We set off for his apartment. Since Lorna’s arrival and the birth of the baby, my father had simply assumed that I’d want to see them, and so every Sunday afternoon instead of heading for the chapel I accompanied him back home. I suppose I should have been grateful that at least now I didn’t have to spend the little time I had with him staring at the carved retablos of a European Jesus or at the gilded altars; everywhere pictures of people kneeling, heads bowed, penitent. Though of course dutiful visits to Lorna and her baby were hardly what I’d hoped for instead. He seemed proud, almost as if he were the father of the child, engaging with it in a way I’d not seen before, a way I didn’t remember from my own childhood. Of course it didn’t occur to me at the time that he might simply have been grateful for the chance to feel necessary again.
The apartment was tidy and newly scrubbed. A curtain of laundry hung across the main room and I had to duck beneath it to get to a seat. Lorna went to fetch water and cordial and a dish of unshelled peanuts while my father sank down onto the mat next to the baby and removed his cap. The baby wriggled on her back, becoming livelier at the sound of his voice. ‘Are you feeling better, Joseph?’ Lorna said carefully, and I was afraid for a moment that my thoughts were all too transparent, that she’d guessed how I resented her. She was eager to please and watched our glasses to see when they might need refilling, attentive to the baby lest it make too much noise and irritate us. Her solicitousness made me feel ashamed.
‘Marisol’s a good name,’ I said, ‘and she’s real pretty.’ Lorna beamed at me. The baby was pretty. And she had a watchful look about her, like an old woman at a roadside store. My mood softened as I took her in.
My father said very little except to the baby. It was Lorna who eventually said, ‘Your father’s worried you might drop out of school.’ I stared at her. It hadn’t even occurred to me that my father might discuss me with her. I looked at him but he nodded as if he was only half listening, though I knew from the way his hands slowed that the conversation had his full attention. Lorna said quickly, her voice appeasing, ‘He thinks you could study more. Maybe even college.’
‘I didn’t think you’d be so interested in my future,’ I said, but at the same time I was surprised that my father had such ambitions for me at all.
Lorna, undaunted, continued, ‘Aunt Bina is already teaching me to sew. There’ll be more money.’ She sounded apologetic and of course she had to know the money to keep her and the baby came from somewhere, that my schooling was not the only consideration.
My father kept quiet. Eventually, Lorna got up to take the glasses away and to feed the baby in the kitchen. When she’d gone, my father said, ‘She knows better than anyone how every opportunity must be grasped.’
‘She works hard,’ I conceded, looking round the apartment.
‘I’m getting old, Joseph,’ my father said and his voice was suddenly harsh. ‘And things will change around here soon enough.’
‘I’ll work harder at school,’ I said, and I meant it. Schoolwork was easy enough for me anyway.
‘You could study to be a teacher or an engineer,’ he said, ‘get a good job.’ I thought of Suelita and the poetry she told no one about. ‘She’s smart too,’ said my father, and his eyes flitted towards the kitchen where Lorna was trilling in a low voice at the baby, enticing it to feed. ‘When she’s older she’ll make a good wife.’ I didn’t respond, unsure for a moment why he’d said it. And then, appalled, I understood that he might be planning to marry again some time, to replace my mother with this girl. Then he said, ‘You will want to marry some day.’
From the kitchen, the sound of the trilling stopped and I remembered how little of what was said could be hidden here. The rooms were small and the walls thin. I felt my resentment bloom into anger. My father had never spoken with me about so much that mattered, yet he talked openly to this girl-child, enough that she felt she could chide me about my disinterest in school. She was smart all right. ‘Your mother would have liked her,’ he said quietly. That he could mention my mother so casually now, when for years he couldn’t bring himself to say her name, even for my sake when I was afraid of forgetting her, finally unhinged me. I chose my words hastily, too hastily. ‘I hardly saw Mom before she died because you sent me away,’ I yelled. My father looked aghast. In the kitchen Marisol started wailing. I lurched to my feet and called out a curt, acidic goodbye to Lorna. She came out of the kitchen, looked first at my father and then at me. I saw her embarrassment, her uncertainty, and saw also that, yes, a marriage had been discussed, if not as something definite, it had been given at least sufficient substance to form a hope for her. I glared at my father and, hesitating as he proffered his hand, I declined to shake it and left.
Woman with Rosary
‘You had your hair cut in the street? Like some … some comfort girl?’ Lola Lovely stood over her daughter in the sala, one hand on her hip, the other working mercilessly at a coral-and-pearl rosary that she sometimes wore as a necklace, ready for sudden moments of piety. She had come in to find the familiar sight of her daughter at the piano, the lid still closed, sheet music spread about her as she sorted and reorganised it. In the hall, I paused in my task of polishing the banister, massaged the muscles in my arm. I’d been working fiercely at the wood, still mad at my father. I wondered what might need doing elsewhere. It sounded like Lola Lovely was hankering for a row and I wanted to work at something in peace. ‘You can’t even play piano in front of your own mother, yet you can have your hair cut in the street like some cuchinta vendor?’ Aunt Mary placed the score she was holding on top of the pile on her lap and frowned at her mother. ‘He said he would never have imagined you there like that.’
‘Who said that?’
‘Mr Casama. That man who was here the other day.’
‘You spoke to Mr Casama?’
‘Yes, I just said so. He came by to apologise for his wife misleading you — he was back in Esperanza earlier than she thought, but just too busy to get home. Or something like that. I didn’t care about that. I asked him about Dominic.’
‘What? What exactly did you say?’
‘I asked him outright if he had anything to do with it. You know, he was appalled. Said he knew nothing about it. He seemed genuinely concerned.’ Aunt Mary stared at her mother. ‘He said there are some big players behind the redevelopment,’ Lola Lovely continued. ‘A lot of money at stake. Not all as honourable as himself.’ Aunt Mary smiled frostily and, seeing it, Lola Lovely snapped, ‘What were you thinking? Having your hair cut like that in front of everyone so soon after Dominic? And such a ridiculous little protest. The whole street must be laughing about it.’ Aunt Mary was silent but I knew that kind of silence. She might be seething but she didn’t want an argument and Lola Lovely’s voice was changing, becoming shrill. Neither woman seemed aware of my presence. I thought about moving away, giving them some privacy, but I’d already been there too long. I started polishing again, slowly.
‘I may be your offspring but I’m almost fifty. You can’t—’
‘Offspring!’ Lola Lovely mimicked her daughter’s tone unsuccessfully. ‘You think you’re so clever. Why do you care about some salon anyway, or this Jennie? Dominic is your son!’ Lola Lovely shook her rosary at her daughter. ‘I should take them away with me. Back to Manila. Both of them. They are my flesh and blood too, even Benny. Yes, even him!’ Aunt Mary cast a furious eye over the piles of music around her feet as her mother continued, breathlessly, ‘You think I don’t know that I’m not as good a person as you? You think I never wish I could go back and change it? I did the best I could at the time and I got it wrong. There! I said it. Are you happy?’ Aunt Mary sighed heavily; her mother’s concessions were not always a good omen.