“Are we celebrating something?” Mariella asked before taking a drink.
“We’re going on a trip,” Isabel told her.
There was the slightest hesitation before Mariella spoke again. “Really? Where is he taking you?”
“Boracay,” Isabel said. “I’ve never been there. I can’t believe it.”
“That’s great, that’s great.” There was another one of those split-second pauses. “You’ll have a great time. Of course, I’ve been there many times, so if you want any tips, just ask.”
“That would be wonderful,” Isabel said.
“Well, then, to the happy couple’s first trip together,” Mariella said raising her glass.
“Actually,” Isabel said in all innocence, “Larry’s taking all four of us.”
Mariella’s smile faltered. I could see her struggling to maintain her composure. “That’s great, that’s great,” she said, looking at each of us, her smile now larger than it had been when she first joined us. Then, as if to emphasize how she really felt, she added through clenched teeth, “That’s great.”
Mariella didn’t stay much longer that evening. Though Isabel begged her to remain, she said she had friends she was meeting. Isabel was the only one not relieved to see her go. Even Larry appeared to understand what Mariella was. It was in the way his eyes narrowed as he watched her walk out, like he was scrutinizing her. But Larry wasn’t dumb. He could see the admiration Isabel had for her cousin, so he said nothing.
For Cathy, it was almost like she had been holding her breath during Mariella’s entire visit. I knew how much willpower it took her to stand her ground. It wasn’t fear that had driven her out of sight the night before, it was hatred that had been held in check only by her respect for Isabel. Otherwise, there would have been a good chance of Cathy diving across the bar and strangling Mariella the minute she saw her. If I were her, I probably would have.
I think I’d been a papasan for only a month when it all went down. Cathy had been working as a bartender for three years already, starting not long after her eighteenth birthday. At some point during those years before I arrived on the scene, like Isabel, she had become involved with a foreigner. As I’ve said, Angeles is cyclical. Everything has happened before, and it’ll all happen again. Cathy’s guy’s name was Manus and he was from Stockholm, Sweden. He was a nice guy, maybe not quite the caliber of a Larry, but still worthy of Cathy’s affections. He made several trips a year, and each time would spend most of his stay with her.
With Cathy and Manus, there was never talk of the future. If he had asked her to go back with him, she would have jumped at the chance. She didn’t love him, but she did care for him. She told me once he was too old for her to fall in love with. He was somewhere just south of sixty at the time, with grown kids back home older than Cathy.
But love was not a prerequisite of marriage for the Filipinas who worked on Fields. It was enough for them if the guy loved them, and seemed like he would take care of them no matter what. That was another one of those fun Angeles contradictions-disgrace yourself in the eyes of your country as a whore, and maybe find someone who would take you away and provide you with more status than you could have ever achieved any other way. So there was no room for the girls to let their own feelings of love or lack of love get in the way.
The mistake Cathy made was confiding everything to Mariella.
Mariella had this way of making the girls feel like she was their best friend, that if they had any problems, they should go to her. But then, if the opportunity presented itself and she was in the mood, she’d sell them out. Usually it was to get something for herself, but not always. If a girl appeared to be getting more than she was, such as a decent guy and relationship that was working-like Cathy had achieved-Mariella wouldn’t wait for an opportunity. She’d make it happen.
Manus hadn’t seen through Mariella. Because he knew Cathy trusted her, he decided he could trust her, too. He told her Cathy had become very special to him, and he had decided to ask her to come live with him in Sweden. Mariella had no doubt sounded supportive, but at some point, whether in that first conversation or soon after, she let it slip that Cathy had told her only a few weeks earlier that she didn’t really love him. He didn’t believe it at first, but I’m sure as the hours passed, doubt began to set in. After all, this was Angeles, and as a seasoned veteran, he knew deep down it was all illusion.
That night he bar fined Cathy and took her to The Pit Stop. While they were eating dinner, he asked her in a calm voice, “Cathy, do you love me?”
“Of course I do,” she said automatically.
The intent of his question didn’t even register with her at first. But when his benign, silent stare was his only response, she realized something was up.
“Why you ask?” she said.
“Because I think maybe you don’t.”
“I said I do, so I do. Okay?”
Again he gave her that half smile, a longing for what had been, or what he had thought had been. “Mariella said you told her you don’t.”
Cathy’s eyes opened wide, and in that moment she realized two things. The first: she’d been betrayed. The second, and more immediately damaging: she had not hidden the look of fear that had flashed across her face. The look told Manus everything he needed to know, that Mariella had been right, and Cathy had not been telling him the truth.
So what had originally been the night Manus would have offered Cathy a new life abroad, instead became the night he gave Cathy back her same old life on Fields. Of course, she didn’t know what he had originally intended to do. That bit of information was delivered later by Mariella, who, practically in the same breath, denied ever telling Manus that Cathy didn’t love him.
It fell to me to pick up the pieces, one of my first counseling jobs in Angeles. It took a while before Cathy trusted me, but when she finally did, she told me everything.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I remember that trip to Boracay as one of the highlights of my time in the Philippines. I hadn’t expected that. In fact, I was almost dreading getting on the plane with the others. A vacation was something I absolutely needed, but, by the time we were leaving Angeles, I had circled back to thinking the only remedy to the tension that had overtaken me was a vacation alone.
We left early in a van Larry hired to take us to Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila. From there, the flight was an hour south to Kalibo on Panay Island. Larry had been told that the bus from Kalibo to Caticlan was air-conditioned. It wasn’t. Something wrong with the compressor, the driver said, as he handed out cold beers to help take our mind off the heat. From Caticlan, we took a boat across to Boracay Island.
Larry had booked us at the Royal Boracay Beach Resort. He’d been considerate enough to get three rooms, but mischievous enough to make sure Cathy’s room and mine were next to each other.
We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging around the pool, drinking margaritas, and, at least in my case, dozing off every now and then. Dinner was also at the hotel, then at Isabel’s suggestion, we went out dancing.
Despite my larger-than-average size, I wasn’t a half-bad dancer. I did resort at times to the white-man overbite, but, for the most part, I comported myself well. Usually, Cathy was my partner, although on a couple of occasions Isabel would cut in. It seemed like after we got going, the only time I would actually leave the dance floor was when a slow song came on. That was more for the girls’ benefit than my own as my shirt was drenched in sweat.
I don’t know exactly what it was, maybe being away from Angeles, maybe not having to worry about any of my girls, but I felt happier than I had in months.
No, not months. Years.
I’d been wrong. A vacation with friends was exactly what I needed, perhaps what we all needed, because it was impossible to ignore the fact that each of us was feeling exceptionally good.
That night we were free. I wasn’t a papasan, Cathy wasn’t a bartender, Isabel wasn’t a bar dancer. We were just friends on a real vacation from our surreal lives.
