After six years without practicing contraception they were still childless. All
the infertility studies revealed that the problem was hers alone. She was
diagnosed as suffering from a progressive form of congenital adrenal
hyperplasia, gaining a lot of weight, a dowager.s hump, and a light but very
obvious mustache. The condition was aggravated by labile diabetes. From five
foot two, one hundred ten pounds, she had ballooned to two hundred thirty
pounds. Her personality deteriorated with her physical appearance. She became
as mean as an unfulfilled rattlesnake in heat.
By 1986, Manny had become miserable, having to be alone at night with his wife,
living in a mansion with eight bedrooms, surrounded and isolated by pine, river
birch and hardwood trees. The Mexican house maid and her Puerto Rican husband
slept in their own separate cottage nearby. Why is a house never a home when
there are no screaming, fighting, yelling, laughing children there? Manny
invented all kinds of excuses for working late in the office or at the hospital
completing his medical records.
Then one inevitable dark oppressive night - "Don't raise your voice at me like
that." Manny shouted back at Sonia. "You will not like me when I'm angry."
Their first and final quarrel.
"Up yours!" was her reply, as she raised her right fist in the classic obscene
Mediterranean gesture of defiance and scorn. What Manny heard was Hirohito's
growl. His pupils started dilating and the sides of his lips began twitching
involuntarily. He turned his back on his wife, went to his library, sat there
staring into space, saying nothing, ominous silence heavy in the air.
The following morning, Sonia was discovered by the maid, in a coma, and was
rushed to the emergency room, in a hypoglycemic shock, and died before the
emergency doctor could start an intravenous sugar infusion. Manny was in the
operating room performing a rhinoplasty which he insisted on completing even
after having been told of the catastrophe. The anesthesiologists and nurses who
were assisting him were all very much impressed by his cool and his
professional demeanor. No one expected and no one saw the cold smile under the
surgical mask. He removed his gloves at the conclusion of the procedure, then
shook the hand of the anesthesiologist, and thanked every one as he always did
after every case that he performed and left the operating theater in a steady
unhurried gait that he always had.
An investigation was started, which was the standard protocol in cases of
sudden deaths. There was no trace of an insulin overdose, no sign of violence,
no evidence of foul play. The case was officially closed two months later.
After Sonia's remains were cremated, Manny began to appear distraught. He no
longer shaved and his office staff was beginning to complain that his behavior
had become erratic and unpredictable. For days he would not see patients in the
office so that finally, after six months, he decided to close his office in the
affluent Louis Pasteur Avenue in Boston and move to Boca Raton in Florida. It
was common knowledge that Boca had the highest number of millionaires,
multimillion dollar vacation homes and two hundred and fifty foot yachts.
Grocery and department stores offered valet parking and dog sitting was thirty
dollars an hour. And all the matrons compared notes on their health and their
plastic surgeries.
The nurses, doctors, and in-laws who saw him off were as teary eyed as he was
when he boarded the 747 Delta bound for the South but by the time he reached
the end of the tarmac, he was already whistling Dixie. By the time he buckled
in, he had already accepted the glass of champagne offered by the well-groomed
stewardess and had said thank you with his trademark innocent crooked little
boy smile and irresistible wink.
And by the time he got to Florida, he was his old pleasant, charming, and witty
self again. He went back to work with unbridled enthusiasm, catering to all the
rich Jewish, Canadian and Yankee retirees who wanted a face lift, a nose job, a
breast augmentation, or a liposuction of the hip and buttocks and whichever
part of their anatomy. Some geriatrics even requested hymenoplasties for
reasons known only to them and Manny was only too glad to comply. After all,
the insurance companies and Medicare would not pay for the procedures and the
patients would end up paying in cash which he would inadvertently forget to
declare as income.
The old women adored him! The men came with their wives and were also so
impressed by him that they invited him to their homes, invited him to their
private clubs, to their yachts, and to their golf games. He was the only
Filipino in the group.
But after fifteen years of financial stability, tranquility and freedom from
domestic responsibilities, monotony triggered a depression that began to bear
down on him. Medications made it only worse. Being alone meant being lonely and
although he played golf with the old farts only during the weekends, he began
to entertain the notion that old age was contagious, like an infectious
disease. And although he would have someone to share his king-sized bed with,
these nocturnal trysts were beginning to feel like chores, and were, at most,
temporary and were resorted to only when the nights would become too unbearably
cold or lonely. What made matters worse was that he had begun to perceive the
scent and the secretions of an aroused white woman as disagreeably offensive as
he began to appreciate the different female racial attributes in favor of his
own kind. To make matters irrevocably intolerable, there were only two
Filipinas in the area one of whom was a happily married wealthy stock broker
and the other, an elderly illiterate domestic helper.
One cold November night, while surfing the different channels on the
television, he absent-mindedly stopped pressing on the remote control button at
a rerun of an old series, "I Dream of Jeannie." He tried to focus on the
shapely legs and incredibly tremulous bosom of the delectable Barbara Eden but
what he saw instead was a vision of that slice of the Eden of his youth. In
that silent moment of solitude he realized he was homesick. And for the first
time in more than 30 years, he finally found the need and the courage to yearn
for home. That same night, Manny prepared three sets of clothes, his checkbook,
a stethoscope, his favorite plastic surgical kit with a couple of scalpels and
packed them into a single piece of luggage. He was going home, at last.
The Philippine Airline noon flight was circling around Butuan banking to one
side or the other so the passengers could see the city from the sky. The plane
was jet propelled. He remembered the last time he flew from Butuan when the
planes were still bumpy vintage DC3s. He saw several familiar faces among his
co-passengers but just could not remember their names. Except two, Floring
Azura, he did not know her married name, and Chickoy Martinez. He remembered
they were among the city socialites then. Nobody recognized him. He was wearing
a cap and dark glasses.
Manny let out a sigh when he saw the Magsaysay Bridge across the river. He and
Chona used to meet some Friday nights near the middle of the bridge and enjoy
the cool wind blowing against their faces. They used to tune in to DXJM and
listen to the disc jockey read out names to whom were dedicated songs of the
fifties when Elvis was King.
From the plane, he craned his neck to admire coconut and dark green mango
trees, banana plants, and fishponds with shoulder deep waters that reflected
the skies and clouds like dozens of large sparkling mirrors. The old surgeon
became subdued when he saw the magnificent Mt. Mayapay looming in the distance
and silently spoke to her, "I'm finally home."
But on the ground, it was an initial cultural shock and a major letdown. It
seemed that the Butuan now was not the Butuan of his youth and of his
recollection. As soon as he got out of the terminal he was greeted by plastic
bags of a myriad colors strewn all over the side of the roads, among rotting
old boxes of Marlboro cartons and freshly discarded banana peelings.
Going downtown on his way to what was exaggeratedly billed as a five star
international quality hotel, he took a public utility vehicle and opened the
window on his right. They passed by the once green and cream painted Sultan
Hotel, now in a major state of disrepair and he saw what was once, he thought,
was the swimming pool. Going through Barrio Libertad, he observed that the busy
public market was less than a hundred yards from the traffic clogged national
highway. The bridge over the river must be new but the squalid nipa shanties
along the river edge were not. Clotheslines between the squatter homes
displayed an assortment of men's, women's, and children's clothing articles of
multiple colors, reminding Manny of the flags of the different member
countries, flapping in front of the United Nations building along First Avenue
in New York.
He did not see anyone he knew. Stepping down from Almont Hotel, he walked
across the street to the Rizal Plaza where the stately "banga" palm trees were
now gone. The grounds are mostly concrete. The rust free metal tube railings
that went around the plaza where they used to sit on and hang around in had
been taken down. Instead, old, large, hardly legible placards of the City's
Mission and Vision were nailed to side of a smaller kiosk and enormous pictures
of the City Executive and his charming wife greeted peanut and flower vendors
and shoe shine boys selling drugs "Merry Christmas!!!" The dates on the faded
portraits showed it was put up three years earlier. He was amused to observe
how resourceful the people were though, using the large flower pots as thrash
receptacles in the absence of the real ones.
He did not see a single familiar face.
There were as many smoke-belching tricycles as there were people. He thought
how ridiculously claustrophobic the streets have become. He saw how narrow Juan
Luna Street was. He remembered it to have been so wide, it seemed, like an
endless boulevard then. Besides, the street sign now showed A. Curato Street.
Where has the great old acacia tree gone? His parents' house no longer existed.
Where it used to be, now stand Muslim souvenir shops offering authentic native
"dili molubad patadjong" made in either China or Thailand. The air was dusty
and the atmosphere suffocating. Downtown was a potpourri of shops, makeshift
"carinderias", chicken and banana barbecue stalls, pirated DVD and CD sidewalk
vendors, beggars, and pimps. Across the street and in front of Chow King are
open canals from which emanated vapors of indescribable aroma.
He saw overpasses in the most unlikely locations, these structures hardly being
used for pedestrian traffic which he supposed was the main reason for their
construction. Instead, these were used for essential human acts which would be
improper to describe. He could not believe the filth. "Was it like this when I
left?" He could not remember.
And yet, all these visual and olfactory insults all but disappeared from his
mind with his first contacts with the locals. The Butuanons seem to enjoy life
more, smiled frequently, laughed easily, and are the friendliest in the world,
without exception. "I am among my own." Manny thought with pride.
Back in the hotel he asked the young lady at the registration desk for
information and directions. He felt awkward at first, speaking the local
dialect which he had not used for ages. "Diin ba ang baay ni anhing Colas
Santos?"Where is the late Colas Santos' residence?" He had died ten years
earlier from some kind of cancer of the blood and lymphatic system.
She was very pleasant and helpful, even arranged for transportation and was
nice enough to act like she did not notice that he was struggling with the
dialect.
The Estacio Village subdivision was only fifteen minutes away. He decided to
take a tricycle. He had never been on one. In it, he felt so vulnerable. The
air pollution of dust and diesel gasoline fumes was appalling. It was four
o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. He passed by the old cemetery and wondered if
the phantom lady in the white flowing dress still harassed the young kids. He
passed the Doctors' Hospital, proceeded to the subdivision and knocked on the
gate near the corner of Victoria and Claudio Streets. He was ushered into the
living room by a maid who was unsure whether to smile at him or not but he
became her eternal idol when he gave her his lost-little-boy look and when he
confided in her that he was just a poor old distant relative long gone but
finally come home. He was asked to wait in the expansive solemn museum-like
living room that was filled with Ming and Sung dynasty vases and other
authentic antiques, each one worth a fortune.
She was as lovely as ever. Betty had just awakened from her afternoon beauty
nap but had already completed the ritual of retouching her make up. Her mouth
and eyes widened in unbelieving undisguised surprise when she saw him.
"Hello Auntie Bets. I'm back."
"Oh, my God!"
"No, not Him, it's just me, Manny."
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