by Tif Marcelo
Margo shook her head in amusement.
He grinned. “What did I miss?”
“I was just saying that you keep nagging me about views.” Roberta’s lip curled up in a snarl.
“You asked me how to monetize, and I gave you my opinion.”
“But I want to tell the truth.”
“Truth comes in many forms,” he said. “In this case, truth would be better served with more enthusiasm. Don’t you think, Margo?”
“Hmm?” Margo was stuck on his statement about truth, harkening back to her conversation with Diana that morning. What she saw as truth was not how her daughter saw it at all. Diana wanted something tangible that explained things, that would change her life, while Margo saw truth as reality, the result of what had already happened.
“Yeah, I agree.” She snapped to, to Roberta’s scowl. “I mean, you only have a few minutes to capture an audience, and meh won’t keep them on.”
“Great, take his side.”
“Sorry.” She shrugged, sheepish. And, with Diana still on her mind, she unleashed her thoughts. “Though if the audience is Diana, then nothing works. She doesn’t talk about the bucket-list trip, my … our work, and though she follows me on Instagram, she never likes my photos. It drives me crazy, if I’m honest. In the past, I thought she was just a little embarrassed, and with my mother passing and Carlo leaving, I thought she was too busy and preoccupied. But now I’m actually starting to get offended.”
Roberta lips turned downward. “Have you spoken to her about it?”
“No—and in the scope of real life, it feels too petty to bring up. We’re all trying on this new normal, and I don’t want to push her.”
“Right, but how awkward has it been?” Cameron asked.
“Very.” Margo had a sudden need to give her mom a call, to ask for her advice. Leora had always been able to tap into Diana’s psyche better than Margo ever could. Neither Cameron nor Roberta had children; they both considered Diana their own, and it felt wrong for Margo to talk ill of her.
The next second, her stomach gave way. Her mother was no longer around. Not to give advice and not to set the record straight about those letters.
“You okay? Your face just fell.” Roberta silenced a text that came in and flipped the volume switch to off. “Tell us.”
Margo nodded. “Can I ask you a personal question, Roberta?”
“Margaret.” She rolled her eyes. “I have one word: shapewear.”
A laugh bubbled through her. About a year ago, Roberta had had her first date in a couple of years and was convinced that she needed shapewear underneath her dress. Margo had agreed to shop with her; it was a welcome break from taking care of her mother, and good thing because Roberta needed two extra hands to shimmy the full body Spanx up her torso. In the end, they’d decided to ignore the patriarchy and ditched the idea altogether.
“All right. That’s my cue,” Cameron said, standing. “I’m going to see about the status of my coffee.”
Roberta rolled her eyes and said to Margo, “You can ask me anything.”
Margo took a breath and told her about the letters, about Diana’s desire to seek out the truth. “And I was wondering”—she swallowed the knot in her throat—“I wanted to know how … since you had mentioned before …”
“Ah, you wanted to know about my finding my birth parents.” Roberta leaned back. Regret passed across her face, and immediately Margo wished that she hadn’t added to her friend’s pain. For Roberta, despite finding her birth parents almost three decades ago, it hadn’t ended happily.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have …”
Her face opened in a sincere expression. “No, no. Please.” She touched Margo on the arm gently. “I’m okay talking about it—thanks to my therapist.” She heaved a breath. “Sometimes, when I’m feeling at my worst, that’s when it haunts me. Why did my biological parents not want me? I know we’ve never talked about it in detail, but my birth parents had lived grand old lives as grandparents. With their older children. I was the youngest born, an unwanted pregnancy they couldn’t afford. Now how’s that for some crap—knowing that the reason you were given up was because they just couldn’t handle one more baby?”
Margo reached for Roberta’s hand, then and clutched it.
“But see? Before I sought them out, I thought I was just a cast-out kid. Now, I know the details of it all. Before, I invented the circumstances of my adoption. After, it was my choice to forgive, which I admit took me a long time. Dealing with a truth like that is like facing a loss, especially since my upbringing with my adoptive parents wasn’t so pleasant. But do I regret finding out? No.” She frowned. “That is some confusing stuff, right?”
“It’s really confusing.” Margo nodded.
“As long as you know what you’re getting yourself into, Margo. That’s all I’m saying. Prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario. I don’t want us to be sitting here six months from now, or hell, in the middle of our burro ride down the Grand Canyon, with you upset at me for enabling a curiosity that you might regret later on. Diana might press you to make that decision before you’re ready, but it’s you who has to live with whichever choice you make.”
“She’s not that bad,” Margo said, then added, cackling, “Yes, she is.”
“She can be decisive, and we both love her for it.” Roberta laughed. “But somehow you have to find the balance between her right to know and your own hesitance.”
Margo bit her lip and looked beyond the windows of the cafe, to the street, at the pedestrians passing by, some with her tan skin color, not quite beige or brown. Growing up, she had always been the different one because she was never all the way anything. Not one race or the other. She was taught some of her Filipino culture from the families she met in the Fil-Am community, but by default she associated her own personality and mannerisms with the women who showed her how to live: her mother, faux aunties, her teachers, and her daughter, too. Who Margo was today was because of what she was born into, a hard-scrabble life as a latchkey kid with big dreams.
But were genetics just as important?
“Is it safe to sit down now?” Cameron said, walking up to the table, with a steaming cup and a plate holding a bagel. “I’m armed with my cup of coffee and am ready for anything.”
“It’s just family drama, as always,” Margo said.
“Well, I figured.” After setting down his food, he set a piece of caramel candy down next to her tea. “They just poured a bowl out at the counter.”
“Where’s mine?” Roberta asked.
He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t even like caramels. You complain they get stuck in your teeth.”
Roberta huffed and speared him with a look. “Fine. You’re off the hook.”
Margo took a sip of her tea, grinned into her cup, and snuck a look at Cameron. In their younger days, the girls didn’t appreciate his sweetness, his steadiness. But as they got into their forties and fifties, his date card had grown to a mile long. By then, people had realized that Cameron was exactly the kind of man a woman wanted in her everyday life. But he never did commit. Despite his deep friendship with Margo and Roberta, he had trust issues.
“Let’s change the subject. Our TALWAC plan,” Roberta said with a wide grin.
“TALWAC?” Margo asked.
“Our ‘Thelma and Louise without any crimes’ plan?”
“Oh!” Margo laughed. “I didn’t realize we named it.”
“I watched the movie on Netflix last night, and I was inspired. Do you think I’m more Thelma or Louise?”
A year ago, their threesome devised a plan to fulfill their retirement dreams, and to document, and maybe earn money from them along the way. A video-recorded bucket-list adventure: two best friends, but without crimes or drama, though Roberta would’ve welcomed a young Brad Pitt in a heartbeat. At the time, Margo had simply placated Roberta—discussing it took her out of the weeds of caregiving. But Leora had found out about it and explicitly reques
ted in her will that Margo use the modest sum of money from her life insurance to make the dream come true after she passed.
Their first trip was to New Orleans.
“Wait. Where am I in the initials? TALWAC doesn’t have Cameron implied. I mean, there’s a C there, but that would be ‘Thelma and Louise without any Cameron’ and that doesn’t work.”
Margo laughed. Cameron was always so literal.
“You are the ‘without crimes’ part, since I’m sure you will be the one putting us on a curfew and reminding us of our senior-citizen discounts,” Margo joked. Both Roberta and Cameron were on fixed incomes, too, but they’d saved money over the years. And their social media revenue helped. That and their senior-citizen and AARP discounts.
“Anyway, we need to discuss activities and scripts for the two days we’re in New Orleans.” Roberta clicked her phone on. “Let me get my list of ideas up.”
The state of Diana’s living room came to mind. Three days. They were leaving in three days, and Margo had yet to tackle those boxes. And now, with these letters, a thought rose above the rest. “I don’t think Diana cares that I’m leaving.”
“Of course she does, Margo. But you’ve gotten accustomed to feeling needed every moment of the day. And now you’re just Mom.” The expression on Roberta’s face was sincere and without malice. It spoke of their shared experiences, of being a caregiver—for Roberta, caretaking of her husband years ago—and of bearing the exquisite pain of loving someone unconditionally at the end of their life.
“Maybe she’s just in denial,” Cameron added. “Denial is some strong armor.”
“You’re right,” Margo admitted now, a bravado seeping through, blurring the guilt and the claustrophobia she had been feeling since moving in with Diana. She and her daughter were both adults. Diana had had a rough six months, but Margo’s last couple of years had been gutting. This trip, with her friends who loved her and saw her through some rough days herself, was important to Margo, and she had to keep moving forward.
After heaving a breath, she said to Roberta, “What videos are you proposing?”
But Roberta’s face had scrunched down into a frown. She thumbed through her phone with her mouth in a silent O.
“Roberta?”
“Did”—she thumbed the screen—“did Diana mention anything different about work?”
“No. Why?”
“Anything, you know, about being called out in the newspaper because …” Her friend passed her the phone. “This was just linked through Facebook.”
The screen was opened to the Northern Virginia News: HOW THE 1% HAVE THEIR BABIES: DID YOU KNOW?
* * *
“Where have you been young lady? It’s past dinnertime.” Margo tossed the kitchen towel on the counter, hands still damp and resting on her hips. “I texted. I called. What’s the point of you having a phone if you don’t return voice mails or messages?”
Her daughter halted in her tracks. “Mother?”
“Don’t ‘Mother’ me. I want you to tell me the truth. Right now. Right this instant.”
Diana looked to the left and right exaggeratingly, as if Margo had directed her demand to someone else. It was something Margo wouldn’t have dared to do with her own mother, even as an adult. Maybe she had been too nice to Diana, given her too much leeway.
“Diana Gallagher-Cary.”
“Margaret Gallagher-Cary,” she teased.
And that darned daughter of hers hiked her hands on her hips to imitate Margo. Diana screwed her face into a scowl, contorted like one of their holiday photos where they yelled right before the self-timer fired. “Do a funny face!” Margo would say, and they’d always don the same look: Margo with her tongue sticking out, Leora sucking her cheeks in and crossing her eyes, and Diana with this scowl.
Margo couldn’t help it; she busted up. It was that or cry at the memory.
Damn it, there went her initial anger. She had never been a disciplinarian.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call or text.” Diana walked forward and pushed a manila folder into Margo’s hand. “How did you know something was up? I swear you have a sixth sense.”
“It’s all over the news,” Margo said, though intrigued by the folder. She sat back on the kitchen stool, the day’s news and her meeting with Roberta and Cameron slipping from her mind as she took out the contents.
“What was all over the news?”
“What is this?” Now completely confused—they obviously were talking about two different things—Margo flipped through photographs and two typewritten documents. Her heart began a steady thump.
She glanced up briefly at her daughter and then back down at a candid black-and-white photograph of a woman wearing a dark sheath dress at a ribbon cutting. She had scissors in her hand, poised against the ribbon, while a man in a traditional Filipino formal shirt, a barong tagalog, held the ribbon straight.
Margo stared at the man’s face.
Her daughter took the barstool next to her. “I went to see the private investigator, Ma. I’m sorry, but I did. I wanted to tell you, but you were already gone by the time I got back from my run. His name is John Prescott and he’s local, in Frederick, and it didn’t take him long. Just today, to find out some real information. It’s why I was away all day—I hung around while his contact in the Philippines did whatever they had to do.”
“Dear God.” Margo wasn’t ready for this. She’d just gotten used to the idea of it all, that something beyond them existed, but actual answers? It was kind of unbelievable.
The lump in her throat divided and grew like a cancerous cell.
Diana took the rest of the papers from her and set them down on kitchen counter, so Margo had a clear view of the documents. Diana pointed at the colored photocopy of a woman in a flowered dress, hands clasped. Behind her were the spiky leaves of a tropical plant and the outline of a two-story home with thatched roofs and balconies. The woman was dark-skinned, stern-faced, pride evident in her eyes. “This is Flora Reyes.”
“How do you know this is the right woman?” Margo pulled the photo closer to her and skimmed a finger over it. “You said it’s a common name.”
“She matches all the criteria. The PI pieced together the possible birth and marriage dates. This woman married an Antonio Cruz in 1946. Her current address is within Metro Manila.”
“Current?”
“Yes. She’s still alive. And, Ma?” Diana said firmly.
“Yes?”
“I’m planning to see her. And I want you to come with me.”
Chapter Nine
Diana watched as indignance and anger washed over her mother’s expression. This, she hadn’t expected. Her mother was emotional, but she skewed toward sadness and disappointment rather than anger, denial rather than snark. And with her current choice of outfit—a crisp white shirt with a teal iridescent bow tie, black capris, and suspenders—Diana thought her mother would cheer for her newfound discovery.
But her mother wasn’t cheering now. “Absolutely not.”
“What?” Diana frowned, confounded for a second. Her mother was always down for an adventure, until Granny had gotten housebound. And Margo had never refused her in the past. Then again, Diana had never asked for anything more than her mother could provide; she put herself through most of college with the help of her mother’s meager contributions—an artist’s wage, after all, was inconsistent and never commensurate to the work she did.
“Wait … you’re serious.”
“As a heart attack. I asked you to do the right thing,” Margo said.
“And that’s what I did. I don’t understand why you don’t want to know more. This is your father. My grandfather.”
“That’s exactly it.” She held her hand up. “This is my father. Did you stop to think that I needed more time? To process all of this? To think? You just made a big decision. You asked someone to snoop into people’s lives, not even thinking about the potential that you might change ours a million percent.”
“So you’re mad at me?”
“Yes,” she said, then sighed. “No. I just wish we could have talked about it beforehand, because this morning’s conversation was a chat, not a unanimous decision. But, you do this, you know.”
“I do what?” Diana frowned, not liking where this conversation was going.
Margo took a deep breath. “You just do. Sometimes without thinking, without consulting. You take responsibility when, maybe, it’s not yours to begin with.”
Diana bit her cheek. She hadn’t told her mother anything about her work, and yet, somehow Margo knew how to poke her where it hurt.
“I’m sorry,” Margo said, wiping her hands on her thighs. “I didn’t mean it, at least not all the way.”
“Does that mean you’re going to come with me?”
“No, dear, I’m not.” She blinked at her. “Aside from the fact that I’m not convinced it’s a good idea, I’m getting on a plane, for New Orleans, remember? For a trip that has been planned to a T.”
Diana couldn’t help it, she snorted at her mother’s gall to just drop off her stuff at Diana’s home and run away. Of course Margo had mentioned it, but Diana had thought … she’d thought her mother would come to her senses. “Right. Your bucket-list trip.”
Margo frowned at her. “Hey, tone!”
“You don’t think this trip to the Philippines is more important? Can’t your trip wait? You wanted to discover more about the country and yourself, right? What could be a better way than to actually investigate your roots? You have never even been, and this is the perfect time.”
Her mother held up both hands, voice softening. “Let’s slow down here, please. You just got the first piece of information, which might not even be accurate. And going to Louisiana is not the same as going to another country.” She gestured at the envelope. “And frankly, now I’m wondering what more is playing into this decision.”
Dread settled upon Diana. She sighed, looked away. “So you know.”
Her mother nodded.
“How did you find out?”