Ling closes her eyes to feel more intensely the fragile closeness of another human being, so afraid to exhale lest it will melt away. It’s been a long time since she was touched. She wallows in both pleasure and anxiety when his fingers undo the button and zip of her pants, not wanting him to stop but feeling her most private self violated at the same time. He drags her pants off and licks her inner thighs. She moans. His hand glides inside her panties, her muscles stiffen. She jerks his hand away and turns from him. Disconcerted, he puts his arm round her and strokes her breasts as if stroking a frightened cat. In the sweltering heat, the two bodies gel into a union of the lost now found.
They lie in this way for a long time and she drifts away into a summer’s day when she was looking for herself in the “lucky country.” She remembers Sydney. She was lying on Coogee Beach on Christmas Day with only a book for company. A rubber ball hit her leg and a naked, blonde toddler came running after it. She picked it up and gave it to the child, who then waddled merrily back to her folks. The glorious day teased both straight and gay couples to the beach, taunting her singleness. She comforted herself that she had a party that night, where she might meet someone interesting.
The sun burned her skin and she thought it was wiser to follow the other Asians who were taking cover in what little shade there was on the beach. The last thing she wanted was to die of skin cancer in her empty flat and have her body found only when the landlady came for the rent. But she also wanted to assimilate and not stick out like a spitting, staring, yelling Chinese.
When her skin was baked to a nice even brown, she packed her things, shook her towel and took a bus home to get ready for the party. She ironed the tight, spaghetti-strap, blue denim dress that set off her tan and washed her hair with banana putty from The Body Shop. She brushed her teeth and gargled with Listerine.
She boarded a train to Central Station, walked in her stiletto heels up a steep slope to Surry Hills and reached Elaine’s house on Bourke Street with sore feet. She should have known Elaine was only capable of providing chips and tortillas, plenty of booze and heavy metal. She felt an urge to go down the street for something more substantial, like a bowl of noodles, but thought that would be un-Australian. Elaine’s boyfriend came to say hello and asked her whom she was barracking for in the footy and she said, “Huh?” He stood politely with her for several minutes, thinking of new things to ask, all the while looking at other people in the room. He looked like he needed to scratch his crotch badly, so she spared him the agony and said she would go outside for a cigarette.
In the flowerless backyard overgrown with weeds, sweet marijuana smoke infused the muggy night air. A couple stared into each other’s eyes and giggled for no apparent reason. Ling joined another group, sprawled on the grass. They were laughing so hard over something that was lost on her, as happened often. It took her a long time to work out that they were talking about a comedian called Barry Humphries. She attempted a hearty laugh in case someone was looking at her. Two boys in the group gabbled incessantly, riding high; nobody listened to anyone anymore but they still broke out into guffaws at intervals.
Ling returned to the house that throbbed with what passed as music and prayed she didn’t have to talk to Elaine’s boyfriend again. She didn’t. Or anyone else without feeling like she was barging in on their bonhomie. She had the recurring feeling that she was an outsider and that she made everyone else feel that way about her too. She walked up to the drinks table and drank whatever was there to appear occupied and to have a table to lean on. But she could only drink so much and pretend to be busy for so long, then a few blokes nudged her out to have their fill of the grog. She wandered around until she found four girls sitting by a small table with an empty stool for her to squeeze in.
“Hi, mind if I join in?”
“Sure, what’s your name?”
Mutual introductions were made.
One of them shouted into Ling’s ear. “Where are you from?”
“Singapore.”
“Wow…is that like near China?”
“I love yum cha.”
“Yeah, I love the spring roll with veggies inside.”
Ling sat with the girls, finding safety in numbers. Never mind that she couldn’t hear them most of the time with the thumping music. She was part of the group as long as she smiled or nodded at appropriate moments, hoping only that no more questions would be directed at her. The girls looked at her as they chatted, acknowledging her presence, but she suspected they thought she had a language problem. The minutes couldn’t have dragged more slowly if she were in solitary confinement. Led Zeppelin threatened to drive her crazy. But not as much as the mind-numbing conversation of the four girls. She broke the tedium with frequent trips to the drinks table. Elaine was her classmate in the first-year philosophy undergraduate course. Elaine’s friends were an excitable bunch of teenagers in search of experience. Ling was pushing 30, in search of friends. She felt blood rushing to her face but did not know whether it was from the alcohol or the realisation that she had not contributed a single witticism to the night’s chatter.
She was grateful the lights were dim so no one could notice her red, bored face. C’mon, get up and go, she told herself. But it was only 9.30 and if she left now, she’d have to face the forlorn flat. It would be the third Christmas in a row she’d spend alone. That wasn’t counting New Year’s, Easter and all the bloody weekends when a barbecued chicken from the Korean takeaway was the highlight of her day. And they say Sydney is an exciting city. Then why on earth do so many people keep pets for company? Tomorrow was another bloody holiday, and tomorrow and tomorrow until term started again in March. I should go look for a train to throw myself under, she thought. I’m tired of Dostoyevsky, Joyce and Kafka, being paid dirt for shoving books onto shelves, tired of the beach, tired of the bush, tired of the city, tired of meeting people who are nice and friendly but absolutely not interested in you.
“Having fun, girls?” Elaine was circulating among her guests. One of the girls in Ling’s “group” whispered something in Elaine’s ear and they both burst into laughter. The rest climbed over each other to hear the joke.
Elaine bent over her. “Hey Ling, sweetie, are you alright?”
Ling fixed Elaine with a glassy stare. She saw her floating about. The earth had lost its gravity. They were all bobbing up and down like Apollo 11 on the moon. Then she fell off her stool and passed out, the stool toppling with her. She had consumed more alcohol than her body could break down. That was her only activity that night.
She opens her eyes and is grateful Matthew is still holding her. It feels like waking up from the nightmare of being the only soul left in the cold universe, to be licked by an old faithful dog. That party and memories of it seared into her psyche and from that night on, have pre-disposed her to suffer an anxiety attack whenever she meets with a large group of strangers. It was a feeling akin to being caned by a teacher when she was a child and shamed in front of the class. Born with a plain face and scathing forthrightness, she has endured a life of being overlooked, especially next to her sister. While Hoong was the perennial teacher’s pet and carried the class exercise books for the teacher, she was the sulky, strange little loner who whistled to herself in class to appear self-sufficient. Teachers often expressed surprise when told she and Hoong were sisters. Relatives loved to pinch Hoong’s plump apple cheeks while Ling would spurn them in case she got overlooked again. While Hoong pandered to the adult circus, Ling, the rude little shit, slunk out of the house with Yang to play with the Malay children and the chickens in the dirt across the road. Yang was the only friend in her inhospitable world and they sought solace by occasionally stealing the eggs around the chicken coop.
Worse than having a plain, churlish-looking face in your childhood is having a plain, churlish-looking face when you are a woman. Despite her father’s good intentions of holding those matchmaking parties, she had ended up with a loser of an Indian who had to depend on her father for a dead
-end job. She became a professional student but had nothing to show for the brilliant academic career she didn’t have. In Singapore, she got her BA and MA in English literature, and in Sydney, a BA in philosophy for want of something better to do. She did not want to go to those confidence-shattering parties anymore and she could not get a decent job, as she was not yet a permanent resident. So she embarked on a PhD to analyse the futility of analysing the Theatre of the Absurd. Then she met Patrick, an Irish-Aussie chef with a seafood restaurant in Darling Harbour, who was neither alcoholic nor Catholic, but a fanatical supporter of the Sydney Swans.
“What are you thinking about?” Matthew nudges her shoulder, bringing her back to the present.
“My useless life. Surely I must have been born to do something.”
“Like what?”
“Like telling it as it is.”
“Tell what?”
She interrogates the two personalities she has acquired. The wastrel in her just wants to go back to Australia with Matthew and lead a life by the sea of insouciance. They would take turns earning a living, as a single income would be enough for their simple life. Or maybe both of them would have part-time jobs, so that they would have “quality” time alone and with each other. She smiles wickedly, knowing that such arrangements would be held in contempt in Singapore, because they have multiple university degrees, but not children, between them. She dreams of Saturday mornings holding Matthew’s hand, walking in Centennial Park and not giving a damn about the people who tell her, “Oh, Singapore is a very clean city. They fine people for not flushing the toilet, don’t they?” or “But you speak very good English” or “Please do not squat on the toilet seat.” She would be more tolerant of smooching lovebirds on the train and dawdling old ladies trying to read food labels in the aisles of the supermarket. She might not have an exceptional life but an angst-free one would do.
At the same time, the judge in her jostles for dominance. Stay back and fight? Would anyone believe her? She’d been drifting in Sydney, indulging in arid fantasies when she should have come home and done something for her father. Politics is screwed-up anyway. She has entered the temple that houses the altars of ideology and looked beneath the surface of each golden icon. They have made Pa a scapegoat when there are bigger thugs around. All that crap about Asian values when they couldn’t even give a dead man some respect, but had to drag his entire family down with him. And we haven’t hit the bottom, she thought. The worst may yet come if…
Her hands and feet turn cold as beads of sweat collect and trickle from her armpit. She pulls a thin blanket over her and rests her head on Matthew’s chest. The cold spreads like a frozen lake to the rest of her. She tells Matthew to hold her tight and not let her fall.
“Hey, what’s happening?” he asks.
“I’m just thinking about Father.”
“You are worried about their looking into your personal assets?”
“What assets do I have to worry about?” She wonders if she is sleeping with a dork.
“Then why are you shivering?”
Ling looks up at Matthew with the quizzical eyes that he feels he has been seeing a lot of lately. He seems less self-assured with each look. She asks herself if she will find happiness with this man who once sold out to her father or if she will find happiness with exposing the men who sold her father out. What about duty? What is after all our purpose in life—to pursue happiness or to do what is right? Or do we achieve happiness when we perform our duty?
She clambers on top of Matthew and wraps her arms round him. “Let’s forget everything about the past and start from scratch.”
“Why? You want to hide your ex’s from me?” He begins to take his joke seriously. She senses he is jealous, and notices his member rising again.
“He’s another dork.”
“‘Scuse me? Another?”
Ling laughs out loud and presses hard against him. He is grateful to see what he thinks is her relaxing, rolls her over onto her back and yanks her knickers down. Faced with her nakedness, they both freeze, transformed into two strangers at a bus stop. Then she arches her thighs round his buttocks and draws him inside her. He feels such a gush of desire and release that the longing and aching before this was all worth it. He will tell this woman all his secrets and fantasies and crimes, if he has them. He tumbles from climax into a deep slumber.
She pulls several pieces of tissue paper from a box under the bed and dries herself and him. She turns up the table fan, and puts on her clothes. Then she sits at the bottom of the bed and watches Matthew, like a baby after a feed. If his skin had been white, blotchy and freckly, the body lying there could have been another Patrick O’Connell, that fat slob of a chef who had five pancakes for breakfast and quarter-pound steak and chips for dinner three times a week. One would have assumed a chef of a Darling Harbour restaurant would have finer taste buds. She feels disgusted at the thought of him.
Still, he was the only one in the whole dry continent who had been attracted to her, Ling recalls with strange gratitude. It was at that pub in Darlinghurst after she had left another boring party. He was there with a whole bunch of Swans fans, watching the AFL on a big screen, alternately cheering and heckling. She felt unselfconscious sitting among them as they were all too engrossed in the game to notice she was alone, except him. He had bought her a drink. Maybe for all his footy denseness, he could see she was a lonely hunter. He drove her home and invited himself in for coffee. She told him she had no coffee but he stayed the night nevertheless. At least I’ve been picked up once, she had reassured herself.
How they’d got married she’d never know. Maybe it was just the need to have someone. Before a year was up, he was already back with his mates at the pub, saying he preferred the big screen. The time he was home, he was married to another “woman”. Every Sunday, he took his new second-hand four-wheel drive out of the garage and parked it in the driveway. He stripped down to his boxer shorts, revealing mounds of fat hanging over the waistband of his shorts, like a butter cake rising and spilling over the sides of a baking tin. He hosed down the car and, with a soft sponge and special soap, scrubbed it tenderly like he was bathing his lover. He dried it with a clean towel, and polished it with a piece of chamois till he could see his own image. He said that after being cooped up in the kitchen all week, driving his Susie gave him a thrill that was better than sex.
One such Sunday Ling asked, “Pat, you coming back tonight for dinner?”
“If we win, we’ll celebrate at the Mad Dog’s and we’ll be so pissed we won’t know our way home.”
“And if you lose?”
“We won’t lose. The Swans have never been better.” He caressed his playmate and wiped the side mirror a third time.
“I’ll grab something from the take-away for myself then. By the way, happy anniversary.”
“What? Holy shit. Well…happy anniversary.”
He came over and gave her a sloppy kiss. He put on his rugby T-shirt and jeans, got behind the wheel and his face glowed with unalloyed happiness. He revved the engine, and Susie zoomed towards the Sydney Cricket Ground for the football final, the game that gave meaning to his existence. He never asked Ling to go anymore because he knew she hated footy. It was not the sport itself she hated but how it made people stupid. How it possessed Pat and relegated their first wedding anniversary to third, fourth, outside position. But then, maybe it was just him. There was always something else—his car, his football, his cricket, his job, his mates, his family in Brisbane. Why the fuck had he married her? Did he think he was the hero who would save her from the life of an illegal immigrant?
He staggered home that night reeking of alcohol, sweat and vomit. He got into bed without cleaning up. She went to sleep on the couch in the living room but he didn’t notice that the next morning when he got up to make breakfast. He ate his five pancakes and read all the triumphant stories in the paper about how the Swans had thrashed the enemy and had done all their fans mighty proud. She didn�
��t say anything and ate the pancakes.
On his 30th birthday, she treated him to a holiday in the Blue Mountains. They took Susie and he rested his hand on her thigh throughout most of the two-hour journey. She played with his dark blond hair and soaked up the sights ahead of them on the Great Western Highway, of the mountain ranges with their bluish tinge. She had booked a B&B in Blackheath. They drove down a road lined with maple trees turning traffic-stopping red, orange and yellow, and swerved into the driveway of an impossibly beautiful stone house surrounded by endless shrubs and bushes, a peach arbour, with cockatoos and lorikeets, a golden retriever and two fat tabbies on the property. It was her dream house even before looking inside.
The effusive manager took them to their room, which was straight out of The Sound of Music. A king-sized bed was covered in a white doona with little purple irises along the borders that matched the curtains. The cream-coloured wallpaper was printed with more flowers and at night, they felt as if they were sleeping in a greenhouse. She felt as if they were on their second honeymoon. She preferred an idyllic walk in the country town and conversation over Devonshire tea, but he liked his holidays more active and wanted to go to the bush. He said they could do their activities separately. But she wanted to do things with him, so on their second day in Black Heath, she went bush walking with him. They went to bed after dinner without his usual hour of TV and her reading. She snuggled up to him.
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