‘Ow, oof, wha’s that about?’
‘Well, Frank, the knees were because, gee, you’re still here and the elbows were because, hmmm, because I hate you.’
He whips the covers off and now we’re racing out the door, a war on the horizon. See, he wants me to think that getting up was never a big deal to him, can’t imagine why I continue to make such a hullabaloo over every little thing … I mean, shoot, Fran, don’t you love the kids? I know I do, can’t wait to see their fresh morning faces . . . Okay, that’s what he wants everyone to think and most everyone falls for it. He’s a master at turning the situation over onto its flip side and gaslighting me. I’m supposed to think I’m a nut, that I make all this up. I can hear my mother saying, ‘Frannie, just go and apologise to Frank. He’s a good man.’ As if I would never interest anyone else and should thank my lucky stars. Maybe in your day, Ma, you had to break a few eggs but I know what’s going on. He kept the job and I didn’t.
We both grab at Sadie.
‘Hello, sweetie!’ she hears in stereo.
‘How’s my best girl?’ says Frank in a ‘can you possibly top that?’ tone.
I’m afraid I can, Mister: ‘Sadie, do you want me to make you waffles for breakfast?’ Frank doesn’t know we have them … hee hee.
‘How about you come to work with me and we’ll have breakfast at the coffee shop. Just me and you. A Daddy–Sadie day.’ He smiles at me with his big blue eyes crinkling, brimming over with tears, for God’s sake. Like Sadie’s going to know how to handle that!
Disgusted, I run to Huxley’s room.
‘My, precious, mmmmmm, kiss kiss.’ Oh, he is so stinky. I wish I’d won in the first round because now I have to change his diaper. But I can’t really; I can hardly see. Though my eyelids have started to peel open, my vision is rather viscous and my eyes hurt so much I have to cry.
‘Fran, it’s okay, I’m not mad,’ Frank says at Huxley’s door, then walks to the changing table.
‘Oh, imagine my fucking relief!’ I shout.
‘I was going to say, “But why are you?”’ He punctuates it with a little pat of hurt.
‘Fuck you,’ I say, rubbing my eyes.
‘Hey, I thought we had a great night, celebrating our success. I’ll be making a shitload of money, we get to stay here and you get to quit working.’
‘Our success? How is any of it my success? I get to quit working. That sounds a little like the opposite of success. And now that I’m not working, you’re treating me like shit.’
‘What? When?’
‘Just now, when you left it up to me to get the kids.’
‘Jeez, I always do that. I thought you wanted the kids to see you first.’
I did.
I do.
‘You better tell me now if you don’t want to take this gig,’ he says.
When I first got here, it felt like a farm stay or something. I didn’t think I’d wind up a farmer. Now, it turns out, I’m not just playing Expat Like Me. This isn’t research. This isn’t a break. I am no longer a literary agent. I am no longer a New Yorker. Say it after me. It’s a classic case of ‘be careful what you wish for’. I wanted an escape, but did I want a total rebirth? On the other hand, three more years of fun in the sun. But three years is a long time. Who’s even going to recognise me? I’m looking more like tree bark every day with all this fun in the sun. Shut up, Fran. You are going to live abroad. Who gets this chance? Be an expat. Be a real mother, for God’s sake. Do it well. Frank heard me wail and moan and beat myself up. He remembers what it was like. Maybe I’ve forgotten already. We wanted life to be simpler and easier and much less bumpy. Oh, my God, I will have fuck all to say to anyone after a month. Shut up, Fran. See, maybe even sooner.
Striking an accord, we (six sides of me, one husband and two children) sit at the breakfast table. Over my mug of coffee, I start to get myself really riled now, not because events have swept me away but because Frank hasn’t even noticed my exaggerated wincing every minute and a half. Dabbing at my poor eyes, I see him gingerly push away his barely eaten wok-fried omelette.
‘Why aren’t you eating that?’
‘I guess I’m not that hungry.’
‘Is it bad?’
‘No, it’s great. I’m just full from last night.’
‘We ate last night?’
‘Actually, I have no idea.’
‘Me neither. So eat your omelette.’
‘Christ, Fran, I don’t want it. Look. You didn’t line up the edges when you flipped it. It’s ruined.’
‘So let me make you another one.’
‘Forget it. It’s not important!’
I don’t want to cry. I say to myself I am happy, I am happy. Call me Happy. Happy is me. I’m H–A–P–P–Y, I’m H–A–P–P–Y. I make my way out onto the bedroom balcony where I have been drying out the clothes.
I open the sliding glass door and am hit by an intense acrid smell. The sky and the sea are the same shade of dull grey; the ships have completely vanished. My eyes start to burn so badly, I almost fall over from the pain. They feel like they’re getting pulled back into my head.
‘Frank! I think there’s a fire!’
‘Yeah, in Indonesia,’ he calls from the dining room.
Apparently Indonesia shares its smoke with us even though we don’t do any of the forest-burning. As the haze hunkers down, the government tells you when it’s safe to play outside by issuing a ‘haze index’. The heavy air captures all of Singapore’s stench: the mosquito spray, the fertilisers and the durian (a type of fruit that smells like Frank’s feet would if he dipped them in cheese and then died for a few days).
I hope it’s better down at the pool. I unclip a towel. I have to be careful or it might break. It’s a giant saltine. That’s what happens when you line dry. How am I supposed to fold this into the swim bag? I hear the doorbell ring. I unclip Sadie’s stiff little bathing suit and once-fluffy robe. The bell rings again. ‘I’m ’a’comin’,’ I say. I scuffle in carrying the weight of my oppression.
‘I’ll be gettin’ that, Massur Frank. I knows how you aren’t up to no good in the mornin’.’
‘Hmmm?’ Frank says, turning a page of the paper.
‘Neva you mind.’
I look through the peephole.
‘It’s Pearl,’ I stage whisper. ‘Did we forget to pay her last night?’
‘Well, I started out with $800.’ Frank digs into his wallet and looks at the receipts. ‘Two hundred at The Captain’s Table for three vodka tonics, three beers, one bottle of wine, cash. We charged The Town Crier Karaoke and everything in Chinatown … Five hundred at Banana Leaf – three Singapore Slings, one beer, pappadums, samosas, potato roti, chicken tikka, chicken murg, rice, fish curry, butter naan, cheese naan, vegetable jalfrezi, beef vindaloo …’
‘Please tell me we packed it all up for starving Indians,’ I say.
‘… lamb masala, vegetable biryani, bottle of wine, jug of beer …’
‘Okay, okay, so we gave her $100?’
‘Ten dollars cash at Swensons for an ice-cream.’
There’s a Swensons here?
‘Fifteen dollars for the taxi.’
‘Okay, so we gave her $75. Should be enough.’
‘Thirty dollars at Our Place karaoke club.’
‘Did I sing, Frank?’
‘Oh yes, “Country Road, Take Me Home”. Like you never have before. And then you sang “Cotton Fields Back Home” and bought a round of drinks for everyone. That was $300, which I charged.’
‘This leaves nothing for Pearl.’
‘I went to the bank machine while you were sleeping in the car.’ He laughs.
‘Okay, okay, so it’s safe to answer then.’ I open the door. ‘Pearl! What brings you here?’
She steps inside, grins and waves at the kids. Sadie rushes over and hugs her knees.
She reaches into her bag and pulls out two lollies for the kids and a dark bottle with Chinese symbols on the label for me.
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‘Here. Use this.’ She hands it to me. ‘Spread this over your eyes and eat a ginger root. Eyes clear up. I found apartment for you.’
‘But we have an apartment,’ I say.
She waves me off. ‘You pay too much, no hot water, bad view … The man in 14–56, his daughter get a divorce. He move near her now. His wife, she no good, lah, she get cancer next year. I can lock in your rate for the next three years. No commission.’ She flips out a new card: ‘Pearl The Finder, specialising in short-term rentals, babysitting, cleaning, ironing.’ The usual list of contact possibilities.
‘No commission? Then what’s this?’ I say, pointing to the final line on her card: ‘10% Fee’.
‘Finder fee, no commission.’
‘It’s even higher than a realtor’s …’
‘Can’t trust a realtor, money on their mind all the time, lah.’ She yanks the card out of my hand. ‘Fifty dollars for the medicine.’
‘Maybe we’ll take a look at it another day.’ I don’t want her to be insulted.
‘Gone already.’ She walks out the door.
‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’ Frank asks, standing by the elevator, dressed for work.
‘Yeah, this stuff Pearl got me is working great. We’ll just go to the pool and take it easy.’
‘Okay, sweetie. Love you.’
I don’t answer. I still don’t know how I wound up jobless. Yes I do. I begged.
I go to my computer and write a difficult email to the office. I tell them that we have decided to stay in Singapore for three more years and while it seems best for the family, I will certainly miss the job and working with them.
I send it and we set off for the pool.
When I get there, I see Tilda retreating. Tilda’s a British pixie with a mod haircut and intelligent, animated face. I’ve seen her gather a crowd and have them all laughing as she recounts some escapade or another. She points to the sign: ‘Due to haze index, the pool is closed.’
‘So now what are we supposed to do?’ I say, rhetorically of course. But she thinks for a moment.
‘Fancy coming round mine for a tea? Might as well get to know you since you’re staying.’
‘How’d you know?’ I ask.
‘Oh, when you’ve been here as long as I have, you know who got a great shag last night. Anyway, three months is always as good as three years. Plus, Pearl told me.’ She laughs.
‘I never told Pearl. I just found out yesterday.’
‘Pearl Popiah knows when the wind’s changing direction. She’s already on to the family that just got here from Texas, so don’t count on her for long. Never mind.’ She screws up her nose at the haze and the stench, looks back at me and says, ‘Forget tea, let’s make up a batch of fog cutters.’
I like this Tilda.
After a few hours of cog futters and great conversation, watching our four kids playing happily, increasingly glad that the haze has given us an excuse to stay inside and get loopy, I leave to go make dinner.
I give Huxley his cream-pea dinner and Sadie her chicken nuggets and check my emails. There’s one from my boss. She says they don’t want me to quit. I’ve been doing fine from here. If my clients are happy, that’s what matters. What amazing people I work for. I was sure the only reason I got the job in the first place was because my mom called my boss and told her I had cancer and to be nice to me, that she’d pay my wages. But after ten years and no sign of malignancy, I had to reckon that they were decent and I wasn’t horrible.
I hear the door open.
‘Helloo!’ Frank booms.
I rush into the foyer. ‘Frank, guess what? I can keep my job!’
‘That’s great.’ He kisses me. ‘Are you sure you want to?’
‘Yes, definitely. Thinking I lost it proved it more. And this will be perfect. I can do it and be home with the kids and it’s only three more years … not like forever …’
‘Good for you.’ He kisses me again. ‘Hey, here’s my news.’ A two-pound Straits Times lands on my lap. I see a picture of Sebastian. The headline: ‘Singaporean on trial for helping CD Pirates’.
‘Frank, when did this happen?’
‘Last night.’
‘You were with me last night, you couldn’t have …’
He raises his eyebrows and shrugs. ‘You were having such a good time, Fran.’
I read the article …
Sebastian Gok, entrusted to enforce the copyright law … is accused of accepting bribes from pirates in return for warning them of impending raids. He is also alleged to have borrowed $10,000 from one of the illegal CD sellers … If convicted, he faces a fine of $100,000 and up to five years’ jail …
No quotes from Frank.
‘Holy shit, Frank.’
Dum da da dum. Dum da da dum. Merry, merry, merry Christmas …
With all that was happening in the office, Frank thought it best to shut down for a while, lay low, make the pirates, thieves and lawyers think he’d closed shop for good. I couldn’t have agreed more – not that I understood what he was talking about. But I did understand that we’d have a few weeks to hang out and then go to the US to make the necessary arrangements for moving overseas for so long. When I called the owner of our apartment in Fortune Gardens to tell him we’d like to extend the lease, he sadly informed me that he had just rented it out to a family from Texas. Their agent seemed to know me, he said. ‘At least she knew you were looking for a bigger apartment,’ he said. ‘Strange,’ I said.
Frank suggested we take a trip, visit a neighbour. He’d heard about this fine little getaway in the highlands of Malaysia. It would be perfect for an outdoorsy experience. Quick flight, a road trip and sweaters at night.
So, off we go to take our first trek in the jungle … with kids.
First thing I notice, because we do have these kids along and they have certain predictable needs, is that there’s absolutely no milk in the Malaysian highlands. I can’t rough it without milk. Another thing I notice – I’m sorry to say – is that they pray too much. That just doesn’t leave enough time for other stuff, like chores, education, driving lessons, farming, picking out drapes …
On our first day, after hours of tooling around in a rented ‘car’ (Fred Flintstone should be so lucky), we find what looks to be a well-lit, well-stocked, generic sort of mini-mart. So, in we go, as a family, because, indeed, this is our first family vacation on this part of the planet and we want to do everything together, as a family. The first aisle is filled with several hundred different kinds of potato chips. The kids go wild. We smile and let them fill up a basket with enough flavours to simulate a well-balanced meal – vegie-flavoured, chicken-flavoured, roast-beef-flavoured and mutton-satay-flavoured.
The next aisle has more snacks, but apparently someone finally lost steam on what else could be done to the potato. They started on something called tapioca crisps and a crunchy extrusion sort of thing made from dahl flour. The packaging is a little more homemade-looking, some stapled shut at odd angles, some just taped closed. The next aisle has peanuts and dried noodle soup, and the last one has car supplies and candy. There are beer and smokes at the checkout.
For lunch, Frank has the beer, I have the cigarettes, and Sadie and Huxley rip through some bags of chips.
The women, all in proper, serious Muslim dress, just can’t get enough of Sadie and Huxley. Every time we’re spotted, we feel like the Beatles coming to America. They do this running ululation and kiss and pull and hug them. My kids are freaked; if the ladies’ noses weren’t covered, I’m sure Huxley would bite one.
We get ourselves into the car despite the throng and start the longest, windiest ride on earth. The roads become more and more narrow, the tarmac turns to rubble, which then disappears entirely until we’re driving on grass and dirt. Every turn is just a matter of luck, or out of luck, because if another car were to come by, it’d be us or them over the side of the mountain. Huxley pukes. It isn’t just the wild ride; it’s also my fault. I
never did learn that not all cries are for food and I kept stuffing him with more and more. We have to drive a while before finding room to pull over and clean up.
Oh, we are so happy when we see the lush, green fields and rolling mountains of Frasier’s Hill come into view. It looks just like the picture in the brochure. There’s what appears to be a tidy, quaint village, an extremely invitinglooking pub, a horse stable and, perched up on a small, sunny mound, an outdoor restaurant.
Then we get a little closer.
I can’t take away the fact that it is hilly and it is green and the weather does feel finer than Singapore’s. Other than that, the village is mostly defunct – broken windows, empty stores, trash flying, flies flying, mosquitoes munching on my children. The pub – hallelujah – is not closed and from the outside it does still look inviting and old and cosy. Walking in, it’s a different story. You can’t get all that comfy without, I dunno, chairs? Never mind, we say, let’s check out the restaurant we saw up on the hill. It’s called The Satay Shack. There are swarms of things darting through the air and landing on mounds of dirty dishes, but we are determined not to get totally pissy, for the sake of the children and for the fact that this is a family vacation. Frank goes up to the service counter and says, ‘Some satays, please.’
‘We don’t sell satays.’
Course you don’t at The Satay Shack!
Back to the pub. The proprietor couldn’t be more delighted to see us return. He brings out a few folding chairs and tells us about his brother in America. Do we know him? We get some cold drinks and look at the menu. There are about four things on it. None of them will ever make it past the kids’ lips but I don’t want to disappoint the owner who, in his way, takes pride in his establishment. It dawns on me that Frasier’s Hill has seen better times and is simply tired and poor and ignored. I am still going to murder the person who had the nerve to recommend it as a vacation spot.
Our nasi lemak and samosas come with a hot dog frankfurt on the side. The kids are in luck after all. Frank and I, on the other hand, are not so lucky. We are cursed with the problem of how not to insult the owner and still not eat. Whatever is slipping around on our plates, it is absurd to call it food. It’s fatty, oily, greasy, smelly and ugly, and I think even hairy, too. We cover the plates with a napkin. Then, a butterfly truly the size of an ample rear end comes through the window and alights on our table. I knew the area was world-renowned for its butterflies but I agreed to come anyway. In other words, I pretty much couldn’t give a shit about colourful moths. They are bugs to me. Still, this one is cool because it is so big. Obscenely so, actually.
Tales From A Broad Page 7