When in Vanuatu

by Nicki Chen

  “I want, I want,” shouted Camille, opening and closing her little hands as she tried to edge around Marie.

  “Let’s see.”

  Marie dumped everything on Madeline’s lap.

  Art supplies. Diana felt her heart leap at the sight of them—thick white artist’s paper, a box of what looked like expensive felt-tipped pens in twelve vibrant colors, and a box of watercolors and brushes. The exact kind of gift that had thrilled her when she was Marie’s age.

  “Did you keep the card?” Madeline asked.

  “Yes. It’s from Allison.”

  “Here.” Madeline held the supplies up for her daughter. “Show this to Auntie Diana. She’s an artist.”

  “Me?” Diana asked, her habitual denial.

  “Yes, you.” She patted Marie’s shoulder. “Auntie Diana will show you how best to use these beautiful pens and paints. And don’t forget to share with your sister.”

  “Yes, Mommy.”

  “Here, Camille. Come and sit on Mommy’s lap.”

  Diana tucked the hanky into her bra and held her arms out to Marie. “Let’s see what you have? Oh, my! This is very good watercolor paper. Now, we’ll need a little bowl of water for the watercolors, and an apron to protect your pretty dress.” She took Marie’s hand, and as they started toward the house, her imagination took over. “We can paint anything you like, Marie, friends with balloons, a birthday cake with candles, a horse and calesa.” She laughed. “We can make a rainbow with all these colors.”

  “Yes,” Marie said with a little skip. “I want a rainbow.”

  Later, when Diana was leaving, Madeline took her hand. “We all fight with our husbands,” she whispered. “The important thing is to make the fight count.”

  22

  On the second day after their fight, Diana woke up with a feeling of heavy, confused determination. Jay was already up, out on the bedroom balcony. “It’s cloudy but no rain yet,” he said, stepping back into the bedroom and sliding the door shut. “Do you want to chance it?”

  Chance what? she was about to ask before she remembered it was Saturday, the day they usually took a walk together before breakfast. “How cloudy?” she asked. Throwing back the sheet, she got up and reopened the sliding door so she could see for herself. The weak purplish light that found its way through a thick cloud cover wasn’t very encouraging. But they’d missed their Saturday morning walks for the past three weeks because of rain.

  Like a team, they stepped into their shorts and pulled T-shirts over their heads. They unfolded their socks and put them on, Diana balancing on one foot and then the other, Jay sitting on the edge of the bed. As soon as their tennis shoes were tied and Jay’s wallet stuffed in a back pocket, they were ready to go.

  Manila was never cool. But that morning, despite the humidity, it was cool enough for a nice walk. “So far, so good,” Jay said, holding his palms up to the sky as they left the building.

  They started off down the service road in the usual direction moving at a brisk pace. Their Saturday walks weren’t meant to be leisurely strolls. They walked side by side, skipping around and over puddles left by the previous night’s rain.

  Already a day and a half had passed since their dinner with Marshall Charbonneau. A day and a half out of fourteen, and Jay hadn’t budged. She had twelve and a half days left to convince him. Falling half a step behind, she took a quick glance at him, taking in the easy movement, the lean, smooth muscles in his arms and legs.

  Twelve and a half days, she thought as she hurried to catch up to him. Or . . . She took a sudden gulp of air. She didn’t want to think about how uncertain the time was. Johnny Gamboa could decide to retire sooner than Marshall expected, or he could hold on for weeks, hoping against hope that he would recover enough to go back to work. Either way, by then, Jay had to be willing to step into the vacant position.

  When they reached McDonald’s at the end of the service road, they were hot and sweaty. Diana paused at the door. A fat dark cloud overhead was daring them to dawdle. She was about to suggest they start back. But the force of habit was strong, and when Jay pushed the door open, she followed him in.

  “The usual?” he asked, not bothering to look up at the menu above the row of cash registers.

  “Yeah.” Her mouth was already watering for her egg and pancakes, butter melting between the layers, shiny, sweet syrup dripping over the edge, hot dark coffee on the side.

  Jay put his arm around her waist as they stood waiting for their order. When it came, he tried to put everything on one tray and carry it himself, which would have been fine any other day. But today she didn’t feel like being the damsel in need of rescue. Grabbing their coffees, she hurried ahead of him and slid into a booth by the window. She couldn’t deny it. She enjoyed being treated like “a lady.” There was a downside of being on the receiving end of chivalry though. It was the wrong kind of symbolism for their relationship, especially now.

  He sat down across from her. And as he unloaded the tray, she wondered how the hell she was going to make it clear to him that she didn’t intend to back down. He needed to understand that where they lived was a decision for them to make together.

  “I’ve been thinking . . .” Jay slipped a pat of butter between his pancakes. Then he put his knife and fork down, leaned his elbows on the table and looked into her eyes and grinned. “You’ve never been to Bali.”

  What? Where did that come from? She looked away, picked up a half-and-half packet, and peeled back the cover. “Uh, no. Have you?” She’d never heard of a D-TAP project in Bali.

  “Yeah. When Dad was stationed in Jakarta, he took us on a Balinese vacation one summer.” He paused, waiting to catch her eye again. “Yesterday I checked some weather stats. July and August are right smack in the middle of Bali’s dry season. We could spend a few days there after I get back from Pakistan. Give you a break from all this rain.” He smiled, obviously pleased with himself.

  Great! She picked up a plastic spoon and stirred the cream into her coffee. A trip to Bali was the perfect temptation. He couldn’t have chosen better. She took a deep breath and put the spoon down. “Right now, Jay, I’m not so interested in a break, as beautiful as Bali must be.”

  “What?” He reared back. “But honey, you’d love it—beaches and mountains, art, music, and dance everywhere you look.”

  She sliced her egg with the side of her fork and watched the yolk spilling out, thick and golden, the white jiggling ever so slightly. This time McDonald’s got “sunny side up” right. “I’d love to go to Bali, honey. Really I would. Just not now. If Johnny Gamboa decides to retire . . .”

  “Johnny Gamboa? Really? I told you . . .”

  “I know, I know. But I told you I wanted to move.”

  “Oh, god!” He looked at the ceiling. “Not this again. I’m not transferring to Vanuatu. I tell you, Diana, Vanuatu is not the panacea you imagine. You think the Philippines is a third-world country? You should see Vanuatu.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Then what is the point?” He slammed down his little plastic knife. “What the hell is the point?”

  For a moment she couldn’t think what it was. She just knew that her life wasn’t working here, that a small South Pacific country she’d never seen before was exactly where she needed to be, that unless they lived there, she was never going to have the child she longed for. “The point is,” she said, “you need to start listening to your heart . . . and to your wife.”

  Jay just shook his head and took a big bite of egg and pancake.

  Listening to your heart. What was wrong with her? That was a stupid thing to say. It was becoming all too evident that if Jay listened to his heart, it would tell him to hold onto his dream job. Diana and their future children would be somewhere farther down the list of his heart’s desires. If she was going to convince him to see things her way, she’d need a better argument.

  She stared at her plate. And if she was going to choke down a few bites of pancake, s
he’d need some lubricant. Picking up the sticky syrup bottle, she poured circular streams of fake maple syrup all over her pancakes and watched it soak in.

  Half a dozen bites later, she had to stop before she gagged on all the sweetness. “Let’s go,” she said, taking a big gulp of coffee and standing up.

  Jay looked from his empty plate to her half-eaten breakfast and quickly looked away.

  She picked up her tray and headed for the waste bin. “We’d better hurry before the rain starts,” she said over her shoulder.

  They made it halfway home before it hit, a light rain at first and then a real downpour. They ran, splashing through puddles and soaking their shoes and socks. With less than a mile to go and dry clothes waiting for them in the apartment, a tropical rain was no big disaster. In fact, Diana found it strangely exhilarating—the cooling rain, her wet hair and clothes, the feeling of strength in her legs as she ran. She sprinted ahead of Jay, who quickly caught up and passed her. The rest of the way home was a close race, neither giving an inch until a jeepney driver laid on his horn behind them and they had to get over. Finally, as they neared the front steps of their building, Diana spurted ahead again. If the top step was the finish line, she won.

  And if small victories are worth anything, why not enjoy them?

  She opened the door with a flourish, and held it for Jay.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “No problem.”

  23

  They had a corner table by the window. A private spot, separated from everything and everyone by poor lighting and the white noise of sounds canceling each other out. The clatter of dishes was muffled by the indistinct voices of other diners and muted by the constant background music of the rain outside. After sitting through a Stephen King thriller, the clatter around their corner table seemed almost calming.

  “Talk about tense,” Jay said. He picked up his spoon and stared at his halo-halo especial. “I’m still shaking.”

  Diana dug into the mango ice cream on top of her halo-halo. “Kathy Bates sure does a good crazy woman.” Like all compelling villains, Bates’s character was determined and smart—crazy smart. And she was utterly ruthless. Diana scooped up another spoonful of ice cream. “You’ve gotta love her single-minded devotion to Misery, even if Misery was a fictional character.”

  Jay shivered. “She started out looking so normal. That’s what creeped me out.” He looked down at his halo-halo as though he’d just remembered it was there and scooped off a big bite of ube ice cream. “Too bad we missed Goodfellas. Guns and gangsters are so much easier to take than a woman with a butcher knife and sledge hammer.”

  “You think so?” Diana stabbed her spoon down to the bottom of the glass and began lifting the sweet beans, macapuno, and nata de coco through the crushed ice and evaporated milk. “Remember the first time we had a halo-halo?” she asked, carefully mixing everything together.

  “Yeah,” Jay said. “Abby talked us into it.”

  Jay and Diana had been newcomers then, living in the same apartment-hotel as Abby and Saudur while both families looked for a house to rent. Together they discovered Manila. Halo-halos had been one of many finds. It seemed, Diana thought as she looked out at the rain, that when they went out together during those early months, the sun was always shining.

  At this moment, though, the rain was just what she needed. A fluid screen. A mental barrier holding them inside, together. Because now it was time. Since their walk to McDonald’s, they hadn’t talked much about Vanuatu. She hadn’t shouted or cried or argued her case. Not for lack of desire. Every time she saw him, she wanted to pepper him with pleas and complaints. It wasn’t easy to restrain herself, but she knew that arguing and pleading all too easily morphed into nagging, and that was deadly. Nagging could only result in one thing: resistance. Sometimes she was tempted to stomp her feet and threaten to leave him. She’d never really considered leaving Jay, though. She loved him. She wanted to have a baby with him. The thought of saying out loud that she might leave him made her shiver.

  So all week she’d forced herself to hold her tongue. She’d waited and considered what she could say to convince him. And now it was Saturday again. Another week gone. She had only five days left to make her case. If she even had five days. It was possible that she was already too late, that Johnny Gamboa had made his decision about a disability retirement faster than Marshall expected and by now they’d found someone else to take his place.

  Her heart skipped to her throat. Please, God, she prayed, don’t let it be too late.

  She’d imagined making her plea to Jay in the quietest, most private place possible. But she was ready now. Their corner table would have to do. She stirred her cold, sweet treat and ate a few more bites. Then she put her spoon down and sat up straight. “I have something to say,” she said.

  Jay stopped eating. He frowned slightly and leaned away. All week he’d been the bandleader trying to cheer up a crowd of one with peppy music, the affectionate husband who would have brought home flowers and chocolate if he weren’t afraid of looking guilty. He must have known his efforts weren’t working this time.

  “I wanted to say,” she began, “that I really am proud of you for the work you do at D-TAP.” Oh, shit! Already this was sounding like a prepared speech, boring, and stiff as a starched shirt. She cleared her throat and continued. “And I’m proud to support you. You’ve said before that D-TAP is your dream job. And I can see that it’s exactly what you’re meant to do with your life.” Saying all this out loud, it was obvious that it was just a big buildup to the inevitable “but.” She could hear it, and she assumed he could, too. Why else would he busy himself mixing his halo-halo, the spoon clinking like castanets against the glass?

  “But,” she said, “when we agreed to move to Manila, it was with the understanding that this would be a good move for both of us. We assumed that getting pregnant would be easy and that by now we’d have a couple of children.” She bit her lip. The accelerated clinking and circling of his spoon flustered her. “But it’s been nearly four years, Jay. We both know it’s not working.”

  “What’s not working?”

  “Manila. My life here. Do you know what people ask me the first time we meet? They ask, where does your husband work? I like being your wife, but that’s all I am here. I have no identity of my own.”

  He stopped stirring and leaned across to pat her hand. “Honey, that’s not true. You’re so much more than that.”

  She bit her lip and blinked back a tear. This wasn’t going well. She had to get control of herself. “Like I said, I know how much you like your work, so I’m not asking you to quit and move back to Seattle. I am asking you, though, to transfer to Vanuatu.”

  “Vanuatu?” He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t see how that would help.”

  “It would get us out of Manila, away from the brownouts and the unending heat and smog and traffic jams. The anti-American demonstrations and coup attempts. And just maybe, it would give me a chance to relax and have the baby we both want before I’m too old.”

  “Oh, Diana,” he said softly in a way that might have meant he understood what she was trying to say and might not have.

  Saying it out loud, her reasoning sounded thin to her. And yet, she knew in her heart that something had to change. Her life was ticking away, and she hadn’t grabbed hold of it yet.

  Taking a deep breath, she leaned her forearms on the table, and looked directly into his eyes. “I’ve decided that after four years of following your dream, now it’s my turn. It’s my turn,” she said again with a decisive nod of her head. “And I choose Vanuatu.”

  He didn’t move a muscle. Then, finally, in what Diana chose to interpret as a positive sign, he blinked, and he sat back and gave his ice a slow meditative stir.

  Having said all she had to say, Diana picked up her spoon and ate her halo-halo, the sweet beans, saba bananas, and macapuno, the crushed ice and sweetened condensed milk, the jackfruit and nata de coco and tapioca.
She ate it all, one cold, sweet spoonful after the other.

  On the way home, Jay was quiet, commenting only on the traffic and the rain. Perhaps he was considering her words. At least she dared to hope he was. For a moment at the end, they’d seemed persuasive.

  Later, though, when she looked back on her little speech, she wasn’t sure she’d said much of anything at all.

  On Sunday, neither of them brought the subject up. And by Monday, Diana was prickling with anxiety. More than once, she paused in front of the phone, considered calling him at work, and then walked away. Or she went so far as to pick the phone up, start dialing, and then, lacking a new winning argument to make, put it back in its cradle. If he couldn’t understand or accept her rights in their relationship, what more could she say?

  Stuffing her bathing suit and a towel in a bag, she headed for the door. “I’ll be back before dinner,” she called to Clarita on her way out.

  At the Seafront restaurant and the embassy PX, people with umbrellas were coming and going. But the locker room where Diana changed was empty, the pool and the area around it deserted. Rain clattered on the metal umbrellas and purred on the surface of the water. She checked the sky for lightning and seeing none, dove into the pool and started swimming, back and forth, back and forth until she was thoroughly exhausted.

  By the time she pulled into their spot in the underground parking, it was getting late. She checked her watch, and her heart skipped a beat. Jay would be home soon. It was time to confront him again. She climbed the single flight of stairs to the lobby and stood in front of the elevator’s closed doors watching the numbers on the indicator light count backwards from fifteen. They paused on twelve and then again on nine before descending at regular intervals to eight, seven, six . . .

  “Hey, lovely lady.”