by Ovidia Yu
“They have to sign this.” With another jangle Panchal entered. Salim took the envelope without a word.
“Sir, you want me to close your car door and lock your car for you?”
Salim, waiting for her to leave, did not reply.
“Would you like a cold drink before going?” Aunty Lee asked Panchal cordially.
“Mrs. Lee, I must inform you that while your food and beverage license is suspended pending investigation of your kitchens and premises, you will incur additional fines and or penalties if you contravene the suspension order.”
Salim finally spoke. “Panchal. Get out. Now.”
Panchal left. Inspector Salim would regret being so rude to her when she filed her complaint about this and all his other breaches of protocol. She stopped to take a phone snap of the badly parked police patrol car her boss had arrived in to add to the list of his misdemeanors.
Salim handed the envelope to Aunty Lee. He already knew what it said. He had been trying to get the order suspended pending investigation when he learned SS Panchal had taken it upon herself to execute it.
“I promise you, this is all just temporary. I can’t explain why right now. I need you to sign this to show that you understand you cannot operate out of these premises until the investigation is complete. The restriction includes not selling elsewhere food that has been prepared here. I’m sorry. We have to follow procedure. It’s not my female colleague’s fault. The orders came from top down. She’s new—”
“She is a monster,” said Nina. “She enjoy bullying old women and servants.”
“So they found poison in the chicken buah keluak,” Aunty Lee said.
Salim said carefully, “They found poison in the dish. But there’s was no confirmation where it came from. This is just a precaution. We received several letters of complaint from the public and we have to respond.”
Though it was her café and kitchen he was putting out of business, Aunty Lee felt sorry for him. And now she knew what Henry had done with the letters Doreen had been talking about.
“Let me see. Nina, read it for me and show me where to sign, please. Salim, would you like a glass of tea?” Tea was the last thing on Salim’s mind but he recognized and appreciated her gesture of deliberately ignoring Panchal’s rudeness.
“Thank you. Not now.”
“Hey, what are you doing?” Cherril’s voice came from outside. “Stop that!”
With a gentle but firm grip on her arm, Mycroft Peters propelled his wife into the café without waiting for Sergeant Panchal to answer.
“What’s that woman putting up on the door?” Cherril demanded, directing the question at everyone in the café. Aunty Lee held up the letter without a word but Nina, taking it from her, held it out to Cherril between thumb and forefinger as though it was something dirty or dangerous.
“Madam, you should not sign it. Madam Cherril, look! Tell her not to sign! This says that there have been complaints that our kitchen is not up to hygiene standards. It says after receiving several complaints of food poisoning from here, they must investigate. Madam, this is all lies!”
“Charges have been made,” Salim said. “So we must investigate.”
“And if nothing is wrong who is going to pay us back for the money lost? She still has to pay rent here even if we cannot do business. Who made those complaints?” Cherril seized the letter from Nina.
“We should let them get on with their investigation,” Aunty Lee said quietly. “Can you find me a pen? Oh, thank you, Salim. Cherril, give me the paper. Where do I sign?”
“We are investigating Henry Sung also,” Salim said to Nina. “With married couples, you don’t know what is going on underneath the surface.”
“That’s why better never to get married!” Nina said.
“No. It’s not Henry,” Aunty Lee said. “I’m sure he wanted to kill his wife at times but I doubt he would have done it so publicly. And he would not have killed his son.”
The problem was Aunty Lee was certain Mabel would not have killed her son either—even as a mercy killing.
“Do something!” Cherril said to her husband. “Can’t you stop them? This is police harassment and brutality and all those kinds of things!”
“I’m sorry,” Salim said again, glancing at Nina, who was standing, silent, beside Aunty Lee.
“You should know there’s nothing wrong with the kitchen here!” Cherril said. “You’ve been here before. I know, I’ve seen you here. You’ve even eaten here. Have you ever seen cockroaches or rats or raw meat on pastry plates or any of the things that people close kitchens for? I’ve worked in kitchens in far worse conditions and nobody ever bothered to complain. If you don’t like it, then don’t eat here, lah! As long as nobody dies, what’s the problem?”
“But somebody did die,” Mycroft Peters said. “This is about Mabel Sung and her son, isn’t it?”
“No, sir. This is a separate complaint that was filed,” Salim said. “Several complaints.”
“If you can’t tell us who complained, can you tell us how many people complained?” Mycroft knew that a single complaint would not have been taken seriously. Too often a customer who felt herself slighted by a waitress would call in and complain.
“Some other people who were there that day have reported feeling unwell after eating food you provided,” Salim said.
“So it’s all people from that party. That’s not true. They’re lying. I was there and nobody said anything. Mycroft, do something!”
But Mycroft Peters just put an arm around his wife. “Aunty Lee, if there is anything I can do—”
“Sorry,” Inspector Salim said quietly to Nina. “I must follow procedure. If members of the public make a report we must follow up. This is only temporary.”
Aunty Lee feared the people in power were not trying to find out what happened. They just wanted to contain the damage and have the incident forgotten as soon as possible. Aunty Lee agreed it was necessary to move on. But you had to find out what the real damage was before you could find the best way to deal with it.
Nina glared at Salim’s back but said nothing. This was actually a good sign for Salim. If Nina had written off the police officer she would have put on her perfectly blank foreign-worker image for him—there would have been no anger, no familiarity, no recognition even. But Aunty Lee had other things to worry about than Salim’s feelings. She was not even worrying about the café being closed, even temporarily. Aunty Lee could sense a deeper wrong. It was like the smell of decay at the bottom of the fridge that made everything else stink. The problem was she could not tell who it was coming from.
“Madam, I phone the people who made reservations, yes? And next week the catering also must cancel?”
“Yes please, Nina. Save everything you can in the fridge—”
“Freezer better, ma’am. And the fresh vegetables and meat also I will prepare first and then pack into the freezer.”
Aunty Lee remembered something else in her freezer.
“I have a sample of the buah keluak that I cooked that day. I want you to check that because no one else seemed affected by it.”
Aunty Lee always said that the most important thing when it came to cooking for large numbers of people fast was having a big fridge and freezer. Even though she liked to be out shopping early at the wholesale center for the freshest of new produce, she depended on her gigantic freezer to store meal portions of washed and chopped vegetables and meats with basic marinades. These machines had not existed in the days of cooking for households of up to thirty people. The main difference was it had been up to the cook to decide what all those people were going to eat, and they all ate the same thing. Also, there had been the back lot for vegetables and chickens, and amahs and servant girls to help with the multitude of small but necessary tasks involved.
“I am going to the prayer and healing meeting tomorrow night. Why not help me prepare some snacks to bring with me? If I don’t charge them it’s not counted as business, right?”
; “As long as they don’t pray until they get sick and blame you!” Nina snapped.
Efficiently operating a host of gadgets, Nina did the work of five kitchen helpers, and the freezer would cut down on wastage during the closure. As long as the closure was really temporary.
That night Aunty Lee was grateful for her own quiet house in a peaceful housing estate. There had been no question of her having to leave the place when ML died. It was just one more thing that she could take for granted, but she was still grateful and said so to ML’s living room portrait: “The greatest gift is to realize how lucky you are to have something before you lose it.” They had been lucky there and had made the most of their years together. She could have no regrets. But now, almost alone in the silent house (Nina was in her room at the back), in front of the silent, smiling portrait, Aunty Lee was tired enough to be lonely, and at that moment she missed her late husband so much that she felt angry with him for dying and leaving her behind. Maybe it was time for her to take down the pictures and move on. Maybe it was time for her to find a smaller house and move out. What was the point in staying here, close to the shop, if the shop never opened again? She ought to be moving on with her life.
Of course she could still talk to ML. That was why she had photo portraits of him all over the house and café. But he didn’t ever talk back. She wished she had some recordings of her late husband’s voice. It would be such a comfort now, just to hear his beloved low gravelly tones. It was one of the things she had not known to value till it was lost to her forever.
“I wish—” Aunty Lee said, laying a hand lightly on the phone beside her, then jumped, startled when it rang.
“Yes?” Her voice came out in a strangled squeak.
“I hope I’m not calling too late?” It was Aunty Lee’s stepdaughter, Mathilda. “Are you sick?”
“No, of course not. Always good to hear from you. Have you had your lunch yet?”
Aunty Lee always enjoyed Mathilda’s phone calls. She had been warned that stepdaughters were much more difficult to handle than stepsons. But she had always gotten along well with Mathilda, who had inherited her late father’s good nature and wry equanimity.
“I heard they closed down your café. Are you okay? What’s happening?”
Mathilda had already been working in England when her father married Aunty Lee. She had told Aunty Lee how much she appreciated the energy Aunty Lee brought to her father’s home and life after Mathilda’s mother had been dead for over fifteen years. Mathilda had married an Englishman not long after and settled down in London. Neither Mathilda nor Mark, who had married soon after his younger sister, showed any antagonism toward the plump, fair “aunty” when she began appearing by their father’s side at family and social functions. Indeed, they were glad she was there to keep their father company and feed him.
“Who told you?” Aunty Lee asked, wondering for a moment whether the closure had already been on the news.
“Selina sent me an e-mail telling me to call Mark. That woman is one solid lump of stinginess. I found out about Sharon’s mum dying online. Can you talk now?”
It was past 11 P.M. in Singapore but Mathilda knew Aunty Lee’s habits well. In the old days that hour would have found her father and his second wife side by side in their matching Barcaloungers in front of the television with their drinks (Black Label for ML, sour plum juice for Aunty Lee) and crunchy, dry, fried anchovies on the table between them. With their eyes fixed on the television they would talk about what they had done that day; what they had seen, said, and eaten, what they found funny, sad, or provoking. And this would lead to talk of the past—going over their early days together and filling in gaps in their years apart. And most of all they talked about all the people in their lives, the friends they had in common as well as the many now gone.
Now that ML Lee was gone too, it was the talking that Aunty Lee missed the most. Of course she could (and did) talk to Nina, to all the many people she met over the course of the day, but nothing could match the cozy and intimate camaraderie of those lost conversations.
“Anyway, Mark wants me to tell you to sell the business for whatever you can get. Or rather he started to talk to me and then that Silly-Nah took over because he wasn’t saying what she was telling him to say properly. She said your reputation is gone, so you might as well quit now. According to her, since your money is coming to us one day you are cheating us if you lose it all. I said I would talk to you myself. Is the café really closed? Are you all right?”
Aunty Lee did not know what to say. She was “all right” compared to a great many other people. Her health was good, and even if the café never opened again and she lost everything she had invested in it she was not likely to end up selling tissue packets outside MRT stations. But things were definitely not as they should be.
“Aunty Lee? Are you there?” Mathilda sounded worried.
“I’m still here. Yes, I’m all right. Yes, the café is closed. They got some complaints, so they have to investigate but they haven’t arrested me or anything, don’t worry. I heard they even went around collecting buah keluak from the Indonesian women who come to sell them here; they want to test for poison. Didn’t even pay for them, the women said. Now nobody will dare to eat buah keluak anymore. I wanted to promote our traditional dishes here; instead I end up destroying them!” Aunty Lee laughed wryly.
“It’s that Sharon Sung. I’m sure of it. It’s the kind of thing she would do. She was also very competitive. I remember she didn’t do so well in her PSLE and had to spend two years in the second-best class, and I think she never got over that.” The Primary School Leaving Exams were the national exams that sorted twelve-year-olds into science, arts, or technical streams, thus shaping their careers and destinies forever. “The last time we got together she was telling us how much more she earned and wanting to compare with people who had been in the top class. By that time the rest of us had already forgotten what class we were in way back then.”
“But it can’t have been easy for her. I heard that her brother was in bad shape. Sharon said her mother’s feminist talk was all a big lie. Her parents were leaving their house and everything to her brother because he was the boy. But she said it was fair in the end because her brother would never be able to earn his own living, and when he got sick I think she was actually glad.”
“Tell me about Sharon’s brother. All I know is that he was sick and he died. Did you know him?”
“Everybody knew of Leonard Sung. He got sent off to the U.S. and got into partying and drugs, but even before that he was always in trouble. You know why he had to leave Singapore before his O levels, right? He got in trouble in school for trying to intimidate and blackmail school staff. Crazy, isn’t it? The holy Mabel Sung’s son! Leonard dropped out of school and became a drug addict and Sharon became a lawyer and joined her mum’s law firm. She couldn’t stand it that even after all that her brother was still her parents’ favorite.
“We were in the same class for several years but I didn’t really know Sharon Sung that well in school. I always thought her mother made her invite me to her birthday parties and things like that because of who Dad was rather than because we were friends.”
“Poor Sharon,” Aunty Lee said.
The problem with favoritism was the rules of the competition were not clear or fixed. They changed to maintain and justify the state of the favorite. But that was not so different from how most things operated.
“She’s too good for everybody else but not good enough for her parents.”
Aunty Lee could see why Sharon felt unfairly treated. Ordinarily she would have wanted to explore this a little, point out to Sharon that the universe and karma had a way of evening things out (look at how her poor brother had ended up), but right now she had something else on her mind. That two people had died was not as vital as the fact that someone had put poison in her food. This was personal.
“Would you like me to talk to Mark and nag him about making his own mone
y instead of spending more of yours?”
“No! Please don’t.” Aunty Lee was startled. Such a thing had never occurred to her.
“I’ll make sure he knows it didn’t come from you. I mean, look, I don’t know how you’re going to leave your money and everything, but if you decide to split whatever is left between the two of us, then Mark is spending my money too, right? Sometimes I think he’s deliberately squandering everything he can, just because he can. Nobody could do so hopelessly at so many businesses unless it was on purpose! And Selina—I think she just wants him to get as much out of you as she can. She got so worked up when you started the café, how you were going to lose all of Mark’s and my inheritance and how we would have to come up with the money to support you in your old age. Then you started making a profit and she had to shut up, but now she’s started again. And look at how much money Mark’s lost so far already! Honestly, I don’t know what he sees in her. But then I don’t know what she sees in him either.”
“Your brother has a very valuable ability.”
“You mean how he gets other people to look after him? That may be valuable to him but doesn’t add value to anyone else, does it?”
“Mark knows how to enjoy himself. He’s enjoying being alive, trying things that catch his fancy, dropping them when he gets bored. He reminds me a bit of a little dog I had when I was a girl. It kept finding things and hiding them away in corners to chew. When it was engrossed in a new toy it didn’t even want to come to eat! But once it got tired of it, that was it. No more interest, no more attention. It was looking around for the next thing. I think Mark is still looking out for whatever it is that will hold his attention. I’m sure if he had to he would settle down and find a way to earn enough money to support himself and his family. He’s a good boy. But right now, since he doesn’t have to, he lives it up and enjoys himself.”
“If we all lived like him the economy would collapse.”
“That’s why we don’t all live like him. You can see why it must be very difficult for Selina. By nature she’s the sort who is very organized, very systematic, very good at keeping money in the bank.”