cousin had tried to seduce Larry, right in front of their room. She had put her lips on his lips, rubbed her body against his. She had tried to get him worked up so he would want to make love to her right where they stood, or even in the room as Isabel slept a few feet away.
In a strange way, the fact that Larry had been able to say no to Mariella almost made Isabel feel worse. She, after all, had not been so immune to her cousin’s influence.
When Larry finished confessing to her, Isabel stared silently at the floor. When he asked her if she was angry with him, she wanted to tell him no, but it hardly seemed adequate enough. How could she tell him she loved him at that moment more than ever, when her embarrassment made it nearly impossible for her to even look him in the eyes? But eventually she did tell him. Not only about her feelings for him, but also about her relationship with Mariella. All of it.
They went out for a late breakfast. Isabel said she wasn’t hungry, but Larry insisted that she eat.
“I don’t want you living with her anymore,” Larry said.
Isabel wasn’t sure what to say at first. Where would she live if not with Mariella? She definitely didn’t want to go back to where she’d been before, so what choice did she have?
Apparently he could see the hesitation on her face. He said, “I mean it. It’s not safe for you. She’ll just continue messing with your mind. You need to get out of that environment. Now.”
“Environment?” she asked. The word was familiar, but the usage was not.
“You have to get away from her,” he explained. “She’s going to make you crazy if you don’t.”
She looked at the ground as she said, “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
His laughter surprised her. It was genuine and good-natured. “Come on,” he said.
They spent the next three days looking at apartments, some close to Fields, some many miles away. Isabel had at first protested, saying she couldn’t come close to affording a place of her own. If he really wanted her to move out of Mariella’s, she would go back to the place she had lived before. But he insisted that he would pay for it.
“I told you I don’t want to touch that money,” she said, assuming he meant the monthly cash he wired to her through me.
“That money’s for you, whether you want to use it or not. Renting you an apartment will be for me,” he said. “For my peace of mind.”
She was finally able to rationalize the idea by telling herself it would save him the cost of a hotel room every time he came to town. And if it made him happy, she guessed it would be okay.
In many of the places they looked, Larry would walk in, take a quick glance around and shake his head. To Isabel, these apartments looked perfectly fine, but not to Larry. It quickly got to the point where he could judge an apartment from the outside of the building, and save them the trouble of going in at all.
It came down to a choice between three places. The two largest were a good fifteen-minute jeepney drive from Fields Avenue without traffic. The third was a bit smaller, but she could walk to work if she wanted. She was scared to live too far from where all her friends were, so the choice became a simple one.
Larry, with Isabel’s help, haggled with the landlord before finally settling on an arrangement that would work for all of them. Larry paid for six months in advance, and said he would pay for the next six months when he returned in the spring. The amount was small, less than half the going rate of a comparable apartment back in San Francisco for a single month. Just to make sure everyone was happy, he slipped the landlord an extra thousand pesos for “being so cooperative.”
The next day was spent buying furniture. As they drove around in a trike looking for a bed, a dresser, a table and the other items Larry thought Isabel would need, she glanced down every so often to the key she held in her hand, the key to her own place. She could hardly believe it. It was the first time in her life she would be living on her own. She was so excited. The only thing that would have been better was if Larry had asked her to marry him and move back to America.
The only times during those days that her happiness dipped was when they went back to Mariella’s to get Isabel’s things. It took two separate nights of waiting before they were actually able to go in. The first night they couldn’t be sure if Mariella was there or not, neither of them having any desire to confront her.
The second night, they waited in a trike down the street, within sight of Mariella’s house. It was early evening, and they could see a few lights on inside, which Isabel knew meant Mariella was still home. Less than thirty minutes later, the lights went out and Mariella appeared at the front door, dressed for a night on Fields. She waved at a group of trike drivers waiting for fares at the end of the block. One of them broke off from the pack and drove over to her. As soon as she took her seat in the sidecar, it took off again.
“You’re sure she won’t come right back?” Larry asked.
Isabel shook her head. “Not until late. If at all.”
Isabel told the driver to pull up in front of Mariella’s place. At first, Larry had thought they needed to bring the driver into their confidence to get him to participate in their plan, but Isabel told Larry to just give him five hundred pesos and there would be no problem. She had been right.
It’d been decided beforehand that, in case Mariella came back unexpectedly, Larry would wait with the trike while Isabel went inside and retrieved her things. There wasn’t much, really. Some clothes, a few items Larry had given her, no more than a suitcase’s worth.
As she approached the door, her hand began to shake, and for a second she wasn’t sure she’d be able to get the key in the lock. But it slipped in on the second try, and before she knew it, she was inside the place that had been her home.
She walked quickly to the stairs, then up to her room. As she entered, she stopped, confused. Everything was changed. The furniture was rearranged, the pictures on the wall were replaced. When she threw open the door to the closet, there was nothing there. She ran over to the dresser, pulling out drawer after drawer, but there was nothing there, either. All of her stuff was gone. It was like she had never spent a single night there. She searched the rest of the second floor, but there was no sign of anything that had been hers.
Downstairs she ran from room to room, hoping to find that Mariella had just packed everything away for her. She didn’t have many clothes-two dresses, some T-shirts, a pair of jeans. But it wasn’t the clothes that concerned her most. She would have been happy to part with them if she could only find the hinged, wooden box that held the memories of her life with Larry: pictures, airline ticket stubs, a dried rose. None of it was there.
Finally, she forced herself to go into Mariella’s bedroom. Again, her clothes were not to be found. But in the corner of the closet, under several full shoeboxes, she found her wooden box. When she opened it, what she saw caused her to momentarily stop breathing.
The pictures had all been ripped into pieces.
As Isabel reached out and touched them, tears began to run down her cheeks, but she quickly wiped them away. No matter what Mariella had done, she hadn’t taken Isabel’s memories.
Isabel tucked the box under her arm and left.
When she got back to the trike, Larry asked, “Everything all right?”
She smiled weakly, then told the driver to take them back to her apartment.
Larry looked dubiously at the box under her arm. “Is that it?”
For an entire block, she didn’t answer him. Then, without taking her eyes off the road ahead, she simply said, “Yes.”
They spent most of the remainder of Larry’s visit in the new apartment. “Our” apartment, they began referring to it. For Isabel, it was the closest she’d ever come to feeling married. In the mornings, she’d get up and make him breakfast. They’d spend the day walking around the neighborhood or hanging pictures on the walls or shopping for little things he thought she could use.
He bought her clothes, which she said she didn’t need, but couldn’t wait to wear. And in the end, he bought her a TV. “So you won’t be bored,” he said.
Not once did they see Mariella.
The day before his plane was to leave, they went to Manila and spent their time in their hotel room holding each other and talking and making love. It was always hard for her when he left, but this time it was more difficult than usual. When it came time to go to the airport, she couldn’t stop herself from crying.
Larry held her close. “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “I promise I’ll be back soon.”
