Chapter 13 #2
“Why do you think he is going to break up?” she says finally.
“Lately when I text him, it takes him ages to reply. He’ll tell me he’s busy or tired or whatever. He used to reply right away, and we used to FaceTime each other every night but the last three, four nights he’s told me he’s too tired.”
“Where is he? Can you see him on weekend?”
“Nah, he’s in Manchester Uni, it’s too far away. We have to wait until the holidays.” Adam wraps his arms around his body, and the act makes him look so young that Mebel’s heart clenches painfully.
“You come into my room now,” she says, and leads him inside, where she makes him sit at the foot of her bed while she boils the kettle for him.
As she starts making tea for him, she tries to think of the right thing to say.
From what it sounds like, Adam’s boyfriend is distancing himself, probably because he’s met someone else, and why wouldn’t he?
A young man at university, chances are he would meet other people.
“We were high school sweethearts, you know,” Adam says forlornly. “Together for three years now. We were voted Most Likely to Get Married.”
Mebel smiles at him. The kettle boils and she pours it out into two mugs, adds a splash of milk and some sugar, and hands it to him. “He sounds like a nice boy. Like you.”
“What if he does dump me?” Adam looks at her with wide, scared eyes.
“Well, then you will cry. It feels like the world ending, and tomorrow is scary and big, and you feel like your life is…no meaning.”
“Mebel!” Adam cries. “That’s not making me feel any better.”
“But it will pass,” Mebel says. “Every day will be easier to live through, and then one day you wake up and you go on your day and then you realize, ‘Oh! Is three in the afternoon and I haven’t thought of him!’ And then next day maybe you think about him at four o’clock, and so on.
And one day you don’t even think about him at all. ”
“But that sounds like really hard work,” Adam moans.
“If I can move on after my husband of forty years leave me for younger woman, I think you can move on from a three-year relationship, yes?”
Adam rolls his eyes. “Okay, you can’t use that as your trump card every time you want to make a point.”
“Why not? I think I earn it already.”
“Technically, you haven’t moved on, because aren’t you here at culinary school because you wanna, like, cook him a really good meal and win him back?” Adam raises his eyebrows at her.
Mebel searches her mind for a good retort, but now, of all times, her mind is choosing to remain silent. Finally, she says, “You don’t talk back to your elders, so disrespectful.”
They sip their teas in silence for a while, then Mebel says, “The problem for me is if I am not Henk’s wife, I don’t know who I am.”
Adam tilts his head to one side. “Aww, Mebs! That is the saddest thing I have ever heard. Now I can’t even be sad anymore because your thing is so much sadder.”
“Good, I am glad I make you feel better.”
Adam puts his arm around Mebel’s shoulders and squeezes her before letting go. “I hope you know that even without Henk, you’d still be you. The Mebel we all love.”
Mebel smiles. When Adam leaves her room a while later, he does so with his head held high, no longer drooping like a wilted flower.
Mebel watches him leave with pride fluttering in her chest. This young generation is so vibrant and strong, and yet vulnerable at the same time.
She thinks of what Adam said about her being the Mebel they all love.
It’s a curious feeling, to be loved by strangers.
Well, not strangers. They are her friends now.
And somehow, it feels like they are the only people who truly know her.
Henk has always known her as someone orbiting his life—first his girlfriend, then his wife, then the mother of his child.
Sammy has always known her as someone who as a mother lives to cater to his needs.
And her friends back home in Jakarta knew her as Mebel the trophy wife, just like themselves.
She has never once talked to any of them about her own dreams and goals.
She had no dreams, or goals, other than to be a trophy wife.
This strange little group of friends she’s made here is the only one to talk of such things, and they’re filling her head with new ideas.
Ideas that are exciting and scary and strange and so impossible to shake off.
The third day of the soup module, they learn to make lobster bisque, and Mebel doesn’t flinch this time at the task of taking apart the lobster.
She handles it with confidence, uttering a short apology before plunging the tip of her chef’s knife into its head and ending its suffering.
The rest she dispatches easily before working on the broth.
Her lobster bisque comes out tasting so incredible that after class, Mebel suggests a picnic to Alain.
She brings a pot of her lobster bisque, as well as freshly baked baguettes that she filches from the bread baking class, and a punnet of nectarines she bought at Tesco a couple days ago.
Alain brings a little jar of paté, a jar of freshly made raspberry jam from Le Provencal, and a bottle of crisp wine.
They go to the University Parks and find a relatively secluded spot away from the Frisbees and the joggers, and Alain unfolds a blanket.
He watches as Mebel lowers herself gingerly onto it.
“Have you never been on a picnic?” he says after a while.
Mebel shakes her head. “Jakarta doesn’t have many parks.
Well, it has some, but the parks are not so nice, not like this.
The grass is patchy, lots of spots where it’s muddy soil, and people smoking in there.
And it’s so hot and humid because Indonesia is a tropical country, so it’s not so nice staying outside. You just sweat all the time.”
“Ah, I see. So, this is your first picnic?” Alain straightens up, his eyes dancing. “Take off your shoes.”
“What?” Oh god, Mebel’s brain gibbers. This is it.
This is his fetish. He is going to ask if he can suck on your toes right here, in the middle of the Oxford University Parks.
And to Mebel’s horror, she isn’t completely turned off by the thought.
She is 99 percent horrified and 1 percent excited.
Wait, no, she has more dignity than that: 99.
5 percent horrified and 0.5 percent excited—no, not excited. Curious. Yes, let’s go with that.
“You need to dig your toes into the grass, Mebel. Feel the beauty of nature.”
“Ah, okay.” Mebel gingerly takes off her Ferragamo shoes and tries to swallow the teeny tiny pang of disappointment she feels at the realization that Alain wasn’t trying to get her to go barefooted for some sex thing. God, those silly girls are such a terrible influence on her.
But when Mebel extends her legs and lets her bare feet rest on the damp Oxford grass, all thoughts of deviant sexual activity evaporate from her mind.
Why hasn’t Mebel done this sooner? She did it before, so many years ago, at USC, didn’t she?
Yes, she remembers now, sitting on the quad, unwrapping a sandwich, enjoying the warm Californian sun on her skin.
And then what happened? Then she went back to Jakarta and got caught up in the whirlwind of finding the perfect husband, and she never thought to sit barefoot on the grass anymore.
For a while, they are both quiet. She senses that Alain is letting her have this moment to herself, and she appreciates him for it.
She has never been with anyone like him before.
As a real estate tycoon, Henk proudly wears his business like a cloak.
He is always on the go with two different cell phones, and they’re both always dinging with important messages he has to tend to right away.
And Mebel admired him for it. She didn’t like men who were idle, because of course there’s always something to take care of, isn’t there?
But Alain is teaching her to slow down, to touch the grass, literally, and what a strange feeling it is.
Mebel takes a deep breath, surrendering herself to this beautiful moment.
She takes in her surroundings, the various different trees and plants around her in different shades of lush green.
The trees in England are so different from the tropical ones that are found in Jakarta.
The ones here are softer, dreamier somehow, their colors muted like a watercolor painting.
She accepts a glass of wine from Alain, and as they clink their glasses, their eyes meet, and a shot of electricity travels all the way from her head down to her toes.
They curl into the grass as Mebel’s cheeks redden.
“I would like to make love to you, Mebel,” Alain says.
Wine bursts out of Mebel’s mouth. She doubles over, coughing. When the coughing stops, she can barely meet Alain’s eye. “Sorry, I think I hear you wrong.”
“I don’t think so. Look, Mebel, you are a beautiful woman, I am a man who is very attracted to you, and we enjoy each other’s company very much, non?”
Mebel’s mouth opens and closes. “I—but—”
“Take your time and think about it. I do not expect an answer now.” Alain puts a spoonful of bisque in his mouth and his eyes close as he savors it. “You made this in class today?”
Mebel nods, still not trusting herself to speak. Did he just mention wanting to, uh, do intercourse and then swiftly change the subject to talking about her lobster bisque?
“It’s perfect. Mebel, you have a talent for cooking. Chef Clarke is very pleased with your progress.”
“He is?” Mebel says, momentarily forgetting the awkwardness of the moment.
“Oui. He says you have improved massively, and I can see that he is right.”