I want to have a little girl, said Che happily, so I could torture her like my mother tortures me.
I want to travel the world, said Larissa. She grinned. On a white horse. They were sitting astride a seesaw in a dusty playground in Piermont. School had ended. They spent the afternoon chalking the lines and playing hopscotch. At four the ice cream truck came and they scraped together enough nickels for one, a cherry bomb banana float, and with it sat on the swings rocking back and forth taking turns with the ice cream.
Che told her favorite joke. Two muffins are in the oven, Che said, and one muffin says to the other muffin, “Oh no! I think we’re going to get baked,” and the second muffin says, “Oh no! A talking muffin!”
Perhaps no, not even then. They didn’t have the same dreams.
The cobblestones hurt Larissa’s feet, and the sun blinded her eyes. She stumbled down Humility and Goodness and Gentleness, all narrow and winding, with their pungent smells of rotting fruit, unwashed humans, and seaweed all marinated in stifling wetness, the overhanging delapidation, the sad-sack windows, the chipped frames, and yet above it all, palms and below it, red flowers, and drenching humidity like the ocean. She walked, dragging her heavy suitcase behind her, carrying her duffel on her sore shoulder; it felt like drowning, the air dense with moisture. Hobbling away from the thing she had come to find, Larissa almost couldn’t breathe. Except it was a sunny morning and sauna hot, and the birds were chirping here, there. Paranaque, a haven for farmers and fishermen, was close to the sea, sandwiched between Manila and Laguna Bays, and it smelled like the sea—salt and fish—all through the thick air. At the outdoor market, haphazard tables displayed slippers, weaved baskets, bags of rice, bananas, mangoes, and yellow pears. She would’ve bought a pear from a beseeching woman in flagrant red garb with a little baby on her lap, except for the falling sensation in her gut. Looking away from the mother and child, she could barely wheel her suitcase over the rough ground.
Where was she going? What was her plan? Should she find a bed and breakfast until tomorrow, then fly back, somehow make her way to Pooncarie, back to Kai? They’d have to make it work somehow, they would just have to. For God’s sake, she couldn’t stay in Manila all by herself! But changing the ticket would cost her money in penalties, and she didn’t have it. Maybe Kai could wire her the money. What was she going to do? She’d have to call him at Billy-O’s, tell him she got in okay, but Che was nowhere to be f—
Through her trance, she heard a gravelly voice. She raised her eyes, blinking, focusing, and glimpsed a tall salt-and-pepper-haired man in a black frock with a pronounced withered face. “Is it nothing to you,” the man said in a British accent, his hands pressed together, “all that pass by here?”
That made Larissa stop walking cast down.
“Look and see,” the man continued, opening wide his large lined-by-life hands and beckoning her to him, “if there’s any pain like your pain.”
He was standing on the steps of a small adobe white church, sandwiched between a green garden and three wooden houses. He had a composed manner about him, penetrating contemplative dark eyes that seemed all the more striking against the gray hair, and an air of juggling too large a number of thinking balls. His mind seemed busy with inner things.
“Excuse me, what church is this?” said Larissa.
“San Agustin of Paranaque.”
San Agustin. It was like a miracle!
Larissa stepped closer, still in the street, and walked a few feet toward him. “I can’t believe it. Is there only one San Agustin?”
“In Paranaque, yes.”
“By any chance do you know a priest named Father Emilio?”
“I am Reverend Father Emilio,” said the man in black cloth.
“Oh, I can’t believe it! Thank God.” Larissa put her hand on her heart and started to cry. Stepping forward, Father Emilio placed his hand on her back, gently patting her. His expression changed, as if he put down some of those bright juggling balls and focused solely on her.
“Yes, you’re right,” he said. “We should thank God for all mercies, great and small. Would you like to come inside?”
“Inside where? Father Emilio…” Larissa wiped her face. “My name is Larissa Connelly. I’m looking for my friend Che. She used to—”
“I know Che very well,” said Father Emilio, staring at Larissa, studying her.
“Has she ever mentioned me?”
“Yes, she talked about you, Larissa. I feel I know you already.” His blinkless gaze, inquisitive, sober, remained on her. “I thought you were Larissa Stark?”
Larissa stammered. As with Mejida, she found it distressing and mortifying that people thousands of miles away from her physically and metaphysically would know anything about her. “She—um—used to, I’m pretty sure, live near San Pablo,” Larissa went on haltingly, “but…”
“She hasn’t lived here a long time,” said Father Emilio. “She left perhaps five years ago.”
“Left and went where? When she was writing me, she said her—” Larissa broke off. She didn’t want to say. She couldn’t remember.
“…Boyfriend was in jail awaiting trial for murder?”
“Something like that.”
“They made bail. And they ran. Took everything and vanished to Mindanao.”
“And she hasn’t been back since?”
He shook his head. “They joined the Peace Brigade there.”
“Peace Brigade? She told me they were going to live with some tribe in the mountains.”
“Yes, the Peace Brigade soldiers,” said Father Emilio. “I vaguely heard that during one of their daily skirmishes with the police and MILF, Lorenzo was killed and Che was arrested. Or perhaps Che was killed and Lorenzo was arrested. This is just a rumor, mind you. No one was sure of anything, and it’s so hard to keep track of people, especially down on the islands. Our parishes can only help so much. Sometimes they lose the string of information. But then a year later I heard that if she weren’t dead, she might have gone to prison for aiding and abetting a cop killer and a fugitive from justice.”
“Prison! Father Emilio…” Larissa’s hand was on her heart. “Please…what are you telling me?”
“Only the truth, Larissa. Would you like to come in?”
“I don’t think I would, no. But…”
Except where did she have to be? Where could she go? If not for this man standing on the steps of his adobe house, where did she intend her feet to carry her?
“I have some real problems, Father Emilio,” said Larissa. “I may be in serious trouble.”
He opened the side door to his church and stood waiting for her to pass by him.
He took her into his rectory, a large comfortable room with tall windows overlooking the street. Larissa wheeled in her suitcase, dropped her duffel and purse and, with relief to finally sit down, sank into an old leather chair. Father Emilio sat in the red leather chair across from her. The windows were open, and the sun was out. There was a fan in the room, swirling the mugginess around, but it was better than being outside. There was a faint smell of incense and mosquito repellent.
She sat like this for many minutes. She didn’t really want to talk, just enough to get her bearings and perhaps ask him to help her. But help her what? Did she want him to give her money? She couldn’t look at him, at his silence, at his calm brown eyes.
“Is it true,” she said when she finally spoke, “that you used to be a renal surgeon?”
“Hmm. Random,” he replied. “But, yes. It’s true.”
“You became a doctor here?”
“No, in London. I came here on a grant with Our Lady of Peace Hospital.”
“To do kidney transplants?”
“That’s right.”
She paused. “So how did you get from there to”—she circled the air with her hand—”here?”
Nodding, he smiled slightly. “Now I see. That is a good question. I decided I could be more useful here.”
“You t
hink so?” she said skeptically. “Rather than help people get new kidneys?” She tilted her head. “My friend had kidney disease. She kept going to church, but what she really needed was a transplant.”
“I think that’s a false choice,” said Father Emilio. “After all, why can’t you do both?”
Did this man just say “false choice”? Her old friend Ezra used to say that all the time. Larissa studied the priest more carefully.
“You didn’t,” she pointed out, finally.
“That’s true. But now I’m not limited by a scalpel or by my area of expertise. I cast my net a little wider. As I said, more useful.”
“I guess.” Larissa shrugged. “Poor Che. So you don’t know what happened to her?”
“I don’t.”
“From what I remember, wasn’t she due to give birth?”
“Yes.” He didn’t say anymore, waiting for her, while she waited for him and sat in the quiet. There was something undeniably comforting about his composed, non-judgmental silence. It was in this silence that Larissa began to speak, almost like thinking.
“I’m not sure but I might have screwed up my life pretty bad,” she said to him because he had kind eyes. “You won’t believe what I’ve done.”
“Okay,” said Father Emilio. “You’ve messed up your life. I understand.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me.”
“It’s so bad, I can’t tell even you, Father. I’ve been wicked.”
“Okay,” he said. “You’ve been wicked.”
“I can’t change anything. I can’t make it better. What’s worse is I’m afraid I may have made a fatal error in judgment. I may have subordinated reason to my…” Love? Carnal desire? Was there a difference? She thought there was. Her life with Kai was carnal, but sterile.
“Okay,” he said. “That’s very possible.”
“Do you know about me?”
“I know about you a little bit, Larissa Stark, nee Connelly,” said Father Emilio. “But tell me some things I don’t know.”
She told him in staccato words. He sat and listened.
“I can never make it up to my children,” she finished. “I will never make it up to my husband.”
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t know. Look at me. I don’t know what to do. I came to Manila because my only remaining friend in the world lived here. I have less than two hundred bucks on me, my…boyfriend is sleeping on someone else’s couch for three months. I’ve got no job, no money—” Larissa kept crying, weeping, into her hands, her eyes swollen, the raw anguish of her cries echoing through the empty halls. I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any idea how to do anything. I don’t know how to live.
He stared at her calmly, while she carried on. “Stay with us for a little while,” he finally said. “See if you can work it out.”
She stopped crying. “Stay with you? What are you saying?”
“You can stay with us as a guest of the monastery.”
“I thought this was a church, not a monastery?”
“I can give you a tour of our grounds if you like, before you decide,” Father Emilio said dryly. “We have the church for the laity, for the parishioners of Moonwalk, which is a district in Paranaque, that is correct. But we also have a small, allfemale Augustinian monastery, twenty-two nuns in all, and attached to that, an orphanage with sixty beds. At the moment they’re all full. Well…” Father Emilio cleared his throat. “Fifty-nine of them are full. We had an eighteen-month-old severely handicapped boy, left on our doorstep at birth, who died three days ago. We’re burying him today.” He paused. “So fifty-nine beds full.”
“Is that what you want me to do? You want me to stay with the nuns? Or the orphans?”
“Your choice,” Father Emilio replied. “But who do you think takes care of the orphans?”
“You’re saying either way I’m with the children?”
“For as long or as little as you need.”
“You’re telling me to stay here—” She broke off. “But I’m afraid I’m losing him, Kai, losing my life, and he is my whole life right now, don’t you understand?”
“You’re sitting in front of me, aren’t you?” said the priest.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“This is also your life.”
“This isn’t my life.” She shook her head. “This is a break from my actual life.”
“This seems like a break to you? You’re destitute, your closest friend is in prison, or dead, and the young man you left your husband and children for sent you away to another country.”
“He didn’t send me away!” Larissa exclaimed, horrified. “He…we were…we had no money, he had to work. No, no, no. You’re mistaken about that. Completely mistaken. We did what we had to do to save ourselves.”
“Yes,” said Father Emilio, his steady eyes on her. “Sometimes to save ourselves we must do outrageous things.”
“Look,” Larissa said hurriedly. Was there any way now of asking him for money to return to Australia earlier? Damn! “I’m in no condition to help with the children. Honest. I’m…I’d like to stay for a few days, just to, you know, but…I’m in really bad shape. I…this isn’t what I envisioned.” She was supposed to come visit Che! What in the world was this?
Father Emilio sat motionlessly, fingers pressed together and coolly stared at Larissa without speaking. After a few minutes she glanced at him inquisitively, inquiring mutely about his silence. He opened his hands. “This is God’s house,” he said. “The doors are always open. In and out.” He pointed outside. “They’re open right now.” He rose out of his chair and extended his hand to her. “It was very nice to meet you, Larissa. If Che ever comes back, I’ll be sure to tell her you came to visit. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go conduct the noon service and then I have a funeral to prepare for.”
“No, Father Emilio,” she said, hurriedly standing up. “I didn’t mean I wanted to go. I’d like to stay, like I said. I was merely saying that I’m not used to—and I’m so upset over things, and Che not being here…this wasn’t what I had planned, that’s all.”
“All right,” said Father Emilio. “This isn’t what you planned. Probably life doesn’t look pretty to you at the moment. But come with me. I want to show you something.”
Larissa followed him, but she was sure she didn’t want to see. “Father, I don’t want to see the dead child,” she whispered.
“Don’t worry,” he said, squeezing her hand. “You can’t save him. But I would like to show you a live one.”
After walking down a long corridor that led from the rectory to the back of the church, they swung open two glass French doors and entered an almost empty enclosed courtyard, a stone square enclosure with ferns in pots and the subdued moist sun shining. Through an archway across the yard, Larissa glimpsed a green lawn and trees, but here on a wood bench in the corner, Father Emilio pointed to a wan girl playing with horses made of sticks. A tiny dark girl, with short, pin-straight black hair and deep-set eyes. She was wearing a beige smock, a pinafore too big for her, and her feet were bare. She looked up at the two adults, her eyes smiling familiarly at Father Emilio and then drifting to stare warily at Larissa.
A gasping Larissa put her palm on her heart.
“This is Nalini,” said Father Emilio. “Che’s daughter. She has also been with us since birth. Che gave birth to her, and then left her with me and the nuns when she and Lorenzo ran to Mindanao. She said she would be back for her.” He lowered his head. “But that was five years ago.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Papa Emilio,” said Nalini in a high clear voice. “Mama will be back.”
Larissa kneeled in front of the girl, kneeled on the stones in front of the bench where the girl who looked like her friend Che, except for the Lorenzo eyes, sat with her sticks, her bobbed black hair. Larissa took several deep breaths before she trusted her voice to speak, to sound bright. “Hi, Nalini.” Barely audibly. No
t good. Have to try harder, Larissa. “Whatcha doin’?”
“Playing.” She stared at Father Emilio. “Is it time for lunch?”
“Yes, child,” he replied. “But don’t be impolite to our guest. This is Larissa. Talk to her. You’ll like her. She knew your mother.”
Nalini jumped off the bench, the horses dangling in her hands. “Really? You knew my mama?”
“I knew her very well. She was my best friend when we were your age, when we both lived in America.”
“My mama lived in America?” Nalini was wide-eyed. She looked up at Father Emilio. “Papa, where is America?”
“Very far away. Now come. You can show Larissa the kitchen, and then you must run to the chapel with the others. Larissa, you must be hungry, too, no?”
The three of them walked at a child’s pace out of the courtyard, which is to say they couldn’t keep up with her skipping through another stone corridor that led to the dining hall in the orphanage with long tables and a galley kitchen at the sunny end.
“What do you like to eat, Nalini?”
“Nalini, stay with us!” Father Emilio called. “Don’t rush so far ahead. Larissa is tired; she can’t run as fast as you.”
The girl skipped back. “I love Nutella—” she broke off, glancing sheepishly at the priest. “I like Nutella, very very much like. But we don’t have it here anymore. Do you know what it is?”
“I do. It was your mother’s favorite thing to eat. I used to send it to her.”