Crazy Rich Asians (62 page)

“
Alamak
, Elle, Lorena, come help me rescue some things from Carol’s bedroom before Sister
Gracie gets in there. If she sees that ivory sculpture of Quan Yin, the goddess of
mercy, she’s going to start convulsing! That Quan Yin has been around since the twelfth
century, but it will have no hope surviving this one,” Daisy said furtively. The three
of them backed slowly away from the living room and made a beeline for Carol’s bedroom.

The ladies rushed about wrapping up any decorative objects that could possibly be
at risk in towels and pillowcases and shoving them into their handbags and random
shopping bags.

“Those jade parrots! Grab those jade parrots!” Daisy instructed.

“Is the water buffalo considered satanic?” Lorena wondered, holding up a delicate
horn carving.

“Aiyah, don’t stand there using eye power! Take everything! Put it all in your handbag!
We can return everything to Carol once she comes to her senses,” Daisy barked.

“I wish I’d used my Birkin and not my Kelly today,” Lorena lamented as she tried to
fit the water buffalo into her stiff leather handbag.

“Okay, my driver is parked just outside the kitchen door. Give me the first shopping
bags and I will run them over to my car,” Eleanor said. As she grabbed the first two
shopping bags from Daisy, a maid entered Carol’s bedroom.

Eleanor knew she had to get past the maid with her suspiciously bulging shopping bags.
“Girlie, fetch me a glass of iced tea with lemon,” she said in her most imperious
tone.

“
Alamak
, Elle, it’s me—Nadine!” Eleanor almost dropped her shopping bags in shock. Nadine
was utterly unrecognizable. She was dressed in yoga sweats, and gone was the thick
mask of makeup, the over-teased hair, and the ostentatious jewelry.

“Oh my God, Nadine, what happened to you? I thought you were one of the maids!” Eleanor
exclaimed.

“Nadine, I love your new look! Aiyah, now I can see how Francesca used to look just
like you, before her cheek implants,” Daisy gushed.

Nadine smiled bleakly, plopping down on Carol’s
Huanghuali
bed. “My father-in-law woke up from his coma, as you know. We were all so happy,
and when they discharged him from the hospital, we drove him home and had a surprise
party waiting for him. All the Shaws were there. But we forgot the old man had never
been to the new house—we bought Leedon Road after he had gone into a coma. Old man
threw a fit when he realized this was our new house. He said, ‘Wah, who do you think
you are, living in such a big mansion with so many cars and servants?’ Then when he
got inside and saw Francesca all dressed up, he started to choke. He started screaming
that she looked like a prostitute from Geylang.
^*
Aiyah, she was wearing haute couture for her grandpa! Is it her fault that hemlines
are so short this season? The very next morning, he made his lawyers take back control
of Shaw Foods. He kicked my poor Ronnie off the board, and he froze all the bank accounts,
everything. Now he has ordered us to return every penny we’ve spent in the last six
years, or he’s threatening to disinherit all of us and give his whole fortune to the
Shaw Foundation!”

“My goodness, Nadine. How are you managing?” Lorena asked, gravely concerned. Nadine
was one of L’Orient Jewelry’s biggest clients, and her sudden reversal of fortune
would surely affect the quarterly numbers.

“Well, you see my new look. For now, we are all trying to act
kwai kwai
. I mean, how many more years can that old man live? He’ll have another stroke in
no time. I’ll be fine—I spent years living in that cramped shop house with him, remember?
We put Leedon Road on the market, but the problem is Francesca. She doesn’t want to
move back to a small house again. It’s so
malu
for her. She’s really suffering. Francesca was always Grandpa’s favorite, and now
he’s taken away her monthly allowance. How is she supposed to live on her lawyer’s
salary? Wandi Meggaharto and Parker Yeo have dropped her, and she’s had to resign
from every charitable board. She just can’t afford the clothes for it anymore. She
blames Ronnie and me. She comes into our bedroom every night and screams and screams
at us. She thinks we should have pulled the plug on the old man when we had the chance.
Can you imagine? I never realized my own daughter could ever say such a thing!”

“I’m sorry to say this, Nadine, but this is what happens when you try to give your
children everything,” Daisy sagely offered. “Look at what’s happened with Bernard.
From the time he was a small boy I already knew he was a disaster waiting to happen.
The
dato’
spoiled him rotten, and never ever said no to him. And he thought he was being so
clever, giving the boy that huge trust fund when he turned eighteen. Now look what’s
happened. They’re getting Kitty Pong as a daughter-in-law. No amount of antique-smashing
is going to change that.”

Lorena giggled. “Poor Carol—she’s always been such a good Christian, but now she has
to deal with having a satanic Kitty in her life!” The ladies all laughed.

“Well, at least we succeeded in stopping that Rachel Chu from getting at Nicky,” Nadine
commented.

Eleanor shook her head sadly. “What’s the use? My Nicky has stopped talking to me.
I don’t have a clue where he is—he’s even broken off contact with his grandmother.
I tried calling Astrid to find him, but she’s missing too.
Sum toong, ah
. You love your children so much, you do everything to try to protect them, and they
don’t even appreciate it.”

“Well, even if he doesn’t want to see you right now, at least you succeeded in saving
him from that girl,” Lorena said comfortingly.

“Yes, but Nicky doesn’t realize how much damage he’s done to his relationship with
his grandmother. I trained him to never, ever
offend her, but he hurt her terribly in Cameron Highlands. You should have seen the
old lady—she didn’t speak once all the way back to Singapore. And take it from me,
that woman never forgives. Now all the sacrifices I have made will have been for nothing,”
Eleanor said sadly, her voice cracking a little.

“What do you mean?” Nadine asked. “What sort of sacrifices did you make for Nicky?”

Eleanor sighed. “Aiyah, Nadine, my whole life has been spent protecting him within
my husband’s family, and positioning him to be the favorite grandson. I know my mother-in-law
never truly approved of me, so I even got out of the way. I moved out of Tyersall
Park so there wouldn’t be two competing Mrs. Youngs. I always let her come first in
Nicky’s life, and because of this he’s been closer to her. But I accepted that. It
was for his own good. He deserves to be the heir to her fortune, the heir to Tyersall
Park, but he no longer seems to care. He would rather be a bloody history professor.
Hiyah, I always knew sending him to England would be a mistake. Why do we Chinese
never learn? Every time we get mixed up with the West, everything falls apart.”

Just then, Sister Gracie came walking down the lawn toward the bedroom pavilion with
Carol and her husband trailing behind. She called out loudly, “Now, what demons lie
in wait here? Exodus 20:3–6 says, ‘You shall have no other gods before me. You shall
not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven
above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You
shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.’ ”

Daisy glanced at the other ladies and said urgently, “Everyone grab a shopping bag
and run for the doors. Don’t look at them, just keep moving!”

Villa d’Ora

Peik Lin sequestered Rachel and her mother in the library, shutting the boiserie doors
behind her firmly. She then padded out to the terrace bar overlooking the pool and
began mixing margaritas for herself and Nick. “I think we both deserve about a dozen
of these, don’t we?” she said, handing him a tall frosty glass.

Surrounded by bookshelves filled with gold-tooled leather volumes, Rachel perched
on the cushioned bay-window seat and stared out at the rose garden angrily. All she
wanted to do was get on that plane to China, but once again Nick had screwed things
up. Kerry grabbed one of the dark green leather chairs by the reading desk and turned
it around so she could sit facing her daughter. Even though Rachel wouldn’t look at
her, she took a deep breath and began the story she had flown halfway around the world
to tell.

“Daughter, I have never told this story to anyone, and it is something I always intended
to spare you from. I hope you will not judge me, and that you will listen with an
open mind, an open heart.

“When I was seventeen, I fell in love with a man who was six years older. Yes, it
was Zhou Fang Min. His family was from Xiamen, in Fujian Province. He was one of those
‘Red Princelings’ and he came from a rich family—at least, for that time period, they
were considered rich. His father was the general manager of a state-owned construction
company. He was well placed in the Communist Party,
and one of his older brothers was a high-level party chief in Guangdong Province.
So the Zhous received the concession to build the new school in our village, and Fang
Min was sent to oversee the construction. It was his summer job. Back then, I was
in my final year of secondary school and working nights as a waitress in the only
bar in our village, so that is how I met him. Now, up till this time I had spent my
entire life in this small village outside of Zhuhai. I had never even left our province,
so you can only imagine what it was like when this twenty-three-year-old man with
slick black hair came into the bar, dressed in Western-style clothes—I remember his
shirts were all Sergio Tacchini or Fred Perry, and he wore a gold Rolex. What’s more,
Fang Min had an expensive motorbike and chain-smoked Kent cigarettes smuggled into
the country by one of his cousins, and he would brag to me about his family’s big
house and big Japanese car, and tell me tales of his holidays in Shanghai, Beijing,
and Xi’an. I had never met a more handsome or sophisticated man, and I fell head over
heels in love. Of course, back then, I had very long hair and fair skin, so Fang Min
took an interest in me.

“Now, when my parents heard that this rich man was coming to the bar every night,
taking an interest in me, they tried to put a stop to it. My parents were not like
other parents—they did not care that he came from a rich family; they wanted me to
concentrate on my studies so I could qualify for university. It was so hard to get
into university in those days, especially if you were a girl, and that was my parents’
sole dream—to have a child that got into university. But after so many years of being
the perfect daughter and doing nothing but studying, I rebelled. Fang Min started
taking me on his motorcycle in secret to Guangzhou, the biggest city in the province,
and there I discovered a whole other world. I had no idea there was an entire class
of people like Fang Min—the children of other high-ranking Communist Party members,
who got to dine in special restaurants and shop in special stores. Fang Min treated
me to expensive meals and expensive clothes. I became intoxicated by this world, and
my parents noticed that, bit by bit, I was changing. When they found out he had taken
me to Guangzhou, they forbid me to see him, which of course made me want to be with
him even more. It was like Romeo and Juliet. I would sneak out of our flat late at
night to meet him, get caught and punished, but a few days later I would do it again.

“Then, a few months later, when the construction project was
finished and Fang Min was heading back to Xiamen, we made plans for me to run away
with him. That’s why I never finished my studies. I ran away to Xiamen, and we quickly
got married. My parents were devastated, but I thought all my dreams had come true.
Here I was living in a big house with his rich and important parents, getting to ride
in a big Nissan sedan that had white curtains on the back windows. See, Rachel, you
are not the only one who has experience dating a rich boy. But my dream quickly turned
sour. I soon found out how awful his family was. His mother was one of these extremely
traditional women, and she was a northerner, from Henan. So she was very snobbish,
and she never let me forget that I was just a village girl who got very, very lucky
because of my looks. At the same time, I was expected to perform a million and one
daughter-in-law duties, like preparing tea for her every morning, reading the newspapers
to her, and rubbing her shoulders and feet after dinner every night. I had gone from
being a student to being a servant. Then the pressure started for me to get pregnant,
but I was having trouble conceiving. So it made my mother-in-law very upset—she wanted
a grandchild desperately. What use was a daughter-in-law if you didn’t have a grandchild?
Fang Min’s parents became very displeased that I wasn’t getting pregnant, and we started
having big fights.