Once Upon a Sunset

by Tif Marcelo

  “What’s up, indeed?” Margo said, eyes on the letters on the glass coffee table.

  The couch cushion sank next to her. “Ma?”

  Where would Margo even start; where would she begin?

  Then, realizing that she hadn’t answered Diana’s question, she simply plucked one letter from the table. It was only then that Margo looked at her daughter, whose face was aglow from the cold air. Tired as Diana had been before she left, she looked awake now, her spirit lighter than before. Her beautiful daughter, who had her late father’s button nose and full lips, but also Margo’s and Leora’s pointed chin and hazel eyes. But her curly, and sometimes frizzy hair, and her strong, solid build that came with her lean frame—were those from her grandfather? Were they Cruz traits?

  These letters affected her, too. They were her legacy.

  Margo gestured at the envelopes.

  “What’s this?” Diana sifted through them. “Letters from Grandpa?”

  “Your lolo, Diana.”

  “Wait. But how could that be?” Diana peered at the ink on one envelope. “The date of this postmark. Granny said—”

  Then the tears that had refused to come an hour before bubbled up. Granny said. Granny—Leora—the epitome of honesty, who believed in truth over kindness, whose words were her bond. The woman who had no filter. Who could be as cutting as an arrow but could love like no other.

  “Your granny, my mother. I don’t know what to think, but I think she lied.”

  Manila, Philippines

  March 28, 1945

  Ms. Gallagher,

  You don’t know me, but I’m asking you to stop writing to Antonio Cruz. He is no longer yours, Ms. Gallagher. He is choosing not to return. He will soon be my husband. Please, do not keep writing. Do not expect correspondence in return.

  Flora Reyes

  Chapter Six

  The legend went like this:

  Antonio Cruz crossed the ocean to find work in America in 1933. At fifteen, he was old enough to accompany his father to what the American priests and teachers in his small barrio in Ilocos Norte depicted as a country full of wealth and possibility. His mother had died the year before, his father was bereft with grief, and America was greener pastures. His father sold their land, leaving their modest life for the United States.

  This idea proved the opposite upon arriving. Antonio didn’t attend school and instead worked the land next to his father as a migrant farmworker in California, among other men and boys. They put food on the table for Americans, but they lived in poverty. They lived in squalor, in shared spaces. Water was scarce among the workers despite the abundance of clean water in the country. For while Americans wanted their work, they shunned and segregated Filipinos and other minority farmworkers.

  Antonio and his father moved to the town of Marysville, where Antonio’s father found regular work in a local restaurant as a cook. Antonio was bright and amiable, and the restaurant owner often used him, too, for errands and deliveries. During one of these deliveries to a seamstress, Leora used to say with a twinkle in her eye, was where he met Leora. Leora Gallagher was one of the town’s seamstress’s girls, hired to do piecework and mending.

  Antonio and Leora became friends. She was a year younger than he. They made conversation in passing, during short walks. She found out that he loved to read. Then began their secret meetings in one of the orchards at sunset, where she would sneak him a book from the home of Mrs. Lawley, the seamstress. They had been aware that what they were doing was forbidden. Leora had an unforgiving father and friends who were vocal in their disdain for the Filipinos who had immigrated to California. But by 1943, they both harbored a secret—they had fallen in love.

  Leora had written the first note. A secret one she left in the notch under “their tree” at the orchard, sometimes tucked in the pages of a book when Antonio exchanged one book for another. It would be the beginning of a back-and-forth, and in this anonymity of pen and paper, they shared all their hopes and dreams. Their notes could contain one or ten sentences, but no matter the length, they were later burned. Seasons turned into years, and the short notes became promises of love and commitment.

  But life was not a plateau; life was a series of mountains and valleys, and World War II began.

  Antonio wanted to go to war, of course, as did all the young men. While their blood and sweat was spread over American land, their hearts were in the Philippines. Leora knew he wanted to go; it was evident in the excitement in his voice. So despite the resentment that she could not help harboring—not at him, but at the injustice of the world—she did not hold him back. She promised to wait, promised to write.

  Antonio was naturalized as an American in a mass ceremony during training, and unbeknownst to Leora, she was pregnant with Margo after a rendezvous before he boarded the silver carrier to New Guinea with the First Filipino Infantry Regiment, with a final destination of the Philippines.

  Antonio died a war hero, in New Guinea, within days of arrival.

  Except—after seven decades, Margo had just discovered—he really hadn’t.

  * * *

  Diana filled her tight lungs with air after she read the last letter of the bunch. Everything that had bothered her in the last twenty-four hours had faded into oblivion. Her issues with Carlo, her patients, her job—all had taken a back seat to the letters that had appeared out of the rubble in her garage: a volcano of information that destroyed everything true about her family history.

  And behind the lava? Anger.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Diana!” her mother admonished, crunching into another saltine cracker. She had taken a sleeve from the pantry sometime between the sixth and seventh letter, and was down to less than half a sleeve. “Language.”

  “Mother. Language is the least thing you should worry about.” She flapped the letters in the air. “I mean. What the hell is this? Is this a prank?”

  Of course it wasn’t a prank, though Diana had to ask. Every envelope’s postmark seemed authentic, the peeling stamps real.

  Her mother shook her head, her fingers lightly touching her lips. “And your granny isn’t here to say otherwise.”

  “Well, then we have to find out. There has got to be more—there must be clues.”

  And Diana was off and running, in her head at least. This was what made her a good doctor—it wasn’t her ability to work without sleep, and it wasn’t her photographic memory. Nor was it her empathy, which was quickly waning these days. It was her zeal for the answer, the diagnosis, the algorithm through which a coordinated series of questions turned a choose-your-own-adventure puzzle into a solution.

  Diana stomped to the garage before she heard her mother answer. She flipped the lights on. Junk greeted her—three generations’ and an ex-boyfriend’s worth. Her eyes darted away reflexively to stifle her increasing claustrophobia, and she sidestepped to where her grandmother’s things were stacked.

  But when she came upon them, the tops of their boxes were unsealed.

  “I’ve already gone through them,” her mother said from behind her. “Before you came home.”

  Diana opened the boxes anyway and looked inside. She found framed pictures, books, Christmas ornaments. Little snippets of her grandmother, though the boxes were free of anything truly telling. Diana and Leora were similar in this respect. Everything in her granny’s house had had a function. When Diana was growing up, it’d been a relief to trounce through Granny’s home in comparison to her own mother’s, who had walls of photographs staring back at her, papers littered about, her workspace spreading out into the entire house.

  Margo had a paper trail that could have pinned her down at a diner in West Virginia in 1996 for a photography assignment. Leora, on the other hand, was a mystery.

  But now Diana wished Leora had been a pack rat.

  “Sweetheart.”

  She looked up then, at her mother leaning against the doorframe. “I’ve already looked. There are no other clues.”

 
; “That’s it? You’re not gonna do anything else?”

  “Like what? I’m seventy-five years old. We have no other blood family. Whatever those letters show—well, too much time has passed.”

  “The truth is still the truth.” A notification beeped from inside the house, interrupting Diana’s launch into her philosophy that the truth was best, no matter how much it hurt. Out of instinct, she patted the pocket of her long-sleeve fleece, only to find it empty.

  Realization dawned. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. Ancestry sites. Plain old Google. The internet kept the stalest of information alive and relevant. “I think you’re wrong, I think the truth might just be easy to find.”

  part two Sunset

  The first stab of love is like a sunset, a blaze of color …

  —Anna Godbersen

  USS General John Pope

  April 6, 1944

  My dearest Leora,

  As promised, I wrote as soon as the ship left port. The mood is somber, and in my cramped rack, no one is saying a word. It seems everyone has taken to paper, probably writing their sweethearts like I am.

  Be proud of me, my heart. I can’t remove your sad expression from my memory. It has only been two days, but I can still feel you with me, your bare arm against mine, my fingers in your hair. I can still see your look of regret. I, too, am sad. I wish I didn’t have to go, but I could not have turned my back when called to duty. Our world is under attack, both yours and mine.

  I can’t ignore my country’s needs. I know this was not what we discussed. But sometimes our world dictates our actions. Sometimes the world tests us, but I believe it rewards us, too. By doing this, I honor my father so he can be proud of me. I will also earn the right to go before your father proudly. I know you think I’m too optimistic, but I’m hopeful.

  Write to me? I may not receive your first note until we get to New Guinea, but your letters will be my lifeline. Tell me all about home. Tell me everything about my father, the town, and what kind of fun you’re having with your friends. Do you remember my friend Onofre, from the barbershop? He has promised to send you my letters as soon as he receives them, and he can mail your letters to me. We can trust him.

  Until then, I will think of you every moment of the day. At sunset especially, when I imagine you are in the orchard, under our tree, thinking of me at the same time.

  Iniibig kita.

  As ever, yours,

  Antonio

  Chapter Seven

  Flora Reyes Philippines

  Flora Reyes Cruz Manila

  Flora Cruz Manila Philippines

  Diana faced page upon page of internet search results for what had to be two of the most common Filipino last names and the biggest metropolitan city in the Philippines. She methodically clicked on each news and image link, each address and profile—ranging from a Flora Reyes in the United States who had previous addresses in the Philippines to the hundreds of women of the same name in the Philippines—even adding the name Cruz in case the two had truly married. But the Flora she was looking for had to be at least in her nineties. Maybe a hundred years old. And maybe she was dead.

  Which would make this entire search pointless.

  The sun peered through the blinds in front of Diana’s desk, and she blinked at the glare. It woke her from her trance after her nights on call and staring at the half-dozen tabs open on her computer, at the notes she had jotted down on the notepad next to her.

  She’d spent the last day and night researching without a tangible lead.

  How hard was it to find a person in the internet age? Still hard, apparently. Despite technology, digital footprints, and degrees of separation, the world’s population had increased at the same feverish pace. And what if Flora Reyes wasn’t even on the internet?

  Diana’s phone dinged a text notification, from Sam.

  Run today?

  Half hour? New revelations.

  This sounds exciting.

  That is a fair, though not adequate, explanation.

  I expect you here in 20.

  A second notification, an email this time. Diana bent over the laptop, changed tabs to her email. And upon seeing the sender, she scooped the laptop into her arms, energy renewed, and flipped the lights on as she made her way to her mother’s bedroom.

  She rushed to her mother’s bedroom door. With a customary knock that was more of a wallop than a rap, she entered, not bothering to mask her steps on the hardwood floors. She approached Margo, who was asleep, with her eyes covered with a leopard-print eye mask, and clothed in pajamas with caricatures of Mona Lisa in varying expressions. Diana touched her mother’s wrist. “Ma?”

  Her mother’s lips twitched, and the wrinkles around her mouth bunched like reeds of hay. She took a deep breath and let out a long exhale, as if falling into deeper sleep.

  Diana could’ve waited to speak to the woman until it was a more appropriate time. She should’ve. The last couple of days had left them both in this strange suspended state. After their initial discussion about the letters, they’d both retreated to their corners. Diana had begun her research, and her mother … well, she couldn’t assume to know what her mother was doing, except that she had been busy on her iPad.

  Diana touched Margo’s fingers, tugged a little. “Ma.”

  Finally, Margo came to. Her hand groped for the mask and peeled it off, pushing back her dyed light brown hair—if there was one thing she was intent on, it was keeping those grays away—eyelids fluttering open to reveal her brown eyes. A smile fanned across her face. “Hi, honey.”

  “Hey.”

  Her eyes narrowed in suspicion, reading Diana’s expression immediately. She inched up in the bed. “What is it?”

  “I stayed up most of last night to do research on Flora Reyes, but it was tough. Those genealogy sites were a maze, and Reyes is about as common as Smith and Johnson.” Diana bit her lip.

  Her mother side-eyed the laptop. “And?”

  “What if I told you that I asked for help?” She reached for her mother’s cat-eye-shaped reading glasses by the table and set the computer on her lap.

  Margo peered at the email through spectacles, face tilted up slightly. Her mouth moved as she read the words, face placid at first. Then her jaw dropped ever so slightly and her eyes cut to Diana’s face. “A private investigator?” She took off her glasses. “Could you hand me some water?”

  Diana picked up the glass of water from the bedside table, most likely tepid after sitting out most of the night.

  Her mother sipped, silence settling around them like a sheer blanket. “How did you find him?”

  “Google—he had great reviews.” At her mother’s questioning stare, she rolled her eyes. “I couldn’t sleep. Anyway, I gave this person all the information we had, and voilà, he emailed back with an offer to work with me. Us. He has a contact in the Philippines. Read the email.”

  Diana pointed to the screen and read the email anyway. “ ‘I feel that this would be a very simple fact-finding mission.’ ”

  “Di,” Margo said warily.

  “There could be nothing to find out, or there could be an entire story we don’t know about, but it’s worth some research, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the thing, Diana. It was so long ago,” Margo said, glancing away for a beat. “And even if there’s something to find, do we want to know?”

  “I mean, why wouldn’t we?”

  “I’ve told you that life was tough for your granny when I was born.”

  “I know. She was on her own after she got pregnant with you.”

  “Me, who ended up looking so different from her.” Her mother nodded, her smile wan.

  “Oh, Ma.” Diana knew this story by heart, too, of both Margo and Granny being shunned the rest of her life by Diana’s great-grandfather. Leora had been sent across the country, just shy of giving birth to Margo, and settled in what would become Old Town Alexandria. Leora had worked as a caregiver and then a domestic helper, passing Margo around to newf
ound friends in their small but tight-knit Filipino community for care until she was school-aged.

  “What I’m trying to say is that despite Granny’s rough start, I had a good life. And now I have a daughter who has grown up to be a successful doctor, with her entire future ahead of her. What more do we need to know?”

  Diana shook her head. This would not be pushed aside, stacked in piles like the papers that used to litter her mother’s house. This wasn’t like finding an extra dollar bill in a pants pocket. “I disagree. We aren’t the same people with this news. I’m not …” She hesitated as a surge of shame and disappointment ran through her. She pushed it back down, unable to trace it, except that it mimicked the sinking feeling she’d battled for months now. Even given her penchant to assume fault, she wasn’t responsible for this recent news. But the fact remained, she wasn’t going to let these letters go without further investigation.

  “I can’t just pretend these letters don’t exist,” Diana said.

  “Honey, we’re not even sure if these letters are authentic.”

  Diana sat back, surprised at the turn in conversation. “You think they’re fake?”

  “No, you’re putting words in my mouth. I’m just saying we don’t really know the context.” She put up a hand. “You weren’t the only one who stayed up half the night thinking about all this. I admit, I was shocked by the letters, but they simply are what they are. So what if he died in the Philippines and not in New Guinea? So what if he lived a little longer than Granny said? If my father were alive today, he would be over a hundred years old, which means he’s passed, most likely. It’s too late.” Her eyes fell to her lap. “And, if my mother lied on purpose, it must have been for a reason. Those were different times, and she was a survivor. I have to trust that she knew what was best.”

  “What if I need more?” Diana asked, after a beat.