"What?"
"What what?" she answered him. He knew she was toying with him. She started
singing somewhat off key, suggestively smiling at him, a glint of mischief
twinkling in her eyes. "Listen, do you want to know a secret? Ho ho ho. Do you
promise not to tell?" That Beattles' song was one of her favorites, 1964. Manny
knew it, too, of course.
"All right, out with it. I know you have something up your sleeve. Who is it
this time?" he relented.
Elizabeth Moreno Santos, widow of his late uncle, was a handsome woman. The
years had been kind to her. She did not look a day older than forty although it
was public knowledge that she was in her mid sixties. They called her Betty and
she would not hide her displeasure when he called her Auntie Betty. She even
insisted that her only grandson call her Momsie Betty rather than Grandma.
And she had been trying to play Cupid for sometime now. Both attempts were a
disaster. Her first one was with a high school English teacher who spoke with a
lisp. Lita was her schoolmate from Buenavista and was three years her junior,
whose idea of an adventure was a game of Word Scrabble and indecent was her
adjective for someone who was not wearing bloomers or jeans when going for a
swim in Manapa. They never went to the beach anyway because every time he
suggested it she would always claim it was that time of the month. He suspected
she had ugly knees. He never saw them as she always wore her skirts down close
to her ankles.
The next one was Lucretia, a forty year old suspected lesbian, whose short arms
and other body proportions bordered on dwarfism, who only recently discovered
the merits of a heterosexual relationship and who also recently decided to join
the Praise The Lord movement. She constantly talked about "my" Mama Mary as if
she were privy to celestial goings-on, her entire wardrobe now being a
combination of white and blue. She firmly believed that imploring the Holy
Mother's name would somehow guarantee her a place in the kingdom of heaven, as
if the mother of Jesus were a divine lobbyist or influence peddler. Name
dropping was her favorite past time, furtively and eagerly looking at the
listener's eyes, searching for approval but hoping to elicit envy. Lucrees
would mention Retired General Ramos by his pet name, Ed, and suggesting, by the
way she would stick out her lower lip, that she was intimate with past and
present Philippine presidents and that Gloria would call her periodically on
her cell phone to consult her about matters of national and international
consequences.
She had an annoying tendency to constantly excuse herself for prolonged
sojourns to the ladies' room as she decided, after reading a couple of National
Inquirer articles, that two tablespoons of coconut virgin oil daily would
prevent cancer, cure AIDS, as well as improve one's complexion. She found the
term "virgin" quite appealing, somehow reminding her of a state she willingly
gave up before puberty to a fumbling juvenile of her age group. She found the
episode painful and unenjoyable and for which reason she made a decision that
the gentler gender made better, gentler partners. Two tablespoons of coconut
virgin oil is good for you, ergo, four tablespoons would even be better. Loose
stools, anal fissures, and hemorrhoids were side effects she was willing to
tolerate. She did a lot of tolerating.
But that was some four months before. This time could be different.
"Is she pretty?" He did not add "this time" although he was tempted to.
"Yes."
"Is she young?"
"Yessssss." She answered, feigning exasperation.
"I don't believe you."
"Then don't."
"O, sigue na, how old is she?"
"Eighteen."
"I don't believe you." But Manny was beginning to believe her. He had been
bugging her to introduce him to one of the former Miss Mutya ng Butuan or to
the candidates of past beauty contests. She had been charged with the wardrobe
and make-up of contestants for the beauty pageants during the May celebrations
for the last ten years. She had always said "No. What am I, a pimp?" But lately
she had softened up. She believed that behind his happy-go-lucky facade,
loneliness was gnawing away at him. Ever since his wife died in 1986. Or so,
she thought.
"What's her name?"
"Jennie. Jennifer Varona. Very pretty, so sweet. She was a runner up a couple
of years ago."
"What's the catch? Is she retarded or something?"
"No catch. Naaah, she's not retarded" She was grinning, playful now. She just
loved to torture him.
"Oh, oh" he thought suspiciously. "And what will it take for you to arrange an
introduction?"
"Mmm, nothing much. How about ten thousand pesos, no, how about two thousand
dollars? You have a lot of dollars. Better still, how about just letting me win
during our next five mahjong sessions?" She was teasing him. Betty was a very
wealthy woman. Even after her husband passed away, things continued to go well
for her. One of her sons was in a high government position. It was not the
amount won at the end of the game that mattered but the bragging rights.
Manny returned her smile. He liked Betty. She had always been a good friend.
She liked him, too, although she was very vocal about her disapproval of his
lifestyle. And to avoid quarreling with him, she would just avoid him during
his rare dark moods when he seemed distant, unreachable, and sometimes somewhat
belligerent.
Ever since he got back from abroad, he did nothing but to indulge in golf and
to go after anything wearing a skirt. Tall, short, light skinned, dark, young,
old. He claims he was non-discriminatory. She accused him of being non-
discriminating. "There's a difference, you know." Betty tells everyone his
taste for women was like his choice of furniture "eclectic."
"Kalooy sab ni manoy." He was sixty five years old. "Poor pitiful old man," was
her usual loud response to his stories which she found frequently
over-embellished and which she suspected were all based on fantasies.
"Just don't overdose on Viagra," was her frequent admonition, an expression of
her concerned affection for him yet at the same time serving him notice that
she suspects that he suffers from certain physiological inadequacies prevalent
among men of his age distribution and that the ornately adorned stories of his
conquests were suspect of exaggeration and subject to further scrutiny.
He confided in her and told her of his amorous adventures in detail and in the
most colorful and descriptive language. She did not believe most of his stories
but he had a way of telling them that made Betty suspect that perhaps some of
them were actually true. One such story was about this girl in Lanao. He
confessed, in a conspiratorial tone, that his golf trips to Cagayan de Oro were
just convenient excuses and that he was in reality on a regular weekly
rendezvous with 'one' of his lady loves. Manny showed her a picture of 'Joy',
with her hand on his shoulder. But something did not seem right, as if the
picture were posed and contrived. She looked like she was twenty years old, not
much older. Dark, long eyelashes, dimples. Betty could not believe someone as
pretty as that girl would fall for him, unless he bought her undying devotion
by paying for her tuition fees, school uniforms, and other college expenses. He
did confess though that Joy was a second year student hoping to finish a course
in Hotel and Restaurant Management in a school run by RVM nuns and that he was
'helping out.'
She remembered one particular episode she now finds amusing. That was when she
got a telephone call at two o'clock in the morning.
"Hello, ummm, who's this?" Betsy mumbled groggily, half asleep.
"It is I, Manny" He sounded frantic.
"What's the idea, calling me at this ungodly hour? It's past midnight! Is
something wrong? Are you in some kind of trouble?"
"I think I broke my arm!"
"You what?!" She was wide awake now.
"I think I broke my arm."
"How did you manage to do that?" She was beginning to suspect he was up to his
usual tricks by the cadence of his voice. "Where are you?"
"I'm in Makati Shangri-La."
"And?"
"Well, I was in bed, you see, and I was not alone. We were trying to experiment
on certain, well, you know, positions. Emily, you don't know her, she got
carried away. She completely lost control and started pulling and pushing and
screaming a bit too vigorously and I got thrown off the side of the bed and
landed on the floor with my left elbow in an awkward angle."
"Hoy, Manny! Wait till you get back here. I will kill you!" Betty yelled on the
phone. She hated it when she would fall victim to his shenanigans.
"Auntie Bets?"
"What?" Betty hollered on the mouthpiece.
"Sweet dreams."
She slammed the phone on the receiver, took a deep sigh, rolled over to her
left side, smiled, and went back to sleep.
Manny left Butuan thirty five years before, under the most mysterious
circumstances. There were rumors about a housemaid in a logging camp in
Prosperidad getting pregnant. That was the same month that a woman's body was
retrieved from Agusan River among the bamboo groves near the narrow portion of
the river close to San Vicente. Nobody connected the two occurrences. The day
he left was when Betty delivered her oldest daughter at the Santos Hospital.
"Didn't even say good-bye." Betty complained to nobody in particular. When he
came back from the United States, he had not changed at all, except that he was
thirty five years older, thirty five pounds heavier and had lost thirty five
per cent of his hair, mostly from the forehead.
Dr. Manuel de la Verdad came back, a retired Fellow of the American College of
Surgery and a Diplomate of the American Board of Plastic Surgery.
Only his psychiatrist knew that he was a manic-depressive.
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