The Colour of Tea (9 page)

My arms drop back down to my sides, warmed now, as Pete shuffles toward me, pushing through the throng. He has black soot on his wide hands and across his shirt. He keeps looking back up to the sky, distracted, checking to see if a rocket is going off.

“There you are,” he murmurs. “I was wondering where you’d got to.”

Un Bon Début—A Good Start

Coconut with Passion Fruit–Spiked Buttercream Filling

I
have already programmed in the number, all I need to do is press one button.

“Hello … I’m calling about the shop?”

The man who answers the phone is not speaking English. He is yelling, but not at me, perhaps at the small child who is letting out the great dramatic sobs that I can hear from my end of the phone. It sounds like Portuguese. Now he turns his attention back to me. “Eh?”

“I was wondering about the shop. Is this a bad time?”

Now there is a woman speaking in the background. The man clucks his tongue and says something conspiratorial to me, which I wish I could understand. Then neither of us says anything and we both listen to the woman. She is loud but firm. The child whimpers. The woman says something soft, soothing. There is quiet. A mother’s touch. The man and I remain quiet for a few more moments.

“English-a?” says the man, in what sounds like a tone of distrust.

“Yes. I’m English. I speak English,” I stammer.

“Okay,” he says. “You come tomorrow to the shop? I bring my friend. He speaks the English.”

“Oh, right. Sure. I can do that.”

“Two o’clock, no problem, okay?”

“Okay, yes. No problem. Um, my name’s Grace.”

“Okay, Grace.” He hangs up.

*   *   *

Pete drops his bag and coat onto a chair by the dining table and shakes his head, his mouth a thin line. He flips on a light, which makes me realize I am sitting in the dark. I sip from a glass of wine.

“Bad day?”

“Bloody nightmare.” He sighs.

He’s come home irritated every night this week, normally making a beeline for the computer to check his sports betting and zone out. He wriggles out of his leather work shoes; they fall with heavy percussion against the floorboards. He pulls at his tie so that the knot hangs around the third button of his shirt—defeated. Then he comes over, sits next to me, and looks out the window. He glances at my hand, which is propping me up, as if he might pick it up and hold it or kiss it. Instead he turns his head to stare back out at the night sky.

“Everything okay at work?”

“It’s not even worth going into. It’s just a mess.” He shrugs.

I imagine what he does not tell me. The mass of problems and glitches that bloom during the opening of a new casino. The deadlines that have been missed, the poor performers who continue to drag the team down, the unrealistic expectations of the investors and the board. Pete has been through all this before, but his shoulders still droop with disappointment, as though he had hoped for something different. He pulls his hand over his face, rubbing, as if he is trying to wipe off the day.

“Wine?” I offer.

“Yeah, thanks. That would be great.”

I refill my glass and pour one for him. It’s only my second glass, but I can already feel the effects, my legs soft and leaden and my head lighter. Dutch courage.

He sits up on the sill, leaning against the opposite corner. We watch people walking back and forth on the pedestrian crossing below. The view is always so dynamic, people moving and going places. This place does not sleep for a moment. Some days it makes me feel like I am the only person in the world inside an apartment, doing nothing. It makes me feel like a sad princess in her tower.

Tonight there are a lot of children walking about with their parents and nannies and grandparents. I’ve become used to seeing little ones up at midnight or even later. I imagine Mama’s shocked voice whispering in my ear as a child walks home from a restaurant with his parents, being tugged along by the arm. “My God!” she would have said. “It’s well past his bedtime!” Forgetting that I had been awake at that time often—baking cakes, making volcanoes out of flour, building with LEGOs, drawing pictures of whales.

“I think it’s a lantern festival or something. The end of Chinese New Year,” Pete explains, as though he can read my thoughts.

“So we’re well and truly in the Year of the Rat then …” I say.

He nods before leaning his head against the glass.

I think back to last week’s fireworks and the bangs that splintered through my thoughts like lightning. “Is that why there are so many kids out?”

“Yeah, I reckon.” He traces his finger around the rim of his wineglass.

He must be right, as a few of the children are bouncing inflatable toys containing battery-powered lights. Below us a brother
and sister are skipping. He has a blue toy in the shape of a hammer, which he grasps by the handle, and she holds an enormous Hello Kitty head tied to a thin plastic stick. She swings it up and over her shoulder, like it’s a fishing line she’s casting. After a few swings, she connects with her brother’s head and he spins around to face her. Soon enough the blue hammer thuds against her forehead. She lets out a round-mouthed wail. We can’t hear it from where we are, but her face is red and aghast.

“Ha!” Pete snorts. “Did you see that?”

“I think Junior is going to get into trouble.”

He raises his eyebrows in agreement. I can see the effect of the wine, moving down over his face as he slumps back against the window. He starts to relax. There is something in the moment that is suspended, the two of us sitting up here looking down at the world below. As if it were a dreamland, a movie; as if we were above it all like puppeteers.

“Pete, I have an idea,” I say slowly.

“Mmm?” He is still looking out beyond the glass.

“I want to open a café.”

“Yeah?” he murmurs.

“I thought I could use, you know … the money.”

He turns to look at me.

I am being vague so I don’t have to say things out loud. It is money we put aside for in vitro fertilization. But you need healthy eggs for that, and we both know that hope has dissolved.

He studies my face, and I wonder what he sees.

“I want to sell sandwiches, coffee …
macarons
…”

“Right.
Macarons.
” His voice has tightened up, the words squeezed as if wrung out.

“Maybe it sounds crazy …”

“Sure does,” he answers too quickly.

“You won’t have to have anything to do with it, Pete.” I drop
my voice almost to a whisper in the hope of pacifying him. “It’ll be my thing. I’ll manage it, I’ll run it.”

He takes a gulp of his wine but is still not looking at me. I know he is listening, but he looks out the window and doesn’t meet my gaze. His chin is lifted so he has to look down his nose at the scene below.

“Pete.” I plead a little, reaching out for his hand. “I need …”

He turns his face toward me slightly. “It’s a big responsibility.” His voice is clipped. He looks down at the glass in his hands and starts to roll it back and forth between his palms.

“It’s a lot of money. I know. But it’ll be a business. It’ll be an investment. I’ll
make
money.” I can hear a little nervous quiver in my voice, so I pause and swallow. “We should use the money for something useful, right?”

He raises his eyebrows. “You sound like you’ve made up your mind.”

I know he wants to talk about the end of our dream. Of having our own child. But I cannot.

“Well …” My mind hovers above my argument, as if looking down upon it. I try to muster strength, conviction. “I know we could use the money for other things. But, this … this is what I want to use it for.”

We sit in silence for a few moments, looking at each other. I feel uncomfortable, like this is a kind of standoff, as we try to figure each other out. The distance between us suddenly seems vast.

“It’s not a good idea, Grace,” he says firmly. Unreasonably.

“Maybe,” I reply. “But I need something. Something that is mine.” There is that calmness in my mind again, thick and cool. “Maybe it’s not a good idea, or maybe it is a good idea. I know I have to try.”

He gives a strange kind of half laugh. “You’ve barely been able to get out of bed. Now you want to run a business?”

I stare at him in disbelief. I have moved all the way to China for his career. I have had faith in him and his abilities.

“Why are you even asking me?” he continues. “Like I said, it sounds like you’ve made up your mind already.”

I raise my chin. “Well, actually, I didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“I didn’t ask,” I say, and my eyes lock with his. My voice sounds so soft, but feels so strong rushing out of my throat, it is a surprise even to me.

Pete’s eyes widen. “Right then. You have it all sorted.” He stands, angry, throwing back the last of the wine in the glass. He looks down at me before turning to go into the kitchen. “I won’t get in your way then. I’ll leave you to it.”

I can hear him putting his glass into the sink, the base hitting the metal with a loud clang. I feel queasy from the confrontation. Pete always manages our money and has the last word on our decisions, a fact that has never bothered me. Until now. Now it needs to be different. Beneath the churning of my stomach, something deep within is firm and quiet with knowing, unconcerned whether the business fails or not; I have to try.

Pete walks through the lounge room without looking at me, goes into the study. I hear him sink into his chair and make out the beeps and whirs of the computer firing up. The jingle of the home page of a sports betting site. The chair wheels creak against the floorboards as he pulls himself closer to the screen. I take a few deep breaths, navigating back to that sweet, deep calmness. I turn to the darkness of the window, watching the steady stream of customers in and out of the stores and the silky, luminous lanterns swaying from the lampposts studding the middle of the road. Out there, in the night, is the land destined to be a park. I can just make out the shape of a single tree, like a lonely exclamation mark.

Dearest Mama,

They have planted one tree. I think it must be a trial, starting with one tree and seeing how it goes from there. Perhaps they are not optimistic. Perhaps they think the land is not going to nurture such a thing. Perhaps that is what they hope for. What I love is that they have planted it in the middle of the whole block. Not to one side where it could lean wearily against the fencing, fatigued by its solitude. Not in one of the corners. But smack bang in the middle, as if to say,
Well, there you go. Try surviving right there.
I do get the impression they would prefer it didn’t. I get the impression that they would much prefer it if the whole one-tree experiment was a bloody failure they could report to the government and happily get on with icing the block over with concrete and turning it into a car park.

But it’s been about a week now and it is still standing. This morning I just about waved hello. I did smile, I admit. A real out-loud kind of smile. I’m surprised my face didn’t split in two with the shock. In the daylight the shadows of the clouds crawl over the empty block and up and over the tree. The land is suddenly three-dimensional. I imagine the shadows having to pick up their skirts like old dames as they navigate over the inconvenient tree. I hear them cursing and complaining, as they lift up their rusty knees and heavy petticoats. I love the idea of the tree being such a nuisance to everyone. Those who planted her, the shadows that have to step over her. Sometimes I think I am in love with this tree more than with my husband. It makes me feel bold. And resolute.

Your loving daughter,
Grace

*   *   *

The pastry kitchen is colder than I had imagined but smells delicious, as sweet and crisp as the bite of an apple. The walls are covered in white tiles, and almost everything is made of stainless
steel. There are quite a few Chinese chefs in the kitchen, busy at work. They don’t look rushed at all, carefully executing their tasks. One chef is releasing praline balls from their molds and then dipping them in a bowl of melted chocolate. It looks like a silken soup, and my mouth waters. He drops each ball in with a large fork and slowly stirs it around. When it comes up again, it has the satin sheen of the warm chocolate. He rolls it, the fork providing a cradle against a marble bench top until it is cool. The fork leaves no crease or mark on the finished product, a perfect sphere. There is such slow art to it; I feel hypnotized.

“Grace!”

I turn to see Léon, wiping his hands against his apron. He gives me a wide, white smile.

“So good to see you. Welcome to our kitchen.” A few stray beads of sweat hang delicately on his upper lip, and he blows out a dramatic puff of air. “Pardon. I have been in the bakery; it is very hot in there. I’m a little … what do you say? Overcooked.” He laughs.

“No problem. Thanks for having me.” My gaze falls, briefly, to the floor, in order to avoid looking at his lips, rosy with the heat. I notice my shoes are dusty with sugar or flour or both.

“No, no, no. It is my pleasure. It is so nice to have someone interested. Maybe Macau is ready for the
macaron
after all.”

“Well, I love them. I hope the rest of Macau does too. I used to eat them in Paris.” With Mama.

“I’m sure your café will be a success. You know, the most important ingredient in this kind of business is passion.” He lifts his eyes to mine for a quick moment before his gaze shifts. The words
your café,
along with his brief stare, make me feel slightly electric. Then I remember all the forms and red tape I’m plowing through, fortunately with the help of the Portuguese-speaking previous owner of the shop. English is not an official language in Macau, and I don’t
have any connections here to get things done, so I feel like a spare part most of the time. I hardly expect success; I’m hoping just to get the place open. I need to show Pete I can at least do that much.

Léon begins to move around his kitchen. He is gentle but clear with the staff, leaving a sense of direction and purpose in his wake. He accepts two bowls from a chef: one full of what looks like flour and another with egg whites.