Bad Fruit, page 13
18 / AIRPORT
THE TWO GIRLS WITH THE sign look like ballerinas. When the passengers surge through the arrival doors, they spring up as if they’re about to go onstage, feet en pointe, arms extended, a “Welcome home, Mum” sign above their heads. I register their moves, bank them for later. I can mimic their focus on the swinging door, I can go on my tiptoes scanning the crowds.
Daddy comes back from the tills with a tray—coffee, fries, a chocolate milkshake. He upends the cardboard packet and nods for me to take a few. I decline. The silence between us is brittle, made worse by the hum of air-conditioning, the loudness of other people’s chatter. I tune in and out of the conversations around us—dinner plans, baby anecdotes, boyfriend trouble—struck by how easy it seems, how impossible.
“When your mother comes back,” says Daddy, dipping his fries into barbecue sauce, “probably best if you stop reading on the sofa.”
The shock of it is a knife sliding between my ribs, and suddenly I’m a child again, six, maybe seven, poring over the books Daddy gave me—Matilda, Little House on the Prairie, Charlotte’s Web. He snuck them to me in secret, slipping me one with the bookshop bag wrapped tight around it, or leaving two for me in my bedroom. I thought he was trying to tell me something, something just for me, maybe he’d say he loved me or that I was special or not to worry about the woman we lived with. It was weeks until I felt the knife. There were no secret messages.
He waggles his finger at me and grins. “And let’s not mention The Sail Boat.”
I put my hand out to stop him.
“Can you start putting your bicycle away, as well? We’re in for a few storms.”
“I’m not putting it in the shed.”
He takes a fry. “It’s going to rust.”
“It’s fine against the house.”
“It’s still going to get wet.”
“I use it every day.”
He cocks his head to the side. “That’s not going to stop it from getting wet now, is it?”
“Just leave it!” I shout.
He stares at me, stunned.
I feel the prickle of other people’s eyes on me. “I’m going for a walk.”
He hands me my milkshake. “Take this with you.”
I snatch it from him, sling on my rucksack, push through the restaurant. Why have the last few days turned me into a child? Is this what it would be like with Mama gone?
The pair of girls waiting for their mother are restless now and tired. They’ve laid the sign on the floor, and close up, I see it’s the work of an entire afternoon, decorated with hearts and rainbows, an impressionistic unicorn. They look around eleven and eight, one a brunette, the other, a strawberry blonde. The older girl braids her sister’s hair, glancing warily at the doors, scolding her sister to stop fidgeting, to hold this butterfly hairclip, that sparkly hair band. Then, it happens. The girl transforms, her eyes widening, her fingers frozen in her sister’s hair and then the braid is forgotten, the sign is forgotten. The girls dart under the railing and sprint to their mother. She is appallingly ordinary, inconspicuous in a gray T-shirt and jeans, clothes Mama would never wear, and she stops her trolley, doesn’t matter about the other arrivals, and throws her arms around the girls, kissing them again and again. Over my wrist, pain dawns. I’ve grabbed it too tightly.
“She’s here.” Daddy sails past me, his thriller tucked under his arm. I tear my eyes from the girls and follow his crumpled polo, his smoothed back blond hair. Mama is too bright for the beige hues of the airport, in her magenta trousers and a matching straw hat. She’s put on lipstick, and I indulge myself in the fantasy that this is romantic, that my father and mother are reuniting after a long time apart, but then Jonathan trudges behind Mama pushing the trolley, his baby-smooth skin reddened by the sun, and Mama doesn’t wave or smile when she catches sight of us.
She allows herself to be embraced, Daddy rounding off his hug with two pats on the back. I throw my arms around Mama, an absurd mimic of the other girls, but she doesn’t notice. She watches Daddy greet Jonathan with the polite acknowledgment of a butler, which bewilders Jonathan so much he acts like one, lumping his suitcase off the trolley before stuttering an excuse to leave. Mama clucks her tongue, annoyed at her disappearing knight, but she is warrior enough. As Daddy takes over the trolley, Mama’s eyes dart behind us. I wait for everything to click into place, and it does. There is an awful easiness to it.
“Where are the boys?” Mama asks.
Daddy gives Mama a dizzying smile. “It was too late to bring them. They wanted to see you though.”
A crease deepens between her eyebrows. “They wanted to see me, and you said no?”
Daddy calls the lift, pressing the button twice after it lights up. “It’s past their bedtime.”
I watch Mama’s ribs expand and contract under her white shirt. She is nearly hyperventilating with the idea that the twins have asked for her even though Daddy has certainly invented this exchange. I put my hand on her elbow to steady her, but I lose her in the lift. Untethered, she says above the hum of other people’s conversations, “Why would you stop my grandchildren from seeing me?” Her power falls over the small space. Everyone is thrown into confusion, no one knows whether to look at her or not, to stop talking or continue. They are all in her thrall.
Daddy doesn’t reply. He fixes his eyes on the descending floors as if they’re a slide of tissue from a suspicious death, a move not without cost because by the time we get out and step into the humidity of the car park, Mama’s thoughts have taken a more dangerous turn. “When did you speak to the twins?”
Daddy slows as we approach the car. “Yesterday.”
“Why did you see them?”
“I brought them home from Jacob’s.”
“Where was Jacob?”
“He had to go back to work, he couldn’t take them home.”
In the car, she clicks her seat belt into place. “So you didn’t spend the day with them?”
Daddy searches for the parking ticket in the side pocket. His answers are distracted, unconvincing. “No.”
“Did you go up to the flat?” Mama drums her fingers. She isn’t wearing her wedding ring. Instead, there is a new bracelet around her wrist, the kind a twelve-year-old would love, silver dolphins chasing hearts.
“No, I just picked them up from outside.”
“So you didn’t spend the day with Francie?”
“Of course not,” says Daddy as he reverses, employing the same silly-little-girl tone he uses with me. Mama’s fingers stop tapping.
“And then Jacob had to leave, and you drove the boys home with Lily?”
“Yes.” He nods at me while checking the rear window. I shake my head. Why does he think I’m going to cover for him?
“Lily was with you? The whole time you dropped the boys off with Francie?”
I slide my knife in. I’ve been sharpening, whetting. “I didn’t go to Francie’s. I got out at the heath.”
Mama’s voice is a hiss. “You went to Francie’s alone?”
Daddy grips the steering wheel. “I wasn’t alone, I was with the boys. I had no choice, Lily just got out of the car!”
What’s a little evening knife play?
“Is that true?” Mama has craned her neck around. “You let him go by himself?”
It’s a good try by Daddy, but not good enough. I’m better at defensive moves, I’ve had more practice. The tears fall quick and easy. “I didn’t want to be there with Daddy and Francie. I didn’t want to see that.”
Mama turns around, satisfied. She pushes back her dark hair and points a manicured finger at me. The dolphins dive against her wrist. “Look at what you’ve done to this family. To your daughter. She can’t even be in the same car as her father anymore. I knew I should have stayed with Jonathan, just stayed away. Do you love her? Have you slept with her?”
Daddy, so confident in the airport, dulls into monosyllables. In the back seat, I watch the road unfold in front of us, miles of accusations, recriminations, games. We’re so far from home.
* * *
I CAN’T MAKE out exactly what Mama is screaming about downstairs, but just the ebb and flow of her voice is enough to show me how bad it is. I catch my reflection in the window and wonder what Lewis would think of me now—legs crossed, forehead pressed against the banister, a caricature of imprisonment. I release the railings just in time before Mama flings open the living-room door and climbs the stairs. I hold my arms out to her on the landing. She buries her devastated face into my shoulder. The back of her neck is tanned, she forgot to apply lotion there.
When she pulls away, I wipe her tears with my thumb and shush her the way I would comfort Leo or Albie: “Don’t cry anymore. You’re OK. Everything is going to be OK.”
She balls her hands up into fists and drags her knuckles across the tops of her legs. “No one wants me back, he doesn’t, your sister doesn’t, the boys don’t care about me. The only person that cares is Jonathan.”
“I want you back. I’ve missed you.” I’m so hungry for her to see me, I almost bite her. But her fists don’t stop pummeling her thighs. I gesture to her bedroom. “Come, look who’s here to greet you.”
Her face lights up at the scene I’ve set and then she sits next to the teddies, stroking their heads lightly as if she can’t bear to disturb them. “You did all this for me?”
I nod.
“Thank you, thank you.” She holds Sapphire to her, inhales her chestnut fur. “What are they doing?”
“Having a tea party. Eating kueh kapit. One of your favorites. Here, have one.”
She takes up one biscuit, admiring the pattern. “They’re beautiful, Lily. Remember when we got some from that stall? When we saw that couple making them?” She’s thinking of when we went for one of our walks, the kind we only do in Singapore, just out, no destination. The stall was a lean-to with a long trough filled with white-hot coals, the molds laid over the top. “How many were there?” she asks.
“More than twenty.” The couple had been in their seventies, the woman filling the molds from one end and emptying them from another, flicking the biscuits to her husband with expert skill. The man chatted to his wife, then with Mama in rapid Mandarin, his fingers busy folding the biscuits and packing them into tins. He said they only spoke about auspicious things so that the biscuit was golden.
“We watched them make an entire tin, so we knew they were fresh.”
“We ate them straight off the coals.”
She lifts one to her mouth and bites. “I wish I could go back to that time, before this happened with your father, when I was happy.”
Were you happy then, Mama? I don’t think you were, not in Singapore at the love-letter stall. But I will help you. I will do everything I can to make you feel better.
“Is there any juice?”
Mama’s girl, Mama’s doll. I steady myself against the wall. “I’ll get you some.”
* * *
IN THE HOLE, I sit by the dandelion, get out my phone and scroll to “New Recording 5.” I change the title hundreds of times a day just to see how it looks—“Lewis—3 August 2020,” “Spit,” and my personal favorite, “Lewis and me,” although I always change it back. I press play at 18 minutes and 25 seconds. To the sound of his laugh, I think of the constellation of his eyes, of laying my hand on his heart.
19 / GREEN JUICE
MAMA IS PUTTING ON HER makeup while expounding on her newest theory—that Francie has “seduced” Daddy. The word “seduced” makes me want to laugh, as if Daddy is a ruined maiden, tricked into surrendering his virginity. No one was more willingly led astray.
“She let him spend so much time with her.”
I’m only half listening. It’s Mama’s first day back at work, and she has a client meeting so I’m hunting for her suit jacket that will be too warm to wear. I’ve located the matching skirt; the jacket must have fallen off the hanger. If I can’t find it quickly, Mama will complain I haven’t organized her wardrobes properly.
“Albie said he was there all the time.”
Inside the wardrobe, I flinch. In the last few months, Mama has started telling Albie that he’s her favorite, and whenever I hear that, a stillness comes over me, like being slowly submerged in freezing water. I say to him, “Careful, Albie, careful,” but when he asks me why, I don’t know what to say.
“When did you speak to him?”
“This morning on video.”
Why would Francie let Albie speak to Mama without her? I find the jacket but stay inside the wardrobe, watching Mama through the hinged edge of the door. “He’s only two, Mama. Children will say anything.”
Mama’s mascara is frozen in her hand. “Albie is completely reliable.”
She waits for me to agree, but Albie and Leo are perhaps the only issue I would resist her on. I change the subject. “Found it.” I hold the jacket to the light. “There’s a mark on the corner, see? A bit of pen. I’ll wash it out.” I head to the bathroom, so Mama has to call after me; the flood of adrenaline will drown out her thoughts.
“Are you crazy? I’ve got a meeting in an hour.”
“Sorry, Mama. Do you still want to wear it?”
Mama glances at her watch. “It’s fine, it’s fine, I’ll just hide the stain behind the desk.”
I smooth the jacket out on her bed.
Mama pouts into the mirror and applies her lipstick. “I’m just going to ask her.”
“Who?”
“Francie,” she says through puckered lips.
“Ask her what?”
“If she seduced him. I’m meeting her this evening,” she says. I stare at the crystal pins in her hair, her makeup shades too pale, as if they will answer this new, dangerous question—why is Mama trying to blame Francie?
“What?” she says layering on the fuchsia. “You think it’s a bad idea?”
“Do you really think she’s involved?”
Mama neatens her lip line with her ring finger. Her eyes are flint in the mirror. “One hundred percent.”
* * *
JACOB PICKS UP almost immediately. “Hi.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“David’s coming back in a sec, what’s up?”
My brother, who has fought to get into this law firm, who has been interviewed and tested to prove he deserves his place, is whispering in his pristine glass office. “Can you step out?”
“Hang on.” He puts me in his pocket. When he speaks to me again, a coffee machine splutters in the background. “Everything OK?”
“Does Francie know Mama’s found out about the poems?”
“Well … no. I don’t want to bring that up.”
“Not even after my birthday? What did she think was happening?”
“She just thought Julia was misbehaving.”
“You need to tell her.”
“Why?”
“She’s meeting Francie this evening.” There’s no need to say who “she” is.
Jacob inhales.
“There’s something else. She’s started saying it’s Francie’s fault. That Francie seduced Daddy.”
I hear the tension in his voice, the dawning awareness that Mama’s narrative is snaking slowly toward him. “How is this Francie’s fault?”
“I don’t know. But Francie shouldn’t go alone. She could make things worse.” I pause. “You need to go with her.”
“I can’t.”
“Are you working?”
“You know I am.”
“But it’s important!”
In the silence that passes between us, I know what he’ll ask and that I’ll agree, and I wonder why I called him when I always knew it would end like this. “Can you go? You can handle Mama best.”
Mama used to make Jacob and Julia sleep in the downstairs hall for tiny things, leaving something out in their bedrooms, spilling a drink at dinner, but I knew how to get them back. I wouldn’t argue with her. I did the opposite. I’d hold her hand and list their crimes, recite word for word how they deserved their punishment. Without anyone to fight, Mama’s aggression would ebb away, and after she fell asleep, I’d tiptoe downstairs and tell them that the coast was clear. Will I always feel guilty for being Mama’s favorite? For being upstairs when they were down? “OK. But promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“Tell Francie before this evening.”
“All right.”
“And Jay, you need to keep it together the next few weeks. There’s a lot going on.”
“Sure, Lil, sure.”
* * *
WE’RE AT THE Vine, Mama’s favorite restaurant in Blackheath, the tablecloths pristine, the menus embossed with gold. Sloane had her fourteenth birthday lunch here with three of her closest friends; they were at the window seat when I came in with Mama, a basket of truffle arancini and sparkling water on their table. I made a shy half-wave to them. They sniggered. Now, when I come into The Vine, I keep my eyes low.
Francie orders just a green juice—avocado, mint, spinach, and parsley; the mash of green reminding me of the ivy Lewis gave me hours earlier. He’d spoken to Pete about plants that grow in shade and gave me three pots trailing dark, glossy leaves. I stalked him back to The Polar Explorer House for that, and, before leaving for The Vine, I plucked three leaves for luck. Now, I comfort myself with his gift, holding them in the pocket of my jeans.
Mama one-ups Francie by ordering a hot water and then mutters that I should try the blackened cod, which means that’s what she really wants, she just doesn’t want to look fat in front of Francie. I order it, dreading the stomach upset that follows when Mama eats out—the trips to the toilet, the irrepressible bad mood, and then I remember the flashback about the spoilt juice—her father punished her because she wouldn’t drink a glass of milk. But why wouldn’t she? Could it be that, all this time, Mama has some kind of undiagnosed milk intolerance? No wonder she likes Peranakan cooking, there’s barely any lactose.
