When in Vanuatu
Page 13
Why? Diana forced herself to smile. Why did Liza think she had deep hidden feelings? “It’s a lovely song,” she said, “but isn’t it awfully sad?”
Liza straightened her back and frowned. “It’s not a sad song,” she said, grabbing Diana’s wrist. “It’s a song with feeling. Not the same thing.”
Marshall drained the last of the sangria into his glass. “Hey, boss,” he called to the waiter. “Another pitcher here.”
While they ate, they talked more about music and Hong Kong, which led naturally into a favorite topic for D-TAP men: great restaurants in Asian capitals and favorite dishes they’d eaten there. By the time the second pitcher was empty, Diana was laughing at Marshall’s jokes. Actually he could be quite the charmer. He was entertaining them now with stories about Vanuatu’s quirky history.
“Back in the days of exploration and colonization . . .” He popped a bite of flan de caramelo into his mouth. “. . . the British, French, and Germans were picking off islands in the South Pacific.” He licked the corner of his mouth and continued. “Fiji became a British colony; the French took Tahiti and New Caledonia; and Germany set its sights on Samoa. But who would get the New Hebrides?” He turned to Liza. “That’s the old name for Vanuatu. Anyway, the Germans were coming up fast, and the Brits and the French didn’t want Germany to get it, so, for the first time in their history, they decided to share. And that’s how the New Hebrides became a French-English condominium.”
“Condominium?” Liza’s big brown eyes widened.
“I kid you not. That’s why today in Vanuatu you can speak English in the morning and practice your French in the afternoon. And,” he said, “that’s why, even now, I have freshly baked French bread delivered to my doorstep every morning. I tell you—” he turned to Jay “—Vanuatu is an island paradise. You should come and see for yourself.”
Yes, Diana thought. Yes!
“I could find you a job. I know the boss,” he said, winking at Diana. “I tell you, you guys would love Vanuatu. Isn’t that right, Diana?”
She wanted to climb across the table and kiss his fat lips. “I’m all in,” she said. “We just have to convince Jay.”
Jay gave her a look of open-mouthed astonishment.
“You see.” Marshall wagged his finger at Jay. “Mark my words, Johnny Gamboa is not gonna recover from his stroke. His job will be yours for the taking.”
Jay gave a nervous little smile and quickly changed the subject.
20
Jay pulled into the entrance of Marshall’s hotel, and they all got out.
“Thanks for dinner.” Marshall shook Jay’s hand. Then he leaned over and, with a self-satisfied smile, placed his hands on Diana’s shoulders, pulled her closer, and kissed her cheek. Stepping back, he nodded at Jay, put his arm around Liza and turned to go. “Think about it,” he said over his shoulder. “You gotta keep the wife happy, you know.” He turned back around and gave Liza an apologetic squeeze. “Wife and girlfriend. I expect Johnny Gamboa to give up and retire in a month or so,” he shouted as he and Liza stepped into the revolving door.
Before Jay could say anything, Diana grabbed the keys out of his hand. “I’ll drive,” she said.
The rain had turned into a warm, thick drizzle that felt like sweat on her shoulders and arms. She flicked it off and slid into the driver’s seat.
Jay slammed the passenger side door and reached for the seat belt. “What the hell were you thinking back there?” He snapped the seatbelt into place and glared at her. “I have no intention of transferring to the South Pacific office. Now Marshall’s going to hassle me about it.”
“I was thinking . . .” She shifted into gear and took off down the drive faster than was absolutely necessary. “I was thinking that I want to move to Vanuatu.”
The standing water on the driveway rose up on either side of them like great spray flowers. Like waves crashing against rocks. Like the splashes and wakes Daddy’s speedboat made in Big Lake the two summers before he died. She’d always loved those splashes, the bigger the better. She would hold onto the seat laughing while Daddy or Andrew sent the boat bouncing over a big wake. She’d lean over the side waiting to be splashed on a sharp turn. Finally, near the end of that second summer, Daddy gave her a turn at the wheel. And she loved it. For her, boating was all about the speed and the splashing and spray. She made a sharp turn onto Roxas Boulevard, sending the car into a small, satisfying skid.
“Hey!” Jay shouted. “What are you doing?”
Smiling, she moved into the fast lane and continued speeding down Roxas Boulevard, splashing the slower cars and buses while Jay sat helpless in the passenger seat.
“I meant what I said.” Her voice was just loud enough to be heard over the now heavy rain pounding on the car’s roof. “I want to move to Vanuatu.”
He laughed. “You’re not making sense, honey. We don’t just pick up and move on a whim. I think you had too much sangria.” He braced himself against the dashboard. “Now slow the hell down.”
Instead, she forced a tricycle into the slow lane and kept going. “It’s not a whim. I’ve been thinking about this for a while.”
“I don’t care how long you’ve been thinking about it. It’s my job you’re talking about.”
“It may be your job,” she shouted over the sound of rain and flapping wipers. “But it’s my life, too.” There was a strange catch in her voice. It stopped her for a moment. “Don’t you see, Jay?” she went on more quietly. “This whole thing isn’t working for me, and I feel like there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s as though you’re saying I don’t have a voice in what happens to us.”
She slowed down, and for a while they rode on in silence. Then, as they turned into their apartment, he squeezed her knee. “I’m sorry, honey.”
Maybe he supposed that was the end of it. Diana would park the car; they’d ride the elevator up to their apartment. Before bed, they’d talk about Marshall’s wife and his girlfriend or catch some last-minute news on TV. Diana would tease him about his kinship with Don Quixote; he’d tease her about being an old cat. Then they’d wash up and go to bed. No hard feelings. Later, when Marshall contacted him, Jay would laugh and say Diana had been caught up in the moment, and no, he wasn’t interested in transferring to Vanuatu. And that would be the end of it.
Well, if that’s what he was thinking, he was wrong.
She’d broken through an old barrier, and she wasn’t in the mood that night to build it back up again.
The apartment was quiet when they entered, full of blurry crisscrossing shadows. Diagonal beams, the nightlight and the balcony lights working at cross purposes, defined the shapes of walls and tables and chairs. Clarita’s door was closed, the kitchen dark.
Jay flicked on the overhead light. He grabbed a glass drying on a towel, opened the fridge, and poured himself some chilled water. “Want some?” he asked, reaching for another glass.
She took the glass from his hand, filled it herself, and put the pitcher back in the fridge. Looking around the kitchen, she realized how ugly it was. Sterile and ugly. And it had nothing to do with her. The white walls had been chosen by the landlord not to offend anyone who rented it. The small white refrigerator with the freezing compartment above looked like something from someone else’s past. The floor tiles were more suited to a bathroom.
“This place has bad feng shui,” she said. Diana didn’t know much about feng shui, but surely her kitchen in Seattle, with its sunflower yellow walls, its French doors leading out to a green fertile space brightened with flowers and an apple tree had good feng shui. “Everything about Manila is wrong for me. For us.”
“So, now you believe in feng shui?”
Suddenly she felt weak and unbearably tired. “All I know is that everything here is bringing me down.” She leaned back against the counter. “This city is gray and hot; it’s noisy and crowded. No matter how hard I try, I can’t relax here.”
He let out a dramatic sigh. “You’ve been tak
ing that doctor too seriously.”
“Dr. Feliciano.”
“Right. Dr. Feliciano. The good doctor and her phony prescription. Who ever heard of relaxation as a way to get pregnant?” He put a hand around her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go to bed. It’s late.”
She put her glass down and pulled away from him. It would have been easy to just give up. She glanced at the crack under Clarita’s door. There wasn’t any light, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t listening.
They turned out the light—the ugly fluorescent light—and made their way through the darkened rooms—the dining and living rooms and the hallway. They didn’t turn a light on until they reached their bedroom.
Jay closed the door behind them. Diana turned on the air conditioning. (Thank goodness the power had come back.) Neither of them looked at the other. Jay made a point of removing his shoes and socks, socks in the hamper, shoes in the closet. Everything neat and precise. Diana kicked off her shoes and stood there, wondering what to do next while Jay unbuttoned his shirt and hung it up.
She sat down on the bed. Why couldn’t he understand how much this meant to her? Didn’t understand, or didn’t care? He used to care about people. In fact, that was the first thing that attracted her to him, how much he cared about people. That and how good-looking he was. Still was. She watched him take his wallet out of his back pocket and set it on the nightstand.
The day she met him, she and her roommate had just returned from a two-day cycling trip to Victoria via Sidney, British Columbia. They had loaded their bikes onto the bed of Jenn’s pickup and climbed into the cab. When Jenn turned the key, though, nothing happened. The sun was just setting, and they were tired and dirty. They’d parked at the far edge of the Anacortes ferry terminal’s lot. The cars that were still around all seemed to be hurrying out the exit. Jenn popped the hood. She leaned over and stared at the engine. “We need help,” Diana said. “Do you have jumper cables?”
Turning around, she saw Jay and his friend approaching. Afterwards, she had no recollection of the friend. Only of Jay, striding toward them, concern turning his hazel eyes sea green in a departing car’s headlights. “Do you need some help?” he asked, looking directly at Diana.
“We have a dead battery.” In her memory, it was only her and Jay. Jenn and Jay’s friend might as well have not existed.
Jay checked the connection. He was the one who tried again to start it, the one who found the jumper cables behind the seat, who ran back to get his car. He was the one who suggested they all have a bite to eat in downtown Anacortes. If she and Jenn hadn’t been wearing sweatshirts and cutoff jeans, their hair in need of a good shampoo, Diana might have thought he was too smooth. Instead he came across as caring, even chivalrous, the kind of good-looking young man you have a bite with. And when you’re done eating, you have no qualms about giving your phone number to such a kind and caring young man.
If she were going to be truthful, she’d have to admit he still cared about people. He even cared about her. But how much?
21
The birthday party was over, the boisterous little girls on their way home. Diana stood back and watched as Madeline escorted the last child and her mother to the gate, thanked them for coming, and waved good-bye. The latch clicked, and for a moment the reverberation of metal on metal hung in the air. Then there was nothing. Just the soft rustle of leaves overhead and a disquieting silence.
“It’s so quiet,” she said when Madeline joined her under an acacia tree.
“They were dreadfully noisy, weren’t they?” Madeline smiled and shook her head. “Little girls in groups . . . Thank God Marie didn’t invite boys. Can you imagine a bunch of six-year-old boys chasing the girls around the garden?”
“The girls screaming at the top of their lungs . . .” Diana smiled. “I can imagine it.” The last time she’d been on a school playground was when she was a child herself. But she remembered how it felt, the giddy excitement of running away from boys. She touched Madeline’s arm. “This was delightful,” she said. “I’m so glad you invited me.”
“No. Thank you. I needed moral support. I was so worried it would be raining again today. And the games. You never know if they’ll work out. Do you think they were too old for the calesa rides?”
“No, no. They liked it. Did you see how they scrambled to climb up on the cart?” In a world too often gray, the brightly painted calesa and the girls in Easter-egg-colored dresses were a welcome sight, giggling, squeezing in, waving as the not-so-lively horse clip-clopped away down the street.
“They’ll be too old next year,” Madeline said as they strolled from one shady spot to another. “I’ll have to think of something else.” She grabbed the string of a pink balloon caught in the kalachuchi tree and pulled it loose. “I’m tired,” she said. “Let’s sit down.”
The child-sized wooden tables and chairs Madeline had rented were neatly stacked beside the driveway in a colorful low structure of red, blue, and yellow. One maid had crumpled the tablecloth from the long serving table and was carrying it into the house for washing. The scraps of pizza and spaghetti were gone. The remains of the cake with its Little Mermaid on top had been wrapped and brought inside.
The two women sighed and sank into a couple of wicker chairs on the patio. Madeline’s sigh sounded like relief. Diana’s was something else. The noise and excitement and nonstop young energy of the children had kept her from thinking about last night. But now it was back, the inescapable echo of angry words filling up the empty air space. “Where . . .?” She cleared her throat, but it didn’t get rid of the tight, scratchy feeling. “Where are Marie and Camille?”
“I told Marie she could open one gift before her bath. She’s inside, probably shaking and measuring all the gifts to find the biggest and best one.”
Diana stared out across the yard. But nothing, not the grass or the ivy-covered wall or the maid struggling to fold up the legs on the serving table, registered with her. She and Jay had both been so angry, so hurtful.
“Diana. Are you all right? Do you want something to drink?”
She tried to say she was fine. But she couldn’t. “Jay and I had a fight last night.”
Madeline sat up straighter, her eyes wide.
“Don’t worry, he didn’t hit me. I didn’t throw dishes.” She felt bruised, though, bruised and guilty. “I started it,” she said. “I told Marshall Charbonneau I wanted to move to Vanuatu.”
“Oh, no. Not you, too.” Madeline clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”
“We took Marshall and his girlfriend to dinner at Casa Armas.”
“Girlfriend?” She covered her mouth again. “Sorry.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything because I knew Jay wanted to stay here. ‘Where the action is,’ as he says. But when Marshall started talking about Vanuatu being an island paradise and how much we’d love it, I just let it all out.”
Madeline tilted her head, waiting, as though she didn’t know what Diana meant.
“I told Marshall I wanted Jay to transfer to Vanuatu. Jay didn’t say much then, but it was obvious he was not happy. As soon as we dropped Marshall at his hotel, he let me have it. I think he expected me to apologize.”
Diana clenched her hands around the woven strands of Madeline’s wicker chair. Despite the ceiling fan and the high roof over the patio, the air felt hot and sticky.
“You didn’t apologize?” Madeline said.
“No.” Diana shook her head. “I was so tired of keeping it all in. Do you ever feel trapped, like you have no control over what happens to you?”
Madeline nodded ever so slightly, but the faraway look in her eyes made Diana flush with embarrassment. Of course Madeline understood. When she was a teenager, she’d spent years in a refugee camp, trapped and helpless, waiting for someone else to decide her fate.
“It’s not a good feeling,” Madeline agreed.
Diana quickly blinked back tears and took a little tight breath in through her mouth.
Too choked up to speak, Diana nodded. She hadn’t been able to find words to tell her friends—or even her mom and brother—how she felt. Not without sounding silly and self-centered. Not without sounding like a comfortable white woman complaining about her life when, within view of her apartment balcony, a jumble of squatters’ shanties huddled on the reclaimed land of Manila Bay.
Madeline pulled a handkerchief out of her bra. “Here,” she said. “Don’t worry, it’s clean.”
It was a lovely, clean handkerchief, soft and fine with tiny pink roses embroidered along the borders. But who the hell keeps a handkerchief in her bra these days? Oh, yes. Madeline does. “Thank you.” Diana lifted the hanky to her nose, still uncertain.
“Please, keep it. I have a drawer full of them.”
If only Jay had been as understanding. If only he’d been as quick to see the connection between her continued failure to get pregnant and her desire to get out of Manila. Oh, how she wished he could appreciate how she’d been scrambling to find some meaning for her life, pinning all her hopes on a baby, and month after month being thwarted. Vanuatu may have been a pipe dream, but it was her pipe dream. And last night, driving down Roxas Boulevard in the rain, she’d been convinced it was all she had.
“My parents never fought,” Diana said, dabbing at her eyes with Madeline’s handkerchief. Her nose was dripping, but she hesitated to blow it on such a beautiful thing.
“You mean they never fought in your presence,” Madeline said with a meaningful tilt of her head.
“I suppose.” Diana blotted the end of her nose, and then she blew it, as gently as possible. “The trouble is, once you say something, it’s there forever.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll get through this.”
Suddenly the back door burst open, and two little girls came running toward them, their black hair bouncing on their pale shoulders and their matching strawberry dresses. “Mommy, Mommy,” Marie shouted. She was holding up two colorful boxes and a large tablet. “Look.”