by Bianca Mori
“I better check on your laundry.” Luke gets up abruptly, his brows furrowed as he leaves the room.
Half an hour later I’m in my own clothes (still slightly damp, but comfortable enough) and in Luke’s car as it winds its way north. We’re pretty quiet until we get off the highway and I start directing him to Auntie Tilde’s bungalow.
“So that’s why you joined the training team,” he says, out of the blue, after I tell him to make a right at the convenience store.
“Yeah. I was thinking of resigning completely, but my old M.O. wasn’t going to work for me this time.”
“Why not?”
“Simple. Magnus.” I take a steadying breath. “He needs me to be stable. I can’t deal with another new project in God knows which part of the city in who knows what shift. Besides, his tuition is crazy expensive.”
“For what it’s worth,” he pulls up to our gate, “I think you have a real knack for training. And even if you joined partly to escape a bad situation with your project, I hope you find that you can grow with us.”
“I do.” I want him to understand how much I mean this. “I really do. It’s weird. I’ve never thought I had a ‘knack’ for anything, except surfing and backpacking. But doing this, now—it makes me wish I discovered that training and teaching was the path for me, ten years ago. It would’ve saved me a lot of trouble.”
He smiles at that, a genuinely sunny smile, without the uneasiness of what we had both revealed earlier that evening. My heart instantly lightens.
“I’m really happy to hear that, Mags. This means I can count on you to bring your A-game on our project, right? You’re going to think hard about what we can change about the material?”
“Yes, sir,” I salute.
I get out, dimly aware of Luke’s car lingering by Auntie Tilde’s gate. The front door opens and Magnus bounds outside, to the honking of the car horn. “Hey, my man!” Luke calls out, leaning over the passenger seat to stick his head out the window.
“Tito Wuke!” Magnus greets, clinging tightly to my legs. Luke waves goodbye and drives away.
Chapter 7
I’d give anything to forget that the next day’s training schedule is for an Australian project. But my alarm goes off, and on three hours of sleep and with the sky still dark, I leave the apartment to make it to our 6am class on time.
The only good thing to come out of this early wake-up call is that I’ll get off work early enough to pick Magnus up from school.
At the office, Luke is his usual chipper self. If he’s tossed and turned last night, I can’t tell, because he’s energetic and charming when he greets the class. The girls are, as per usual, smitten. I try to strike a balance between deflecting the worst of his lust-inducing cuteness while trying to learn something about expertly handling a class, but between lack of sleep and a showering-in-Luke’s-condo hangover, I’m too zonked to function. It’s all I can do not to run out of there when the class ends.
I’m so preoccupied with timing my jeepney ride just right to get to Magnus’s school that I don’t notice Luke rushing outside the office doors.
“Hey!” he catches up to me in the lobby. “What’s the hurry, Magsie?”
Magsie? Magsie? Where did that come from?
I swallow hard and hike an answering smile on my face. “Sorry, Luke! I need to go and pick Magnus up from school.”
“I can bring you there. We can to talk about the Public Speaking material on the way?”
A car ride to Magnus’s school would cut my travel time by half—my principles can’t say no to that—so in we go to his hatchback, flowing easily into the pre-rush hour traffic.
“So?” He slides the car into the right lane. His toned arms flex on the steering wheel, but I wrench my thoughts back to the business at hand. I picture him running through the slides and visualize the bits where the trainees started getting bored.
“I think we should capitalize on video.”
“Video?”
Grrr. His infuriatingly thin T-shirt flutters against his hard chest in the aircon’s blast.
“I mean, these days, if you want to see an example of a really good, captivating speech, all you need to do is go online. Why don’t we start the session by playing a video of a really inspiring presentation to get the class fired up?”
He’s nodding thoughtfully. “You know, I was reading this article about this guy whose TED talk is, like, the third most-viewed presentation on YouTube, ever, but he’s actually super introverted and hates parties and crowds. His tips were really powerful, but short and easy to understand.”
A light bulb goes off in my brain. “We can do the whole class as a listicle. Twenty Tips To Blowing Your Audience Away. You’ll Never Guess What Happens Next!”
“I love the clickbait title,” he laughs drily.
We’re nearing the school now, lining up with the rest of the cars and school buses off to pick the kids up from afternoon nursery class, so I let loose with my pet idea--the one that immediately popped into my head the minute Luke brought up revamping the curriculum.
“I think we should record the class on video.”
Traffic is at a standstill as each of the cars turn into the school driveway and adorable little kids bound or toddle into the vehicles. Luke turns to me with an interested glint in his eye. “Go on?”
“It would be great if we can throw them off the deep end by having them do an impromptu speech at the start of the class and recording it. Then we teach them our top 20 tips, and at the end of the class, have them re-do their speech on video. Then we watch it all to compare and see if they’ve improved.”
A slow smile spreads across his face. “That’s not a bad idea at all.”
We get to the end of the driveway, and in no time I’m out and back inside the car with my sweaty little angel in tow.
“Mama mama mama!” Magnus bounces in his seat. “Is this our car?”
“No, Buchoy. It’s Tito Luke’s.”
His little face perks up. “Tito Wuke, you also get me tomowow from schoo’?”
My cheeks instantly heat. “Aw, sweetheart, not tomorrow. Tito Luke has work.” My son opens his mouth. I just know I’m in for a long interrogation about the nature and provenance of the nine-hour workday as well as the finer points of flexible BPO work shifts, so I distract him with: “Are you excited to go home, sweetie? I asked Auntie Tilde to buy the sweet bread you like.”
“Sweet bread?” mutters Luke.
“Pan de sal and coco jam,” I whisper.
From the rearview mirror, my son’s sunny face darkens into a frown. Uh-oh.
“But Mama--” he chirps plaintively, “Want go to the pawk.”
“Buchoy, sweetie, don’t you want to go home and watch cartoons?”
“Pawk!” he says with a firm shake of his head.
I throw Luke a shifty glance. He’s chuckling. “But Tito Luke is with us, sweetie, he has somewhere he needs to be--”
“PAWK!” Magnus yells, twisting his mouth. “You pwomised, Mama.”
Oh Lord, and so I did. I twist in my seat and face him. “Sweetie, Mama is sorry, but--”
“Where’s the park?” Luke says, pausing at an intersection. “Left, right?”
“Luke, you don’t really--”
“It’s fine,” he reaches over and squeezes my wrist in reassurance. “I don’t have anywhere I need to be and this light is changing in five seconds--directions, Magsie!”
My brain is momentarily fried with the one-two punch of wrist contact and nickname but I recover enough to yell “Straight!”
Magnus laughs delightedly as we make it to the neighboring village’s playground in record time, taking the inter-village shortcuts instead of the jeepney-choked main roads. Luke’s barely parked the car when my kid’s pent-up energy explodes. It’s all I can do to hurry to change his shirt--we can’t have his school uniform mucked up with playground grime--and he’s off like a shot to the monkey bars.
“Hold up, Magnus Daniel Ab
arquez!” I yell, shaking my mosquito repellent-smeared hands in defeat.
“Uh-oh, Mama means business,” Luke says behind me. I wipe the strong-smelling lotion off on my forearms while he picks a park bench with a good view of the playground. I perch on the space he pats beside him.
“When my mom deployed my full name, I knew I was in trouble.”
I point out my boy, currently hanging upside down by his knees off a low steel pipe. “You can see how effective that technique is on my son.”
Luke laughs and we watch Magnus play. I let my boy’s tinkling laughter float towards us, loving how the late afternoon sunlight bounces off his golden head, my heart swelling with one of those moments of absolute contentment every parent has now and then. I know it’s only a matter of time before he decides to pick up a turd or do something equally horrific, so I enjoy this brief moment of bliss.
“He’s a beautiful child,” Luke murmurs. He’s looking serious, the set of his face giving off that flash of intensity I found so surprising the first time we had lunch together.
“He is.”
“I’m surprised you let him play as freely as you do.” He scuffs the toes of his sneakers on the gravel. “Most parents or nannies I see at the condo are constantly chasing after their kids with a towel and a first aid kit.”
“I’m not much for helicopter parenting,” I chuckle. “My mom hovered over me constantly and all I wanted to do was escape her and do my own thing. Soon as I was able, I would sneak out: to my neighbor’s house, to the mall; later, to the beach.”
“Look at you, the little rebel.” He elbows my waist. The tickle in my bottom rib feels like an electric shock.
“The point is,” I say crossly, rubbing my side, “that I don’t want to stifle Magnus. I don’t want him growing up fearful of everything, cringing at the corners at some imagined danger. I grew up that way, I don’t want it for him.”
Luke gives me this teasing, challenging, one-eyebrow cocked-look so I stick my tongue out at him. His eyes crinkle with mirth and then he leans over to touch my nose with his fingertip.
It’s a whisper of a caress, fainter than a butterfly’s touch. He leans back and then says, ever so casually:
“What do you say to owning the public speaking training revamp?”
“What do you mean?” My heart thuds in my chest, the spot where he touched my nose burning like a brand.
“Your ideas are fantastic—the listicle format, the video—and I think you should get the opportunity to design and deliver the class.”
I swallow a hard lump in my throat. “Deliver?”
“Yeah.” He turns to me, the lowering sun outlining him in golden light. “I think you can teach it.”
I nearly fall out of the bench. “Me? But I can’t even do that ‘one thing you’d be surprised to know about me’ icebreaker properly.”
“See, I think that’s what’s brilliant about this,” he says smugly. “We get to refine Twenty Tips to Blow Your Audiences Away and you get to practice them. That way, whatever works for you, we’ll know for sure will work for the class. Durable Learning, baby.”
“This is your brilliant plan,” I shake my head. “Kill me with performance anxiety.”
“Uh-huh. It’s so brilliant, by the time we’re done, you can also do the demo for the training managers.”
“What?!” I sputter, interrobanging against my mind’s walls. “You--you--!”
“‘You amazingly astute and clever genius’ is the phrase I think you’re looking for,” he winks, getting up to stretch. Not even the eyeful of V-shaped lower torso I get can distract me from the panic attack I’m having.
“Luke--”
“You can also add ‘handsome,’ I’m not picky,” he laughs, leaving me blinking and sputtering as he finds Magnus. Soon they’re roughhousing by the slides and chasing each other under the swing sets.
I watch them, my mind churning.
I think of his offer, his ‘brilliant’ plan.
I think of the time and effort it will take to come up with our twenty tips AND make sure it sticks with our learners.
I think of me having to deliver the whole thing in less than a month.
(My palms start to itch with anxiety.)
I think of Clarence and the whispers that followed me out of Clausen.
I try and imagine those whispers following me again to the training team.
I think of Cass and her rules.
The memory of Luke’s soft touch, so light I can’t even convince myself I haven’t imagined it, intrudes on my process.
I look up to see Magnus whooping with unrestrained joy as Luke pops out from behind a slide, pretending to be a monster.
I think of how my principles are no match for any of this.
“Luke!”
He’s pushing Magnus on the swing and turns to me, shielding his eyes against the sun.
I smile. “Yes. Let’s do it.”
Chapter 8
“This is stupid,” I say early one Wednesday morning, two weeks after our playground conversation. Luke sits in front of me in an empty, half-lit conference room, along with my training classmates Peter and Lisa. All of them are looking expectantly up at me, and the combined forces of their three stares turns my knees to jelly.
The door to the conference room shimmies and Cass slides in.
“Oh Lord,” I sigh to heaven.
“Hey Mamu!” she says excitedly, taking a seat beside Peter.
“I invited Cass,” Luke explains, as if I couldn’t make the fact out by myself.
“Why?”
Luke walks up and places both hands lightly on my shoulders. Over his I see Cass widening her eyes in excitement.
“Breathe, Mags.” I inhale deeply, getting a whiff of his piney-mint shower gel. “This is just like doing the intro to Business Comms, and you know you did an awesome job with that this week, right?”
I nod, but I open my mouth to argue.
“Hup!” He shushes me. “We’re just going to practice some of the tips we’ll be putting into the Public Speaking training.”
“Yes, but--”
“Have a conversation with the audience. Look one person in the eye and finish a thought before moving onto the next person.” He quotes from our draft.
“Don’t pan-and-scan,” I complete Principle #1.
“Right,” he nods, squeezing my shoulders firmly. “You ready?”
“No.”
His voice slows to a smooth, comforting trickle. “Just think of this as your own personal TED Talk.”
I look at Peter and Lisa and Cass, my three-person audience. “I feel like an idiot.”
Luke sweeps back to his seat and gestures for me to start.
My mouth goes dry. I rub my itching palms together as my heart gallops in my chest. The room is dim but it feels like a bright spotlight is trained on me, illuminating every pore and wrinkle, going through cloth and skin to show everyone my bones and innermost thoughts. Cass smiles encouragingly at me.
I run through our guinea-proofed tips.
Tip #1: Prime the audience.
“TodayIamgoingtotalktoyouaboutsurfing,” I squeak, the breath trapped in my chest. I shut my eyes tight and let it out in one controlled exhale. Time to start over.
Tip 2: Speak much slower than usual.
“Today,” I pause, breathe and look at Cass.
Tip 3: Talk to one person at a time.
“I am going to talk to you about...surfing.” I smile and look at Peter. “Picture me on a wave...”
I go through two paragraphs of my draft speech, and, surprise surprise, don’t expire of nerves on the spot. Luke smiles widely from his seat and gives me two thumbs up.
***
We finish work early and celebrate by picking Magnus up from school. He’s bursting with energy and both Luke and I are hungry, so I let him rock out at the mall’s play place while Luke buys us hotdog sandwiches. We devour these while waiting for Magnus’ 30 minutes to be up.
&
nbsp; “You did really well today, Mags.” Luke’s voice is soft, his eyes focused on Magnus rolling into the ball pit with a new playmate.
“You taught me well,” I admit. “I didn’t die while doing that speech.”
He continues blankly watching my son through the glass. “You’re so lucky to have him.”
My heart lurches like a drunken uncle on New Year’s Eve. There’s an irrational red mist that settles around it as I wrestle through my thoughts. Yes, I am lucky and yes, my son is a blessing. But the words ‘lucky’ and ‘blessing’ seem to paper over the not-so-Hallmark moments of single motherhood. Such as: what I overheard at the Project Clausen girls’ restroom that Monday after being groped by Clarence at our team beach trip. The little cutting glances from other moms at Magnus’s school when they ask after his dad. The fact that I may as well be the whore of Babylon in my own mother’s eyes.
Luke isn’t a fool. He picks up on the vibe with a frown. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I smile tightly, but I want to rail, because it’s not nothing: the words to explain what it is don’t exist for me yet.
“You can tell me.” He nudges the ticklish spot on my waist, and the intimacy of that gesture reminds me of the knowing looks that always accompanied the words She’s got a child out of wedlock, so...
I flinch. “Please don’t do that here.”
“Here?” he raises an eyebrow. “You mean in public?”
“Yes.” I don’t want to talk about this. I want to shrink into the bench and disappear.
He frowns and turns his whole body to me. He moves his hand to my cheek but thinks better of it, and instead deploys his Concerned Training Manager face. “Mags. What’s the matter?”
I take a good long breath and blurt out: “What you need to understand about me, Luke, is that I’m...kaladkarin.”
“I’ve heard of that expression,” he frowns. “It means it’s easy to get you to join activities?”
“Yes. Kind of. But not just that.” I clutch at the space in my chest above my heart. “This? Is also kaladkarin. My heart isn’t very picky. It’s very easy to tame it.”
