by Amy Cheung
Sam looked at me, not saying a word.
“You said seven. It’s only a quarter past. I went to pick up a bottle of wine. It’s for you.” I took the bottle out of the bag and showed it to him.
“I can’t spend the evening with you.”
I stared at him indignantly.
“She organized a dinner tonight with several of our friends and family,” Sam said.
“You promised me.” I glared at him, then dashed inside.
He didn’t follow me upstairs. He wasn’t coming after me; he really had gone home.
I drank the entire bottle of red wine. I pulled the jigsaw puzzle out of the closet, took it out of its frame, and slid it onto the floor. With both hands, I overturned it, letting the pieces scatter in all directions. It filled me with glee to destroy something I’d made with my own hands. He’d shattered our agreement, so I’d shattered his present. It was easier to destroy something than to make it in the first place.
Right. And then there was the cake in the refrigerator. I took it out. The box hadn’t been opened, and a ribbon was tied around it.
I took the cake over to Chui Yuk’s apartment and knocked.
“Happy birthday,” I said when she opened the door.
Chui Yuk froze for about three seconds. I thrust the cake into her hands.
“What happened?” she asked me.
“I need to use the bathroom!”
I stormed inside. For a long time, I was propped up against the toilet, throwing up. I heard Chui Yuk calling for Yu Mogwo to come help. The two of them brought me over to the sofa, and Chui Yuk made me a cup of tea.
“Aren’t you supposed to be having dinner with Sam?” Chui Yuk asked. My head felt much clearer after vomiting. It was only then that I noticed that Yu Mogwo’s appearance had changed. His hair was a mess, he was sporting a full beard, and he looked like he’d lost a lot of weight. A cigarette dangled out of the corner of his mouth.
“What’s happened to you?” I couldn’t help asking.
“You two can talk. I have to work on my book,” Yu Mogwo said coldly.
“What’s happened to him?” I asked Chui Yuk.
“I already told you. This all started about a month ago. He’s been locking himself up in the study to work on his new manuscript. Plus he quit his job today and said he’s going to stay home and write.”
“What prompted all of this?”
“I think the newspaper stopped publishing his fiction right around that time. He was pretty unhappy about it. He’s put all this pressure on himself to write a bestseller. As a result, he’s so stressed out that he can’t even write anymore. His moods have been getting worse and worse.”
“Everyone has their own troubles.” I suddenly had a terrible headache.
“Why did you drink so much?”
“That woman did it on purpose. She organized a dinner tonight with all their friends and family to celebrate Sam’s birthday so that he couldn’t spend the evening with me.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“It never used to get to me, but I’m not like that anymore. I can’t lose out to her. It’s up to me to fight it out with her until the very end.”
“You? Why is it up to you?”
“I know I’m the one Sam really loves,” I said.
“So why isn’t he with you today, then?”
I didn’t have an answer. It was true. Even if he did love me, what good was that? He’d always be at her side, no matter what.
“Chow Jeoi, you’re the other woman!”
Chui Yuk’s words were a major wake-up call. I absolutely loathed the thought of myself as the other woman. All this time, I’d been trying to convince myself that his wife was actually the other woman. She was the one who was making it impossible for Sam and me to get married. Now that I was being confronted with the cold, hard facts, though, it was pretty laughable.
“I feel bad. That was never my intention.”
Chui Yuk sat down next to me, wrapping her hands around her knees. “For love, I’d be willing to be the other woman, too. So it’s settled, then. You and I are both people who act on their emotions. People like that suffer.”
“Can I stay over tonight? I don’t want to go home.”
“Of course you can. You can sleep next to me.”
“What about Yu Mogwo?”
“He’s been sleeping in the study for the past two weeks,” Chui Yuk said glumly.
I lay down in Chui Yuk’s bed and drifted into a muddled sleep. In the middle of the night, my bladder felt like it was ready to explode, so I got up to go to the bathroom. The door to the study was halfway open, and I could see Yu Mogwo, his back turned towards me. He was sitting at a desk, crumpling sheet after sheet of manuscript paper and tossing it on the floor. The floor was practically covered in crumpled balls of paper. He turned around and stared at me. His expression was blank. He was about to become the first person to go insane while writing a novel.
In the morning, I woke up Chui Yuk.
“I’m leaving now.”
“Where are you going?”
“If I don’t go to work, I can’t pay the bills.”
“Do you feel any better?”
“I decided I’m going to break up with Sam,” I said.
“Break up with him? This isn’t the first time you’ve said that.” Chui Yuk didn’t seem to believe me.
“This time it’s for real. I thought it all through last night. You were right. I’m the other woman. That’s never going to change—ever,” I said miserably.
“Can you really bring yourself to leave him?”
“I don’t want to hear his lies anymore. I don’t want to be disappointed anymore. Being deceived by the person you love is a painful ordeal.”
“I don’t know. I’m often deceived by people I like,” Chui Yuk said with a wry laugh.
“I’m going to move back in with my family for a while.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to see Sam. I don’t want to give myself a chance to change my mind.”
Just then, my pager went off. It was Sam. As I left Chui Yuk’s apartment, I shut off my pager.
Though we’d broken up numerous times before over the past four years, none of those times had been for real. This time it was different. I felt something like hopelessness. I’d cried all the other times, but this time I didn’t. I went home and packed up my clothes. The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle lay scattered on the floor. Our restaurant would never materialize. The phone rang. I sat beside it, waiting for it to stop ringing. I knew it was Sam. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. He must’ve thought I was still mad. I left, pulling my suitcase behind me. As I went past the first floor, I ran into Ms. Kwok.
“Going on a vacation, Ms. Chow?” she asked me, smiling.
“Yes.”
“How was the cake?”
I nodded a little. I hadn’t even tried it.
When I got to the store, Anna said that Sam had called for me. His fretting over me only made me more resolved to leave him. The phone rang again, and I picked up the receiver.
“Where were you?” he asked me.
“Happy birthday,” I said.
“How about if I come over tonight?”
“Forget it. I’m done listening to your lies.”
“Let’s talk about it tonight.”
“No. I don’t want to see you. I’m moving out of that apartment. I’m grateful for the time we had together. Good-bye.” I hung up.
Sam didn’t call me back. I didn’t think I’d ever have the courage to break up with him. I’d never loved anyone that much before. But now it was time to let him go.
That night in class, Chen Dingleung noticed my suitcase.
“Are you catching a red-eye?”
“No.”
“I’ll take you across the harbor.”
“Thanks, but I’m not going across the harbor.”
“I have something to give you,” Chen Dingleung said, handing me a
cassette. “It’s the song you wanted, ‘I Will Wait for You.’”
I hadn’t expected to get that song at that particular moment. My face went blank. Why was I always so slow on the uptake?
“What, did you find it already?” he asked.
“Oh, no. Thank you. How’d you find it?”
“I have my ways.”
Later that night, back at my mother’s house, I dropped the tape into the cassette player and pressed “Play.”
“I will wait for you . . .” Sorry Sam, I thought, I can’t wait for you.
For the next two weeks, I stayed at my mother’s house. Sam didn’t come looking for me there, and he didn’t stop by the lingerie shop. I’d been hoping that he’d call or maybe come to the store. But he didn’t. Even though I was the one to break up with him, I actually felt a little disappointed. How could he have given up so soon? Maybe he knew that there was no point. It wasn’t that I wouldn’t change my mind; it was that there was no way for him to change reality.
Chui Yuk and I went to the movies, where we watched a sidesplitting comedy together. While Chui Yuk cracked up loudly, I didn’t even smile.
“You were the one who wanted to end it, so he didn’t come looking for you. And yet you’re unhappy about it,” Chui Yuk said.
“Even if you tell a man that you want to break up with him, aren’t you allowed to want him to beg you to stay?”
“You’re still wearing the necklace he gave you.”
It was true. I couldn’t bring myself to take off the necklace.
“You don’t think something happened to him, do you? It seems so unlike him not to try to reach me at all,” I said.
“No, I don’t think there’s been a freak accident. If you’re so worried, you can always reach out to him.”
“He’s so sneaky. He’s probably backing off like this just to draw me in. He knows I won’t be able to resist being the one to get in touch first.”
“Whatever you say.”
“I want to go home and see.”
“Do you want me to go with you? Just in case Sam committed suicide there . . .”
“He’d never die for me.”
I went back to my apartment to see whether Sam had stopped by and maybe left something for me. But everything was just as I’d left it. The only difference was that the puzzle pieces that I’d left on the floor were missing. The puzzle was sitting on the dining-room table, fully completed.
How could it be? I distinctly remembered tossing it on the floor and letting it crumble to pieces. Who could have put it back together?
Sam stepped out of the bathroom.
“When did you get here?” I asked him.
“Two weeks ago.”
“Two weeks ago?” I asked him.
He walked up to the puzzle and said, “I just finished putting it back together.”
“Have you been coming here every day?”
“Every day. Whenever I had a little free time, I came and worked on the puzzle,” Sam said.
“How did you get it done so quickly?”
“I told you I had a knack for puzzles. This one was pretty challenging, though. If I hadn’t had two whole weeks to work on it, I never would’ve gotten it done.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked him, tears welling in my eyes.
“It’s our restaurant.” Sam put his arms around me.
“Get away from me!” The tears started to trickle down my cheeks as I tried to push him away.
“The night you told me you wanted to break up, I came over here. When I saw the puzzle scattered in pieces on the floor, I wanted to put it back together. I thought that if you came back someday, you’d see the puzzle and it would make you happy.”
“You thought I’d come back?”
“No. I thought you wouldn’t come back. I was sure that you’d always think I’d deceived you. There have been times when I felt I was being selfish and that I should set you free, so that you could find a man who’d take care of you for the rest of your life.”
“But you couldn’t bring yourself to let me go? I can’t stand you! I truly cannot stand you. In fact, I’ve never hated someone as much as I hate you right now.” I charged at him, yanking his shirtsleeves and swinging my fists at him.
Sam pulled me close and held me tight.
“I can’t stand you!” I said, crying.
“I know,” he said.
I hugged Sam with all my might. I truly couldn’t stand him, especially since I now knew that there was no way on earth I could ever truly leave him. I clung to him, this man whom I hadn’t seen in fourteen long days, this man who provided strength and warmth and yet could make me feel so much pain. Love is such a devastating force sometimes that what we call reason and willpower amount to no more than meager words of consolation.
3
Flying Backwards
“Yu Mogwo is leaving!”
Chui Yuk arrived just as I was closing up the shop.
“Where’s he going?”
“He’s going to study in the States.”
“Going to study?”
“He heard about a creative-writing program. Michael Crichton took classes there, and he went on to write Congo and Jurassic Park.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yu Mogwo had me really scared there for a while, but he’s been much better over the last few days. He said his inspiration has run dry, so he needs a change of scene.”
“That’s good news. Otherwise he might be the first person to ever spiral into madness while writing a science-fiction novel.”
“The thing is, he insists on going by himself.”
“By himself? For how long?”
“All he said was he’s going for as long as he’s going.”
“Does he want to break up with you?”
Chui Yuk looked at me helplessly. She couldn’t hold back the single tear that trickled down her cheek. “He didn’t say he wanted to break up. He said he wanted to try out a different way of life because his current life is slowly killing him. Maybe I’m standing in the way of his artistic pursuits. Is it possible that a writer can have too much emotional stability?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. I thought that a writer was just like anyone else who was always shifting between stability and instability, and occasionally finding a balance. One thing was certain, though. The nature of Yu Mogwo and Chui Yuk’s love was changing. He was starting to pull away from her; he was looking for a way out. There were only two possible outcomes: he would eventually realize that Chui Yuk was the woman he loved most, or he would eventually break up with her.
When Chui Yuk opened her purse and took out a tissue to wipe away her tears, I noticed that she had an awful lot of cash inside of her purse.
“Why are you carrying around so much money?”
“I went to the bank and withdrew it for Yu Mogwo.”
“Is that your savings?”
Chui Yuk nodded. “I have tens of thousands of dollars in here. It’s my entire savings.”
“He has some nerve using up all your savings to go on a vacation like that,” I said.
“He’s not going on vacation. He’s going to clear his mind. Yu Mogwo has always been the strong-willed type. You haven’t lived with him, so you just haven’t seen it, that’s all. He always has to have his way. It doesn’t matter how other people feel. I’m his girlfriend, which means I’m always trailing behind him, picking up the pieces. When the publisher calls to find out whether his manuscript is ready, I’m the one who has to answer to them. If he curses someone out, I’m the one who has to apologize. If he doesn’t want to get up and go to work, I’m the one who has to call in sick for him. I still haven’t even introduced him to my family because I know how much he hates to socialize with other people.”
I shook my head, laughing darkly.
“What’s so funny?”
“Yu Mogwo and I are more similar than I realized. I used to be the more strong-willed one. And it used to be Sam who picked u
p the pieces for me. Now that I think about it, I was lucky.”
“I don’t think of myself as being unlucky! I like taking care of Yu Mogwo. I feel like he needs me, and that’s really important.”
I was different from Chui Yuk. I wasn’t used to taking care of someone else. I liked being taken care of. To me, it was really important to feel like I was being taken care of.
“When’s Yu Mogwo leaving?”
“Soon.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“He promised he’d call me once he was settled. My mind’s been spinning ever since I found out, but if you love someone, you have to give them space, right?”
“You’re so very wise.”
If there was ever a woman who relied on love and loss to mature and grow as a person, Chui Yuk was that woman.
Two weeks later, Yu Mogwo left in search of freedom and inspiration—with Chui Yuk’s entire savings in hand. Chui Yuk fought back tears as she took him to the airport. Yu Mogwo left without so much as a second thought. I still believed that being taken care of was much better than taking care of someone else. As long as someone’s trailing behind you, picking up the pieces, why not do whatever the hell you feel like?
Today was the start of our semiannual sale, and the store was full of customers who weren’t usually willing to spend money on expensive lingerie but would come in if there was a sale.
At dusk, a really skinny woman came into the store. Her face looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place where I’d seen her before. She wasn’t the least bit curvaceous, and she looked pretty flat. I guessed she was a 32A, max. She lingered for a long time, and finally I went over to her.
“Excuse me, miss, is there anything I can help you with?”
“Do you carry . . . push-up bras?” she asked.
“Ah, yes.” I’d already predicted that she was going to ask for a bra with an especially dramatic effect—which is why she waited until there weren’t many other customers in the store before speaking up.
“There are three kinds of push-up bras—which kind are you looking for?” I asked her.
“There are three kinds?”
“There’s maximum support, medium, and light.”