That was the thing about families, wasn't it? You were consulted, asked for help, and you never agreed with half the things they did, but you loved them anyway.
Talk about complicated.
“So we’re quite ready to proceed with the plans,” Tita Merry continued, brandishing a previously unseen baby pink trapper keeper (yes the kind you used to have in Grade School) from her seat. I saw Regina sigh a little at the sight of it. I saw Dad jump when Tita Merry slapped the gigantic 1990s trapper keeper on to the table.
"Ever since she turned eighteen, I have been booking Regina for a wedding at Magallanes church," she promptly informed the table, which made Reg's eyes widen. That was apparently news to her. "I make that reservation year after year. Mellie the church's secretary is always on my Christmas gift list. You remember last year, when I gave Mellie the quezo de bola spread, Charity?"
My mother, who to everyone else in the universe was Chari, barely looked up from her plate of bibingka when she nodded. I could tell by the shake of her shoulders she was laughing, whether at being called Charity or the special Edam cheese spread, I would never know. My Dad was squeezing her arm, trying to get her giggles to stop. Tita Merry didn't see it, but cleared her throat.
"So the wedding will be in December this year, so we don't have much time."
"Why the rush?" my mother asked curiously. "Are you preggy, Regina?"
"Regina Marie!" my grandmother exclaimed, slapping her hand on the table. She was a Luz, a family with alta sociedad Spanish and Batangueño roots. She was very traditional. In her mind, proper ladies didn't drink wine until they were 21, and children were strict second class citizens in a family gathering. Until we turned eighteen, we were made to eat in the kitchen rather than the main dining room.
Major assumption number two: any woman marrying early or quickly must be pregnant already. Regina laughed it off while Enzo choked lightly on his food. I was only too happy to thump his back for him until it cleared out.
"No, Lola!" Regina exclaimed, shaking her head just to emphasize her point. "Promise! I just want to do it quickly, that's all."
"And anyway, Lorenzo's parents and I have already agreed on the date,” Tita Merry exclaimed. I saw Regina turn to Enzo for confirmation and he nodded. "It's the best date since we have my sisters coming in very soon. Your Titas Flora and Fauna booked their tickets back to Manila last night."
"Yes, did they say why they booked so suddenly?" Lola May asked. "Those tickets must have been expensive.”
"Yeah, and we all know Ate Flora only likes riding first class," Dad pointing out, sipping his coffee. “She usually doesn’t book a ticket until it’s at least half-off.”
"I have no idea why they decided to fly in so fast, but they are arriving next week so they can be part of the every-all!" Tita Merry exclaimed. We would soon find out that she had this uncanny ability to spin every topic we discussed to steer towards the wedding. The weather today was warm? That's why she booked December so the wedding would be cool. Global warming? Surely not before the wedding!
By every-all, she meant the general festivities that came with a wedding. And here in the Philippines, that meant a lot. There was the traditional pamamanhikan, the engagement party, bridal showers, reunions if relatives were coming in…the list was potentially endless. Since the happy couple was getting married in a year, more or less, that didn't give us much time.
Did I say us? I meant them. They didn't have much time.
"So, we have the pamamanhikan and engagement celebration in exactly a month with both families and a large party," Tita Merry announced, consulting her calendar. This hyper-organized Tita was completely new to me. Usually Tita Merry was a bit scatterbrained—I had to remind her of certain things when I organized events for her, and she always worried she forgot to do something. But with this, she seemed totally confident in herself, and ready to take this whole thing on. "Enzo's family has graciously allowed us to host them—“
"Which sounds very odd to me," Lola May pointed out, tutting her disappointment. We all knew that traditionally, the groom's family invited the bride's family to their home so the son may formally ask the bride's parents for their daughter's hand in marriage.
But Tita Merry wanted to do away with that tradition (not doing it with Tito Gerund made her too sad, Regina explained later) and simply have a big engagement party with the asking as a part of the program. Not exactly the most traditional of pamamanhikans.
"Now Martha, as the Matron-of-Honor, may I entrust you with this?"
Now it was my turn to choke on my food. I heard Maggie hoot with laughter and I wanted to drop kick her. Enzo was only too happy to return the favor I did for him and thumped on my back, which made me glare slightly at him while he sheepishly smiled. Regina shook her head.
“Mamá!” she exclaimed. “She's still single, so it's Maid-of honor."
"Loool Ate's a matron!" Maggie exclaimed from her seat, and I glared daggers at her to get her to stop. Lola May shook her head at me like she found me hilarious.
"And I haven’t even asked her yet!" Regina exclaimed, immediately reaching over Enzo's front to reach for my hand. She ended up half-sprawled over him since my arms were not that long. "I’m so sorry Marths, I was going to do this whole thing with a necklace and a card for you…”
Me? Her Maid-of-Honor? Over my dead body. Over my dog’s dead body (sorry, Bibi). No way. No freaking way.
“It’s no big deal,” I said, turning to her to give her a tight smile, which Enzo actually returned, and I looked away sharply.
I shouldn’t be bothered by this. Enzo and I were just friends now. I had no claims over him except that one night, that one night that I had kept so close to myself. I thought I would never see him again, that I would keep the memory just as it was...secret and all mine. Now here he was, real as can be, but he was Regina's now. My brain couldn't process it. I needed a little time.
Telling Regina about the past was Enzo’s job…right?
“Perfect!” Tita Merry said, jotting something down. “So Martha is organizing the pamamanhikan. This is going to be a big deal, my dear. The Benitezes are expecting a big to-do, since Regina here is the oldest grandchild. We'll make sure to put their money where our mouths are."
I felt the color drain from my face and my hands go slightly clammy as my father corrected Tita Merry. Planning events for her charities was okay, but an engagement party with Tita Flora, Fauna and Merryweather Aguas breathing down my neck? Did she think I was agreeing to it?
I didn’t have the emotional strength to handle any of this. I was barely holding it together.
“No, Tita, I—“ I began. Tell her you have a full time job! And a dog!
“Thank you for volunteering, hija, it’s going to be a huge help to me and Regina,” Tita Merry said, smiling and tapping my hand affectionately as my jaw dropped to the table. I wanted to scream and tell everyone that I couldn’t go through with this. I wanted to storm off and just leave bloody Antipolo so I didn’t have to do any of this.
Instead I deflated slightly and grabbed a piece of pichi-pichi.
“I don’t think we’re going to get along,” I said, sliding Max's phone to his side of the table and glaring at him a week later. We were sitting in his favorite restaurant, a kebab place he went to so often that the staff knew his name. I had to admit, the shawarma rice was pretty fantastic.
We were eating out because Max was consulting with me over his accounting and other business practices. He was the most dedicated vet I knew (although I admit I didn't know a lot), and he really enjoyed running the clinic, but he was admittedly too scatterbrained to handle the administrative work himself. So our office helped him out, and he was more than happy to have us on retainer.
I was helping him make sense of his finances while he sorted out his patient files and told me about his regular patients, his favorites, recounting the giraffe birth for the fourth time (I loved hearing that story because Max got hit in the forehead by the calf's h
oof and passed out).
One of the older waitresses had come over to comment how nice it was that Max "finally found me” as she gave me another serving of rice. I was too high on the amazing garlic sauce to really care, and continued to eat with gusto. That was, until Max announced he was seeing someone.
"Ha-ha, nice try, liar," I said, squeezing more garlic sauce over my plate.
"I'm not kidding," he insisted, pulling his phone out from underneath his clinic files to show me the photo.
Her name was Georgina Torres, or George for short. She brought her little Bichon Frisé to his clinic for anti-rabies shots one day, and according to Max, she was “so gorgeous it would have been a crime not to flirt with her.” I was a bit dubious about this until I looked her up on Facebook (it didn't take long since she'd taken to tagging Max in every possible post) where she posted a selfie of herself and Max with the caption, "walking the babies with my bae.”
Like, calm down girl, it's only been two days. Max has had relationships with cake slices longer than with you.
“She’s…” I frowned, wondering what I would say to put it delicately. “I don't know. There's something unlikeable about her.”
"What are you talking about, the photo already has five hundred likes," he pointed out, peering down at the photo again. It was a nice photo, optimal lighting, a nice filter and a big smile from her. Max, I wasn’t too convinced about yet. He didn’t get selfies, why people needed to constantly take pictures of themselves. When he posted, it was always a photo of the book he was reading, or of Wookie, a candid photo of me once in a while.
And suddenly he was converted to the power of a selfie? I don’t think so.
"She has a Bichon, Max! Never trust a girl with a Bichon Frisé, their owners tend to be more high maintenance than them," I warned him.
"Is that a piece of wisdom you picked up from an Internet video?" Max said quickly, and I narrowed my eyes at him. Now I knew something was off. Since when did he watch Internet videos? Since when was he so defensive about a girl he was dating? He never usually told me more about them than their name. What was so different about this one? Did he forget that he was the one who told me about the Bichon Bitch?
He must have noticed the beginnings of my annoyance bubbling up from inside so he dropped his steady gaze.
"Look," he sighed. "Just...be nice if I introduce you, okay? She already feels threatened by you as it is…"
I put on a scandalized face, dropping my jaw, and bugging out my eyes. Max gave me the same narrow-eyed look I'd just thrown at him, and I shrugged it off.
"What?" I asked innocently. "I just find it hard to believe a bae with a 'banging body' like hers would be threatened by the girl who could break her in half by sitting on her."
It was a joke we both knew didn't land. Max never enjoyed it when I self-deprecated. We both frowned and looked down at our food. Clearly this wasn't a good day for either of us.
I mashed my rice and garlic sauce together on my plate, contemplating ordering a lassi yogurt while I slowly processed what Max was trying to do. I couldn't imagine him going out with someone. Maybe I hadn't known him for long enough, or maybe I'd never seen him show such a keen interest in anyone else. And why should I not be happy for him? He was handsome, a dog-lover, with a business of his own, and he was so well-read I couldn't catch up with him. Sure he was a little scatterbrained at times, but that was what I was for, right?
"Okay, I'm sorry," I said so quickly he wouldn't have heard it if he wasn't listening out for it. I reached across the table and squeezed his hand. His elbow was resting over a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera, which should have tipped me off about his current mental state. Why was he so determined that I know about this girl? He's never talked about his other dates before, much less plan to introduce them to me.
I pretended to review his papers to put us back on the topic of the clinic. But I couldn't.
“I’ll be nice," I promised. "I'll smile and compliment her and make her feel pretty."
"That's not..." Max said, taking a deep breath to calm himself down before he talked again. "That's not what I want, and you know that."
So what did he want? I wanted this kind energy to dissipate, I wanted to talk to him about this Enzo thing. But with that look of his face, I knew it was the last thing he wanted to do.
"I have to go," I said, fishing my wallet out of my bag to pay for my half of dinner before I started gathering up the files I would need to review later. "I have to..."
"Yeah," was all he said, raising his hand to ask for the bill. Tito Bob of Tito Bob's Shawarma House came over and made a whole fuss about how I shouldn't pay when I was the one being taken out to lunch. Tito Bob was a very large, very gay man who used to work in Turkey as a dishwasher in a famous Turkish shish-kabob place.
After three years, he got fed up, asked his boss point blank just what made his shawarma so good and came home to open his own place. He’d known Max since he moved to Manila from Los Baños, and claimed he was the one who put the lean in Max’s figure. Char!
"Ay, Tito Bob, we're not—"
I began to protest, but he squeezed my hand and shook his head vehemently before he waggled his fingers at Max.
“Hoy, Max! I don't give you the best table in my restaurant so you can be ungentlemanly to your uber-ganders girl!” he scolded Max, swatting him lightly with the fluorescent yellow fly swatter he always had about his person. "You already brought her to the cheapest place in town, the least you can do is pay!"
No amount of explanation on my part would deter Tito Bob’s surprisingly traditional beliefs about my relationship with Max ('I have never heard of a girl being expected to pay for her meal when she's on a date!'). Max sighed and placed the bills on the table, gathered up the files, his book, and nodded his head toward the door. I was too distracted by Tito Bob asking about Max’s kissing technique (‘I bet he’s sloppy but really tender, charot!’) to be surprised that Max was holding my hand as we walked out.
It was only when Tito Bob looked down at our linked hands and gave me a knowing look that I realized we were doing it.
Oh. We were holding hands.
We stood outside together, our hands still clasped together. I know it should be a big deal to someone, but it wasn't, right? No big deal. Friends held hands all the time, didn’t they?
But he couldn't look me in the eye for some reason. Maybe he was still mad about what I said about Georgia. Or was he? I hated not knowing.
My hands were starting to get clammy, so I made the excuse of fishing out money from my wallet to pay for my half of lunch. Max frowned and leaned over, placing a hand on the small of my back before whispering, "Tito Bob's watching."
Lo and behold, he was. Tito Bob watched us from the restaurant door, and he was actually gathering his wait staff and pointing at us specifically. I realized that this was the first time in two years that anyone had ever assumed that Max and I were a couple. It was a strange feeling, and I knew I would have found this hilarious if he wasn’t in such a bad mood. Maybe he would find it funny later.
"Where are you off to?" he asked, leading me gently to his car. "I'll drop you off on my way to meet George. We're taking the dogs to that fancy place in Taguig for a jog."
There were a lot of jokes I could make about pretty, cropped-shirt wearing Georgia Torres jogging dogs with slobby, rough, leave-me-alone-to-read Max, but decided it was prudent to just hold my tongue.
"I'm meeting Reg then we’re picking up our aunts at the airport," I said. "I can get a car or something."
"Martha..."
"Max," I said, turning to him with a bright, confident smile on my face. "It's okay."
I had this odd feeling that I was talking about something other than our transportation arrangements. But I smiled and ignored that feeling. Max gave me a solemn nod, like he knew it too. My phone beeped with a text message.
Regina: Is it just me or has Taguig gotten fancier than the last time I was here? Anyway, here at
Fully Booked. Are you excited for the Three Witches to reunite??? because I’m not
Martha: Something wicked this way comes, and I am not looking forward to it either. Taking an Uber. See you there!
Regina: xx
Martha: What is that?
Regina: Oh, sorry! Its kisses. British thing. Don’t worry about it.
Shortly after Regina asked me to be her Maid-of-Honor, Maggie quickly pulled me aside to tell me that Regina…had changed. Apparently she was determined to become my friend, and that I should try too.
I told Maggie that I wasn’t the one who dressed up in a big, sparkly ballgown at my own seventh birthday, but promised to make an effort. So Regina and I were texting all chummy-like. I had to admit, if I didn’t know about her little evil ways as a child, we would make really good buddies.
Did this mean she was already growing on me?
Martha: Okay. Have to talk to you about something, by the way. About Enzo.
MESSAGE SENDING FAILED
Six
TRAFFIC. TRAFFIC EVERYWHERE.
Regina was practically bouncing off the walls of our van as we rushed headlong into the traffic-lined streets. The entire four lanes of C-5 was crammed to the gills with private cars making their way to the expressway, and we were stuck there until we reached the small service road heading to the direction of the airport.
Kuya Benjo was muttering curses under his breath as he navigated the road, and not for the first time, I was glad that I wasn’t the one driving. Tita Merry was in the front captain's chair, dead asleep. She hated sitting in vans as much as Regina, but always took the more passive approach and simply fell asleep behind a pair of cat eye sunglasses. I could swear I heard snoring. Our van was the only car big enough to fit us, the titas and their luggage, since, they announced they were bringing home two boxes each.
If the Dress Fits Page 6