Regrettable Things That Happened Yesterday

by Jennani Durai

  The alarm of having my accommodations altered forces me to give up the act. “That won’t be necessary,” I say quickly, pushing up my eye mask. “We’re staying at the Marriott.”

  “You can change your reservation there,” Pop insists. “I think my hotel will be better for you.”

  Zara finally decides she should put an end to this. “We have to stay at the Marriott,” she tells him. “My uncle’s dead body is there.”

  *

  I received the news of my brother’s passing rather unceremoniously, during my routine reading of the Sunday papers at 8am. In between news of a new school for the technically-inclined and an ad for hair loss, I spotted a short article with a name I recognised:

  A 44-year-old Singaporean hotel manager was found dead in his residence in Phuket on Friday night.

  Authorities say that Mr Prakash Gopalan, general manager of the Marriott hotel on the Thai island, died from a heart attack at least two hours before he was discovered. No foul play is suspected.

  Mr Gopalan, who moved to Phuket eight years ago to take up his current position, lived alone in a property adjacent to the hotel. It is believed his body was discovered by a friend.

  Hotel staff remembered Mr Gopalan as a jovial man.

  “He was always laughing and joking whenever we saw him. He knew how to have a good time,” said receptionist Aim Parnthong.

  In a statement issued yesterday, Ms Fiona Allen, the hotel’s head of marketing, said: “His energy will be sorely missed.”

  The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is appealing for Mr Gopalan’s next of kin. Anyone with information should call 6319-5231.

  I read this article a few times to ascertain that I had understood it correctly, and then once more to see if there was any possible way it was not referring to my estranged brother.

  “Tricia,” I said to my wife, who was sipping her coffee across the table. “It seems that my brother has died.”

  I heard myself and felt I sounded like a stilted character in a movie.

  “Really?” she asked, not tearing her eyes away from her own section of the newspaper. “Hmmm.”

  There was no love lost between my wife and my brother, so I didn’t expect tears, but I was still a little surprised. I sat with the newspaper in front of me, staring at the page, thinking about who else I could call to share this information with, when Tricia finally looked up, startled. “What did you say?”

  I pushed the page I had been reading towards her. “This article is about my brother. My brother died.”

  She made a grab for it, then read it either repeatedly or very slowly over what felt like a good half-hour. I had to resist the urge to shake her to tell me what to do next. “Oh my god, oh my god,” she said when she finally spoke.

  She looked at me searchingly and reached out to hug me, but I, for some reason, could not comprehend what she was doing and just stared at her. She settled for squeezing my arm. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. Oh my god,” she said again. She had the beginnings of tears in her eyes and this made my heart rate spike.

  “What do I do?” I said, feeling like a child.

  “You need to give this hotline a call.”

  “What?” In the initial shock of reading the news I had completely passed over the phone number. “Yes, I’ll do that right now.”

  The hotline must have been a dedicated one for Singaporeans who had discovered that their loved ones abroad were dead, because it was answered by a sympathetic-sounding woman named Angela who didn’t at all get flustered when I stumbled my way through explaining who I was and the news I was calling about. She put me on hold while retrieving the information she had, leaving me with Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up” as hold music, presumably to help me find the strength to press on. When she came back on the line, she sounded slightly confused, and asked if I wouldn’t mind providing her with some details like my identity card number and my parents’ whereabouts. “They’ve both passed,” I told her, after reciting my IC number. “Is there a problem?”

  “Sir, the MFA has been in touch with the Thai authorities about bringing your brother’s body home,” she said carefully. “But this morning, his wife contacted them as well, saying she would like to do the funereal rites in Thailand.”

  “His wife?” I think I laughed at this point. “Prakash— my brother—has no wife. He has an ex-wife but she— she’s out of the picture. Is this a mistake? Or some kind of swindler?” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tricia, mouthing what wife and I shook my head. This was clearly a mistake.

  “No, sir, it says in our system that she showed the Thai authorities a marriage certificate, dated last year. But because MFA already put in a request yesterday, the authorities over there are holding the body at least until a next of kin from Singapore arrives to sort out the…matter,” said Angela, who had transitioned from sympathy to awkwardness.

  “I thought you were going to ship it back to me,” I said, now feeling as though I were dealing with an errant Amazon delivery.

  “Yes, sir, but now we can’t. You will have to fly over there. MFA will be able to help with the expenses,” she said.

  I sat in silence with this deluge of new information for a while with my mobile phone pressed almost painfully to my ear. “I’m so sorry, sir,” said Angela, after the silence had evidently become too protracted. “Would you like me to make the travel arrangements?”

  This struck me as ludicrous, and I wondered how much of this woman’s job was like a travel agent’s, making flight and hotel bookings, only that her customers were the saddest travellers in Singapore. “Yes, please,” I told her. “I can leave tomorrow.”

  I ended up having to call Angela back to ask for one more ticket for my daughter. It was the school holidays, and my wife was still pulling long hours at work. Tricia insisted that Zara could not be left with anyone at all, not even my parents-in-law. Apparently, even a trip with her half-coherent father about to tussle over her dead uncle’s body with an unknown potential gold-digger was a better alternative than any sort of baby-sitter. So Zara and I packed our bags. It only occurred to me at the airport that Tricia might be sending our daughter along precisely to capture this sort of scandalous detail and report them back with her childlike memory for mundane things.

  *

  Zara’s announcement makes me cringe but at least it has the blessed effect of silencing Pop momentarily. He stares at her and then at me for an uncomfortably long time, so I nod awkwardly in case it is confirmation he needs. Zara turns to me, looking stricken, and whispers: “Was it bad to say that?” I shake my head and put an arm around her. “You’re right,” I say to Zara, but for Pop to hear. “We’re bringing Uncle home.”

  I hear myself and feel I should have tried harder to sound convincing. The truth is that I am not sure at all that this body-collection mission is going to be successful. Who is this wife, and does she really have authentic documentation? If she does—and if she’s Thai—she has a clear advantage over me in dealing with the local authorities in Phuket. All I can hope to do is show up bearing a strong resemblance to the dead man, produce some faded childhood photos I had dug up for this purpose, and then maybe throw myself on his corpse to prevent it from being buried on Thai soil.

  “I’m so sorry, sir,” says Pop, sounding sufficiently bad for having pestered us thus far into the flight. “Please, please, if you need anyone to help you speak Thai—let me know.”

  It appears it will be hard to rid ourselves of Pop and his linguistic services. I nod at him again and hope with all my heart that this will be the end of our communication forever, even as I sincerely doubt it. I glance to my left to see if the pregnant lady feels compelled to offer her condolences too, but she is soundly asleep. I feel an irrational wish to trade places with her, to be able to block out the world so easily, to be concerned with life instead of death, and to not be seated as close to Pop.

  I pull my eye mask down again in a futile attempt to try to simulate the internal Zen I imagine my seat
mate is experiencing. I know I have avoided being alone with my thoughts thus far, busying myself first with logistics, then packing, then getting Zara ready, and then fending off inquisitive strangers on the aircraft. But the feelings I am trying to avoid are creeping up on me, and I expect they’ll all arrive the moment I identify Prakash’s body: the realisation that my brother is dead, really dead, and that that means the thought I had always had at the back of my head—one day maybe we’ll get close again—has to die too. And after that, assuming it all goes well with the wife, I’ll have to bring his lifeless body home with me on a plane. Where will it even go? At the back of the plane? In the cargo section? Should I buy out a row of seats near me to rest the coffin? Will there already be a coffin waiting for me or is this a Styrofoam box situation? I feel my thoughts are turning ridiculous. I feel sure Angela from the MFA will have all the answers.

  I suddenly regret bringing Zara along for the trip, even though my wife insisted. I had agreed because I thought she would provide a nice distraction, but now I feel keenly the prospect of having to process my own complicated feelings about my brother’s death before wrangling his body from the clutches of a Thai wife and flying back with my hard-won cadaver, all with a six-year-old by my side, who will most certainly not stay silent and let Daddy “process”.

  She has already asked too many questions I don’t have answers to—what happened to Uncle? Who is his wife? How come I’ve never seen her? Are you sad? Are you very, very, very sad?

  Yes, Zara, Daddy is very sad, is my standard reply, but it bothers me that I have to be asked that question, that I somehow am not displaying my grief the way other people seem to, that death the way Zara understands it right now calls for a reaction more pronounced than mine. I wonder, probably unfairly, if my wife or I have somehow given my daughter the impression that I’m not grieving, that I can’t grieve for a brother I hardly saw, a brother I had nearly nothing in common with anymore, a braggart, a spendthrift, a lout by all accounts. Why do I even care so much about bringing him home?

  I want to say, Daddy feels sad in a deep, deep way he cannot explain. But that of course would need more explanation.

  *

  Before my brother stopped calling—and I mean way before, before he became a serial womaniser, before his marriage broke up, before he moved to Thailand, before he became a high-flying hotel executive, before he was never in the same country for two consecutive weeks, before he started enjoying his liquor before lunch, before he moved out to live with friends, before our father left and our mother died, before he started caring what he looked like, before he stopped letting me hang out with his friends, before he started hiding magazines under his bed—before all that, we were best friends. I feel stupid stating that so baldly and obviously, in such a cliché, but it’s true. It didn’t matter that I was four years younger. He didn’t think I was too childish or embarrassing to hang out with, to tell his secrets to, or to beat viciously in Street Fighter.

  Almost everyone will claim to have this sort of golden phase with their sibling if they had a good relationship at all, so I don’t want to pretend we were more special than anybody else. The phase ends, it becomes a fond and fuzzy memory in adulthood, and you redefine your relationship with your brother or sister through a different lens. Maybe I was the only one who thought it was a time that could come back.

  When I think about my brother now, what keeps coming back to me is the day I started Primary One. We were in the thick of our golden phase then, and my brother had asked to be my class’ prefect but hadn’t told me. I was in a heightened state of anxiety about spending my first full day away from home without either of my parents. I also had my arm in a sling from having broken it a month earlier, and a new school bag I was unable to put on and take off without assistance. I realised this only when a teacher with a loudhailer directed us to form two lines per class and sit down. I turned around frantically, hoping my mother would still be there, but she had left, and as all my new classmates sat down around me, I was left standing, trying to wriggle out of my school bag with my one good arm, willing myself not to start crying on my first day of school. I felt my chest give a tell-tale shudder and I braced myself for the humiliation as I looked down at my classmates’ questioning faces and then suddenly I felt the pressure of my bag’s straps easing on my shoulders. I looked up and saw my brother with his gleaming prefect badge grinning at me like he had engineered the world’s best prank. “This is how Ma does it, right?” he said, carefully taking my plaster cast out of its sling and the sling over my head before easing my arm out of my bag’s left shoulder strap. I nodded, too overwhelmed with gratitude, too in shock that my brother could still be looking out for me here in school. He put my bag on the ground and told me he’d be back later to help me put it on before class. I clung to his hand to stop him from leaving and he laughed. “I have to take attendance,” he said, pointing to the other classes’ prefects doing the same. In a whisper, he added: “Don’t hug me in school.”

  During my best man’s speech for his wedding, I told a couple of stories, just regular, funny stories with a hint of nostalgia—an overblown fight we’d had when I took the last slurp of a milkshake we were sharing, how he used to let me go with his friends to the arcade after school because he was afraid I’d tattle, the shirt of his I’d stolen because a girl I liked complimented him in it. But I didn’t tell this story. We had already grown apart by then, both of us knowing that he’d only chosen me for his best man because I’d chosen him first, and that I’d done it because it was tradition and I always played by the rules. I spoke too fast, didn’t wait long enough for my punch lines to settle, and generally bumbled the speech but my brother got out of his seat to clap me on the back in front of everyone when I was done, and at that moment I felt a pang of something I couldn’t describe. I wished I had included that story, and then I wondered if I should just tell my brother privately, but then what would that accomplish? I would end with, “So yeah, you really looked out for me,” and I’d look down and he’d look away and then we’d go back to the relationship we’d had as adults.

  *

  A stewardess sidles up to our row and asks Zara what she would like to drink. Zara’s brows pull together and her mouth purses and her face goes into the expression I know so well which means that whatever this decision is, it will take forever. So I silently count to sixty—a minute is fair—while Zara thinks, orders orange juice, changes her mind immediately to apple, thinks while it’s being poured, changes her mind to Coke, thinks while the stewardess (who has now cottoned on) just waits, changes her mind to Sprite. I then butt in to say I’d like a Sprite too, and just as both our Sprites are reaching our trays, I see Zara open her mouth again to say something and in a moment of great parenting I clamp one hand over her mouth while my other hand steadies the Sprite that’s just been placed on my daughter’s tray.

  That’s what I’m doing when the pregnant lady digs into my left thigh with nails like ice picks. At first I link the stewardess’ look of horror with the pain, and think this lady is punishing me for what looks like child abuse, but I turn to her and realise she’s the one in pain. “Sorry,” she says in a strained voice, as I pry her nails out of my leg, only to have her clutch my arm. “A contraction. So strong.”

  The stewardess serving drinks gasps and rushes off to the galley, while the few people nearby who have overheard are now exclaiming, but I can’t make out individual words they are saying. I only hear the rush of blood in my own ears and the mounting fear of being part of something monumental but I glance back at Zara and calm myself down. She’s not going to have a baby right now.

  “This thing takes hours,” I hear myself saying, and I sound stupid and callous. The lady is staring at me like I’m crazy so I parrot things I heard people tell my wife when she was in labour. “I mean, just stay calm. Take some deep breaths. Don’t let these other people around make you stressed. This is probably just pre-labour.”

  “I know,” she hiss
es at me. “This is not my first baby. But these are so strong. I don’t remember them being so bad. I’m only at thirty-five weeks, and I’m not with my husband or my family.”

  Then she begins to cry, and the hubbub around us swells. The stewardesses now come flocking to her side, holding her other hand, offering her hot towels, asking if she’d like to walk around a little bit because we’re still an hour from Phuket. “An hour?” she asks, through tears. “I don’t know what to do.”

  I look over at Zara, whose eyes are wide and whose Sprite is forgotten; and Pop, who seems to be having the exact same reaction. Zara pulls at my sleeve. “Is she having her baby now?”

  Her voice rises on the last word and I shush her hurriedly. “No, she’s not, honey, but let’s be extra nice to her because she’s in pain, okay?”

  Zara nods and tries to reach over me to pat the lady, in what I assume is a reassuring manner, but she can’t quite reach and ends up just grazing the lady’s elbow. The woman suddenly grabs Zara’s hand and squeezes, which alarms us both, and I quickly substitute my hand for Zara’s so that my daughter’s fingers don’t get crushed.

  “Just try to transfer the pain to me,” I say, because I remember saying it to my wife and I think she responded positively. The stewardesses have now left to bring more hot towels or perhaps just exclaim to each other about all the excitement, and I’m on my own. “Every time it hurts, just squeeze my hand. We’ll be there soon, then they’ll take you to the hospital, then they’ll call your husband, and he’ll get on the next flight over, the immediate next one.”

  Even as I say it, I realise this will be a multi-hour process, probably prolonged many times in the mind of a woman in labour.