Miss Seetoh in the World (7 page)

‘Are you aware,’ he said slowly, stressing
every syllable, as he stood up, and she knew that another paralysing chill was
about to descend, ‘that for the last few months I have had exactly the same
thing placed before me every morning?’ Another truth about her unfitness as a
wife and homemaker confronted her. She thought, I’m glad I’m not a mother as
well. Zero out of three in her report card would be irredeemable failure.

The rice porridge with the pickled leek, the
fried anchovies and peanuts, favourite traditional breakfast fare going back
through revered generations, was now a symbol of a wife’s shameful incompetence
and worse, indifference. The preparation of the breakfast was the daily duty of
Por Por who took on this one chore in the household with great pride, being
incapable of everything else through increasing dementia. The rice porridge,
like so many other absurdly small things in their marriage, had become yet one
more occasion for marital discord.

She had almost wanted to scream at him:
well, dammit, let us know what you want, instead of keeping silent these long
weeks and then coming out with all the accusations! The angry words were
swallowed back as soon as they formed on her tongue. It was no use. He was sure
to respond by referring back to a time when he had mentioned this or that wish,
and she had nodded, only to forget it promptly.

Trying to remember each act of disobedience
as he dragged it up from his unforgiving memory, only added to the confusion
and bumbling which gave the impression of culpability, so that in the end, she
always fell back, exhausted, upon a heap of futile words.

The devoted Mr Chin had once managed to
persuade her to accept a lift home. She asked to be dropped at a point well
away from her house. Days after that, her husband had asked her very casually
as they were getting ready for bed, ‘What were you doing on Kiam Hoot Road?’
and he mentioned the day and hour.

A little tremor of anxiety gripped her, as
her memory sprang into rapid recall and remained blank. One of his friends must
have seen her and casually told him. Her confused look and hesitant answer
confirmed his suspicions, and he said curtly, ‘We’ll not talk any more about
the matter.’ What are you implying, she screamed silently. It was always the
uncompleted response, locked inside her throat, increasingly charged with
bitter anger.

In a dream that night, she taunted him,
‘Yes, it was Brother Philip!’ He asked, ‘Did he do anything to you in the car?’
and she said even more tauntingly, ‘Of course he did.’ Brother Philip became Mr
Chin who became the principal who melted into Tony Curtis, in a mocking
phantasmagoria of suspected lovers from St Peter’s Secondary School. She woke
up with a start, to see her sleeping husband beside her, and took care not to
make the slightest noise or movement, for even in sleep, a possessing arm would
be flung upon her body.

She had made the supreme mistake, one
evening, of talking at length on the phone with Brother Philip. School business
ended as soon as she reached home; no student had her phone number. The call,
about a camping trip that Brother Philip was organising for some students and
wanted to consult her about, was actually a welcome diversion. She was aware
that her husband was not only listening, but observing her intently. She told
herself: remember, keep a straight face, no laughter, no smiles, no sharing of
witty jokes or student absurdities, only focused business talk.

He asked, as expected, when she put down the
phone, ‘What was that all about?’ She told him.

‘Why on earth would anyone want to consult
you on a camping trip to Indonesia?’ Sometimes the sarcasm was allowed to end,
sometimes it became the trigger for a larger accusation. He said, without
looking at her, ‘You know the truth? Let me tell you the truth. You are too
preoccupied with your schoolwork, your creative writing, your reading all those
clever books.’ Taking on a life of its own, each favoured activity loomed as a
hateful rival. If she lovingly nurtured a little plant in a pot, it would
become a rival too.

In remonstrance, she would say, ‘But –’ and
immediately recoiled before the confronting chill of his resentment. He never
let the anger get in the way of the unfailing soft voice and civil language, so
that her mother, listening anxiously outside their locked door, would think
with relief that they had made up and fallen asleep together. In measured
tones, his glasses glinting ominously, he reminded her of her persistent
dereliction of wifely duty, citing a dozen examples in addition to the porridge
episode, that she could not even remember, and she would be silenced for the
rest of the day, left to her own vexed thoughts.

The most carefully rehearsed rejoinder to
the accusations would be stopped even before the opening word by the sheer
weight of the cold anger as he stood in judgement before her.

‘I had specifically told you to make out a
cheque to Third Aunt. That was ten days ago. She called this afternoon to say
she hasn’t received it.’ But, but. But it’s a huge sum, more than we can
afford! Besides, you didn’t make it very clear. You said if she were to ask
again, and she never did, and so I – The large sums he was magnanimously
dispensing to his relatives and the church charities were an alarming strain on
their joint, by no means substantial income.

Her friend Emily had said, ‘Every family has
its parasites; you can be thankful you have only his Third Aunt in Malaysia.’
Not particularly interested in money matters, she was aware that they were
spending beyond their means.

Her brother Heng, who tactlessly pried into
her finances, had advised her more than once, ‘Have a separate bank account,
your own money. You never know.’ He added, ‘Ah Siong is not a gambler or a
womaniser, but he likes to act like a big shot, treating his friends and
colleagues to dinners and drinks in fancy restaurants. How much do you manage
to save a month, the two of you, without any children? Tell him you want to
start your own account. I can get my bank manager to get you the best terms.’

He was involved in some businesses which he
never spoke about except when he made money, just as he remained
uncommunicative about his wife and young son who lived with his in-laws in Malaysia.
Their mother had once mentioned that the boy was ‘not well’, then gestured with
finger against lip that no more was to be said or asked about the matter.

Heng called a few days later to find out if
she had taken his advice about setting up her own personal bank account. She
hadn’t. ‘Well, don’t blame me if anything happens.’ His responses to his
sister’s failure to act upon his advice ranged from a resigned ‘I tried my
best’ to an angry ‘well, I wash my hands off you!’

It would be impossible for her to broach the
sensitive subject of money with her husband, for his questions, always charged
with suspicions, would escalate into a full inquisition that would wear her
out.

It was simply amazing – the gap between the
outward docility and the inward rage. She lived in a double-truth world. If one
day I should write the story of my life, she thought, as she took out her
husband’s shoes to polish, hating their very sight. She had been doing the
daily polishing since he told her the maid didn’t do it properly. I never asked
you, he would have protested. But you expected it, and would have sulked if I
didn’t, she would have replied. There you are, unwilling to do such a little
thing for your husband. You forget the many things I have done for you. Oh?
Just name me one. Just one, he would have sneered. You are a heartless bastard,
she would have sneered back.

Imaginary arguments went on in her head,
endlessly, sometimes continuing into her dreams, because real ones were no
longer possible. Imagination, wit, a sense of humour – all were sorely needed
if she wrote her life story and described the negotiating of two such different
worlds. If, like the meticulous author, she kept little cards to remind her of
the incidents to go into her life story, they would bear the most absurd
headings: ‘Incident of Porridge’, ‘Incident of (Un)Polished Shoes’, ‘Incident
of Too-Transparent, Green Blouse’, ‘Incident of Wrong Telephone Number and
Pathetic Indian Caller’. She had picked up the phone one evening; the caller
had got the wrong number but pleaded with her to hear his story, a terrible one
of loneliness and heartbreak, that lasted a full hour. Her husband checked the
phone bills not for purposes of economy but for monitoring her calls,
especially long outstation calls.

‘Would you have listened in sympathy to me
for an hour?’ he had said.

She thought of wives whose energies were
channelled, almost effortlessly, into streams of pure attention and devotion,
while her husband stood in the aridity of her detachment and indifference. They
were well-educated wives who could have had illustrious careers, like Dr
Phang’s cousin’s wife, but chose to be at home to serve their husbands’ every
wish. During attendance at mass in the Church of Eternal Mercy, sitting beside
her husband, she would observe the other wives sitting beside theirs, and
conclude they were as loving and compliant as she was indifferent and defiant.
Their marriages were peaceful havens, as hers was a storm-tossed vessel far out
at sea. It served her right to have embraced an institution for which she had
neither talent nor disposition.

She had sworn to love, honour and obey her
husband; true to all three vows in the eyes of the world, she had in truth
broken them all in the privacy of her own. The outward pretence could not be
long maintained; soon he, alert, proud, sensitive, would have to hold her to a
true accounting: did you love me at all? Why did you marry me?

The silence continued all the way in the car
as he drove her to school, and was broken twice, very briefly, by a grievance
that was mounting by the day. The car had stopped at a traffic junction that
faced a row of rundown shophouses that would soon be demolished to make way for
a shopping mall. In an unguarded sharing of secrets very early in their
marriage, she had pointed out one of the shophouses as the scene of a silly
girlhood romance, where a young man named Kuldeep Singh used to take her for
ice cream after school. Her husband had said nothing then, but retrospective
jealousy, summoning back the past for present accounting, could be even more
fearsome. Thereafter, each time the car stopped at the traffic junction in full
view of the offensive house, she would look down, to her left through the car
window, into her handbag, anywhere but in the direction of the shophouse, aware
of the sideways glance that he was casting at her. Every small act of hers
became a test of wifely propriety, subjected to the merciless analysis of a
love turned forensic.

That morning, her thoughts being very far
away, her eyes inadvertently rested on the forbidden object of the shophouse;
worse, the thoughts suddenly took a turn for tender recollection as in her mind
appeared an image of herself and Kuldeep Singh in their school uniforms,
perched on high stools at the ice cream bar, foreheads almost touching as they
sipped, through two long straws, a single glass of ice cream soda. Kuldeep had
confessed to being completely broke, but a riffling of the pocket of his uniform,
and then of hers, had produced a small handful of coins that was enough to pay
for one soda. Out in the bright sunshine, Kuldeep suddenly had an idea, his
eyes shining with mischief. He pulled out a small penknife from his pocket.

‘See, I’m leaving a mark of remembrance of
our happy day.’ He carved a large X sign on a corner of the wall near the bar
entrance, and had another idea. ‘Come here,’ he said to her. ‘Here, hold the
penknife. Like this. Now I’m holding your hand, and we carve together.’

He was duplicating the supreme wedding
moment when, in smiling union, groom and bride cut the bridal cake together.
‘You’re crazy,’ she giggled but complied. ‘Look out,’ she hissed, and they
fled. The sign could still be seen, twenty-three years later.

The tiny smile at the recollection had
escaped too quickly for her to stop it. Her husband said, ‘What was that smile
about?’

There was a vast stock of student howlers
that she could resort to, and she said, ‘I was just thinking of that awful
student I told you about, Maggie, and her atrocious grammatical mistakes –’,
and hated herself for the lie. The stock was cooperatively inexhaustible but
was rapidly losing its usefulness.

Her husband said again, more pointedly,
‘What was that smile about?’ and she lapsed into wordless misery which, in the
few minutes before they arrived at her school, became large tears filling her
eyes. She made no attempt to wipe them off.

‘What are you crying about?’ he said, in the
closest to a snarl that his habitual politeness would allow. ‘One would think
that it’s you who’s the victim in this marriage.’

At the school gate, as she got out of the
car, the tears having been hurriedly blinked back, she made a feeble attempt at
normalcy. She said, ‘There’ll be a staff meeting that will probably last two
hours or longer. I’ll be late home. Shall I call you at your office?’ and he
said, ‘You do whatever suits you,’ and drove off.

That night the lovemaking was horrible for
the intrusion of the afternoon’s jealous suspicion which worked itself into
what seemed like a manic reclamation of her body. It ended in a wash of
self-pity, as he whimpered, rolling off her, ‘If I don’t satisfy you, you can
go back to that Sikh boyfriend of yours.’ He was not done. He took the bathos
of self-pity to the histrionics of desperate self-abasement, comparing his
small build to the amazing, ethnic-joke proportions and prowess of the Sikh,
then of the Caucasian male, and cried out, repeatedly and tearfully, ‘Tell me
the truth; after your Kuldeep, after your Brother Philip, am I a
disappointment?’