Room for a Stranger

by Melanie Cheng

  ‘How was your day?’ Meg said, knowing immediately it was the wrong thing to say—too much like a wife greeting her husband after a long day at work.

  Andy drank the water greedily. ‘It was okay,’ he said when he’d finished. He put his empty glass in the sink.

  Meg would have to tell him to start washing his dishes, but not today. ‘I’ve made a pasta salad,’ she said as she buttered the toast.

  Andy sat down at the table. ‘Thank you.’

  Meg placed the bowl of salad in front of him and watched him take a bite.

  ‘It’s cold,’ he said, spitting the penne into a serviette.

  ‘It’s a salad.’

  Andy ate the toast instead.

  ‘Do you eat salads in Hong Kong?’

  ‘A few dishes are served cold. Chicken. Pickles. Jellyfish.’

  ‘Jellyfish?’

  ‘Yes, but we only eat that as an appetiser, when we go out to restaurants.’

  For a minute nobody spoke. Atticus sang the alphabet song from his cage.

  ‘So you’ve eaten jellyfish but you’ve never had a pasta salad?’ Meg said.

  ‘Yes.’

  She was about to apologise but stopped herself. She filled her mouth with pasta instead. As much as she hated to admit it, the salad was horribly bland. There was no colour or texture or spice—she might as well have been eating cardboard. Andy’s Cup Noodles with all their MSG almost certainly had more flavour. But it had been decades since Meg had derived pleasure from eating. For her, meals were a chore, like showering or brushing her teeth. Necessary but boring.

  Andy finished his toast and excused himself. He scrubbed the crumbs from his bread plate and left it to dry in the dish rack. It was the first time Meg had seen him clean up. When he was gone, she ate her dinner slowly, one piece of cold pasta at a time. She stared at Andy’s bowl of untouched food, his empty chair.

  10

  It was mid-semester break, exactly five weeks until swot vac. This thought was enough to keep Andy up at night. When he turned on the light and tried to study, his eyes burned and blurred with fatigue, but as soon as he lay down in the dark again, his mind raced as if he was on speed. Thoughts flooded his brain at such a rapid pace he struggled to keep up. Giant rod-shaped bacteria. Neurons like exploding meteorites. His mother, beating him with the feather duster; his father, flinching with each stroke. Every so often a moment of reprieve—a flash of Kiko, her long fingers, her shiny hair, her reluctant, soft-lipped smile.

  At three am Andy heard the bang of a possum landing on the roof. Exasperated, he got up. It was like living in a haunted house. As he crept down the hall in his slippers he avoided looking at the framed photographs on the wall. He knew the people in the pictures were dead. They’d probably died inside the house. This didn’t bother Andy—in his grandmother’s flat, there’d been a black and white photo of Andy’s great-grandfather, together with an urn containing his ashes, on a shelf above the kitchen sink. But there was something about number four Rose Street, a sadness Andy felt as soon as he stepped through the front door.

  A gentle glow emanated from the kitchen. Perhaps the old lady had left a light on by mistake. Andy was surprised to find Mrs Hughes sitting at the table in her dressing-gown, nursing a cup of tea. She’d lit a candle instead of turning on the ceiling light, presumably to avoid waking the parrot. Her face was a puzzle of shadows.

  ‘Possums?’ she said, and for a moment Andy wondered if he was talking to a ghost.

  He nodded. ‘You too?’

  Mrs Hughes shook her head. ‘I’m not afraid of possums. I’m a chronic insomniac.’ She took a sip of her tea. ‘I’m afraid of my dreams.’

  Andy smiled, unsure if this was a joke.

  Mrs Hughes moved to stand up. ‘Can I make you a cup of tea?’

  ‘No, please, sit down.’ He felt bad that she was always doing things for him. He hadn’t forgotten about the ten hours of housework he was supposed to do. Andy wished he knew about cooking or gardening. He was terrified Mrs Hughes might ask him to clean the bathroom, which was in desperate need of a good scrub. Every night before he showered, Andy removed his glasses, thankful he wouldn’t have to see all the mould in the grout as he washed himself. But the thought of getting down on his hands and knees with a brush and actually touching the stuff made him shudder. He grabbed two Cup Noodles from the pantry and flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘Would you like one?’

  Mrs Hughes eyed the cup in Andy’s hands.

  ‘It’s really nice if you crack an egg into it,’ he told her.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I’m feeling peckish.’

  Andy enjoyed being able to do something for his host. He poured boiling water into the paper cups and stirred them with a fork for two minutes. Mrs Hughes fetched the eggs from the fridge and watched him crack one into each cup before stirring some more. When he placed the steaming soup noodles in front of the old lady, she inhaled deeply through her nose.

  ‘It’s good,’ she said, after taking a sip.

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘A little spicy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  They went back to slurping their soup. When Andy had finished eating all the noodles, he drank the remaining liquid straight from the paper cup. Mrs Hughes watched him.

  ‘It’s the best way,’ Andy said.

  She lifted the cup to her lips. When she had finished she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. ‘The perfect midnight snack.’

  They heard a light purring noise from Atticus’s cage.

  ‘At least somebody’s sleeping,’ Mrs Hughes said, and laughed.

  11

  It was Wednesday. Andy had already left for uni and Jillian was late. As she waited, Meg peered through the curtains of the lounge room window at the pearly buds on the ornamental pear tree.

  They’d taken a two-week break from their weekly coffees because Jillian had been away. Meg and Anne didn’t meet up without Jillian—they’d tried once and it had been awkward and unpleasant. Meg knew that much of Anne’s performance was for Jillian’s benefit anyway—friendly but competitive banter. Without her, Anne was impatient, occasionally even a little bitchy. In truth, Meg didn’t mind a break from the routine—she was dreading Anne’s I-told-you-so smile when she found out Andy was studying biomedicine.

  Meg knew something was wrong as soon as she saw Jillian stumble up the driveway. She rushed to the door and opened it before her friend had a chance to knock. Instead of saying hello, Jillian walked straight past her towards the lounge room.

  ‘What’s happened? Is Henry okay?’ Meg asked. Henry was Jillian’s husband. He had diabetes and was always being admitted to hospital.

  ‘No.’ Jillian pulled a ball of tissue from her pocket. She squeezed it in her hand. ‘It’s Anne.’

  Meg sat down on the couch. Anne was never unwell.

  ‘Her heart, apparently,’ Jillian said and dabbed her nose with the ball of tissue. White flakes fell like snow onto the carpet. ‘Last week she told me she’d need a lift to the café today. She was planning to take her car in for a service. But when I arrived to pick her up I found Greg sitting on the verandah. He was still wearing his pyjamas. She died three days ago.’

  ‘My God.’ Meg felt the hair on her forearms stand on end.

  ‘In the middle of pilates. She excused herself from the class and collapsed in the gym stairwell.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Greg said she’d been complaining of indigestion, but she’d refused to see a doctor.’ A drop of snot snaked down from Jillian’s nostril to her top lip. ‘He felt terribly guilty, the poor man.’

  ‘She was so stubborn,’ Meg said without thinking, and immediately felt bad for speaking ill of the dead.

  In spite of the heat, Jillian shivered. While she’d been waiting, Meg had drawn the curtains and turned off the lights in the lounge room. It felt wrong now, in the face of tragedy, to deal with trivial things like lighting. They sat like statues in the dark.

  ‘Would a cup of t
ea help?’ Meg said after several minutes had passed.

  Jillian nodded. ‘We won’t be going to the café today.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Not for a while.’

  Meg sat down at the kitchen table while she waited for the water to boil. She’d lost people before, but she had always expected to outlive her family—her mother and father were old and Helen had been ill for a long time. She hadn’t expected to outlive Anne. From her friend’s despondent state in the lounge room, Meg guessed Jillian felt the same way.

  The kettle boiled and Meg prepared the tea. It was at times like these that formalities seemed particularly important. She arranged the teacups and sugar bowl on a silver tray. When she returned to the lounge room, Jillian had regained some of her colour.

  Jillian took the tea gratefully, resting the hot cup in her lap. ‘Anne was such a pain in the arse sometimes, but such great fun too.’

  ‘Yes,’ Meg agreed. She knew they had to partake in this messy ritual of weepy nostalgia, but she felt weary at the prospect of it.

  ‘The funeral is this Friday.’

  Meg hadn’t been to a funeral in years. She supposed that was one good thing about not having many friends. ‘Where?’ she asked.

  ‘At their local church. Anne would have hated it, but Greg and the kids insisted.’

  This surprised Meg. Anne had always been scathing about religion. She’d hated the nuns at their Catholic school with a special savagery, which had made her something of a hero in sixth form. Meg and Jill drank the rest of their tea to the sound of Atticus singing and squawking in the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ Jillian said, returning her cup to its saucer. ‘I’ll drop by around twelve.’

  ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

  Jillian stood up. She wrapped her silk scarf around her neck. ‘Just don’t die on me.’

  12

  Andy came home to an empty lounge room and a note waiting for him on the kitchen table. Help yourself to the spaghetti. I’ve gone to bed with a headache. Andy had only been living with Mrs Hughes for three weeks, but she’d already cooked spaghetti bolognese on at least ten occasions. Andy scooped a portion of the refrigerated pasta into the bin to make it look as if he’d eaten it, and then cracked an egg into some Cup Noodles.

  ‘Hot potato!’ Atticus screeched.

  ‘Not potato, noodles,’ Andy corrected him. ‘Can you say noodles?’

  ‘Can you say noodles?’ the bird replied.

  Andy remembered what Mrs Hughes had said about the parrot mocking her. He bowed his head and ate his dinner. Bored, Atticus turned his attention to a bottle cap on the floor of his cage.

  At ten past five Andy’s phone rang.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Have you eaten yet?’ Andy’s father asked. A standard Cantonese greeting.

  ‘Yes,’ Andy replied, throwing his empty noodle cup in the rubbish bin. It was usually his mum who called, during her lunchbreak, which was around midafternoon in Melbourne. ‘Is something the matter?’ He could hear the bustle of Hong Kong in the background—the hiss of a bus door, the beeping of pedestrian lights, the shudder of a jackhammer.

  ‘It’s your mother.’

  Andy didn’t need to hear more. The illness that had plagued her all his life had returned again, he knew it. The last time was when he was fifteen—seven long and medicated years ago. Andy’s memories of that time were sketchy, mostly because they never spoke of it. Every day, for a week, Andy had been left with his grandparents in their tiny flat in Tai Koo Shing. As his mother lay sedated somewhere on the other side of the island, Andy and his grandmother had watched Cantonese soap operas—hypnotised by the men with long plaits seducing women with powdered faces. Sometimes he’d daydreamt about himself soaring, swords drawn and robes flapping, across cloudless skies. He remembered his father returning late in the afternoon, rubbing his tired eyes.

  Atticus whistled a tune in his cage.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ Andy’s father asked.

  ‘Nothing. What’s happened to Mum?’

  ‘She’s gone to hospital. For a rest.’

  This was how his father spoke—in a series of soothing euphemisms. His mother had been overworked when they found her, floppy as a rag doll and cold as a fish, on the tiled floor of the shower. She’d been stressed when they’d discovered her in the kitchen smashing a frying pan at a giant snake that only she could see.

  ‘When?’ Andy asked.

  ‘A week ago.’

  Andy wasn’t surprised by how long it had taken his father to tell him. In his family everything was a secret until it became impossible to hide any longer.

  ‘Shall I come home?’ Andy asked, but it was an empty offer—he knew his father would decline.

  ‘You need to study.’

  ‘How long will she be in hospital?’

  ‘Not long.’

  That could mean a couple of days or forever.

  ‘The best thing you can do is to work hard. Get high enough marks to get into medicine.’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  Perhaps his father sensed his helplessness, because his voice took on a chirpier tone. ‘It’s your birthday soon.’

  Andy had forgotten all about it. He would be turning twenty-two on Friday.

  ‘Your mother and I have transferred two thousand dollars to your account. That’s lai see from your aunts and uncles as well as us. You should thank them. Spend a little and save the rest. Take your friends out to dinner, do something nice.’

  Such generosity was unheard of. His mother must be really sick. Andy thanked his father and hung up the phone. He looked through the window past the trees towards the haemorrhaging sun.

  That night, Andy searched the internet for people willing to sit his exams for him. He was astonished by the number of websites devoted to cheating at university, and even more so by how openly they advertised their services. He eventually found someone called Kanbei who had taken the same biomedicine course and graduated with honours—or so he claimed—three years ago. Through a series of text messages they arranged to meet at a Chinese takeaway place on Friday. When it was done, Andy plugged his phone into the charger beside his bed. Rather than feeling nervous about the pending encounter, he felt relieved. He opened the door to his room and used his hands to find his way down the dark hall to the kitchen. He was both thirsty and a little hungry, and he’d spied a packet of Tim Tams in the cupboard earlier that day. As he walked past Mrs Hughes’ room he paused. There was an odd noise coming through the door. It sounded like an animal whimpering—something smaller and more timid than a possum. As he moved, a loose floorboard announced his presence with a creak. The whimpering stopped. Andy held his breath. He counted to three and tiptoed the rest of the way to the kitchen. It was only once he was munching on a biscuit that he recognised the noise for what it was—Mrs Hughes weeping.

  13

  Meg had been given Andy’s personal details with his application—his previous address on Spencer Street, his next of kin, his passport number. She wasn’t sure what had made her look at the paperwork again, but she was glad she had, because otherwise she would have completely missed his birthday.

  Anne’s funeral was that afternoon and Meg was in search of a distraction. She decided to bake Andy something for his birthday—her mother’s famous pineapple upside-down cake. She was certain she had all the ingredients she needed—brown sugar, flour, butter, eggs, milk, tinned pineapple—so she wouldn’t need to go to the shops. She’d been hoping Andy might do a weekly trip to the supermarket, but since their Cup Noodles midnight snack, Meg had hardly seen him. Recently she’d had to resort to communicating with him through post-it notes stuck to the fridge. She supposed she could take it up with the agency, but she didn’t want to get Andy in trouble. She reminded herself that he was always home at a reasonable hour, and that he was quiet, and tidy.

  She got to work on the cake. It felt good to bake again, to melt butter and sugar and feel the war
mth of the oven on her legs. She normally scoffed at cooking shows like MasterChef, but today she appreciated the therapeutic power of creating something to eat, especially something rich and sticky, from a pile of nothing.

  As the cake baked, Meg got dressed for the funeral. She opened her wardrobe and picked out a black blouse and a pair of pleated black slacks. She put on the earrings she’d worn to Helen’s memorial—the pearl drops her mother had left her in her will. As a tribute to Anne, she added one of Helen’s brooches to the ensemble—a gold kitten with a ruby bow and diamante eyes.

  The doorbell rang just as Meg was pulling the cake out of the oven. She placed it on a wire rack on the stovetop and hung her oven mitt on a hook beside the rangehood. When she turned around, Jillian was standing in the kitchen.

  ‘The front door was open,’ Jillian said as they kissed.

  ‘Andy must’ve forgotten to lock it.’

  ‘I thought this boy was supposed to look after your safety, not put you at greater risk.’

  Jillian was wearing a black dress with black lace sleeves. She hadn’t bothered with eyeliner or mascara and was as pale as a ghost. ‘You’ve been baking?’ she said.

  ‘It was something to do.’

  ‘I know the feeling. This morning I weeded the garden and scrubbed the grout in all the bathrooms.’ Jillian wiped her nose with a handkerchief from her pocket. ‘Anne would’ve preferred the baking.’

  Meg smiled. She pointed to the brooch.

  Jillian cooed. ‘Miss Marmalade.’

  Meg’s thoughts turned to the stray Anne had rescued from the skip. ‘What will happen to her now?’

  ‘I don’t know. Greg hates cats.’

  ‘She’d be a constant reminder.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll take her in.’

  ‘Really?’ Meg was surprised. Jillian was not and never had been an animal person. The few times Meg had asked her to mind Atticus, she had backed away, citing allergies.

  ‘I guess we can all do with a little companionship sometimes,’ Jillian said. ‘Like you and your Chinese student.’