The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir (31 page)

I faced my own trials when I went over to Suzie’s house for a meal. Dinner at Suzie’s was almost the exact opposite to ours, especially when it was a special occasion. It was like a fine restaurant; you sat down and conversed. You didn’t shout, yelp, or flex any leg muscles, you conversed. In the beginning I kept looking into the corners of the room, half expecting a courteous yet quick-witted English butler to appear and gently lay a starched, monogrammed napkin on my thigh.

‘Lovely to see you again, Mr Do, sir.’

On one early visit they planned a ‘special dinner’, and I knew it was special because Suzie’s mum had pulled out her enormous box of silverware, polished it and laid it just so on the table. There must have been three or four forks, several knives of different sizes and a single spoon to every setting.

As we sat down I started sweating. I had not been to many formal dinners and I had no idea which piece of cutlery to use. Where was the chopstick option? I have since been told you start from the outside and work your way in but, on this occasion, I had not heard this titbit of wisdom.

A number of entrees came out and I was doing pretty well, I thought. I soon figured out I should eat slowly, watch to see what everyone else was using and follow suit. A main dish came out and I was watching Suzie’s grandmother, who picked up her spoon. No problem. I picked up the spoon and began happily scooping up the peas and little veggies on the plate. Made perfect sense. I looked up and I realised her grandma was just re-arranging her cutlery to make space for a carafe of red wine. She put the spoon back on the table, and picked up a fork.
She bloody tricked me!

We got to the end of the night and out came dessert—a special custard dish. A very, very runny special custard dish. Everyone picked up their spoon and I looked down. All I had left was a fork. I looked at Suzie’s grandmother who looked at my fork.
I know I have a fork, you know I have a fork, everyone knows Anh’s got a freakin’ fork
.

But no one said anything and I finished off my dessert, taking a little longer than everyone else. To this day Suzie’s dad likes to remind me of the event. He’ll sling me a steak at a barbie and say, ‘Hang on, Anh, let me get you a spoon for that.’

On another occasion I came over one afternoon and saw Suzie’s dad jackhammering old tiles off his pool so that workers could put in new pebblecrete. I had never used a jackhammer before, but I figured it couldn’t be that hard, so I said to him, ‘Robert, why don’t you take a break. I’ll do a bit for you.’

He showed me how it worked and then handed me the jackhammer.
Bam bam bam bam bam
 . . . away I went. Half an hour later I wondered,
Is this guy coming back from his break? I’ll just keep going I suppose.
Two hours later I was still going at it. Suzie called out: ‘Anh, take a break.’

I took a three-minute drink break then got stuck into it again. I figured I’d better just keep going until Robert came out and told me to stop.
Bam bam bam bam bam
 . . . another three hours later I’d finished the entire pool.

I walked in to dinner with my teeth rattling and my fingers trembling from the vibration the jackhammer had set into my bones. I picked up my knife… 
tap tap tap tap tap
on the plate.

Suzie told me later that Robert was inside the whole time watching me.

‘I can’t believe he’s still going,’ he’d said. ‘I just want to see how much resilience the kid’s got.’

‘Trust me, Dad, I know Anh. He can keep going till tomorrow morning if need be.’

After I’d finished the whole pool Robert said to his wife: ‘Fantastic! I liked this kid from the start.’

And indeed he had. Years ago when Suzie and I were just friends he said to her, ‘You’ll marry that boy one day.’ He saw in me a young kid who reminded him of himself. Robert had also been raised by a single mother and had grown up in a suburb not far from Yagoona.

Our wedding reception was to be held at Taronga Zoo and it was going to be expensive. Suzie’s father wouldn’t let our family pay, especially after all the trouble we had gone to with the engagement party.

‘In Australia, the bride’s family pays. That’s how we do things,’ he told me.

‘In Vietnam we split it and all pitch in together,’ I countered. He waved me away.

‘No, Anh, it’s different here, so I’ll take care of it.’

‘How about we go halves,’ I said, thinking I’d do the right thing and make one last offer to be sure I looked like a good bloke, and then I’d let it go.

‘All right,’ he said.

All right? Oh my god, the guy just said ‘All right’. Anh, you idiot!
I went into panic mode as large dollar figures popped into my mind, a swarm of zeros swirling around like poisonous killer bees.
Quick, say something to try and reverse the ‘All right’.

‘All right, Anh, I’ll tell you what, why don’t you take care of the alcohol and the entertainment?’

Phew!
I was happy with that. I really didn’t want him to take care of all of it, but I was glad that our going halves deal meant he had by far the biggest half.

Over the years Robert has become a friend and somewhat of a mentor to me, teaching me the strategies he used to become very successful financially. But in the early days I was trying extremely hard just to impress him. I knew he liked wines and he would probably want really fancy ones at the wedding, so I came up with a genius plan.

‘Robert, Frances, next week I am going to bring over six reds and six whites and I want you to do a blind tasting.’

I shopped all around Sydney comparing prices and found a dozen fantastic wines, which were all on special. They ranged from a thirty-dollar red down to a six-dollar white. I got Suzie’s parents to sit down in the living room, and then the two of us treated them to this brilliant tasting, complete with cheese and crackers in between glasses to ‘cleanse the palate’.

First I poured out the most expensive riesling, hoping the initial sip would be slightly jarring, and put him off.

‘Oh that’s delicious!’ he said.

Damn! He liked it. Let’s just hope he likes the others more.

When I poured the last white, the six-dollar chardonnay that was reduced from $28, Robert and Frances took a sip and both agreed in unison: ‘This one’s the best.’

Whoo-hoo!
I was over the moon. It really was a good wine, and when you multiply the saving of $22 per bottle over multiple cases, it tasted even better. Alas, they went on to pick a red that was $25 a bottle. But what the heck, one bargain out of two ain’t bad, and it certainly could’ve been much, much worse. More importantly, Robert and Frances liked this quirky young kid who was so very keen to impress their family. And so the stage was set for a wedding to remember, with just one little wonky-toothed issue which remained unsolved.

The wedding was held in my old school chapel at St Aloysius College in Kirribilli. It was a Catholic ceremony and about a hundred and fifty guests turned up to watch us take our vows. The service was led by my muscle-thighed Jesuit priest uncle, as well as my favourite priest from school, Father Dooley. It was a beautiful sunny day with a few clouds overhead and everything was going perfectly, just like a fairytale, until something unexpected tripped me up.

It had been a little while since I had attended a Vietnamese wedding, so I had forgotten about a traditional song dedicated to the happy couple’s parents. One of my distant cousins picked up a guitar and dedicated the song to the bride and groom’s mums and dads.
No sweat
, I thought.
This should be good
. And then the lyrics started.

Dear Lord, watch over my father and mother… 

I was thinking,
Sweet. Lovely song isn’t it?

For me the mountains you’ve climbed,

The struggles you’ve gladly endured …

Uh oh
, I thought to myself.

No matter what happens tomorrow

Your love I shall never forget

Your love I shall always return …

I felt a lump in my throat, but clenched my teeth and managed to swallow it back… just. Then I did something stupid, I looked down at my mum. She saw me trying to hold it back, and she started crying. That’s when I completely lost it. I was bawling. I looked down and saw my loving, beautiful mother who had sacrificed so much to get me to where I was. I saw my little sister and brother, two little kids who had endured it all. And I thought about my dad who wasn’t there. Who would’ve given the world to see his son not waste any time, and marry the woman he loves.

My dad had known about the wedding, we had talked about it a few months earlier.

‘Look, Anh, it’ll be weird if everyone sees me, so it’s probably best if I’m not there,’ he said, wanting to get in first. He knew I wasn’t going to invite him, and I loved him for making it easier for me.

I looked across at my beautiful bride, my soulmate, my best friend and lover who just radiated a warmth that told me everything was going to be okay. Suzie wiped away my tears and I thanked God for my blessed life.

I expected to get a severe ribbing from my football mates after the ceremony for my show of emotion, but instead the boofheads hugged me. Big Sid, normally a stoic Italian, came up to me still teary eyed and crushed me with a big hairy hug.

‘Ya dickhead,’ he said.
Sniff, sniff
.

Our friends told us later that as we had said ‘I do’ the sun broke through the clouds and a blaze of light shone through the massive stained-glass window at the front of the chapel. It was a magical omen. Suzie did a reading in Vietnamese and my family just loved it; she had made such an effort to embrace our culture.

The ceremony was emotional and moving but the reception was one enormous party. Suzie always loves to do things a bit differently so ours was never going to be a conventional wedding. We had our traditional church ceremony, but the theme for the reception was Caribbean Carnivale. It was awesome. There were multi-coloured flowers, butterflies and bridesmaid dresses—bright colours everywhere.

I had approached a friend from the stand-up circuit who ran a theatre props hire business.