Behind the Moon (12 page)

Now look what had happened. She could have spent a romantic evening with Stan having dinner somewhere chic and expensive. Stan would have known where. He liked to read the
Good Food Guide
and
Gourmet Traveller
in his spare time, and she liked the fact that every restaurant he chose was right at the other end of the city from where she grew up—a constant affirmation to her of her own success. She’d shrugged off those Vietnamese boat beople roots and made the cultural and class migration eastwards into hip, cosmopolitan Sydney life. But after all that, to have to drag her fiancé back to this: the boredom, the humiliation, the sheer and utter daggyness of everything she’d come from and everything she was trying to flee, including her childhood friends. Before, when she realised she’d forgotten Gibbo’s twenty-first birthday, she’d felt the strong tug of guilt, especially when she thought of Gibbo in his friendlessness. But in the midst of this new humiliation, there was no room for anything but the purity of white hot fury. She felt justified in her choices.

Still, childhood training held and she said placatingly, ‘Gibbo and I will always be friends, Mr Gibson. But you must see that everybody is really busy these days, what with finishing uni and finding our feet in the workforce and everything. We all go through different phases of life and right now, many of us are in the process of establishing relationships. Settling down.’

She was quite pleased with how she’d prepared the groundwork for her big announcement. She turned to Stanley and saw that he was gone. Then Bob Gibson cut the ground from under her.

‘Don’t you talk to me in plurals, Tina Ho. I’m not interested in “many of us”. I’m only interested in you and why you have no time for Nigel now that you’re working. English teacher, huh! Grown too fine for us now you’re living in Bondi? You’ve forgotten your roots.’

‘Vietnam?’ she said coolly. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Bob, calm down, please,’ Linh said, placing a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t be so angry with Tien. You shouldn’t speak to my daughter like that.’

‘I’ll speak to her any damn way I please. She could’ve been
my
daughter if things had been different. You’d have done better with me than that bloody Yank who fucked you over and then fucked off at the end of the war.’

He stopped short, aware that something had not come out right. He hadn’t said what he’d meant to. It was the wine. He’d been diverted, sidetracked by other people’s interruptions. He looked at his wife and felt disorientated.

‘What are you telling us, Bob?’ Gillian said. She was very calm as she looked at him. She didn’t feel betrayed. Rather, an intoxicating sense of certainty, of vindication, welled up inside her, the knowledge that she had been right after all. There was a reason why she could not love him as she should. ‘Did you have an affair with Linh? Is that what you’re implying?’

Tien pushed back from the table and said slowly to Bob, ‘How do you know what happened to my father? Did you know him? Why didn’t you tell me? Mum, did you know Mr Gibson when you were in Vietnam?’

‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ Linh said. Her face was flushed with deep embarrassment. ‘Gillian, he doesn’t mean what he’s saying. Can’t you see he’s drunk?’

Gillian ignored her. ‘You didn’t answer my question, Bob. Did you have an affair with Linh?’

‘No, dammit. Of course not. That’s not what I meant.’ He was furious at the filthy-mindedness of other people.

‘I see. Excuse me.’ Gillian got up from the table and went out into the hall to get to the bathroom.

‘She’s a bloody drama queen,’ Bob accused. He looked at Annabelle. ‘You both are. We wouldn’t be here tonight if it weren’t for your ridiculous antics. But oh, no! We’ve got to get together for this fucking Dead Diana Dinner.’

The bathroom door was closed. Gillian desperately needed a pee and a few moments to collect herself. How odd that phrase was, she thought irrelevantly. To collect herself, as though she had been dropped and scattered, like coins, and needed to be gathered up and put into a purse. Her breathing was shallow and she felt rather dizzy. She wondered whether she was having a stroke or a heart attack, then dismissed the thought. She just needed to sit down quietly.

She gripped the ceramic door knob and twisted. Locked. It was very annoying. She put her ear to the door. Silence. She got onto her hands and knees and peered through the crack between the base of the door and the cream pile of the hallway carpet. Darkness. Getting to her feet, she tapped on the door.

‘Hello? Hello? Who’s in there?’ she called out. She could hear someone shuffling, shifting weight but trying not to make a sound. Maybe it was a burglar.

Quickly, she envisaged the toilet in her mind: pale green square tiles around the base of the commode, and a matching toilet seat cover in pale green carpet pile. Annabelle had told her long ago that she only put the cover on when company was coming, otherwise she’d have to wash it every week. On the whole, she said, her men weren’t too messy because she had a No Standing policy in all her bathrooms and she’d trained her men well. To the right of the toilet bowl, a roll of toilet paper spawning blue shells and green starfish on its three-ply surface. To the left, a tiny white sink holding a squat clay jar with a white pump that squirted out antibacterial liquid soap. A paper towel dispenser above a bamboo wastebasket lined with a plastic bag. A stumpy little cactus bristling on top of the commode, next to a spare roll of toilet paper disguised as a fairy in a pink ballgown. And three and a half feet above the commode, a small fly-screened window that only the contorted body of a wriggling child could fit through. The burglar was trapped.

Later on, Gillian couldn’t understand why she had not called out for help. She supposed that she was no longer capable of thinking. All she knew right then was that there was a burglar hiding in the Cheongs’ mint green toilet. She was the only one aware of this fact, therefore it was up to her to handle this. Whatever else had happened that night, no matter how much Bob had embarrassed and humiliated her, she would not let the Cheongs be robbed blind without trying to do something. But what?

She glanced up the dimly lit hall and on the hall table, beside the telephone, she spotted three porcelain statues. The Three Immortals—Fuk, Luk and Sau—she thought, household gods found in many Chinese homes to bring health, wealth, happiness and longevity. In her stockinged feet, she stealthily tiptoed over to the table and contemplated the gods. She picked up the one on the left and tested its weight: twelve-inch high Sau, god of health and longevity, with his big bald head, rounded temples budding like apples, and long flowing white beard. He was dressed in an elaborately embroidered red and green Chinese robe trimmed in black, and he held in his left hand a walking stick with the head of a dragon. He would do just fine.

She carried Sau back down the hall and waited outside the toilet door. Her bladder was full and pushed uncomfortably against her uterus like a menstrual cramp. She pressed her thighs together, tried to refocus the feeling of urgency on the statue heavy in her hands, and thought inconsequentially of an ad she’d recently seen about incontinence pads. It couldn’t be much longer, she assured herself, for how could he steal anything unless he came out of the toilet?

Then she heard it, the snick of the door unlocking. The ceramic knob turned and the door began to yawn open.

‘Bob, I think you’re a wee bit drunk.’ Tek forced himself to smile jovially to show that he wasn’t embarrassed for the poor
ang mor
’s tremendous loss of face.

‘I’m not drunk,’ Bob snapped. The effrontery of this Asian man to think that he needed placating; to take charge in this way—even if it
was
his house. To act as though he, Bob Gibson, was a problem—or had a problem—when, if only Tek Cheong could be brought to realise it, he was the one with the problem. ‘I’m just telling people the way it is. Making you all face reality for once in your lives.’

‘Maybe we don’t want to face your reality, Bob.’ Tek was starting to get annoyed. He cast an exasperated glance at Annabelle. Do something, he signalled. She was the one who’d insisted on having the Gibsons over for dinner. He knew how it would be, and now look at the crazy old man.

Annabelle said kindly, ‘Bob, if you have problems with Gillian or Nigel, you know you can always come and talk to us?’

‘Yes, we’re here for your family,’ Tek agreed a little too heartily. ‘Fair dinkum, mate.’

Bob couldn’t believe the insult. They sat there regarding him with such condescending patience as if their lives were perfect. The perfect Singaporean family who had made the perfect transition from pidgin-speaking migrants to perfectly acculturated Australianness. Perfectly multicultural, holding on to the best of the old Chinese ways—
sek farn
my arse!—and good-humouredly adopting the occasional ockerism, but always with that self-deprecating smile of awareness to show that they were quoting Australianness ironically; that they were cultured and sophisticated enough to play these multicultural games and win. Oh yes. My word, they actually believed they were winners and that he, Robert Gordon Gibson, had a problem. And now they’d made him feel belligerent and out of place, and there was nothing a man like him could do except push back and show them that he was as good as them. Or, at least, that their perfect little Asian family was just as fucked up as his own.

‘I have a problem. Did I hear you right? Did you say I have a problem?’ Slow and menacing now, drawing out each word, savouring the syllables, building up the drumroll to the frenzied crash and fury. ‘I’m not the one with a problem, you fucking stupid . . . chinks. I’m not the one with a fucking faggot disgrace of a son who tries to feel up his best mate. You’re the ones with the problem and here’s some free advice for you. You’d best haul your poofter son in to the nearest hospital and get him checked out for HIV quick smart.’

He’d done it. He’d lobbed the grenade he’d been cradling in his hands for years, and the explosion should have been like an orgasm in its violent, no-holds-barred intensity. Instead, his throat constricted, his heart felt squeezed dry and all he wanted to do was cry. He raised his head in bewilderment. Was that the sound of his own weeping? He glanced confusedly around him and his gaze rested on Justin. Bob saw that tears were running down the young man’s face, and right then he wanted nothing more than to rip out his own tongue until there was nothing but a bleeding mess in his foul mouth.

‘God, what have I done? Justo,’ he pleaded, but the words ‘I’m sorry’ stuck in his throat. He sat down heavily on his chair, breathing hard. He shook his head because there was nothing he could say that could possibly atone for what he had done.

‘Justin, is it true?’ Tek asked. ‘Are you a—a
homo
?’

He didn’t need the jerk of his son’s head to confirm what the tears so obviously told him. He pushed back his chair and stumbled out of the room to do what he always did in times of stress. He retreated to his karaoke den in the rumpus room.

Bob gripped the table and leaned towards Justin. ‘Justo, mate,’ he begged, but Justin refused to look at him.

‘Bob, I think you should go,’ Annabelle said. She was white-faced with shock. She couldn’t look at her son, couldn’t bear the images that invaded her mind.

Bob looked at Annabelle, and all the remorse in the world was no use. ‘Yeah, all right. Yeah. I’ll just get Gillian—’

She came in at that moment, looking dazed and afraid. ‘I’ve called 000,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I don’t think I’ve killed him but he might be brain damaged. Tien, I’m so sorry.’

‘Who?’ Annabelle demanded, dabbing at her wet eyes.

‘What?’ Tien said.

‘Stanley whatsisname. Your boyfriend. I’m afraid I hit him with the statue of Sau.’

‘You
what
?’

‘I thought he was a burglar hiding in the toilet. He’s lying in the hallway now. I think he’s still bleeding although I tried to stop it.’

‘Fuck! Shit, shit, shit!’ Tien pushed away from the table and ran into the hall, Annabelle hurrying after her.

‘We meant it to be a good dinner for all of you,’ Gillian said. ‘We just wanted to help you become friends again.’

She turned and went outside to await the ambulance.

Justin stood up, walked over to the window and looked out. ‘Did you tell him, Gibbo, you bastard?’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ Gibbo said helplessly. ‘It just sort of came out about that night. I’m sorry.’

‘It just sort of came out,’ Justin repeated. He couldn’t stop the tears. He swiped the back of his hand under his nose and swung back round to the table, thumping it violently. A gold-edged plate slipped off and bounced on the thick pile of the carpet. Congealed brown gravy glistened like dog turd. ‘I thought I loved you, you . . . fucking Judas. I’ll never forgive you.’

He was still sobbing as he stormed out of the house.

Gibbo buried his face in his arms. He was twenty-one years old tonight. He hated his father, he hated his mother, and most of all he hated himself.

‘Don’t take it so hard.’ Linh had moved from her place across the table to sit beside him. She put a hand on his shoulder and began to massage it gently.

‘I fucked up,’ he mumbled from under the mound of his arms.

‘Yes, I suppose you did. So did everyone else, though.’

‘He’ll never forgive me.’

‘Sure he will. Just give him time. Let’s give everyone time to get over this.’

He raised his head and looked at her, his face red and mottled, smeared with tears. ‘They despise me, Justin and Tien. They always have. I’ve been kidding myself we were friends all this time. They’ve never liked me. They couldn’t possibly. I don’t even like myself.’

She shook her head, moved by pity, and hugged him quickly. She gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze, then her hand dropped away. ‘They don’t like themselves either, and they take it out on you. Especially Tien. But the three of you are still friends, and that will never change.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, maybe you need each other too much.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘We’ll see.’