Tales From A Broad (9 page)

Now the stores are left with quite an overstock of Merlion hats, socks, key chains, snow globes (who's the genius behind selling snow globes in a place that has never and will never see snow?) and cookies. There really should be a contest for the person who can offload all this crap.

The last place we go in this district is finally iconoclastic. We walk through an indoor waterfall, everything is blue, I am blue, Frank is blue, the drinks are blue. The place is called Reds (just kidding). Anyway, it's a gay bar. They tell us we'd be more comfortable in the back room.

‘No, we wouldn't!' I bellow. ‘We're from New York. I'm in publishing, for God's sake.'

Frank turns me to face him and says, ‘It's against the law to be gay in Singapore. Give them a break, for Christ's sake.' He leads us out the door, but the night goes on and on.

At Mushafah Dan's, the owner says, ‘Stop! Stop! No one has ever had three Mushies!'

‘That may be true,' I declare, ‘but tonight, I will make history!'

Perhaps, one day, I'll remember the rest of the evening, but for now, the little school marm in my biology is making me remember to pay. I have this condition called blepharitis. Not only is this an unsuitably named affliction for a sexy tart like me, but the symptoms insidiously undermine my perfection. Why couldn't I have something called panther, meaning I'm always so cool. I have
blepharitis
. It's when your eyes … oh, I'm so embarrassed to talk about it … but they get hideously sticky and incredibly painful. It feels like conjunctivitis only it hurts worse, lasts longer and you sometimes have to tell people to please focus on your lips and forget about the ooze-making machine under your brows. It comes out after bouts of bad diet and, okay Marm, bouts of drinking.

I simply cannot open my eyes. Apparently, while I stupidly thought all face parts were having fun, my eyes came up with a plan to punish me. They invented a blepharitic adhesive so advanced, so insoluble, it is stronger than superglue. I am in misery.

The first time I got it, I was about six. (Obviously, it wasn't from too many cocktails.) I was naturally rather panicked. Until then, the worst experiences of my life had been coming second at Pammy Diener's dress-up party, missing the school bus and getting yelled at by my dad for crying when he yelled at me about something else in the first place. (Dad could yell logarithmically.)

I called out for my mom. ‘Mom! Help! Help!' I waited for her to come charging into the room, as I knew she would, like the time I bit down on the thermometer, or when I got a nailfile stuck in my teeth or couldn't get Barbie's head off my thumb. She never even let a minute pass if the television picture went bad. But she sure was taking her time now. Maybe she was desensitised from all the times I cried, ‘I fell in the toilet,' legs and arms pointing at the ceiling. Maybe she should have gotten me a special seat. Maybe she wasn't such a swell mom.

I knew that blind people had great ears and I'd have heard her galloping toward me even if she were across the road at Aunt Lois's, which she wasn't. And how did I know? Because I could
smell
her. I called out louder, more plaintively. Nothing. Blind and motherless, I turned to God, promising I would fess up to the hole in the wall I blamed on the housekeeper, I'd stop talking during Hebrew school (he'd like that one), I wouldn't throw my apple away at lunch, please, just let me see again.

Along with the supersonic hearing and genius nose, blind people are also more spiritual. Before – when I was whole – I only told God what I wanted and he silently took notes. Now, all of a sudden, he was handing out tests. Letting me know I was special. I thanked him and politely told him I would prefer to be especially pretty instead.

I needed help. It wasn't coming to me so I felt my way around the room, sliding my palms along the walls, bumping into furniture, loudly, slowly, painfully, making my way to the kitchen … seven paces from the bed to the door … nine paces from the door to the corner of the hallway … six steps down to the foyer. When the linoleum ended, I was there. I'd made it. And without a dog!

Mom had closed the kitchen door so she and Dad wouldn't wake us up. I bumped into it and heard Mom telling Dad that she was sorry she broke the egg yolk and would fry him up a new egg. Dad was still pissed off that the one he had been counting on, had already buttered his toast for, had tucked the paper napkin into his dress-shirt collar in anticipation of, was, in fact, not fit for human consumption.

‘Just look at it, Eunice,' I heard him say. I imagined the microscopic droplet of yellow that was pale and chalky instead of incredibly, unexpurgatedly sunny. He scraped his chair back (a bloody cacophonous sound for me now that my other senses were making up for the one that died so young). ‘Forget it. I'm not hungry,' he said through a mouthful of toast.

Dad read egg yolks like the I
Ching
. ‘Puncture in upper quadrant: bad day for signing contracts … Heavy layer of albumen: best not to schedule important meetings …' It wasn't just eggs, sometimes it was the fat on a lamb chop, plain as day, forecasting this or that, or the temperature of the bread or the meaning lurking within a lemon slice, as opposed to the preferred wedge, with his Chivas.

He thundered out and encountered me.

‘Hello baby doll,' he said as he kissed me on my forehead.

‘Father? Father? Is that you?' I asked, placing my hands on his face to ‘see' his expression.

‘What the hell are you doing?' he asked.

Mom's slippered feet, her morning scent
. ‘Harvey, don't use that language. Frannie, what
are
you doing?'

‘I can't open my eyes, Mommy.' I started to cry and then, a second later, I could open them and see through some spiderwebs. I felt the urge to rub and soon enough I had balls of gunk all over my cheeks and hands but my sight was restored. Either I was no longer special or I was forgiven.

Oh, to be six years old again. It's not that I remember loving being six, but I'm sure I didn't have hangovers. So far, I've only discussed the upper tenth of my body. But, down to my digits, the cellular me was protesting. My throat was parched, my stomach was angry and my feet throbbed out a warning of what they'd do if I ever wore those shoes again.

I'm sure we came home because that's Frank's shoulder I'm drooling on and these feel like my sheets. I'm sure we paid Pearl because she'd still be here ratcheting up the total if we hadn't. Frank enfolds me in his arms and pulls me close, settling in, safe and warm. He sighs.

‘
Frank!
'
I shove him.

‘Whaa …'

‘You have
got
to turn your head the other way or just stop breathing altogether,' I say.

We both get up; I follow the sounds of his bare feet. We wash, brush and gargle. My eyes are burning and still fastened shut.

We lurch back to the bed. Frank nuzzles again, a salve, a tonic, a shrine, a lily pad on a warm, gentle pond. I start to slip back into sleep and that can only mean one thing: yes siree, the kids are up and the demanding has begun. Not in a ‘when you get a minute' kind of way, rather in a series of
now
sounds. Hoarse crying from Huxley's room.
Now!
The banging on our door of Sadie's small, determined fist.
Now!
Rattling crib wall.
Now!

Frank doesn't move a single, solitary molecule in his body. He's relaxed as a marshmallow. I'm blind and I'm angry. Furious that this is not an ‘up for grabs' chore. This is
my
chore. Because
he
is working and soon I will not be. Because
he
is the
man
. Because that is what expat life is like. Because I better get used to it. I crawl out of bed but take the long way, over his body, traversing his midsection, my elbows and knees not missing a trick.

‘Ow, oof, wha's that about?'

‘Well, Frank, the knees were because, gee, you're still here and the elbows were because, hmmm, because I hate you.'

He whips the covers off and now we're racing out the door, a war on the horizon. See, he wants me to think that getting up was never a big deal to him, can't imagine why I continue to make such a hullabaloo over every little thing … I
mean, shoot, Fran, don't you love the kids? I know I do, can't wait to see their fresh morning faces .
. . Okay, that's what he wants everyone to think and most everyone falls for it. He's a master at turning the situation over onto its flip side and gaslighting me. I'm supposed to think I'm a nut, that I make all this up. I can hear my mother saying, ‘Frannie, just go and apologise to Frank. He's a good man.' As if I would never interest anyone else and should thank my lucky stars. Maybe in your day, Ma, you had to break a few eggs but I know what's going on. He kept the job and I didn't.

We both grab at Sadie.

‘Hello, sweetie!' she hears in stereo.

‘How's my best girl?' says Frank in a ‘can you possibly top that?' tone.

I'm afraid I can, Mister: ‘Sadie, do you want me to make you waffles for breakfast?' Frank doesn't know we have them … hee hee.

‘How about you come to work with me and we'll have breakfast at the coffee shop. Just me and you. A Daddy–Sadie day.' He smiles at me with his big blue eyes crinkling, brimming over with tears, for God's sake. Like Sadie's going to know how to handle
that
!

Disgusted, I run to Huxley's room.

‘My, precious, mmmmmm, kiss kiss.' Oh, he is so stinky. I wish I'd won in the first round because now I have to change his diaper. But I can't really; I can hardly see. Though my eyelids have started to peel open, my vision is rather viscous and my eyes hurt so much I have to cry.

‘Fran, it's okay, I'm not mad,' Frank says at Huxley's door, then walks to the changing table.

‘Oh, imagine my fucking relief!' I shout.

‘I was going to say, “But why are
you
?”' He punctuates it with a little pat of hurt.

‘Fuck you,' I say, rubbing my eyes.

‘Hey, I thought we had a great night, celebrating our success. I'll be making a shitload of money, we get to stay here and you get to quit working.'

‘
Our
success? How is any of it
my
success? I get to quit working. That sounds a little like the opposite of success. And now that I'm not working, you're treating me like shit.'

‘What? When?'

‘Just now, when you left it up to me to get the kids.'

‘Jeez, I always do that. I thought you wanted the kids to see you first.'

I did.

I do.

‘You better tell me now if you don't want to take this gig,' he says.

When I first got here, it felt like a farm stay or something. I didn't think I'd wind up a farmer. Now, it turns out, I'm not just playing Expat Like Me. This isn't research. This isn't a break. I am no longer a literary agent. I am no longer a New Yorker. Say it after me. It's a classic case of ‘be careful what you wish for'. I wanted an escape, but did I want a total rebirth? On the other hand, three more years of fun in the sun. But three years is a long time. Who's even going to recognise me? I'm looking more like tree bark every day with all this fun in the sun. Shut up, Fran. You are going to live abroad. Who gets this chance? Be an expat. Be a real mother, for God's sake. Do it well. Frank heard me wail and moan and beat myself up. He remembers what it was like. Maybe I've forgotten already. We wanted life to be simpler and easier and much less bumpy. Oh, my God, I will have fuck all to say to anyone after a month. Shut up, Fran. See, maybe even sooner.

Striking an accord, we (six sides of me, one husband and two children) sit at the breakfast table. Over my mug of coffee, I start to get myself really riled now, not because events have swept me away but because Frank hasn't even noticed my exaggerated wincing every minute and a half. Dabbing at my poor eyes, I see him gingerly push away his barely eaten wok-fried omelette.

‘Why aren't you eating that?'

‘I guess I'm not that hungry.'

‘Is it bad?'

‘No, it's great. I'm just full from last night.'

‘We ate last night?'

‘Actually, I have no idea.'

‘Me neither. So eat your omelette.'

‘Christ, Fran, I don't want it. Look. You didn't line up the edges when you flipped it. It's ruined.'

‘So let me make you another one.'

‘Forget it. It's not important!'

I don't want to cry. I say to myself I am happy, I
am
happy. Call me Happy. Happy is me. I'm H–A–P–P–Y, I'm H–A–P–P–Y. I make my way out onto the bedroom balcony where I have been drying out the clothes.

I open the sliding glass door and am hit by an intense acrid smell. The sky and the sea are the same shade of dull grey; the ships have completely vanished. My eyes start to burn so badly, I almost fall over from the pain. They feel like they're getting pulled back into my head.

‘Frank! I think there's a fire!'

‘Yeah, in Indonesia,' he calls from the dining room.

Apparently Indonesia shares its smoke with us even though we don't do any of the forest-burning. As the haze hunkers down, the government tells you when it's safe to play outside by issuing a ‘haze index'. The heavy air captures all of Singapore's stench: the mosquito spray, the fertilisers and the durian (a type of fruit that smells like Frank's feet would if he dipped them in cheese and then died for a few days).

I hope it's better down at the pool. I unclip a towel. I have to be careful or it might break. It's a giant saltine. That's what happens when you line dry. How am I supposed to fold this into the swim bag? I hear the doorbell ring. I unclip Sadie's stiff little bathing suit and once-fluffy robe. The bell rings again. ‘I'm 'a'comin',' I say. I scuffle in carrying the weight of my oppression.