by Niyati Keni
‘What beautiful pearls,’ Lola Lovely said emphatically. ‘Quite symmetrical.’
‘Eddie bought them for our anniversary last year,’ Connie cupped the beads in her palm, displaying them. ‘In Singapore.’
‘Of course, old pearls have an incomparable lustre,’ said Lola Lovely. She looked Connie over, smiling. ‘Would I know your mother?’ she added.
They sat down to dinner late, for Lola Lovely insisted on more drinks all round and made no move to get up from the settee. When they finally moved to the dining room, all eyes were on the platters steaming at the centre of the table. Pastor Levi patted his belly. ‘America’s a real artist,’ said Eveline, at the sight of the food. America had excelled herself, for she knew instinctively that her skill in the kitchen was her only weapon and, moreover, that it was only through Aunt Mary that she might get to wield it. As a result, the conversation foundered as people started to eat.
After a while Eddie said, ‘This was my favourite as a boy. But you couldn’t have known.’
Aunt Mary looked pleased. ‘America decided on the menu. I rarely need to instruct her.’
‘She’s been with our family for years,’ Lola Lovely said. ‘I remember the day I employed her. Skinny thing she was then.’
‘Fresh from the fields to the market to the kitchen,’ Mulrooney said, through a mouthful. ‘Not packaged in plastic in some mall.’
‘Progress has its price,’ Eddie said.
‘Progress is an interesting concept.’ Mulrooney leaned forward. ‘We only measure our progress in relation to our fellows.’
Eddie smiled down at his plate. ‘You’re a revolutionary through and through, Father. Surely even your ideals must at times be checked by pragmatism?’
‘That sounds so completely reasonable. You’re a politician, Eddie, more than a businessman.’ Levi said cheerfully, spearing a piece of fried fish.
‘I’m not an evil man,’ chuckled Eddie. I wondered if he enjoyed his reputation.
‘How handsome you’ve both grown,’ Connie said looking at Dub and Benny. ‘You might even be courting now, Dominic.’ Dub blushed lightly.
‘You must have your pick of the local girls,’ Eddie said and I saw how Dub struggled to look at him. ‘No one special?’ Dub opened his mouth to speak and then stopped, glanced at his mother, then up at me. I felt helpless. Aunt Mary looked puzzled and her gaze lingered over her son, before considering me briefly.
Connie laid her hand over her husband’s. ‘Filipino men are famous for playing the field, I guess. But there comes a time when a man has to choose,’ she said. Her husband smiled evenly and let his hand rest under hers, putting his fork down to pick up his glass.
Once again, Dub started to speak and faltered. I saw Benny look at his brother, assessing him with his artist’s eyes. For a moment, Aunt Mary looked alarmed and then her gaze swept the table and she turned to me and said briskly, ‘More rice, Joseph,’ though the bowl was still half full. And to Pastor Levi and Eveline, ‘I don’t believe you’ve tried the pork yet.’
I didn’t return straight away. America needed my help to turn a sponge while she iced it. I wasn’t gone for long, but when I returned the air seemed charged and Eddie was flushed. A space had been cleared on the table and Pastor Levi was drawing an imaginary Esperanza with his finger. ‘But that area must have at least a thousand households.’
‘At least,’ said Eveline. ‘Why, there are several storeys all along the river.’
‘You can’t just break up a community that’s been there for generations and expect there to be no consequences,’ said Pastor Levi.
‘There’s no place in business for sentimentality,’ said Eddie.
‘You can’t dismiss it as sentiment,’ Mulrooney said angrily. ‘These are real lives.’
‘We’ve considered a number of alternatives.’
‘What will be your sacrifice?’ Benny said suddenly. ‘You said everyone would stand to lose something. What will you lose?’ The room fell silent. Aunt Mary put her fork down carefully. ‘Boys,’ she started.
‘Am I answering to teenagers now?’ Eddie smiled. ‘Antonio wouldn’t dream of interrogating his elders.’
‘Nevertheless, it’s an interesting question,’ said Pastor Levi.
‘I’d certainly like to hear the answer,’ said Mulrooney.
‘I grew up in Greenhills,’ said Eddie quietly to Benny. ‘There’s no point clinging to a history. We can move with the times or be left behind. It’s a choice.’
‘Not for everyone,’ said Aunt Mary firmly. ‘Not everyone has a choice.’ She looked at Benny, a fleeting pride in her face.
‘This should be a discussion for adults,’ said Eddie, catching her expression, ‘For those who will actually be footing the bill.’
‘It depends on what you mean by footing the bill,’ said Eveline hotly. Pastor Levi reached out and squeezed her hand. I saw Mulrooney look at their hands on the table. I wondered if he ever thought about getting married himself. I imagined Jaynie next to him, their hands side by side, almost touching, looks exchanged as they leaned together during the conversation.
‘Let’s not ruin such magnificent food with an ideological debate,’ laughed Eddie.
‘It’s a worthy discussion for a good meal,’ said Mulrooney.
‘It’s not as if I’m on my own,’ said Eddie, ‘as if I’m the only interested party. The scheme will go ahead with or without me. I’m simply making the best of an opportunity.’ I’d never imagined Eddie as a small fish and I wasn’t quite ready to believe it, but the table fell silent again after he said it.
‘Wasn’t it your idea?’ said Aunt Mary, eventually.
‘Well, ideas can’t be owned,’ said Eddie, sitting back, his hands spread out, like a picture of Jesus at the last supper. ‘They take on a life of their own in no time.’
‘Nothing can really be owned,’ I said softly.
Startled, Eddie looked round at me and then started laughing. Lola Lovely straightened up in her chair and said, ‘Perhaps you’re needed in the kitchen, Joseph.’
‘What a household you have, Mary,’ Eddie said. ‘Full of youthful romanticism.’ He stared at Dub. Dub met his eye but looked away again quickly and then, suddenly, pushed himself back from the table and stalked out of the room. Immediately, Aunt Mary excused herself; as she followed him I moved forward to start clearing the empty platters away, my body blocking the view of the hallway. When I came out with the plates, I heard her say, ‘Don’t you dare leave. I want to talk to you.’
‘Sure,’ said Dub unhappily.
She gave him a long look. ‘This evening is important to me,’ she said. ‘If you can’t behave graciously, you may have your dessert in the kitchen, if America has room for you.’
Dub didn’t return to the table but slipped up to his room and closed the door. He didn’t answer when I took a plate of America’s sponge up to him and I brought it down with me again. A little later, I heard the front door close and the sound of a motorbike engine, but the voices in the dining room continued without pause and Aunt Mary didn’t emerge.
I was kept busy in the kitchen, brewing coffee and clearing up with America. Every now and then America and I paused in our work and glanced at each other when we heard the voices rise to a crescendo, but we couldn’t make out what was being said.
Eddie Casama and Connie left early. I read the disappointment in Aunt Mary’s face and understood that nothing had been resolved. She walked upstairs to Dub’s room and pushed the door open and when she came downstairs her mouth was a thin line. ‘Did he say where he might be heading?’ she asked me. I shook my head. And then she asked me what I knew, whether her son was seeing a woman, whether there was some connection with Edgar Casama. And, for the first time, I lied to her and knew that she saw it. She looked at me, through me, and then without another word she left the kitchen and retired to her study.
View from the Headland
Two days after Eddie Casama ate at our table, Dub came t
o see me in my room. He stooped a little as he stepped through the door. He’d never set foot in it before and I saw his surprise as he looked about him. ‘Not much of a window,’ he said. ‘I’d go crazy. It’s like a … ’ He glanced at me, reddened.
‘I don’t spend so much time in here,’ I lied.
He threw a book onto the bed next to me. ‘She said you had to read this one.’ I glanced at the upside-down cover, recognised a detail from Picasso’s Guernica, a painting that Benny had marked in one of his mother’s art books. I touched the book lightly. If Dub hadn’t been there, I might have raised it to my face, sniffed it. The Age of Reason. It looked like a serious book and I was flattered. I’d read everything she’d sent me, even rehearsed opinions on them in case she ever asked, though of course she never did.
Dub moved further into the room and I was conscious of an urge to shrink back against the wall to accommodate him. He sat down against the wall, in the same spot Benny had occupied, and stretched his legs out, pushing his feet into my bedding. I’d been reading when he came in and he smiled at the book already in my hand. Dub had little interest in books. He was too alive, too connected to the world to need to evade it. ‘Good?’ he asked, looking away again before I answered.
‘Sure,’ I shrugged, though I was only a few pages into it and, my thoughts still in thrall to the last book I’d read, I was disinclined to enter a new world just yet. I thought how if he’d been Benny I’d have said as much.
‘One of hers?’ Dub’s voice softened. I’d noticed before that he never referred to BabyLu by name when he spoke about her with me; she was our only common ground.
‘One of your mom’s actually.’ He frowned up at the doorway at the mention of his mother. He didn’t say anything for a while. I listened for any sounds coming down the passageway. I’d left America in the kitchen but I couldn’t swear she was asleep; it was too quiet.
‘You want to go for a spin?’ Dub said suddenly.
‘Now?’
‘Sure, why not. America’s sleeping out there. Mom’s in her study.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What don’t you know? How to have fun?’
I stared at him, surprised. Then I stood up.
America opened her eyes as we came out of the passageway and watched us, silently, as we crossed the kitchen, her eyes slitted like a cat’s. I pretended not to notice. She’d looked fed up all evening, banishing me to my room a little earlier than usual, but I wondered now if she’d wait up just so she could grill me when I got back. I didn’t care; I’d never been on a motorbike before.
Dub wheeled the bike out onto Esperanza before starting the engine. I locked the gate behind us. He held out a helmet, the same one he’d given to BabyLu. It still smelled of her. It was tight as I pulled it on and I struggled for a while with the straps, as she had done. Dub, already astride the bike, glanced back at me, his foot tapping lightly against the gear lever. I gave up and climbed on behind him, the straps hanging loose under my chin.
We cruised down Esperanza and took the coast road out towards Little Laguna. Out here, the street lights fell away and the night swamped in towards us, submerging us. The road became coy, revealing itself only by degrees in the headlight. The wind tugged at us and I clung to Dub as BabyLu must have done. He slowed down. I took a long, deep breath. The smell of the sea was sharp and clean. I felt fully awake, exhilarated.
Ahead of us a signboard floated in the darkness, marking the way to Little Laguna Beach, but Dub sped up as we neared it. I wasn’t disappointed; I didn’t want to stop at all. A minute later he slowed again and turned onto a short track that pointed towards the headland. The track was uneven and the bike crawled along, the wheels crunching over sand and shingle. Soon enough we stopped and Dub turned off the engine. He looked over his shoulder at me, waited as I dismounted first. I was still in my shorts, my legs stiff with cold, and I moved slowly, clumsily, back from the bike. Around us the blackness seemed almost solid, as if I might reach out and at any instant encounter its surface. I could barely make out my feet.
Dub left the bike’s headlight on and we followed the path it cut, our shadows sliding ahead of us over the rocks. We climbed a short way over the boulders and, as the light thinned, we stopped, settling ourselves side by side to look out over the sweep of the bay. Down below, the lights of Little Laguna were strung like beads in the darkness and overhead the sky was crammed with stars. It was nothing like the stretch of coast at Esperanza, punctuated by the jetty and lined with shacks.
The wind was playful, capricious. It smoothed Dub’s hair down over his face, gusted it away again. He started talking, raising his voice to be heard over the sounds of wind and sea. He talked about Little Laguna, about the bars, the sunsets, about women in bikinis or in diving suits, about fights he’d seen, about freshly caught fish still struggling in buckets sold to foreigners on the beach at sundown. As he talked, I watched the lights down below. Little Laguna Beach was no more than five kilometres out of town along the coast road, a fifteen-minute ride in a jeepney from the jetty. I’d never been.
He fell silent and stared into the distance, and I knew that he’d brought her here too. ‘She sat right there,’ he said, ‘where you are now. The night I took her for a ride. We were gone maybe three hours. He was supposed to be away on business but when we came back his car was in the street. You know, when she saw it she wanted me to ride on but I wasn’t afraid of him so I pulled up. The car was empty. He was already upstairs. Well, he owns the place, I guess. His driver was on the sidewalk, leaning against the bonnet like John Wayne, rolling his sleeves up like he was getting ready to get his hands dirty. I wanted to go up with her but she wouldn’t let me. When she handed back the helmet, she pushed it into me so hard I almost fell off the sidewalk.’ His hand came to his chest, rubbing it lightly at the remembered sensation. He sat up a little straighter. ‘His driver looked me up and down but he didn’t come over.’
I studied Dub’s profile and I wondered if there was anyone in the neighbourhood who wouldn’t have recognised Aunt Mary’s eldest boy.
‘She didn’t even kiss me goodnight,’ he said.
He had stayed for a while in the street, his bike engine idling. After a few minutes, he heard the sound of arguing from upstairs, but he couldn’t make out what was being said. It must have been loud to filter down into the street, to be audible over the sounds of Prosperidad even at that hour. He turned off the engine and made to get off the bike but the chauffeur pushed himself up slowly from the bonnet and took a step forward. They stayed like that only briefly, for soon enough the raised voices stopped and soft music started up. The chauffeur looked down at his watch and then pointedly at Dub, who started his engine and rode away into the night.
Dub fell quiet. Eventually he said, ‘I need your help, Jo-Jo.’ Jo-Jo. It sounded wrong when he said it. My eyes ran along the line of lights in the distance to where the last of them was swallowed up by blackness. I waited. I hadn’t been so enthralled by the ride to forget that he must have had a reason for bringing me here. ‘She won’t say if it’s mine or his.’ He picked up a pebble and flung it into the darkness. I listened to it clatter away over the boulders. When the sound of it had been lost altogether, Dub said, ‘You know the curandero? He’s a friend of yours, right?’ And I thought, Uncle Bee? What does he have to do with anything?
‘Sure I know him.’
‘If it’s his, she’ll never leave him. And if it’s mine … Joseph, I’m only nineteen.’ I leaned forward to pick at my sandals. I didn’t want him to say another word. When eventually he spoke again, his voice was uncharacteristically shrill, the timbre taut and unpleasant, like a blade ringing against a stone. ‘You could get me some herbs or something, right?’
I felt a knot form in my chest. I sat up straight and the abruptness of the movement made him turn to look at me. When I didn’t return his gaze he looked away again. He picked up another pebble and lobbed it into the night. I waited for the first strike, the
second, the third, and as I listened, I thought how the sound of each impact lessened in strength even as it remained unchanged in character. The thought seemed so perfectly fitting at that moment that I smiled into the darkness and consequently sounded almost cheerful when I said, ‘But your mom …’
‘What about my Mom?’ he said testily.
‘I don’t know. What I meant was—’
‘I’ve thought a lot about it. I’ve thought about nothing else.’
‘What does she want?’
‘My mom?’
‘BabyLu.’ The wind pulled her name away from me as I spoke it.
‘I don’t know. She doesn’t know, I guess. It’s not like I get a lot of chances to talk to her.’ I shut my mouth hard at this and waited, relieved when he spoke again. ‘It’s such a mess, Joe.’ His voice in the darkness was desolate.
Your mess, I wanted to say.
‘You’ll help me won’t you?’ I felt the knot in my chest tighten. I didn’t answer, and after a moment he turned to look at me. ‘You have to help me.’
Still I hesitated, aware of his gaze. ‘Sure,’ I said at last.
He gripped my forearm gently, squeezed it before letting go. ‘I knew you would.’
Dub pushed his hands into his pockets, withdrew them again. He lit a cigarette, cupping his hands round the end of it for a long while until it caught. He smoked silently and when he’d finished it, he pushed the stub into a crevice in the rocks and lit another one straight away. His hands were trembling and, seeing it, I felt sorry for him. The knot in my chest felt heavy, like a stone. ‘Dub … ’ I started to say.
‘Sorry, Joe. I didn’t think.’ He held his cigarette packet out to me. I shook my head. He looked puzzled and put it away again, pushing himself up from the ground in the same movement. He was walking towards the bike before I’d even got to my feet. He started the engine as I reached him and waited, staring into the distance while I climbed on. My head was loud with thoughts and, later, I scarcely recalled the ride home, though I remember that we looped down to the beach and he pointed out a floating bar, its lights bobbing in the blackness.