// 11 January 2018 - Manila, Philippines //
I arrived in Manila at almost midnight. The familiar air I sensed the second I exited the terminal.
Jeffrey flew back to Singapore after we parted ways and whispered each other’s farewells at the airport in Bali. We had our final talks over dinner in a small cafe before I boarded the plane to Manila.
No one knew I was coming home. No car that I left in the airport parking. And no family driver coming to get me. Instead, I went on a cab, hoping Mom or Yvonne happened to be at home.
“Forbes,” I said to the taxi driver the second I settled in the backseat. The driver peeked at me quickly, with wide eyes, wondering at why a well-heeled woman like me was riding an old taxi.
I didn’t mind. I was taught to live a moderate life by my father and not to look down on the less fortunate for he, himself, was a poor kid, living in the gutters of Kuala Lumpur before he found luck exporting spices and tomatoes to the Philippines.
Forbes Park is the “Beverly Hills of Manila” and my mother’s choice to live in. As we drove through wide streets and passed by a gang of middle-aged men looking as though they just came from the Manila Polo Club nearby, I was already preparing myself to whatever I get to see at home.
Through the tall gates, I could see that no one was home. The parking lot was empty and there were no lights aside from the kitchen and the nearby rooms where the maids and housekeepers are allowed to stay. Where could Mom or Yvonne have gone to?
I rang the doorbell and Annie, the youngest housemaid, opened the door for me. By the looks of her, I could see that the house is plagued again. Annie’s eyes were weary, as if she just came from crying. Did Mom beat her again?
Mom has been abusive, both physical and verbal, since Dad passed away. It must have been evoked by her pain medications for her chronic backache, or by her excessive drinking. And not to mention, the pills.
Yes, the pills. I know Mom has been popping drugs. Been experimenting on new drugs like she did in her teenage years. Her addiction was only temporarily stopped when she married Dad, although from time to time she went to rehab after another. I tried to talk to Yvonne about it, to send Mom back to rehab, but she was helpless as I was.
Mom is the most resistive person we know. Inaccessible and delinquent, most often. And sometimes, it almost feels like she’s the youngest among us sisters.
I could recall the time when the police called in the middle of the night on All Soul’s Day, on the first year since Dad passed away. The police said Mom was involved in a car crush from her way to the cemetery and almost killed a young couple at the other car.
Yvonne was out of the country at the time, been in Saint-Tropez and the Camargue honing her equestrian skills to escape the pain of going to the graveyard. I found Mom in a hospital stretcher that night, with a few of bruises and fractured bones.
I wanted to confront Mom after that, about why she was making a mess at everything. For I, too, was grieving and we needed each other’s guts to pull through the endeavors.
“I miss your dad,” Mom said, almost in a whisper, with tears running down her wounded face. “I’m sorry,” she wept more, and I could only watch her quietly and cry oceans, too.
I know my mother loved my father. They both did.
But learning, later on, that Dad was not Mom’s first husband, I started to lose some of the remaining respect I have for Mom.
Aunt Beverly, from my maternal side, once shared that Mom’s first husband was an Italian guy named Gustavo. She said they were briefly married and that Gustavo was the one who filed for a divorce.
When I asked Mom about Gustavo, she never said a word. And changed the subject matter to about me and Ethan. “Do you love Ethan?” Mom would ask, looking straight to my eyes as though she was cursing my relationship with Ethan.
“Of course,” I replied carefully. Then she slid a mocking smile and judged me by her look. “But do you think he loves you, too?”
It was a question that’s been haunting me, till now. Did Ethan really love me? Maybe. I don’t know. After all of the things that happened, those questions of Mom can now hover in the air. It is over.