by Hsu-Ming Teo
‘I want to lose myself in your tranquillity,’ he mumbled into her neck. ‘You’ve got such an aura of calm.’
‘Yes, I’m practically inscrutable,’ she said sadly. Then she sighed, because all her life she had tossed up bright dreams to the gods, and always they came shattering back down, so when would she ever learn to stop needing so much and be happy with what she had? She would be happy.
He romanced her in a way that Jonah had never been able to, and she made herself content with that. She loved the short little phone calls throughout each day, the bunches of flowers that he brought her, the little gifts, the short, hand-written notes with little verses of love from the Song of Solomon—You have ravished my heart with one look of your eyes. How much better than wine is your love, and the scent of your perfume than all spices—and the longer, erotic letters. Like a lovestruck teenager, she pressed some of his flowers and folded his notes carefully and put them into a carved wooden jewellery box that she buried in the vegetable patch.
(Years later Jonah dug up the box accidentally when he was turning over the vegetable patch to plant roses. In his old age, he wanted to be surrounded by the scent of roses. He took it out, shook off the earth and maggots, and opened it. The notes and letters were all unsigned. Even at the height of his infatuation, Rodney Philippe was careful in his love. With trembling fingers, Jonah unfolded a note, smoothed the page and read. He took the box inside and called for me. Is this yours? he asked. I looked at the box, brimful of letters and pressed flowers, and scanned the note that he held out. Yes, I said, they’re mine. He looked me in the eye. Here you are then—I didn’t read them, only that one you’re holding. He gave me the box and went back out to the garden to turn over the soil.)
Pandora became acquainted with the world of daytime hotel rooms. She and Rodney combed through the Yellow Pages looking for suitable hotels, careful never to return to the same one or to establish a routine that might be traced.
At first she was charmed by the thrill of cheating, the titillation of wickedness and the decadent romance of lying naked in her lover’s arms, sipping champagne at two in the afternoon.
Then Josie Philippe returned triumphantly from her mission trip to Bangladesh, where they’d saved souls, seen God performing miracles, and established two new churches.
‘I don’t want to stop seeing you, Pandora,’ Rodney said as he burrowed between her thighs. ‘I can’t.’
‘I don’t want to hurt Josie,’ Pandora said, as she knew she must. ‘I’ve got nothing against her.’
But she lied. She did want to hurt Josie because she wanted to take away what Josie had. She began to hate Josie and she felt a tight-lipped triumph every time she saw her because she and Rodney shared a secret that made Josie an outsider. At the same time, though, she wanted to destroy Josie with the truth, fling it in her face like acid.
‘We won’t let her find out then. Pandora, I have to have you. I simply adore you. I’m in love with you.’
‘Then do something about it.’
He stopped his thrusting, shocked into stillness.
‘Do something about it?’ he echoed. ‘What?’
‘What do you think?’
‘You mean divorce Josie?’ She just looked at him. ‘I thought you didn’t want to divorce Jonah.’
‘I’m willing to now. I love you too, Rodney.’
‘Let me think about it.’
Love made a mess of everything. The hotel rooms began to depress her. Rodney was running short of cash and he looked for cheaper, tackier motels now. They were no longer glamorous and decadent; they were sordid. Worst of all, she felt like a cliché stuck in a timeworn and unoriginal groove. She saw Rodney less frequently now that his wife was back. He had to be more careful so his schedule was irregular. He no longer rang her at home or sent her little presents, and he asked her to stop sending him letters and gifts as well.
‘We’ve got to be careful,’ he said. ‘People might talk.’
Deep inside her, she began to despise him then. If he had been evil she could still have loved him and hung her hopes of escape on him. But he wasn’t evil, just human and weak. She despised the pusillanimous morality he still paid lip-service to, and his inability to act. She despised herself as well, for she knew that she, too, was incapable of taking drastic action without his support. Pandora began to despair.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll ask her for a divorce,’ he assured Pandora. ‘It’s just that the timing is really tricky. She’s just come back from such a great trip and she’s in really high spirits at the moment. I don’t want to spoil her mood.’
‘What about my mood?’ Pandora demanded. ‘You say that you love me, but you won’t do anything about it.’
It was on the tip of her tongue then. If you loved me, you would . . . But she swallowed the words and crushed them down into her diaphragm, for she understood instinctively that, once uttered, the words would suffocate his love in resentment.
‘Look, you’re a lot stronger emotionally than Josie. Whatever happens to you, you always cope. Right throughout your childhood and throughout your marriage. Chinese women always cope. Isn’t that what you said? Josie’s different. She might look strong and confident, but she’s very insecure emotionally. I’ve got to ease her into the subject. I don’t want her to lose her faith in God as well as in me.’
So she gave him time. He already had her love, so she gave him the only things she could give him now: her loyalty, her support, and lots of time for him to ease Josie into the idea of divorce. She listened to him as he complained about the huge arguments he had with Josie, about her temper tantrums that made his life a living hell. Things were going to be so different when they together, he assured her. He couldn’t wait. Pandora made herself believe him. She hung on to his love and convinced herself that she would not become yet another statistic. When my love swears that he is made of truth, I do believe him, though I know he lies. She made love with him in a small motel room on Parramatta Road, their moans and shudders masked by the heavy traffic passing outside, and she believed him when he whispered that it was all right; they were going to end up together. Everything would work out. Meanwhile, Josie went away on a mission trip to Nigeria at Christmas and they had more time together. Then Josie came back again. Still Pandora waited.
Josie rang her at home one day.
‘Hi Pandora. We haven’t seen you for a while.’ Her voice was bright and chirpy. ‘Rodney and I have been pretty busy since I’ve been back, but we keep saying we ought to get you and Jonah over for dinner.’
‘I’ll have to ask Jonah when he’s free,’ Pandora said.
‘You do that. I hear you’ve been taking care of Rodney while I’ve been away, so we want to thank you guys. Give us a call back when you’ve talked to Jonah, okay?’
Pandora rang Rodney at his office. ‘Josie just called. She invited Jonah and me over for dinner at your place.’
‘Oh my God! Does she suspect anything?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. Have you told her that you want a divorce?’
‘Yes, I brought it up the other night. We agreed to think about a separation while she makes a life for herself. She’s got a great ministry going now.’
‘Rodney, don’t lie to me. Don’t lie to me the way you lie to her.’
‘I’m not. Christ, what am I going to do now?’
He sounded so agitated. She waited for him to tell her that he would pack a suitcase and move out of the house he shared with Josie. That he would file for divorce. She had waited for him for so long.
‘What else did she say?’ Rodney asked. ‘Was she upset or in a temper? Did she sound all right?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe you should ring her and find out.’
Pandora hung up. She pressed her face against the wall and wrapped her arms around herself, hugging herself for comfort. She was beginning to see that however much Rodney claimed to adore her, even to love her, Josie was always going to be his first priority; Josie’s feelings, i
nsecurities and needs. And maybe Rodney really got off on being needed that desperately. Maybe it fed his ego, made him feel important and powerful. Gutless, Pandora thought fiercely. He was such a gutless man. He said that he was unhappy with Josie, but he was too gutless to make a clean break and let them both start over. Instead, he continued with their war of attrition, hoping that Josie would be the one to call off the marriage finally and absolve him of responsibility.
On the following day, after Jonah had gone to work, Pandora spent the morning cooking pork stew for Jonah’s dinner. She packed a suitcase and scribbled a letter to him.
She put it in an envelope, sealed it and placed it on the kitchen table, leaning against the pot of pork stew. Then she rang Rodney at work.
‘What is it?’ He sounded harassed and impatient. ‘You shouldn’t be ringing me here, Pandora. You’ve no idea what’s happening at the moment. This place is a hotbed of suspicion. It’s all gonna blow.’
‘I’m leaving Jonah,’ Pandora told him.
‘What? Are you crazy?’
‘I’m going to take a bus to the park at the end of Glebe Point Road now. The one by Blackwattle Bay. If you love me as much as you say you do, you’ll come and get me. I’ll wait for you there.’
‘Pandora, don’t do anything stupid.’ His voice was panicky now, then angry. ‘Listen, I don’t deal well with ultimatums, okay? I’ve got back-to-back meetings this afternoon.’
‘That’s okay. I’ll wait for you.’ She hung up. She switched off all the lights and power points in the house and checked the windows and doors to make sure that everything was secure. Then she let herself out of the front door and locked it, slipping the key under the money plant on the verandah. She picked up her suitcase and walked to Burwood Station.
It was such a beautiful day, the sky so blue over Blackwattle Bay and the sunshine so sharp that the shadows could cut you. Pandora walked over to a shaded bench under a tree and sat down to wait. She watched mothers playing with their kids in the sun, lunch-time joggers passing, an old man who spent the afternoon throwing a stick for his dog, kids rollerblading after school. She kept an eye out for a dark green Holden Commodore. Sometimes she thought she caught sight of the back of a head, or the cut of a coat that looked familiar and she started up, her heart pounding, but it was always someone else. Buses came and went. Shadows lengthened. The sun set slowly, throwing out burning streamers of pink and orange over the bay. The sky darkened gradually and Pandora couldn’t distinguish anything in the grey light. Too late, she realised that she had completely forgotten about her night blindness. Time passed and she couldn’t see anything. All she could do was sit there on the park bench, in the dark, clenching the handle of her suitcase and waiting for Rodney Philippe to come.
THE COMPULSION TO CLEAN
I had sex for the first time on the night that Hwee Mei threw me out of her home and out of her life, and it was pretty unspectacular. I’d gone to Sonny’s pub with the adolescent idea of drinking myself into a stupor, like in the movies. How would we respond to the climaxes and crises of life if it weren’t for the movies? They were a manual for growing up. They taught me everything I knew about how to behave as a western adolescent, how to mouth the clichés and arrange my body into the appropriate postures and attitudes of various emotional states. I internalised their soundtracks and replayed them in my head. They amplified the meaning of my mundane existence and added poignancy and significance to otherwise bitter but banal events.
Cut off from contact with Sonny, unable to live vicariously through him, I clung to the tatters of badly written scripts. I tried to get plastered but the barman knew I was Sonny’s sister and had just clambered over the legal age, so he stopped me after I’d gulped down two beers like cough medicine because I didn’t like the taste. However, he let me hang around and that was when He−mi came over and sat beside me. A handsome Maori who spent much of his days surfing and most of his nights playing the guitar and singing, He−mi was a member of Sonny’s band. I didn’t know much about him except that Hwee Mei thought he might be gay without knowing it since his main ambition in life was to become an opera singer. ‘It’s not impossible. Look at Kiri Te Kanawa,’ he insisted. After a few drinks his favourite party trick was to launch into the aria ‘E lucevan le stelle’ from Puccini’s Tosca: My dream of love has vanished forever, the moment is fled. I die in despair and never have I loved life so much. He completed his performance with the requisite heart-rending sobs at the end, covering his face with his long brown hands as his shoulders shuddered.
I can’t even remember how it happened now; I guess I’m a one-drink wonder and even two schooners go straight to my head. One moment we were in the pub and the next thing I knew I was in He−mi’s room in a tumbledown terrace house near the Newtown flour mills. I still had my T-shirt on but not my underpants, and He−mi was heaving and panting on top of me, his dark body a dead weight pinning me to a mattress which had a rather peculiar odour of sweat and baby powder. Sex wasn’t particularly painful, but neither was it comfortable. I think I felt as if my body didn’t belong to me. After the whole thing was over I turned to look at him.
‘Now are you going to tell me that you love me?’ I said cynically.
‘Get real, Gracie-girl. It’s just sex,’ he said. ‘I hardly know you except that you’re Sonny’s sister. Shit, don’t tell Sonny about this. I need my job.’
‘Don’t think he’d care one way or the other.’
‘You’re a funny one, Gracie-girl,’ he said as he rolled on top of me again. ‘All that need and no-one to hang it on. Well, don’t go falling in love with me and all that shit. I’m out of here soon as I get my break.’
Still, he was rather sweet to me while it lasted and I didn’t get VD, and maybe that’s all you can expect these days. If I stayed overnight he’d raid the fridge in the morning, sniff the sour milk and jog out to get some more so he could fix me cereal for breakfast. He wouldn’t let me clean for him or do anything for him. ‘This is not your home, Grace,’ he said, drawing the boundaries clearly. On warm afternoons he’d jam a baseball cap over my head and one over his—‘All that black hair attracts a lot of heat,’ he’d say—and we’d sit on the back steps munching chips while I read and he played the guitar, singing anything from ‘Dock of the Bay’ to ‘Nessum Dorma’.
‘This is nice,’ I said once.
‘Yeah, it is. Just don’t get used to it.’ But he put his arm around me and gave me a hug.
‘Don’t worry. No expectations at all.’
And it was just as well. He auditioned for some music college in Canberra and was accepted, so off he went to follow in Kiri Te Kanawa’s footsteps.
‘Good luck. See you round,’ I said, just before he left for Central Station. My generation cannot say ‘goodbye’. We have lost the formal rituals of leave-taking.
‘Yeah. I’ll call you,’ he said awkwardly, fidgeting with the battered handle of his guitar case.
‘Will you?’
‘Nah, not really.’ He grinned then, honest to the last, and I realised how much I liked him—really just liked him—at that moment. ‘Take care of yourself, Gracie-girl.’ And then, because he didn’t know how to leave without saying it although he didn’t mean it either: ‘See ya later.’
There was not much else for me to do so I just studied and finished school. After the HSC I moved out to Newtown. I circled job ads in the newspapers and went for interviews, but in the end I just started cleaning houses. My fingers were raw and red because I kept forgetting to wear gloves, and my knuckles swelled up painfully. I mopped, dusted, vacuumed, laundered clothes and ironed them and there was such satisfaction in mindless work. I brought order into other people’s homes. I removed trash from their lives.
At home I’d read until the early hours of the morning, but I still had trouble sleeping. My flatmates and I sometimes trolled King Street to pick up convenient cocks, back in the days before King Street started to look like Oxford Street, Paddington, with hip
cafes and trendsetting clothes stores; back when dingy shops sold African beads, belts, bells and beanies. My flatmates were looking for a good fuck; I was just looking for a cure for insomnia. In the morning, if I didn’t have a cleaning job to go to, I fixed breakfast for the stomachs attached to those cocks: freshly ground Italian coffee, cereal and toast, sometimes even bacon and eggs. I accepted their groans of appreciation—‘You’re amazing, Grace,’ they always said, ha ha—and put them out of the house as soon as I could. Then I stripped the bed, laundered the sheets and effaced all signs of human intrusion into my home. I showered, scrubbed myself vigorously and cleaned my teeth carefully with a soft-bristled toothbrush. Gentle circular motions, round and round.
And, of course, I flossed. Habits of hygiene are harder to break than family ties.
I hardly saw Sonny anymore. I didn’t know what he was doing for a living. Occasionally I saw his name on cheap posters pasted onto lampposts, advertising the dates and places where his band was playing. Otherwise, I assumed he was wrapped up in Hwee Mei and his baby. I was afraid of intruding on their domesticity. If they were actually happy, I thought, then they should be given a chance. That baby should be given a chance to break the pattern, to grow up quarantined from the inevitable hurt and disappointment of failed relationships in the Tay family. Perhaps Hwee Mei felt the same way. She didn’t like Sonny contacting us, neither did she like us to visit. When Mum went around to play with little Mary Tay, she hovered protectively, as though the baby might catch some germs from Mum. As for the Patriarch, we’d never had much to say to each other and he stopped speaking to me after I became a cleaner.
‘You’ve got a good brain, Grace,’ he insisted. ‘It comes from the Tay side of the family. All the Tays have good brains and they put them to good use. Look at your cousins. All doctors and engineers. How can you not want to go to university?’