by Ovidia Yu
There was no one at the back gate Aunty Lee had been directed to bring the food around to, but the gate was not locked, and looking through it, Aunty Lee could see the pool and patio area with several long tables and stacked-up chairs. That would be where the party was going to be. Aunty Lee told Nina to park the bright yellow Ford Focus on the side of the road by the entrance. There was a white line indicating no parking at all times on both sides of the road, but it was unlikely the Land Transport Authority would act unless residents complained. This was probably the entrance that service and tradespeople used. From here, the residence looked far grander than Aunty Lee’s own house. She had heard rumors that the Sungs’ fortune was not as stable as her late husband’s, but Aunty Lee knew most of the time rumors only meant other people were envious of what you had.
Aunty Lee had been more intrigued to learn that Leonard, the Sungs’ havoc (an untranslatable Singlish term used to describe an uncontrollable or promiscuous child, but with indulgent overtones) son had recently returned from the United States and moved back in with his parents. Leonard Sung was said to be a drug addict, an AIDS victim, a cancer patient, or all of the above. But none of the people who fed Aunty Lee these delicious news nuggets had actually seen the boy since his return. Not having children herself, Aunty Lee loved hearing details about problem children. But what interested her most about Leonard Sung was her stepdaughter, Mathilda, telling her Mabel Sung had once tried to matchmake Mathilda and Leonard.
“She’s not good at taking no for an answer,” Mathilda had said wryly when Aunty Lee told her who her latest catering job was for. Aunty Lee had continued the weekly long-distance phone calls to Mathilda in London after her father’s death. She wanted Mathilda to remember her roots in Singapore, and besides, she liked the girl.
“You didn’t marry the boy, so you must have said no, right?”
“Why do you think I’m staying out of Singapore until she’s married him off to someone else? Actually she never talked to me. She was bugging my parents and implying that unless they accepted her offer, they would never find a nice Chinese boy willing to marry me after sending me away to become all Westernized.”
Naturally Aunty Lee was curious to see what Leonard Sung looked like. But there was no one in sight as she pushed the gate open.
“Hello. Hello.” Nina spoke into the gate intercom but there was no answer.
“The gate’s not locked. Why don’t we just go in and start setting up?” Cherril suggested.
Nina started to say they ought to try calling first but Aunty Lee was already pushing the gate open, eager as a little girl to start the day’s catering adventure.
Once inside the gate, Aunty Lee looked around with interest. Did the Sungs really have a private chapel and baptismal pool on the grounds? People said they had turned to religion after their son got sick. But the only pool she could see was the small, blue-tiled swimming pool, along one side of which the line of buffet tables was standing. And the small building on the other side of the pool . . . could that be the famous chapel?
The house itself was clearly a luxury mansion. Aunty Lee herself lived in a good but somewhat lower-class bungalow. Built on the sloping inner reaches of King Albert Park, the main Sung residence was on the highest level, while the architect had made the most of the sloping land behind the house by creating a series of living spaces linked by external sheltered stairs as well as what looked like a chairlift. An outdoor kitchen complete with cooker, barbecue pits, and an enormous freezer was located on the stone patio by the swimming pool on the lowest level, where the back gate was located. Across the pool the front of the smaller building (which looked more like a guesthouse than a chapel) had French windows facing the pool and patio. These were coated with silver reflective film, so Aunty Lee looking in saw only a distorted version of herself. A sheltered stone staircase linked the guesthouse and small circular gravel driveway leading from the back gate to the main building and there was also the chairlift. Aunty Lee wondered whether it was intended as a granny flat—you were close enough to have dinner with your family and have grandchildren dropping in but you had your own toilet and space for mah-jongg games. Aunty Lee did not miss having children, given all the exam worries that came with them, but she would have liked to have had grandchildren to spoil . . .
Despite these pleasant thoughts, something about the little pool house made Aunty Lee uneasy. Was it because she could not see what was going on inside? She knew some people valued privacy above everything else. But too much privacy also meant that no one could look in to make sure nothing was wrong. A fall, for example, could mean lying there helpless for hours or more.
Cherril came to Aunty Lee’s side, snapping her out of her daydream. “Should we bring down the extension cables for the blender and chillers or wait and see if they provided them? They said they would, right?”
“Better to bring everything.” It was not that Aunty Lee did not trust people who didn’t do their own cooking—she just trusted her own instincts and equipment more.
It was still early. A few guests appeared, making their way down the stone staircase and admiring the landscaping in little clusters. Cherril supplied them with drinks (tea, coffee, fruit juices, and her mocktails) while Aunty Lee and Nina spread out the tablecloths and plugged in the food warmers.
“It’s going well, isn’t it? Isn’t it fun?” Cherril said so happily that even Aunty Lee did not have the heart to remind her that the hungry (or just greedy) hordes had not yet descended with their demands. “I’m just going to bring in the rest of the coffee flavoring syrups.”
Aunty Lee was steadying the chafing pan that Nina was plugging in under the table (“Madam, a lot of rubbish underneath here. All their cleaners and bottles of everything they just push underneath the table!”) when she saw the electric gates slowly open as Cherril returned with two bags of syrup bottles looped over her shoulders. Cherril looked surprised but pleased. Of course there would be a remote control for the gate somewhere, Aunty Lee thought, most likely in the family cars. She was just going to warn Cherril to watch out, a vehicle might be coming, when a black car turned sharply off the road and charged through the gates. The car’s passenger mirror caught on the handle of one of Cherril’s bags, pulling it taut against her shoulder and dragging her after the car at a stumbling run.
“Don’t fall under the wheels!” Aunty Lee shouted. “Stop! Stop the car! Stop!” She dropped the chafing pan and started to run toward the car, desperately waving her arms and wishing she had spent more time with her Active Elders exercise group. Cherril had dropped the other bags and was frantically trying to loosen her arm. Fortunately the bag handle snapped. The car continued up the side slope to the house, leaving a trail of broken glass and syrup stains and a shaken Cherril in a heap on the drive.
By the time Nina and the other guests reached her, Cherril was sitting up and saying she was all right. There were red welts on her arm from the bag strap and painful-looking scrapes and bruises on her legs but nothing worse. The electric gate slowly swung shut.
“Do you want to go home?” Aunty Lee asked. “Nina can drive you back. You should rest.”
“Of course not. This is my first big job. But all my coffee syrups are smashed!”
“I don’t think the driver even saw you,” one of the guests said. “Nowadays, with tinted windows, with stereo system and shock absorber and noise cancellation system, you hit something, also you don’t know until you get home and find your car dented.”
Or bloody, thought Aunty Lee. That was another disadvantage of too much privacy. Sometimes you didn’t know what damage you were doing. Or perhaps you didn’t care.
4
Preparing the Buffet
The food looked and smelled good, laid out on the heating pans. The early guests had been calmed down and, drinks in hand, were chatting in little clusters. Aunty Lee, Nina, and Cherril set to work clearing up the mess of broken glass and syrup concentrate on the driveway.
“It’s
nothing compared to what we used to get during in-flight turbulence,” Cherril said lightly. “Once you get used to clearing up coffee and cake smears on the cabin ceiling and broken glass and vomit on the cabin floor without spoiling your makeup and manicure, nothing on the ground is too much to handle. Since this is a driveway and they don’t have a dog or children, we don’t worry about the glass dust, okay?”
Even Nina could not fault Cherril’s cleanup. If Aunty Lee had had any lingering doubts about working with Cherril, this dismissed them. It was important that a team be able to handle disasters together, but this was seldom tested till it was too late. Perhaps, Aunty Lee thought, it would be a good idea for all restaurants to plan a disaster as part of the staff screening process. Perhaps she could come up with a restaurant staff training guide and take on apprentices at Aunty Lee’s Delights. Perhaps this could become the next big reality-TV hit that everybody looked down on in public and watched in secret . . .
“What are you thinking, madam?” Nina asked suspiciously. Nina believed they should only take on jobs they knew they could do and knew they would make a profit on.
“Nothing,” Aunty Lee said. “Can you believe we were afraid Cherril couldn’t do real work?”
“What’s that?” Cherril asked.
It was Nina’s turn to say, “Nothing,” She tied up the final bag of stained newspaper and glass shards and took it out to the bin.
“You look so delicate, Nina thought you are not strong enough to do real work,” Aunty Lee explained. “And I thought you look so thin, how can you work in a restaurant if you don’t like to eat?”
“Oh, I eat a lot but I never get fat,” Cherril said.
“You are lucky. I have a Budai figure,”
“Budai?”
“Laughing Buddha. The fat, happy Chinese Buddha, not the thin, sad Indian one. You rub his tummy, it is supposed to bring money and good luck. But I don’t have to rub his tummy, I got my own.” Aunty Lee rubbed a hand over her own middle section, making Cherril laugh. “Healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
“Well, it seems to work!”
Aunty Lee, with all the energy she put into her curiosity and cooking, was one of the happiest people Cherril had met in her new life.
Things were not as happy up in the grand Sung house.
Mabel came out of her son’s room and slammed the door hard. Yet another maid had said she wanted to leave. It was the third one since Leonard’s return. They were supposed to take care of the housework but they all gave Leonard as their reason for leaving. The girls said he shouted at them, threw things at them, and tried to “hug and kiss” them. Mabel had tried to talk to Leonard, who said only that the stupid sluts deserved it. Even as a boy, Leonard had always had his moods and what Mabel thought of as his indulgences, but he had always kept them out of sight. Mabel knew, of course. She had paid his bills and settled charges with compensation money. And she had been careful not to give her husband the details. Leonard was a strong and charming personality, full of talent and potential. It was not his fault he didn’t fit into Singapore’s strict academic system or America’s moralistic, politically correct system. Mabel knew that after her son had sown his wild oats he would settle down. And with her support he would make her proud of him.
But that had not yet happened. Now the poor boy was so weak she could not be angry with him. Instead she was angry with her husband for not doing more to save their son. Henry was the doctor but Mabel was the one fighting to save Leonard’s life. Mabel would do whatever it took to give Leonard back his health. She knew her son was not perfect but he was her son.
Mabel looked at her phone screen. She had persuaded Henry, who was paranoid about security, to install monitoring cameras all over the house. This way she could make sure Leonard was cared for when she was at the office. Leonard, propped up on a chair and cackling gleefully, was throwing something at the maid who was changing his bedsheets. Mabel looked more closely. Leonard was tearing pages out of a book. He crumpled and smeared the papers in his soiled adult diaper before throwing them at the crying girl. Mabel knew that despite the pay raise she had just offered, the girl would be leaving. But at least Leonard was laughing.
Mabel switched cameras to see how many people had arrived. She needed a decent number of classy-looking people present. Aunty Lee, the caterer, was there too. The stupid, fat old woman was chatting with Mabel’s guests as though she was one of them. Mabel Sung and her husband had been acquainted with the late ML Lee. ML had gone to the right schools, worked with the right people, and lived in the right district. At one time Mabel Sung had considered the Lee children worthy matches for her own. If only they had had a mother who understood the importance of good connections, Mabel was sure something could have been worked out, but Rosie Lee had been no help at all. “Leave them to work it out themselves,” she had said irresponsibly. As though children knew more than their parents. But at least she was supposed to be a good cook. Leonard had complained that their Filipina maids didn’t prepare real Singapore food. He was too weak to eat out and he didn’t like reheated dishes. If Mabel hurried, she had time before the meeting to bring Leonard something from the buffet, just to make him happy and keep him quiet for a while.
“Mabel, I have to talk to you.” Sharon caught Mabel as she came down the stairs.
“Not now. I’m busy.” It still jarred Mabel when Sharon called her “Mabel.” At Sung Law it was a rite of passage when she graciously gave new staff permission to “call me Mabel,” though few took advantage of the honor. When Sharon confronted her with “Do I have to go on calling you ‘Mrs. Sung’ forever?” she had simply said “Of course not” and Sharon had started calling her “Mabel.”
“Mabel—”
Mabel winced again. Sharon had been offended when reminded to address her as “Mrs. Sung” instead of “Mum” at the office and this was payback. Mabel was careful not to show she minded or noticed.
“Mabel, this is important. It’s about the firm and it’s not just important. It’s serious and it’s urgent. There are big problems!”
“Then you go and take care of them. That’s what I made you partner for.”
“Mabel, it’s serious. It looks like there’s money missing. Will you please listen to me for once? This is more important than some stupid party.”
“I have to get your brother something to eat before the food gets cold. There’s no money missing, don’t say things like that and frighten people. It’s all just paperwork, this account or that account. Probably GraceFaith just put something in the wrong place.”
“Or maybe GraceFaith is the one who took it. I don’t know why you trust her so much. If you were running the company properly, you would get a trained lawyer or at least a trained accountant.”
Mabel Sung did not bother to defend her assistant. “Ask GraceFaith to explain everything to you. I don’t know why she isn’t here yet. I told her to come early and help set up. Give her a call and tell her to hurry up but don’t bother her with your questions until Monday.”
“She’s probably still in the office.” Sharon knew she was in the right and her mother was being stupid. But she still seethed at the suggestion that GraceFaith could explain anything to her.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would GraceFaith go to the office today?”
Mabel headed toward the covered stone stairs to the pool patio.
Sharon’s questions had not been answered. But she had seen GraceFaith at the Sung Law office that morning and now she knew Mabel had not sent her there.
“Are you sure this is the right house? Why don’t they let us in? Why do we have to wait outside?” the woman asked in nasal, tongue-curling Mandarin that marked her as coming from Beijing or one of the northeast provinces of Mainland China.
“Of course it’s the right house. I am here every day. I told you I am the doctor that looks after the son of the house.” The man had grown up speaking Mandarin at home in Malaysia, but all his education since moving to Singapore had been in
English. He suspected the woman looked down on his Mandarin much as Singaporeans looked down on his English—but not as much as they looked down on the inability of PRCs—as recent arrivals from the People’s Republic of China like his companion were tagged—to understand any English outside a textbook. But no matter. He was on the verge of making his big break. He was going to be rich and more important, he was going to be powerful. And then everyone would be forced to respect him.
“If you are the doctor, why do we have to take taxi here? Why don’t you have a big car? And why do we have to wait outside the front gate like poor people?”
“I told you I arranged the meeting for eleven thirty, we are still early.”
“Either I go inside now or I’m leaving.”
5
Mabel Sung
Aunty Lee was always happiest when she was serving food. And she especially loved buffets like this. Laying out the stacks of clean plates and utensils, setting up the decorations (edible in this case), the dishes of achar and sambal and spicy fried anchovies and peanuts, the baskets of keropok, and of course the food. The steaming tubs of white rice, yellow rice, and coconut rice and the aromas that rose from the warm food all promised comfort, satisfaction, and fulfillment . . . for a while at least. Aunty Lee wanted to make people happy. That was at the root of what some saw as her busybody meddling. She was not always successful because some people seemed determined to live unhappy, uncomfortable lives. Still, when they came to her table to be fed, Aunty Lee did her best to remind them what contentment felt like—a little spicy stimulation, sweet and sour sensations, and the age-old comfort of steaming rice and rich, clear soup.