Singapore Noir

Twice, on weekend days — weekends were always Ed’s, because, as Ellen explained, if she wasn’t working through a weekend she needed Me time — Ed and Davey ran into Ellen and her someone else in the Smith Street wet market. The someone, a boisterous Russian with a big smile, was a client of Ellen’s firm. He tickled Davey’s chin and seemed happily baffled by the noise, the bright colors of signs and stalls, the profusion of spices and fruits he called “foreign” and “exotic.” Ellen kissed Davey, smiled thinly, and steered her Russian away as soon as they’d exchanged enough substance-free sentences so that everyone could see she was perfectly comfortable in Ed’s presence. Watching her examine fine powders, peeled bark, and round berries in spice stalls, seeing her make purchases he was sure she had no idea how to use, Ed wondered if she was hoping to learn to cook. Ellen, he thought, cooking: none of their friends back in New York — or anywhere else — would believe it. But Singapore did strange things to you.

Ed settled into the new arrangement and found it not uncomfortable. The nights Davey spent at Ellen’s, Ed missed him, missed cooking his rice porridge in the morning and teaching him his new word of the day. Ed worked late into those nights, so his days were free for Davey and for Maricor, whose calm company he was coming to enjoy. Maricor had good English — one of Ellen’s criteria for a nanny — but Ed also spoke with her in Singlish, Maricor laughing with delight when he surprised her with a new phrase. Ellen had rolled her eyes when he’d used Singlish words: “It’s not a real language, you know.”

Six seasonless months drifted by. Ed and Ellen were quietly divorced, Davey adjusted easily to his double life and started to speak in full sentences, both Singlish and English — with the occasional Spanish word thrown in, and sometimes Russian — and the languid heat of Singapore seeped deeper into Ed’s pores, melted the suits out of his wardrobe and the hurry out of his steps. Expats and young people raced around him, career-building, but the old, true life of the island was indolent and slow and kind, and that was the life Ed lived until Ellen called one morning to say she’d been promoted again. She was going to Moscow.

Ed congratulated her: he knew she was happy. Moscow was the plum placement in Ellen’s firm and she’d worked hard for it.

“Sergei says he can get you a work visa, no problem.” Ed heard the pride in her voice about her well-connected Russian before he understood what she was really saying.

“I don’t want to go to Moscow.”

“We can’t very well share custody long-distance. I know people do, but study after study shows that’s not the best thing at all for the child.”

Study after study? Best thing for the child? “You’re taking Davey?”

“Of course. I’m his mother.”

Phone to his ear, Ed stared dumbly out the window. He lived now in another ground-floor flat a few blocks from Ellen’s, a place with a small patio where Davey and Maricor sat on the paving stones building a tower from wooden blocks. Davey wore khaki shorts (“Like Daddy’s!” he’d shrieked with glee when they’d been presented to him) and Maricor’s red sundress pooled around her knees. “Davey doesn’t want to go to Moscow.”

“What are you talking about? He’s a child. He has no idea where he wants to go.”

The patent error took Ed’s breath away. He tried to picture Davey, who’d never worn a sweater, all bundled up in parka, scarf, and boots, with a no-nonsense Russian nanny pulling his mittens on. He wondered where a child would play if nine months of the year it was too cold to be outdoors. Like New York, he realized, but worse, and what did New York parents do? Sent their kids to preschool boot camp so they’d be fast-tracked to MIT or Yale.

“There’s an American School in Moscow,” Ellen was saying, “and a couple of international schools as well that would be good for him. Sergei looked into it already. I start the fifteenth of next month — that’s more than four weeks, that gives you plenty of time. You can stay in a hotel until you find an apartment. My firm might help.”

Ed hung up thinking, Kena sai, lah. Kena sai. Hit by shit.

Early Sunday, when Maricor went to Mass at Good Shepherd Cathedral, Ed and Davey went to Malaysia. They made the trip every few months, always by ferry because they were in no hurry and Davey liked the boat ride. Sometimes they went right on through Johor Bahru all the way to Kuala Lumpur and spent the night. From time to time they went to the beach at Desaru. Almost always, whatever else they did, they shopped at the Larkin wet market for spices and vegetables. The market aunties in Singapore laughed at Ed about this, for they scorned Johor Bahru because of its dirt and crime and general not-Singapore-ness, and claimed everything found there was available in Singapore. Ed would shrug and smile and say, “Most can, some cannot, lah,” and join them in laughing at his Singlish.