Tales From A Broad

by Fran Lebowitz

  Thousands of kids were there because the maids had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off. We all brought a dish and some drinks. I brought homemade potato latkes, applesauce, ruggelah and three bottles of my brother’s Snow Farm Wine that I hid away in boxes when we moved. The party started at five. I wore a yellow cocktail dress that was short but smart, and a black pearl necklace and sapphire diamond earrings Frank brought back from Bangkok. Several of my friends’ parents were there visiting so we adopted them for general grandparent duty.

  ‘… Yeah, it was nice …’

  ‘Well, it was so good of you to call,’ Pat says, wrapping it up a bit abruptly.

  ‘Where’s Huxley?’ Bill asks.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Bill. See you in a few months.’

  ‘I’m getting old. I don’t have a few months.’

  ‘Bill, you’ve been saying that since I first met you ten years ago.’

  ‘Just hang up, Bill. I’ll bring dinner,’ Pat says. ‘Goodbye …’

  ‘Hi Ma!’ I say into the phone.

  ‘Frannie! I was just doing my exercises. I usually turn the phone off when I do them but I thought that I hadn’t heard from you in so long. I was just telling Sonya how Hanukah came and went and I didn’t hear a word from you. I don’t even know if you got my card. Did you get the kids anything with the money I sent? I would have sent a gift but I wouldn’t have known if it got to you. At least with a cheque I can see if it was cashed. You didn’t cash the one I sent for your birthday. Ah, speaking of birthdays. Did Frank get my card? Did he have a good birthday? I hope you didn’t drag him around to all your things and you just let the poor guy relax. From what Pat tells me … can you believe I have to hear about you from your mother-in-law … Frank must keep up with her. I know she does that email you want me to do but you know me, I’m just learning how to use the VCR. Pat says you and Frank are always out on the town. Poor Bonnie and Harris, they’re too busy to go out. They don’t have maids. We’ve had six feet of snow already. I’m out shovelling every day. It’s good exercise, besides, I don’t trust the boys who come around. This neighbourhood isn’t safe any more. But I don’t know where to move. Oh, I have to hang up in a sec, I just noticed the time. I’m late already. You didn’t tell me how you are? Or the kids. Typical! I love you. Talk to you next week.’

  I had hoped to get a quick chance to assure Mom that I was swell. I had always been such a source of commotion, disturbance, worry, grief, stress, fear (why else have kids?) all my life that I wanted to make amends and prove that I had my act together. I was a long way from convincing Mom. Even if I said nothing more than ‘I was just about to go to the store’ she’d be sure it was another hair-brained, crazy scheme I was cooking up.

  ‘Well, guys, let’s get dressed for Jenny’s,’ I call out.

  Frank puts down his paper. ‘What?’

  ‘The Boxing Day party. At Jenny’s. Remember?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it starts at noon.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yeah, it does.’

  ‘I mean, I’m not going.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s going to be the same people from the Christmas Eve party and the same people from the Christmas Day party.’

  ‘I guess there will be some cross-over attendance, yes. What’s your point?’

  ‘What more could I possibly have to say to these people after one night apart?’

  ‘Oh, come on, get dressed. I’ll write out some conversation cards for you or you can just sulk against the wall. Anyway, you don’t want to be all alone on Boxing Day.’

  ‘I don’t know what Boxing Day is. I do want to be alone. I would love to be alone. Alone with you and Sadie and Huxley.’

  ‘That’s so sweet to hear. Listen, I’m going to –’

  ‘Go out for your run,’ Frank finishes.

  ‘Yeah, and I was going to meet you there because I want to run for a few hours today. So I’ve packed a bag for you to bring to Jenny’s so I can shower there.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She said it would be okay.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Don’t run. Stay.’

  ‘Jeez, Frank. I can’t make a day out of a sofa and a newspaper. I need other ingredients. Don’t be mad.’

  ‘Don’t keep Samantha waiting, Fran. I’ll see you at noon.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I give him a long kiss because I still have a minute before Samantha will be at the gate and because I can’t bear to just leave him standing there with his arms outstretched in the void.

  ‘I didn’t think I’d make it out,’ I say when I see her.

  ‘Oh, my gang isn’t even up yet.’

  ‘What time do your kids go to bed?’ Mine had been up for hours already.

  ‘Sometimes they just don’t. And sometimes they sleep all day.’

  ‘That doesn’t worry you?’

  ‘I read a book, Your Body, Our Cash, all about how big companies want us to be awake during the day so we can buy things.’

  ‘I never thought of it that way.’

  ‘Sure, look how the commercials for toys and junk food are on during the day. And the stores …’

  ‘Open in the day,’ I add, wide-eyed. ‘Yeah, you know, you’re right! Still, I could write a book: Kids Who Don’t Sleep Don’t Get Toys … and Other Things Children Should Know to Make Their Lives More Pleasant.’

  ‘Fran!’

  ‘What do they do at 1 am?’

  ‘Oh, we make bread or play chess or watch television.’

  ‘We? So how do you function during the day?’

  ‘Bet!’ We laugh.

  Our plan is to go down East Coast Park and over Mt Faber and take a cab to Jenny’s from there. Now that we’re doing one long run a week, it’s critical for our sanity to find inventive routes on this small island. Last week, to make up a two-hour run, we went through a mall from end to end, on each floor. I thought it was brilliant. We got aircon, we had some steps, we got to leap over things like wheelchairs and small children, and we could window-shop. Plus the bathrooms were much better there than in the park – better soap and some even had toilet paper.

  Not too many people are in the park this morning but it’s still a scene. There are four kinds of groups that can be found here no matter what the time, no matter what the weather, no matter what the holiday. First, there are the public workers, lean, swarthy men from places like Sri Lanka, who live in encampments in the park. Their ghettos are hidden from public view by trees and shrubs but if you peer between the branches, you can see them laying out their straw mats, cooking over butane stoves, smoking bidis and washing out the cloths they wrap around their waists and then tuck between their legs. I don’t know what they call that look; it’s like Aladdin before he got rich. In the earliest hours of the morning, like 5 am, a crew of them sweep the paths free of detritus; another set, reams of black garbage bags artfully coiled around their heads, like walking dispensers, change the bin liners; and still another just stand there harmlessly, but unnervingly, curling their lips as they watch me run past.

  Okay, so that’s the worker bees. Then you have the people, usually poor families and teenagers, who pitch tents and camp out. They bring everything that’s not nailed down and set it up just like it is at home, outside the tent. They put sofas and crockery, televisions and radios, tons of meat and rice and snacks and drinks and breakfast items onto a trolley and sail over to their plot of land, be it the tarmac, the sand or the grass. They stay up all night (so as to avoid the consumerist mind control of the big retail establishments?) eating and singing and eating some more until they pass out wherever they please, be it the grass, the tent, the tarmac or the sand. I’m sure they wake up with thousands of welts, a gift from the carpet of red ants that patrol the landmass, and the thick clouds of mosquitoes that rule the ankle zone of Singapore.

  Then you have your bathroom atten
dants. They live with their families in the rest stations. It is not what most westerners would consider a home. Yes, they have running water, yes, they have lots of indoor plumbing, but they sleep in a hot little cell between the Gents and the Ladies and probably live on the snack food they sell: very instant noodles (just add saliva); Twisties and cuttlefish floss (you got me, but it’s written on the package and you don’t find it at the dentist’s).

  Finally, there are the ever-present teams of Tai Chi practitioners. I’ve been in the park in extraordinary weather and at the frightful hours of dawn and dusk, and there they are. I love them best. Happy herds of people past 50 in T-shirts that designate their class name, making small, tight movements to tape-recorded instructions. The cassette they listen to was produced before anyone used the word ‘digital’ for anything but a clock. The hisses and pops, static and blur are so grating, I can’t imagine these disciples get the zen for their yen, but they are such a jolly lot that I feel grateful to witness their simplicity as I sweat and drip on another endless workout.

  We leave the park, run along the highway on Shears Bridge and get honked at. ‘Oh, look, it’s Lisa and Roy. Hi!’ I wave and blow a kiss. We run past Suntec City Mall.

  ‘Fran! Samantha!’ come a duo of voices.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, still running, to people sitting outside drinking coffee.

  ‘Who were they?’ Samantha asks.

  ‘I think it was Simon and Melanie.’

  ‘Oh, I helped her breastfeed.’

  ‘That must have been a while ago, ’cause just the other day, I helped her up after she and Simon passed out in front of the koi fish. I found them at five in the morning when I went out for a run.’

  ‘Where were their kids?’

  ‘Pearl. Wonder what that night totalled.’

  When we get to Mt Faber, Singapore’s idea of a mountain, we trudge up the hill. Cable cars leave from here and stop at the World Trade Centre and then Sentosa Island, a little freckle of land used until 1970 as a military base. As logic would dictate, it is now a pleasure resort–theme park. Most people say it sucks: too expensive, too run-down, what a waste of space. While I see Sentosa Island that way too, I love it for those very reasons. I remember our first visit. Sadie enthralled a snake charmer who directed a python to slither up her tiny body like a stripe on a barbershop pole. I bit my nails but she begged for more. We took a hike down the ‘Dragon Path’, following an ancient archaeological site where the first dragons were discovered. Really. There were plaster-of-Paris skeleton remains of 200-yard-long mythical reptiles and partial human skulls. Really. And then we went through Sea World. It took about one minute and cost $50. It features a moving platform that takes you through a glass tunnel of ocean life. I read every placard aloud to the family and we took another spin in an effort to amortise that $50. Then we went to the surfside burger place that would have been better without the insanely loud technobeat. We had a deep-fried lunch, hung out on the beach, rented paddle boats, collected things. And then found ourselves covered in tar.

  We went to the hotel there and used their facilities. They had a shower outside of the pool area and we scrubbed until the black ooze on our feet and butts was the colour of nicotine stains and not quite sticky enough to pick up more than a few thousand grains of sand. The kids wanted to go to the pool, so we carried ourselves like guests, haughtily looking at the towel man, wagging our fingers at the cocktail boy, and no one thought otherwise as the kids went through the waterslides and frolicked in the pool. After that, we changed back into our clothes and kept looking at each other, saying, ‘This is our new life. This is great!’ All right, so we got a little gooey, a little sunburned, but all that was of no concern as we sat in the Thai-styled lounge area, open on three sides to the South China Sea, a few ceiling fans spinning, the band, Kep Tan and To Nil, singing ‘Muskrat Love’. We lapped up the sunset with a bottle of happy-hour half-priced Moët and two Shirley Temples, toasting our friends back home who were bundled up with drippy noses. We spotted our first family of wild monkeys, picked up the car and went home, wondering what exactly everyone thought was so funny about Sentosa. Okay, the next day I had tar on my butt and deep-fryer fat in my veins, but it was worth it.

  ‘Hey Samantha, next run we should go into Sentosa.’

  ‘Oh, no, you couldn’t pay me to go there.’

  ‘Why not?’ I feel defensive.

  ‘They make you keep pets on a leash.’

  ‘Listen, Sentosa has hills. Not just stairs, but hills. Think of it! We could go through the mall, around the docks, over Mt Faber and –’

  ‘Golly, I didn’t see it that way. Sure!’

  By the three-hour mark, we are back at the base of Mt Faber having circled Labrador Park a few times. We get some water and call Comfort Cablinks for our taxi. After you call Comfort Cablinks once, they think they know you. Here’s how the second and ever-after conversations go:

  ME: Hi, I need a pick-up.

  DISPATCHER: Is this 9-082-4116?

  ME: Yes.

  DISPATCHER: Coming from Fortune Gardens, is it?

  ME: No. I’m coming from Mt Faber.

  DISPATCHER: You stay at Fortune Gardens?

  ME: Yes, but I need a taxi from Mt Faber.

  DISPATCHER: (tapping on a keyboard) You are staying at Mt Faber now?

  ME: I’m just standing here waiting for a taxi.

  DISPATCHER: Okay okay. Pick-up location is Mt Faber. Going to Prestons?

  ME: No, that was yesterday. Today I –

  DISPATCHER: You don’t go to Prestons today?

  ME: No, no, I need to go to Bayshore.

  DISPATCHER: (tapping) Your husband is Frank.

  ME: Yes.

  DISPATCHER: You are Mrs Frank.

  ME: Not technically, but that’s okay.

  DISPATCHER: You live in Fortune Gardens.

  ME: Yes, I do, but I’m not there now.

  DISPATCHER: But your maid is at home.

  ME: Yeah. Can you get me?

  DISPATCHER: Please hold for your taxi number.

  Five seconds later, a voice comes on and says, ‘A blue comfort cab with a small dimple on the left rear side and an advertisement for Tiger Beer, licence plate SHA 489098, will be arriving in five minutes’ time.’ One minute later, it is there. The driver greets you, ‘Miss Flank. You not go to Plestons today?’

  His computer screen, inexplicably, has a picture of you in your home, in your PJs on a Sunday morning. Comfort Cablinks is Big Brother. They get you where you’re going and they know where you’ve been.

  Jenny lives in Bayshore. It’s a lot like Fortune Gardens except the apartments are bigger and they have two restaurants. Instead of being numbered, their blocks are named after gems. The precious ones – Ruby, Emerald and Diamond – are taller and face the sea. Opal, Jade and poor little Quartzite have a view of their superior crystals. I met Jenny through Tilda. She has three kids. The older two, Trent and Neil, are Sadie’s and Huxley’s ages.

  I get there before Frank and the kids, but others are there. I stand dripping in the vestibule. I don’t have my clean clothes to change into but Jenny brings me a towel and a glass of water.

  ‘Fran, Fortune Gardens is just two blocks away. Why didn’t you go home first?’ Jenny asks quite reasonably.

  I know I’m being set up here. I will say, ‘Believe it or not, finishing at a different door makes running here just a tad less monotonous.’ And the British will say, ‘Bloody stupid to run in this heat; you wouldn’t catch me doing that.’ And the Americans will say, ‘You are so disciplined. I wish I could find the time.’ The Australians will say, ‘You call that a run, mate? Back in Sydney I ran 40 kilometres in under two hours.’ The Germans will say, ‘Vatz de difrence. You get olt; you die.’ The Canadians will say, ‘ ’.

  As I towel off, I see lots of kids, hands in chip bowls, drink boxes dented and overturned on tables and chairs, moms reaching for toys, pouring out juice and picking up muffin parts and unclenching fists for more
muffin parts.

  ‘Jenny, where’s Steven?’ I ask.

  ‘Working.’

  ‘Sudden emergency?’

  ‘No, just the usual.’

  I’m puzzled. I turn to Tilda. ‘Hugh here?’

  ‘He’s watching the soccer at Muddy Murphy’s. It doesn’t start until three but last time Everton beat Manchester, Hugh was at Muddy Murphy’s three hours early.’

  ‘I’m not following you,’ I say.

  ‘When he watched Everton lose to Manchester, he was at Father Flanagan’s.’

  ‘Okay … still not there yet.’

  ‘What’s not to get? Everton won because Hugh was at Muddy Murphy’s and they lost because he was at Father Flanagan’s instead. So now he has to go to Muddy Murphy’s wearing his green tie and have three rum and Cokes and three beers three hours before the game if he wants them to beat Manchester. I’m not going over this again with you, Fran, either you understand or you’re daft.’

  ‘Where’s Collin?’ I ask Dana, afraid to show Tilda my confusion.

  ‘With Hugh.’

  ‘But I thought Collin roots for a different team?’

  ‘Not the point,’ Tilda pipes in. ‘Collin was with him at Muddy Murphy’s when Everton beat Manchester so he has to come.’

  ‘So, are any men coming?’

  ‘Oh, I highly doubt it. Jenny, it’s just tea for mums and kids, right?’

  On cue, Frank walks in and hands me my bag of clean clothes, takes the kids’ shoes off and asks where he should stash his 12 cans of VB.

  He opens one, Jenny’s maid appears and takes the rest of the beer into the kitchen. I motion for him to follow me down the hall, into the bathroom. I close the door. I turn on the shower and undress. He smiles. He moves toward me. I can’t decide if I should tell him he’s taken the day off to go to playgroup or if we should have sex on the bathroom rug first.

  ‘I’m dirty,’ I warn.

  ‘So am I.’ He smiles.