Love and Vertigo

by Hsu-Ming Teo

  ‘For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.’

  He rolled off her. Wearily, he turned his face towards his wife. She was lying completely still. A rivulet of water wandered down her cheek, following the grooves that cupped her silent mouth like parentheses.

  ‘Have it your way then,’ he growled, too late. He got out of bed and scratched his crotch, grabbed his pyjama trousers and climbed into them.

  ‘Martyr,’ he accused as he stalked out of their bedroom. He stopped short when he saw me huddled in the hallway, my arms wrapped around my knees. ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘Rapist,’ I said, crying. He snarled and raised his hand to slap me. I quickly squeezed my eyes shut and looked away, bracing myself for the blow. Then he dropped his hand and shoved me away. He stomped downstairs into the guest room and slammed the door shut. When I pressed my ear against the door I could hear the uneven rasp of harsh sobs. I didn’t know who he was crying for: himself, his wife, maybe for all of us. ‘Pan, I love you,’ I heard him cry. ‘Oh God, God.’

  I drew back from the door and made myself hate him. I cursed him with vile epithets in my mind as I went upstairs into the master bedroom. How apt the name seemed then. The room where my mother had been mastered.

  ‘Mum?’ I said. I drew the quilt over her rumpled nakedness and climbed onto the bed. ‘Mum? Are you all right?’

  ‘Go away, Grace,’ she said, turning her face away from me.

  Still I hesitated. ‘Do you want me to help you to the bathroom? Shall I turn on the light?’

  ‘Just go away and leave me alone.’

  The next day I went over to Sonny and Hwee Mei’s place. I wanted to let Sonny know what had happened so that he could visit Mum, or at least give her a phone call. She needed him, not me.

  Hwee Mei opened the door. ‘Oh, it’s you again. Sonny’s still sleeping. He didn’t get in till late last night.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ I followed her into the kitchen and saw the pillar of dishes in the sink. ‘I’ll do the dishes while I wait, shall I?’

  ‘No, don’t. Just sit down.’

  Slightly surprised, I did as she said. She made me a mug of coffee, as usual, but she didn’t make one for herself. She rummaged around for some Tim Tams, arranged them neatly on a plate and brought them over to the table.

  ‘Look, Grace.’ She hadn’t sat down and her knuckles were white and tense on the back of the orange vinyl chair. ‘I don’t know how to say this. I know you’re very close to Sonny and all that. Look, I’m pregnant, okay?’

  ‘You are? Hey, that’s great! When did you find out? Do you know if it’s a boy or girl?’

  ‘Look, we haven’t much money,’ she said, ignoring my questions. ‘I’m going to have to stop work when the baby comes, and Sonny still hasn’t established himself properly yet. It’s really hard for me to say this, but do you ever stop to think that every time you come around here, you’re costing us money?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I couldn’t believe I was hearing this, yet was I really that surprised? I had pretended all this time that Hwee Mei was my best friend and closest confidante, that I loved her almost as much as I loved Sonny and that she felt the same way about me. Who was I kidding?

  ‘I mean, look at that.’ She gestured to the mug of cooling coffee and the plate of Tim Tams. ‘Coffee and bikkies don’t drop free from the sky, you know. We have to pay for it.’

  ‘But I didn’t ask for any coffee or any Tim Tams. I’m sorry if I haven’t been more considerate, but I don’t have to eat and drink something whenever I come to visit. In fact, I can help out. I can bring stuff over, especially now that the kid’s on its way. I don’t do much else with my pocket money anyway. I’m not really into clothes and all that, you know.’

  ‘Look, Grace, we really like you, but you shouldn’t come around so often. It’s time you built your own life. You don’t go out with your friends and Sonny says you’ve dropped out of church. I know you only went because Sonny went, but that’s exactly what I mean. You live your life through Sonny. It’s not healthy. You have got to get your own life.’ She crossed her arms defensively over her body, as if protecting her child, Sonny’s child, from me. ‘We’re a family now. Me, Sonny and the kid.’

  How is it possible for someone to be kicked in the guts over and over again and not develop some sort of warning signal, some sense of self-preservation? How is it possible to keep on falling and never hit the ground? How is it possible to still keep on hurting when all emotion should be dead?

  ‘Yeah. When you’re right, you’re right. Guess I’ll see you around, huh?’ I got up and walked out of the flat.

  LOVE IN A HOTEL ROOM

  Pandora had always depended on someone else to rescue her; she was incapable of saving herself. A dutiful Chinese daughter and then a submissive Chinese wife, she had never learned to fight for anything she wanted, to take up arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them. Perhaps she never really knew what she wanted anyway, since she did not know herself. She could never understand herself because she only ever slid furtive, sidelong glances at life. She was comfortable, if unhappy, with her oblique but familiar vision of the world.

  When she felt that she could not bear her marriage any longer, she looked to Josie Philippe for help. Unfortunately for her, Josie was out of the country. Rodney Philippe answered the phone and told her that Josie was leading a three-month mission trip to Bangladesh. He launched into a monologue about the great things the mission team would do and it was with some surprise, mingled with irritation, that he finally noticed the harsh rasp of sobs on the other end of the line.

  ‘Pandora, what’s wrong?’ he demanded. But he knew her only as a pastor, not as a human being. Over the years she had been in his church he’d had ‘fellowship’ with her, but neither he nor Josie had ever developed anything as simple and strong as friendship. He sighed internally and did his duty now. ‘Pandora, I’m coming over, all right? I want you to go into the kitchen and make yourself a cup of hot tea. All right? Hang up the phone now.’

  He spoke to her as if she were an idiot-child, but she did as she was told. She waited in the kitchen for him to tell her what to do next. She could think of only one thing: was she going to get a divorce? It would be such a scandal in the Lim family, even rivalling Lida Lim’s adventures over thirty-five years ago.

  Lida Lim. Dead for so many years now, run over by a reversing milk truck one chilly grey English winter’s morning as she tap-tapped her way across the street with her white cane. Had she been happy before she died? Nobody knew. Tom the English Sailor did not marry her in the end. His mother forbade it, so he left Lida and settled down instead with a nice English girl named Emily who worked as a secretary in a real estate office and read Barbara Cartland novels in her spare time. Lida Lim went on to her next man, whose name we had long since forgotten. He worked as a bouncer in a nightclub and poured over the footy pools during the week. He, too, left her when he discovered that her night blindness was deteriorating and she could no longer venture out of the house after dark. Despite the flashing strobe lights and silver disco ball, she was as blind as a mole inside his nightclub and easily disorientated by the throbbing music. If he’d wanted a missus who just stayed home and nagged, he’d have gotten bloody married, wouldn’t he, he said when he walked out. At the time of her death, she had been living with a Pakistani called Ashis who ran a High Street take-away and looked after her when her retinitis pigmentosa degenerated into full blindness. None of the Lims went over for her funeral except for Winston. Then he tried to sue the milk company for compensation but the case was thrown out of court.

  Lida Lim might never have been married, but at least that meant she’d never had to consider divorce. Pandora was miserable with Jonah, yet she was terrified of getting a divorce. True, there was no need to consider the children; they were old enough to take care of themselves now. But there were all sorts of other factors to consider: the self-righteous a
nger of Winston and Daphne, who were not divorced despite their unhappy marriages. Chinese women didn’t divorce, Daphne told her. That kind of thing was for westerners. Chinese women just put up with their husbands and were grateful for their children. And the condemnation of her church friends. Marriage was a sacrament, the church insisted. Whom God had joined let no-one put asunder and so forth. If they rejected her because she got divorced, who else did she have in Sydney? And after years of enduring Jonah’s presence, could she accustom herself to his absence? Where would she go? The house did not belong to her. She had never worked in her life, hadn’t even finished her arts degree because she’d become pregnant. How was she to survive without Jonah?

  As usual, she needed a man to rescue her. Rodney Philippe came and threw her a lifeline. He sat in the kitchen with her as she cried and crumpled her way through a box of Kleenex. He listened as she spoke haltingly, painfully embarrassed, of divorcing Jonah. Perhaps. He probed and prodded her family history out of her. He prayed with her and showed her scripture verses, and they talked some more. Divorce was not the answer, he told her sadly. Didn’t he himself know that marriage was not an ideal institution, and that married couples weren’t always happy or compatible? Take himself and Josie, for example. They had gotten married when they were so young, straight out of university. Over the years they had both changed and grown in different directions. They were such different people now, and they didn’t rub along smoothly very often, but although they didn’t have children, they were still together, weren’t they?

  ‘But you always look so happy together,’ Pandora said.

  He smiled ruefully. That was faith, he said. Act loving and God will give you the loving feelings. So had the feelings come, she asked? They would come, he assured her. He had faith in that, and she should have faith in God as well. God could save her marriage if she was willing to stop being a victim and take victory in Jesus’ name. Their God was a God of miracles. He healed the sick and made the lame walk and leap with joy. He opened the eyes of the blind and raised the dead and, if she wanted it badly enough, if she was willing to believe, he could heal her marriage too. Yes, she wanted it. She would trust God and have faith in him. They made a pact to meet regularly, to study the scriptures and pray together that God would heal both their marriages.

  Rodney Philippe came over during the weekdays, when Jonah was at work. He drank coffee and ate the little sandwiches she made, then they got down to business. They studied the biblical role of husband and wife. They looked at God’s plan for relationships. And they prayed that God would give them the desires of their hearts. She began to trust him; she told him that Jonah had sex with her whether she wanted it or not, and she submitted because it was her wifely duty to submit to her husband in everything. Rodney was surprised at the quick surge of fury he felt. He was deeply upset by the bred-in-the-bone chauvinism of these Oriental men.

  ‘That’s not submission, that’s rape,’ he said angrily. Then he inhaled deeply. ‘Listen, Pandora, Jonah’s misquoting scripture, twisting it for his own ends. Just tell Jonah “No” next time.’

  It was easy for him to say that. He finished his lukewarm coffee then drove off back home, leaving her alone. She didn’t dare to refuse Jonah. She was afraid of his anger and, even more than that, she was just so tired. So she lay under Jonah and closed her eyes, pretending that it was Rodney Philippe making love to her. A man who would lay down his life for his wife, so he claimed, just like Christ. She wished she was his wife.

  ‘I love you, Pan,’ Jonah said. He wrapped his arms around her possessively. ‘Do you love me still?’

  ‘Mmm.’ She hated him for asking the question.

  Pandora waited by the front window until Rodney came over again. She loved the way the dark green door of his Holden Commodore swung open quickly and he sprang out, full of life and energy. The driver’s door slammed and he jogged round to the front passenger’s side and pulled the door open. He stuck his head inside and she briefly admired the tight curve of his bum. Then he withdrew his head like a turtle and straightened up, closing the door, bible in hand. He wheeled around and the car alarm beeped as he strode towards the front door.

  ‘So have you heard from Josie?’ she asked as she poured boiling water from the kettle onto the granules of instant coffee in his mug.

  ‘No.’ He shrugged. ‘I guess she’s pretty busy. The Lord must be blessing her work. How are you and Jonah going?’

  She put the kettle down carefully and stirred the coffee, pouring in the precise amount of milk that he liked. With both hands, she set the mug in front of him. Then she sat down and arranged herself into the familiar posture of submission, her hands folded and her eyes lowered to her lap.

  ‘Not good. Don’t know how much longer I can keep going. Look, it’s not him I want inside me.’

  She glanced up at him. He sprang up from the kitchen table with that quick, nervous energy that she admired and knocked over the cup of coffee she had so carefully prepared. It spilled over the table and dripped onto the floor. The cup rolled, tipped and smashed on the tiles. He ignored it. He came around the table and took her into his arms to kiss her. His hands streaked down and around to her bottom and he grabbed fistfuls of it through the thin wool of her grey skirt. Then, impatiently, he scrunched up her skirt and his fingers burrowed under her panties to cup her flesh. For an instant, she was totally shocked. Where was the wooing and the romance? she wondered. Where were the words of love and tenderness?

  ‘Pandora, we can’t do this here.’ He untangled his hands from her clothes and stepped back. ‘I’ve got to think about this.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said dully. He was picking up his coat and shrugging it on.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ he said on his way out.

  Sure you will, she thought. But he called the next day, and she felt that maybe she could trust him after all. ‘Do you want to meet today?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ve booked us a room at the Hilton,’ he said. ‘We can meet there and talk or whatever. You can take the train from Burwood to Town Hall.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ve never done this before,’ he said as he let her into the room. He was nervous. He took her hand and his palm was sweaty. ‘I just want you to know that.’

  ‘I haven’t either.’

  ‘We don’t have to do anything you don’t want. I don’t want to hurt you or anybody else.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you or anyone else either,’ she said in return, and she wondered whether the whole scene would take place according to some B-grade film script, with both of them helpless to do or say anything but mouth off clichés.

  ‘It’s important that we don’t hurt anybody,’ he insisted, and she understood that he wasn’t just talking about Josie and Jonah, but also about the church. Nobody could find out or his career would be sunk. She agreed. She sat down on the couch. He knelt by her and eased off her pretty high-heeled shoes before seating himself. Then he swung her legs onto the couch and placed her feet on his lap. He began to massage her feet like the tender lover he wanted to be.

  ‘You’ve got cold feet,’ he observed as his fingers stretched the skin of her arches.

  ‘They’re always cold.’ She was always cold.

  ‘Your bones are so fine, so delicate.’

  His hands left her feet and worked their way up her shins, then calves, loosening up the bunched muscles there. He pushed her skirt up slowly and stroked the dimpled flesh of her thighs. ‘Lift your hips up,’ he whispered. She obeyed, and he tugged at the elastic waistband of her underpants and slid them down her legs. He stared at the coarse nest of black curls at the top of her thighs. ‘Will you open up for me, Pandora? Please?’ Jonah never asked, she thought, spreading her thighs wide, and he never did this for her. She closed her eyes and tangled her fingers in Rodney’s thick brown hair as he bent his head and gave her the gift of tongues.

  He undressed her slowly and kissed her all over. He licked at t
he stretchmarks across her belly and lapped at the cellulite of her thighs. ‘I love all the different textures of your skin,’ he said as he pulled her off the couch and led her to the bed, turning down the covers so that she could slip inside. The sheets were cold so she snuggled against his warmth and allowed him to part her thighs. ‘Pandora, I adore you,’ he said as he entered her to piston in and out. ‘I’ve wanted to make love to you for so long now.’

  He said he adored her. That was all right. That was safe, wasn’t it? She knew where she stood with that. Adoration was intense, momentary, physical. It was what men said when they couldn’t say ‘I love you’ because they couldn’t fulfil the impossible demands and responsibilities of love. Adoration was realistic; it didn’t make and break the same promises as love.

  ‘I adore you,’ Rodney said again. ‘You’re so quiet and serene and gentle. You make me feel so peaceful.’

  She turned her face towards his and he saw himself mirrored in the stillness of her dark brown eyes.

  ‘Tell me about yourself.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything. I want to know every single thing about you.’ With his index finger he smoothed away the slight frown that dipped between her brows. ‘Start with your childhood. What were you like as a kid? I bet you were such a cute little kid.’

  She opened herself up to him and told him things that she had never told Jonah. She told him about being born under the sword of death, about being unwanted by the Lims and Tans, about singing for her special treat with Donald Duck in hawker centres, about everything that she had ever wanted and dreamt of being. She wanted him to understand her, to know who she really was. Look at me and see, really see me.

  But he couldn’t; like so many western men, he was blinded by his own fantasies of Oriental women. Quiet, gentle, passive femininity that transformed into voracious, insatiable sexuality in bed. Lady and whore in one. He stroked the soft, smooth skin of her back, squeezed her small bird-like bones, kissed the passive oval of her face, and failed to feel the bitter passion and disappointed dreams that bubbled deep inside her; the rage she didn’t know how to express, that she could only escape from by shutting down her consciousness and sinking into mind-numbing depression.