by Yeoh Jo-Ann
He dashes out of the staff room, taking care to use the least popular exit, and down the back stairs. It is three o’clock. Too late for lunch, too early for tea. Perfect.
Mrs Chan is ready with his cup of tea—he called her from the phone on Dennis’ desk five minutes ago. Sukhin wants to take his tea and scoot off, but as usual she needs him to indulge her in a little small talk. If Mrs Chan didn’t make such a good cup of tea and if she wasn’t so obliging, Sukhin would not allow her these trespasses—he never speaks to the man running the junior college bookshop, who once sold him a dud pen and refused him a refund.
“You getting thinner, Mr Dhillon.” She stares at his shoulders, his stomach. He half expects her to make him turn around.
He assures her that he’s not getting any thinner and takes a step away to actively discourage conversation.
“All the children, very stress. You? Teacher also very stress?”
Indeed. “The children are stressful, Mrs Chan.” The children are so bloody needy.
“Last time, you young, you also stressful.”
Touché. Sukhin is amused in spite of himself. He bows, startling his tea mistress. “Back to work. See you in the morning.”
Mrs Chan manages a parting shot before he can move out of range: “Don’t stress. And cannot just drink tea ah, must drink water, okay?”
The tea break, even the banal chat with Mrs Chan, is a welcome distraction. Sukhin is having a particularly lousy day. He has to reset an entire exam because one of the trainee teachers thinks she might have hinted too much at what the Wuthering Heights excerpt would be in next week’s nineteenth-century paper.
“They were so worried, and I just wanted to make them feel like they could do it. I’m so, so sorry. I’m such an idiot!” She found him at Dennis’ desk this morning and cried for a whole half-hour while Sukhin watched the clock and wondered just how supportive he had to be, given the magnitude of inconvenience she was causing.
“Lynnette, it’s fine.” No, it isn’t. But I have to get to work. Work that you’ve created.
“I’m such an idiot!” Yes.
“Please calm down. Everyone makes mistakes.” Yours is just stupider and more of a time-suck than most.
And this morning, he took thirty-eight and a half minutes to get to work after his run. It’s the first time he’s timed himself in a very long time. The last time was two weeks before his birthday and he’d clocked in thirty-seven minutes, which has been his timing for the last three years, ever since he’d started cycling to work. And now he’s unable to break thirty-eight, even after trying for a week. This morning, he was sorely tempted to skip shaving to see if that would make up for things—but that would have just been pathetic. And he knows he isn’t taking longer to dress or shower—the clock in his bathroom makes sure of that. So it’s just the cycling bit that’s taking a minute longer—a minute and a half—damn.
Is this what happens at thirty-five? What’s next? Or worse, what has already happened or died or given way that he hasn’t discovered yet?
Sukhin sets down the paper cup of tea, grimacing. Renchun, Dennis’ neighbour, sees him and raises his eyebrows.
“You okay?”
“Have to reset the paper for next week. God.”
Renchun’s eyes widen. “Aiyoh. What happened?”
Sukhin tells him, trying not to be mean about it. But he doesn’t bother hiding his irritation. Why should he? At thirty-five, in the face of rapid physical deterioration, surely he is allowed to be cross with dumbassery as long as he refrains from calling it dumbassery? And that dumbass Lynnette is costing him an afternoon’s extra work, which means he will be late—he still has to get that coffee pound cake from his mother before he goes to see Jinn.
“Wow, Lynnette, you’ve really done it.”
“What?”
“Sukhin is telling everyone in the Maths department how you fucked up the Lit paper.”
“But he told me it was fine!”
“Well, it’s not. Diyana said Sukhin said he will never let trainee teachers breathe onto exam questions again.”
“I really really didn’t mean to do it. Should I talk to him?”
“Are you kidding? It’s Sukhin. I think you should just pretend not to exist for the rest of the week.”
“Stop that. We’re not supposed to eat in the library.”
Jinn has the foil-wrapped coffee cake on her lap and is sneaking a slice out of the tear she’s made in the packet. “Sure.”
He frowns. “You’ll make everything sticky.”
“I won’t touch you.”
It’s raining and they have decided to venture farther away from Chinatown for proper cover, into the depths of the National Library instead of their usual rainy-day coffee shop on Keong Saik Road. Sukhin is poring over his much-marked-up copy of Wuthering Heights, trying to find a passage to replace the one he’d previously chosen for the exam. Stupid Lynnette.
Why did it even have to be a stodgy essay question? Why bother? Maybe ten of his first-year students will be able to consider, structure and write a clear essay on any text in any of the exams they’re about to take; the rest will muck about until the middle of next year trying to find their footing and then miraculously pass their A-Levels—it’s the same story for every batch of students he’s ever had. If only he could set a quiz instead, like the ones his Russian literature professor at university used to deal out at random.
What is the colour of Heathcliff’s eyes?
What season is it when the narrator first encounters Heathcliff and family?
What is the name of the dog that has just had puppies in the first chapter?
Next to him, Jinn eats another slice of cake, engrossed in an issue of Singapore Tatler. On the cover is a couple on a sofa, in what looks like an obscenely expensive apartment. They are dressed in black, flying goggles around their necks, rugged and stark against the soft beige tones and flowing fabrics of the rest of the shot. Against his will, Sukhin’s mind drifts. What kind of scene is being played out here?
Hey, darling, shall we get kitted out in modernist pseudo-aviation gear and watch television?
Great idea—let me plug in the wind machine first and change the curtains. It’s time we saw leather juxtaposed with bleached linen around here.
“Cake?” Only half of it is left.
“No. All yours.”
Later, when she gets up and takes a walk to stretch her legs, Sukhin picks up the magazine. The headline on the cover reads: “Power Trip: Carey and Ching to Conquer the World”. He would never have thought Jinn to be the type to read society magazines. Is this a sign that she’s having doubts about the vagrant life, that she wants to return to more prosperous times? Her family is markedly well off, he recalls—large, tasteful house in an old-money neighbourhood, quiet, expensive furniture, both girls indulged with esoteric hobbies and language lessons. It must be brutal for her, living on the streets after decades of a life in which cold showers could be considered physical assault, and surely this is all well past the point of novelty. He knows he is being unkind—he knows that she isn’t driven by anything as daft as novelty or the need to experience the other side, that hers isn’t an indulgent journey of self-discovery (Don’t Eat, Pray, Love?)—but there’s a big logical gap somewhere. Or, more likely, there’s a whole chunk of missing data.
“... I can’t talk to anyone because I will only say terrible things. I must go. I’m not coming back—count on that. Forgive me for what I do.”
Her recital of the note springs on him at random moments on most days, but never in full. Sometimes he only hears the beginning; sometimes, like now, the end. But his thoughts are always the same: why walk away from everything and everyone, when you can just ignore it all? And that becomes the cue for him to wonder when this will all end—at some point, she’ll realise she didn’t have to walk away and then she’ll go back to whatever’s left of her life and do her own laundry and get her own cake.
On page seventy-
two is a double-page spread dominated by a photograph of a woman in a bright red dress perched on a table, surrounded by cakes and pastries of different shapes, sizes, colours and textures. The header reads “Queen of Tarts”; her smile is big, bright and beatific. Her face is familiar—why? Sukhin reads the kicker.
“‘Never look before you leap,’ says our entrepreneur of the year. It’s certainly worked for her—in just two years, lawyer-turned-baker Teo Ping Hwa has turned an old family cake shop into boutique pâtisserie Advocakes and Solicitarts, where reservations must be made months in advance, even if you’re visiting royalty. Sue Selvarajah grills her on the subjects of risk, family and the perfect pandan chiffon.”
So this is what Jinn’s sister looks like perfectly coiffed and dressed by someone else—like someone else. Even the birthmark on her left cheek has been airbrushed off.
He skims the article—a whole slew of gormless details about clothes, a couple of mentions of her past life as a lawyer, more talk of clothes, a brief history on her decision to convert her grandmother’s bakery in Tiong Bahru into a pâtisserie, an anecdote about the Bruneian princess not being able to get a sea salt caramel coconut cream cake, something about the family. Aha.
“Teo politely declines to talk about her sister’s disappearance five years ago, but shares that the family has done its very best to move on. ‘It’s brought us closer, in unexpected ways,’ she says. ‘And my husband has been my rock through it all.’”
Followed by some nonsense about work-life balance, some random titbit about pandan juice extraction, then a trite, formulaic ending.
Sukhin checks the cover—the issue is from a year ago, so most of this must still be accurate. So much drivel, though. Distilled, the article could have been shrunk to a single paragraph. One day, one of my students is going to write something like this and I’ll see it and feel responsible. This sends his thoughts back to the exams, back to Brontë—the children will just have to suck it up and write an essay, for their own protection.
Half an hour later, having decided on the passage he will use for the exam, Sukhin shuts his book, stretches and wonders where she’s gone. He knows Jinn’s propensity to wander off—it’s how they ended up becoming friends, after all.
The girl with the cackle from the concert was in the drama room, talking to Rashid, the leading man. Sukhin was helping with the sets, working on a contraption that would release paper rain from the stage ceiling. He put down his tools quietly and wondered if he should leave. He didn’t know why he thought he should leave—in fact, he knew it was irrational, but at the same time, it felt like the sensible thing to do.
Too late. Rashid was already bringing her over; obviously he wanted to show her the sets. A crude mixture of anxiety and indecision kept Sukhin rooted to where he was. To his amazement, she recognised him.
“Hey, it’s you.”
“Yes. I think I sat next to you at that concert last year.”
“No, no. It was that chem lecture—you fell asleep and I woke you up.” She laughed. “I think I frightened you!”
Oh. That was her, was it? Sukhin felt horrified all over again. “Are you helping with the production?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I just got here. I’m really supposed to be in bio lab but I got bored.”
It became their contraption, the rain machine.
Outside the library, it is raining for real. Torrential. Tropical. The kind of rain the colonial planters on Cameron Highlands must have written home about. In Malaya, dearest, the rain is different. Umbrellas are no match for the monsoon, and we have been stuck indoors for three days. Everything is wet. There must be something like this somewhere in a Somerset Maugham story.
Jinn is sitting on the steps at the edge of the library’s central atrium, an expanse of sheltered outdoor space extending from the main entrance to some sort of stage area. She’s watching the rain. Sukhin sits down next to her. Her face is rain-splattered and her hair is wet, but her eyes have a lively gleam.
“Ready to go?” He wants to suggest dinner somewhere, but she’s never said yes so far, so he keeps quiet.
She nods. “Let’s.”
A rain like this makes everything harder in Singapore. Traffic slows down to a crawl, no, a struggle to crawl. Pedestrians move in slow motion, avoiding puddles, wrestling with umbrellas and slippery sidewalks. Visibility ends at two metres. Tempers are short. Queues are long. The world is grim and wet and dim and cold.
The car park near Chinatown is almost full and it takes him more than twenty minutes to find a space. Silent and glowering, he takes her suitcase out of the boot. She holds his large black umbrella over them both as they walk to her alley, the suitcase skidding occasionally on the slick pavement.
“Fuck.”
She says nothing. Her face is calm as she hangs on to the umbrella with both hands, holding it down against the tugging, insistent wind.
The cardboard house is a sodden mess. The rain gutter along the roof overhang is partly collapsed, the overflow drowning part of the house. Most of what’s still standing is now a wet amorphous blob, the rest roughed up and scattered by wind.
They stand very still; they don’t approach the wreckage and neither knows what to say. Sukhin’s head is full of stupid platitudes; he bites them back. Jinn looks occupied; she is watching a cockroach crawl up the wall behind the lump of boxes.
“You’re coming home with me.”
Sukhin is surprised by how firm he sounds, and even more by how quickly she relents.
Family conference. Sukhin is doing his best to be nice.
“Is this a school project?”
He wishes he hadn’t bothered to ask their permission. “No, Mum, not a school project. But my friend needs some boxes—she’s moving house.” Sort of true.
“And what if we need to move house?” Dr Jaswant still thinks of their box collection as the moving-house hoard.
Sukhin allows himself one eye roll. “We’ve lived here since I was four, Pa. Are you really thinking of moving?”
“No—but the point is to be prepared. In case.”
Doris senses that their son is about to lose patience and leave. She shoots her husband a sharp look. “How many boxes does your friend need?”
“Quite a few—these should be enough.”
Sukhin has set aside about thirty boxes of various sizes—he has an idea for her new house that requires some amount of flexibility.
“Oh! So many! I thought you were cleaning these!”
“I was, Mum—I can’t bring her dusty boxes.”
Doris wonders who this woman is. She can’t remember the last time Sukhin mentioned a friend, let alone a woman friend. Does he have a girlfriend? Or is he at least interested in someone? The prospect is thrilling. She must do her best to help this along.
“Of course, of course—and go ahead, take the boxes for your friend.”
“Maybe not the vacuum-cleaner box, that one is such a nice size for—” But Dr Jaswant is silenced by another, more menacing glare from his wife.
“Take the vacuum-cleaner box, Sukhin.”
“Maybe Punggol.”
Jinn stands at the kitchen window, looking out. There’s nothing much to see—the back of Sukhin’s apartment overlooks the gardening shed and the bicycle lots.
Sukhin has just returned from work and, even after three days, is unsettled to find her at home. He leaves his bag next to the sofa and goes into the kitchen. “Punggol? We can go take a look around after dinner.”
He would have asked her to remain, but she’s been talking about where she should live next since she arrived and he doesn’t know how to approach the subject of her living with him. Not that he’s thought it through—but he’s willing to. Willing, but unable to take the plunge and say, “Forget Punggol, Jinn. Just stay here.”
Instead, after looking up how to drive to Punggol from his apartment, Sukhin loses himself in peeling potatoes for dinner. He will make her a nice casserole. Cauliflower, potatoes and ple
nty of cheese and paprika.
The highlight of the week was the very real chance that the stupidest of all the conversations they would ever have was over and done with.
She wanted to sleep on the sofa. Absolutely not. It would ruin the sofa, he told her. And then she wanted to lay her mat down in the living room and sleep there. Out of the question, he told her. He didn’t want her sleeping among the stacks of books he keeps on the floor or anywhere near the unfinished 3D puzzle of the Guggenheim—it has taken him two months to reach a point where it is starting to look like a building.
“Are you saying I should sleep with you?”
“No!” Damn this woman. He should have just let her sleep on the sofa. “Yes. It’s just easier. There’s enough space. And it’s a bed.” He doesn’t know what else to say. “I can take you to a hotel, if you like.”
“That’s going to be a lot of money.”
“It doesn’t have to be fancy. And of course I’ll pay.”
“I don’t want you to pay for a hotel.”
Round and round they went. By the time Jinn agreed that sleeping with him was the most logical thing to do, he was too tired to find her choice of words even the slightest bit amusing. Overcome with relief that the conversation had finally ended, he even let her take the right side of the bed, which is his side, and now he can’t say anything about swapping without sounding strange and petty.