When Shirley woke up from her dream she realised that the bed was moving. Edward was turned away from her and his hips were jerking. Maybe he was having a wet dream. Shirley opened her eyes wide and wondered why she didn’t have dreams like other people. Where they could wake up, grope their way back to reality, and then tell themselves “that never happened” instead of “why did I ever let that happen”.* * *On Saturday morning Shirley had a shower that lasted more than the five minutes she usually kept herself to. Edward waited for his turn patiently outside the bathroom and when Shirley stepped out he told her that she smelt wonderful.
“Choose something for me to wear,” Edward told his wife after he saw her in her dress. “You never do that for me anymore.”
Shirley chose for him a white shirt and pin-striped polyester trousers. When they were out in the corridor, Shirley went back into the house to check if the iron had been switched off. Edward watched her and then asked himself what he had possibly done to deserve such a woman. His parents were not very keen on Shirley because she had not gone to university. But there was something simple about her that caught Edward’s heart. There was the sad way she laughed, and the way she took pains over small things, like removing lint off his collar or helping him to pluck a freak strand of white hair from his head. He couldn’t reconcile all this with the fact that he had actually planned their initial years of marriage so that she would not bear children before his business took off the ground.
When Shirley came back out to the corridor, she had something in her hand. It was a koala. Her sister had given it to her when their family got back from a holiday in Melbourne. Three months ago it was clipped to the side of the rear-view mirror on their Subaru, before they sold it.
“What’s that for?” Edward asked.
Shirley clipped the koala to her index finger and held it up as if she were testing the wind. She then wiggled it, its silhouette doing a pantomime against they sky.
“This is for luck,” she said.* * *On the ride home they sat at the top deck of a double-decker bus. Shirley still had the koala, but it was inside her purse, where she had torn off the felt. She found out that there was a plastic clothes-peg inside the koala. She had allowed herself to get carried away. When they reached the office, they found that there were so many people around, some married couples, some whole families, bringing their children along. She then asked her husband, “Edward, our prize is what number prize?”
“What do you mean?”
“First prize or second prize or what?”
“They didn’t tell me.”
When they sat down, Edward held Shirley’s hand tightly in his. Beside them was an Indian family. The Indian father had asked Edward whether he was informed about winning the prize through mail or telephone. When Edward answered him he said, “For us also, same thing. But for us they got my daughter’s pager number. But she passed the telephone over to me. We know we only get two air tickets, but we want to see how, when is the flight, because I want to bring the whole family along. Later see how lah, if anyone maybe want to sell their tickets for discount or what.”
Edward was thinking then that nothing could make him part from his. He was not going to let his wife down anymore. A speaker then went up to the microphone and addressed everyone. There was an atmosphere of goodwill and people clapped enthusiastically when he called the people in attendance “lucky families”. And there was a slide-show regarding investments in Australian property. The person kept saying the words, “No obligations”. They were allowed to invest any amount between 6,000 to 10,000 dollars. After 10 minutes Edward realised that he was not going to collect his air tickets. When the presentation was over, Edward loaded his paper plate with some fruit tarts from the reception. Shirley refused to touch any of them. In fact after a while she just walked away, and Edward had to skip on the coffee. When he finally caught up with her he passed her a brochure that had a koala on it. It read ‘Australia – Where the magic begins.’ He told her, “Maybe in a few years’ time,” and Shirley had replied, “I don’t think I have that long left in me.” And then she kept quiet and remained that way for the entire duration of the bus ride.
When they were at their doorstep, Shirley thought about how she should have left the iron on. So it would burn down a house like theirs, so empty, the walls decorated with failure, like paintings at a gallery. Each painting was a portrait of a husband who never doubted himself and who loved his wife so much she was powerless and incapable of anything but blind trust.
When they were in the living room, Shirley mentioned something in a whisper, a whisper that didn’t conceal anything, not excitement or hope, a whisper that was the only thing left when everything else had been stripped and revealed.
“Edward, how can you do this to me?”* * *At night, the couple took turns to brush their teeth. Edward was wearing pyjamas, and each time his eyes fell
