“She has my sincere condolences. Anyway, yeah, it turns out I don’t have a bright future as an international spy ahead of me. He sprung me following him after like two minutes and then gave me a really awkward lecture about stress levels and folate. So, anyway: HR knows. HR at Frost knows I’m pregnant. I am seriously waiting any minute for someone to tap me on the shoulder and send me in a taxi home, disgraced.”
I highly doubted that was about to happen, not if Henry was the HR person that knew. “Henry won’t tell anyone. He takes the whole HR confidentiality thing very seriously.”
“Well, it might not matter soon, because my stomach’s starting to touch the front of my tops. It’s over. The end is nigh. They’re going to demote me and burn me at the stake, Min. Send help.”
I laughed. “As HR manager, I’m pretty sure Henry won’t let them burn you at the stake. It’s not in the OH&S manual.”
“Since when has anything Frost ever does been in any HR manual?” Sarah asked. “Anyway, in other news, did Rob just tell me you’re moonlighting as a brickie now?? And Gemma just texted me and told me she’s on her way to Thailand??? Honestly, I’m away for like one day and everything turns upside down. I should have hired a babysitter for you lot.”
Sometimes I thought I probably needed one. I didn’t bother telling her about how badly my so-called co-workers had taken me being outed; I didn’t want her to worry. She’d bother Rob if she knew, and she had enough stuff on her plate already. Plus, it wasn’t like I could really do anything about it; I needed the money. I just needed to tough it out.
While I was lost in thought, another message came through. “Wow, I nearly forgot the whole purpose of my assignment!” it said. “Mission: Check on Henry. Um, there’s really no nice way to put this, so how would you like the news?”
It sounded like she didn’t want to tell me that he was fine without me, so I braced myself. “Shoot.”
“Well, all the interns love him and he’s super professional and all that, but…” There was a pause between messages. “I don’t know, dude. There’s something a bit off about him. He’s got the saddest polite smile I’ve ever seen. I don’t think he’s doing that great.”
I had to read that message twice. It was simultaneously the best news and the worst news I could have received, and despite the fact part of me was cheering, ‘He misses you!’, the rest of me kept remembering how miserable Gemma had been—what if he was like that?—and how upset he’d been on the phone, and when I’d bumped into him at the restaurant. God, my heart ached thinking about him sitting alone in his house, crying like she had been. I hoped he wasn’t doing that. It was probably my fault if he was, though, wasn’t it?
Before I’d thought it through, I texted Sarah, “Can you tell him to call me? Tell him I miss him and I want to help.”
Her reply was quick. “Uh, no can do, Mister. He’s obviously trying to get over you. Just leave it and give him some space. It’s not for you to get involved anymore.”
Yes, but I know I can make him feel better, I thought fiercely, and then took a few breaths. Or maybe I couldn’t. Maybe seeing me again would make him feel worse? Ugh. I thanked her and dropped the phone in my lap, running my hands over my face. She was right.
It wasn’t long before the sound of revving utes trying to navigate the loose sand got me up off the sandbank and back onto the work site, where the chatter of loud, ocker voices and slamming car doors was already obscuring the wind and the waves. Tucking my phone away, I got back to work.
I couldn’t dwell on how Henry was feeling for too long because, embarrassingly, Daz and Rob had clearly had a word to the other boys over lunch about me. The other four were a lot more subdued, suddenly: too suddenly. That was almost as bad as them whispering; I hated the thought of people needing to be told to behave around me.
I was half-heartedly mixing some water into the hardening mortar when Rob took the shovel out of my hand and placed something into it. When I looked down at it, it was a Red Bull. He grinned at me. “Have one for me, would you?” he said. “I promised Sares I wouldn’t.”
At least some of my co-workers were awesome, I thought, grinning, and sipped at it while I turned the mortar with my other hand. It reminded me a lot of Sarah sneaking me Red Bulls when people were being terrible at Frost; I wondered if she’d told him.
Before we could start again, Daz carefully went over the brickwork Rob and I had done that morning with his spirit level. When he was done, he patted Rob on the back and gave me the thumbs up. That made me feel much prouder than I’d expected it to, and I was smiling as Rob and I got back to work on the wall.
We had to finish as the sun went down, so I helped clean up the site and put the tarps back over it, and then we all drove in a big convoy back to the tiny nearby town. Daz must have rented us a holiday house to stay in there, because we all pulled up beside an ordinary-looking house. The guys all hopped out and started carting things onto the front veranda: a half-empty slab of beer, a BBQ, bags and eskies.
I’d lifted a big esky off the tray of one of the utes to help, but immediately one of the boys said, “Nah, let me carry that,” and took it off me. I offered to help with the BBQ, too, but no one would give me the tongs. The final clincher was when one of the boys started to make a really rude joke and Jonno hushed him. They all awkwardly tried to avoid looking at me before someone changed the subject.
Honestly? I might as well be standing here in a fucking Cinderella dress, for how they saw me. The worst thing was that they were actually starting to make an effort—Jonno even put a beer in my hand, but only after he’d helpfully taken the lid off it, something he didn’t do for anyone else—they just had no idea what they were doing wrong. Rob looked absolutely overjoyed when one of them made a huge, lumbering effort to ‘he’ me—after which he expected me to thank him—and I didn’t have the heart to explain to Rob why that hardly made a difference.
I couldn’t say anything about it to the rest of them anyway. I’d put big money on them getting all weird around me again if I asked them to stop treating me like a lady just because I was different.
Before long, it got really exhausting sitting around those white, stubbly faces and being constantly aware that I was the odd one out in every way, so I stood and mumbled something about not having slept much the night before, and went and shut myself in one of the bedrooms in the house.
I sat down slowly on the edge of the bed. I’d had a few beers; less than it took to make me really drunk but my head was swimming a little.
I don’t want to be here, I thought, gazing down at the gaudy carpet on the floor. I didn’t have much of a choice, though, because I had debts that needed to be paid. I couldn’t be picky about what I did for money anymore, and who’s to say if I walked out on this job that the next place wouldn’t treat me worse? I just had to deal with it.
I’d just rather deal with it at home with Bree to cuddle, I thought, and then reminded myself she probably wouldn’t have been able to pay that much attention to me if I was there anyway: she had too much studying to do. I wondered if she’d managed to get her teeth into those maths problems she was worried about during the day, though?
Figuring a short phone call wouldn’t interrupt her too much, I dialled her number. It would be nice to have a chat with her.
She must have accidentally left her phone on silent, though, because she didn’t answer. Sighing, I figured I'd go and have a shower before the bathroom was full of drunk men. I was in there with my binder halfway over my head when something rattled, and I realised it was my phone vibrating on the vanity. Unfortunately, my forearms were weak and aching from mixing mortar all day, and that, plus being tipsy, meant I wasn’t able to struggle out of the binder fast enough. I missed the call by a millisecond.
Groaning, I tried her again, this time getting the message, “The person you are calling is on the phone…’ which meant she was probably trying to call me.
I laughed a bit at that and put my phone back on
the vanity to wait for her to call through. She must have done exactly the same thing, because I finished with my quick shower and was getting into my pyjamas before it buzzed again. I answered it immediately.
I was in the middle of saying, “This is phone tag, right? Does that mean I’m ‘it’?” when I heard the three international dial tones.
All the blood drained from my face.
The voice that answered wasn’t the cheerful, bubbly voice I was expecting; it was the complete opposite. “Oh, so I see your phone is working just fine now,” it told me dryly in Korean.
It was my mother’s voice.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I stood there staring at my face in the mirror with the phone against my ear. The combination of shock and alcohol was paralysing, but I had to do something. You could just hang up, I told myself. Hang the phone up, Min. Turn it off. You don’t have to talk to her right now. Don’t wait, just take the phone away from your—
“You sounded like you were having a good time with the person you thought was calling.”
Bree. My voice rasped when I spoke. “W-We’d just been trying to call each other, that’s all.”
“Are you having a good time, Min?” She sounded deathly calm. That was always a bad sign.
It wasn’t like I could pretend I didn’t have good reception, either; she was crystal clear. She’s going to kill me, I thought. She’s going to—
“Are you having a good time?” When I didn’t reply, she prompted me, “Well, are you?”
“No,” I managed.
“I think you are,” she told me. “You want to know what I’ve been doing?”
I closed my eyes. It was too late to escape this conversation, wasn’t it?
“I’ve been worried sick for days, Min. Worried sick. I was sitting here imagining all the awful things that might have happened to my only daughter, my only family left in the world apart from my dying mother.”
“I told you why I wasn’t—”
“Oh, yes,” she interrupted. “You told me. ‘My phone is broken’. Is that true?”
Well, technically… “Actually, my phone was broken after I—”
She saw straight through me. “Is your phone broken, Min? Is it broken now?
I swallowed, watching my lips press into a thin line in my reflection. “No.”
She let that hang in the air for a moment. “So you lied to me.”
My whole face hardened; there was no point in arguing. “Yes.”
She exhaled with what seemed like excessive disappointment. “Why, Min? You know how my nerves are. Why would you ignore text after text, email after email, knowing how much it worries me? Why would you lie to me about it?”
I wished I could think of something smart to say to deflect all of this, but I’d had too many beers and my head was spinning. All I could do was stare dumbly at my reflection.
“Why, Min? Do you have a brand new family and you don’t need your boring old mother anymore, is that it? I mean, is it even true about Henry not telling his family about the wedding? Maybe you just don’t want me involved, maybe you think their ideas are better. Will you even tell me about the wedding, I wonder? Am I even invited to—”
“Mum…”
“Don’t you ‘Mum’ me,” she said, throat tight. “My only daughter—the most important person to me in the world—is finally getting married. I’ve longed for this my entire life. I’ve been planning for it, dreaming of it. I’m so excited for you. This is my only chance for a beautiful wedding, I don’t have other children. But it seems like you don’t even care. It’s like you’re trying to take it away from me! I’ve just been sitting here crying all day. I don’t know what to do with you.”
And I didn’t know what to say to that. She wasn’t going to get a ‘beautiful’ wedding out of me, not for many, many years. I didn’t want to feel guilty about it either because I didn’t choose to be the way I was, but she wasn’t pretending to be upset, she was upset. Ugh…
“Why are you doing this to me, Min? Why would my own daughter do this to me?” She paused. “Is it Henry’s mother? Does she want this wedding all for herself? Because she already had her chance when she let her daughter marry that awful Chinese man, and she doesn’t—”
“No, Mum.”
She made a noise. “Well then, what is it? What’s wrong with you? Why are you pushing me away just at the moment when we’re finally about to have everything we’ve always wanted? Don’t you want me to be part of your life?”
I kept my mouth shut.
“Maybe now that you’ve got a sparkling social life, it doesn’t matter to you what happens to the mother who gave up everything to make sure you—” She stopped abruptly as if something had occurred to her. “Wait. It’s your new ‘friends’, isn’t it?” She didn’t give me time to reply. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with them recently.”
I stifled a groan. “No, Mum, they—”
“—have clearly been in your ear. That unmarried white girl from Frost you’re staying with, how old is she? How interesting that you quit your job at Frost right before moving in with her. Did she tell you to do that?” She didn’t give me enough time to reply. “I bet she did.” She exhaled. “I bet Henry would think she’s—”
“Henry likes Sarah, Mum.”
She huffed. “Well, you could say Henry likes anyone right now, Min, and I wouldn’t know any better, would I? Not since you told Henry not to call me. Anyway, now that you’re not working seven days a week, it’s time you started going back to church. Maybe you’ll meet some nice friends—”
I grit my teeth. “I have nice friends.”
She still wasn’t listening. “Henry could go with you to church, too. When he was over here at Easter, he said he was interested in learning more about Catholicism. He really is such a good man, I think he’d even repent and convert for us. Then you could get married in a Catholic church, wouldn’t that be beautiful?”
I clammed up, because there was no fucking point.
I could hear—a keyboard, I think. Was she typing? “…Anyway, I think you living with this ‘friend’ is bad for you; you should move out straight away. Henry always said you’d be welcome to move in with him. And I suppose it’s a bit unorthodox, but you could always set up another bedroom so people don’t think you’re living in sin. I’m sure Henry can help you afford a moving van to—oh, never mind, I see you have a bit of money in your account anyway.” I heard a mouse clicking. Was she…? “Hmm, what’s this deposit on Thursday? $450? Where did you get that money? Oh—silly me. Henry probably thought ahead and gave you some money so you could afford the car repayment yesterday…”
I bristled; she was in my online banking. “I’m not moving out, Mum.”
She paused for a moment and then kept speaking like I hadn’t said anything. “It shouldn’t cost too much to rent a van—oh, look, there’re even Korean people who do it in Sydney! They look very nice. This photo on the website looks like the son of one of the ladies from Church. Such a lovely boy. How much do you think it would cost for tomorrow—”
“It doesn’t matter how much it’s going to cost, Mum, I’m not moving out of Sarah’s!”
“Oh, dear, that’s a bit more than you have. Hmm…” I heard more mouse-clicking.
“Mum!” I raised my voice when she kept not listening. “Mum, I’m not moving!” I repeated it in Korean, which was probably a bit rude. “Do you understand? I’m not moving!”
This time, she responded to me. “Yes, you are,” she said, sounding very sure of herself. “I just rented you a van for tomorrow morning, at 8am. There wasn’t quite enough money in your account so I thought I’d be a bit generous and pay the rest of it with my money. Good, I’m glad that’s sorted. Now we can get back to your wedding without your friends meddling.”
Did she just…
I couldn’t… did she just fucking use the last of my money to rent a fucking van? “Cancel it!” The words burst out of my mouth as I watched my face g
o red in the reflection. “I need that money, I have debits coming out and I don’t want to—”
It was like I’d hardly even spoken. “Henry can give you the money. Anyway, this may seem a bit harsh to you, Min, but I’m doing it for your own good. You make terrible decisions by yourself, and your friendship with that woman was a bad decision. She would have ruined the life I’ve worked so hard to build for you. In the end, when you’re happily married to Henry, you’ll realise I was right to be strict with—”
“—No! Mum! Mum, stop! Cancel that, I need the money, I really need the money!”
She sighed impatiently. “For what, Min?”
“I have car repayments, credit card repayments, and I have a loan that I—”
“You have a credit card?” She didn’t sound surprised. “How long have you been hiding that from me, Min Lee? I bet it’s maxed out, isn’t it? You know, I think I’ve let you try and manage your own finances for long enough now, it’s really clear you’re terrible with money. Look at this: $400 on a pearl necklace back in May? Really, Min, that’s the reason you don’t have any money. If you hadn’t spent that, you’d have some money left after paying for the moving van now. You can get angry at me all you like, but in the end, it’s your fault—”
I saw red. “No!” My voice echoed off the walls of the bathroom. “I’m an adult, I have expenses that I need to pay, you can’t just go rifling around in my account when your—”
“Oh, yes, Min, you’re such a responsible, mature adult. So mature you waste all your money and then blame me when there’s none left. So mature you just ignore your mother’s messages when you can’t be bothered spending five minutes to reply to them, even though you know I’m excited about your wedding—”
I didn’t know where to fucking start with her. “You know what, Mum? If it was five minutes, I wouldn’t mind! But you expect me to be constantly available to you all day to talk about weddings and honeymoons and—”
“Well, excuse me for caring about my only daughter’s wedding! What a terrible mother I must be, wanting the best for my daughter! I’m sorry if I’m interfering with your busy schedule of being unemployed and doing no housework when I see something beautiful I want to share with you. I don’t mean to drag you away from your friends for five minutes—”
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