A woman appeared from around the corner and said, “Aiyah, Nicky, why is your hair
so long? You look like a ruffian! You better get it cut short before Colin’s wedding.”
“Hi, Mum,” Nick said simply. Rachel was still reeling from the abruptness of this
encounter when Nick continued, “Mum, I’d like you to meet Rachel Chu,
my girlfriend
.”
“Oh,
hello
,” Eleanor said, as if she had no idea who the girl might be.
So this is the girl. She looks better than in that school yearbook picture obtained
by the detective
.
“It’s so nice to meet you, Mrs. Young,” Rachel found herself saying, although her
mind was still trying to accept the notion that this woman could actually
be
Nick’s mother. Rachel had been expecting an imperious grande dame with a powdered
white face and a tight perm dressed in some Hillary Clinton–esque pantsuit, but before
her stood a striking woman in a trendy scoop-neck top, black leggings,
and ballet flats, looking far too young to have a thirty-two-year-old son. Rachel
bowed her head and presented her gift of oranges.
“How lovely! Aiyah, you really shouldn’t have!” Eleanor replied graciously.
Why in the world did she bring mandarin oranges—does she think it’s Chinese New Year?
And why is she bowing like some stupid Japanese geisha?
“Have you been enjoying Singapore so far?”
“Yes, very much,” Rachel replied. “Nick’s taken me to have the most fantastic hawker
food.”
“Where did you take her?” Eleanor looked at her son dubiously. “You’re practically
a tourist yourself—you don’t know all the secret holes-in-the-wall like I do.”
“We’ve been to Lau Pa Sat, Old Airport Road, Holland Village—” Nick began.
“
Alamak
! What is there to eat in Holland Village?” Eleanor exclaimed.
“Plenty! We had the best
rojak
for lunch,” Nick said defensively.
“Nonsense! Everyone knows that the only place to go for
rojak
is that stall on the top floor of Lucky Plaza.”
Rachel laughed, her nerves quickly dissipating. Nick’s mother was so funny—why had
she been so nervous?
“Well, this is it,” Eleanor said to her son, gesturing at the space.
“I don’t know what you were talking about, Mum, the place looks perfect.”
“
Alamak
, you don’t know how much of a headache this flat has caused me! We had to re-stain
the floors six times to get the right finish.” Nick and Rachel stared down at the
beautiful gleaming white oak floors. “And then some of the custom furniture in the
guest bedrooms had to be redone, and the automatic blackout curtains in my bedroom
aren’t dark enough. I’ve had to sleep in one of the guest bedrooms on the other side
of the flat for more than a month now because the curtains are on back order from
France.”
The entry foyer opened into a great room with thirty-foot ceilings and a grid-like
pattern of skylights that drenched the room with light. The space was made even more
dramatic by a sunken oval pit in the center, with sleek Hermès-orange sofas perfectly
contoured around both sides of the oval. From the ceiling, a spiral chandelier of
sculptured gold and glass teardrops pirouetted down until it almost touched the oval
driftwood coffee table. Rachel could hardly believe that Nick’s parents lived in such
a space—it looked more like the
lobby of some impossibly hip hotel. A phone rang in another room, and a maid peered
out of a doorway to announce, “It’s Mrs. Foo and Mrs. Leong.”
“Oh, Consuelo, please send them up,” Eleanor said.
At last, the reinforcements are here
.
Nick looked at his mother in surprise. “You invited other people? I thought we were
going to have a quiet family dinner.”
Eleanor smiled.
We would have, if it were just our family
. “It’s only the regular crowd,
lah
. The cook made
laksa
, and it’s always better to have more people for that. Besides, everyone wants to
see you, and they
can’t wait
to meet Rachel!”
Nick smiled at Rachel in an attempt to cover up his dismay. He had wanted his parents
to give their undivided attention to Rachel, but his mother was always springing last-minute
surprises like this.
“Go wake your father, Nick—he’s napping in his media room down that hall,” Eleanor
instructed.
Nick and Rachel walked toward the media room. The sounds of gunfire and explosions
could be heard from within. As they approached the open door, Rachel could see Nick’s
father asleep on a Danish ergonomic recliner while
Battlestar Galactica
played on the flat-screen television built into the sandblasted oak wall. “Let’s
not disturb him,” Rachel whispered, but Nick entered anyway.
“Wakey, wakey,” he said softly.
Nick’s father opened his eyes and looked up at Nick in surprise. “Oh, hello. Is it
dinnertime?”
“Yes, Dad.”
Nick’s father got up from the chair and looked around, spotting Rachel standing shyly
in the doorway.
“You must be Rachel Chu,” he said, smoothing down the back of his hair.
“Yes,” Rachel replied, coming into the room. Nick’s father extended his hand. “Philip
Young,” he said with a smile, shaking her hand firmly. Rachel liked him instantly,
and she could at last see where her boyfriend got his looks. Nick’s large eyes and
elegantly shaped mouth were exactly like his mother’s, but the thin nose, prominent
jawline, and thick jet-black hair were unmistakably his father’s.
“When did you get in?” Nick asked his father.
“I caught the morning flight from Sydney. I wasn’t planning to come until later in
the week, but your mum insisted that I fly up today.”
“Do you work in Sydney, Mr. Young?” Rachel asked.
“Work? No, I moved to Sydney
not
to work. It’s far too beautiful a place for work. You get distracted by the weather
and the sea, the long walks and the good fishing.”
“Oh, I see,” Rachel said. She noticed that his accent was a unique fusion of British,
Chinese, and Australian.
Just then, there was a knock on the door, and Astrid peeked in. “I’m under strict
orders to corral all of you,” she announced.
“Astrid! I didn’t know you were coming tonight,” Nick said.
“Well, your mum wanted it to be a surprise. Surprise!” Astrid said, fluttering her
fingers and giving him an ironic smile.
Everyone made their way back to the living room, where Nick and Rachel were surrounded
by a flurry of dinner guests. Lorena Lim and Carol Tai shook Rachel’s hand, while
Daisy Foo embraced Nick. (It did not escape Rachel that Daisy was the first person
who had hugged him all night.)
“Aiyah, Nicky, why have you been hiding your beautiful girlfriend for so long?” Daisy
said, greeting Rachel with an effusive hug as well. Before Rachel could respond, she
felt someone grabbing her arm. She looked down at the bing-cherry-size ruby ring and
long red manicured claws before looking up in shock at a woman with teal-green eye
shadow and rouge painted heavier than a drag queen’s.
“Rachel, I’m Nadine,” the woman said. “I’ve heard so much about you from my daughter.”
“Really? Who’s your daughter?” Rachel asked politely. Just then, she heard a high-pitched
squeal right behind her. “Nicky! I’ve missed you!” a distinctive voice exclaimed.
A chill came over Rachel. It was Francesca Shaw, greeting Nick with a tight bear hug
and a kiss on the cheek. Before she could react, Francesca put on her biggest smile
and swooped down on Rachel with another double-cheek kiss. “Rachel, lovely to see
you so soon again!”
“Oh, were you at Araminta’s bachelorette party?” Nick asked.
“Of course I was. We all had such a gloooorious time, didn’t we, Rachel? Such a beautiful
island, and wasn’t the food marvelous? I heard you particularly enjoyed the
fish course
.”
“Yes, it was quite an experience,” Rachel replied slowly, stunned by Francesca’s remarks.
Was she admitting responsibility for the mutilated fish? She noticed that Francesca’s
lipstick had left a bright red imprint on Nick’s cheek.
“I’m not sure if you remember my cousin Astrid,” Nick said to Francesca.
“Of course!” Francesca rushed to greet her with a hug. Astrid stiffened up, taken
aback by how familiar Francesca was being. Francesca scrutinized Astrid from head
to toe. She was wearing a white drape-front silk georgette dress with navy blue trim.
The cut is so perfect, it must be couture. But who’s the designer?
“What a fantastic dress!” Francesca said.
“Thank you. You look lovely in red,” Astrid responded.
“Valentino, of course,” Francesca replied, pausing to wait for Astrid to reveal the
designer of her outfit. But Astrid did not reciprocate. Without missing a beat, Francesca
turned to Nick’s mother and gushed, “What a fabulous place, Auntie Elle! I want to
move in
right now
. It’s all so Morris Lapidus, so Miami Modern! It makes me want to throw on a Pucci
caftan and order a whiskey sour.”
“Wah, Francesca, you hit it right on the head,” Eleanor said in delight. “Everybody,
we’re going to do something different tonight—we’re all going to
makan
in my little kitchen,” she announced as she led her guests into a kitchen that to
Rachel seemed anything but little. The cavernous space looked like a gourmand’s idea
of what heaven might be—a gleaming temple of white Calacatta marble, stainless-steel
surfaces, and state-of-the-art appliances. A chef in white uniform stood by the commercial-grade
Viking stove, busy monitoring bubbling copper pots, while three kitchen maids scurried
around making final preparations. At the far end was an alcove with an art deco diner-style
banquette.
As they took their seats, Carol glanced over at the chef deftly ladling crimson broth
into large white clay soup bowls. “Wah, Eleanor—I feel like I’m dining at the chef’s
table of some chichi restaurant,” she said.
“Isn’t it fun?” Eleanor said merrily. She looked at Rachel and said, “I was never
allowed to set foot in the kitchen at my mother-in-law’s house. Now I get to eat in
my
own
kitchen, and actually watch the food being cooked!” Rachel smiled in amusement—here
was a woman who obviously had never cooked a meal in her life but seemed to relish
the novelty of being inside a kitchen.
“Well, I love to cook. I can only dream of one day having a kitchen as beautiful as
yours, Mrs. Young,” Rachel said.
Eleanor smiled graciously.
I’m sure you can—with my son’s money
.
“Rachel is an
amazing
cook. Without her, I’d probably be eating ramen noodles every night,” Nick added.
“That would be just like you,” Daisy commented. She looked at Rachel and said, “I
used to call Nicky my ‘Noodle Boy’—he was always so crazy over noodles as a kid. We
would take him to the top restaurants in Singapore, and all he ever wanted was a plate
of fried noodles with extra gravy.”
As she said this, three maids entered the dining alcove and placed large steaming
bowls of
laksa
noodle soup in front of each guest. Rachel marveled at the beautiful composition
of butterfly shrimp, fried fish cake, pillowy tofu puffs, and hard-boiled egg halves
beautifully arranged over the thick rice vermicelli and fiery soup. For a few minutes,
the room lapsed into silence as everyone slurped down the distinctive noodles and
savored the rich broth.
“I can taste the coconut milk in the soup, but what gives it the slightly tart, spicy
kick? Is it Kaffir?” Rachel asked.
Show-off
, Eleanor thought.
“Good guess. It’s tamarind,” Daisy answered.
This girl wasn’t bullshitting—she
does
know how to cook
.
“Rachel, it’s so impressive that you know your way around a spice rack,” Francesca
chirped, her fake-friendly tone barely masking her disdain.
“Apparently not as well as you know how to gut a fish,” Rachel commented.
“You girls went fishing?” Philip looked up from his
laksa
in surprise.
“Oh, yes, we did. One of the girls even caught a bigger, endangered fish. We tried
to convince her to put it back in the water, but she wouldn’t, and it ended up biting
her
very
hard. There was blood squirting all over the place,” Francesca said, biting the head
off her jumbo prawn and spitting it onto the side of the bowl.
“Serves her right,
lah
! Our oceans are getting so overfished, and we must respect all of God’s creatures,”
Carol declared.
“Yes, I agree. You know, when you’re just a
tourist
, you need to learn to respect the environment you’re in,” Francesca said, glaring
at Rachel for a split second before shifting her gaze onto Astrid. “Now Astrid, when
can I get you to join one of my committees?”
“What sort of committees?” Astrid asked more out of politeness than any real curiosity.
“Take your pick—I’m on the boards of the Singapore History Museum, the Museum of Contemporary
Arts, the Heritage Society, the Pulau Club, the Cultural Arts Advisory Board at SBC,
the steering committee of Singapore Fashion Week, the Singapore Zoo, the Lee Kong
Chian Natural History Museum’s Selection committee, the Wine Connoisseurs Society,
Save the Shahtoosh, the junior committee of Christian Helpers, and, of course, the
Shaw Foundation.”
“Well, my three-year-old boy keeps me pretty busy—” Astrid began.
“Once he’s in kindergarten and you have nothing to do, you really should consider
joining one of my charities. I could fast-track you onto a committee. I think you’d
be a natural.”
“So Rachel, I hear you teach at NYU with Nick?” Lorena cut in.
This Francesca is getting on my nerves. We’re here to interrogate RACHEL, not Astrid
.
“Yes, I do,” Rachel replied.
“Which department?” Nadine asked, fully knowing the answer, since Eleanor had read
the entire dossier on Rachel Chu to all the ladies while they were getting hour-long
reflexology massages in Shenzhen.