Chapter 3
What really made me start thinking seriously about marriage was an Excel spreadsheet.
Three months before the wedding, I drew up a household cash-flow forecast.
An occupational hazard.
When Chen Shuo saw it, he laughed. “You’ve turned getting married into a project appraisal.”
I checked the figures on the sheet, line by line. “The mortgage and living expenses will come to over twenty thousand a month. How are we supposed to manage without working it out?”
We sat together at the dining table.
I averaged about fifteen thousand a month after tax, not including project bonuses.
Chen Shuo took home twelve thousand, with a year-end bonus. His income was steadier than mine.
The mortgage was eighty-one hundred a month.
Building management fees, utilities, car insurance, food, both sets of parents, day-to-day expenses…
When we got to children, Chen Shuo said, “How much can a baby cost?”
I looked at him.
“Do you know how much a postnatal carer costs?”
“Can’t we manage without one?”
“Then who’ll do the work?”
“My mum.”
“Your mum will look after me while I recover from giving birth?”
“She’s very capable.”
I didn’t answer.
“And you get paid maternity leave,” he added. “Your company pays into social insurance for you, doesn’t it?”
“What about after maternity leave?”
“What?”
“Who’ll do the drop-offs and pick-ups? Who’ll take time off when the child is ill? Nursery finishes some time after four, doesn’t it? What about the summer and winter holidays?”
Chen Shuo was quiet for a while. “We’ll work it out when we get there. There’s always a way.”
I turned the laptop towards him.
“I’m not saying we won’t manage. I’m asking who’ll do it.”
He frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. Who will do it?”
He leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment.
“I’ll do whatever I can, obviously. But you know the kind of job I have. I can’t just take time off whenever I want. Your company’s a bit more flexible, isn’t it?”
I looked at him.
There it was again.
His job couldn’t move.
Mine could.
He must have seen my expression, because he added, “I’m not saying you should do everything. In a marriage, whoever can manage it more easily does a bit more. What’s wrong with that?”
“Then why,” I asked, “does it always turn out to be easier for me?”
Chen Shuo stared.
After a while, he gave a little laugh.
“Liang Cen, have you spent so long on projects that you calculate the cost of everything now?”
I smiled too.
“Living does have a cost.”
“What about love?”
“Are you going to calculate that too?”
That stopped me.
Because in our culture, the moment a woman starts counting the cost to her time, her body, or her career, it looks as though she doesn’t love enough.
Money can be counted. A home can be counted.
The betrothal money can be counted. Renovation costs can be counted.
But who gives birth, who gets up in the night, who takes leave, who passes up a promotion, who spends an extra fifty minutes commuting—those are things best left uncounted.
Count them, and you damage the relationship.
I closed Excel.
We didn’t discuss it any further that night.
Past one in the morning, Chen Shuo was asleep. I was still awake.
Occasionally, a car passed on the elevated road outside, sweeping light through the gap in the curtains and across the ceiling.
I suddenly began working out a number I’d never seriously calculated before.
An extra hour’s commute every working day meant twenty-two hours a month.
Over two hundred and sixty hours a year.
Two thousand six hundred hours in ten years.
A hundred and eight days.
And that was just commuting.
It wasn’t that I begrudged those hundred and eight days.
It was that, for the first time, I’d realised the things we called “while you’re at it,” “it’s easier for you,” and “could you just do this” could really add up to years of a person’s life.