by Ovidia Yu
Nina was glad Aunty Lee was not there to say: ‘What if there’s a fire in the kitchen and you can’t get out of your room to escape?’ or ‘What if Beth has a heart attack in the night and you can’t get out to give her CPR in time?’
But then, if Aunty Lee were there she would surely have got Nina out of that storeroom and back to Binjai Park. Suddenly Nina missed her plump eccentric boss terribly. And she missed her simple, pleasant room in the Binjai Park bungalow. That was what ‘home’ had come to mean to Nina.
Her thoughts went again to Salim. Would Aunty Lee tell him that Nina was living and working somewhere else for a while? Or would Aunty Lee let him think Nina was successfully avoiding him?
Nina did not know what she wanted him to think. She did not want to worry him unnecessarily – that she was certain of. Her working for Beth Kwuan was illegal, and his police side would not approve. It was already difficult for him to know Nina was helping out in Aunty Lee’s café, though he could see she was not being overworked.
Resolutely, Nina forced her thoughts away from Salim. She was tired and tomorrow would probably be another hard day. She closed her eyes and steadied her breathing. Even if she did not manage to sleep she could rest her body, her eyes, and her mind for the next day. And as usually happened, once she accepted this she started to drift off to sleep. The mattress had the slightly sour smell of stale sweat. Not surprising given how hot the room was – the tiny window not letting in much air. She would wash the bed sheet tomorrow, Nina thought as she drifted off to sleep, and spray sofa cleaner on the mattress. She just hoped there weren’t any bugs …
It seemed that she had barely drifted off to sleep when there was a clattering of poles from downstairs and the sound of angry voices. Or one male, angry voice and a woman’s voice calming and soothing. That was Beth, Nina thought. Because the noise would surely have woken Beth, and if she did not know the man who had climbed in through the window she would be screaming now instead of talking to him. Nina lay in the dark listening. The man stopped shouting. Later, footsteps came up the stairs. As they passed her room there was a hard thump on her door. It was a thump of anger, not of someone trying to get in, which made sense because the key was in the lock and they could get in any time they wanted, though Nina could not get out.
Nina got very little sleep that night after that. She wondered what Aunty Lee was doing; wondered if Aunty Lee missed the evening cup of honey and ginger tea that Nina put by her bedside every night.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Alone Again
Of course, the real reason Aunty Lee had allowed Nina to go away for a few days was that Nina had said Aunty Lee needed her and could not be left alone in the house without her.
If not wanting to leave Aunty Lee alone was one of the reasons Nina wouldn’t marry Salim, Aunty Lee was going to prove her wrong! She would show Nina that much as she appreciated her, she did not need her!
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ Cherril had asked as she dropped Aunty Lee off at the gate of her house that night. ‘Do you want me to get Avon or Xuyie to come and sleep here tonight? I’m sure they won’t mind.’
‘Of course not!’ Aunty Lee said. The thought of having the shy, clumsy Xuyie bumping into her things or Avon fingering them while talking loudly and aggressively on her mobile phone filled Aunty Lee with dread.
She went into the kitchen to put leftovers into the fridge, and switched on the electric kettle that Nina had filled that morning. Then she went, as usual, to sit in the sitting room with her glass of warm ginger tea. The furnishings were so familiar that she hardly saw them anymore. But though she often sat here, alone, in the evenings, tonight the room felt empty.
The sound of insects from the garden and traffic from a distance only made the room feel more quiet. Though Nina had barely been gone a day, it felt as though there was a thin coating of dust and silence over everything. Even the photo portrait of M. L. Lee on the low coffee table seemed distant.
‘Nina will be back.’ Talking to her late husband’s portraits comforted Aunty Lee. A quiet man, he had seldom answered even when alive. ‘I miss her. But not as much as I miss you.’
Nina always moved the photos around when she dusted or when she put Aunty Lee’s evening tea on its little carpet coaster. It was her way of acknowledging both the loss and presence of M. L. Lee. M. L. would not have approved of her sending Nina away, even for a few days, Aunty Lee thought.
Aunty Lee picked up her phone and tried to call Nina. She would say she wanted her back tomorrow, even if that made it look as though she couldn’t do without her. But Nina did not answer her phone.
She was probably busy, Aunty Lee thought. She would wait till tomorrow.
Apart from that, Aunty Lee was surprised not to feel more alone that first night of Nina’s absence. She had half expected an echo of the misery that had enveloped her in the months following M. L.’s death. In those days even getting out of bed had seemed a pointless chore. If we are all going to die anyway, why not just lie in bed and wait for death to come?
But now, being alone in the house felt just a little like being on holiday. Because she knew it was temporary, of course. That made all the difference. Nina would stay at Beth’s house overnight and maybe for another night or two and then she would be back, full of stories, and everything would return to normal.
Mark had called to remind her that they were just fifteen minutes away and that she must text them when she got up in the morning so that they would know she hadn’t fallen down in the night. Aunty Lee agreed.
Cherril had offered to stop by in the morning to drive Aunty Lee the less than 50 metres between her house and the shop in the morning. Also, Helen Chan had sent her a text asking if she wanted to go over for mah-jong or join them for supper after. Aunty Lee didn’t like mah-jong, but staying home because she had turned down an invitation always felt better than staying home because she had no alternative.
Mark called twice more that first night: once to tell Aunty Lee that Selina said she was welcome to spend the night in their condominium apartment though they had no spare room and would have to sleep on the sofa to let her have their bed, and a second time because Selina wanted her to check that her oven was turned off and her gate and doors locked. Selina had never quite got over her discovery that Aunty Lee often left her front door unlocked and her kitchen door open during the day. In the old kampong days, all the village houses left doors and windows standing open to let in air and light. Some didn’t even have doors! Dogs and geese had provided all the warning systems needed.
But Singapore had changed since those days. You no longer knew the parents, grandparents and in-laws of the people living around you. Since the burglary at Helen and Kok Peng’s house, and the public service warnings about break-ins in landed estates had been issued, Nina had made sure their perimeters were locked.
Aunty Lee did a walk around of the house before going to bed. She checked all the entrances (front door, back door, French windows opening onto the patio) as she walked through the house but this routine was really for her to say goodnight to all the photo portraits of M. L. There was at least one picture of him in each room.
It was time for Aunty Lee to change them, as she did regularly, but not tonight. Change may be good, but too much change all at once can make you forget who you are.
Looking at M. L.’s photographs had been painful at first, but now she found them comforting. Several photographs showed the two of them together, the much younger Rosie Lee glowing and happy. And, of course, there were some photographs of M. L. with his first wife and the young Mathilda and Mark. Aunty Lee had promised her husband she would always provide a home and be family for Mathilda if she should ever need it (M. L. had had an old Asian patriarch’s distrust of the white man who married his daughter) and she kept a couple of those photographs on display … but only in a corner of M. L.’s study.
And so to bed? It was never completely quiet in Singapore. There was always the rumble of d
istant traffic, a car passing nearby, dogs conversing, and when even those sounds dropped, you became aware of the wind rustling the trees and whirring of night insects. That was the difference between sound and noise. When you accepted sounds as a familiar background to your environment they stopped being ‘noise’. Aunty Lee stopped by the last photograph, one of the largest, just outside her bedroom door. This one, that she had never rotated out of sight, showed M. L. in his favourite green golfing shirt. He had already been starting to fade but kept going out on the green for his nine holes thanks to golf carts, caddies, and faithful golfing buddies. Aunty Lee knew M. L. had occasionally met Ken Loo at the golf clubs, though they had not played together regularly.
There was something else about Ken Loo – no, about Patty Kwuan-Loo – on the edge of Aunty Lee’s mind, tied up with the house break-ins she had been thinking about earlier. Patty’s house had not been broken into, that was not it. But she had cancelled a dinner party at the last minute (or the day before, which was the same thing when you thought about the time it took to plan, shop for, and prepare to host a dinner) after hearing some friends (Helen and Peng) had had their house broken into. Aunty Lee was not sure but she thought Raja Kumar and his wife, Sumathi, had been among those disappointed. Yes, it had been Sumathi who had told her about it. This would not have been a big deal except that it was the last dinner party Patty Kwuan-Loo had planned.
After that she had retreated into social seclusion. And the next thing they knew, she was dead.
Aunty Lee remembered being just a little jealous of Patty, because she never seemed to have any fears or qualms. And what had there been to be afraid of? Looking back now, all their girlish angst about friends, boys, tests, parents and looks seemed ridiculously distant. They had all been young and beautiful and full of potential in their teens.
With sudden insight, Aunty Lee saw that, if she reached her 80s and looked back, her current self would seem equally full of youthful potential. She was still in a position to do, rather than look back wishing that she had done.
‘I’m alone tonight, but I’m all right. Good night,’ Aunty Lee said softly to the last portrait. It was her way of meditating out loud. Sometimes she did not know what she thought or felt until she put it in words that M. L. would have understood.
It was only when Aunty Lee was already in bed that she remembered what Jonny Ho had said about coming over to persuade her. All that the man had said about new immigrants and investments might be true, but Aunty Lee would not trust her own impressions to commit to a business deal any more than she would trust her financial advisor to choose seasonings for her sauces. However, Jonny Ho was entertaining, especially compared to the demands for money made by Mark and Selina over the years. It would be interesting to see what Darren Sim thought of him. This was a good thought to go to sleep on. There was no hurry, after all.
Aunty Lee could not help thinking about what she would wear when she met Jonny Ho again. So few men paid any attention to how you looked or what you wore, it was a pity to waste one who did. She had no idea, then, of what lay ahead.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tuesday
Tuesday was the first day of the working week at Aunty Lee’s Delights. Aunty Lee was determined that their first day without Nina would run as smoothly as any other day. She had forgotten her resolution of the night. If Nina didn’t marry Salim, it would not be because Aunty Lee needed her.
Aunty Lee had walked over to the café, arriving before nine o’clock, all ready to get to work, only to find she could not get in. Nina had always unlocked the café in the morning. Aunty Lee knew she had her own set of keys somewhere but could not remember where she had last seen them. She called Avon and Xuyie upstairs but they did not have keys either. Aunty Lee had to phone Cherril to come early and let her in.
Cherril sounded sleepily alarmed when she finally answered the phone to hear Aunty Lee saying: ‘It’s me. No need to bother Anne. But can you come down to the shop now?’
‘Aunty Lee? What happened? Why are you here so early?’
‘I am always here around this time, what.’
‘Uhm. Okay I’ll be there soon.’
Early morning had become the only time she and Nina had the café kitchen to themselves. Nina would put a mug of hot soya bean milk next to the list of the day’s bookings, and while Aunty Lee went over the lists of supplies and deliveries needed and confirmed the day’s specials, Nina would start the stock pots and sort the vegetables left outside the back entrance.
Today, Aunty Lee found she didn’t know where the bookings ledger was kept when it wasn’t put on the table in front of her. Neither did Cherril.
‘What book?’ Cherril looked grumpy and sleepy.
‘Do you need coffee? You look half asleep!’
‘I’ve given up coffee. Caffeine upsets the hormonal cycles.’ Cherril was addicted to coffee, but she and Mycroft were trying to start a family. ‘I’m not sleepy. I’m just … ’ She caught sight of herself in the large gilt-framed mirror standing in the corner of the room and yelped. ‘I forgot my make-up!’ In fact, she had forgotten to wash her face that morning, having dashed out in a panic when Aunty Lee called. Rushing out of the back door, Cherril almost tripped over the plastic bins of fresh vegetables wrapped in newspapers. She hurried away.
Aunty Lee hauled the vegetables in and sorted them into what would go into the fridge and the chill room and what needed to be soaked until they were ready for cooking. She could still handle the work; she didn’t need Nina’s help with that at all. What she missed was having somebody there to talk to and bounce ideas off. Nina might not approve of all Aunty Lee’s cooking experiments, but explaining her thoughts to Nina helped Aunty Lee understand herself. She missed that.
‘It’s for her own good,’ Aunty Lee said to the photo portrait of M. L. by the ‘Today’s Specials’ chalk board. This photo had been taken next to one of the dwarf frangipani trees in their garden. Aunty Lee had been standing next to her husband when it was taken but she had cropped herself out of the picture. When that photo was on display Nina always brought a branch of the pink frangipani flowers for the vase next to the photo, arranging the live blossoms over those in the image. ‘I miss her,’ Aunty Lee said to the photo as she removed the wilted flowers. ‘But it’s for her own good. She has to see that I don’t need her to stay with me. It is not easy to find a good man who wants to be good to you. If she marries Salim then they can face whatever happens together.’ M. L., impassive in death as in life, said nothing.
Cherril, her face restored to perfection, reappeared, along with Avon and Xuyie. The girls had probably been watching out for her, Aunty Lee thought crossly. Not understanding timid people, she tried to get through to them by talking more loudly, as though they were deaf, which only made things worse.
‘How did yesterday’s catering go?’
‘Fine. Good. The potatoes they didn’t want are in the freezer,’ Cherril said. ‘And they ate all the basil and lemon verbena leaves garnishing the dishes but other than that they didn’t eat much. A lot of food was wasted!’
‘Did they pay?’
‘Yes. But I wasn’t sure if I should … ’ It was the first catering job Cherril had handled on her own. Aunty Lee had given herself the afternoon off after Nina’s departure. After all, if Cherril was to start taking more responsibility, better she practise on a job she had brought in than on one of Aunty Lee’s old friends!
‘If they paid then it was a success,’ Aunty Lee said firmly. ‘You made a profit. That’s a success.’
‘Thanks.’ Cherril smiled, looking pleased.
Aunty Lee knew that, despite her polished appearance, Cherril Lim-Peters was insecure about many things, especially her limited education. She gave such a good impression that Aunty Lee was always forgetting how hard Cherril had struggled to understand what Mark and Selina and Aunty Lee herself took for granted.
‘Well done. Next time just serve them more leaves, less real food. You can say it is he
althy and charge them more money and make them more happy!’
Aunty Lee was just congratulating herself on how well things were going in the shop, and wondering whether to phone Beth to ask why Nina was not answering her mobile phone, when Jonny Ho turned up at Aunty Lee’s Delights.
‘Hello Rosie Lee!’ The man was standing just inside the entrance.
Aunty Lee was so startled that she dropped the prawn she was carefully slitting to remove its dark string of intestine. People who knew her from her girlhood called her ‘Rosie’ or ‘Rosalind’ without her husband’s surname and everybody else addressed her as ‘Aunty Lee’ or ‘Mrs Lee’.
‘Who have you annoyed now?’ Cherril wondered, only half joking.
But she turned to stare at the handsome man striding across the room towards them (ignoring Avon’s offer to show him to a table).
He had a huge grin on his face when he stopped in front of them and posed with his arms crossed in mock anger. ‘Rosie Lee. Why you did not tell me who you are yesterday?’
He looks like a film star, Cherril thought. Avon, torn between staring and preening, obviously agreed. Shy Xuyie looked scared of him. But then everything scared Xuyie.
Jonny Ho rested a hand on the back of a chair and looked at Aunty Lee with a challenging smile. Yesterday Aunty Lee had been struck by his good looks, and she had heard Helen Chan raving about how meltingly, seductively handsome he was. Aunty Lee remembered the tingle of nervous excitement her first encounter with this man had triggered, but it didn’t come today. The Taj Mahal effect she realized. Years ago, after M. L. sent her on a trip to the monument, they had agreed that if they had heard nothing of it, they would have been impressed. But thanks to a pedantic acquaintance who appointed himself their tour guide, the monument had been a let-down. (Old Vasu meant well. But nothing could have lived up to the hype he had spouted.)
That morning, Jonny Ho’s flirtatious look reminded Aunty Lee of a cat that pretends to release a trapped bird, hoping it will try to escape and provide more sport before becoming a meal.
