“He made up an ailment?” asked Pen.
“An ailment, a name, an entire medical history. He said he had to cancel his appointment with a doctor in Ohio because of an unexpected business trip to Cebu and didn’t want to wait until he got home to get checked out.”
“What kind of doctor is Armando, anyway?”
“A thoracic surgeon.”
“So Jason said there was something wrong with his—what? Thorax? Do humans even have thoraxes? I thought insects were the ones with thoraxes.”
“Well, that would explain why Jason has one,” said Will.
It should have been a nothing moment, slightly funny but evanescent, a moment in a long stream of moments. Instead, for Pen at least, it separated itself, became self-contained and revelatory. Pen and Will looked at each other and smiled the kind of smiles people exchange when they have known each other for a very long time, and maybe it was the exhaustion or the fact of time’s having been turned on its head, but Pen had the sensation that, right then, they were two bodies caught in perfect balance, the forces pulling them together precisely equal to the ones keeping them apart, Pen on one side of the doorway, Will on the other, and what she understood is that all the forces were love and that she was the opposite of lonely. This could be enough, she realized, this kind of being together. Friendship. In spite of all her longing (her fingers on his wrist), this could be enough.
“You’ll have to come back,” said Pen, taking a step backward into the room, “and tell me all about it.”
“You know I will,” said Will.
THE NEXT MORNING, WILL FOUND PEN AND AUGUSTA AT THE HOTEL pool. It was six thirty, which, for Pen, under normal circumstances and time zones, would have passed for the crack of dawn, but which felt remarkably late given the fact that she and Augusta had both been up for a grim, trapped, hungry, television-filled (thank God for the Disney channel) two and a half hours.
Augusta was in the baby pool cooing to the dolphin fountain, and Pen was feasting on warm, dense, cloven rolls called Elorde bread after a Cebuano boxing star (Pen had learned from the waiter that boxing was the most popular sport in the Philippines, with basketball and billiards close behind), sticky rice redolent with coconut milk, and mangoes, palm-sized, kidney-shaped, butter-yellow on the outside, with brilliant, silken, spoonable flesh of such acute deliciousness that, upon taking her first bite, Pen could have wept with joy.
“Was he cute?” had been Pen’s first question.
“I wouldn’t say ‘cute,’” said Will.
“Because you never say ‘cute’ or because he wasn’t?” asked Pen.
“Both,” said Will.
“So what’d he look like?”
“The anti-Jason. Take Jason and substitute every single thing about him with its opposite, and you’ll get Armando.”
Pen considered this. “Jason has decent teeth. Are you saying Armando had bad teeth?”
“Every single thing about Jason except his teeth. I didn’t pry open his mouth and go in with a flashlight, but I got the impression that his teeth are fine.”
“What else about him is fine?”
“Pen.”
Pen sighed. “I knew I should have had you take a picture. What was he like? Funny? Smart? Devastatingly handsome? Did he look great in his white coat? Did he even wear a white coat? Did he really seem like the kind of guy who would run without a shirt? Was he stunned to see Jason walk into his office?”
“Yes.”
Pen narrowed her eyes at Will threateningly.
“Yes, he really did seem like the kind of guy who would run without a shirt,” said Will.
“No!” yelped Pen, recoiling. “Wait, didn’t you used to run without a shirt? I think you did. I seem to remember that.”
“I never ran without a shirt. Occasionally, when it was unusually hot, I took my shirt off afterward, when I was cooling down. Totally different thing.”
“Sure, Will. Sure, it is,” said Pen, patting his arm. “Are you saying Armando was arrogant?”
“A little. Although it was kind of an awkward situation, so maybe he’s not always like that.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“We didn’t talk long. He walked into the examining room, where we were waiting—”
“Wait a minute. You went into the examining room with Jason? Didn’t anyone find that odd?”
“He told the nurse we were brothers and that he had a tendency to panic in hospitals.”
“You look like brothers,” said Pen.
“So anyway, Armando walked in and we all shook hands, and Jason asked about Cat, and Armando said he preferred not to discuss it at work, and Jason said, ‘I don’t think you’re getting how important this is,’ and Armando said that, yes, he did, and then he invited us to his house, and then he said the thing that made Jason go apeshit, and Jason yelled, and before they could throw us out, we left.”
“Hold on. You shook hands. Just like that? I mean, I know you; you’d shake hands with Attila the Hun right before he chopped off your head, but Jason? With Armando the motherclucker? Armando, his sworn enemy?”
“I was impressed, actually,” said Will. “He was literally quaking—or at least kind of vibrating—with, I don’t know, rage or a lust for vengeance or something, before Armando got there, but the second the guy walked in, he pulled himself together. He had that ‘gotcha’ look on his face he gave us when he showed up at the reunion, but he was strangely polite, even kind of dignified.”
“But what about Armando?” Pen asked. “Wasn’t he shocked?”
“No. He didn’t miss a beat. It was crazy. Or at least, I thought it was crazy until the end, when he said the thing that made Jason go apeshit.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Right before we left, Jason said something like, ‘BTW, way to play it cool, bro. It’s like you were expecting me.’”
“He said ‘BTW’? What is wrong with him? Nobody says that.”
“A lot of things are wrong with him, remember?” said Will. “So then Armando gave him this arrogant smile and said, ‘I was expecting you,’ and Jason turned the color of Hawaiian punch the way he does and said, ‘No, you weren’t.’”
“He’s such an infant,” said Pen, sighing.
“And Armando said, ‘First of all, you called from Ohio. Second of all, you called yourself “Clark Kent.” ’”
Pen’s eyes widened. “Jason really did that? Why?”
“Apparently, he’s been a huge Superman fan his whole life.”
Pen covered her face. “Oh no.”
“Right. Then Jason said in this sneering voice, ‘Why would that mean anything to you? You don’t even have Superman here.’”
Her face still covered, Pen opened her fingers and peered out. “He is the ugliest American in the whole history of ugly Americans.”
“Armando didn’t refute the Superman thing, just gave Jason this sort of pitying look, and then said, ‘I knew it was you because Catalina told me about your comic book predilection. She told me how embarrassing it was that you always made restaurant reservations under the name “Clark Kent.” ’”
“Ai, yi, yi!” shrieked Pen.
“Ai, yi, yi!” echoed Augusta from the pool.
“That’s when Jason turned purple and started yelling that Armando was full of shit and how he knew what ‘predilection’ meant and how Cat hated being called Catalina and loved it when he made reservations like that and how Cat called him ‘her Superman’ when they were alone.” Will shuddered. “It was sad.”
They sat and watched the lemon light pour through the coconut palms and skim across the serene blue pool, paying tribute to the sad, angry, devoted, appalling, lunkheaded hunk of humanity that was Jason with a moment of silence.
“I’m a mermaid, Will!” called Augusta.
“I can see that,” said Will, smiling.
“So, hey,” said Pen excitedly, “I’ll meet him.”
Will made a pained face. “You sure you want to be there?
It could get ugly.”
“Are you kidding? After you stopped by yesterday—or whenever it was—I got so jealous that you were meeting him and I wasn’t that it took me thirty whole seconds to fall asleep.”
It had taken her longer than that. She had lain for a long time, contemplating the familiar, easeful, uncluttered holiness of friendship and the memory of Will in the doorway with his damp hair and beautiful eyes, looking like all the Wills he had ever been. There was peace in it, in being the same old Pen who wanted, above all other things, for nothing to change, but still, her body had stayed awake, wired, her skin tingling, until sleep hit like a snowstorm, whiting out everything.
Will smiled. “Poor Pen.”
“Pen’s not poor!” corrected Augusta sternly, from the pool’s edge. “Pen’s rich!”
“True,” said Pen.
“Armando’s sending his car for us today at five,” said Will.
“Fancy,” commented Pen through a bite of mango. “I guess I’m not the only one who’s rich.” Then she sighed. “Poor Jason. Poor, poor, poor, poor Jason.”
Augusta didn’t say that Jason wasn’t poor. She had left the world of adults. In joyous self-absorption, she leaned back like the bathing beauty she was, her toes pointed, her face to the sun; then she sat up and slid into the water like a seal.
THE INTERIOR OF ARMANDO’S CAR WAS ICE-COLD AND PRISTINELY, almost spookily clean, but it wasn’t, to Jason’s evident satisfaction, especially fancy, not a limousine certainly, which is what they’d all either dreaded or hoped for, not even a Mercedes, which seemed to be the luxury car of choice in Cebu, their slick, dignified shapes jostling incongruously through the city streets with tricycles, mopeds, and jeepneys (public conveyances of surpassing gorgeousness, flashing with chrome, dazzlingly painted, studded with hood ornaments, religious icons, proper names, and cryptic messages; Augusta declared that jeepneys were “the best things in the whole, wide world of shininess” and Pen had to agree). Instead, Armando’s vehicle turned out to be a Japanese SUV, smallish and silver.
As they’d piled into it, Pen had heard Jason mutter to Will (or possibly to himself or to Armando or Cat, neither of whom were there), “Not exactly a slammin’ ride for Dr. Hot Shit,” which had caused Pen to shoot a worried glance at the driver, whose imperturbable face reacted, if it reacted at all, by growing several degrees more imperturbable. When Will had introduced himself to the driver, the young man had identified himself as Ruben, emphasis (charmingly, Pen thought, and distinguishing him forever from her favorite sandwich) on the second syllable. Pen had winced when Jason, in what she knew he hoped was a blatant defiance of normal driver/rider protocol (although who could say for sure?), ignored the door Ruben held open and stuffed himself into the front passenger seat (it had been slid almost as far forward as it would go, presumably to accommodate passengers riding in the back where they belonged), but Ruben hadn’t so much as fluttered an eyelash.
“So, uh, Ruben,” said Jason, with a conspiratorial glance back at Will and Pen that made Pen want to strangle him, “you cart old Armando everywhere, do you? Where I come from grown men generally drive themselves, unless they’re, like, extremely elderly or paralyzed or whatnot. It’s a point of pride.”
Pen had the urge to stick her fingers in her ears and sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” at full volume. Instead, she stared pointedly out the window. They passed roadside fruit stands with their big, glorious, fanned bunches of bananas overhanging careful pyramids of red, green, and gold orbs. Sometimes, the traffic slowed enough for Pen to make out individual fruits, gorgeous and strange: giant green brains, strawberry-colored sea urchins, golden hedgehogs. She wanted to ask Ruben about them, but Jason was still talking. “No offense,” he began, words to make your heart sink.
“No offense, but personally, you couldn’t pay me to ride in the back while another dude drove. I’d feel like an I-don’t-know-what. A toy poodle.”
“Toy poodles ride in the backseat while another dude drives?” asked Augusta skeptically. “By themselves?”
“Of course not,” said Pen. “Jason’s just making stuff up.”
Jason aimed a look of irritation at Pen and seemed about to start talking again, when Ruben said, “Dr. Cruz drives himself. I am the driver for the family.”
Jason widened his eyes at this, his blond brows shooting up his forehead. “Dr. Cruz has a family?”
“Yes,” said Ruben.
“This I did not know,” said Jason, nodding, and adding in an inexplicable and heinous French accent (inspired by Hercule Poirot? Jacques Clouseau? Cousteau? Impossible to say), “Zee plot thickens!”
“Look at the kids, Mama,” said Augusta, pointing. “All dressed the same.”
They were schoolchildren, lovely in their uniforms, walking serenely along the dusty, busy street, some of them so young that Pen marveled at their being out alone, until she saw that they weren’t alone. They walked in threes, fours, arms linked or loosely wrapped around each other’s waists, each one connected to another, the little ones in between the bigger ones.
“Little kids in school uniforms,” said Jason. “Doesn’t get much cuter than that.”
Pen caught Will’s eye and telegraphed, So clucking weird how he can do that, shrug off asinine-ness like an ugly jacket and get real and wistful.
“All those kids,” Jason went on. “You know something? It hit me last night that maybe that’s the reason all this is happening.”
Will looked at Pen, who shrugged.
“The kids?” asked Will.
“Yeah,” said Jason. “One anyway. Hell, why not two or three? We’ve talked about it. Or I have. Cat wasn’t ready to give up, I guess.”
“You mean adoption,” said Pen.
“It’s a Catholic country. Highly Catholic,” said Jason. “Some people are surprised by that, an Asian Catholic country.”
“We know it’s primarily a Catholic country,” said Pen, hoping against all odds that he wasn’t about to say something hideously insensitive in front of Ruben.
“So we’re talking no birth control. Families with seven, ten kids. Cat and I could adopt some, take them home, give them everything they’d never get here.”
Ruben didn’t speak or shift his gaze from the road.
“What’s birth control?” asked Augusta in a loud whisper, and Pen hushed her with a kiss.
“People say there’s a reason for everything,” Jason said. “And I’m thinking that maybe the reason for all this pain and upheaval is to give us the babies we’ve been wanting for so long. Because, as God is my witness, we would totally do right by them.”
Jason was still staring out the window at the children. Pen didn’t know what to say to him, but, looking at him, she could see that it didn’t matter: he had forgotten they were there. The car kept nosing slowly forward, so full of burgeoning sorrow and longing, Pen thought the windows might blow out.
ARMANDO’S NEIGHBORHOOD WAS IN THE HILLS. PEN HAD NOT EVEN been aware of hills, until the car passed the guard stand at the neighborhood’s entrance and began to wind up them. The houses weren’t mansions but were bigger than any houses Pen had seen so far, a far, far cry from the plywood and aluminum shanties they’d seen on their way from the airport to the hotel. (“Squatters” the driver had explained; Pen hadn’t known exactly what he meant by that and hadn’t asked, but she hoped it had something to do with temporariness, hoped that those shanties were a stop on the road to someplace better, though she worried that they weren’t.) As in the rest of Cebu, there were flowers in profusion, lopping over walls, bordering every doorway, banked against buildings, flaring along the roadsides: fiery pink bougainvillea, bushes thick with yellow bells, the white stars of sampaguita, which Ruben told Pen was the national flower. Here and there, bony dogs sprawled in scraps of shade.
“They look feral to me,” said Jason. To Pen, they looked haggard and introspective.
Ruben stopped the SUV in front of an iron gate set in a long white wall and beeped the h
orn, and, after thirty seconds or so, the gate swung open and they drove through. When Pen turned around, she saw two small boys in flip-flops pushing the gate shut.
The house was the kind of house that instantly made Pen want to live in it, fine-boned, graceful, but solid and comfortable-looking, with pebbled steps leading down through a steep, tiered garden to a deep, shadow-pooled lawn. It glowed white as a shell in the mellowing sun.
Ruben opened the car door and lifted Augusta out and set her feet on the ground in a gentle, but matter-of-fact manner that led Pen to think he must be a father. Through the open door Pen saw a man standing on the salmon-colored tiles of the verandah, and even before he began to walk toward them, she knew he must be Armando. He was maybe five-foot-ten, compact and lean, with wavy black hair and the bearing of a prince. He wore stone-colored cargo shorts, leather fisherman sandals, and a loose, short-sleeved linen shirt in a periwinkle blue that offset his skin so impeccably that Pen suspected a woman (Cat?) had chosen it for him.
“Hi,” he said with a smile. “Welcome.”
He shook hands with everyone and was composed and convivial, as if he were greeting old friends, instead of the large, volatile, cuckolded husband of his former (or not former) lover and the cuckold’s pals. As the five of them stood on the verandah, Pen saw the two boys who had closed the gate peeking their glossy heads around the corner of the house, and then a young woman, possibly a teenager, appeared with the boys in tow. They wore striped T-shirts and lovely, shy grins. The oldest could have been no more than eight; the smaller one a few years younger.
“Ask her,” the woman said to the boys, her hands on their shoulders pushing them gently forward. “The way I told you.”
Slowly, the boys approached Augusta, ducked their heads in miniature bows, and the older boy said, “My name is Paul, and this is my brother Nando. Would you like to play?”
After gaping at them with an expression of dewy-eyed enchantment, Augusta curtsied and said, “My name is Augusta,” and looked up beseechingly at Pen, who nodded.
“Sure, as long as you stay in the yard.”
“Yay!” she shrieked, breaking the spell, and the children bounded like terriers across the grass, the young woman following behind.
Falling Together Page 29
