because what you
consider misdeeds are trivial when one considers time, and how it
simply keeps moving away. You yourself said it, ‘All of our
misdeeds are natural acts,’ acceptable, if one believes in a
natural order. I, for one, do not.
However, in one final
act of redemption, before leaving Singapore, David handed over the
gun to Inspector Tan. He headed to the Kallang River and hurled the
bag of toys into its waters. A commuter train thundered past on the
narrow river ’s rail bridge, its passengers ensconced in
air-conditioned tubes, peering at screens and listening through
headphones. No one noticed a broken man weeping on the pedestrian
bridge and a lady standing by him, a lady with a resolute exterior
and a well-concealed but fragile, helpless, crumbling interior.
He was ecstatic, when
the remission briefly led to complete symptom-less recovery, needing
no more of the poisonous medication that was killing the cancer along
with my husband. David, in some sense, resisted the poison, while the
cancer succumbed to it, like a race of survival to the finish,
between the cancer and him, both fighting a common enemy, the drugs.
The disease reappeared within months, fulminant and deadly as if with
a vengeance, at which point he gave up.
During that brief
period of wellness, there was wine and joy, including pleasures of
marital life, without the aid of any mental or physical contortions.
David could love me normally, if I may say so, though the word is
misplaced in the context of copulation.
Jay and David spoke,
quite a bit through their period of brief wellness, of what I know
not, but it seemed like a conversation of some substance, like the
ones we carry for a lifetime, for Jay stopped being melancholy and
simply grew up.
Further on down the
line, when he got really sick, I cared for him when everyone else
gave up, sending him back home to me, back home to die. Each time I
left home, for unavoidable tasks that demanded my presence away from
him, he asked ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ when all
he could physically do was lie down and wait for me to return, after
I had run my chores. I loved the man, to his bitter end.
He died in unimaginable
pain, the medication unable to counteract or even mitigate the
effects of malignancy. The pain made his demise acceptable; at least
there was relief from it, for everyone.
In the first few days
of aftermath, visits from people filled with gratitude and concern
made his loss seem far less vacuous than it actually was. The church
service and the mass, sepulchre and the stream of visitors gave way
in just over a week’s time, leaving an empty space at dinner,
and a stillness all about the household. It was like removing the
words sung in a song, leaving tunes bland and dull with only the
chime of hollow wordless music. Jay fared better than me, with school
and a steady ring from friends for him to fall back upon, well beyond
that first one week. The young move on, with life to look forward to;
it was I who was continuously pulled backwards into the past. It was
I who was left all alone, still sleeping on my side of our bed, as if
he were still there on his side, when I could have easily moved
towards the middle, spreading out in comfort, knowing he was gone.
In the beginning, when
I was still young and sexually active—at least
biologically—invitations from married friends dried up. After
all, who wants a sexually starved widow in the vicinity of their
menfolk. They needn’t have worried, not on that count; I had
learnt to tackle the problems posed by sex quite well, that too
without the need of a partner.
Seeking out married
men, the thought repulsed me, after what I had suffered at the hands
of a married man, my husband. For some reason, the alternative of
seeking gigolos is not mainstream; if it was, I may have considered
it, but it isn’t like female prostitution, which is accessible
and almost acceptable, at least in certain situations. Male
situations, like
consider misdeeds are trivial when one considers time, and how it
simply keeps moving away. You yourself said it, ‘All of our
misdeeds are natural acts,’ acceptable, if one believes in a
natural order. I, for one, do not.
However, in one final
act of redemption, before leaving Singapore, David handed over the
gun to Inspector Tan. He headed to the Kallang River and hurled the
bag of toys into its waters. A commuter train thundered past on the
narrow river ’s rail bridge, its passengers ensconced in
air-conditioned tubes, peering at screens and listening through
headphones. No one noticed a broken man weeping on the pedestrian
bridge and a lady standing by him, a lady with a resolute exterior
and a well-concealed but fragile, helpless, crumbling interior.
He was ecstatic, when
the remission briefly led to complete symptom-less recovery, needing
no more of the poisonous medication that was killing the cancer along
with my husband. David, in some sense, resisted the poison, while the
cancer succumbed to it, like a race of survival to the finish,
between the cancer and him, both fighting a common enemy, the drugs.
The disease reappeared within months, fulminant and deadly as if with
a vengeance, at which point he gave up.
During that brief
period of wellness, there was wine and joy, including pleasures of
marital life, without the aid of any mental or physical contortions.
David could love me normally, if I may say so, though the word is
misplaced in the context of copulation.
Jay and David spoke,
quite a bit through their period of brief wellness, of what I know
not, but it seemed like a conversation of some substance, like the
ones we carry for a lifetime, for Jay stopped being melancholy and
simply grew up.
Further on down the
line, when he got really sick, I cared for him when everyone else
gave up, sending him back home to me, back home to die. Each time I
left home, for unavoidable tasks that demanded my presence away from
him, he asked ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ when all
he could physically do was lie down and wait for me to return, after
I had run my chores. I loved the man, to his bitter end.
He died in unimaginable
pain, the medication unable to counteract or even mitigate the
effects of malignancy. The pain made his demise acceptable; at least
there was relief from it, for everyone.
In the first few days
of aftermath, visits from people filled with gratitude and concern
made his loss seem far less vacuous than it actually was. The church
service and the mass, sepulchre and the stream of visitors gave way
in just over a week’s time, leaving an empty space at dinner,
and a stillness all about the household. It was like removing the
words sung in a song, leaving tunes bland and dull with only the
chime of hollow wordless music. Jay fared better than me, with school
and a steady ring from friends for him to fall back upon, well beyond
that first one week. The young move on, with life to look forward to;
it was I who was continuously pulled backwards into the past. It was
I who was left all alone, still sleeping on my side of our bed, as if
he were still there on his side, when I could have easily moved
towards the middle, spreading out in comfort, knowing he was gone.
In the beginning, when
I was still young and sexually active—at least
biologically—invitations from married friends dried up. After
all, who wants a sexually starved widow in the vicinity of their
menfolk. They needn’t have worried, not on that count; I had
learnt to tackle the problems posed by sex quite well, that too
without the need of a partner.
Seeking out married
men, the thought repulsed me, after what I had suffered at the hands
of a married man, my husband. For some reason, the alternative of
seeking gigolos is not mainstream; if it was, I may have considered
it, but it isn’t like female prostitution, which is accessible
and almost acceptable, at least in certain situations. Male
situations, like
Similar Books
