The Colour of Tea (6 page)

“Pourquoi pas?”
Why not? She says with a shrug and a laugh.

I find myself smiling back at her. She has that teacher’s way of noticing a wounded stray and tucking her under her wing. I feel myself surrendering to being looked after.

“Now, you must meet Léon.”

She takes my elbow and gently guides me out of the air-conditioning and onto the balcony. We are seventeen stories up in the restaurant of a brand-new and shiny casino; it’s like being on top of a Christmas tree. The view from here is striking—Macau peninsula lies just beyond the water, its reflection shimmering in the dark. The lurid lights seem so much lovelier at night. Even the bridge is sparkling with the headlights of taxis streaming across it to Taipa.

A tall man leans forward on the railing, holding a big glass of wine. He seems to be having the same thoughts I am, a smile on his face as he gazes out at the city with eyes shaped like almonds, dark brows. His hair is thick and silvery, brushing the top of his collar. His full lips press against the glass as he takes a mouthful. He turns slightly and looks toward us, eyes softening with tenderness and smile stretching, displaying pearly teeth. My chest tightens, and I suddenly feel too drunk. A little dizzy at least.

“Léon! You have to meet Grace. Grace, this is my ’usband, Léon.”

“Hi,” I murmur.

He leans forward and kisses my left cheek, then the right.

“Good evening, lovely to meet you,” he says with genuine warmth. He sounds just like the Paris I remember. City of love and mysteries. It makes me catch my breath.

I watch Celine’s hair blowing in the breeze as she talks about
her students. Her eyes light up when she describes one earnest child with terrible pronunciation; her laughter has the silvery sound of a flute. I want to know if they have children, but my throat thickens and I can’t say anything. I look at the two of them against that glittering view. She is wearing a white silk shirt and he a blue linen one. It makes me think of laundry ads for detergents that make whites whiter and colors brighter. Such demanding, needy fabrics, silk and linen. But they look effortless, leaning into each other in a comfortable way that makes me feel a little sad. They look like the couple smiling out from the photo frame before you slide your own photo inside. The couple you wish you were.

Celine excuses herself to fetch more wine, and I look up to see Léon smiling at me.

“I’m so sorry, you must forgive my English, it is not very good.” His accent is as thick as butter, but each of the words is clear. I wish I had learned more French, but I have never been good with languages. I think it takes an extrovert.

“Oh no, not at all. Your English is very good. My French is quite terrible; don’t apologize.”

“Well, you are kind. I find it hard sometimes, you know? People find it difficult to understand what I mean.” He sighs and laughs. As he leans back on the railing, I notice a little crooked square of stubble he must have missed when shaving. I have a ridiculous urge to put my finger there to see what it feels like. “You like the food,
non
?”

“Sorry?”

“The catering. You like it? I saw you eating the cheeses.”

My dress feels tight around the waist. I beg my face not to turn crimson. “Oh. Yes. I do like the food. It’s very good.”

“This is my restaurant, where I work. I am the chef here.”

“I didn’t know. I … I used to be a waitress.” I don’t know why I
offer up this information. It seems to rush out of me. I change the subject. “The Pont-l’Évêque was very nice. It’s from Normandy, isn’t it?”

“
Oui.
Yes, it is.” Léon raises his eyebrows and smiles. “Ah, a woman who knows food.” Then he frowns. “I wish Celine would eat more. She is too small. Like a sparrow. I worry.” Léon releases a puff of air from between his full lips disapprovingly. It must be a French version of “tut-tut.”

“Oh, well …” I fumble for something appropriate to say. Inside my chest I feel my heart lift, and a proper smile almost reaches my face. Almost.

*   *   *

Pete and I head home that night in the wet air, silence drawn out between us. He makes little grunts every now and then, as if he is agreeing with himself. Must be thinking about something to do with work. We get home, and he puts on the BBC and takes off his shoes. I go into the bathroom to remove my makeup. There is the murmuring of English reporters in the background when I climb into bed with nothing on and put an extra pillow under my head. I reach under my bedside table for the pile of cookbooks I have stacked there. I am reading
Rick Stein’s French Odyssey
when Pete comes in from the lounge room. He goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

“So you had a good time tonight?” he calls out.

“It was okay.”

“Told you it would be.”

“Mmm …”

He pulls off his shirt and tie, dumping them onto the chair by the end of the bed. He looks at me, or the book cover, I’m not sure which. He puts on fresh boxer shorts. The orange striped ones he likes to wear to bed. He lies on his back looking at the ceiling,
places a palm against my thigh. The dehumidifier strums away, while I learn the secrets of good onion soup. Clear and brown, smelling of the streets and corners of Paris. What a lot of onions. I think about going to the Taipa market tomorrow.

“Night then, love,” Pete says. He sounds cool, distant, his hand sliding off my leg.

A little while later I say good night to Rick Stein, closing his book. My mind is full of recipes and French food. My stomach is full of cheese. I turn off my lamp and roll over, facing the dark hump of bedsheets that is Pete asleep. I put my hand on his thick shoulder, feeling the warmth of him through the sheet, before turning over.

Dearest Mama,

I’ve been dreaming about French food. Remember the cheeses? The breads? How we imagined opening our own bistro? You and me serving baguettes and soup du jour. A terrace in the sun, white plates and silver cutlery. Dogs drinking out of saucers, high heels tucked under wrought-iron tables. The thoughts seem to scroll along with “Summertime.” Playing in my head, round and round like a licorice-colored record. You know, from
Porgy and Bess?

I’ve been thinking about Paris, Mama.

I remembered how I knew this song. I mean, the first time I ever heard it. When I woke up in the hotel and you weren’t there. The night was black and cold. I was just tall enough to reach the light switch, although I had to jump to flick it on. I thought you might be in the corner or behind the wardrobe, playing a trick on me. I checked under the bed, but there was only a sticky throat lozenge covered in lint. I sat down on the bed for a while, pulling up a piece of the quilt, sticking it in my mouth and chewing. Then I put on my boots all by myself and my winter coat over the top of my nightgown, and crept out of the room and down the stairs. The porter was snoring in his chair.
Outside the night air was icy, and the tops of my legs got covered in goose pimples.

“Mama, Mama, Mama, where are you, Mama?” beating a little chant in my head. Right or left? The wind bit at my ears and blew around my thighs. My heart was racing in my chest. I turned left. No one was on the street; it was as quiet as a church and slick with the rain that had fallen that afternoon.

Not too far away, I could hear loud music coming out of a dark café. A trumpet! Bah bah baaaaaaahhhhh, it sang. It was warm near the doors, and there were a few people standing outside laughing. I moved closer, rubbing my hands together. They were smoking long, thin cigarettes and talking above my head. I stood near the glass of the windows and listened to the crooning of my favorite instrument. I loved that it sounded so pretty and so strong at the same time. I had tried playing it once in music class. It didn’t sound like this—proud, pure notes streaming out from the golden tubes. All my sounds had been like farts—loud, rude, and brief. Listening to that trumpet, I suddenly felt too cold. I pressed myself against the window, fighting lonely tears. If I’d known a prayer, I would have said one. Instead there were just two words on my lips. Please, Mama.

As if by the magic of wishing it to be so, I saw you then, through the warped glass, dancing by the stage in your silky peach dress. Your cheeks were red, your skin shining. “Mama, Mama, Mama! It’s Gracie!” I called to you, sure that you would see me.

People were looking at me now, through the fug of their smoke. A woman bent toward me. She wore a red jacket and tall black shoes. She was speaking, but I didn’t understand her French. I felt like I was stuck at the bottom of a well. She tried to pull my arm away from the window, turn me to her, but I shook loose. As soon as she let go, I started running. Back to the hotel, hot blood and fear pumping through me. I was crying when I flew past the dusty lobby, my boots
heavy on the stairs. I slammed the door behind me and locked it from the inside. I leaned back against it for a time, dazed, my chest heaving. Then I climbed into bed with my boots and coat still on and pulled the quilt over my head. Sticking my cold hands down between my knees to make them warm, I fell asleep.

I don’t know when you came home. Late in the morning when I woke up, my coat was on the floor, folded on top of my boots, and you were at the window, tapping your fingers against the sill. The makeup was washed off your face, save a few clumps of mascara under your right eye. You were wearing a robe, wet hair twisted in a towel, red-painted toenails peeking out from the bottom. You had a little white patisserie box tied with a ribbon on your lap, and you smelled like sugar.

“Oh good, you’re awake. Today we really have to go to the zoo, Gracie. I don’t know how long it has been since we saw animals. Do you remember?”

I shook my head.

“Well, it’s polar bear weather, don’t you think?” You jumped onto the bed, squashing one of my feet as you landed. You tickled and cuddled as I bit my lip. Maybe I had dreamed it all.

“You left me …”

“Oh no, sweetie.”

“Yes, you left me. Last night.” I started to cry the same hot tears from the night before, like they’d been waiting behind my eyes.

“Shh, shh, shh … Hey, don’t you cry now,” you said. “Have this. It’ll make everything better. Mama’s promise.” A wink as you handed me the box. Inside, the prettiest cake I’d ever seen, button-round. A
macaron,
you told me.

We went to the zoo that day, didn’t we, Mama? Stayed out too late, until the sun went down and I got a chill. We never talked about the bar. The jazz bar playing music from
Porgy and Bess,
where you were singing and dancing in that peach-colored dress. How you had
left me in a hotel room around the corner, until you came home in the morning.

So many mysteries, Mama, always so many.

Your loving daughter,
Grace

La Poudre à Canon—Gunpowder

Gunpowder Green Tea with Sweet Mandarin Buttercream

P
ete has been busy with work. Late nights and dark circles ringing his eyes. A couple of evenings he falls asleep on the couch in front of the television so I have to wake him and guide him to bed. I have run out of sleeping pills, so I spend most nights listening to him sleep with my eyes wide open in the darkness. These are the long nights when I can’t stop thinking of children. Skipping, dancing, running in after school for a warm snack. Pink babes in my arms. The smell of freshly washed hair. Feeding a small one from my own breast. This last thought is the worst; it makes my whole chest ache as if my heart is made of river stone. I cry in the bathroom with the door shut so Pete doesn’t wake up. My mind races like a cat chasing its tail. Like there is no end. I wish for sleep over and over, chewing on the bedsheet like I did when I was a kid. When it finally comes, I dream my way through the mornings till midday, half the day blissfully disappeared.

During the afternoons the only thing that seems to hold my interest is baking. I go through my recipe books. Soft-centered biscuits, cakes slathered with icing, cupcakes piled up in pyramids on round plates. Pete doesn’t say anything, although every morning
he takes out the rubbish bags filled with stale muffins and half-eaten banana loaves. The only thoughts that seem to distract me from babies are those memories of Paris. A gray cold, tall men, black coffee, sweet pastries, and Mama laughing, with her hair and scarf streaming behind her. The smell of chocolate and bread.

*   *   *

On a warm Thursday night before sliding into Chinese New Year, we go to the Old Taipa Tavern. It’s an English-style pub, popular with the expats, sitting on one side of a village square next to a Chinese temple. Adults talk and drink cold beer out of sweating glasses while their kids ride their bikes around and around on the concrete. The older boys buy “throw-downs” from the local shop, tiny paper packets of dynamite or gunpowder, something explosive, which fit neatly in a small palm and make a loud snap when thrown against the ground. They lay them down where the younger ones will ride over them, frightening the color out of their cheeks when they pop, making them burst into tears.

Pete and I sit outside, although the sun is fading, and I order my standard sausages and mash. Pete chews on his lower lip and can’t decide. His face is dark and drawn when he finally places his order. A burger.

“Everything okay?” I ask as our waitress heads off to attend to a table of loud Aussie blokes calling for “another bucket of cold ones.”

“Yeah, fine.” Pete slugs down a big gulp of beer.

I watch a small man with sagging trousers lock the big red doors to the Chinese temple. His face is lined and serious, a single long hair sprouting from a dark mole on the side of his chin. He sees me watching him and blinks like a cat. He hops on a bicycle, rides away.

“Work is a mess.”

I turn back to Pete. He is picking at the label on his bottle.

“The building work is shit. Everything needs to be done twice. I’m signing off on stuff I’d never approve back home. But there are deadlines, so what am I supposed to do?”