The End of Men(24)

But everything isn’t going to be all right. It’ll never really be all right again. I don’t want to end with a platitude because Anthony was honest. Never to the point of cruelty, but he was straightforward. He didn’t even manage to keep his planned proposal a secret because he didn’t like the deceit of it. It’s a good thing though that he told me. The original ring he picked was horrendous.

So, I’ll leave you with a poem because I can’t end my darling husband’s eulogy with an insult to his jewelry taste. He loved Edna St. Vincent Mallay so her poetry feels like a fitting end.


You go no more on your exultant feet

Up paths that only mist and morning knew,

Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat

Of a bird’s wings too high in air to view,

—But you were something more than young and sweet

And fair,—and the long year remembers you.





* * *





I switch off the webcam and the screen goes dark. The house feels empty, eerily quiet, with Theodore sleeping in his bed upstairs. Death was never something I considered in great detail until it raged across our lives, but I never would have imagined giving a eulogy from my living room to friends and family on Skype. It doesn’t feel like a fitting end to the life of a pet, never mind my husband, Theodore’s dad, Anthony. The Plague is making its mark even after death.

Anthony’s parents are heartbroken not to have had a service but there’s nothing we can do. The Public Meetings and Gatherings Act was passed three weeks ago as emergency legislation after the Oxenholme riots. It is out of my hands. Besides, there’s still an image in my mind of that poor woman, hugging her two small sons, wailing on the floor as hordes of people swept around a train to London begging to be allowed on. The train was empty. It was being put out of service. Transport around the country is suspended. What’s the point in running? Where does everyone think they’re running to? There is no safety now. The law makes sense.

Two days after group gatherings were banned, so were burials. The Plague Death Management Act. A technicality in many ways, as the graveyards were filled weeks ago, but a painful certainty nonetheless. Anthony was cremated today, but I will never be given his ashes. They are too risky. And so, he is gone. The warm body of my lovely husband, mine for fifteen years, is gone. No gravestone to choose a quote for. No ashes to keep in an urn and carefully scatter over the Cornwall beach on which we said our vows on a sunny, blustery day in September all those years ago. There is nothing left to do but weep, and so, for the first time today, I put my head in my hands and sob for all that is lost. The memories of my past with the love of my life, the happy life we lived as a family and the future we planned and dreamed of. It is all gone, and I don’t even have the ashes to show for it.





ROSAMIE


Singapore

Day 66

Mr. Tai is returning from Macau tonight and the apartment is buzzing with the excitement and terror of his return. Angelica and Rupert are being more clingy than usual; they find it hard having him here. Most of the time he ignores their existence but sometimes, he decides that he needs to see their “progress” as if they’re companies.

“They’re only children!” I want to yell at him, but I can’t do that. I don’t even want to think about what would happen if I did that. I’m just the help and that is very clear. This is an apartment with a hierarchy. I’m above the maids but below the cook because he’s been here for twenty years and he knows how to make a noodle dish that Mrs. Tai likes and she says no one else makes it the way that he does. Rupert is superior to Angelica even though he’s only three and she’s five because he’s a boy and he’s going to take over the business one day.

There’s a hush as the call comes in from the driver that Mr. Tai is making his way up in the elevator. Angelica and Rupert are lined up nicely in front of Mrs. Tai, and I’m fifteen feet away because she doesn’t like to remind anyone that I spend more time with her children than she does. It’s ridiculous that we’re making such a celebration about a man coming home. He’s so rarely here we practically throw a parade when he walks in the door. The maids sometimes talk about where he is off to—Shanghai, Macau, Toronto, Sydney. The rumor is that he has a mistress in every city but Mrs. Tai doesn’t care as long as she has her credit cards. I don’t know if I believe that but it’s not like we’ve ever talked about the state of her marriage.

The elevator door opens and immediately I think, Mr. Tai doesn’t look so good. He’s sweaty and shaking. I have an urgent desire to push him back into the elevator, press the button and get him out of here. He forgets to bring his suitcase into the apartment so one of the maids runs to grab it before the elevator doors close behind him. Mrs. Tai is looking at him quizzically. He says something in Cantonese and she looks at me with her “Take the children” face. I gladly take Angelica and Rupert into the nursery—it’s already past their bedtime—and begin the routine of bath, pajamas (“No not those pajamas! I don’t like those ones anymore. I’m not a baby!”), book (“I want this book! I don’t care which one Rupert wants. I’m not a baby!”) and bed. When Mr. Tai comes into the nursery to say good night to Angelica and Rupert, Mrs. Tai is behind him, crying silently. I hope they will go away quickly. They’re scaring the children and he might have the Plague. He probably doesn’t, surely he doesn’t. But if he does, he might give it to Rupert and the risk of that makes me feel sick. That night, he and Mrs. Tai have a big fight. I don’t understand what they are saying as they always argue in Cantonese but the next day when I take the children to the kitchen for breakfast, I see that Mr. Tai is nailing wooden planks across the elevator. The sound of the hammer makes me flinch and Rupert keeps asking me what is going on. As I take the children back to the nursery to eat, Mr. Tai turns around and says in a crazy voice, “No one is to enter or leave this house.”