Wei Xiang turns to the digital alarm clock on the bedside table: 8.37am. Ai Ling’s pillow is slightly indented; he reaches over to smoothen it out. He throws off the blanket, gets out of bed, and shuffles into the toilet. The area around the washbasin is wet, and Ai Ling’s toothbrush lies beside the tap; he replaces it in the glass container that they are using to hold their toothbrushes. The room smells of minty toothpaste and lavender-scented talcum powder. Wei Xiang stares in the mirror at the sagging eye bags and days-old stubble of his reflection; his eyes are lustreless, and his skin pale and sallow, the texture of bread dough. How did he get so old, so quickly? Only thirty-eight, yet he feels at least ten to fifteen years older, already a middle-aged man. He sighs, then turns on the tap and splashes his face with cold water, rubbing the skin roughly. He grabs a face towel from the rack and realises Ai Ling has used it that morning. He breathes in her familiar smell, then dries his face.
After stepping out of the toilet, he wonders where Ai Ling could have gone so early. She has always been a morning person, waking at least an hour before him, even on weekends. Sometimes, while half-asleep in bed, Wei Xiang could hear her moving through the flat, doing laundry or getting ready for a five-kilometre run around the neighbourhood park. Maybe she has gone out for a run; her Adidas shoes and running attire are no longer in her luggage. Whenever they travel, she always tries to explore the new surroundings when the day is still young with a short run. “Come on! The air is good!” she would say, trying to drag Wei Xiang out of the hotel bed, but over the many years, he has probably only joined Ai Ling a couple of times.
Wei Xiang checks the time again. Perhaps he should wait for her to come back so that they can have breakfast together at the hotel café. He remembers the porter telling them, when they checked in yesterday, that the continental buffet breakfast was available until ten o’clock. He changes out of his sleeping attire—singlet and boxer shorts—into a white T-shirt and Bermudas, then lies back on the bed. He stares up at the ceiling and recalls their lovemaking the night before: his mouth on Ai Ling’s engorged nipples, the fleshy swells of her breasts, her stifled groans as he moved within her. His skin tingles from the remembered pleasure, and an erection stirs in his shorts. He reaches in and gives his cock a few tugs, then stops himself. This can wait; it is still early.
Even with the windows closed and curtains drawn, Wei Xiang can still hear the sounds of the town coming through, soft and muffled. He thinks of the places they will go to later; Ai Ling has already planned a long day packed with activities and sightseeing. They only managed to check out Phuket’s shopping district yesterday after arriving from the airport, with a trip to its wet market and bazaar, and ended their day with dinner at a beachfront restaurant showcasing a panoramic view of the sea. Wei Xiang reaches for the printout of the itinerary on the bedside table; under one column, Ai Ling has listed some restaurants and cafés, and directions to get to them. She has also printed out a map of Phuket Island and marked down these eateries, highlighting each with a different colour for different days. So typical of Ai Ling, to plan everything down to the smallest detail.
The night before, after dinner, they took a walk along the beach, and stopped at a clearing of rocks on the shore. He noticed the worried look on her face, but when he tried to cajole her into telling him what she was thinking, she became taciturn, even evasive. Her moods can sometimes turn dark, as he has learnt over seven years of marriage, and leave her distant and distracted for days on end, even weeks. Each time she slips into this state, she pushes away from him, retreating into a secret place inside her to which he does not have access; it always pains him to think that his wife does not trust him enough to share whatever is going on in her life. He does not want his marriage to slip into that of his parents’, one that was virulent, destructive.
Even when he was just a young boy, Wei Xiang could clearly sense his parents’ profound unhappiness, flinching at the hurtful words they constantly hurled at each other. His parents’ lives had drifted apart, taking separate paths, until they were practically strangers living under the same roof. For a long time, Wei Xiang could not understand the causes behind his parents’ frequent fights, and where all of it would eventually lead. All he can remember is the fear that ate away at him, that the world was no longer stable and at any time would collapse. He carried this fear as a warning to himself, an old wound which he kept scratching.
Wei Xiang took it upon himself to do whatever he could to keep his family together. Without any prompting, he cleaned his room, put away his shoes neatly in the cupboard, washed his eating utensils, did his homework, folded his clothes, showered and ate and slept at the same time every day, and nailed down his daily routine into exactness and precision. He listened to his parents, obeyed their instructions, came home on time, did not ask to watch television, kept to the rules (and made some of his own), helped out his mother with the housework and went out on errands to buy newspapers or cigarettes for his father or a bottle of soy sauce for his mother. He passed his tests and examinations with flying colours, and received praise from all his teachers for his results in the year-end assessments. He performed as the lead in the school play in Primary Six, which his parents attended together; they even clapped for him. He kept everything in check and in order, and firmly believed that if he did everything perfectly, down to the tee, nothing would ever go wrong, not in his life or in his parents’.
And yet, the fights persisted, worsening in severity and frequency; Wei Xiang would hold himself responsible, believing that his actions, or inactions, were to blame, that he had not done the right thing at the right time—an unseen and unknown catalyst that had sparked off yet another chain of regrettable events. And he would redouble his efforts, adhering even more staunchly to his quest for perfection; he would not give in to negative thoughts, thoughts he would never share with his parents in any case. His faith in his own actions always depended on this belief, and he never swayed from it, even in adulthood.
Later, of course, he came to know the reason for the collapse of his parents’ marriage, a reason that caught him completely by surprise: the death of a brother he never knew. One night when he was in his early twenties, his father told him everything in a state of drunkenness: when Wei Xiang was seven, and still an only child, his mother went away for two months to stay at her sister’s to recuperate from a miscarriage. Alternating periods of sadness and neediness and silence ensued after his mother came back home, strange baffling episodes in which she would pull Wei Xiang into a hug as easily as she would push him aside or ask him to stay in his room and do as he was told. This had also been the beginning of the long stretches of fights that took place between his parents, their angry voices penetrating the walls of his room.
Wei Xiang was stunned by the news, and by the fact that he had been kept in the dark for such a long time, and at the same time he was intrigued by this secret part of their family history. He wondered how his parents had worked in tandem, through the long years, to keep any hint of the death from him. He felt betrayed by the secrecy that had led to nothing but pain for all of them.
Yet, even the birth of Wei Xiang’s younger brother, two years after the death of the unknown brother, did little to obviate what was ultimately the end of the marriage. His parents had hoped that the new son would take on whatever the dead son could not, but this was an unfair expectation, a false hope. The shadow of death loomed over the family, even if Wei Xiang and his younger brother were never consciously aware of it.