Driving dilemma (Part 2)

By Virginia Pasalo

 

ANNA had nothing to say, her words hid under her tongue, and all she could say was, “Uh-huh?” Before she could say another word, Ramon’s back receded fast, merging itself with the hawkers and the hookers that littered Mabini Street. And he was gone, claimed by the shadows of pain.

“Was he saying what I think he was saying?”, she asked herself. She felt a certain kind of loss, something familiar, something she could not put her fingers on.

He reminds her so much of Anton, the day they decided to elope, when she was held inside her room and was not allowed to go out. Anton was on the other side of the street hidden behind a mango tree, with a small luggage and a gray jacket. There was only one person she confided of their plan to elope, her best friend Susan, who had predicted that the match is destined for a breakup. Her parents brought her to Boston, where eventually she enrolled in a management course at Harvard. She cried for a while but Harvard offered the intellectual stimulation she needed to grow. That was so long ago, she thought, Susan eventually married Anton, and Anton had moved on, as he moved up in the hierarchy of the Philippine Air Force.

Anna drove along Roxas Boulevard but ended up at the Front Page Café ordering a most bitter coffee that the owner just brought from the mountains of Bukidnon. It was in this café that she came to, when faced with a dilemma, taking wisdom from a mentor who knew her heart. There was a point in her life when she wanted to break the marriage, and it was this man who helped her find a balance. He told her, relationships don’t just happen, you have to work on it like the farmer works the land, from dawn to dawn. She did not know anything about farming, but she thought she understood, and buckled down to work, in the office.

This same man was telling her, follow your heart. But her mind said, “I cannot hang on to a precipice.” And then, “I cannot compromise my family’s reputation.” Then, “What about my reputation?”And the final answer, still from her mind, “No. the answer is no.” After that she ordered tequila, and by midnight, she was rolling on the floor, laughing and crying at the same time and shouting, “Anton! Anton!” but it was Ramon’s face she was seeing in the candlelight. Except that it was not really Ramon, but Ka Doroy, with a glass of water, asking her to drink and sober up.

When she arrived, her children were all asleep, except for Chito.

“Why so late, Mom? The driver waited to drive you but you left in a hurry. He waited for you till seven.”

“Ramon? Did he come back?”

“Ramon? No mom, Steve, our driver, remember?”

Two years passed and her life was back to normal. She had chosen to forget the shameful display of her raw emotions luckily to a man who can keep secrets to his grave. It is also to her advantage that he forgot easily, and information passed through his ears, like water passed quietly in a stream of oblivion.

Occasionally, images of Ramon floated through her mind, wrapping her whole being with warmth. At times the warmth became so overwhelming that she had taken liberties with her imagination. She imagined Ramon’s breath on her nape, his tongue drawing circles as it swept through her skin, moving to a trajectory she never allowed him before, not even in her imagination. It was a sensation so powerful, it made her fingers grope her breasts and slide through the intimate landscapes of her body. She felt depraved. But depravity, in secret, did not harm her children, or her parents, or her reputation. It was a small price to pay to alleviate deprivation, a cosmic encounter, it is as if her entire body had been rubbed with refreshing oils and bathed with the freshness of flowers whose essences were extracted by the most skillful of hands.

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