by Inez Tan
“It’s a glaringly obvious mistake,” he said mildly.
She held her tongue but crossed out her answer with such fury that she tore a hole through the page. Since Primary One, every night after Curie cleared up the family’s dinner, they had sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, cleaved by symmetrical stacks of books. It was impossible to avoid him. And now this was becoming a familiar addition to the scene: Edison pointing out her mistakes when she hadn’t asked for his help.
“You know, you don’t have to keep correcting me,” she said, forcing a smile.
“But I have to if your answers are wrong.”
They glowered at each other, each feeling perfectly justified.
Something had changed between them. The ground had split and the gulf was ever widening. Having no choice but to grow up at exactly the same time, the siblings were quickly perfecting the art of living separate lives together. Outwardly, they maintained their routines. They continued studying together at the kitchen table. Their parents allowed them to listen to the radio as they worked so that they could drown out the sound of their younger sister shuffling around the flat, mumbling to herself. (She had severe autism and spent most of her days at the Active Minds Special Needs School, stacking blocks together and knocking them down.) They flicked between Power 98 and 98.7 FM when advertisements came on. Curie liked the music, while Edison did it to improve his understanding of people his age. They even divided the flicking equally.
But now Curie avoided speaking to Edison as much as possible. She felt a little guilty when she thought about it. She knew that Edison had no friends at school, only rivals. At home, the two of them had occasionally chatted about something that had happened at school over a game of weiqi before they went to sleep, but now days could pass without her hearing his voice, except when he was volunteering his flawless answers in class. He made it look so easy, but if anyone had thought to ask her, Curie would have told them that he worked harder than anyone else. He stayed up later than she did, poring over his books, and woke up earlier than she did to do it all over again. On exam mornings, before leaving their home, he looked ill enough to vomit. Lately, he seemed thinner than usual, his brow creased and strained. He had also developed some kind of odd, nervous tic of wiping his palms on the front of his thighs. He must have been lonely, Curie thought.
But for his part, he seemed to be avoiding her too, and going out of his way to make sure it affected her. For example, he had been taking longer and longer in the toilet, for no reason that Curie could discern other than that it annoyed and inconvenienced her. Perhaps he wasn’t lonely at all, not in the way she could be. After all, she reasoned, he knew practically nothing about the world outside his schoolwork. Before their mother excused him from chores so he could focus on his studies, he used to wash their dishes without detergent. Once, dispatched to buy lunch for their family of five, he had come home with one packet of chicken rice and three bananas. There was some basic form of knowledge Edison didn’t know he lacked, Curie thought: for all his genius, he couldn’t seem to figure out that he depended on her.
(Later, she would conclude that her real mistake had been thinking she could be anything like him.)
Their mother often said that she loved them both very much and yet, if only they had been born a year or two apart, they could have saved so much money handing Edison’s things down to Curie. This irritated Curie to no end. When she was applying to junior college, Curie briefly considered taking a different subject combination from Edison’s, one more balanced towards the humanities, which she liked to think were just as worthwhile as the sciences. But her mother’s wistful sighing at the dinner table galled her into deciding to take whatever Edison took just so that her mother would be forced to buy two sets of identical books, which was how both siblings ended up embarking on the same gruelling combination of Physics, Biology, Chemistry and History. It was only as she got back her marks from the May exams that Curie began to realise she might have made a serious error. But even as spite had driven her away from her brother, spite would drive her on.
Besides, the June holidays were just ahead, peeping behind a mountain of schoolwork. She was looking forward to catching up on her studies and her sleep. Perhaps she could even watch as many as two hours of television per week. Furthermore, the Stamford choir was scheduled to make a modest short trip to Malaysia to sing in a festival. She had never been out of Singapore, and she was looking forward to exploring a new country with her choir friends.
“I knew I was forgetting something,” said her mother with satisfaction, when Curie brought her the consent form. “Your uncle said he needed some help at work, and I told him one of you could spare the time. Edison can’t miss his science competition, so you’ll have to do your part for the family.”
Edison was leading a team of students to compete in the World Science Olympiad at CERN in Geneva.
“Our trips take place during different weeks,” said Curie. “What if we took turns helping Uncle Beng?”
Her mother’s face darkened. “Edison needs to prepare himself, and money doesn’t grow on trees,” she said stiffly. “His plane ticket was paid for by the school, but everything in Europe is expensive. Your father and I can’t afford to pay for the both of you to travel the world and have fun.”
“We’ll have to demote you,” said the choir mistress solemnly, when Curie informed her that she was unable to make the trip for family reasons. “It wouldn’t be fair to others to let you keep your position when you can’t be there for your group.”
So Curie spent her June holidays brooding and bored out of her mind. Helping Uncle Beng at work consisted of sitting at a push cart in a shopping mall, attempting to sell mobile phone protectors while her uncle ate long, leisurely lunches and napped in the back of the food court. Whenever she tried to study, her enormous files of notes knocked all the phone cases off the cart, scattering showers of loose rhinestones across the floor. When she scrambled to pick them up, they winked at her mockingly, even as shoppers carelessly crushed them underfoot.
In July, Edison and his team returned from Geneva in a blaze of glory—they had come in first! First in the whole world! Another amazing achievement for Singapore! The whole school cheered as the principal ascended the stage to present the team with their gleaming trophies at morning assembly. Every school day began with the 8am assembly—the students standing in neat rows by last name and by class year, singing the national anthem as the red and white flag slinked limply up its pole. (Windy days were rare.) On Mondays, they sang the school song as well, and that morning, it had been Curie’s duty as a prefect to raise the blue Stamford flag. From her position on the stage, she followed Edison with her eyes as he walked up the stage to shake the principal’s hand. The principal beamed at him, parting his lips to reveal an oblique array of horsey, tea-stained teeth. Together they held the golden, gleaming trophy aloft while the whole school burst into applause. As the noise died down, Edison suddenly straightened and leaned over towards the principal’s standing microphone. He wiped his palms a few times on the front of his thighs, then said hoarsely, “Excuse me, sir, could I please say a few words?”
The school fell silent. Clearly this was spontaneous, and therefore shocking, but everyone was feeling generous. How they loved Edison Chan! Yet Curie felt a sudden twinge of foreboding.
They had gotten into an ugly spat the night before. Edison had been at the kitchen table, lovingly buffing his trophy with his shirtsleeve. Curie hadn’t said goodbye to him before his trip, which she still felt bad about. Feeling that she should at least acknowledge his triumphant return, she paused in the doorway and said, “Congrats.”
She was about to leave when he cleared his throat. Was he going to apologise? She waited. He seemed to take a long time choosing his words. “On the flight coming back,” he said slowly, “I thought I would be glad to come home. I was looking out the window as we flew over Singapore. And everything was so small. The buildings were like toys… I
t was like a dream. For a moment, all of life felt so insignificant.” Setting the trophy down, he pressed his palms to the front of his thighs.
Curie had never seen him in an existential mood before. He always went from success to success; why should he ever be sad? It worried her, which annoyed her, since he was the last person on earth she wanted to be worried about. Instead, she tried to imagine what it would be like to be on an airplane. “I think I would be scared to look,” she admitted. “It would be a long way down.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding, “a long way down indeed.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, and she felt suddenly impatient to leave. “Well, congrats again,” she said, turning to go.
Then he said it. “Well.” He cleared his throat. “It’s good to speak with you again, Curie. Let me know anytime if you need help with your homework. I assume you’re still making many of the same basic mistakes.”
No doubt he had meant this as a peace-making gesture, but Curie’s jaw dropped. He was right, of course, and she had never hated him more. For a second, she simply stared. Then she ran to her room and slammed the door. In the living room, their younger sister Elise started shrieking. Curie sat on the floor, stifling her sobs with one hand and gripping the doorknob with the other in case Edison tried to come in. He didn’t. From the sound of things, he was also ignoring their sister. He had never really liked her. He possessed an almost unearthly ability to tune Elise out; it was as though he could push her completely out of his range of hearing. Curie, meanwhile, remembered that she’d left a pile of incomplete homework in the kitchen that needed as much time as she could possibly give it. About an hour later, when she finally ventured out of her room, she found Edison still at the table with his hands in his lap, asleep or meditating. “Shh, it’s okay,” she said to her sister, whom she supposed looked as red-eyed and ragged as she did. Curie made Elise a hot Milo and helped her find a documentary about deep-sea creatures on television. (Curie had been the first to notice the girl’s mysterious obsession with marine life.) Together, they watched a trio of squids surge through a churning cloud of ink. Edison’s eyes remained closed, his face reflected smooth and golden in the side of his trophy.
Now Curie watched him as he stood before the microphone. Emotions struggled across his face, though she knew hardly anyone else could perceive it. He pressed his palms repeatedly against his thighs. At last he cleared his throat and said, “Everything we’ve achieved—what is it worth?”
A murmur flickered through the crowd. Edison seemed to struggle some more, wiping his palms on his thighs again and again. He took a step towards the edge of the stage and stared down. Curie held her breath.
But then he stepped back. He seemed to stand taller, and he shouted, “What matters are the accolades that will follow!” to thunderous applause.
Curie bit her lip, not persuaded. The previous night, she had dreamed that he was the sole passenger aboard a rocket, flying quietly beyond the moon. In her dream, he’d wiped his hands over and over on the front of his thighs: his mind was the only thing keeping the spacecraft aloft, and somehow that was under threat. Curie’s thoughts drifted, and she barely heard the rest of the announcements that followed (choir receiving only a brief mention, as the festival they attended had conferred no awards).
But the fact of the matter was that A-Levels were now just a year away, and Curie was feeling closer and closer to losing her grip on everything. Her marks were not improving, despite her waking up at 4am to revise her work daily. To avoid Edison, she had taken to studying with a flashlight in the room she shared with Elise—not on the bed, where she would fall asleep, but on the floor, where she sometimes fell asleep anyway. Moreover, since Primary One, she had saved up her pocket money to buy tonics and supplements in addition to those administered by her family. Brand’s Essence of Chicken with Cordyceps and other herbal tonics had helped past A-Level scorers achieve their desired results, according to their TV and print ads (“EXAM IS A GAME! IS YOUR CHILD WINNING?”). In her more desperate moments, she thought about going to the traditional Chinese medicine shops. There, people bought long twisty rhinoceros horns (now possibly illegal) and pigs’ brains pickled in vinegar to boil them into mentally stimulating soups. Tonic ingredients were expensive, so when parents brewed and children drank the stinking liquids, both were performing great sacrificial acts of love.
She had even cultivated the habit of looking through Edison’s notebooks during his long periods in the toilet, in the hope of glimpsing the secret of his success. The margins were crowded with Edison’s sketches of complicated tessellations: pulleys, chains and interlocking gears. There were also copied fragments from works of political theory. He had been reading Plato and Machiavelli and Nietzsche, which Curie thought was pretentious.
Today there was a new note: he had recorded in his printer-neat handwriting, “The ideal citizen is replaceable.”
This, like his other ramblings, was completely useless to her. She closed the book in disgust, knowing that she would be back again the following day with a gambler’s bottomless hope.
Whether Curie worried or suppressed her worries, the results were the same: she made virtually no progress. When she got the results of her third major round of exams, she saw that she had barely limped through Chemistry and failed Physics. As September gave way to October, her marks still failed to improve. She began chewing on her fingers, a habit she acquired from Elise. She had nightmares about leaving pages upon pages of her exams completely blank. Teachers sent home report cards that read: Curie needs to try harder. They also mentioned that if she failed any subject cumulatively for the year, she would be expelled. Her mother would have taken away some of her privileges, except that Curie had none to begin with. There was absolutely nothing to distract her from her work in the Chans’ dull fourth-floor flat. (Her parents might have disagreed—though they had never believed in buying their children whatever toys or computer games that children their age had, they had allowed for what educational recreation could be afforded from a case of illustrated encyclopaedias and three Rubik’s cubes.)
But when Curie was told of her suspension from the student council, she ran to Mrs Lam in tears. Her teacher looked up from marking worksheets. “Mrs Lam, I’m being suspended from my duties as a prefect,” Curie burst out.
Mrs Lam looked shocked. “How come?”
“My marks are too poor. I asked what that had to do with my moral conduct, and the discipline master told me, ‘A prefect is expected to show diligence in all areas of life.’”
“Well, the discipline master isn’t wrong,” said Mrs Lam carefully. “We would naturally encourage you to drop extracurricular activities if they’re causing your marks to suffer.”
By now, Curie understood a little more about where Mrs Lam was coming from, from the stories her teacher had told her. As a girl, Mrs Lam had given up everything to focus on her studies. Because her parents had been too poor to give their children pocket money, she had carried a jam sandwich and a hard-boiled egg to school for her lunch every single day, even through university. Her eyes had filled with tears of joy the day she received her first pay cheque: finally the day had come when she could help support her family. Today, she was a senior teacher in a prestigious school. She was sometimes ashamed that the unofficial national priorities were the so-called five Cs: Cash, Car, Credit card, Condominium and Country club membership, even though she and her cardiologist husband had been clamouring to collect the full set since they were married. She believed there needed to be a sixth: Conscience. It was Conscience she was trying to impart to Curie now.
Yet as a concession to Curie’s misery, Mrs Lam offered to supervise her as she took practice tests, and while Curie could have done them just the same without a teacher watching her, she gratefully accepted, hoping her teacher would also offer to talk her through her incorrect answers. She also welcomed the physical refuge of the staff room, given that Annette now sought her out continuously. Since her 18th
birthday, Annette had been inconsolable. She was now only three years away from turning 21, whereupon she would lose her title of the greatest youth violinist in Singapore. She would cease to be special then, for there were hundreds, if not thousands, of outstanding adult violinists, many of whom she had no hope of outshining. Furthermore, she was under considerable domestic strain. Her older brother had been boasting of making trips to “the Harvard ATM”, which he thought was a sexy way of saying he was on a full scholarship to the best school in the world. It infuriated Annette. She raged, “Why can’t he just pretend to be modest like everyone else?”
Between the extra practice tests and Annette, who burst into tears twice a day now without provocation, Curie hardly had time to fret over anything else. But Annette was not the only one having breakdowns as the November finals loomed closer. Queues formed outside toilets because half the stalls were occupied by students who were either weeping or beating their heads against the wall. Stamford took the initiative to hire psychiatric counsellors to give its students a presentation on the proper habits of good mental health. The team consisted of two women led by a man. Curie thought one of the women was inappropriately dressed: her skirt was too short (she kept tugging it down with both hands, as one pulls on a roll of paper towels), and her pink lacy top was clearly an undershirt. Curie lost even more respect for the guest speakers when they started up their PowerPoint: the first jolly red slide read, “Tips on Effectively Managing Stress!” in bold Comic Sans. Line by line, stupid advice whizzed onto the screen: Exercise at least once a week. Curie tried not to laugh. Everyone was taking it so seriously; many people were taking notes. They just couldn’t see how dreadful everything really was. Meanwhile, she certainly could, but she was no better for it. Why not laugh? she finally decided. How splendid that this school provided her with something to laugh at.