Mrs Mismarriage

Noelle Chua

Description

Harvard literature scholar Audrey Lee's perfect life loses the plot when her brand new boyfriend, the dapper MBA Paul Chang, gets down on one knee and of all the silly and ridiculous things, proposes marriage! Suddenly Audrey is fairy-tale trapped and wed-locked into a life she never wanted, that of an expat wife and home-maker in her hometown Singapore. And that's when a number of attractive men pop up all interested in her, enough to make Audrey feel she may indeed be the Singaporean Madame Bovary or Lady Chatterley. With Paul too absorbed in his career to care plus a few mishaps making marital mayhem, Mrs Mis-Marriage is starting to feel that perhaps she is destined to live ...unhappily ever after...

Sujets

• Romance

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Cavendish International
• Date de parution: 23 novembre 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789814677455
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Mrs MisMarriage

2009 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited
Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International
1 New Industrial road, Singapore 536196
All artwork by Eugene Pua
Designer: Rachel Chen
Editor: Crystal Chan
All rights reserved
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National Library Board Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data
Chua, Noelle, 1967-
Mrs mismarriage / Noelle Chua. - Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2008.
p. cm.
ISBN-13 : 978-981-261-610-4 (pbk.)
ISBN-10 : 981-261-610-1 (pbk.)
e-ISBN : 978 981 4677 45 5
1. Intercountry marriage - Singapore - Fiction. 2. Foreign spouses - Singapore - Fiction. I. Title.
PR9570.S53
S823 -- dc22 OCN244503881
Printed in Singapore by KWF Printing Pte Ltd.
This book is dedicated with love to its first readers, my sisters, the chick lit advisers, Lara and Mariel
and my hopes for their own happy and successful, non mis-marriages
contents
to engage or disengage, that is the question
mismatch made in heaven
happily ever after?
resuscitating the romance
sex and the city state
domestic differences
domestic adjustments
the in-laws
time apart
temptation island
relationship building
opportunities for intimacy
other people
girl talk
disconnected
conflict resolution
separation
making choices
new frontiers in marriage
1
to engage or disengage, that is the question
Girls tend to be silly, asking, Who will I marry? Why can t they just be smart and ask, Should I get married? That s the more important question.
-My Ma, Lillian Lee
I noticed you with Henry, twice before we first met. I thought you were cute. Like a little school girl with your sloppy backpack and all your books. Once I figured out the two of you were just friends, well, I decided to make my move.
That s what my husband says. I snort at that. But he sticks to the story. It s a story I often ask him to tell, because I need to make sense of the sequence of events that got me here in the first place. My husband. My husband of six months.
Can I just tell you that even after half a year, the phrase my husband still feels very odd, like the blandly lukewarm cafeteria fast food my old friend Henry and I subsisted on, back when we were all grad students at Harvard. Some nights, in my dorm kitchen, Henry and I would make chicken rice from the instant mix packets my Ma sent via FedEx.
I didn t miss Singapore but I did miss the food. And chicken rice brings comfort somehow. Of course, it was never ever like the real thing. Limp and tasteless and overly oily. Just like the way the words my husband feel in my mouth.
The final year I spent at school feels like a million years ago, now that I ve come home to Singapore. I was completing the course work for my literature masters. I even did a minor in psychology on top of it, finishing both in record time, if I m to believe my professors. I d just begun research for my doctoral dissertation-a study of the single woman and themes and motifs in the 19th century novel. I had correspondence going with chair people on the English departments of two liberal arts colleges, one in the south and one in the midwest, for future academic postings. To top it off, I was the editor of a new literary journal, The New Review , leading my staff -three bespectacled, upper-class English majors who were just about as nerdy as I was-in frequently violent, never-a-dull-moment discussions of the fiction and poetry we picked out from the slush pile.
And wonder of wonders, much to the wide-open-mouthed surprise of my friends back home, I was no longer just a lonely nerd with her nose buried in a book, whose tongue frequently moved too quickly for her brain. I actually had a boyfriend. And he was wonderful.
He was everything I never dreamed of-if only because I never have been the dream-about-the-love-of-your-life type. He and I had been dating almost five months now and everything had been going as smoothly as a sonnet by Shakespeare. Sure, Paul was in the final year of his program, and would soon be returning to Wall Street where I was sure any number of plum investment banker positions would be his for the taking. But I was confident our impending separation would be no cause for alarm, at least not on my part.
Everything was all planned out. I would stay in Boston and finish my dissertation. He would work in New York. I would take the train and visit him when I could, while of course, seeing the sights, taking in the art, and watching all the shows on Broadway. The rest of the time, well, we would write, call, skype, chat, and Facebook. This was America, after all. There were trains and planes and automobiles. We could spend breaks and long weekends together. It was entirely workable. When two people are of one mind and one heart and living on the same side of the world, everything is possible. Even that I knew, and I had only lived in the US for three years.
The other thing that I knew? I was never going to return to Singapore. No way. Not after I had escaped the rat race and tasted life in the real world? Nothing would have ever induced me to join my old friends, Ser and Er, and Kelly, all huffing and puffing on the treadmill of life, in the relentless uphill pursuit of the five C s-cash, car, condo, credit card, and country club. Return to the tiny red dot and be destined to have the expected, do the usual and take the conventional path? No thanks. I had just begun to live my life on my own terms. Going home was just not part of the plan.
And then it happened, boom boom boom. With just five words, everything changed forever.
It was spring in Boston. It was the kind of day that glistens in buttery yellow sunshine yet stays fresh and briskly cool. No days like this back home, I remember thinking to myself, as I opened my two generous dorm room windows wider to take in the scent of purple lilacs blooming on the bushes outside. Lilacs don t bloom back home, either.
Sheer luck had blessed me for three years with a rather large single room on the ground floor of one of the most central residence halls in Cambridge. It may not have been much to look at, but it was warm in winter, cool in the summer, comfortable, spacious and all mine-a far cry from the little gray room and the tiny grilled window my brother Darren and I shared back home in my Ma s HDB flat when we were kids.
Most importantly, it had everything I needed. There was my bed-the widest single I had ever seen. There was the comfy arm chair Henry helped me drag back from an English faculty member s garage sale-I didn t even have to buy it! She just gave it to me. There was the beat-up desk that came with the room and all my books set in piles around the also very beat-up but still jam-packed bookshelf that matched the shelf. And for the last three and a half months, on most nights, even though I could tell, of course, he much preferred his own cushy apartment off-campus, my American-born Chinese boyfriend Paul would come and share my bed. And that of course, I will tell you, made my room a more than perfect paradise.
Anyway, I was all ready to start my third reading of Jane Eyre that month for the Bronte paper I was writing, when there was Paul knocking on my door with his unmistakable three sharp raps.
I opened the door to find him clutching a large, thick white envelope. I had not expected to see him at all that day, or the next, as I knew he was going through a series of on-campus recruitment interviews for possible jobs.
Hey, what are you doing here? I thought you were-mmmffphhhhh He stopped me with a kiss, diverting my usually rapid-fire train of thought. Of course, Paul, being Paul, he was dressed as smart as you please, in a pinstriped dress shirt layered over a sleek black turtleneck and equally sleek trousers. Meanwhile there I was, lounging around in my faded once blue, now grey terry-cloth robe and mismatched pajamas, my hair still gathered in last night s unwashed ponytail, at 11 AM in the morning.
Audrey, Audrey, Audrey he said, I ve got news.
Even now, as I remember the way he would say my name back then, my heart melts a little. Back then he said my name like he really meant it.
You got a job! I guessed, and then changed my mind, after scanning his expression.
No, no, wait. Oh don t tell me. You got the job! I leaped up to hug him like the happy and supportive girlfriend I always tried to be.
Oh Paul, that s wonderful news. Now we re both set! It couldn t be more perfect. I continued to gush as I abs