“Sure.”
“You have everything. You know that? I didn’t grow up this way. My radio ran on batteries. It was a transistor radio. My mother listened to Chinese Opera.”
“I didn’t have everything until I met you,” Teck How said.
Karen smiled. She looked at the ring on her finger and managed to keep the smile for a few seconds. She wanted to close her eyes and let the broken shadows of trees fall across her face and her hands, which were folded contentedly on her lap. On the BBC World Service they were talking about babies who were dying of AIDS in Romania. Karen felt her heart move as she heard the words “orphanages, overcrowded, abandoned children”. She suddenly felt the pity of someone who was a thousand miles away from all the action and couldn’t hear any sound of suffering except through the clipped accent of a newsreader.
“Teck How, would you adopt an AIDS baby?”
“Depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Depends on whether people will like it.”
“Your parents?”
“Your parents, our friends, neighbours, relatives.”
“Does it matter what they think?”
“Maybe.”
“It wouldn’t matter to me. They need our love.”
Teck How winced a little listening to Karen talk that way. Maybe it was the way she said the word ‘love’.
“They don’t live very long. You want to love something for three years at most and watch them die on you?”
“Well, maybe if they had people to love them they might live longer.”
“That might happen or something else might happen.”
“Like what?”
On the radio, the news had shifted from abandoned babies to stock market reports. Teck How was going steady at the wheel, 80 kilometres per hour.
“Like we die a little earlier,” Teck How said.
“Not if we’re careful,” Karen replied.” I don’t think there’s any risk, Teck How. I don’t think we can get AIDS from babies. It’s not something that happens. They’re innocent. We don’t catch things from them.”
“I wasn’t talking about the disease. I was talking about giving all you’ve got to something that hasn’t got much going for it in the first place.”
“And you will die earlier because of that?”
“Maybe.”
“That was selfish, Teck How,” Karen said, her hand tugging at the wrinkles on her skirt. “I’m not saying that you’re a selfish person but that was a selfish thing to say. You have everything. Look at these stickers on your windshield. Two country clubs and one condominium. It’s not wrong to want to share them with other people.”
Teck How smiled good-naturedly and turned to look at Karen for an instant.
“Let’s drop the subject. Okay? Shall we drop the subject?”
“If you want to.”
“You’ve decided where we’re going for dinner later?”
“No.”
“Never mind. We can decide later.”
Karen looked at Teck How and smiled back. She switched the radio back to the channel that was playing love songs to show that she was serious about changing the subject. Karen opened the glove compartment to look for sweets but only found a street directory, parking coupons and a comb. It was then she realised that she was not riding in her father’s nineyearold Daihatsu but her fiancé’s BMW.
“Teck How?” Karen asked, stretching lazily.
“Hmmm?”
“I’m sorry for saying what I said just now. You’re not a selfish person. You know that.”
“It’s nothing to get worked up over.”
“I have everything to thank you for. Did I tell you how happy I was? I’m happy, Teck How.”
“I’m happy for you too.”
“No, you have to be happy for yourself. Then it will all make sense. I was thinking of all the times that I had to wake up in the morning while my parents were still sleeping to have a cold shower. I would eat breakfast while waiting for my hair to dry. And then I would watch a bit of AM Singapore, not really watching, but the house was just so quiet. And then walk to the MRT station. Sometimes when I saw taxis pass by I had to stop myself from reaching my finger out for one. And inside the train there would be this wind coming from somewhere, and I would try to figure out how it got in, and why it was so cold. I would be so afraid to fall asleep, even though everybody else was sleeping.”
“You were afraid you’d miss your stop?”
“No, I was scared that I would start talking in my sleep. When I was small my mother used to say I did that. I would talk about a lot of things, and sometimes I would cry and shake my shoulders as if somebody’s dirty hands were on them. Won’t you feel strange if you talked in your sleep? You could say bad words or bad things about people and you could make a lot of funny expressions. So sometimes even if there were seats in the train I would stand up. And if it got tiring I would read the advertisements. I would read the poems sometimes too. But half of them I couldn’t understand. Did you ever read them?”
“No, I never read any of them,” Teck How said.
“You have a car.”
“It was my father’s actually.”
“But it’s yours now. It’s a beautiful car. It’s a beautiful car, Teck How. What’s the horsepower thing again? Is that what you call it? Horsepower?”
“2000cc.”
“A 2000cc car. My God. It feels different sitting here.
I want you to know that, Teck How. This is all so new to me. That day when we went to choose the wallpaper and the guy rolled out the samples, you shouldn’t have just left me there. I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t know a thing about wallpaper. The man there just looked at me and all I could say was… this is beautiful. They’re all beautiful. I’ll wait for my husband and see what he says.”
“Husband?” Teck How asked.
“I mean, fiancé. But I didn’t know whether he understood what fiancé means. And I didn’t want to spend a lot of time explaining it to him. Why, you’re not happy with
