Chapter 2 #2
“What is this ‘boundaries’?” Mebel says suspiciously. She’s suspicious of English words. English words are like men—inconsistent, fussy, and make you look stupid when you pick the wrong one.
“It’s like”—Sammy scratches his chin—“you know, like a wall that you can’t cross.”
“You mean like separate rooms? Don’t we have that already?” With a huff, she strides out of the kids’ bedroom and down the stairs.
Sammy hurries after her. “Kind of like separate rooms. But do you see how it defeats the purpose of sleeping in a separate room when you can just barge into our bedroom anytime you like?”
“I most certainly do not barge in anytime I like,” Mebel says in a reasonable tone of voice as she walks into the kitchen. “I always wait until morning, in case you are making me more grandbabies.”
Sammy closes his eyes. “You know what I mean. I don’t think it’s healthy for you to come into our room first thing in the morning.”
“It’s not first thing in the morning. I’ve had my breakfast,” she says, gesturing at the used dishes on the kitchen island. “I’ve had time to make you freshly squeezed vegetable juice—”
“Please, please stop making us the vegetable juice,” Sammy says.
“Nonsense, it’s so good for your gut health. Everything starts in the gut, you know. There’s a reason why it’s called the body’s second brain.”
“Mami, just—stop!”
Growing up, Samuel has always been a sweet-natured boy, quiet and shy.
He rarely ever raised his voice. And so, in this moment, when he does exactly that, it reaches deep into Mebel’s brain and freezes every part of her.
She stares at him, dumbfounded. Her little boy, who now has a wife and three children.
Her little boy, who is all grown up and has a family of his own.
And it sinks in then, with terrifying clarity.
Sammy doesn’t need her anymore. Even her grandchildren have no need for her.
They all have nannies who know their routines much better than Mebel does.
And the thought, terrifying in its coldness, seeps through her papery skin, spreading ice throughout her veins.
If she is no longer needed as a wife or as a mother, then where does that leave her?
She thinks of her social circle. She and Henk belong to half a dozen clubs, each one more exclusive than the last, and so they have plenty of friends.
But said friends are mutuals, and Mebel has no delusions about her inheriting any of them in the divorce.
All the club memberships are under Henk’s name, after all, with her trailing along as “the spouse.”
“Mami? You okay?” Sammy is saying, and it sounds as though his voice is coming from so far away.
Mebel sees the future unraveling before her.
Long days and even longer nights, the hours stretching like taffy until being conscious becomes an unbearable chore.
Maybe she might pick up drinking, pretending that she has decided to become a whiskey connoisseur, sipping a glass each night, then two, then passing out drunk until late morning.
She would waste away slowly, her skin puckering up like drying orange peel, the helpers whispering to one another about her slow demise as she gently decays in her lonesome.
I guess that’s how you’ll die, after all, her brain says. Not quite as exciting as being eaten by a shark in the swimming pool, but I daresay it would be less messy, and you could at least have an open casket funeral.
No. She mustn’t let that happen. She can’t. She clamps down on her spiraling thoughts. Without thinking, she says, “I won’t go down without a fight.”
Sammy regards her doubtfully. “Um…okay?”
“I mean it. I won’t!” Mebel’s chest rises impressively. “I am going to win your father back.”
Instead of applauding her, Sammy merely stands there and stares.
“For the children’s sake,” Mebel adds, in a magnanimous voice. Look at me, she thinks. Look how I’m setting aside my pride, my ego, and sacrificing everything for the sake of the kids.
Sammy’s eyes soften. “You don’t have to do that for me, Mami. I’m a grown man. You can seek your own happiness now.”
“Oh, I don’t mean you,” Mebel says with a flippant wave of her hand. “Like you said, you’re a grown man. For the girls. Freydis, Aelgifu, and Luciana.”
“I really don’t think—”
“They can’t grow up in a broken home.”
“I’m not sure that having divorced grandparents counts as being from a broken home?” Sammy says.
“Don’t be ridiculous, of course it does. And don’t say the D-word around me, Sammy.”
“I’m sorry, Mami,” Sammy says quickly. “I should’ve known it would be triggering to you.” The word “triggering” is said in English, and it catches Mebel off guard.
“What does that mean, ‘triggering’? Like I’ve been shot?”
“It means it’s a word that triggers a lot of emotions for you. A word that isn’t just a simple word, but one that carries a lot of bad feelings and memories.”
Mebel nods, filing the word away for later use.
“Yes, I suppose you are right. The D-word is…triggering. But once I win your father back, it won’t be, because we won’t be getting one.
In fact, what we’ll do is celebrate—oh! We can renew our vows!
Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Nothing too fancy, we’ll keep it intimate, just send out one thousand invitations, so with their plus-ones, it’ll be two thousand guests max. ”
“I think you’re getting a bit carried away, Mami. Why don’t you ask Tante Meimei out for lunch?”
“Meimei?” Mebel cries. “That she-demon will tell the entirety of Jakarta that your father is leaving me!”
“Okay…or maybe any of your many, many friends? I’m sure some of them will be empathetic. I know you housewives are all about presenting the image of a perfect marriage to everyone, but I would bet money that many of them are hiding things that are much worse than what Papi has done.”
Mebel ignores Sammy’s patronizing tone of voice.
“Aiya, this is not the time to think of socializing. This is the time to plan. I will have that designer Kris make me a gown, she’s all the rage right now.
Oh, I should call her now and let her know I’ll need a gown from her; she’s booked up for the next six months, you know.
” She looks around for her cell phone and spots it on the kitchen counter, but before she can take it, Sammy practically pounces on it.
As Mebel watches, dumbfounded, he holds it behind his back.
“What are you doing, son? Let me have my phone.”
“No.”
“Sammy!” she snaps.
“Mami,” he begins, then he takes a deep breath, as though fortifying himself, “I cannot let you do this again. You’re always doing this.”
“Doing what?”
Sammy gestures at her. “This! You go on a wild tangent and get carried away without thinking of the consequences. I mean, you’re about to have a gown made for a vow renewal—” He pauses, sighing with visible frustration. “Did you forget that you haven’t won Papi back?”
“Oh, well, that’ll happen.”
“How?”
Mebel shrugs. Irritation mounts up inside her. “I’ll figure it out. Now kindly give me back my phone and—”
“No, Mami. If you’re going to win Papi back, you need an actual plan. You can’t just sit back and do your trophy wife thing and trust that other people will take care of it for you.”
He might as well have slapped her across the face.
For a moment, Mebel blinks at her son, stupefied.
Then the anger comes, a trickle at first, but it doesn’t take long before it turns into a rush.
“Do my ‘trophy wife thing’?” she hisses.
“Do you really think that lowly of me? Do you know how much I’ve done for you? ”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Sammy says. “I just meant, like, when it comes to the big, important things, you’re used to letting Papi handle them. You always said the man is the head of the household and the wife’s job is to follow along.”
And, unfortunately, Mebel knows this is true. She has been fed on a steady diet of traditional gender roles, and she has turned around and fed Sammy the same thing.
“Mami,” Sammy says gently, “I think you need to listen to what Papi wants. If he wants to have a divorce, then…” He raises his hands and shrugs.
“Unless you have an idea of how to keep him around?” Sammy waits a moment for her to reply, and when she doesn’t, he gives her a small, pitying smile, and says, “See? Papi has always been the ideas person in the house. He knows what he’s doing. I think we need to trust him on this.”
How dare her own son talk to her like this!
Mebel has half a mind to smack him with one of her very expensive Le Creuset pans (which she has never once used, but she likes knowing that she could use them if she wanted to).
The anger surges through her veins, pounding in her head, heating up her entire body until she feels like she might explode.
The answer blurts out before her mind has time to catch up. “I’ll go to cooking school!”
“What?”
The moment Mebel hears those words, she realizes she’s right. That’s exactly it. Her eyes light up with righteous flame. “Yes, that’s it! That’s what he wants, isn’t it? A wife who can cook. That’s the entire reason he’s off with Wendy.”
Sammy scratches the back of his head. “I don’t know that that’s the ‘entire reason’…”
“Oh please, of course it is. Have you tasted her homemade pulled noodles? I dreamed about that dish for days. Honestly, she’s so good I would turn into the lesbian for her.”
“Please don’t ever say that again.”
“Another reason I know he’s only with her for her food,” Mebel continues, “is because she is flat-chested. Your father is a breast man.”
“Oh god. No, Mami, enough. You have convinced me. Yes, Papi is only with Wendy because of her cooking prowess.”
“Therefore, all I have to do is go to culinary school, learn how to cook, and voilà, I will win him back,” Mebel says with a flourish.
Despite herself, hope is dancing inside her, lighting a spark she has so desperately needed in the last few days.
It’s as though when Henk had left her, he’d taken all the light in the world with him, but now one of these precious lights has found its way back and is beckoning to her to follow it out of the darkness.
“It’ll take a long time, Mami,” Sammy says.
“You young people have no patience. All things that are worth having are things worth waiting for. And your father is definitely worth waiting for.”
Sammy merely looks on with a sad expression.
Mebel turns away. She can’t allow herself to be talked down, not now when she’s finally come up with an idea of her own.
The thought strikes her: When was the last time she’s had an idea that was fully hers, not Henk’s or anyone else’s?
She’s forgotten that feeling of being ready to fight for something she wants, and right now, all Mebel wants to do is fight—if not for Henk, then for the life she knows she deserves.
The life to which she has devoted her entire being, spent all of her youth preparing herself for.
The life of a trophy wife. And by god, Mebel is going to win that war.