Issue 24

Monica Macansantos

The night Andrew received his mother’s call, he was unbuttoning his shirt in front of his bathroom mirror, savoring the lazy, pleasant buzz that lingered in his head after a night of drinking and sauntering down the warm, noise-filled streets of Makati with friends who could drop everything at a moment’s notice to celebrate his good fortune with him on a Tuesday night. His breath reeked of alcohol, his clothing smelled of cigarettes, and he was annoyed about having to shower when all he wanted was to crawl into bed and into the arms of the girl he had brought home. But Nina, who laughed as she unbuttoned her blouse, had told him that a shower would do him good. He took her slow disrobing as a hint she’d join him, but she made no promises. He had gotten this far with her and wasn’t in the mood to argue.

When Andrew’s phone buzzed against the vanity table, the first thing that occurred to him was that there had been an emergency at the hotel, and that, as his boss’s new right-hand man, he had to be there to clean up the mess, to soothe frayed nerves. “It will be more work, but you’ll be adequately compensated,” his boss had told him that morning, his large hand squeezing Andrew’s in a strong, friendly grip before letting it go. Andrew was, of course, the perfect man for this kind of promotion because no one else at the Manila Peninsula understood a guest’s needs as much as he did. Like him, the men and women who checked into this hotel sought refuge from the lives they led, a place where their needs could be met with no strings attached. What they sought was freedom, which they never had in their homes or workplaces, for it was a hotel that provided ease, an escape from other people’s expectations. He always reminded new hires, from the people working behind the reception desk to the chambermaids who emptied their guests’ wastebaskets in the morning, that the people who walked through their doors were their guests, no matter what their last names were, what their skin color was, what they did for a living, how their accents sounded, or even how they held their silverware. The last thing their guests wanted when checking into this hotel, he told them, was to be judged.

Instead, it was his mother’s number flashing on his phone’s screen, and for a moment he hesitated before taking the call. He pushed the bathroom door shut when he sensed the panic in her voice, and walked away from the door.

“It’s your father,” she said, and she sounded like she was about to cry.

“What happened?”

“He’s very sick.”

“Have you talked to Carmina?” Carmina, his elder sister, was a doctor, and lived an hour away from their parents.

He could hear her taking a deep breath before she said, “He locked himself up in his room and won’t open the door. He thinks the cops are coming for him.”

“Ma, what’s going on?” His mind cleared as he spoke, not because he wanted to know what his mother was talking about, but because what she had just said made absolutely no sense to him.

“It’s been happening,” she said, hesitating, “for a week now. I didn’t want to tell you because I was sure you’d be worried. You know how disappointed he was when he failed the Bar this year, didn’t you?”

“Ma, you should’ve talked him out of it.”

“I tried, but you know how stubborn he is. It’s been his lifelong dream. I couldn’t just say no.”

“You could’ve told him that it doesn’t matter to us. At his age, he should be tending to his garden.” This was what his father excelled at: putting pressure on himself, even when the people who knew him were too busy getting on with their lives to mind his failures.

“If you were here, you could’ve helped me talk him out of it.”

There was a faint, hesitant rapping on the bathroom door, followed by Nina asking him, in a voice touched with concern, if everything was all right. He put a hand over the receiver and said, “It’s my mom.” He pressed his phone to his ear as Nina pulled away from the door, and a chill came over him as he was enveloped anew in a world he thought he’d left behind.

The nightmares started three weeks ago, his mother said above the static, just after the Bar results were released. He didn’t find his name on the list, and two nights later he started crying out in his sleep. “I tried comforting him, but he wouldn’t go back to sleep. Then, the next day, he started telling me to lock the gate and the door because the cops were after him. He wouldn’t let me leave the house, even when we ran out of food.”

“Did you tell Carmina?”

“I told her everything.” There was a pause.

“And what did she say?”

“She said she couldn’t bear to see him like this.”

“God damn it,” he muttered under his breath. He was aware that his sister’s marriage was on the rocks, but the old man was her father, and his parents hadn’t mortgaged their house to send her to medical school so that she could avoid them when they were ill. “But he’s her father,” he said, pounding his thigh with a clenched fist.

“I called for an ambulance about an hour ago. They’re in the driveway, but your father ran into our room to hide. He thinks they’re the police, that’s why. He won’t open up. I’m afraid he’s going to hurt himself.”

“Am I supposed to go there?” Baguio was at least a seven-hour bus ride from Manila. With luck, he’d get a midnight trip from Cubao, and it would be morning by the time he reached his parents’ house. He was angry with Carmina for refusing to help when she was just an hour away, but the more he thought of her, the more he understood why she couldn’t go. What did his mother expect him to do, once he was there? Like his sister, he was afraid. If strangers couldn’t talk him into opening his door, neither could he.

“You have to come. I’m begging you. You’re the only person who can help us now.” He knew he couldn’t argue with her any longer. Her voice was breaking as she spoke.

Nina was waiting for him on the living room couch when he opened the door. She had taken one of his robes and wrapped it around herself, and although the sight of her waxed legs falling out of his robe would’ve excited him earlier, he couldn’t will himself to feel anything aside from embarrassment when their eyes met. He leaned against the wall, staring into the darkness of his sparsely furnished living room, waiting for the appropriate feelings to come rushing to him. Her bare feet padded towards him, and he froze at the touch of her fingers.

She was only a friend from work, and they were hardly a couple. But he took her hand in his, afraid that she’d leave him if he told her the truth.

“It’s my dad. I have to go home.”

He wouldn’t be in Baguio for another seven hours, but if his father attempted to take his own life in his room, at least his mother wouldn’t tell him later on that he didn’t do anything to prevent this. He fell asleep on the bus, and when he woke the sun was rising, pouring its rays over mist-covered mountains and rice paddies that surrounded his hometown. He was almost home and felt a soft glow of hope spread within him as he looked out the window, almost forgetting why he was sitting on a bus, on his way to his father’s house.

He checked his phone and saw that his mother had texted him at two in the morning, saying that the ambulance that had come to pick his father up had left and would return the next day. As his bus entered the empty streets of a small town that was just waking up, he rang the hospital, asked for an ambulance, and from the bus station called his mother to tell her he was on his way.

An ambulance was waiting at the gate of their hillside home when he stepped out of the cab, and two orderlies in white suits were chatting and smoking in the shaded, tree-lined driveway when he unlatched the gate. One of them had what appeared to be a straitjacket draped over his arm, and nodded at him as he walked past them. “You been here long?” he asked them, and they smiled sheepishly as they dropped their half-finished cigarettes on the gravel and put them out with their white shoes. The front door slammed and his mother, hair unkempt, came rushing to his side.

“Those two guys were smoking,” he said, his mother clutching at his arm as they entered the alley of shrubbery leading to the front door.

“Don’t worry. Your dad won’t notice.”

His head was heavy with sleep as he strode past the dark, tiny living room and his mother’s slick-tiled kitchenette. He walked up to his father’s closed door, glanced at the laminated photograph of Saint Therese of Lisieux pinned to the wood, sighed, and knocked.

“Dad, it’s me. It’s Andrew.”

The old man stirred. “Is that you, anak?”

“Yes, Dad. It’s me.”

His father unlocked his door, poked his head out, and asked, in a timid voice, “Is the coast clear?” The hairs on Andrew’s nape stood on end when his father grinned. His mother rushed to them, saying in a level voice, “They’ve left, dear.”

“It’s just us, Dad,” he said, sliding an arm around his father’s frail body and giving his mother a quick nod. She met his glance, took the old man’s hand and said, “It’s a beautiful morning, Arturo. Why don’t we take a walk?”

Andrew held the front door open for the three of them, glad that the shrubbery his father planted by the door years ago kept the orderlies hidden from view. Footsteps crunched against the gravel, and he could feel his father hesitating, pulling away from his grip.

“Agents,” his father whispered.

“It’s just Carmina. She’s home,” Andrew said, in the most nonchalant tone he could muster. The two orderlies marched towards them, side by side, unfurling a straitjacket between them.

Andrew brought his arms around his father’s waist, while his mother gripped the old man’s wrist with both hands. His father whimpered and tried twisting himself out of Andrew’s embrace, and their eyes met before he moaned, in a voice that sent chills through Andrew’s body, “So you’re with them now.” One of the orderlies was holding a syringe, and he stabbed the needle into the old man’s arm while Andrew held him. After some struggle, he collapsed in Andrew’s arms, and Andrew pulled him up while the two young men fastened the jacket’s belts around him. “Thank God,” Andrew’s mother said, wringing her hands, while Andrew released him into the arms of the orderlies. His arms ached, and he sank onto the front step as he watched them take his father away. Two more orderlies were coming through the gate, pushing a stretcher between them.

Andrew rose and took his mother’s hand as his father was loaded onto the stretcher. “I told him you were coming, and he waited for you,” his mother said as they followed the group of orderlies through the open gate.

“And I tricked him.”

“There was no other way.”

The doctor on duty assured him that the windows of the General Hospital’s psychiatric ward were equipped with metal bars “as a necessary safeguard.” His father had convinced himself that he was being brought to jail, and being brought to a room with bars would only confirm this belief. Andrew asked the bespectacled, baby-faced doctor if there were alternatives to this arrangement. The doctor tilted his balding head and laughed as though to commiserate. He then suggested a rehabilitation center on the outskirts of town called Roseville. “It’s a beautiful place, with rolling lawns and lots of space for walking and exercise. You’ll have to spend a lot more though, if you want to put him there.” His mother was filling prescriptions at a nearby pharmacy, and they stood right beside his father, who lay sedated in bed. “I think they left brochures for us. I can get one for you, if you’re interested.”

“Thanks.”

The doctor’s sneakers squeaked against the faded linoleum as he opened the door and strode down the hallway.

Andrew thought of what his mother had told him as they sat at his father’s bedside, watching his father’s bony chest rise and fall beneath his thin hospital gown. “He kept on dreaming that you, Carmina, and I were locked in our rooms. He’d wake up in the middle of the night, yelling at me for not opening our doors to him.”

He could hear his father pounding on his bedroom door as he sat beside his sedated father, waiting for the doctor to return. No longer was he an adult, sitting beside his father’s hospital bed, for he was now small enough to crawl under his bed with his plastic Spider-Man as his father yelled at him through his bedroom door in a crazed voice that made him shiver, even now, as the doctor, holding a brochure, asked him if he was all right.

The picture of an ivy-covered brick inn advertised as “Roseville” on the cover of the glossy brochure intrigued him. The private room featured inside had high ceilings, a single bed, a nightstand, a bookshelf, and cushioned flooring. It had a window that overlooked an open lawn. He noticed the latticed grills.

He checked the prices listed at the back of the brochure and made his calculations. Much as he believed that a person like his father, a retired schoolteacher, had every right to receive care in a place like this, he also knew that privacy, comfort, fresh air, and individual attention came at a price.

His mother stepped inside the room, and he rose from his chair, telling her he had to make a call. In a balcony shaded off from the street by a bamboo grove, he dialed Carmina’s number. She picked up after four rings.

“Where are you?” she asked with an air of authority that was typical of her, but threw him off nonetheless.

“I should be the one asking you that.”

“I’m in a meeting.”

“Do you know that Dad’s in the hospital? And that he wouldn’t come out of his room until I came home from Manila?”

“I’m really sorry. I just wasn’t up to it.”

“I wasn’t up to it either. But I’m here, and you’re nowhere.”

“I just can’t see him like this. I’m in a daze.”

“Oh, come on, Ate.”

There was silence on the other end, and then he heard her sniffling.

“My husband has another woman,” she said, her voice cracking.

“What’s that got to do with this?” he blurted out, and he soon regretted what he’d said when she erupted into sobs.

“None of you care about how I feel,” she sobbed.

“Ate, you have to calm down.”

“How can I calm down?” she wailed into the phone. “My father’s sick, and my marriage is falling apart.”

“That husband of yours has cheated on you three times. It’s time for you to leave him and come help your father.”

She quieted down, then asked, “What’s the name of your attending physician?”

“Doctor Paragas.”

“I went to med school with his sister. Tell him that.”

“And how’s that supposed to help?”

“He’ll treat Dad better if he knows his sister’s my friend.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the hallway and spotted a jaundiced young man lying in a gurney. The young man’s skin clung to his bones, and he returned Andrew’s stare with glazed-over eyes. There was no way he could spend another hour in this harshly lit building that reeked of bleach, used liberally and without success, to rub out the sour smell of illness and death. “I’m putting Dad in an institution called Roseville. He’ll get proper care and he might just recover from this. It’s going to cost a lot of money. But we’re going to share in the expenses, you and I. If you aren’t going to contribute your share, I’ll tell Ma you did nothing.”

“Guess I have no right to say no.”

“You don’t,” he said, and hung up.

He sat in the ambulance that took his father to Roseville and held his mother’s hand as they watched his father’s face twitch and grimace in his sleep, as though pursued in his dreams by the same policemen who haunted him during his waking hours. They accompanied his sleeping father as nurses wheeled him into his new lodgings, Andrew wanting to make sure that the room they put him in was what the brochure had promised. Afterwards, he took a look at the grounds and the activity room, and signed some forms, settling the bill at the front desk as his mother spoke to the institution’s attending psychiatrist. He took his mother out for lunch afterwards, wrote her a check, and brought her home in a taxi. No one could say now that he didn’t care for his father, especially not Carmina, whom he barely had the chance to speak to, and likely wouldn’t go out of his way to console.

Afterwards, as he leaned back in his bus seat on his way back to Manila, his eyes lingered on the groves of pine trees clinging to the mountainside, slowly growing sparse as the bus slithered down the two-lane road into the lowlands. He remembered the pine trees his father had planted in their garden years before he was born and how they towered over them all, casting shadows on him as he had walked down his father’s driveway that morning to fetch him from his room. When he was growing up, the trees planted around their yard had grown tall enough to shield their house from view. His father drove him and Carmina to school and back, oftentimes pointing out that these trees kept them safe from the prying eyes of intruders. Neither he nor Carmina had playmates from the neighborhood, and the one friend he brought home when he was in elementary school was soon sent away after he blurted out a cuss word while they played sipa in the yard.

He found a cream-colored box on his desk when he returned to work the next morning with a Post-it Note shaped like a chef’s hat stuck to its corner. “If you need anything, please let me know. Your friend,” it read. A chuckle escaped from his lips when he read the phrase, “Let them eat cake!” embossed on the lid. He opened the box and found three rows of pastel-colored macarons inside. He popped one in his mouth and let it melt on his tongue as he plopped into his swivel chair and leaned back. He pulled out his phone from his pocket, typed out, “Dinner tonight?” and sent it to Nina.

Minutes later, she answered, “I get off at eight tonight, but I can fix you dinner downstairs. If you can wait for me, I can meet you. What would you like?”

He hadn’t been thinking clearly the night his mother called, and hadn’t refused Nina’s offer of a ride to the bus station. It was eleven at night when they set out in her Golf, and they sped down EDSA Avenue in silence, their eyes fixed on the dusty, littered highway as rickety city buses barreled past them. She glanced at him when they stopped at intersections. When he met her eyes, she smiled and glanced at the road, knowing perhaps that it wasn’t the best time to intrude.

“Salmon. Cook it whichever way. Will be downstairs at eight. I’ll tell Chef Luis not to nag you.”

“Thanks. I need that.”

“Thanks for the treats.”

“Hope they’re still fresh.”

The grilled salmon served to him that night at the hotel café was glazed with sugar and wine sauce and was juicy and fresh in the middle. He was finishing up a glass of Sauvignon Blanc when a young lady in a Tin Tin T-shirt and jeans walked up to his table. “How’s your meal?” It was Nina.

“You startled me,” he said, putting down his wine glass.

“It’s the lighting,” she said, pointing at the shaded lamp in the middle of the table. “Makes me look like a little girl.”

“This was so good,” he said, pointing at his empty plate with the tines of his fork.

“Thanks.” She pulled up a chair beside him, put her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her palms, and fixed her round eyes on his face.

“How’s your dad?”

“Not bad,” he said in haste, then, “Are you hungry?”

“I had an early dinner. But thanks, anyway.”

She had round cheeks, a small chin, and long-lashed eyes that narrowed into slits when she smiled. Her face had been heavily made up when they first met at a friend’s birthday party, and in the smoky, strobe-lit interior of the pulsating nightclub where they danced, he’d thought she was beautiful. He couldn’t catch her name above the thump of music, and so she took him by the hand to the restroom, where she planted a soft kiss on his earlobe and whispered, “It’s Nina.” While they kissed, his hand wandered up her dress and found a naked, round breast to fondle. She gasped with pleasure when he stroked her nipple with his thumb, and as it hardened to his touch, she grasped his hand through the material of her dress and with a drunken smile said, “Not yet.” A name like Nina was easy to remember, but when she wore her sous-chef’s uniform to a meeting the next day, she wasn’t as easy to recognize. Only then did he take notice of her at work, as he imagined what she looked like underneath all those clothes.

He smiled at her and asked, “Do you want to get some fresh air?”

Ayala Avenue in early June was quiet and balmy at nine in the evening. The Peninsula’s terraced fountains had just been lit up, a watery, illumined stairway that guided Andrew’s gaze upwards towards a starry, cloudless Manila sky. He walked past this fountain almost every day on his way to work and back to his apartment, but the sight of shimmering water cascading down these steps had a comforting, almost magical effect on him as he held Nina’s hand.

Bentleys and Lamborghinis had become a common sight on the streets of the central business district in recent months. Whenever he walked home, his eyes lingered on these cars that sped past him, observing the way their polished bodies captured the light of offices and hotel rooms several stories above, flinging this gathered light across the street at pedestrians like him. The executives he lunched with claimed these were boom times, and he could believe them, judging by the number of people booking rooms at The Peninsula, as well as the number of foreign businessmen checking into their hotel. Young executives like him were the future of this country, he was told at the gala dinners he was invited to. He found solace in this thought, telling himself that he was part of an economic revolution, that people like him weren’t alone in thinking this, that the Makati business district wasn’t just an island of glass and concrete rising from a sea of shantytowns and garbage-strewn streets.

The rustle of palm leaves filled his ears as she talked about being homesick in New York, where she had been just a year before, and about wanting to come home to a warm night like this after having survived a particularly harsh winter.

“I was dating a guy I went to culinary school with. After we graduated, I thought of staying on because of him. Horrible, competitive guy, but I was stupid and in love. Then one night, after I came home from an interview that did not go well, he joked that I could be his maid if I really wanted to stay in America.” She gave his hand a slight tug and laughed. “Did I make you mad?”

“I would’ve punched the guy,” he said.

“You’re cute,” she said, giggling.

“But I meant it,” he whined. But she was laughing, and for reasons he couldn’t understand, he started laughing too.

He placed his hand on the small of her back when they stepped inside his building’s elevator, and when they entered his unit he pulled her waist towards his and kissed her. She dropped her purse and rested an arm on his shoulder as her mouth opened to his, and when he asked if he needed to shower first, she whispered in his ear, “I want you now.” He had thought of her throughout the day, and as he carried her to his room, laid her down on his bed, pulled off her Tin Tin T-shirt, and unclasped her bra, he realized that what he truly wanted was oblivion. He wanted everything in his life to disappear: his job, the stupid, ugly face of an angry guest who claimed that her mink coat had been returned by their in-house cleaners “with a nick in it,” the antiseptic smell of hospital corridors, the childish twinkle in his father’s eyes when he opened his door to him, asking if the coast was clear. All he wanted was Nina, her body, and the look in her eyes as he entered her, pulling him in. He plowed her and clawed at her breasts, suckling them, seeking to bury himself deep inside her warmth until there was no escape, going gentle when she laid her fingertips on his chest and said, “Andrew, you’re hurting me.”

He laid his head in her lap afterwards, and when he apologized for being rough on her, she tucked a lock of his hair behind his ear and said, “Something’s bothering you, that’s all.” He wanted to tell her about his father’s madness but fought the urge. He chose to think of the subtle, surprising flavors of the dinner she had made for him, how they lingered on the tongue, and how his mother’s cooking would never compare to hers. He remembered the taste of his mother’s bland vegetable stew, which he hated, and then it all came rushing back to him, the memory of his family eating vegetable stew for weeks because they couldn’t afford anything better, because his mother was the only one working and his father had left his job because he wanted to review for the Bar, which he didn’t pass for the second time. He spoke of this memory as she stroked his hair, and he felt he could tell her everything, no matter how absurd his stories were, because she was listening. He had started this story and had to tell it to its end. Once he had gotten so hungry that he pinched some money from his mother’s purse and used it to buy corn chips at school. “I put the bag of chips in my backpack and nibbled on it all day, between classes. I forgot to throw away the bag before coming home.” He remembered his father barging into his room while he was studying for a test, belt in hand, pulling him onto his bed before whipping him, while his mother watched, begging his father to stop because it was just ten pesos. “She told him anyway even if she knew he’d beat me,” he said. “It was the day after the Bar results were released. He failed, you know. My dad probably felt super when he found out his son was a thief.”

“But it wasn’t your fault.”

“It set me straight, though. From that point on, I never stole again.”

“But you were hungry.”

“Wasn’t an excuse for stealing.” He looked into her eyes, which were filled with shock and sorrow, and said, “At least he took his failure like a man. He went back to teaching, didn’t complain about his life, even if we never got rich. We managed. That’s one thing about him I admired.”

She closed her eyes as she shook her head. “What he did to you was wrong.”

He raised his hand to stroke her hair, laughed, and said, “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you weren’t there the other night.”

In a low voice, she asked, “What happened?”

He sighed. “He had it in his head to try taking the Bar again, now that he’s retired. And guess what, he flunked it again.” He looked into her eyes to make sure she wasn’t pulling away from him as he spoke, and said, “He got really depressed. He was having a nervous breakdown when I saw him yesterday.”

She stroked his forehead, and said, “You poor thing.”

He felt a sharp pain rise up in his throat as he said, “I’m not crazy.” She slid beside him, and the touch of her arms sent a convulsion of grief through his body. He lacked the strength to keep the sobs at bay and fell apart as she drew him close to her breast.

“I hate my father.”

“I know,” she cooed. “And it’s all right.”

“He shouldn’t have had children. He shouldn’t have had me.”

“Don’t say that,” she said, with a wry smile.

Sunlight fell in streaks on his face when he woke the next day. His bedroom door had been left open, allowing the faint sound of a running shower to reach him as he lay in bed. He checked the clock on his nightstand. It was almost seven. As he pulled the sheets away, he faintly remembered a hand resting his head on a pillow, fingers tucking his blanket under his chin, and the touch of a woman’s lips on his forehead as the rest of his body eased itself into slumber.

“You’ve worked so hard. You should treat yourself to a new car,” his boss told him over lunch one day. “Take out an auto loan. Get yourself something new. We’re paying you well.” It was a gentle way of saying, “You can’t impress our clients with that old clunker of yours,” meaning his eight-year-old Mazda. Although he had thought of getting a new car when he learned of his promotion, his father’s medical bills had to be settled, leaving him with just enough for some basic luxuries.

“It’s not a Lamborghini, but listen to that engine,” he said to Nina. They were speeding up the wooded, hilly roads of Tagaytay in his newly purchased secondhand Audi convertible, the roof folded down on a pleasant Saturday morning.

“It’s already a sexy car, silly. We’d get kidnapped if this were a Lamborghini.”

“Thank God I can’t afford one,” he said, turning briefly to watch her shaking her hair loose from its chignon.

“Well, when my brother was kidnapped, he was just driving our family Pajero,” she said, leaning back in her seat as the wind whipped through her hair.

“Good God.”

“I know. It was horrible. But he made it out alive, thanks to my parents.”

“And you still came home, despite that.”

She raised her hand to feel the wind. “This is home.”

They spent much of their time indoors as typhoons lashed their city during the rainy months and monsoon rains flooded the streets. There were nights he spent at her apartment in Salcedo Village, where she had a fridge stocked with strange health foods and the occasional hotel kitchen leftover. When the streets were flooded, she spent the night at his pad, which, at the height of a storm, was a ten-minute drive from the hotel. They made love while typhoons whipped rain across the city’s sky and slammed it against their windowpanes. He kept a bottle of her favorite shampoo in his bathroom, while she kept a bottle of his aftershave on her vanity counter. While dressing for work one morning, he found her Tin Tin T-shirt piled with her underwear and pajamas in his dresser. He pulled it from the drawer, breathed in her scent, refolded it, and returned it to its pile.

His mother texted him with updates on his father. He was getting better, she said. He wasn’t imagining policemen and judges anymore and was beating other patients at Scrabble in Roseville’s game room.

“At least he’s good at something,” he texted back.

“He’s content. I hope he stays this way when he’s well.”

“He’d have to stay crazy for that to happen.”

“Don’t call your father that.”

His father came home in October, just as the skies began to clear. The long weekend of National Heroes Day was coming up. His mother called in the middle of the week, inviting him to lunch that Saturday to celebrate his father’s return. Carmina and her daughter would be there, she said.

“I really don’t see the point of going,” he murmured, burying his face in the curve of Nina’s nape as they lay in bed.

“You really don’t want to know how your father’s doing?”

He kissed the down at the base of her neck. “This means I can’t come with you to your parents.”

She sighed as he rested his hand on the curve of her waist. “If you go see your father, I’ll make marzipan for him.”

“He doesn’t even know what that is.”

She gave his thigh a playful slap. “Then he should try my marzipan before he tastes a crappy store-version.”

His Audi’s engine purred softly beneath his feet as he set out for Baguio at sunrise. If he drove instead of taking the bus, he could take the new expressway that bypassed the traffic-choked agricultural towns dotting the old, two-lane highway. The sky was clear, and he drove with his roof down as he sped past swampland, mango orchards, and statues of the Virgin Mary perched on lone, rocky hills. The freeway sliced through swaths of rice fields, and birds flying by the roadside raced him as he sped on. The engine did not complain as he navigated the steep, twisting two-lane road that slithered upwards into the cordillera’s interior. A chill set in as he drove on, and he knew he was home when he drove into a thin fog curling down the mountain slopes. As he switched on his fog lights and unfolded the roof of his car, he spotted a lone, scraggly pine tree clinging to a barren mountain slope, right beside a billboard advertising a country inn “with sweeping views of pine forests and meals served with fresh Baguio strawberries.”

His father’s pine trees cast shadows on his car’s leather seats as he pulled into the driveway. His mother had opened the gate for him and was pushing it shut when he switched off the engine, unbuckled his seatbelt, and leaned back in his seat.

“Well, this is new,” his mother said, walking towards him. He stretched, feeling a subtle ache creeping up his neck. He took off his sunglasses, placed them on the dashboard, cracked his door open, and reached for Nina’s marzipan in the passenger seat.

He stepped out and kissed his mother on the cheek before handing the pie to her. “And you brought dessert too! Is this from the hotel?”

“No, but it was made by a sous-chef who works at the hotel. She’s a wonderful cook.” He closed the car door behind them, and as his mother stared at the pie, said, “It’s called marzipan, a kind of cake made with crushed almonds.” He pushed the lock button in his trouser pocket, and the car made a loud, decisive chirp. “Nina made it especially for you.”

“Your girlfriend?”

He smiled. “Yeah.”

A look of relief crossed her face, and she said, “Well, it was wise of you not to take her here.”

He lowered his voice to a whisper as he said, “So he’s not yet well.”

“Oh, he’s gotten better, but you know,” she said, waving her hand around and smiling with her mouth closed. “It will take time before he returns to his old self.”

Parked at the corner of the driveway, underneath his father’s guava tree, was the old Volkswagen that Carmina inherited from their father after her wedding, which Rico, Carmina’s husband, had painted a garish neon blue. It glowed in the shade of his father’s guava tree like a radioactive insect with headlights for eyes.

“Is Rico here?” he asked, since it was Rico, and not Carmina, who knew how to drive.

“Of course.” She gave him a short, firm nod.

“You do know what happened between them, don’t you.”

“What was I supposed to do, turn him out? Besides, your father likes him. If I told him to go away, who knows what your father would do.”

The screen door slammed, and Rico waved at them as he approached.

“Nice car!” Rico called out.

“Thanks,” Andrew said. “It’s secondhand.” He was prepared to bolt, and fondled his car key in his pocket as Rico pumped his other hand. Rico wore a striped golf shirt that may have fit him a year before but was now stretched tight over his belly.

“Doesn’t look secondhand,” Rico said, wiping his bottom lip with his thumb and forefinger as his eyes wandered up and down the Audi’s silver body. He whistled, grinned, and said, “Mommy was just telling us that you got a promotion. I got a promotion at the hospital too, but you know how it is with us nurses in this country. They barely pay us a living wage.”

“I’m sure you’re doing all right,” Andrew said. As they walked towards the house, he took his phone out of his trouser pocket, typed, “My sister’s husband is back, acting like nothing happened. He just called my mom Mommy. God’s playing a sick joke on me,” and sent it to Nina.

The old man’s eyes were fixed on the TV set, and he didn’t lift them, even when Andrew stepped inside. His squarish face, which once had a healthy, muscled tan, owing to hours spent under the sun pulling weeds and hacking at tree branches with his bolo knife, was now soft and pale, almost blubbery. He had obviously regained the weight he had lost. He was wearing a T-shirt that advertised a brand of ibuprofen, and was seated on their tiny living room’s bamboo bench, sandwiched between Ruth, Carmina’s five-year-old daughter, and Carmina, who was flipping through a faded copy of Vogue with a young Cindy Crawford on its cover.

Confetti and balloons rained on a weeping game show contestant as a group of bikini-clad girls gyrated and sang in the background. “Itaktak mo, itaktak mo,” Ruth sang, her small, pitchy voice trailing the thin falsettos of the dancers.

“Ruthie, ask for blessing from your tito,” Rico said, closing the door behind them. Ruth jumped down from her seat, head bowed, and approached her uncle. Andrew felt the enormity of his hand as the little girl took it, and his hand barely grazed her forehead before she let go and returned to her seat. Carmina glanced up from her magazine, fixed Andrew a bored look, and said, “Hi, Drew.”

“Hi, Carmi.”

“Arturo,” his mother said, setting down the pie on the round dining table that separated the living room from the kitchenette.

His father’s eyes darted around the room, searching for her, and when he found her standing behind the bamboo bench, he asked, in a childlike voice, “Are we eating yet?”

“We will, soon. Your son is here. You were looking for him since yesterday, remember?” she said, pointing across the living room to where Andrew stood, right by the front door.

The old man’s eyes lit up. “You came!” he cried.

Andrew smiled. “Yes, I did.”

“He even brought dessert,” his mother said. “Something his girlfriend made.”

But his father wasn’t listening. His eyes had returned to the TV screen.

“He does that a lot,” his mother said, as she opened a cabinet and pulled out a stack of dishes.

Ruth leaned her head against her grandfather’s side, and the old man gingerly placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder.

“I didn’t know Charmaine baked,” Rico said, taking a seat beside his wife.

“Different girl. Her name’s Nina.”

“And this girl cooks?”

“She’s a sous-chef.”

“Sus-chef?”

“Sous. Assistant.”

“That’s French, isn’t it.”

“He’s blushing,” his mother said, giggling as she set the table.

“If she can cook well, you should marry her.”

“Thank you for telling him that, Rico,” his mother said. “He’s thirty-two years old.”

“Oh come on, Ma.”

“It’s true. Your dad and I won’t be here forever.”

“Mommy’s right,” Rico said, stretching an arm on the back of the bamboo bench before placing his hand on Carmina’s shoulder. “Life isn’t just about work.”

“Marriage isn’t for everyone,” Andrew said, wishing he could wipe his brother-in-law’s smarmy grin off his face. Perhaps Rico sensed this, for he gave a nervous laugh, turned to look at the food-laden table, and said, “It smells delicious, Mommy.”

“Andrew,” his father said in a soft voice. Everyone in the room turned to the old man.

“Yes, Dad?”

His father’s eyes lit up like a mischievous child’s.

“The last time I saw you, you were drunk,” his father said.

“When was this?” Andrew asked, alarmed.

“Before they brought me to the hospital,” his father said. “You were staggering, like this!” His father spread his arms and swung his head from side to side before bursting into a fit of giggling.

Carmina turned around in her seat to face their mother and asked, “He hasn’t taken his pill yet, has he?”

“Which one?”

As Andrew made for the restroom, Carmina said, “The blue one, the one that controls his hallucinations. Don’t worry, we’ll go through all his pills later.”

After relieving himself, Andrew switched on the sink faucet, only to hear a dry whistle escape from its spout. Sighing, he uncovered the plastic drum beside the sink and used a plastic dipper to rinse his hands. He dried his hands on his mother’s yellowed terrycloth towel and checked his phone. He had a new message from Nina. “It’ll just be a couple hours. You said so yourself. Take a deep breath. Don’t kill each other! xoxo,” it read. “Thank God she isn’t here,” he said to himself before texting back, “Hope everything’s going well on your end. I love you.” He kneaded his throbbing temples with his fingertips, looked in the paint-speckled mirror, blinked his tired eyes, and stepped outside.

Lunch was the usual celebratory fare: chicken and vegetable pansit, fried chicken, vegetable lumpia, pork adobo, a bowl of wet, lumpy rice. Rico told jokes that Andrew had heard from his barber in Manila, praised his mother-in-law’s cooking, and was first to pass a dish when the old man wanted something. “Everything tastes good, Daddy?” he asked, and the wrinkles in the old man’s face deepened as he smiled and nodded in assent.

When the sound of forks and spoons clinking against china filled the silence that fell upon them, Rico mentioned the recent news of a Filipina maid who had been raped and killed in Saudi Arabia. Andrew could feel himself wincing inside, especially when his mother, who had heard about the woman in the news, started describing the young lady’s injuries. He was trying to think of something else in the news that could steer the conversation away from this gruesome police report, when Rico himself changed the topic by talking about his life in Saudi Arabia, where he worked as a nurse for two years.

“It’s burning hot in Saudi. I had to drink three gallons of water a day, just to stay alive,” Rico said, mixing the soy sauce of his pork adobo with his rice.

“Were there many Filipinos in the hospital?” Andrew’s mother said, deboning the fried chicken on his father’s plate as his father looked on.

“Yes, Mommy, there were many Filipino nurses and doctors at the hospital where I worked. We’re running their hospitals and building their roads. Those Saudis don’t work at all, they just hire us to do the work for them.”

Carmina raised her glass and said, “Rico told me a story about a truckload of toilet bowls. The Saudis didn’t know what was in the boxes they were unloading, so they just tossed these boxes of toilet bowls out of the truck!”

“Imagine, Mommy, a truckload of toilet bowls all gone to waste!”

So, you finally found your crowd, Andrew said to himself, using one of his mother’s party napkins to wipe away the grease on his lips.

“At least, in the Philippines, we all get a good education,” his mother said. “They may have oil, but we are educated.”

Switching to English, Rico said, “At least, in Philippines, we knows English!”

“Is that right?” Andrew asked, folding his napkin.

“Of course, yes! In Philippines, we knows English more!”

“Okay,” Andrew said, his laughter nearly escaping his mouth as he spoke. His mother gave him a look of reproach from across the table. Carmina ate her food in silence while her daughter twirled her noodles with her fork, humming a tune.

The old man had piled a mountain of rice on his plate, and he stared at it in bewilderment, muttering to himself as he clutched his fork and spoon. His mother put a hand on his shoulder, and asked, “Would you like anything, Arturo?”

“Daddy, do you need anything?” Rico asked in a loud voice. “More meat to go with all that rice?”

“I think he heard you,” Andrew said.

His father brushed off her hand, scooped a ball of rice with his spoon, pushed it near a piece of chicken, and lifted the spoon to his mouth.

“I knew you could do it, Daddy,” Rico said.

“No one said he couldn’t,” Andrew rejoined.

As though he hadn’t heard Andrew, Rico turned to him with a warm, guileless smile and said, “Say, brother, you work at The Peninsula, don’t you?”

“That is correct.”

“If you work at a hotel, relatives get discounts, don’t they?”

He drank up the last of his soda, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Yes, that’s one of our privileges.”

“Hey, Carmi, wouldn’t it be cool to spend a night at the Manila Pen?”

In a tired voice, she asked, “And when will we have the chance?”

“You could take a leave. Or we could do it when you visit Manila for one of your doctors’ conferences. Andrew can make it happen. Di ba, Andrew?”

With a fork, Andrew pushed the remaining pansit noodles on his plate into a pile. “I can extend my discount privileges to my sister.”

“But Ruthie and I can come along too, can’t we?”

He met Rico’s look, and said, in a firm voice, “Just my sister and her family.”

“Thanks,” Carmina said, with what seemed to be a look of apology. “We appreciate it.”

“We weren’t asking for anything else,” Rico said, stabbing a soy-sauce-coated chunk of pork with his fork.

“I was just making sure,” Andrew said.

“Making sure of what, Drew?” Carmina said, putting down her fork and spoon.

He couldn’t stand the pretense any longer. “I was making sure that he wouldn’t abuse the favor. The Pen isn’t just some roadside motel he can check his mistresses into.”

Rico wiped his mouth with his napkin, tossed it beside his plate, and said, “Carmi, would you want me to leave? Because it seems like your brother doesn’t want me here.”

“No, you sit down. This is your home too.” She turned to Andrew and said, “Let’s not fight. It’s Dad’s party, not ours.”

He laughed, rolled his eyes, and said, “You weren’t even here when he needed you. And now that he’s sort of well, you can be his doctor again, acting all concerned and sorting his pills.”

“She helped too when you left,” their mother said, while his father brought another piece of chicken to his mouth.

“At least Rico and I visited Dad at Roseville.”

He could hear his own voice rising as he said, “But I brought him there. I made all the arrangements.”

“Well, thank you for that, but you could’ve also visited him while he was getting better. He didn’t get one visit from you.”

“I was the one who thought of visiting Daddy,” Rico chimed in. “We were there for him.”

“Yes, it was Rico’s idea,” Carmina added. “Without him, I wouldn’t have gotten through this.”

“I played Scrabble with your dad,” Rico said. “He’s gotten really good.”

“I beat him every time,” the old man said, pointing his fork at Rico.

“That’s true,” Rico said, nodding. “He beat me, fair and square.”

“Of course he’d beat you,” Andrew said, laughing. “You can barely speak English.”

A look of disbelief crossed Carmina’s face as she asked, “What is your problem?”

“Can I have dessert?” Ruth asked. Andrew’s mother smiled at her and said, “Your Tito Drew brought a pie for us. It’s a special kind of pie, isn’t it, Andrew?”

“But I beat him,” his father whined, fear creeping over his wrinkled face as the room fell into a hush.

“Of course you beat him,” Andrew said, in a voice that sounded astonishingly insincere. “You beat him on your own terms.”

“I did, I really did,” his father whined, and his face crumpled as a tear rolled down his cheek. His wife rushed to his side, holding his shoulders as his body heaved.

“Look what you’ve done,” Carmina said as Andrew stared at his lap, too afraid to say anything more.

Andrew lay on the lumpy, sagging bed of his childhood room, waiting for sleep to come as he stared at the mildewed ceiling. He remembered raising his hands in surrender as he rose from his chair at the dining room table, claiming that the long drive up to Baguio had worn him down and that he wasn’t himself. His mother had been rubbing his father’s shoulders in an attempt to soothe the old man and wouldn’t look up when she said, in a level voice, “Drew, you need to lie down and rest. You can use your old room if you want to.” He was too embarrassed to defy her after all the trouble he had caused.

He had looked inside his closet before going to bed and found his comic books, sweaters he had long outgrown, even his old school uniforms. Moth-eaten blankets formed an amorphous mass on the floor beside his bed, while his mother’s old fashion magazines were stacked in a neat pile beside them. The entire room seemed to be covered in a film of dust, and his old comforter smelled of must and age. The kapok fibers used to stuff his pillow gave off a sour, aged scent as he turned to his side. He thought of the years that lay between his departure for Manila after graduating high school and this brief, upsetting visit. Years had passed since he lay in this bed, under these covers. His life had taken off in Manila, while time stood still in this room. He never spent the night at his father’s home when he came to Baguio, preferring to check into the Camp John Hay Manor whenever he had business in this town, and he could understand why his mother hadn’t dusted and aired his room. What he couldn’t understand was why his mother hadn’t gotten rid of objects that were of no use to anyone living in this house. Surely a poor kid could wear his old uniforms and sweaters, and a poor family could keep themselves warm during the winter months with just one of his fleece blankets. Her old Vogues wouldn’t bring herself up to date with the latest fashions, and he was surprised to find that she hadn’t given his comic books away to the newspaper and bottle collector who occasionally passed through their neighborhood. It was almost as if she had been waiting for her little boy to come back to his room, lock himself up, pull on a sweater, crawl under these blankets, and console himself after a scolding or beating by reading about Planet Op Di Eyps, a land where monkeys wore human clothing and cajoled each other in Tagalog about their misfortunes.

The cloud of strain he had left behind seemed to lift as silverware clinked against plates and the sound of laughter and conversation penetrated his closed door. His mother was offering Nina’s marzipan for dessert, and Rico volunteered to cut the cake into equal slices, claiming he was good at math. Slices were passed around, and his mother remarked that it was good, while Ruth asked if she could have ice cream with her slice. He could hear the relief in his mother’s voice as she spoke to this child, saying, “Yes, you like chocolate ice cream, don’t you?” Carmina protested, saying that too much sugar would be bad for the child, but their mother brushed away her protests by saying, “It’s only once in a while.”

“You’re spoiling her,” Carmina said. Neither Carmina nor he had ice cream when they were growing up. Sugar is bad for you, their mother used to tell them, echoing what their father used to say about dessert.

“I can indulge myself in a little spoiling, can’t I?”

His muscles ached when he woke to the sound of dance music and the bored, nasal voice of a TV announcer rattling off a list of prizes: flat-screen TVs, Samsung Galaxy Notes, washing machines, a year’s supply of Surf fabric softener. He breathed in the smell of kapok as he rubbed his eyes. He checked his watch. An hour had passed: it was two in the afternoon. The heaviness in his head had lifted. He got up and checked his phone.

He had a text from Nina, sent an hour earlier. “It’s different when you’re not around. I love you,” it read.

After combing his hair, smoothing the creases of his shirt, and putting on his shoes, he stepped outside. He saw his father standing at the dining table, fumbling with a knot on top of a bag of green mangoes as Ruth looked on. “When I was just a little older than you,” he said to Ruth, finally untying the knot, “we used to climb the mango tree of our neighbor’s backyard and steal as many mangoes as we could before the old man who lived in that house chased us away with a bolo knife. When my father found out what we were doing, he gave me a good whipping!” He took one mango in his left hand and allowed the fragrant fruit to rest in his palm. Ruth grinned at her grandfather, perhaps expecting him to offer her a peeled mango. Andrew looked on, wondering why his father’s tenderness had to skip a generation.

“Do you want to eat those mangoes, Dad? I can peel some for you,” Rico called out from the bamboo bench, where he sat with Carmina. When his eyes met Andrew’s, Andrew lifted a hand and said, “Sorry, man.”

“Apology accepted,” Rico said, with a lift of the chin.

“I can peel these mangoes myself. Why, do you think I can’t do it?” the old man said.

Upon hearing her father, Carmina sighed, put down what she was reading, and approached the dining table.

“Mila, give me a knife,” their father said, as their mother dried her hands with a tea towel.

“Mom, don’t,” Carmina said. Their mother glanced at her and then at Andrew, pursing her lips as she wrung the towel in her hands.

He repeated, “Give me a knife.”

Andrew saw the sad desperation in his father’s eyes, and said, “Mom, give him a knife.”

His sister stared at him in shock and hissed, “Have you lost your mind? You know he’ll hurt himself.”

Their mother backed away like a frightened child. Andrew walked to the kitchenette, rummaged through the drawers, and took out a knife. “He wants to peel his own mangoes,” he said, turning to Carmina. “Let him do it.” He took his father’s free hand, pressed the knife’s handle into his palm, closed his hand, and stepped back.

His father whispered, “Thank you,” and started slicing the top of the mango he clutched with his left hand, gripping the knife inwards, towards himself. A strip of green skin fell to the table, exposing the mango’s firm, yellow flesh. He set the blade against the edge of the mango’s unpeeled flesh, sliding the blade to the mango’s pointed tip. Strips of hard, green skin fell to the table. His wife took a plate from the dish rack and offered it to him, and he set the naked mango on the plate. Rico rose from the bamboo bench and approached the group that had gathered around the old man, and he stopped beside Carmina, who took his hand and gripped it. The old man took another mango and sliced into its flesh, exposing a paler yellow underneath. He set this peeled mango on the plate and took another one. Ruth took a strip of green skin and licked its fleshy inside, and Carmina snatched it from her hand, tossed it on the table, and slapped her buttocks. As Ruth cried out, their father peeled his third mango, stripping it away and exposing a darker, wetter yellow. “This one’s overripe,” he declared, just as the knife slid from his grip, cutting into his skin.

“Now look what he’s done!” Carmina said, rushing to her father’s side and taking the knife from his hand. Their mother was frozen where she stood, and said, “I couldn’t tell him to stop. He insisted.” Andrew put an arm around his father and pulled him close when he wailed in pain. “It’s all right, Dad. At least you tried,” he said, rubbing his father’s arm, wishing his father could stop shaking. Rico slipped into the bathroom and returned with bandages, scissors, cotton, and alcohol, dumping these on the kitchen table. He waved the women away, pulled up a chair, and forced the old man to sit down.

Rico pulled up a seat, pulled a piece of cotton from the bag he held, and soaked it in alcohol. “Daddy, you should be more careful with knives. They can hurt you,” he said, taking his father-in-law’s hand and rubbing the alcohol in. The old man yelled and tried to pull his hand away, but Rico’s grip was strong. “There, there. Don’t do that. I know it hurts, but this is good for you,” Rico said, as though he were speaking to a child. The old man’s hand fell limp, and he shook with weeping.

Carmina shook her head, looked at Andrew, and said, “This is all your fault. What did you want to prove, anyway?”

“At least he tried,” Andrew said. “That wound’s going to heal.”