When in Vanuatu

by Nicki Chen

  It was on the tip of Diana’s tongue to say something mollifying. You’ll work it out. Or, I’ve heard that Vanuatu is beautiful. Exactly the kind of things a woman is expected to say. As she kicked her feet in the clear blue water, the coral toenails she’d painted in bed on the first day of the coup rose and fell, briefly breaking the surface before sinking again.

  “I may not be earning money,” Abby continued, “but I have obligations here. Being president of the Makati International Nursery School is not a bridge party. Next week—if they ever march those bloody hooligans out of Makati—I’m scheduled to interview candidates for a new teacher for the three-year-olds. After that, I have an appointment with Mrs. Chang to explain that even though her two-year-old daughter is brilliant, we don’t accept anyone who is less than thirty months old. Then there’s the year-end party to plan and the new playground equipment to order. Damn it! Diana, I like being president of the nursery school. And I’m good at it. I damned well don’t want that scatterbrained Jenny Littlejohn to take over.”

  “They wouldn’t choose Jenny Littlejohn, would they?”

  Abby sighed. “You never know.”

  The melancholy in her voice seemed to spread a haze of sadness over the water, slowing the strokes of the old man who was still swimming, his long, pale arms circling like slow-motion windmills. You make plans; you choose a career; you marry the man you love. And yet, you never know . . .

  “Let’s go get dressed,” Abby said.

  Only moments earlier, the sun had been sparkling on the water, the sky bright blue. Now the sky was muddled, streaks of lavender and peach bleeding into the quickly fading blue. The table where they’d left their bags and towels was already in full shade. Diana reached up, plucked a plumeria from one of the trees, and held it to her nose. Then she wrapped her towel around her shoulders, and she and Abby headed for the shower room.

  In a city of crowded spaces, Seafront’s shower room was an anomaly. An oasis of space and cleanliness—lockers and benches and white tile, individual showers and roomy toilet stalls. Everything clean and in working order. Today it felt different, sanitary and cold. Sinister. Diana placed the plumeria on a bench beside her bag, abandoning the small, fragment of nature to the room’s unbendable surfaces.

  She picked up the plumeria one more time, sniffed it, and put it down. Then she stepped into one of the shower stalls and turned on the water.

  “I’m going to miss Jollybee,” Abby shouted from the next stall, her voice echoing off the shiny tile.

  “Jollybee?” Diana tossed her suit onto the divider beside Abby’s—a turquoise one-piece next to a fuchsia bikini.

  “They have this brilliant burger, the ‘Amazing Aloha.’ You should try it. Beef, bacon, lettuce, cheese, and a big juicy pineapple ring in a bun.”

  It was hard to keep up with Abby’s moods, impossible to catalog the list of all the things she loved and hated. After living in the Philippines for more than three years, she must have a long list of things she’d miss if they moved to Vanuatu.

  Diana used to keep a list like that, a mental list of the things she liked.

  A dollop of foaming shampoo slid down her forehead, and she brushed it aside. When she was a child, her mother had advised her to always take note of beauty and to keep an invisible list of all the things she liked. For a while Diana faithfully kept that invisible list, adding to it almost every day.

  When she emerged from the shower, wrapped in her towel, Abby was already in the communal area between the lockers, stepping into her underwear. “I don’t know if you noticed,” she said, glancing up at Diana, “but Saudur and I had a big fight last night.” She pulled her pink flowered panties over her hip bones and snapped the elastic with her thumbs, sending a little jiggle through the delicate skin on her belly. “It was a battle for the title of most powerless.”

  “Most powerless?”

  Abby laughed. “I know, it sounds crazy now, but at the time we were deadly serious.” She hooked her bra and bent over to let her breasts fall into the cups. “It started with me complaining that he didn’t even ask me if I wanted to move. His excuse was that it wouldn’t have done any good. He had no choice in the matter. ‘I’m powerless,’ he said. And that’s what set me off, his insistence that he was powerless, when I figured that I was the one who had no control over the direction of my life.

  “I screamed at him, something about how much I hated being powerless. And all the frustration I’d been feeling came bursting out as tears, which just made me angrier. I do not cry.”

  “I know,” Diana said. “I’ve never seen you cry.”

  “It’s a skill I learned in law school. Never show weakness. Anyway, you’d think that at the very least, my tears would have earned me a modicum of sympathy.” She took a rolled-up dress out of her bag and shook it. “But no. Saudur was more intent on pleading the case for his own powerlessness. His big brown eyes got all watery, and all I could think of was, no, don’t do that. I’m the one who is powerless.” She buttoned the last button on her sunny, button-up-the-front dress and looked up, smiling. “You must have heard the ruckus we were making.”

  “Yeah. We did hear something. But, you know, the air conditioners are so loud . . .”

  “Did we keep you up?”

  “No. Don’t worry about it.”

  They stood in front of the mirror, Diana towel-drying her long hair, Abby fluffing out her auburn curls.

  “I was furious. I jumped on top of him and pinned his arms to the bed.” She gave Diana a look that was one more of pride than regret. “I haven’t brawled like that since I was a kid,” she said, snickering. “In those days I was a holy terror.”

  Diana dug a brush out of her bag and set to work brushing her hair straight back and catching it in her left hand. “Sounds like you enjoyed it.”

  “Damned right! You can’t beat fighting for a good adrenaline rush.” She gave her head a shake to set her hoop earrings swinging. She slipped on some bangles and painted her lips red. Then she stood back and watched Diana pin her hair into a sideways French twist.

  “You’re such a classic beauty,” she said when Diana had finished. “The kind of woman a prince would marry.”

  Diana gave her a wry smile. Not if the prince wants an heir to the throne, he wouldn’t.

  13

  Makati had been back to normal for more than a week now. On the fifth day of the occupation, the government negotiated the departure by bus of 818 foreigners who’d been stranded in hotels and condos. The following day, December seventh, the rebels marched back to their barracks in Fort Bonifacio, and Abby, Saudur, and the boys returned to their house. The occupation of Makati had left ninety-nine people dead, fifty of them civilians. Now, a week after Makati’s return to normal, no one knew whether the rebels would be punished. Most of the officers had simply slipped away.

  Diana added a tag to Clarita’s gift and set it under the tree. This year for the first time, the American Embassy had flown in fir trees from Washington State. Stepping back, she breathed in the sweet evergreen scent. It felt almost like Christmas.

  Humming along with a carol on the radio, she could feel the coup beginning to fade into memory. In a few years, hardly anyone beyond the families of the ninety-nine victims would remember it. Historians like Andrew would say that it could have been much worse. She doubted that history would look kindly on the rebels, though. No one Diana and Jay knew sympathized with them. Jay derided them for their incompetence. Saudur blamed them for their continued loyalty to Marcos. Abby laughed and said they were motivated by a thirst for adventure and fame—which was certainly true of their leader, Honasan, who was widely viewed as a grandstander. Perhaps, though, history would look kindly on Cory Aquino. She seemed to be a good and honest person who had the bad luck to be elected president at an extremely difficult time.

  Anyway, Diana hoped this would be the last coup attempt so that the Philippine government could get on with the business of governing, and the rest of them cou
ld get on with their lives.

  She reached behind the tree and plugged in the lights. Then, singing along with Madonna to “Santa Baby,” she stepped back again and admired the tree with all its shiny red and gold balls. Yes. It felt very much like Christmas.

  When she was a child, Diana and her mom were known in the family as the master decorators of Christmas. They made wreaths and table decorations. They wrapped gifts in secret in Mom’s studio and decorated the tree when Daddy was at work. Seeing it for the first time, he’d fall on the floor in amazement. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he’d swear. “Cross my heart and hope to die.” On Christmas Eve, when it was his turn to open one of his gifts, he’d insist that he couldn’t possibly open such a work of art.

  “Open it,” Diana and her mom would shout. “Open it. Open it.”

  He’d shake his head over and over until eventually he’d give in. Then he would remove the bow and paper ever so slowly, peeling off the Scotch tape and grimacing if he tore a bit of paper by mistake.

  Some years the master decorators would make their own wrapping paper using watercolors and stencils and cut-out snowflakes. Once they made silk-screened poinsettias and holly. Another year they made origami stars and reindeer and tied them on top of the packages.

  After Daddy died, Diana and her mom stopped turning their Christmas gifts into works of art. Mom bought wrapping paper and ribbon at the supermarket, and Andrew wrapped his gifts in the Sunday comics. He was already a teenager by then and Diana would be soon. Santa Claus wasn’t real, and over-the-top gift wrapping was just plain silly.

  Reaching under the tree, Diana pulled out two large gifts wrapped in red and white Santa Claus paper, their misshapen forms hinting at the dump truck and bulldozer inside. Simon and Jeremy wouldn’t appreciate a fancy bow, but they might like some origami reindeer.

  She set the gifts on her desk and searched through the desk drawers for origami paper. In a bottom drawer, she found a thick stack of it, precision-cut paper in every shade of the rainbow. She separated out some midnight blue, brown, and moss green sheets. It had been years since she’d done origami. She wasn’t sure she’d remember how to make a reindeer.

  Once she got started, though, it all came back to her—the folding and creasing, opening up, and then folding again, the geometry of origami squares, rectangles, and triangles.

  When she finished, “Carol of the Bells” was playing on the radio. Ding dingy dong, ding dingy dong. On the balcony, the tissue paper tails of the Christmas lanterns she and Jay had bought at the Saturday Market were fluttering in the breeze.

  She hadn’t been to Abby and Saudur’s house since before the coup attempt. Today, entering San Lorenzo Village, driving past the guard post, everything looked the same as before. The only thing that had changed was her awareness of how close the village was to the high-rise buildings the rebels had occupied. If she looked straight ahead as she drove down San Lorenzo Drive, all she saw was the gracious tree-lined streets and two-story houses. When she tilted her chin back another inch or two, though, the hotels and condos towered over the tops of the trees.

  She turned onto Apostol Street, parked in front of Abby’s house, and walked up to the gate, a paper bag filled with Christmas gifts in each hand. Like all the houses in the Makati villages, Abby’s was surrounded by a wall. Her wall was made of concrete blocks skim coated with cement and painted white.

  Diana rang the bell, and something—was it the shrill sound of the bell?—stirred up a fluttering in her chest. A kind of butterfly of anticipation, as though she had something to tell her friend. She didn’t, of course. She laughed. Being four days late wasn’t the kind of thing you shared with a friend. No matter how much it meant to Diana, in reality, four days was just a late period.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am,” Abby’s maid said as she swung the gate open. “Come inside. I’ll call Mrs. Rahman.”

  “Auntie Diana, Auntie Diana!” The twins raced across the grass toward her, Simon sprinting ahead, his arms pumping, heels kicking up behind him, poor Jeremy struggling to keep up. It was amazing how different their running styles and skills were. From a distance you’d never guess they were identical twins.

  “Auntie Diana.” Simon tugged on one of her bags. “What’s that?”

  “Christmas presents.”

  “For me?” Jeremy peaked inside the other bag.

  “The big presents are for you and Simon. The others are for your mom and dad.”

  The boys sprinted ahead looking over their shoulders to be sure she was following them into the house, through the entry, and into the living room where Simon performed the baseball maneuver of sliding to a stop with his forward foot under the Christmas tree. “Put ’em here,” he instructed.

  Jeremy stood in front of the tree, his arms spread wide like a small MC on a TV game show. “See our Christmas tree. It’s the bestest ever.” He raised his eyebrows, waiting for her confirmation.

  For a moment Diana couldn’t speak. The tree was far from perfect. Tinsel hung in globs reaching only half-way up. A paper chain began on one branch and petered out after a two-foot run. Construction paper stars and bells and candy canes decorated with stickers and crayon scribbles were scattered haphazardly among evenly spaced lights and balls.

  “Yes. It’s the bestest ever,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat. “I hope I can have a Christmas tree like this someday.”

  Behind her, a woman’s footsteps started down the stairs and stopped. Diana turned around, and there was Abby, halfway down the stairs, looking like she’d been caught in a children’s game of freeze.

  “Diana, hi,” she said, starting up again. She swept her hand over her T-shirt and shorts. “I meant to change into something more presentable.” She frowned at the paper bags Diana brought. “What’s all this?”

  “Christmas presents. For us.” Simon reached inside one of the bags and wrestled out a large gift.

  “For our Christmas,” Jeremy said, grabbing the gift from him and putting it under the tree.

  “Hey! Let Auntie Diana take care of that. You boys go play.”

  “Oh!” They plodded away, feigning exhaustion.

  “Mummy.” Simon whipped back around. “Can I show Auntie Diana our bullet holes?”

  “Later. Now go on.” Abby flicked her wrists at them. “Scat.”

  “Whoa!” Diana raised her eyebrows. “You have bullet holes?”

  “A couple in the perimeter wall. One in the side of the house. Let’s go sit in the lanai. It’s too hot in here.”

  Abby’s lanai was a kind of screened porch, open to the living room and hall on two sides and screened on two others. It seemed cooler than it was because of all the plants. There were large potted palms and philodendrons on the floor and ferns and ivy and orchids hanging from the wrought iron grills. In one corner, green and yellow parakeets chirped and flitted around inside a large cage. The jungle-print cushions on the rattan chairs completed the illusion.

  Abby’s maid was right behind them with calamansi juice, cookies, and napkins. She set the tray on a glass-topped table and turned to leave.

  “Could you bring us some wine, Lourdes, and a couple of wine glasses?” Abby asked. “There’s a bottle cooling in the fridge.” She glanced at Diana and just as quickly looked away.

  Diana’s heart sank. Something was wrong. Not that they never had wine at two in the afternoon, but, well . . . If her suspicion was correct, they were both going to need a drink.

  For the past few days she’d been kidding herself. And why wouldn’t she? Abby had been so convincing. She’d stamped her foot and vowed in no uncertain terms that she was not going to move to Vanuatu, and Saudur would just have to find another position here in D-TAP’s Manila office. It was the day the rebels marched back to Fort Bonifacio. Jay and Saudur were at the office. The twins were watching cartoons. Diana and Abby were gathering things together for their return to Abby’s house in Makati.

  Diana was looking for stray toys when Abb
y made her announcement.

  “I’ve decided.”

  “Decided what?”

  Abby stuffed the boys’ PJs into a suitcase and zipped it shut with a ferocity that left no question about her determination. “I will not move to Vanuatu.”

  Her face had been almost as fiery as her hair that day. This afternoon, though, all that ferocity was gone. Without her usual “Lady Danger” red lipstick, without any makeup at all, Abby looked pale, her eyelashes nearly invisible. She looked less like the confident Londoner of her adulthood and more like the freckle-faced Irish lass of her childhood. “Sorry,” she said, “I haven’t made any reservations for the beach trip we talked about.”

  For a split second, Diana felt a flash of relief. They weren’t moving after all. Abby was just feeling bad about the beach trip.

  The fan whirred and the parakeets chirped. Outside, the laugh of a neighbor’s maid overlaid the ever-present distant hum of cars and buses and motorized tricycles.

  Abby cleared her throat. “We won’t have time to go to the beach. I’ll be packing.” She picked at a loose strip of rattan on the arm of the chair. “Saudur’s taking the job in Vanuatu. Friday was his last chance to decide before they gave it to someone else.”

  “You’re leaving.” Diana hadn’t meant for her words to come out that way. So soft, as though she were giving up on their friendship, assigning Abby to her Christmas card list.

  Without looking at Diana, Abby walked across the room to the birdcage. “You and Jay might be able to get reservations on Borakay,” she said, her voice breaking. “Or Matabunkay or La Playa del Norte.”

  “Abby, please,” Diana jumped up. “Please don’t worry about us.” She put her arm around Abby’s shoulder. For a moment they gazed at the parakeets, pretending Abby’s sniffles were lost among the birds’ chirps and warbles.

  Abby pulled away and covered her face with her hands.

  “What can I do?”

  “Get me a tissue. Better yet,” Abby said as Lourdes made her entrance, wine glasses tinkling, flip-flops slapping against her heels. “Get me some of those paper napkins and a glass of chardonnay.” Abby blew her nose on one of the napkins Diana brought and wiped her eyes on another. “I told him I wouldn’t go,” she said, stuffing the napkins in a back pocket.