“Uncle Eddie, look out! There’s food right behind you!” his nephew Jake shouted.
Eddie glanced around for a second and continued on his tirade. “Why are you always like this, Mummy? Why do you always behave so provincial? You are filthy rich! Why can’t you be a little less cheap for once and have more a sense of your own self-worth?” His three children looked up momentarily from their math practice test books. They were used to his rages at home but had rarely seen him so upset in front of Gong Gong and Ah Ma. Fiona pulled at his sleeve, whispering, “Lower your voice! Please don’t talk about money in front of the children.”
His mother shook her head calmly. “Eddie, this has nothing to do with self-worth. I just feel this sort of extravagance is completely unnecessary. And I am not Singaporean royalty. Singapore has no royalty. What a ridiculous thing to say.”
“This is so typical of you, Eddie. You just want all of Singapore to know that you flew in on Ming Kah-Ching’s plane,” Cecilia interjected, reaching for one of the plump roast-pork buns. “If it was your own plane, that would be one thing, but to have the audacity to borrow a plane for three trips in two days is just unheard of. I personally would rather pay for my own tickets.”
“Kitty flies private all the time,” Alistair said, though no one at the table paid him any attention.
“Well, we should get our own jet. I’ve been saying it for years. Dad, you spend practically half the month in the Beijing clinic, and since I plan to expand my presence into China in a big way in the coming year—” Eddie began.
“Eddie, I have to agree with your mother and sister on this one. I just would not want to be indebted to the Ming family in this way,” Malcolm finally said. As much as he enjoyed flying private, he could not stomach the thought of borrowing the Ming jet.
“Why do I keep trying to do this ungrateful family so many favors?” Eddie huffed in disgust. “Okay, you all do what you want. Squeeze into economy on China Airlines for all I care. My family and I are taking Leo’s plane. And it’s a Bombardier Global Express. It’s huge, state-of-the-art. There’s even a Matisse in the cabin. It’s going to be amazing.”
Fiona gave him a disapproving look, but he glared at her so forcefully that she retreated from any further objection. Eddie shoveled down a few rolls of shrimp cheong fun, got up, and announced imperiously, “I’m off. I have important clients to attend to!” And with that, Eddie stormed out, leaving a rather relieved family in his wake.
Tony, mouth full of food, whispered to Cecilia, “Let’s see their entire family plunge into the South China Sea on Leo Ming’s fancy-ass plane.”
As much as she tried to, Cecilia couldn’t stifle her laugh.
7
Eleanor
SINGAPORE
After a few days of strategically placed phone calls, Eleanor finally nailed down the source of the disturbing rumor involving her son. Daisy confessed hearing it from her daughter-in-law’s best friend Rebecca Tang, who in turn revealed that she’d heard it from her brother Moses Tang, who had been at Cambridge with Leonard Shang. And Moses had this to report to Eleanor:
“I was in London for a conference. At the last minute, Leonard invites me down to dinner at his country estate in Surrey. Have you been there, Mrs. Young? Aiyoh, what a palace! I didn’t realize it was designed by Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur, the architect who built Waddesdon Manor for the English Rothschilds. Anyway, we were dining with all these ang mor[14] VIPS and MPs[15] visiting from Singapore and as usual Cassandra Shang is holding court. And then out of nowhere Cassandra says loudly across the table to your sister-in-law Victoria Young, ‘You’ll never guess what I heard … Nicky has been dating a Taiwanese girl in New York, and now he’s bringing her to Singapore for the Khoo wedding!’ And Victoria says, ‘Are you sure? Taiwanese? Good grief, did he fall for some gold digger?’ And then Cassandra says something like, ‘Well, it might not be as bad as you think. I have it on good authority that she’s one of the Chu girls. You know, of the Taipei Plastics Chus. Not exactly old money, but at least they are one of the most solid families in Taiwan.”
Had it been anyone else, Eleanor would have dismissed all this as nothing but idle talk among her husband’s bored relatives. But this came from Cassandra, who was usually dead accurate. She hadn’t earned the nickname “Radio One Asia” for nothing. Eleanor wondered how Cassandra obtained this latest scoop. Nicky’s big-mouthed second cousin was the last person he would ever confide in. Cassandra must have gotten the intel from one of her spies in New York. She had spies everywhere, all hoping to sah kah[16] her by passing along some hot tip.
It did not come as a surprise to Eleanor that her son might have a new girlfriend. What surprised her (or, more accurately, annoyed her) was the fact that it had taken her until now to find out. Anyone could see that he was prime target number one, and over the years there had been plenty of girls Nicky thought he had kept hidden from his mother. All of them had been inconsequential in Eleanor’s eyes, since she knew her son wasn’t ready to marry yet. But this time was different.
Eleanor had a long-held theory about men. She truly believed that for most men, all that talk of “being in love” or “finding the right one” was absolute nonsense. Marriage was purely a matter of timing, and whenever a man was finally done sowing his wild oats and ready to settle down, whichever girl happened to be there at the time would be the right one. She had seen the theory proven time and again; indeed she had caught Philip Young at precisely the right moment. All the men in that clan tended to marry in their early thirties, and Nicky was now ripe for the plucking. If someone in New York already knew so much about Nicky’s relationship, and if he was actually bringing this girl home to attend his best friend’s wedding, things must be getting serious. Serious enough that he purposely hadn’t mentioned her existence. Serious enough to derail Eleanor’s meticulously laid plans.
The setting sun refracted its rays through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the recently completed penthouse apartment atop Cairnhill Road, bathing the atrium-like living room in a deep orange glow. Eleanor gazed at the early-evening sky, taking in the colonnade of buildings clustering around Scotts Road and the expansive views all the way past the Singapore River to the Keppel Shipyard, the world’s busiest commercial port. Even after thirty-four years of marriage, she did not take for granted all that it meant for her to be sitting here with one of the most sought-after views on the island.
To Eleanor, every single person occupied a specific space in the elaborately constructed social universe in her mind. Like most of the women in her crowd, Eleanor could meet another Asian anywhere in the world — say, over dim sum at Royal China in London, or shopping in the lingerie department of David Jones in Sydney — and within thirty seconds of learning their name and where they lived, she would implement her social algorithm and calculate precisely where they stood in her constellation based on who their family was, who else they were related to, what their approximate net worth might be, how the fortune was derived, and what family scandals might have occurred within the past fifty years.
14
In this instance,
15
Abbreviation for “members of Parliament,” used in this instance to refer to Singapore MPs, most definitely from the People’s Action Party.
16
A Hokkien term that literally means “three legs” and comes from a rude hand gesture made by holding up three fingers as if supporting someone’s genitals. This is the Chinese version of a practice more commonly known to Westerners as “sucking up.”