always exaggerated when she was upset.
“Of course I’m not going to go for the operation. I just want to find out more about how they operate. I suspect Edmond Yong has been working with illegal organ transplants. Maybe Mabel Sung found out about it. She may have been tempted to get them to heal her son if the prayer and faith healing didn’t work—or maybe she did ask them and it didn’t work and she was going to tell on them, so they had to silence her and get rid or her son because he was evidence of the illegal surgery!”
“Ma’am, nowadays with postmortems and everything, you still got evidence, what.”
“Yes, but this is Singapore. They give you a quick look-over, find out what you died of, then poof, you’re cremated. Next thing you know you are a pile of ashes inside a nice pot in the columbarium. No way anybody can open up the pot and find out what kind of previous operations you had!”
Nina, with her nursing training, had more faith in hospital records than Aunty Lee did, but it was no use talking to her boss in one of her superspeed moods.
Salim, who had changed back into his uniform, held up his phone now.
“Power company says power supply to the Sung house was terminated till further notice by the owner’s request. Same thing with the water supply. So it can’t have been Sharon Sung that called Edmond Yong just now if she asked for the power to be cut off.”
Aunty Lee thought about it. She couldn’t prove it but she felt the first call had been from Sharon. It had probably been GraceFaith who had instructed that power and water to the house be cut off. This was not entirely surprising given that no money was coming in and Sharon and Henry Sung had moved out. And GraceFaith would not have minded making Edmond Yong a little uncomfortable.
But why had Edmond’s caller been so upset? Had he someone in the house with him? Someone caught in the middle of a hot shower perhaps? No. It was more than that. She had seen shock, fear, rage, and loss in Edmond Yong’s reaction to news of the power cut to the empty house.
“He had something in the house,” Aunty Lee said to Salim.
“We checked through the whole house that day,” Salim said. “There’s nothing there.”
24
Anne Peters
It was not the gym that Aunty Lee headed to the next morning. She had woken up with the sense that she was missing something.
“Where are you going so early?”
“For a morning walk. Walking is good for the health. That’s why they build so many parks for us. You even see ministers walking around when there is no election com
ing. It must be good.”
“What are you up to now?” Nina asked suspiciously. She sounded like one of those harried domestic helpers trying to keep hyperactive children out of trouble. “You want me to make egg for your breakfast?”
“I have to deliberately meet someone and make it seem like a total coincidence. Not very easy these days,” Aunty Lee said. For a moment she thought wistfully of the fresh food markets of the past. In those days you knew where you were likely to find people, whether they preferred freshly caught fish, freshly cropped vegetables, or chickens slaughtered on demand. Walking around the market, you could get your day’s food, news, and exercise at your own pace.
“I’m taking my phone with me. If that GraceFaith sends me anything, you phone me right away, ah!”
Anne Peters was out walking Tammy, her sweet-natured “Singapore special.” Mycroft had brought the mongrel puppy home for his mother after she had not left the house for three months following his sister’s death. Now she walked with Tammy two, three times a day. And when she was home, the dog stayed devotedly by her side. There were definitely different ways of healing, Aunty Lee thought.
Tammy greeted Aunty Lee with her customary delight. Tammy was always overjoyed to see everyone. After Tammy had licked and nuzzled Aunty Lee and had her head scratched, Aunty Lee continued walking with Anne Peters as Tammy returned to the joys of sniffing the trails of dogs gone by.
“Something on your mind, Rosie?” Anne Peters looked mild and gracious. But people who knew the family believed Mycroft’s Queen’s Counsel brains had come from her.
“Mabel Sung. Mycroft mentioned that you used to know her quite well.”
“He told you Mabel tried to match her Sharon to him, I suppose. Poor boy. He never recovered from that. But I told him he should be flattered. Obviously his qualifications overcame any qualms she had about his being Indian.”
“You think Mabel was racist?”
“Actually no. Not more than any average member of a majority race. I think Mabel tended to classify people by how useful they could be to her.”
“You knew Mabel Sung before she became a big-time lawyer. You probably knew her better than most people. Do you think Mabel could have killed herself and her son?”
They walked on for a while in silence after this, led by Tammy’s nose and curiosity.
“I think Mabel would be willing to kill someone else to save her son. But I don’t believe she would kill herself.”
“Leonard was always her favorite, wasn’t he?”
“Oh yes. The boy was a holy terror but he could do no wrong in her eyes. Sharon was too like Mabel herself. She was just an extension of Mabel. I always felt that Leonard was the other side of Mabel, the wild side that she never got the chance to explore. But I always got the feeling that there was some of that wild side in Sharon too, only it never got the chance to come out.”
“Sharon seems very focused on taking care of her mother’s legacy,” Aunty Lee said. “I would say she’s trying to prove herself except I don’t know who she is trying to prove herself for.”
Anne Peters laughed ruefully. “Daughters can be difficult. For years my Marianne thought Mycroft was my favorite because I kept pushing her to do better, to try harder. All along she was the one I was thinking of. I knew Mykie would be all right somehow. No parent will admit it, but good children can be a bit dull.
“But compared with Leonard Sung,” she continued, “I would take a dull child anytime. For years Sharon must have seen her brother as Mabel’s favorite. Their parents spent a lot of money sending Leonard away to college in America. They gave him an allowance, paid for his expenses, his apartment, his car. Sharon got her law degree at the National University of Singapore on a scholarship. Yes, of course they would have paid for her fees and her books, but that was nothing compared to what they spent on her brother and Sharon would have taken that for granted. She didn’t even move into the college dormitory because her mother said she would be more comfortable at home.
“When Leonard dropped out of school and got mixed up with bad company, his parents didn’t know what to do. They got him into another college, he dropped out again. They went over to talk to him, they sent friends to talk to him, but as Henry said, it was only after Sharon made them stop sending money to him that he finally came back to Singapore. And by that time he was already sick.”
“Sharon must have thought it was very unfair that her parents took her doing well for granted but made such a fuss over Leonard,” Aunty Lee said. “I heard her telling people at the prayer and healing meeting that since what happened to Leonard was his own fault, it was ridiculous that people were putting so much effort into praying him better.”
“You went to prayer and healing meeting?” Anne Peters asked.
Aunty Lee nodded. “Mabel called when ML first got diagnosed.” She was only prevaricating a little.
Anne Peters nodded. “I’ve had a heart problem for some years. IE, infective endocarditis. I was told that since I have a damaged valve, the infection could have come from something as basic as bacteria introduced through a scratch on my gums when chewing or flossing. Anyway it didn’t kill me, I carried on with my life. Then this absurd, odious little man came and tried to convince me to pay the earth to get a transplant. He implied my poor dead daughter’s memory would be destroyed if I didn’t pay up. Plus I would get a brand-new healthy heart valve. Can you believe it? I told him to get lost and if I ever heard from him again I would call the police.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“I thought he might have got his information from Mabel Sung. I didn’t want to get her into trouble with the police. And to be frank I didn’t want to drag up poor Marianne again. You know what the papers can be like. I know what it’s like to worry over a child. I didn’t want to cause Mabel more trouble. Rosie, you’re not being blackmailed into doing something, are you?”
“Oh no,” Aunty Lee said with perfect honesty.
“Don’t you agree it’s easier to forgive people who wrong you on impulse than people like that man who plan it? I don’t understand people like that. Is it worth it?”
“My helper Nina always says, if we are all parts of the same body, some people are ingrown toenails and should be cut off.”
This got a smile from Anne. “She’s Catholic?”
“I believe so.”
Anne nodded, as though this helped her decide which folder to file the observation under. Poor woman, Aunty Lee thought. She was still trying to find meaning in her daughter’s death.
“Have you seen Henry since?”
“He seems a bit lost without her. I suspect Mabel made all the decisions for them.”
“Some men are like that.” Anne Peters smiled. “As long as everybody knows they own the car, they don’t mind being driven around by a chauffeur.”
“But in his case it was true, wasn’t it? Mabel was the one running the successful law firm. Henry was semiretired. Because of his Parkinson’s, he couldn’t operate anymore.”
They had reached the gate of the Peters house by now. Anne unlatched it.
“I don’t know about that. There were rumors of trouble in paradise for a while. Apparently Henry was angry about how much money Mabel had spent on Leonard. Many men just aren’t very good around sickness.”
“You’re not saying Henry would have done something—”
“I’m not saying anything,” Anne said firmly. “Except I would advise you to stay away from Mabel’s schemes. I know she’s dead but you don’t know what tangled webs she’s left behind. And there’s Sharon, you said she’s taking over the law firm?”
“She’s trying to save it, I think.”
“The problem with Sharon is she’s too much like Mabel. No matter what, she would always have been either a shadow or a competitor. She never had a chance while Mabel was alive.”
“And now?”
“Now I suppose she’ll carry on where her mother left off and do whatever Mabel wo
uld have.”
Back home, Aunty Lee could not decide whether she had learned a lot or nothing at all. There was the shape of something vitally important in the mass of details that Anne Peters had shared with her but she could not figure out what it was.
She sat down on her bed. She could hear Nina operating the vacuum cleaner in one of the other rooms. She was glad both that Nina was in the house with her and that she was not in the same room. She wanted to process the teeming thoughts in her head in private. But since her loss of ML, her fear of being alone had grown. How had this happened? Rosie Lee had always thought of herself as the strong, independent one. Now she felt she would rather be dead than alone. What was going to happen to her when Nina left to go home?
Aunty Lee shook her head. This was still part of the grieving process, she told herself. It could go on for years. She was lucky because having time to grieve was a luxury. Some women who lost their husbands had to worry about feeding themselves and their children. How would she have coped with feeding five, six, seven little Rosies and MLs? Aunty Lee had to laugh at herself and the image this conjured up. Now Mark and Mathilda were independent and she only had to look after herself. The least she could do was stay healthy and happy. She knew the best way to do that was by staying active. But now Aunty Lee’s Delights, which was supposed to take care of that, had also been taken away from her.
The photographs in the bedroom were some of Aunty Lee’s favorite portraits of ML. Their wedding portrait held pride of place over the bed. They had not gone through all the traditional marriage ceremonies but Aunty Lee was wearing the phoenix collar and kebaya that had been worn by ML’s mother as well as by his first wife. It had made her feel accepted by them as well as by ML (who was looking at her instead of at the camera). Well, one good thing about being alone was that ML was not around to worry about her.
