China Dog (9 page)

Mrs. Low even went to the trouble of giving her daughter’s graduation picture to Mrs. Yee, the well-known matchmaker in Toronto. She knew that by
Gam Sun
standards, Sandra would be considered fairly desirable and the matchmaker would collect a handsome fee from the family of the prospective husband. After all, Sandra had a university education and a job with a decent salary and was not bad-looking. And there
were no moles in unlucky positions on Sandra’s face, and – as far as she knew – none on her body. Mrs. Low remembered how Betty Kwan had made her daughter have a mole removed from underneath the inside corner of her left eye. The mole stood in the path of tears: a symbol of the family wealth being washed away. No family would willingly embrace a bride whose face bore such an obvious omen of poverty.

During her last visit to the restaurant, Sandra’s mother took her aside and showed her pictures of three different young men who were looking for wives. One was an accountant and two were computer experts. Sandra smiled uncomfortably and said, “I’m not ready to get married yet.”

“Not ready!” said Mrs. Low in exasperation. “You’re twenty-nine. Soon it’s going to be too late.” Sandra merely smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “By the time you’re ready, you’ll be too old.”

Sandra fiddled with the silver bangles on her wrist, and flicked her hair over her shoulder. “Mah, they just don’t look like my type.”

“But all nice boys. No pocked skin or bad teeth. All good jobs, don’t smoke and drive their own cars.”

“I don’t know. They’re just not my type.”

“The boys you like – all seem so
goo gai
, strange, weird.
Lo fons
, okay, sometimes. The one who liked you in high school, now he was nice, the rich boy, the one whose father was a doctor.”

“Mah, that was a long time ago.”

“But the ones now, the one with the long hair and no real job.”

“Ma-ah.” That was the signal to end – that special inflection in Sandra’s tone. They both knew the unspoken reason for Sandra’s resistance was Victor.

When Sandra was in university, several of her professors made passes at her. One of them was quite persistent. He was a hobby photographer and wanted her to model for him. At first it seemed innocent enough. But one day when she arrived at his studio, he looked at her with his rheumy grey eyes just a second too long. He was holding a red silk garment in his hands, absent-mindedly stroking it with long, thin fingers. Without saying a word, he passed the dress to her. It was a silk cheongsam with deep side slits meant to expose the thighs. Sandra took one look and left. The professor’s interest in her had always seemed sexual and protective at the same time. But now she couldn’t help wondering if he just wanted to live out a fantasy of making love to Susie Wong. Victor, though, was different.

Sandra and Victor had met a few years before at the University of Toronto. She was a librarian in the main library. Victor was an artist, a painter. Sandra still remembered the day he came into the library gallery to look at an exhibit of paintings. She remembered the loose plaid shirt and the paint-splattered denim jeans. His shoulder-length hair was clean, freshly washed. Sandra was immediately suspicious as she watched him examine the pictures. He seemed far too interested in the way each frame was mounted on the wall. Victor had been aware of Sandra right from the beginning, of her unwavering stare drilling into his back. Afterward, he walked directly to her
desk. “Those paintings are mine, you know. I painted them.”

Sandra leaned slightly back in her chair as Victor stood with his arms propped on her desk, his body angled in her direction. She smelled just a faint trace of aftershave. He had read her unspoken suspicions so accurately that she found herself at a loss for words. Once again she was glad of her dark complexion, hiding her blush of embarrassment. Victor straightened up and started to laugh. Sandra looked up and noticed that his teeth were straight, white, and perfectly shaped. Then in a complete change of tone, he asked her out for coffee. Sandra smiled and said “Yes.”

When Victor asked Sandra to marry him, she was only somewhat surprised. After all, they had been living together for over a year. Between them, they had developed a mutual routine of quiet compatibility.

They lived in an apartment on the second floor of a large house on Howland Avenue. Their furnishings were few, but carefully chosen – a small grey sofa, an olive green armchair, a second-hand oriental carpet, a stereo set, a torchère lamp, and a bookcase made of wooden planks and bricks. Victor’s large canvasses of conflicting, writhing colours decorated the plain white walls. And together they lavished their attention on the
ficus benjamina
that thrived in a sunny corner of their bay window.

Sandra remembered exactly when Victor proposed. It was memorable for the ordinariness of the timing. They had been clearing away the dishes together after eating their order-in pizza. The words just popped out of Victor’s mouth. “I think
we should get married.” Sandra was surprised at how quickly she said yes. If she didn’t say it fast enough, he might not ask her again. It was only then that she realized how important it was to her that their union be official. For over a year she had ignored her own feelings and desires, allowing them to breathe only between the layers of her skin.

When they first met, Sandra had taken Victor to several family functions, but then he gradually stopped going. Sandra’s family was never overtly unfriendly. But there was something unnerving about the way Mrs. Low looked at Victor when she greeted him and the way she spoke about him in Chinese to whomever happened to be around. He picked out his name in the jumble of Chinese sounds. The unflattering tone of her voice made him feel just slightly uncomfortable. Often he felt ignored and Sandra’s fussing made it worse. He got the distinct feeling that although his presence was never actively discouraged, neither was it enthusiastically welcomed.

So when Victor stopped showing up, Sandra’s family carried on as if he no longer existed. He was Sandra’s secret and one that they didn’t particularly want to share. For several years Sandra went along with this charade. But when she and Victor got married at City Hall with her best friend, Gail, for a witness, Sandra wanted to tell them, but didn’t know how. She was sick of these family pretenses. She wanted out.

Sandra parked her car outside her brother’s restaurant, the Golden Gate. More than ten years ago, Glen and their father
had purchased the restaurant from Bill Woo. Shortly after taking over, their father died of a sudden heart attack.

Sandra reached into the back seat and grabbed a bag filled with a barbecued duck and a strip of roast pork and a second bag filled with oranges. After getting out of the car, she took a deep breath and opened the door to the restaurant.

Everyone was laughing and talking, clustered around a table at the back of the dining room. Just behind them was a room divider decorated with a golden dragon and a phoenix. At one time it must have been striking, providing a focus for the room. But it now looked tired and shabby. Dustballs were lodged in the scales of the dragon and a layer of dust dulled the tail feathers of the phoenix. Christmas decorations were still dangling between the lights. Bill Woo had sold her brother a thriving business, but Glen had taken it for granted, and Sandra knew without even asking that business was poor.

Her older sister, “movie star” Marilyn, was the first one to notice her arrival. The three of them had been named after Hollywood celebrities: Glen, after Glen Ford; Marilyn, after Marilyn Monroe; and Sandra after Sandra Dee. But Marilyn was the only one to really live up to her namesake. Her voice was a husky, velvet purr, and her movements were studied and seductive, like a sex kitten.

“Here she is, the
hoo sung
, our Canadian-born,” Marilyn called out to everyone. “Sandra, you’re here at last. We’ve been waiting for ages.”

“Oh, the traffic was really heavy.”

Marilyn’s left eyebrow went up and she looked at her husband, Walter. Everyone knew Sandra was lying.

Sandra leaned over and gave her mother a hug. “Happy birthday, Mah.”

Then she walked into the kitchen. Glen was standing at the counter, his head down, slicing vegetables. His wife, May, was in front of the sink, washing a large pot of rice. Sandra handed Glen the bag of barbecued meats.

He looked up from his chopping. “Oh! Hi. Thanks, how much do I owe you?”

“No, no. It’s okay.” Sandra waved her hand and shook her head in protest.

“No, no, I should pay,” said Glen, facing down, still chopping.

“No. It’s
okay
,” Sandra insisted emphatically. As Glen started to reach for his wallet, Sandra walked into the dining room, muttering to herself. She hated these charades, always having to be alert, knowing when
yes
meant
no
and
no
meant
yes
. She glanced back and caught May’s twinkling eyes, a knowing smile on her face.

When Sandra returned to the dining room and looked at Marilyn and Walter and their three children and then at her mother, the vestiges of resolve evaporated, leaving her feeling short of breath and dry in the mouth. She helped to set the tables, then sat down to dinner with her family. The food was tasty, or so everyone said. The conversation was incessant, but the only voice Sandra heard was her own, echoing inside her
head – a steady monologue, drowning out all the outside voices. This is crazy. Marriage is supposed to be a celebration. I feel like a sneak with a dirty secret that’s going to upset everybody. In the end, she just couldn’t snip the wire for the family tightrope act.

Two days later, Sandra was on the phone to her mother. “Mah, I have some news. Victor and I got married.”

There was silence, followed by, “When?”

“Two weeks ago. I was going to tell you at your birthday party. But I decided I wanted to tell just you first.”

“Why are you like this? Sneaking off. Not having anyone from your own family at your wedding. Not giving face.” Sandra started to fidget with the telephone cord.

“Mah, it wasn’t a big affair. We just had a friend as a witness. We got married at City Hall. We’re going to have a reception. And we want everybody to come.”

“What kind of reception? Chinese or
lo fon
, Canadian?”

“I don’t know yet. Victor and I will have to talk about it.” She looked at Victor sitting on the sofa, half-heartedly reading the newspaper.

Sandra said goodbye and put down the phone. There was no point in further discussion. She felt like a coward. But her family had never really given Victor a chance. Her mother rarely referred to him by name. She still called him that
gwei loh
, that devil man. The fact that he was an artist didn’t help either; his livelihood was suspiciously unreliable. And even
worse, as her mother emphasized, he worked with his hands. This was in contrast to Walter, her sister’s husband, who was a chartered accountant with a lucrative business, who wore a three-piece suit to work every day, who used his brain to make a living, and who served the Chinese community. It was a good thing Victor didn’t speak Chinese. Although he intuitively understood her mother’s misgivings, at least he never heard the specifics. Her mother would just have to get used to having a white man for a son-in-law.

“Well, how’d your mum take the news?” Victor looked up from the newspaper as Sandra put down the phone and splayed herself out on the armchair.

“She wasn’t hysterical. And she didn’t disown me.”

“That’s good. Now what did she say?” Victor asked, carefully folding the paper.

“Oh,” Sandra sighed. “The usual guilt trip. What I expected. That my actions slighted the family.”

“Did you tell her we’d have a party. Maybe she could help with the planning.”

Sandra sat up and shot Victor a look. “Get serious.”

Victor and Sandra wanted a very small affair – perhaps a few friends and the immediate family. They were half successful. They invited their few personal friends and the immediate members of Victor’s family. But Sandra’s mother insisted on inviting distant relatives whom Sandra had not seen since she was a small child.

Sandra obediently took the final guest list and meticulously handwrote each invitation with a fountain pen. The following Sunday she drove to her brother’s restaurant to display her efforts to her mother. As she watched the countryside breeze by, she smiled, feeling proud and very pleased with herself.

Mrs. Low was sitting at the back of the restaurant. She was reading the Chinese newspaper. Other sections of the paper were scattered on the table. On the wall beside the table was a large Chinese calendar. Each month was adorned by a close-up of a Chinese female movie star. The February calendar girl seemed especially coquettish, her dark eyes flirting with the camera.

Sandra walked briskly into the restaurant. She gave her mother a quick hug, tidied the pile of papers on the table, sat down, and carefully showed her the invitations.

Her mother rested one arm on the table in front of her. The other arm was perched on its elbow, while her hand supported her jaw. She looked at Sandra, then pursed her lips as she shook her head in disapproval. “You can’t send invitations like this.”

“Why not?” Sandra had spent many hours looking at blank cards before settling on one with a cover that would neither offend nor have a hidden unlucky meaning for the Chinese guests. She purposely avoided anything that was unusual or had a hint of the occult. She finally decided on a woodland scene of a bird gazing thoughtfully at a peaceful blue lake. Who could possibly object to a landscape?

Mrs. Low looked at Sandra with complete disbelief. Surely her daughter couldn’t be this ignorant. “You don’t know anything. How can you send a card with just one bird? This is a wedding reception. There should at be least two birds.”

“But I’ve written them all out.”

“Well send them to the
lo fons
if you want. They don’t know any better. But don’t send them to the Chinese. They’ll think your reception bad luck.”

Sandra gathered up the cards and stormed out of the restaurant. She drove off without even noticing her mother running after her. When she reached Howland Avenue, she raced up the stairs to the second floor and unlocked the door. The moment she stepped inside, a feeling of relief rushed over her. Fortunately Victor wasn’t home. She needed to be alone. Sandra kicked off her shoes and threw herself lengthwise on the sofa, her head propped up against the arm. She was still trembling, and her face was wet with tears. She was livid. But mostly with herself. Why was she letting her mother affect her like this?