Tales From A Broad

by Fran Lebowitz

  Frank opens it and pulls out a bunch of mixed bills. He says it is the exact amount that was in our cash machine account. Then he unfolds a long letter:

  Dear Sir and Ma’am:

  I do not suppose that returning your money is enough. I know I must explain how I can do this crime. There is only one answer. It is love. My love for Posie.

  Bet sighs and brushes the back of her hand over her right eye, she sniffs. Posie sits still, with her hands in her lap. I’m dying to hear what’s coming next, probably: ‘We couldn’t afford to remove the tumour, even with the 50 jobs I have. We were short by the exact amount you keep in your cash machine. Here, take it back. At least Posie will die an honest woman.’ Frank clears his throat and continues.

  You don’t know this thing called love. It has made me do what I did. My love for Posie.

  Posie’s head is hanging and her hair covers her face. I can’t get a read on her expression. Bet is staring out over the balcony. She nods a silent ‘amen’.

  She is everything to me. She is the earth, the stars, the fruit. I want her with me always. She is the clouds, the sun …

  Shut up already. What about the money? Bring it on home, Aruhn.

  I will never do this again. This love has made me do a terrible thing. I wanted to get Posie in trouble with you. She will not marry me. She says her job with you is too important. I wanted her to lose her job. Then she would marry me. I am ashamed. I did not think it out. You do not know how love can make a man crazy. Yours Truly, With God, Aruhn.

  That’s the end. Frank folds the letter and tosses it on the table. He leans back in his chair. There’s a great deal of expectancy crackling in the air but I know what’s going to happen next. He’s going to hold her like a baby and say how sorry he is that she had to go through this. He’s on her side for some reason that probably has to do with the fact that she’s 23, helpless, vulnerable and beautiful. I look down and see my revolting bunions have grown and yellowed with calluses.

  Now what? I’m not one for long silences, you know, so: ‘What the fuck was all that about? It’d be pretty hard to marry you once you’d been deported, huh?’

  ‘It’s the love, Ma’am Fran,’ Bet says. ‘It can make a man crazy.’

  Frank looks at Bet but is talking to Posie. ‘Well, now that we know how crazy he is …’

  Bet interrupts, ‘He is better now, Sir. I saw him just yesterday.’

  ‘Yeah, but, gee, Bet, how do I – a man with a wife and two kids – know about this thing called love? No, I’m sorry, but Sadie and Huxley are not safe. Posie, you’re not safe here either. He knows where you are.’ Oh, save little Posie by all means.

  ‘Oh, but Sir, in the last part of the letter, he said, “I will never do this again,”’ Bet chimes in.

  Frank now shifts his focus to Posie. ‘I’m afraid that the best course of action is for you to leave. Tomorrow. I’ll buy you a ticket home.’

  What? I am stunned.

  For all my raw anger, I have never once actually done anything that hurt someone worse than words – okay or a little punch and kick. There’s no doubt I’m relieved and gratified that Frank is on my side, that he and I are thick as thieves, partners, pals, going through this crazy thing called love – but, well, part of me says, gee, I hate her, but I don’t want to destroy her life. And, okay, I have to say it, though you have probably already guessed it, a tiny, tiny part of me says, gee, I’d sort of rather still have my maid, dammit … It won’t happen again.

  I motion Frank into the kitchen. He doesn’t move to follow me. Instead, he stands up powerfully, firmly, and walks to the balcony wall. He looks out to the horizon. After a moment, he turns around and – with a voice full of tenor and a stare that would wither anything with a heartbeat, a look I’ve seen rarely – he begins. ‘At first, I’ll admit, I thought, “Poor Posie, terrified by her boyfriend. He wasn’t who she thought he was. Perhaps he locked her in her room when he stormed through the house, stealing whatever he pleased, my satchel for one.” But then, I don’t know, something about her demeanour. Her posture was so still, but tentative.’ Frank pauses and puts his hands behind his back. He paces the length of the balcony.

  Frank is amazing me. This is the guy who can sit in a car silently thinking of nothing for hours. Actually capable of driving and not wandering from deep reflection to self-analysis to suicidal thoughts, like most people – or like me, at least. He is a man who drives and says to himself, ‘Bird. Sky. Yellow line down the road. Tree. Cloud.’ Now I’m learning that his camera catches interesting angles. (Okay, I guess I suspected there was a little more to him. I mean, I married him. And not just because no one else was asking.)

  ‘Go on,’ I say.

  Frank continues. ‘But then, I see it all. Correct me if I’m wrong – Bet? Posie? – last night, the Assembly of Filipinos of the Sacred Holy Blessed Young Heart held an emergency meeting. “What are we going to do to help Sister Posie?” they ask around. Someone says, “A bake sale?” – “We don’t have the time, Sister Eugenia.” – “A fashion show?” – “Sister Eugenia, we have to help her by tomorrow.” – “We dig the tunnel from the Lucky Plaza to the …” – “Sister Faye, thank you, now we’re thinking.” – “Why don’t we get the boyfriend to return the money?” – “Sister Beluga! Haven’t you been listening?” Then, Bet, the clever sister, stands up. “I will write a letter and we now go collect the money. Everyone put in what you have. Sister Angela, can you get another diamond earring off Ma’am? Good, I’ll see you at Ah Luit’s pawnshop. Everyone, we meet back here at 5 am.” Grumbles from the sisters. Bet shouts, “Posie would do it for you!”’ Frank, legs astride, stabs his raised finger at an imaginary congregation, as he envisions Bet did last night. His body is coursing with energy. We don’t dare move. I am speechless.

  ‘I don’t know if Aruhn stole the money or not. If I’m wrong on all of this, then the fact remains that Posie is involved with a nut who might do something worse the next time. No matter what, we’re left with a person of extremely poor judgement and character. Are we not, Fran?’ I blink.

  ‘Go? As in tomorrow?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But Frank, we have a party to go to tomorrow.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  I have to grow up too fast, too soon. Okay, okay, we can miss the party. Frank’s right, of course, we can’t leave the kids in Posie’s care no matter what the truth is, so I dejectedly nod my head and say, ‘Posie, you have to leave tomorrow.’ When she begins to cry, I wish I could just go back to being Mean Ma’am.

  There is a knock. I am grateful for the excuse to turn my back on the people on the balcony. I open the front door.

  ‘Pearl!’ I say, seeing my stocky little friend. She stands on the threshold and peers at the balcony.

  ‘Oh, I come at the wrong time.’ She looks at me and smiles. ‘Maybe right time?’

  ‘There’s a bit of a mess. What’s up?’

  ‘I have a subcontractor now. Jean. She’s a grandmother. So here’s her card and here’s an invitation to my house for Chinese New Year. I invite all my clients.’

  ‘Listen, I don’t want this to get out, but we’ve just had to fire Posie. I could use someone for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Can can, lah. Jean will be here.’

  ‘But I don’t know Jean.’

  ‘Okay, you don’t want a babysitter?’

  ‘Well, is she good?’

  ‘Yes yes, lah.’

  ‘Um, all right.’

  The next day, Frank purchases Posie a ticket to Manila. He and I had gone over it again and again and had decided that she was possibly a thief, had a stalker boyfriend, lied, showed incredibly bad judgement … the best thing was to let her have a new start. She could return to Singapore later and pretend we never existed.

  Posie breaks down when she kisses Sadie and Huxley. Bet shows up in a new party dress and full make-up. She wants to go to the airport to see Posie off. I wave to Posie as Frank puts her little birdcage of a
suitcase in the taxi. Posie is wearing a sweet, pale yellow dress. I see Frank slip her a fat envelope of money. I did the same thing earlier. I think this whole affair is more costly than having our money stolen but we feel it’s the right thing to do. Frank gets in and the taxi drives away.

  I go back inside and open the door next to the refrigerator. I want to travel down her old hall, take a look in her room, perhaps to punish myself, I think. I need to feel for her for a moment.

  I slide open her bedroom door. The television, VCR, microwave, toaster oven, cable TV box, even the rice cooker … gone. And it hits me. Oh! My! God! That was my sweet, pale yellow dress. And, of course, the pearls, you know, the ones I wore with it on Christmas Eve … gone too.

  Someone, I don’t know who, left the cake out in the rain. It’s been sitting in the middle of the sidewalk on the corner of Marine Parade and Boonlap Road for two weeks. Every time we walk to the New Barrel, every time we make our way home from the New Barrel, I pass this cake. The other night, in a torrential downpour, the cake acted like it was perfectly normal to be there, like it was perched on the bakery shelf, fresh and dry. No one dropped it by accident (a Singaporean would never, ever mistreat food). It is an offering, a token for someone deceased who must have liked cake al fresco. Or the person who invented weatherproof cake, falling down dead before the craze really took off. The cake won’t melt under the sun; it won’t budge in the winds. It holds court there day after day. We pass it now as we make our way to Pearl’s Chinese New Year lunch. The big dent left by my shoe when I got the urge to smoosh the cake collects a small puddle in the middle. Frank seems happy to see the cake’s surviving; he’s all about live and let live. The reason it was placed on that junction is a mystery but no more so than what we see every day, like finding a huge wake being held in a corner of your parking lot or a shrine erected behind a shrub off the side of a cricket field. We just assume that the location must hold meaning to someone involved here or beyond.

  The fortnight of Chinese New Year celebrations has disgorged so much peculiar detritus it is improbable they can move about at all in China, hemmed in with holiday shrapnel. The red packets, hong bao, are strewn about the streets; ashes from joss sticks, shrivelled oranges and fake money swirl about the gutters and nestle themselves in the boughs of trees. The whole country looks red, gold and gaudy. And, there must be some passage in the Mandarin text that claims the apocalypse is near – the food-buying frenzy amounts to sheer hysteria. There isn’t a parcel of land, not a sidewalk, parking lot, building site or even traffic island that hasn’t remade itself into an instant convenience store. Even the quickie-marts have stopped pumping gas so they can use that area to clone themselves. The goods are all the same: sodas, nuts, dried fruit, hard candies, big cellophaned gift platters stacked with all the above, chips, chips and chips, expensive tins of abalone and shark fin soup, floss, floss and floss (that’d be your standard pork floss, chicken floss and cuttlefish floss), instant noodles, durian and beer. ‘Tell me again, what is it that no human really needs? Okay, I’ll double my order.’ I shouldn’t make fun. I mean, what’s so different about this to the holiday hoopla back home? Our chickens might come with their heads off, and we might serve our food to those still visible to the naked eye, but it’s all about abundance … Ah, who am I kidding, it’s totally different here: the smells, the sounds, the scurrying to buy, sell, give, eat, burn; and their junk is junkier. I am in a foreign land. I need to simply accept their way of doing things without analysis or criticism, rather with generosity and respect; no judgement, but embracing, absorbing, growing, learning. I’m glad I came to this decision after I got the pleasure of stepping down on the cake.

  The holiday seems to mean the world to Pearl. Issuing an invitation to her home on the most important day of the Chinese New Year season means she considers us as family, or very important people in her life at the least. People she wants to impress. Should she happen to bounce a kid on her knee, I’m sure she’ll waive her usual fee on this day. Of course, we’ll all get a card. Not a holiday card, silly, the new one’s she’s putting out that now includes information on her seminar: ‘FilipiNO, How to Fire Your Maid! (Call Pearl Now.)’

  But Pearl probably wouldn’t have been so eager to entertain us had she known I’d go back to the maid thing. After Frank and I had fired Posie I thought about calling Pearl but found myself calling Jessica: ‘May I speak with Jessica, please?’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Rittman. This is Jessica.’

  ‘This is Fran Rittman. I came to you from Samantha Burns. We hired Posie.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Rittman. I just saw your husband the other day to prepare the paperwork for Posie’s departure.’

  ‘Posie left.’

  ‘I know, Mrs Rittman. I helped with Posie’s departure.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand your tone, Jessica.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Pardon? Pardon? You helped Posie? Like, I didn’t? Do you even know how hard I tried to make her a member of the family?’

  ‘Mrs Rittman, sometimes it just doesn’t work out.’

  ‘I gave her every Sunday off. And holidays, too. I gave her a workout tape.’

  ‘Would you like to interview for another maid, Mrs Rittman?’

  ‘One that she could do in her room. I told her that she should start off with cans, big tins of beans that I would have used in a recipe or something but instead I gave them to her … and I promised I’d buy her a set of weights once she mastered the beans. Oh, it is just so hard to believe. Do you know I gave her brisket lessons?’

  ‘Yes, you did the right things. Would you like to look for another maid?’

  ‘Yeah, right, life goes on, huh, Jessica? I remember the time she told me right away, when I came back from something or another, that Huxley had cycled down the steps. “Ma’am, Huxley rode his tricycle off the steps.” Just like that, that’s how she used to talk. She gave him a bandage. He rolled down 16 concrete stairs.’

  ‘I have several girls who would be suitable for you.’

  ‘Jessica, I just lost my Posie. Am I to settle for suitable?’

  ‘I assumed you were calling me to look for another maid.’

  ‘And replace Posie. Just like that?’

  ‘She was special, but …’

  ‘But what, Jessica? You think I forced her to steal from me? I raised her to be a good maid.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Rittman. You did your best. Why don’t you take some time and call me next week.’

  ‘Okay, but don’t sell them all before I get back to you.’

  ‘We don’t sell them, Mrs Rittman.’

  ‘You know what I mean. Save a good one for me. Listen, just so you know, I think I want a fatter one this time. Not sloppy, just, um, ample.’

  I should’ve known my call to Jessica wasn’t necessary. Fortune Gardens had learned of Posie’s departure and all the surrounding facts about the same time we did. There’s the speed of sound, the speed of light, and the speed of gossip. Frank had just arrived back upstairs from seeing Posie and Bet off and found me in the middle of Posie’s old room, stupidly looking under posters and envelopes for the missing television. I wanted to find it because I did not want to get in the hot car and chase her down some steamy tarmac. I’d just showered. I didn’t care any more, really. There was no one there to watch the TV now, or to microwave a small bowl of noodles and hot Milo. The necklace, well, everyone saw it on me a few times anyway.

  ‘What are you doing, Fran?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Frank, she took everything, see?’

  ‘I cannot believe this! What a … everything? The TV? The refrigerator?’

  ‘We can still catch her if we hurry.’

  ‘Um, like now?’

  ‘Well you don’t wait to catch someone about to board a plane.’

  ‘Yeah, but by the time we park.’

  ‘And pay for parking …’

  ‘That’s $2.50 already, we might as well just buy a new set.’

  ‘
Yeah, and we’d be rushing. Our luck we’d get into an accident or we’d get a ticket.’

  ‘I agree. Rittman luck.’

  ‘She doesn’t have them on her, anyway. Bet probably has everything down at the church ready for some raffle.’

  ‘And we’d get in that accident for nothing.’

  ‘Yeah, we can always get another TV.’

  ‘But you don’t get your life back, Fran.’

  Before we could continue pretending we weren’t just hot and lazy, the phone rang and didn’t stop. Everyone was offering condolences, which basically meant offering some maid-time. Caroline was breathless, ‘Well, I told Bethy she could do your laundry on Sunday at three.’ Dana said, ‘Gwen isn’t working two Saturdays from now so you could go out.’ And Tilda said, ‘I knew it was coming. You were too nice, practically ruined it for the rest of us. I was sure Carol was about to ask for a radio. BUT, mind you, you should call Irish Kell. Two maids over there and they’re leaving.’ And so I did.

  ‘Hi Kell, Vulture here.’

  ‘Oh, Frahn, I was just gonna call ye. I know ye’ll be thinking of having a wee word with Imogenia or Marzipan now, won’t ye?’

  ‘Tilda mentioned …’

  ‘Aye, I know. Well, we’ll be taking Marzipan back with us and Imogenia, well …’

  ‘Can I talk to her?’

  ‘Just don’t be expecting much.’

  ‘Not the brightest bulb on the tree, eh?’ I whispered to Kell, who was no longer on the extension.

  ‘Hello, Ma’am. It’s Imogenia,’ she said softly.

  ‘Oh, hi. How are you? Did you hear about Posie?’

  ‘I didn’t hear about the TV.’

  ‘What else didn’t you hear about?’

  ‘The VCR and the fridge, Ma’am.’

  ‘How’s the church raffle going over there at Our Lady of Overburden?’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Never mind, anyway, I want you to come work for me. That way you get to stay in Fortune Gardens with your friends and you know my kids already and they know you …’ I was getting excited by this now. Imogenia was a big, soft, oleaginous thing with stringy hair and big, thumbnail-sized teeth. Her silhouette was decidedly missing linkish. She had worked for Irish Kell for years, so she must be efficient, and I recalled that kids didn’t necessarily run away the minute they saw her coming, so it’d be okay. I continued, ‘You could start after –’