This is the final part of Delicate Touches and I've struggled with this part more than any other part because I still feel I should have tacked this part onto Part Seven as it's just an epilogue and the part where I tie up loose ends. The eventual novel that comes out of this would be longer but this is just the first draft, more or less. Thank you to the people who stayed with me to the end, it's been a marathon effort but now that I've finished it, I'll be moving onto shorter stories!
Shaima.
*****
For many years Mei Lin had harboured an obsession with numbers. As a high school student she'd scored high in maths tests and gained an A+ for her final exam. Part of her fascination for numbers lay with her ninth year maths teacher Ms Grey and it had nothing to do with Ms Grey's looks, rather it was her oft-repeated mantra that mathematics was the universal language of the universe. Alien beings might find our music and art baffling or even distasteful but we had a common tongue with mathematics. For someone like Mei Lin who'd spent the first few years of her life in Malaysia, the concept of a universal language was alluring. Her love of numbers had even infiltrated her religious beliefs. Six days to create the world and the seventh day to rest. Forty days and forty nights for a flood, and three days in a tomb.
Much of the latter however was behind her. The earth was four billion years old not six days, the flood had been but one of many floods and there was no proof Jesus had been resurrected. Yet despite that, she still attributed significance to certain numbers and after three days away from Stevie she felt as if she'd awakened as from a slumber. Contrary to her natural instinct, she didn't stay the night at Stevie's on the Sunday night and she didn't go back to Elwood either. Nicki was there and she wanted to spend the night in her old bed because at least there beneath the duvet she could process her feelings.
Her mother had no idea of what had happened after the balloon flight but she already knew that Stevie was out. It was on her profile page and her mother had become something of an Internet junkie, constantly posting memes condemning abortion, same sex marriage and anything that smacked of liberalism. Thus, the first question she'd asked Mei Lin that Sunday night was about Stevie's sexuality and Mei Lin candidly admitted that Stevie was gay.
"But it's not a crime, mum," she chose her words carefully, "not in Australia."
"But it should be, now look at the country."
"The country is still here," she replied, "there are no gas chambers or concentration camps, people get married to people of the same sex and the opposite sex, children are born and life just goes on," she finished suddenly as her father came into the kitchen.
"How was the balloon flight?"
"It was fantastic," she smiled, "did you see the pictures?"
Unlike her mother, Mei Lin's father didn't spend a lot of time on the Internet when he wasn't at work, it was only recently that he'd finally agreed to set up a Facebook profile. Perhaps he feared that his friends would visit his wife's profile and think that they shared the same skewed beliefs or maybe he just saw it as a trivial thing.
"I have not checked the Facebook," he frowned.
That gave Mei Lin the exit she needed and she spent the next half an hour or so showing him her pictures and the video. She felt a closeness to her father that she'd never felt for her mother, he was the one she looked up to and whenever she was hurting or confused she turned to her father first because he at least would defer to logic instead of lurching into an emotional tirade.
The next morning however she had felt somewhat guilty as she drove away because she hadn't outed herself to her parents. She did out herself to Stella at work and the older woman merely raised her eyebrows and smiled.
"So, you and Stevie, huh?"
"It looks like it but I'm still confused."
"One night between the sheets won't turn you gay, trust me. I've slept with a few straight women for the first time and they're still straight. Give yourself some room to breathe and take stock, it's not a life or death decision to out yourself, or not," she propped on her palm.
"And nobody should feel the pressure to out themselves. There are those out there on both sides of the divide who politicise the debate and shout it from the rooftops but they forget that ordinary men and women are merely falling in and out of love. We say in AA that most folks just want to be happy, whether that's loving your own kind or building plastic model cars."
"Model cars," Mei Lin nudged her glasses.
"What do you think I did for the first six months of my sobriety," she replied, "I came home from work and went to work on a model car until it was time to make dinner and go to a meeting, and after the meeting I'd come home and do a bit of work on the car and then try to sleep. My head was literally spinning, I white knuckled it for months and months."
"Maybe I should make model cars then."
"Whatever," she replied, "I gave most of them to my cousin's son but I still have a couple of boxes buried on the top shelf of the wardrobe."
And yet despite the offer, she'd not gone looking for model cars. Instead she'd kept herself busy with work and school work, anything to keep from facing the inevitable question. Am I gay or not? The second day was much like the first only this time she was at school and found herself both drawn to and repelled by girls she'd come to know as friends. Should she be looking at a friend like this? To make matters worse, Stevie hadn't come to the rescue. Granted she texted two or three times a day but there was no I love you or promises of undying love. It seemed that Stevie was just waiting for her to make up her own mind and that frightened her. What if she made a decision and it turned out to be the wrong one?
On the third day however she came to a decision as she came home from a half day at school. She was going to go for a drive. She had no ultimate destination in mind. That was the thing about living here, you could literally drive for days without running out of road and if you drove right around Australia it would take months.
Mei Lin found herself heading east through the inner suburbs of Hawthorn and Camberwell, and then through Box Hill and Heathmont but as she drew closer to her parents house Mei Lin finally diverted to Linda's 'soon to be old home' in South Croydon, not knowing if Linda was even at home and half expecting the house to be locked.
Linda's door was open however and when Mei Lin called out, the older woman came to the door, judging by her old clothes and rubber gloves she'd obviously been cleaning.
"Can I come in for a few minutes?"
"Sure," Linda stepped back to let her in.
"Are you busy?"
"Kind of," Linda started peeling off her rubber gloves, "I've been cleaning half the day, I'm at the shower now and once I've cleaned that I'm having a cold shower. This fucking heat is taking it out of me."
"We've got climate control at our place."
"It can't come soon enough," Linda led her through to the kitchen, "you want something to wet your whistle?"
"Soft drink."
"Any particular flavour?" Linda opened the fridge, "one of the benefits of being a recovering alcoholic is having a good variety of lolly water although I've never taken to Doctor Pepper."
"Me neither," Mei Lin leaned against the bench, "I'll have whatever you're having."
"Pepsi it is then," she took out two cans, "do you want it in a glass or straight from the can?"
