Welcome to Envy Park (4 page)

"Yeah, right. No, I mean, I just
met her once. Filipina who lived in the flat two doors down from
me. I saw her in the lift sometimes, but then one day she just
knocked and when I opened the door, she was there with her
seven-year-old daughter. Could I watch her, she asked, because she
had to attend to an emergency and she had no one else to turn to. I
was shocked for a second, but I agreed to do it. And then I said,
'I'm Moira by the way,' and she was in such a rush that she didn't
even tell me the kid's name. She came back later that night, and
was so thankful, but that was it. We didn't really become friends
after."

"What was the
emergency?"

"She never told me."

"That's strange."

"Didn't trust me enough to tell me
the details, but still managed to leave her child with me. I could
have been crazy!"

"You don't look crazy."

"Thanks but the crazy ones never
do. It made me think about why someone would do that. Why trust
that blindly? And it's because you're in a rush, it's an emergency,
and you have no choice—what do you do? And this woman just put her
faith in me, because of a vague notion that we were from the same
place and would value the same things. It's almost illogical. If
you were thinking clearly, you wouldn't do that. I don't think I
would."

"She chose to trust
you."

"Yes, she did."

"And she was right to."

"Yes, she was."

"And because you were trustworthy
indeed, you encouraged her to be just as trusting next time around,
and maybe she won't be as lucky."

"You mean I made it worse by being
nice to her?"

"Think about it. If you were a
jerk and turned her away, she would have learned that she shouldn't
just leave her kid with strangers."

"Yes, but I would have been a
jerk."

"It's good that you
aren't."

"Are you telling me I should have
been a jerk? Because the consequence of going down that path isn't
pretty. I wouldn't be talking to you now, eating this fancy cotton
candy, if I was the kind of person who taught
lessons
like that."

"I'm glad you aren't. It's funny
that you say 'lift' and 'flat.'"

"Did I? I kind of revert to it
when I talk about being there. It's the word they use! But it took
me a while to get used to it. I kept thinking they meant
shoes."

"We'd be using it too, if we'd
been under the British longer."

"Maybe neighborhood bakeries would
be serving scones. Scones or
pandesal
?"

"And we'd be driving the same
messed-up way but on the wrong side of the road."

"It would be chaos."

"No different from today then.
Just flipped over."

"So that's settled then," I said,
smiling as I popped the last clump of the unsurprisingly addictive
coffee cotton candy in my mouth. "British Philippines. Exactly the
same, but with different words, and scones."

Chapter 5

Beside the small stall that served experimental
desserts was an old-school Italian food place, and the next day, my
former officemates were there to have dinner with me. A
semi-impromptu thing.

I kept in touch with them, sure, but I was doing the
bare minimum in terms of keeping friendships. On some of my holiday
visits to Manila I skipped meeting them entirely, and I didn't feel
bad about it. They were nice people and all, but because they all
still worked at the same place, conversations gravitated toward the
same things all over again. It was great when it was dish I wanted
to hear; not so when it was nitpicking over some little thing that
happened at work.

To Roxie, I had described my friendship with them as
being locked in a time capsule. If I wanted to relive my life and
thoughts from five years ago, all I needed to do was hang out with
them. There was nostalgia in it, but also a reminder that I had
changed.

I said yes to this sudden dinner because they had
been hounding me about it for weeks, and they offered to actually
come to NV Park, and I had run out of excuses.

"Okay, and Arabella's coming along
with us okay, bye!"

Arabella. As in my former boss, Arabella. Somewhat
of a mentor figure to me, except I couldn't give her that much
credit because my career was currently nonexistent, and I did leave
the job before I could get a promotion or a substantial increase.
She and I were okay. I didn't have any enemies. But hanging out
with her was increasingly becoming icky.

"So how many guys did you sleep
with while over there, Moira?" was her second question, after "how
are you."

No joke, I pretended to choke on a
spaghetti noodle. Just to give myself time to think. Arabella
wasn't like this before. But as time went on—as she neared forty,
maybe—she was getting more and more like this. Whatever this
was.

The ex-boyfriend's name was
George, Australian with Filipino parents. He was Aussie in many
ways and Pinoy in others, and the balance was what probably made
him most attractive to me. Like me, he was someone and somewhere
without quite being it. Except he had more than two decades of a
head start. So it might be wrong of me to be calling him my
boyfriend. Truth was, he was a guy I had dinner with, and did stuff
with, for about a year, but I never felt that he loved me, and I
was pretty sure he was seeing other people.

So one day I just said, no I wasn't going to do
stuff with him anymore, and he started going out with new assistant
manager Tamsin. I was the new girl too, when we started. He was the
type who did that.

"What have you been hearing?" I
said, laughing it off. "Don't trust any of these
gossips."

"So did you go out with
foreigners? Like, Americans, British guys? Or were they mostly
Filipinos?"

After I freed myself from the
George delusion, I dated. Participated in "cultural exchanges" as
Roxie and I liked to say. But it wasn't easy to be suddenly
promiscuous when your flatmate was your mom's friend's daughter.
Not that she was a snitch, but it was weird. I was acutely aware
for example that every time her boyfriend visited they would
probably want to do stuff and didn't want them to feel like I was
in the way. (That weekend I bought huge headphones and a bunch of
movies to watch.) Surely she thought the same about me.

The four other people at the table didn't even
notice how strange this was, which made me wonder if I was the one
going crazy. In fact, they continued having their own conversation,
about what VP so-and-so did at the annual meeting blah blah blah,
while I was left to fend for myself.

"No, I didn't go out with
anybody," I lied, just to close the book on it.

"You're lying."

"Nobody liked me over
there."

"You're lying. How could they not?
You’ve got that...look going for you."

"What look?" I was curious about
this.

Arabella was really going there.
"Educated Filipina."

She meant it as a compliment, so I
didn’t dare think about what she considered an insult. Best to move
on. "Thank you, but no."

"Nobody, the entire time? Five
years? Didn't you have a boyfriend or something?"

I was too deep into this by now.
"Where did you hear that? There was nobody. I was living with a
very religious girl and she made me promise not to bring anyone
home."

"But that's what their apartments
are for!"

"Guys have flatmates,
too."

The flats weren't huge. You'd run
into each other eventually, like on the way to get a glass of
water, and all the money spent on headphones and movies would have
been for nothing because you'd have to politely nod and acknowledge
the casual visitor wearing skimpy shorts.

Over the years it became more like normal, but I
never got comfortable knowing that much about another couple (when
they fought, made up, broke up, hooked up) through sounds
overheard.

So when the opportunity to buy a unit at NV Park
came up, I got a one-bedroom. Not going to be sharing.

"Hotels? Motels?"

"Too expensive."

"Oh dear." Arabella looked over at
the others just to check if they were as shocked as she was, but
they were still in their own world. But she looked so sorry for me.
"Is that why you came back? Did you give up on finding a man
there?"

Arabella, by the way, was eight years older than I
was, and also unattached. Her last serious relationship had ended
even before I met her at work. She was a workaholic, but I refused
to believe that she had absolutely nobody the whole time. Not the
way she kept obsessing about my dating life.

Or maybe it was an indicator that she indeed didn't.
Have anybody.

"I should introduce you to
someone," Arabella was saying, her nails clicking noisily as she
browsed her smartphone contacts list. "I mean, you've been back for
a month right? Are you free Saturday?"

"No I'm not, Arabella, but thank
you."

"What's your next job?"

"Nothing, right now."

"Are you sure? Because a new
division opened up this year. I could recommend you for it. You
should consider it. You're not getting any younger."

I sipped some water and swallowed
what I really wanted to say. "How are you? Who are you seeing now?"
I went, sweetly.

"How can I see anybody when I’m
leaving at ten every night? This job is going to kill
me."

I smiled and tried to recall how this conversation
went. She was complaining about the hours she put in, for as long
as I'd known her. I had come to see this as a dance. She stepped
forward (I hate my job I work so hard), I stepped back (you should
take a break you deserve it), she stepped forward again (but I
can't not right now), chachacha.

"Weren't you promoted lately?
Can't you start delegating or something?"

Chachacha.

Arabella loved her job. She loved how it gave her an
environment to be superior to other people. She loved being right,
and being a mentor, and showing people the ropes. She liked being
the last to leave, and complaining about it early the next day. But
she didn't want to admit it, so she made a show out of hanging out
with the underlings, trying to be part of their/our lives.

It was precisely this environment
that showed me that my future was Arabella, if I stayed at that
workplace any longer, and no I didn't want to be getting older and
living vicariously through her "kids."

But I was never, ever going to tell her that.

So throughout dinner I kept up the dance.
Chachacha.

-/\/\/\-

ARABELLA

I. CAREER AND FINANCES

+ Stable career (if a little boring and possibly
dead-end)

- Can’t afford NV Park

II. FAMILY AND FRIENDSHIPS

? In touch with family, but not in best terms

- Friends are actually officemates who don’t want to
offend their boss by saying she can’t come along

III. LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS

- None recently

- Living vicariously through Moira and who knows who
else

IV. PERSONAL FULFILLMENT

- No time for travel

- Supposedly, no time for hobbies

-/\/\/\-

Okay, to be fair, it wasn't just
Arabella. It was like my decision to move years ago also involved
me putting a sign over my head that said "Project Your Regrets Onto
Me." I tried to remove these people from my life, but at least one
would remain, anywhere. The person who would say I was wrong for
staying/going, that I should be going/staying, that I couldn't
stay/go for the rest of my life, that I should decide to go/stay
now before it was too late.

These people just couldn't be happy for someone who
was enjoying herself.

And yet I had to remain polite, so
when I encountered these people, I went into "no comment" mode, or
close to it. I lied.

My jaw was numb from all the lies, by the end of
dinner.

Arabella didn't let up the interrogation about my
life and future plans, so I just kept saying things to close the
topic. But she kept coming back.

They weren't major lies; mostly
just me saying "nothing" when there actually was a "something."
Except the "something" was going to lead to more questions, so I
just didn't say it. The lies weren't going to hurt her, and I
convinced myself that she deserved them for being so nosy about my
business.

I had a plan, all right? I didn't need to share it
with everyone. And the lack of sharing didn't give anyone the right
to make one for me.

Maybe I shouldn't have told people I was staying
longer this time.

When I started walking back to my building, it was
near midnight, and being annoyed at Arabella's questions gave me
excess energy. So I went to the gym.

And Ethan was there.

Only the two of us were apparently crazy enough to
use the facilities at that hour, but I wasn't complaining. I waved
hello but skipped the small talk and went straight for the
treadmill.

Maybe a more ambitious run this time. I set it for a
course that would simulate a jog up three hills in thirty minutes.
And then I started running.