DAUGHTER—
She had decided a year ago that they would have a big party when her father turned sixty. Her Korean friend’s father had once told her that there were two important birthdays in a person’s life: their first and their sixtieth. The first birthday was a celebration because the child had survived the perils of infancy. And the sixtieth signified that they had lived a long life. She had wanted to fill the house with her father’s friends. Then she realised that all his friends were related to his business in one way or another, or people with whom he was on friendly terms at the Chinese Business Association annual dinners. ‘Ay, Mr Kiang, how is business going, old boss?’ he would say to them, shaking their hand in greeting, and they would clap him on the back and ask him the same. These were people you invited to weddings and funerals, but did not have anything to do with in between.
If you were to ask these men and women who had emerged into this new Wonderland from the Killing Fields what was most important to them in their lives now, in their fifties, they would answer, ‘Health and happiness’, but they probably would secretly think, ‘Privacy’. They cherished their privacy because it was a kind of peace. But they liked to hear about other people.
‘Needle came into the shop the other day. Her father has cancer, you know.’
‘What, old Mr Ung?’
‘Yes, it is quite late cancer.’
And of course, Needle’s family would not expect help, not like the Australians with their constant visits and bringing over of food. One or two visits to old Mr Ung and then you would leave him to his family to look after. That’s what they were there for.
But a celebration – surely these acquaintance-friends would love a celebration?
‘Don’t be silly. I don’t need that kind of thing,’ he muttered. ‘Too much trouble.’
Instead they went to a small dumpling restaurant in Chinatown. Her father had had a cough for about two weeks and was huddled in a knitted scarf and his old brown leather jacket. She had bought a cake from the cake shop in Chinatown, a cream and mango confection that looked as if it might have been sitting in the chilled cabinet for half a day.
‘You should have got it in Footscray,’ her mother said. ‘It would be fifteen dollars cheaper.’
She looked at her family around the table. Alexander barely said a word because his mind was elsewhere, at some point in a law essay. Her mum had come straight from work in Springvale and was wearing her blue Retravision shirt. She had bought a pair of pyjamas from Target for her children to give to their dad for his sixtieth. ‘Don’t waste your money on useless stuff for your father,’ she said to them, and she would have said the same for herself if it were her birthday.
At school they were taught that generosity meant telling the other person: ‘I really want this, but I think you should have it.’ That would show your magnanimity of spirit. Her parents’ way was to pretend that they didn’t want it at all. That was how they showed their love, by not making the other person feel bad for taking something they might have desired.
‘The soup-filled dumplings are the speciality here,’ she said, ‘so let’s order four trays of them.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said her mother. ‘Just order one, for a taste.’
She had learned long ago not to argue with such reasoning, but she privately thought that if you went to a specialty restaurant, you ordered the speciality dishes, not the cheapest things on the menu; yet that was just the way her mother was. It made her feel a pang of sadness, for the things in life her parents had forfeited.
She looked around the table – they didn’t look all that sad. Exhausted from the day’s work maybe, but not sad. This meal was quiet, and focused on eating.
‘What’s it like to be sixty, Dad?’ Alina asked.
‘Nothing much.’
‘What do you mean, nothing much?’
‘I’m not an old grandpa yet!’