You Had One Job
Is there any excuse for this hapless American?
“I’m American.”
“So, it’s a cultural thing? Americans not turning up for their own wedding?”
Decima Lee was pissed. She’d deferred the whole marriage-and-breeding caper until the alarm on her biological clock started pinging. Finally ready to do the deed and contribute one (strictly one only) additional grandchild to the dynastic line, she’d spent two years hunting for a suitably docile spouse at professional networking events and society dos. She wasn’t going to be too fussy. Someone with just the basics: height, looks, not overly intelligent, a healthy bank balance and not too closely related. Someone like the sunburned twit standing in front of her.
Tommy Tang offered all of these, together with a cute smile, a taste for experience travel and a lust for high-performance sports cars. He passed his bedroom performance exam with flying colours (she’d insisted he retake the test several times). All the right boxes being ticked, Decima had pulled the trigger, got herself pregnant and only then got around to seeking Tai-po’s very necessary approval.
Turned out, spousal due diligence wasn’t Decima’s forte. In contrast, Tai-po had let loose the private investigators who, in turn, had unleashed the omniscience of Google, to discover that Tommy didn’t tick a few of the extra boxes Decima should have put on her checklist. Thanks to some expensive lawyers, Tommy might lack a criminal record. But it was a given that he wouldn’t be allowed back into the securities industry, either in this lifetime or the next.
Tai-po had a few words to say, none of which constituted the approval needed if Decima wanted continued access to the family trust fund. Only when Decima’s waistline had become a discussion piece with Tai-po’s beringed mah jong posse did the old lady hold her nose and say the magic words.
Decima promptly told Tommy that they were getting married and that she wasn’t changing her name. To make sure he knew where and when he was supposed to turn up, she delegated responsibility for the invitations to him, and WhatsApp’d him the details:
Date: 8/7/2024
Time: 11 o’clock
Place: St. Margaret's Chruch, 2A Broadwood Rd, Leighton Hill
Knowing Tommy, and also knowing he was more interested in planning a pre-wedding getaway with his mates, she followed up with a second message clarifying that it was 11 a.m., not 11 p.m.
Like all dead fish, Tommy had gone with the flow. He copied the details to the printer, quite literally. Decima gritted her teeth when she found the typo on her WhatsApp message faithfully reproduced in beautiful gold lettering (large font for Tai-po’s benefit) but was forced to let it go – in a spate of unprecedented efficiency, Tommy had already dispatched the invitations by snail mail. After sorting out the rest of the logistics, her biggest fear had been arriving at the altar to find him wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt and the same fish-blood-and-guts stained khaki cargo shorts he was wearing now. Her second biggest worry had been giving birth in the church while the entire invite list live-streamed her swearing and grunting on their social media feeds.
In need of therapy, she’d spent the remaining weeks before the wedding pre-spending Tai-po’s much-anticipated lai see.
“Do you know what it’s like turning up to the church with an eight-month bump to find my parents, my grandmother, the guests, the priest, photographers … the damn workers repairing the water fountain thingy? Everyone but my husband-to-be?”
“But –”
“But shit! I was calling hospitals. And where were you? Hanging out with the friggin’ fish in Saipan!” She slapped him on his forearm where the sunburn was reddest.
“I had a month and –” Tommy managed to get five machine-gun-quick words out before being shut down again. Using the involuntary down time constructively, he rubbed his arm.
“No, I had a month. Less. You had one job to do – turn up sober.”
“I’m going to. Of course I am. I’ve got the tux and everything. The rings –”
“I should put the bloody ring through your nose.” It was still an option. A few sleeping pills added to his single malt and … it might take a few attempts, but she was confident she could do it.
Sensibly, Tommy decided to let Decima vent. He wondered whether they were still engaged, or whether she would instruct him to make a fresh romantic proposal.
“And now we have to do it over. The dress, both dresses, the banquet … I … oww. I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to go through it all again.” She stroked her protruding stomach, reassuring herself rather than the unborn baby.
Mustering his defences, Tommy reached into one of the pockets in his cargo shorts.
“Hell! Even your parents made it. Can’t stand me, but they came. We had a nice exchange of e-mails about their hotel bookings. Then they got on a plane from somewhere in the land of the free and flew all the way to Hong Kong to witness their one and only not get hitched.”
“But the wedding’s not ’till next month!” He waved the double-folded invitation around like he was fending off a drone attack.
“Next month!? Are you still growing weed on the roof? Because I told you to stop before we got another visit from the police. Next month? We’d be spending our honeymoon in the maternity ward!” They hadn’t been planning on going anywhere except HKTV Mall, to stock up on diapers and noise-cancelling headphones.
He checked the text she’d sent him against the gold-lettered invitation. “I put it in my calendar: August 7th. We’re getting married on August 7th. In the morning, like you –”
“8th July,” she countered. “How could you …” she trailed off as he shoved his phone under her nose, and the penny dropped. “You Americans really are different. Now, can you call my driver? My water just broke.”
Simon Berry is a recovering lawyer who calls Hong Kong home. He has an MFA in creative writing and a PhD in English literature from City University. His novels A Wasting Asset, A Debt To Pay and A Road to Follow are available on Amazon.
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