Miss Seetoh in the World by Catherine Lim

hand. It ended in Brother Philip’s, and he returned it to her,
laughing.
    Her husband was standing at the doorway and
looking at her. ‘I see you’re changing your hairstyle.’ Just what are you
trying to prove. What is this all about. What is in your mind. You think I am
stupid, don’t you. She hated the questions loaded with the biting sarcasm, born
of the endless suspicions. She had no idea that the small casual reference to
the putative admirers at St Peter’s just a few days ago was rankling so badly.
‘Has it anything to do with that admiring Mr Chin and Brother Philip?’ She made
a mental note never again to refer to any acquaintance so long as it was a
male.
    Once she was late home from school by a full
hour. When his calls home went unanswered, he rang the school, and had to call
again because the school clerk said Mrs Tan could not be found.
    When he got her at last, he said sternly,
‘Where were you? I called home three times and the school twice.’
    She had had an urgent, unscheduled meeting
regarding some national seminar that her students were taking part in, called
at the last minute by Brother Philip who of course she could not mention. ‘Then
you should have called me at the office to let me know,’ he said.
    Professing an indifference to literature, he
had saved some of her favourite literary quotations to throw back at her. She
had tried to explain at length the reason for something she had done – something
so trivial she had difficulty remembering it – and he had turned to her and
said with a tight smile, ‘My, my, the lady doth protest too much!’ He had
turned her beloved Bard from tonic to toxic.
    Silence remained the best option. I live in
fear of my husband’s daily displeasure, she thought miserably. What sort of
life is this? I am truly dying. That night he made love to her as usual,
briefly and sullenly, and without a word. Then he turned his back towards her
and remained in that position through the night. The spare bedroom called, but
she was tied down on the marital bed by a hundred cords of fear tightening by
the day.
    The next morning, as usual, he dressed
carefully to go to the office, again not saying a word as they had breakfast
together. He took only a few spoonfuls of the hot rice porridge that was their
breakfast every morning.
    ‘Are you aware,’ he said slowly, stressing
every syllable, as he stood up, and she knew that another paralysing chill was
about to descend, ‘that for the last few months I have had exactly the same
thing placed before me every morning?’ Another truth about her unfitness as a
wife and homemaker confronted her. She thought, I’m glad I’m not a mother as
well. Zero out of three in her report card would be irredeemable failure.
    The rice porridge with the pickled leek, the
fried anchovies and peanuts, favourite traditional breakfast fare going back
through revered generations, was now a symbol of a wife’s shameful incompetence
and worse, indifference. The preparation of the breakfast was the daily duty of
Por Por who took on this one chore in the household with great pride, being
incapable of everything else through increasing dementia. The rice porridge,
like so many other absurdly small things in their marriage, had become yet one
more occasion for marital discord.
    She had almost wanted to scream at him:
well, dammit, let us know what you want, instead of keeping silent these long
weeks and then coming out with all the accusations! The angry words were
swallowed back as soon as they formed on her tongue. It was no use. He was sure
to respond by referring back to a time when he had mentioned this or that wish,
and she had nodded, only to forget it promptly.
    Trying to remember each act of disobedience
as he dragged it up from his unforgiving memory, only added to the confusion
and bumbling which gave the impression of culpability, so that in the end, she
always fell back, exhausted, upon a heap of futile words.
    The devoted Mr Chin