Chapter 20

The last breath of winter was hanging around above the grasses. The trees’ leaves with their branches were dancing continuously. The chirping sound the birds were making at that time of the day was such a resemblance to humans’ open market or bazaar. Was there any difference? Weren’t they making those noises to know where their partners were? Or calling their partners to hurry up and bring food for their younglings? Perhaps to change the babysitting duty? The smell of fresh grass, which had been watered recently, was wafting through all sorts of creatures’ nostrils. For some, it was a bell ring for lunch. For many others, the mixture in that fresh smell showed the territory of some animals who left their marks. The sun’s rays were peeking through the gaps of leaves. Like children that never get tired of doing the same game over and over again, each shaft did the game skillfully. It wasn’t all game and play. The worker ants were carrying the little pieces of grass-blade or some part of dead insects. Some were doing it alone, and some had been helped by other members of the colony. Above them, the dragonflies, butterflies, bees, and other flying insects were jumping from one flower to another under the watchful eyes of their predators. The food for the newborn chicks was down there.

“We are all here to celebrate the life of a great husband and father . . . ,” the priest was saying to the little mass of people. The gilded casket with a smooth surface reflected the sun’s rays, which made a miniature of its size. It was as if the story of Narcissus were happening there. The sun wanted to see its image on everything. The assembly around the coffin was all wearing black. It was an abominable image to have; whereas everything was moving forward and being lively, some wanted to stop and think about the past. A group of people who weren’t in harmony with nature, as usual, was gathered to celebrate the beautiful life of a husband and a father. They all had a solemn face for a celebration.

The children were imitating their bigger size in the future. Did they think it would be them in the future?

Some wore shades to match their outfit for this commemoration. The tears that came down on their faces were wiped by different-colored handkerchiefs.

This black mass ruined the beautiful color in the surroundings. It was as if nature painted a beautiful picture arduously to be ruined by a naughty little boy. This black mass wasn’t welcomed there. The living world wanted to correct the image by removing it.

A woman who didn’t know why she was wearing black was sitting beside me. She wasn’t sad or happy. She just repeated the custom she learned when she was a kid. Since when she practiced, that custom depended on nature’s or her parents’ whims. She was obviously practiced on that. She was doing her part perfectly, but as a stranger, nothing more.

“He must be a good man. Look at this gathering. He had lots of friends, but where is his family?” she whispered to my ears.

“He was a good man. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the brightest son. His wife . . . his wife doesn’t know that he is gone,” I whispered back.

“Oh, the poor man, how is this possible?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s possible. In this twisted world, everything is possible,” I replied.

“That is sad,” she commented. I just nodded my head to agree with her. She took my hand to hers and tapped on it with her aged skin and bony hand.

“I’m afraid I have the same fate as this man. My son is far away from here, and I don’t know where my husband is right now,” she said, then she looked at my eyes. “Do you know where my husband is? I asked everyone I saw, but it seemed no one knew where he was. He has never done this to me. If I find him, I’ll box his ears out,” she said with conviction.

“If I see him, I’ll let him know how angry you are at him,” I replied.

“No, don’t. I want it to be a surprise,” she shared her evil plan. There was a cute but sinister smile forming on her lips.

I lost track of what the priest was saying. He was reading from one copy of the same book that every priest was carrying around. I thought he should have memorized the whole thing by now. Maybe he didn’t care or wasn’t getting enough funerals. The cover of the book was the same color as our outfits. He looked around the crowd with practiced eyes, reading the crowd’s emotion. The solemnness and firmness of his voice was anything but merciful. Here he stood and talked about a person who didn’t share any qualities of his, talking about a gentle heart, which he himself didn’t know of. In the depth of his pupil, where darkness made a home, he spoke of the kindness of a man. It was a rehearsed act. There was nothing new about what he said. It was only a repetition for him but a new experience for me. I never lost my father before, so being oblivious to that feeling was a given. The priest was talking about where my father was as if he could pinpoint the exact location. Did he believe anything that was coming out of his mouth? Maybe in the beginning he didn’t, but he reiterated it religiously so much that he believed it now.

Where was my father? Was he where this priest said he was? Perhaps a millennia of seeking knowledge could tell us. We die; we break down into particles, if not eaten, until nothing is left but our bones. All those soft touches, all that laughter that made his face handsome and lively, all that strength who lifted me from the ground, all those warm touches that wiped the tears from my face were going to be broken down in nature and memory. His body was falling through way before his passing. That laughter was replaced by his coughs. Those good memories had already been replaced by horror shows. Those strong arms were almost thinned to the bones. There was nothing beautiful about having plastic tubes on his upper lips. His face hollowed out so much that his cheekbone and teeth were obvious to see. There wasn’t enough breath in him for laughter. The accumulation of thousands of years of science was telling me that his body was going to come to nothing. The thousand years of science and experimental accomplishments to fight a rogue cell was by injecting more poison to the veins.

His existence was reduced to a polaroid series of an image on a film.

A frozen moment of his beautiful smile was looking back at me, which had been framed for all to see. In the book of memory lane, there were so many pictures of him and my mom that I wasn’t included—the time before I was conceived or even after that.

A squirrel, which stood on its two legs and was busy stuffing its face, was watching the show.

“Does his son have anything to say?” the priest asked with a reading-through voice. I just shook my head. What was there to say and to whom? I looked around and saw a bunch of strangers. His wife was alien to him than anyone else in that gathering. My friends became outsiders the moment I wasn’t involved in their lives. Should I say something to those little kids who only knew something terrible happened and that they weren’t allowed to laugh and play? Should I say something for the sake of the priest who was already bored and wanted to move on to his next ceremony?

To whom?

Slowly they brought down the casket to a deep hole in the ground. The pulleys weren’t making any noise. They were being oiled enough for that. What was that for? To not disturb sniffing noise some women made? OR to hear a man clear his throat? The casket kept going down. It was going to the place where we were so afraid to go. The notion of hell was coming from that, wasn’t it? The ground was swallowing it up. The reflection of the sun was getting dimmer.

To me, it was as if the earth were hugging it and embracing it deeper. We were like children running around doing this or doing that, and when we were tired enough, the earth opened its arms to soothe us. It Sings a lullaby for better sleep. Now it was taking one of her children in. I could almost hear the voice that was calling his name. “Come, child, come. You ran enough.” It was like when he embraced me when I was tired or scared. Now a more prominent being was doing the appeasing and lulling. Then slowly, without waking up her child, she closed her arms around my father as if to protect that precious, sleepy child from us. After a while, my father was embraced wholly by the earth.

“Good night, Dad. Sleep well,” I murmured to myself while a trickle of tears was coming down my cheeks.

Marshal’s hand was on my shoulder and tapping me there to make me calmer.

People started disappearing little by little. Some, as a routine, gave me their condolences, which I returned by thanking them. They gave me pitiful looks when they saw my mom beside me. I didn’t feel the same way. I knew that in a few months, it would be my mom’s turn to sleep peacefully, and I would get rid of these pitiful people.

Involuntarily, I rubbed her back. She didn’t need my comfort. It was for me. This munificent and benignant woman in a wheelchair will stop playing the game of life and leave her son to continue it. I envied her for that. I wasn’t sad about that; I was sad this game wouldn’t be fun without my dad and my mom in it. I had to do it all alone until my time came to retire.

“Agustin,” Marshal called me. He gave me the signal that it was time to go. I just followed him numbly. He was pushing the wheelchair for me. I just followed. Aiko and Bernadina looped their arms around mine and led me away. One of Aiko’s children was marching in front of her in her black dress. The other one was helping his daddy push the wheelchair.

I looked back to the place where my dad was. He was still there, and the Earth promised me to take care of him for me. I was assured.

Bernadina and Aiko led me to our cars. Marshal, with the help of a nurse, put my mom in a car. My mom, who was happy to see outside again, wasn’t happy to get to that confinement. However, she stayed quiet like always. She didn’t ask much for herself before I was born and didn’t ask for anything else after I was born. Nowadays, she only asked for her husband and her only child. I went and sat beside her. Bernadina went and sat in the passenger’s seat. Aiko was going to follow us by her car and her two children. One of them wanted to have a ride with his dad. The poor thing was disciplined gently by her mom’s words while he was pouting and hating every grown-up for not understanding his needs. In the end, he succumbed to his mother’s request.

The ride wasn’t that long. Since we didn’t talk that much, it was a quiet ride. My mom was looking outside and watching the cars and the people in them. Maybe she was trying to find a familiar face in that dense traffic. I was watching her and holding her hand to mine. She didn’t resist because my face was friendly for a short period of time before I became a stranger again. Marshal was watching the front car. If that car moved an inch, he would drive that inch. Bernadina was watching the sidewalk and rear mirror to see how my mom and I were doing.

She was the one who spilled the beans. One day, unexpectedly, she visited me. Since she knew I was living with my parents, she came to hit two birds by one stone, but to her surprise, she found out about my parents’ situation. I saw her in shock. After that, I had to witness Marshal’s tears and Aiko’s cry in his arms. That was how they found out, and Marshal was angry and upset at me for keeping it a secret. The quarrel between him and that young doctor was comical. He just walked in and stole her patient. “Fuck the patriarchy” was written on her face, and I could read that a mile away. Since I wasn’t trying to antagonize Marshal more than he was, I accepted him as their doctor. He was a surgeon. I don’t know what he could do for a cancer patient and the other one who had her immune system attacking her with a cherry on top of forgetfulness.

One day he asked me what was with that doctor. I confessed that he just took away her personal chef. Nonetheless, I should give him credit. He went beyond to visit my parents daily after his work was done. He jokingly told me he was doing that for his sanity. He claimed the job was stressful, and at home, Aiko and his children wanted him to run a marathon.

My father loved to see him there. They were always joking with each other. They talked about life and children. My father always looked forward to seeing his children. There was joy in his eyes when he caressed their hair with care. I often caught him giving chocolate and candy to them without their parents knowing, and he made me his accessory to his crimes by giving me a wink. Sometimes they sat on his bony lap like I used to so he could read some stories. Sometimes he told them how their father was when he was younger.

I knew how difficult it was for Aiko, but she was as committed as her husband. She was working hard in her office and at home. Bernadina was there too, if she needed to be. She was there to hear the complaints or act as a sour aunt to discipline those little devils. My parents’ house became a hub for gathering. Even though my mom didn’t know what was going on, she was happy to be involved in something. The children made the house lively by chasing each other, crying, and pointing fingers at each other for anything that put them in trouble. One day I found one of them who began realizing her inner artistic spirit by working on the wall on the second floor. She drew her mom, her dad, herself, and my dad in a wheelchair. She was about to get in trouble, but I insisted that I liked her work and would tutor her personally. I drew the lines on the wall and told her to paint it in whatever color she wanted. Soon enough, my father was there to watch us doing the painting. He was happy to have a new hobby and wasn’t bothered at all about what we were doing at his wall. Above her drawing was my drawing of the same people she tried to draw.

Then there was the other one who was playing with cars. Strangely, those cars and trucks seemed to crash into each other a lot. He also made the sound effects of those crashes, the skidding, and the explosion of those demised cars and trucks. In his worldview, most people were lawless and wild. I was following his storyline the way he jumped from one part to another. It was confusing why they were doing all those things. There was no motive, no goals. Simply for no reason, the cars were speeding up, skidding, and crashing into each other. Was our story written in the hands of a child? That could be the reason why nothing in life made sense.

Those children made me wonder if I was like them once. I asked my father, and he answered that it was my wishful thinking to have that kind of childhood. I was too predictable.

I learned those lessons. I crashed those little cars, and I made it more cinematic. Even better, I made a simulation of his work on the computer and asked him if it was close enough to his imagination. The look he gave me was something to frame for.

I got close to both, and their world became a sanctuary for me to escape reality. It was as if I were catching up to them. Marshal and Aiko were happy that their children found a playmate to play with. For them, I was the free babysitter, and for me, they were the wisest teacher and shrink.

It wasn’t all good. Sometimes I had to teach a class full of serious students with a half-painted face from that artist prodigy. I would take a picture of my class and share it with my dad and my mom. Her parents loved it so much that they framed it and put it in her bedroom. That little girl loved it so much that she could hardly contain herself.

I was getting closer to them each time they came for a visit. I couldn’t be happier to see my father was all smiles when they arrived. He was getting weaker by the day, so at some point, all the games we were playing were in the room that he and my mom were in. Sometimes my mom would get impatient when we interrupted her while watching the movie I made. Occasionally, we watched it together, and they bombarded me with all sorts of questions that I found difficult to answer, like if I were friends with all of them, if I were getting married to any of them, and if not, why not? Or if I knew where they were now. If I said yes, I invited one sort of problem. If I said no, another gate of hell was getting opened wide.

Meanwhile, my father enjoyed seeing me in my misery. The noise he made, which was supposed to be laughter, wrenched my heart. When my father couldn’t read stories for them, it fell to me to do it. I did it for his sake. The problem with reading stories was that sometimes I had to read them many times. It was vital that they liked it.

Those days passed in seconds.

One fateful evening, my father’s heart gave up and never started again. It was just like that. He left and made a vast space in my heart. Isn’t it better to say the huge hole was created in my life, not in my heart? I knew the expression started as old as the whole civilization. In the past, people believed there was nothing in a human’s skull and all the work was done by the heart. They thought the thinking and feeling were done by the heart and the brain was useless. If that were true, the same heart stopped working.

We arrived at my parents’ house. Bernadina took control of everything. She attended to guests while I was laying down my mom on her bed. Aiko was attending to her children to behave, going back and forth to help Bernadina. Marshal was doing my supposed job, thanking the guests for showing up.

I didn’t care for that gathering, and the people I cared for were busy being polite to my father’s friends or some of his coworkers and acquaintances.

These people were stuffing their mouths in memory of the person who left and drank the strong drinks to forget the same person.

Those children in black were looking miserable, so I went to them and told them to go and play. To one group that chose to draw, I sat with them and started drawing that comical gathering and people.

Let the grown-ups play their grown-up games. We drew to please our hearts, not anyone else’s. We drew the people who were busy doing something else. The time didn’t stop for us either.

I had to play like a grown-up as well. I had to thank the people who came to give me condolences.

Marshal was there beside me when I was courteous. He was a big help. He did what I wasn’t willing to do. The whole thing was orchestrated by Bernadina and Aiko.

The time that all the guests left couldn’t come faster.

We were sitting at a round table and taking breathers while listening to the TV that was turned on in the next room where my mom was. We all saw those memories that I made more than a dozen times. By now, we could tell which one she was watching on which part.

“Thank you. I truly don’t know what I could do without you,” I said sincerely. They answered me with their tired smiles.

“Don’t mention it. I’m just happy everything went smoothly,” Bernadina said while lying in her sore back.

“Thanks again,” I thanked them again. Now they gave me a sad smile. It was an understanding that they showed.

“Thank you for taking care of Nadine and Robert and the other kids. You made the job much easier,” Aiko observed. I nodded my head with a smile.

“I don’t think it’s proper for me to ask you to stay here longer. All of you have a life to attend to,” I said offhandedly. They shook their heads in unison to show their protest.

“Besides, Nadine and Robert are sleeping. They’ll be grumpy all night if we wake them up now,” Marshal said.

“What about your jobs though?” I asked.

“I already took a few days off,” he responded immediately.

“Me too,” Aiko said as well.

“I think I could manage not looking at a monitor all day for a few days,” Bernadina said as if obligated to say something.

“Thank you. I truly don’t know how to appreciate your kindness,” I said and felt guilty and happy at the same time.

“Oh, don’t worry. We’ll think of something,” Marshal said to ease the mood, but Aiko and Bernadina gave him a glaring look with a smile to tell him to shut up. I just chuckled, and they accompanied me with it.

After some chatting, I saw the tiredness in their eyes. I asked them to go and get some sleep. The children had already conquered one room—the room that we were drawing on its walls. They had some toys of their own in that room after so many visits. It was as good as any place for them. Another bedroom was taken by Aiko and Bernadina, like the time when they were teenagers. It was my childhood bedroom. Also, there was an office that I was working there, so it left Marshal and me to sleep in the basement, which had beds for guests.

Marshal went and took the best bed and had the audacity to show me his teeth. I took the other one while having a big smile on. We lay down and looked at the ceiling. We didn’t talk and just looked at the top. We were too tired to speak. At least he was. I, on the other hand, was too hyper to sleep. The home felt less crowded without my dad in it. He was gone forever. I think the reality sank into me at that moment. I couldn’t hold back the tears. They were just there. More images and memories of my dad came to me, and it sped up the flow of tears. I won’t see his laughter anymore.

It was between reviewing on those moments that sleep came and took me to another place.

The few days that my friends stayed with me went by too fast. The day that they left me, the house became too quiet. There weren’t any children running around. There were no more teases and jokes. It was me and my mom and a TV that was rewinding my different life.

Marshal Still came every evening to check on my mom. My mom felt much lonelier than before now that my father was gone. It was evident from the complaints she made and her agitated behavior. Even though she didn’t recognize her husband in his last remaining months, she noticed the change in the air of the house. Her eyes were looking for something that wasn’t there. Sometimes her husband was on those videos where she went on holiday with. Those moments were short though. Those videos were all about her child, showing what he was doing and keeping himself busy; that was what it was all about.

When I took her to bathe or brushed her hair or fed her, I wondered about my childhood. Was I as easy as she was? Or more like a little beast whom she had to chase to feed? Every day I played piano, violin, guitar, or some other instrument to entertain her. She listened attentively. It was a way for me to talk to her, telling her with the universal language about my feelings.

I decided to take my job in her bedroom. I quit my university job. It just didn’t feel right to work. The other jobs could be done behind the computer. Aiko and her children were always a welcome distraction for me, but I don’t think she felt that way. She always thought she was adding more burden into my life by bringing them. It didn’t matter what I said; she wouldn’t listen.

Two months have passed since my father passed away.

One day I was reviewing a project on my computer when my cell phone rang.

“Hello,” I answered.

“Hello, it’s me, Agustin,” a female voice said. I knew the voice. It had been implanted deep into my brain like any other painful memory.

“Calysta?” I blurted.

“Yes, it’s me,” she responded softer.

“How are you?” I said businesslike.

“I’m good. Thanks for asking,” she still said it softly.

“It’s good to hear your voice again,” I said and tried to be courteous.

“Thanks,” she said with the same tone. It had been months, like ten or eleven months, since that day. There was an awkward silence hovering for a few seconds.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t attend your father’s funeral. I felt that my presence wasn’t a good idea.”

She was probably right. I didn’t want to see her like that. It was difficult enough for me to let my friends back into my life. I was angry at them for forgetting my parents and not knowing about their conditions, but it took me a while to realize that I, as their son, didn’t know either. Hence, they repaid me tenfold when my dad passed. The thought of not having them there was unbearable and unbelievable. However, Calysta was a different story. Neither I nor the others talked about her in our conversation.

“You are probably right, but thanks for your consideration,” I said. There was silence on the other side of the phone.

“Do you think it is a bad idea for this phone call too?” she asked.

My thoughts were somewhere else. I didn’t think about it until that time, but I figured who had given my phone number. It wasn’t that difficult to decipher who. Bernadina wasn’t that friendly to her for many years. That was what I gathered. My approach to her was like walking on thin ice after the curveball she threw at me about her feelings. I tried to convince her that by my actions and words, we could only be friends. It didn’t matter to her. She thought I needed more time convincing. However, when she found out about my parents, she took it easy on me.

Marshal? It was out of his character to sell me like that. He always carried a face full of guilt whenever he was around me. My house was his second home before we met any of them. There was another side argument; he could be the one since he would have thought it was the best thing for me.

The most probable was Aiko. She was still in a good relationship with her and wasn’t far from her character.

She was waiting for my answer on the other side of the phone.

“I don’t think it is. I’m glad to hear your voice.” I tried to be nice. That was what I thought.

“Thank you. It is good to hear your voice as well,” she responded. Her soft voice still held a spell on me. On the one hand, I tried to show her that I was over her. On the other hand, my ears were aching to hear more from her. However, we ran out of pleasantry. I had nothing more to say. She still felt like a stranger to me. One part of me told me to say something, and the other part told me that I didn’t have to. I listened to the second part. I didn’t know why she brought up the worst things about me. I felt guilty about it. I felt it wasn’t right, but something deeper prevented me from being nice to her. I thought she killed that part of me by herself.

“Thanks again for talking to me,” she told me after a long silence.

“No problem,” I said with a dead tone.

“I guess that’s it. I just called to hear how you are doing,” she responded and was desperate to continue as long as she could.

“Thank you again,” I said with the same tone.

“Oh, one more thing. Do you want to meet and talk sometime this week?” she asked as if it had just occurred to her.

“I don’t know. I can’t promise you. I have my hands full,” I said coldly.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. It was only for my sake. I understand,” she said. I could hear the disappointment and sadness in her response.

“Goodbye . . .” She was about to end the call.

“Call me . . . ,” I said and overlapped her goodbye.

We paused for a moment. She waited for me to finish my speech.

“Call me in a few days. Let’s see if I could find the time,” I offered. Deep down, I was swearing at myself for being weak again. I thought she didn’t deserve any sympathy from me.

“Sure. Thank you,” she said with a happier tone. She didn’t like the result, but she compromised.

“All right then, I’ll talk to you later,” I said.

“Yeah. Sure. Talk to you later,” she responded.

“Bye,” I said with a defeated voice.

“Bye,” she said in triumph.

That evening, I talked to Marshal about it, and he responded that we were two grown-ups. He thought that we should leave behind the past and move on.

“You think so? Is she working on you as well?” I was referring to his wife. He just laughed.

“You know how they are. They are like sisters. I’m the bad guy who wants to share their sisterhood with you,” he said it sarcastically with a smile on.

“The generosity you have,” I responded.

“Bernadina is going to kill me,” I said with concern.

“Oh, that, Jesus, man. Sucks to be the popular bloke in the block,” he responded casually.

I confided Bernadina’s confession with him a few weeks before my father’s passing. He was as surprised as me to find out about it. He promised me that it would stay between us only, but he was Marshal and would probably tell Aiko about it. Aiko didn’t say anything to me, and I didn’t see any body language from her to suggest otherwise.

“Did you tell Aiko about it?” I asked.

“No, should I?” Marshal responded. He scratched his head while saying it.

“Jesus, man, what were you thinking?” I asked him. When he saw the anger in my eyes, he thought better than to deny it.

“Oh, Calm down. She knew about it for a long time. Why do you think they broke the group?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there,” I countered.

“Well, after your breakup with Calysta, a few years later, I don’t remember if it was two or three years later, Bernadina had a huge fight with Calysta. When I asked Aiko what happened, she gave me a look as if it were all my fault. I didn’t pursue it after that. It didn’t affect us. We still saw both of them, but these two never talked. In the end, I put my foot down and asked them for reconciliation. Here, now you know as much as I do,” he said with his casual voice.

“Now what? I don’t want Berna to be angry at me,” I said.

“Thanks for thinking about me. You forgot that I married the craziest one,” he complained.

“It’s probably her scheme all along,” I protested.

“Do you think Aiko has that much time for planning with two kids running around?” he defended her.

“You are an idiot if you underestimate her that much. She could govern the whole world and still have enough time to come up with a game plan for both of us to chase our tails,” I said. He wasn’t sure to be proud of her or fear her.

“If you put it that way, it’s possible,” he said.

“What Calysta wants from me? What if I said no? Probably, I had to face Aiko’s wrath again,” I said with concern.

“You could always ask her if she is fine with polygamy,” he said with a smile. It made me laugh, and with my laugh, he started laughing.

“Can’t I just pass the ball to Aiko to talk to her and convince her otherwise?” I said desperately.

“You are still assuming that she knows. You have no idea what kind of hell she unleashed when Calysta pulled that stunt,” he objected.

“So what? Sooner or later, she is going to find out, and if she finds out you knew about it and didn’t tell her, then I hope your ass is comfortable to be on the couch,” I replied.

“I just want to know how you feel putting me in this kind of situation.” He tried to make me feel guilty.

“Your debt is being paid for sharing our conversation,” I said calmly. He gave me a look that said, “Dude, that was brutal.”

After that, we changed the subject. We talked about politics, religion, and the economy. We talked until it was time for him to go. As usual, I gave him that extra food in containers. It was for him to take home and share it with Aiko and his children.

Two days later, I got my answer. Aiko wouldn’t do it. She called me personally to tell me that. I questioned the reason behind it, and she only answered that she didn’t want to be part of this game. I didn’t dare ask her if it was her plan all along.

A few days after that, Calysta called. I agreed to meet her on Thursay evening. I had to arrange with a nurse to look after my mom while I was gone.

That evening, I couldn’t be more nervous.

I walked to her door and rang the bell. Only to my surprise, a teenage girl around fourteen or fifteen answered the door. I thought that I had made a mistake. I looked at the address that Calysta gave me.

“Are you Mr. Adalbert?” the girl asked.

“Yes.” I looked at her, not understanding what was happening.

“Please come in. She left me a message to tell you that she got caught up in work, and she was sorry about that,” she said that to me and opened the way for me to get in. There was another issue besides that that I couldn’t get my head around. Why didn’t she make a call to me on my cell phone that she couldn’t make it?

I went in, and the first thing that I noticed were children’s shoes on the ground and in the shoes rack. Then I saw two children come from the hallway and stood looking at me. The curious look they gave me made me curious as well. Whose were these children?

“Sorry, it wasn’t your mom,” she explained to them.

The whole world collapsed on me. I barely breathed. I took a long inhale for my starved body. How long was it that I forgot to breathe? I didn’t remember. The sadness was crashing on my chest like waves after waves in a stormy sea. That strange feeling that I had been betrayed by my friends again resurfaced. Why didn’t they tell me anything? How could they do this to me?

Those kids were disappointed to see me too.

A torrent of questions like water reservoir in a dam rushed out in my head and started turning some gear. When did that happen? Was she married before? There were so many other questions.

To be fair, I had no right to feel anything about what other people do with their lives, but my Hypothalamus was complaining about how to keep my blood pressure balanced and down after this revelation. My Amygdala was telling me to escape and wasn’t listening to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which was preaching to be reasonable. My Pineal Gland was checking to see if it made too much Melatonin for this hour of the day since it looked like I was having a nightmare.

I knew I was unreasonable. Indeed, she would meet someone else since there was nothing special about me.

“Do you want to come in?” that teenage girl asked. I was about to say no. I even opened my mouth to say it, but shame, pride, or stupidity—I couldn’t decide which—didn’t let me. She invited me into the hall area, where a chair and sofa were arranged for the guest. I was too annoyed to care about anything else. I didn’t care how the house looked like. I was cursing myself for going to that place.

I watched the two kids march in front of me. They went to watch their program on the TV. I found a place to sit, then I noticed that I was carrying my usual shoulder bag. I didn’t know that I had even brought it. I threw it on the sofa—the hell with its content.

“Do you want something to drink?” that young girl asked me.

“No. Don’t worry about me. Just continue what you were doing,” I answered. I needed a moment to digest what had just happened.

Those kids were watching their TV, and I was watching them. After a while, when I cooled down a bit, I realized that I couldn’t blame any of my friends for any of this. First, we never talked about Calysta and what she was doing. Second, it could be that it was so typical for them now by being with Calysta and her children that it was as natural as breathing. Anyway, I wasn’t angry at them anymore. I was mad at myself. What was I thinking? What was I hoping to gain by coming here? Perhaps a warm hug with lots of kisses and hoping to go further? Still and all, the whole world had a different plan for me. It made sure of it by throwing me back to reality.

That little girl looked back at me and smiled, and my heart dropped. She had her mom’s eyes, hair, and feature. She even had her mom’s smile. I didn’t know when I started smiling, but it was there on my face. I think she took that as an invitation to come and talk to me. She came to me with those little feet of hers. She tilted her head to one side, and by doing so, she made her grin bigger and broader.

“I’m Meleta, and that’s my brother, Valerio,” she introduced herself and her brother.

“Nice to meet you, Meleta. I’m Agustin,” I responded. She raised her little hand to give me a handshake. I raised mine to do so. She invited herself and sat beside me then looked at me. What now? I wondered.

“Do you know any games? Do you want to come with me and play with me?” she asked, and without waiting for my answer, she took me to her room, which she shared with her brother by the looks of it. There were all sorts of children’s books, toys, and small dresses and clothes. As I was accustomed to the rules of children playing, which there isn’t one, I sat down to be hosted by that little girl.

“Tea or Coffee?” she asked and raised a tiny kettle.

“Tea, please,” I requested. She poured the imaginary tea in a little cup for me.

“Oh, thanks,” I thanked her. I touched the teacup and removed it immediately.

“It’s too hot,” I explained. She had the cutest laugh.

“Sorry, I should have told you the tea was hot.” She played along.

“No harm is done,” I dismissed her wariness.

“Do you like to have cookies or cake with it?” she asked politely and showed me the plastic cookies and cake.

“I like my tea like this. No sweets for me. Thank you,” I said. She looked at me in a way that I committed an unforgivable crime.

“You don’t like cookies and cake?” she asked.

“I only like the homemade one,” I explained myself.

“Oh, I made them myself this morning,” she swore.

“In that case, I’ll have the cookie,” I requested. She put a plastic cookie on a tiny plate. That cookie was big enough to cover that tiny plate. I thanked her for her hospitality and kindness.

“Oh, wow, this tea has a coffee taste in it,” I complained, which brought a huge smile to her face.

“Sorry about that. I guess my brother used this kettle for his coffee,” she explained. If I had any actual thing in my mouth, I would have choked on it. It made me smile instead.

“Unforgivable!” I exclaimed.

“I know. I told him many times that he mustn’t do that, but he doesn’t listen. Look, he doesn’t even clean after himself.” She showed me her room to prove her point, but besides car toys and pants, I saw pink dresses and shoes as well.

I shook my head, and she nodded as if she agreed with me that she couldn’t believe how undisciplined her brother was. She was too much for me. Her cuteness was overwhelming. I wanted to hug her and shower her with kisses, but I didn’t know I was allowed to do it since her mom wasn’t there to ask.

“There you are,” a familiar voice said behind me. I turned back, and I saw the familiar face. She was still as beautiful as ever.

“Hi,” I said, still drunk from the happiness that the little girl gave me.

“Hi, I see you already met Meleta,” she said.

“Yes, she is a great host,” I explained. The grin that little devil gave me could energize the whole world, let alone me.

“Sorry, I was caught up in my work, and my boss wants it to be done today,” she explained.

“No worries. I understand,” I said, still dazed with her mini version.

“I’ll go and change fast,” she said and dashed out of my sight.

I saw that the little girl was pouting. She looked like she was about to cry.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked that precious girl.

“She didn’t say hi to me.” She was close to crying after that confession.

“That would be weird,” I confessed as well.

“What do you mean?” she looked puzzled.

“Oh, nothing. This whole time, I thought your mom had hosted me.” She looked more confused. Good. That way, I wouldn’t see her tears.

“Tell me. How many times do you say hi to a mirror?” I asked her. She got more muddled.

“I don’t say. Why?” she asked.

“Because I think your mom thought she was looking at her image in the mirror, not Meleta. You exactly look like your mom. You even act like her,” I said and added the last part so she would be proud of herself. She nodded, but she still wanted to cry.

“You know what? I’m going to cancel my night with her. We stay here and cook something to eat. I hope your cooking is as good as your baking. What do you think?” I asked her.

She was still looking petulant, but she came to me with her open arms and looped them around my neck. I smiled and hugged her back and lifted her to take her to the kitchen. She wasn’t as small and lightweight as I assumed her to be.

“Do you want to show me where the kitchen is?” I asked her to take her mind out of that unfairness she felt. Her buried face on my shoulder was raised to see where we were. Then she directed me in the direction that I was headed already.

“Thank you,” I said. She just nodded. In the hall, the boy was still watching his TV, and that teenage girl was on a different couch and reading some magazines. We passed them without them noticing us. I saw the kitchen and headed there. When I got there with that little girl, I looked around.

“I don’t know this kitchen. Would you help me to navigate?” I asked her gently. She nodded in response. I put her down.

“First things first, what should we make?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said casually.

“What comes to your mind when I say food?” I asked again.

“Pizza,” she said immediately.

“Sei il Mio prefer to,” I blurted. She looked at me in puzzlement. I just smiled.

“Where do you keep the apron?” I asked her. She showed me a drawer. I went there and took it.

“Where is yours?” I asked her. She was bemused.

“Are you telling me you baked those cookies without an apron?” I asked her. She smiled back. There it was, what I was looking for.

“Do you have pizza bread?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“Wow, so you are saying we have to make the dough ourselves?” I asked. She only raised her shoulder, not knowing what to answer.

“What you two are doing?” I turned and saw it was Calysta. She was ready at last. She let her hair down on her shoulder. Her sleeveless dress was green and elegant.

“What looks like we are doing?” I asked her back.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Are you cooking something? Wow,” she asked and looked baffled.

“Yep, we are trying to make a pizza. My Sous-chef and I”—I pointed in the direction of the little girl—“we’re talking about ingredients.”

Calysta smiled. This was the first time I saw her genuine smile for a long time. “But we are going to be late if we stay longer.” Her eyes and lips were smiling.

“Forget about that. She already prepared us desserts. I don’t want to waste those freshly baked cookies and cakes.” I looked at her mini version. She was all smiles like her mom.

“What were you making?” she asked offhandedly.

“Pizza,” her mini version said before I could.

“Pizza?” she exclaimed. The other two came to see what this fuss was about.

“Yep.” I stood my ground. I put on the apron and asked where they kept their wheat. Calysta saw that I was serious and got annoyed and, at the same time, happy. Soon, she went back to her room to change her clothing. I asked Meleta to mix the yeast with the wheat. We were in the middle of kneading the dough when Calysta finally came back to the kitchen and joined those two audiences. I was on one side of the dough, and Meleta was on the other side. Obviously, I was doing the heavy lifting and kneading, but I let her push down the dough with her tiny hands. It was just to let her make her hands dirty. She loved every part of it. After kneading, we allowed the dough to rest, and my sous-chef and I started attacking the vegetables. Calysta, watching us from the counter, got nervous and protested against letting a madman teach her daughter how to hold the knife and cut vegetables. It wasn’t as if I’d let anything happen to that precious little girl. What I did was to show that her thumb must always stay behind four fingers. When it was time to show her how it was done, I put her little hand in my hand and held her hand firmly with my thumb so that it wouldn’t move. I started cutting vegetables. In other words, my fingers were on the line of fire, and I only tried to involve her more in action.

Nonetheless, she was her daughter, and she had the right to set limits in danger exposure. I showed her how to cut onions and stay extra careful around onions. Those things were slippery. One moment, someone is cutting onions; before they know it, they see they are also cutting their fingers as well. Calysta didn’t object when I showed her how to whisk. She delightfully whisked the sauce with some spices. The little angel wasn’t so happy when her mom stopped the madman from mentoring her to cut vegetables. When we were busy whisking the sauce, I noticed that one of our audiences was gone. That teenager was gone.

My Sous-chef and I started preparing the dessert. Making the dessert was messier than the pizza. While we were making the dessert, it gave the dough time to rise and kept us busy doing something. I knew my ideal dough would take longer to form, but I wanted to wrap up the cooking. I wanted to start a serious conversation with Calysta. I could have made a simple food and less time-consuming. Indeed, nothing about the daughter and her mother would be that simple. That whole time we were cooking, Calysta and I didn’t talk much. She was just sitting there and only spoke when she needed to, as if she were watching a cooking show that starred her daughter and me. Finally, the dough was ready, and when I looked inside the fridge, we just found out that there wasn’t enough cheese to cook with it. It was my fault that I didn’t check the fridge to know if we had enough; however, it was an unforgivable crime in the eyes of that angel. Calysta suggested going and buying some or just ordering one pizza, but I insisted there was a way around it. We could have made the pizza pocket version of it. It wasn’t as good, but it was a solution. Then we made it that way. The compromise made pizza better.

Meleta liked that a lot. Her fruit of hard work was admired by her mom and her archenemy, her brother. I took only a piece and let the kids have their fill. The dessert was delicious as a well, which, if they were allowed to, they would have finished it that night. I never asked the name of that teenage girl, and when I asked Calysta, she told me that she was their babysitter. I forgot what her name was again in here. That meal ended on a good note. The kids were happy, specially Meleta, who got to be involved in the making of it.

I was planning to say good night and go back home, but Calysta insisted that I should stay. She wanted to talk to me that night, but she couldn’t do it in front of her kids. However, she was glad that her daughter and I bonded fast. Cooking with that kid was like a surreal dream, but it was time to wake up from that fantasy.

After the kids went to bed, I sat across her. The mood changed in a matter of seconds. It was all business. I wanted some answers, and the person who sat across from me had all the answers. She changed my path, but before that, I had to call home and see how my mom was doing and tell the nurse that I wasn’t sure when I would be back. It wasn’t supposed to go this way, but since when did everything go as it had always been planned?

It took me a while to talk to the nurse, and after thanking and apologizing to her, we ended the call.

I was ready to have a long and earnest conversation.

“How was your mom?” she asked softly.

“Same as this morning.” The first shot was fired. She nodded and tried to keep herself calm. The way she looked down was an indication of her sorrow and anger. She was making her body smaller to protect herself.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she explained and still made herself smaller. I felt terrible doing this to her, but one part of me would never be the same.

“You wanted to talk,” I said. I didn’t put it in question. I just wanted to get over whatever she wanted to say.

“Do you want something to drink?” she asked.

“I’m driving,” I explained. She nodded and didn’t dare to look at my eyes directly.

“You are good with kids,” she said, but to me, it sounded like she was convincing herself.

“What do you want, Calysta?” I asked impatiently.

“Nothing,” she said. I saw her fingers pinching her dress.

I didn’t say anything more. I just watched her. That was my way of saying that “I won’t waste my breath on you.” I guess she had a speech planned in her head, but it didn’t go the way she wanted it to. The silence between us was inviting more silence.

“Why did you do it?” I asked and cut the chase before she could say something irrelevant.

“Do what?” she asked. I was getting furious. I didn’t like what she was doing. I didn’t like that version of myself. The playful boy inside me had to get quiet if he didn’t want to get hurt like before. The one that hurt him was just sitting across from him. However, the hellhound inside me was without a leash.

I stood up to leave. I’ve had it with her. To hell with whatever her answer was. I thought I could live without knowing why.

“Agustin, please,” she begged me to stay, but I was moving with determination.

“I’ll tell you.” She gave in. I went back but didn’t sit. I just stood behind the sofa. There were tears in her eyes—those eyes that I adored for so long. She made me feel much worse. My blood was boiling. The more I saw the tears, the more I wanted to cave in the wall with my punch. She was still merciless with her tears. There was a part inside me that remembered the promise I made to her father.

“Could you leave me alone for a while?” I requested and tried not to yell at her. I don’t know what I was thinking at that moment, but I knew if I left that night, I wouldn’t be able to see her again. From there, it would just get worse.

“If you don’t leave now, there won’t be anyone in this world that can convince me to see you again,” I said coldly to her, and that wasn’t an empty threat. Somehow, I knew that I would have done it. There was no doubt.

She looked at me with tearful eyes. Those eyes were still potent enough to cure and poison a whole country. I looked away. I wasn’t as strong as I thought.

She gracefully rose and left. The answer she would have given me wouldn’t be enough. I just realized what a tremendous gift I gave her. She would never understand that simple act of asking her not to be there wasn’t because I was about to hurt her physically. It was because there wasn’t any answer in the world to satisfy me. I would have brushed it off quickly by an angry response, or worse, instead of listening to what she said, I would have compared it to my feeling.

I lay down on the sofa. I was tired of this stupid game. I was too old to care what a teenage Calysta thought about me. She was the same as any other girl. I closed my eyes to breathe and think. I was hurt, and my thought went to my mother. At that moment, I felt like a scared kid who wanted to be hugged. Maybe my dad knew what to do. I wished he had been there to help me. Now I was playing the grown-up games—being angry at every small thing, finishing first at the line being more important, not enjoying the game, and lots of silly things to add to that list.

I don’t know how, but I slept on that sofa, and the only reason I woke up was that I felt uncomfortable lying there. I sat up, and my joints were protesting. I looked at the watch, and it was too late to drive home. Plus, if I left, who would lock the door behind me? I couldn’t sleep on that couch, so I slowly went to Calysta’s bedroom and knocked on her door. It took her a while to come to the door. She opened the door a little to see who it was. I thought she probably closed the door because of me; otherwise, there was no need to do so. She was wearing a nightgown with a robe. She bundled herself up in that robe.

“I can’t sleep on that couch. Can I come in sleep there with you?” I asked. There was no sexual attraction motive, and I didn’t want to leave before talking with her. However, my odd request woke her up completely. Her eyes, from being sleepy, turned to a surprised look.

“What?” she asked in a hissing voice.

“Don’t worry. There is no intention behind it. I just want to talk to you before I leave, maybe in the morning. Can I?” I asked shamelessly. She didn’t know what to do with this crazy guy. It was a Western movie stand-up between us in the middle of the night at her bedroom door—one who was spoiled to his comfortable sleep and the other for honor and dignity.

“I’ll go and sleep on the couch,” she said at last and opened the door for me.

“Is this how much you trust me? No surprise that you forgot how much my words carry,” I said with a tone of bitterness, but I went inside and lay down on her bed. Memories from the past that had been ignored for my sanity rushed in. Involuntarily, a smile formed on my sour face. It was a different time and different people. She was still at the door and second-guessing her decision, not for the comfort though. She knew well enough that if I say something, I stand by it. That was one of the reasons why she loved me. She told me that herself. After some indecisiveness, she gave in and came to bed. She was still shy about it and didn’t want to offend me any further. She lay down as far from me as she could.

“I’m still a virgin,” I said casually. I turned my head to her to see her reaction. Her reaction was hilarious and heartbreaking. “However, I slept with many girls. It all started with a girl that I met at the university. Since I was leaving the city and that country, I found it unfair to abuse her like that. She was the sweet and extremely fragile being that I had ever met. I won’t tell you why she was like that. It is her story to tell if she wants to. After leaving her, I decided to be more outgoing and started talking to different kinds of people. Poor, rich, beautiful, or ugly, it didn’t matter. I went and started talking to them. I wanted to get rid of that shyness and be more forward. Like anything I do in life, which you know . . . you know very well, I put aside a time for that practice. Sometimes I ended up talking to stunning girls and wondered if I could convince them to sleep with me. In the beginning, I couldn’t, but then eventually, I succeeded but never went through with it. It wasn’t as if I was putting anything on the pedestal. I just couldn’t do it. They all reminded me of you and that girl.” I looked in her direction, and I bet that she wondered who that girl was rather than listening to the story. “It made me question my feelings toward all this process. I was holding on to the innocent time I had. I was afraid of what would come after it—tedium and monotony of doing the same action over and over for the rest of my life. Since I wasn’t preaching it to anyone and sometimes lied about my virginity to shut some people up, I was fine with it. It was the discipline I was looking for, like being an alcoholic, putting a glass of whiskey on my lips but never drinking it. Smelling the ice cream but never eating it. Sex was like that for me. However, I didn’t like the loneliness that came with that kind of attitude. That would be the reason why I slept with so many girls but didn’t go through with it,” I finished. That whole time, I looked at the ceiling, not at her. I looked at her and saw I didn’t put her to sleep. “Aiko thinks that I changed too much. She already cast judgment on me. She thinks that I don’t have any moral ground. Bernadina either doesn’t care or sees it as a compromise. Marshal, you know how he is. However, I never told them any of this. I don’t know why I didn’t. I found it kind of weird and unnatural. Maybe I was afraid of seeing the disappointment in the eyes of Marshal. Maybe I just didn’t care about Berna or Aiko since they washed their hands and cast a judgment on me without knowing the whole truth. What do you think? Can you tell the reason behind my actions? I don’t know. I’m not dependent on them like before, but I do know that I’m much happier than those years without them,” I finished my thought. When I looked back at her, her eyes were full of tears. She turned her face when I looked at her and her teary eyes.

She imitated me and looked at the ceiling. I looked back to the ceiling as well.

“It was never my intention to put you through this. I thought that I was doing the right thing when I decided to break up with you. I was miserable after my father’s passing, and there you were trying to help me, and I rewarded you back that way,” she said and told me the whole story from the school to the park.

“I did regret it immediately after you left, but either you didn’t hear me or just ignored me. After a while, I thought you had enough of me for all those crying. I thought it would be a good idea for you to have a break from me. Then I found out that you never told them that I was the one who broke up with you. I planned to talk to you about it in school, but you never showed up again. You were much smarter than me, so I thought you knew what you were doing, and I went with it. Months later, I found out why you didn’t show up. Aiko told me about it, and I felt worse than ever. They didn’t do it on malice. They thought that I wouldn’t be able to do such a thing to someone like you. Maybe they were right. Maybe they weren’t. But I was glad to have them by my side. They helped me a lot during those days. In the end, it wouldn’t be possible without your actions. You took the heat and gossip while I was receiving all the sympathy. You have no idea how I felt for a long time. The heavy conscience of what I did to you was always there. I’m not just telling you this for the sake of saying it. I wasn’t doing well in college. I thought I passed the sadness in my life, but wherever I went, the thought of you was always there. I dated many other boys, but I had to bring down my standard to be able to talk to them. Some treated me horribly. Some just wanted to use me. Some of them gave promises that had never been fulfilled. At one point, I felt so alone that it put me on edge. I wasn’t doing well at all. Then my depression started. It made me do things that I never knew I was capable of. One night I partied too hard and blacked out. I don’t know what happened that night, but something happened that changed my life and path. Meleta and Valerio were the results. Agustin, they saved me. They came at a time that I was in the worst moment in my life. Many times, the thought of abortion or putting them for adoption came to me. Likely, they would be born after my graduation. I’m glad that I didn’t go through with it. They forced me to get my act together. Thinking about them, not myself, changed my path. I graduated, and a few weeks later, they were born. My mom and Aiko helped me a lot. I almost broke the group again. One day when the memories overwhelmed me, I told Bernadina what went down that day. Bernadina started a big fight and called me names. The worst part was when she confessed her feelings toward you.” She looked at me, and I saw in the corner of my eyes that she was looking for something, but she couldn’t find it. She continued, “I felt worse. I mean, I saw girls that were bragging about how they slept with their best friends’ boyfriend, and here I was. Not only did I take away her chance to be with you, I also poisoned her mind to take my side. The slap she gave me, the spit she threw at me, I can still feel them on my face. For a long time, we didn’t see eye to eye. I wanted to apologize to her, but she never wanted to be in the same place as I was. I think it was because of Aiko forcing her to talk to me again.” She was saying it with her broken voice. She was sobbing the whole time when she was telling me that story. “Then one day, out of boredom, I turned on the TV, and there you were. You were talking to the host and that pop star.” She stopped talking. She was trying to figure out how to proceed. After a while, she continued, “The look you had, the boyish charm, the way you were talking, the way you handled the host, it opened a closed door that has been shut for many years. It is not an exaggeration to say that I didn’t know what to do.” The whimper was in her voice as she was telling me the story. “How you became so different yet still stay the same. That flirtation with that pop star . . .” She didn’t know how to say what she was thinking without offending me. To tell me how proud she was to find me so confident and, at the same time, angry that I was doing it with someone else. To tell me the lingering feeling she still had. She was concerned about the image she would have in my eyes. She thought she wasn’t allowed to be jealous. She continued, “Then you sang that song.” Her weeping continued. She told me she didn’t know what she was supposed to do after that song. “You told the whole world that you still loved me.” Her weeping continued, but she didn’t say anything for a few minutes. When she didn’t hear anything from me, she continued, “Now I realize you may be singing about the girl you met in college, not me . . .” She waited for the confirmation or denial, but I gave her none. The torture continues, I thought that was what she thought. “After that show, I didn’t know what to think. The question that you like to hear my voice again? was haunting me every second. Then I realized that I had no way to contact you if I wanted to. Marshal, on the other hand, had a connection in university, so he called you first.” She was arriving at the part that she didn’t feel comfortable at all, but she continued, “Aiko told me that you are meeting with them, and there was no mention of me. They decided it would be best that I won’t show up at first. The plan was to warm you up to the idea of seeing me again. The only thing was that I had to wait.” She paused again to gather her thoughts. “They said they understand how I feel, but how could they? They weren’t me. They didn’t know what went down between you and me. I wondered if you held a grudge over me or not, even though it happened many years ago. Anyway, I agreed that I should stay away.” Her tearful eyes were looking for sympathy that wasn’t there. I was continuously looking at the ceiling. It was as if I found a beautiful painting up there while there was nothing at all. “I thought I could do it, but when the day was getting closer, I was beside myself. I couldn’t do anything. Many times, I did many silly things that I didn’t know I was doing. I misplaced my toothbrush in the fridge. I was making too many mistakes at work. There was that guy, Novak, the one you met, that insistently asked me out. I thought in order to think about something else or somebody else, I accepted his request. I put it in the same day you were meeting with the others. The thing is, I chose a restaurant close to the place you were meeting. I don’t know what I was thinking that I thought it was a good idea to do that, but that desire to see you again, to hear your voice again made me do stupid things that I thought were smart. I was sitting outside with my date, and the only person I wasn’t looking at was him. My eyes were watching across the street to where you were. Novak noticed this and wanted to know why I was looking there. First, I denied it, but after catching me looking across the street a few times, I told him that my friends were sitting there. Things got worse from there. Now he wanted to impress me by introducing himself to my friends, and you know the rest. Maybe I wanted him to do that and was happy he did it. After that fiasco, after everyone stopped yelling at me, only then did I realize how selfish I’ve been. I undermined their requests by that silly excuse. That it was Novak’s fault, not mine. I couldn’t feel worse than that. I spoke too soon for that. I discovered weeks later about your parents and what you were hiding all that time. I took away the chance to unburden yourself. Then another realization hit me, the reason I broke up with you years ago was that you made me feel bad about myself. Feeling inadequate to be with you was unbearable. The worse part was that I realized that and chose an easy way out instead of improving myself. My thoughts weren’t about how to redeem myself. Instead, I wondered if I wanted to have that constant guilty feeling again. In the past, I was tired of feeling at fault all the time. Being with you, not being with you, I’ll get punished for it,” she said at last. She was looking for something to comfort her, but there was nothing.

What could I say or do to help her? Anyway, I did nothing. Now and then, I looked at Calysta and then looked back to the ceiling. “Your story is the same as those people who worked hard for nothing. There is one kind who plants something in the ground but never eats the result of what they did. There is the other kind who knows but not doing anything. What is the benefit of having knowledge and not using it? Wouldn’t it be the same as the person who doesn’t know at all? You realized your shortcoming, but what did you do about it? Just self-pity or blame everyone for what you are,” I told her without any filter. It only broke her heart more. She wanted to leave the bed, but she came with the realization again that it only proved my points. Later, she admitted that she felt that she would lose me forever if she left the bed that night. I, on the other hand, lay back and stoned my heart to her cries. I slept a few minutes later. She slept after crying her eyes out in silence. The disheveled hair and the traces of tears on her face made her look like an innocent child who had been disciplined by her parents.

The night passed, and the day replaced it. When I woke up, the first thing that I saw was Calysta’s face. Her hair was stuck to her face where there were tears from last night. I gently removed her hair from her face, and she showed me her protest by moving her head. Her eyes were still closed. I rose from the bed and made sure not to wake her up. I looked back to where she was lying down. Nothing in the world could soften my heart the way she did. All that animosity inside me melted away. I didn’t want to leave her like that or at least wait to say goodbye to her. I decided on the latter. I went to her kitchen to prepare something for breakfast while waiting for her to wake up.

I looked at the fridge and saw the cereal box and cornflakes on top of it; inside of it were some eggs, sausage, butter, and milk. I sighed and began making breakfast. I found some biscuits and the location of the salt and pepper. I threw the sausage in a pan and started making a sizzling sound. Then I melted the butter in a different pan and stirred it with flour. I cooked the flour just enough to change the color. I whisked the milk, salt, and pepper. I continued doing so until I got my desired thickness. Since I didn’t know how they liked the eggs, I made them all the same. I thought that way there won’t be any fighting. I put the biscuit on each plate. On top of it, I put the crumbled sausage and covered it with fried egg. The milk gravy went on top of the fried egg, and I sprinkled it with some cheese. Then to help my guilty conscience for all those fatty breakfasts, I served them with some sliced fruit. The coffee was getting ready, and the kettle was boiling as well. I saw the mini Calysta walk into the kitchen with her brother. While she was rubbing her eyes and yawning, she asked me what was happening and where her mom was. I couldn’t help myself not to tease her.

“Your mom said that I’ll be taking care of you until next year. She said she’ll be back as soon as she can.”

“What?” she asked and demanded an answer.

“Well, she wanted to tell you yesterday, but she couldn’t. She told me to tell you first thing in the morning, and I promised her that I’d do it.” I also acted like everything was fine. I stole a look from her and saw that she was about to cry. I was about to disclaim what I said when Calysta walked in and asked what was going on. The mini version jumped to the big version and showed me her tongue.

“You didn’t have to go through all that trouble. They usually eat cereal for breakfast,” she said. I couldn’t decide whether it was her “Thank you” or she was implying that “This is my house and my rules. I feed them the way I like to.” That was important for me. One would flatter my heart. The other one would boil my blood. To put my mind at ease, I asked her what she meant.

“Oh, I didn’t mean any offense. I only meant that they would be fine with either,” she explained. It sounded like last night’s conversation was forgotten and never happened. Either she acted fine in front of her kids or she simply tried to forget that last night ever happened.

We sat down and started eating breakfast, except for the little boy who looked at me with hatred. I didn’t have to be a body language expert to see he didn’t like me. I didn’t try to impress him or acknowledge his hatred until he knew what it meant, so what I did was ignore him. I knew that infuriated him and made him hate me more, but I didn’t care.

“Mom, can I have the cereal?” he asked her mom. Calysta looked at me apologetically.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll take that home. I’ll give it to my mom’s nurse,” I said calmly. “I’ll just make for three in the future,” I promised. The look he gave me was legendary. Calysta was speechless. She was happy to hear that I would continue seeing her, and she was sad that her son, unlike her daughter, didn’t like me.

“Really?” she asked me nonetheless. The big smile on her face, the eyes that were made to see only happiness shone like a sun. My heart was too weak to say no to her, but it wasn’t as reckless as before. I only nodded. I knew my voice would betray me, and because of that, I only nodded. Her smile got bigger, if that was possible.

“Can I come and visit your mom?” she asked immediately. She wasn’t taking any prisoners. I smiled from inside but kept my stern face on.

“Do you really want to see her like that? She isn’t like before. I don’t think she even remembers you.” I tried to change her mind or set her expectations low. However, she didn’t budge, and she wanted to see her. I gave in.

After breakfast, I drove home. She followed me by her car.

After apologizing to the nurse for being late and not showing up last night, I offered the breakfast I made that morning. She was glad to have such breakfast and went to the kitchen to warm it up a bit. I went in to see how my mom was doing. The TV wasn’t on, so I assumed she was still sleeping. I walked in, and I saw she was looking at the window.

“Do you want to go out?” I asked.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“A nurse,” I replied. She looked at me and then looked at the window again. What was the point of telling her that I was her son when she couldn’t tell? It would only add more stress to her for not remembering me. Her comfort eclipsed mine.

“Do you want me to read a story for you?” I asked. She shook her head.

“Are you hungry?” I asked. She shook her head again.

“Do you want me to play for you?” I asked again, but her answer was the same.

“Do you want me to brush your hair? It will make you feel better,” I asked. Her answer was the same.

“Do you want me to massage your head?” I asked, and still, she refused.

“Do you want to watch a video from your son?” I asked. This time, her head turned around and nodded. I put on the VHS and turned on the TV and watched the movie with new eyes. Calysta walked in with her children and looked in my direction. She was looking for permission, which I denied. I didn’t want to disrupt my mom when she was watching her TV. She didn’t like anyone to disturb her when she watched her child on another side of the world, which was almost always. She nodded to show her understanding.

I kissed her forehead. Like always, she looked at me to see recognition, but when she couldn’t, she turned her attention to the TV. I left her there and went to the other room.

“Is she all right?” Calysta asked.

“She is. She doesn’t like anyone to disturb her when she is watching her TV,” I explained.

“I understand,” she empathized.

“Thank you,” I said. “Do you want to see the rest of the house? Marshal’s children made a renovation.”

She agreed to come with me. I showed her the artistic room where drawing and painting were on the walls. I didn’t go there much since my father wasn’t there to watch me drawing on his wall. I showed her my old bedroom, which my parents left the same. I showed her my office where I ran my companies from this side of the ocean. I showed her the kitchen and the basement. Except for a few modifications since the last time she saw it, the house stayed the same. She didn’t have to tell me how sad she was. I could see it in her eyes.

“Do you want to draw on the wall in that room?” I asked Meleta. She didn’t need me to tell her twice. She ran to that room to leave her masterpiece. Calysta’s son stood behind. He didn’t like me to tell him to go and have fun. He stood behind to protect his mom from me. We went to the hall and sat.

“Now I know why you are angry at me,” she said out of the blue. I was too tired to be angry. I could guess what she thought. She thought that I was mad at her because of my mom. Maybe it was partially true, but she missed the mark. All the trouble she made in the past and the things that I had to go through were missing in her logic. It was my choice to do that for her, but the price was too high. I think at that time, I missed the mark as well. The happiness I had in my mind for her was different than hers.

“I stole your time with your mom,” she explained. It wasn’t true. At one point in my life, I had to move on and have my own life, and the outcome could be the same. However, my feelings didn’t care about logic. My emotions were looking for a person to blame for my inadequacy. She wanted me to deny it, but I didn’t.

“I have to go and make some calls and review some projects. Make yourself at home.” I stood up to leave.

“Do you want me to leave?” she asked.

I looked at her. Was it manipulation? Did she want me to tell her to go so that she could break free of her guilty feeling? She would get angry feelings toward me; therefore, whatever she did in the past, in her mind, would be justified.

“You could watch all the tapes that I made if you are interested,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her directly to stay, so I requested that way.

“You don’t mind?” she asked, but the happiness was dancing in her eyes.

“Yeah. Everyone saw it. I don’t see why you can’t,” I responded. I saw her happiness dimmed. If I just nodded, she would still be happy. That lingering and tortuous soul of mine was set out to see pain, and happiness and merriment were poison to its nature. After showing her where the tapes were, I went to the office room.

After a few phone calls and reviewing the process and cost of operation and the research development, I went down to check on my mom.

The movie she was watching ended, and like always, she didn’t tell anyone to change it. She was looking at the window, watching birds and trees. I went to her, and as I have been trained by nurses and doctors, I started massaging her legs and arms. I readjusted her pillow and tried to put her in the wheelchair so that I could take her out for a walk.

“What is wrong with her?” the mini Calysta asked. Such an innocent question to ask, but what was the correct answer for it? Should I explain to her my mom’s medical condition by those medical names? Or should I explain to her level of knowledge?

“There isn’t anything wrong with her. We just changed our roles,” I explained to her. I thought that was as good as any since she couldn’t understand the full extent of it.

“Sorry, I don’t know how she snuck away from me,” the bigger Calysta said.

“Don’t worry. I was explaining to her my mom’s condition,” I replied. My mom wasn’t listening to our conversation, so she missed the part I called her my mom. Her mind was somewhere else.

“But I don’t understand,” the mini Calysta protested.

“Come here,” I asked her. She came with her tiny feet and taller attitude.

“When you were this size”—I demonstrated by my hand the diminutive size she was when she was born—“who took care of you?”

“Myself,” she proudly declared with a smirk on top of it. It made me and her mom smile as well.

“Well, for me, it was different. When I was that size, my mom helped me to grow up. Now that she is at this age, I’m helping her to grow older and get more rest,” I explained.

“Is my mom going to be like that?” she asked with worrying eyes. Her mom pulled her back to herself to protect her from my response.

I remembered a poem that my colleague told me once:

These two days of my life proceeded,

Like flowing water to the river and wind to a meadow.

I’ve never worried about these two days,

The day that hasn’t come yet

And the day that is my past.

“It isn’t time for you to worry about the future. Why don’t you enjoy your time with your mom for now?” I replied.

“My mom won’t be like that,” she said stubbornly. I didn’t take it personally, but Calysta shook her gently to make her quiet.

“I love her the same. It hasn’t changed by her age or condition,” I said gently.

I didn’t convince her. She had a set of rules in her head. One of them was that her mom wouldn’t get old or sick.

I pushed my mom’s wheelchair, and it started moving. Even though I was as gentle as I tried to be, she held the wheelchair’s armrest firmly, with one hand pushing her forward and another I put on her shoulder to reassure her that everything would be fine.

“We are going outside a bit. Do you want to come with us?” I asked her. She looked at her daughter and wondered if it was all right to bring her.

“You can bring your children. We are going to the nearby park,” I suggested.

“Are you sure?” Calysta asked, but Meleta was already impatient to go there.

“I think someone is coming with us, and she doesn’t care if you are coming or not,” I responded. I smiled at the little devil. She smiled at her daughter as well.

“Let me see if Valerio is coming as well,” she said and left us to ask him. She left the little devil with us.

“Do you want to help me?” I asked her and showed her if she was willing to push the wheelchair. She nodded her head.

“What a brave girl, don’t you agree?” I asked my mom. She didn’t know what was happening. She just went with whatever we did. That brave little kid came behind the wheelchair, and with my help, we pushed the wheelchair forward. Calysta and her son met us in the hall.

I talked to the nurse and thanked her for the troubles. She left the house with us. She went in another direction. The weather was nice and sunny. We wheeled my mom slowly on the sidewalk. The birds were chirping. Meleta was walking in front of me and pushing my mom. Calysta was on one side of me and her son on the other side. We walked down the street in unison. It didn’t take us much to arrive at the nearby park. I parked the wheelchair close to the nearest bench. Meleta and Valerio ran off to the playground and started playing with other kids. My mom was in her wheelchair and watched them playing. She watched them in silence.

Calysta and I sat on a bench close to my mom. A street musician was playing some songs on his guitar. The parents were watching their kids closely. With their explosive energy, the kids were climbing everything, and the things they couldn’t climb, they wrestled with.

“How do you feel?” Calysta asked me.

“It is much better than before. Thank you for asking,” I replied.

“I hate sitting on a bench. I remembered it as if it happened yesterday,” she said with deep sadness.

I looked at her. Now that I know the reason behind our breakup wasn’t that grandiose and it was because of her insecurity and because she mistakenly thought it was for my benefit, I felt empty about the whole ordeal. All those pains were for nothing.

“I need to drink to oblivion. The naiveté of me who thought being in love was an easy thing never saw the big wave of problems that it brought with itself,” I said to no one. It was just a reflection on myself. We were young and stupid. I couldn’t judge her for what she did in the past with a middle-aged me. It wasn’t fair for her, so I told her that.

“Thank you,” she responded.

I just nodded. I looked at the children play. The thought of teaching them what love was, was a joke. I wasn’t sure what I felt for Calysta was love. Perhaps it was just an attraction.

What was love? No one seemed to know the answer. I looked at my mother. She was watching the children play. Maybe she knew, but how could she tell me now? Where could I learn about love when there wasn’t a teacher to teach me?

“Do you know what love is?” I asked Calysta. She looked at me in a way that only meant that she expected preaching from me.

“I truly do not know,” I told her honestly. I looked at the playground. Maybe the children knew, but would their definition make sense to the grown-ups? Perhaps it was as easy as playing in that area. Like mathematics problems, the answer was often easy, but it depended on the understanding of the questions in the first place. If so, what part of the question was confusing for me?

“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied at last. Maybe it was evident to her. Was I blind to the answer?

“Have you experienced love?” I asked her again. She gave me a look as if to ask where I was going by that question. Was I about to tell her that she never loved me?

“Yes?” she said suspiciously.

“Can you tell me when and who if you can?” I asked her.

“I love my children, my parents, and my friends,” she told me. I thought she didn’t understand my question. Maybe the answer was that easy. Maybe I was overthinking it. However, something inside me told me that was not it. I should have solved it by now, but why do I feel like I didn’t understand it? Did I love my mom? I looked at her in the wheelchair. I knew I would do anything for her, and it wasn’t an exaggerated statement.

Nonetheless, I knew that wasn’t the definition. Maybe Calysta thought that doing anything for a person that isn’t herself would mean love. Was she wrong? Or was I wrong?

“Are you all right?” she asked me. I just nodded but was still deep in thought. Some questions seemed easy to answer, but the definition was complex.

For example, 1 + 1 = 2. Anyone who had basic mathematical training could answer that, but the problem starts when they ask them to define each part. A trained mathematician would explain each part by proving it. First, they would describe what those numbers are and what rules they should follow. For example, if 1 were defined as equal to 2, then that equation would be wrong. Since the definition of 1 has been changed to 2, the equation should be read as 1 + 1 = 4. After understanding what those numbers are and what set rules they must follow, another problem arises. What is that plus sign? What is that equal sign? Each one must get clear definitions. It took a lifetime for Bertrand Russell to define the basics of mathematics, yet he couldn’t do it all. The more he went for the basic, the crazier it got.

It brings me to this point. I’m trying to define love. Would I be able to answer that question ever?

“What are you thinking? I see you are in deep thinking,” Calysta said with concern. I looked at her and saw the damage I had inflicted on her for the first time. Now I could see what I couldn’t before. The curtain was pulled away. She wasn’t built to be stern at. Plant a red rose in the middle of winter, and it dies. Put an evergreen tree in the same place, and it passes the winter without any problem. Should a red rose be abashed for being a rose in winter and summer? Wouldn’t it be the foolishness of the gardener who expects too much from that rose? I was the foolish one the whole time. I disregarded her delicacy. Now she second-guesses whatever I tell her; she would try her utmost to decipher every word that would come out of my mouth.

“It isn’t about what you said. I already moved on and was thinking about something else,” I clarified.

My father didn’t give me much advice. I didn’t understand the reason behind it at first, but later in life, I understood. He gave me a few pieces of advice so that I could treasure and remember them. One of his advice was to have generosity and clemency with friends and toleration and forbearance with the enemy.

Which one was Calysta to me? Was she a friend or an enemy? It didn’t matter because I didn’t follow my father’s advice. He wasn’t all talk. Even though my friends hurt his family, he had that much wisdom not to bear any grudge against them. He opened his arms to them and accepted them when they came back to my life again.

“Come here,” I asked Calysta and showed her the place next to me.

“Why?” she asked with wary eyes. I smiled to show that there wasn’t any malicious intention behind my invitation. She was still hesitant. Didn’t I sleep with her last night without any incident? It was an invitation, not a threat. I didn’t want to insist on it.

Instead of looking at her eyes, I looked away and watched the playground. My right arm, as a habit, was still stretched on the back of the bench. If she wanted to come closer to me, she could do it on her time. She was like a scared bird, and anyone with knowledge about birds knew that they shouldn’t grab the bird and hold it forcefully. That way, the person loses the trust of the bird altogether. It was my responsibility to adjust to her timing, not the other way around.

I looked at the other parents. Some of them were watching the kids from afar. Some of them were more involved in their kids’ play. Some were watching at the edge of the playground. The kids were experimenting with each piece of equipment. They used the seesaw. They played it for a while and moved on to the merry-go-round, then to the swing set, and finally, to the climber playset. From there, they went back to the seesaw and repeated the cycle. They played and burned that colossal energy inside of them. I looked at my mom. I was wondering what she was thinking at that moment. Then I felt Calysta on my right side. Her warmth and delicate body touched mine. After so many years of being separated from her, she finally came back to me. Maybe we broke up for nothing, but I learned a lot during that separation. I met a lot of people, aside from DNA and fingerprints, who also had different personalities. They all desired a friendship, a companion, or a listener to their stories. All in all, we needed each other, and I needed her the most.

I saw a drop of tears from my mom’s eyes. She was still looking at the playground. I touched her hand gently to have her attention. She looked at me with teary eyes.

“Is everything all right?” I asked her. She looked at me and back to the playground.

“I wish he never met her. I wish he never fell in love with her. He isn’t here because of that despicable and wretched girl,” my mom said with a tremor in her voice.

“Who?” I asked, knowing deep down who she was talking about, but I held on to that little hope that she was talking about an old lover or someone else, not me.

“My son. My beautiful and kind baby. He was so happy before he met her. She broke her heart and almost killed him. He left us and never came back,” she said with a tone of sadness that broke my heart all over again. My selfishness and immaturity hurt her deeply. I thought I did my diligence by just making some videos about my life, not knowing that by each one of them, I was agonizing and tormenting her.

On my right side, I noticed that Calysta was crying again. She was trembling under my arm. Instead of seeing my foolishness, she took it personally. I felt trapped between them. Which one to comfort first? I pressed Calysta closer to my side, and again, I touched my mom’s hand. My mom looked at me with her tearful eyes.

“I know wherever your son is, his feelings for you never changed. He always thinks about you, and you have a special place in his heart. I hope you forgive his foolishness and naivety,” I said with difficulty. I don’t know how I held it together.

I kissed Calysta’s top head. None of this would have happened if I didn’t blow it out of proportion for a measly conflict. Weren’t all of us wishing we were somehow wiser when we were younger?

“It goes the same for you too,” I told Calysta as well. She hid her face behind her hands and rested it on my chest. She was shaking like a leaf.

We sat there and watched the joyful children play with sad and weepy eyes.

The time passed.

Meleta and Valerio came back with big smiles on their faces.

“I’m hungry,” Meleta said. Calysta nodded her head in affirmation and looked back to me to get permission to feed her children.

“I think my mom is hungry as well,” I told her, and we started heading back home to cook something. Meleta resumed her position in front of me and started pushing mom. Valerio walked beside her mom. We didn’t go that far when Meleta protested that she was too tired to walk. She was looking at her mom for lifting.

“Do you want me to carry her?” I asked Calysta. She nodded. I picked her up and let Calysta push my mom’s wheelchair. She was hesitant to touch the wheelchair of a broken heart mother, but she understood the situation. She wouldn’t be able to carry her daughter far before she got tired too. She reluctantly took the handle and started pushing her. We didn’t go much farther when Valerio wanted to be lifted as well. Since Meleta was in my hand and I was beginning to feel her weight, I couldn’t give the same offer. Calysta’s hands were full, so she couldn’t do anything either.

“Honey, we are almost home. Can you walk a little bit more?” she was asking him like a coach asking her pupil to carry on a little bit more. It only brought more protest on his part. He insisted that he couldn’t walk another step. There weren’t any Taxis passing through either.

“Would you be so kind as to let him sit on your lap for a while? We are almost close to your home,” I asked my mom. She looked at me and Meleta in my hand. She then looked at Valerio and nodded. Her mom helped him to sit on my mom’s lap. My mom held him securely. After that, we started moving again. In the corner of my eyes, I saw that my mom was brushing Valerio’s hair gently. She didn’t know whose child it was; nonetheless, she cared for him as her own. There were traces of smiles on her face. We walked the rest of the way in silence.

As soon as we arrived home, Meleta wanted to be on the ground and asked her mom to take her to the bathroom. Valerio came down from my mom’s lap and followed his mother and sister. I saw my mom stretched her hand to hold Valerio for a little longer. I held her hand to mine and kissed them both. She looked at me again without knowing me.

“Do you want anything? Water? Food? Anything?” I asked her. She looked at me and touched my face with a caress. She had done it sometimes, but she would forget about it the next hour or day.

“Can you help me a little bit? Put your arms around my neck so that I can lift you,” I asked her with care. She nodded her head and put her arms around my neck.

“I’m going to put one of my hands in here”—I showed under her knees—“and the other one in here.” I showed her back. She nodded to show me she understood. “All right, I’m going to lift you,” I informed her. She didn’t have much strength in her, but I felt a little tension she put around my neck. I lifted her gently. Her feathered weight felt like nothing on my hand.

“I’m going to take you to your bedroom to rest,” I told her our destination, so if she had any other plan in her mind, she would be able to tell me.

“Could you please take me to my son’s room?” she asked. Sometimes she asked for that, and I obliged. After taking her there and laying her down on the bed, I asked her if she wanted anything else. She shook her head and embraced my old blanket.

After kissing her forehead, I went down to make lunch for nine people.

I went to the kitchen and took a deep breath and started cooking. I mixed dried rosemary, garlic powder, pepper, and seasoned salt.

I rubbed that over the chicken. Then I placed it in an ungreased baking pan. I covered and baked it for one and a half hours. I put the timer on for that.

Calysta walked into the kitchen with her children. She looked so apologetic.

“I think it is time for us to leave,” she said with a sad tone.

“I’m cooking for everyone. The lunch will be ready in a few hours,” I said, hiding the sadness that was creeping in.

“I don’t want to be more of a problem as it is,” she said. The tight lips and her narrow eyes were telling me another story. She was telling me to convince her otherwise.

“My mom likes Valerio a lot, and I need my Sous-chef here,” I said and pointed at Meleta. She smiled and looked at her mom to see if she could stay. She couldn’t say no to those little eyes, as I couldn’t say no to her.

“Are you sure we are not making a problem here?” she asked as a courtesy. I smiled and nodded. I couldn’t speak more. I couldn’t give a quick-witted answer to hide behind it.

While we waited for the chicken to get ready, I started cutting mushrooms, celery, carrots, onions, and pepper. I handed my Sous-chef a large bowl with flour and salt and told her to mix it up. After that, I showed her how to beat eggs and let her do the beating. She was a blessing at that moment in my life. She made me think about something else. To teach her something that I learned in my journey in life, to satisfy those always curious eyes. I told her to make a well inside that mix and then add the beaten eggs, milk, and oil into that well. She did it happily. I told her to stir that together to form a dough. The timer went off. I drained the chicken and put aside that skimmed fat for later. I let the chicken cool down. Meanwhile, I helped my Sous-chef to knead the dough. I poured that fat into a Dutch oven and let it boil.

After we finished the kneading, I added the vegetables to that broth and let it simmer for half an hour. The little angel and I started making the noodle and deboning the chicken. The amount of residue on her little nose made her cute and lovely. While we were doing this, her mom was watching me to not do something stupid again. Valerio was long gone and started watching TV in the hall.

“Do you want to cut the chicken?” I asked Calysta. She nodded and went to wash her hand to do that. When I saw the soup was boiling, I put half of it in another container and added the noodles to another half. When the noodles were tender enough, I added Calysta’s cut chicken to it and left it there to get ready. The other portion was left for Marshal and his family. When he came, I would add the noodle and chicken to it.

I took a bowl for my mom to eat in my bedroom. I let it cool down before I started spoon-feeding her. Even though the food was easy to eat, she still had difficulty eating the soup. After each spoon, I had to clean the residue with a napkin. I had to show her the same amount of patience she showed me when I was a child. Slowly, at her own pace, she finished her lunch.

“Do you want anything else?” I asked her. She shook her head.

“Do you know where my husband is?” she asked me. Even when he was alive, she was still asking where he was in front of him. My father always told her that her husband would be back in the morning. That answer became my answer as well. She would meet him one day if that tale had any truth in it.

I left her there while she was snuggling the blanket. I went to the kitchen to have my own chicken noodle soup. Calysta was there and watching her children eating the soup. They were tired and hungry enough to eat anything in front of them, so they ate their fill. After that, they found enough space to eat cherry-filled cheesecake.

After they were done and had no more space, they went to watch something on TV.

Calysta and I started eating after they left us. She was sitting across from me at the table. Seeing her sitting there and eating with me strung a cord in my heart that made me feel happy. Even after so many years, she stood to be both the poison and antidote for me. I was at her mercy, and she wasn’t shy to use that power on me. Her eyes found out that I was looking at her. She raised her head, which made me smile like a teenager.

“I’m glad that you are here,” I shared some honesty with her. She just smiled back at my comment. It was a tight-lipped one. She didn’t believe me. I stopped looking at her and started eating my soup. It came out, but not the way I wanted. It could be much better.

The evening came, and with it, the promise that Marshal would be there soon. Because it was a weekend, maybe he would bring his family as well.

The bell rang, and there he was as usual. He also brought his family. The kids who saw their own size abandoned the big one who played with them for the last few months. They rushed into the house and started playing. Marshal and Aiko were in big surprise to find Calysta with her kids there. My reconciliation with Calysta brought them a joy that I hadn’t seen for a long time. Calysta gave Aiko a long and sisterly hug, and Marshal was happy for this unexpected encounter. Aiko wasn’t shy to ask how we made up, which brought silence on my part. Calysta smiled and led Aiko in. I stood behind to walk with Marshal.

“I’m glad to see you two are together again,” Marshal commented.

“I’ve been an idiot this whole time, haven’t I?” I asked him.

“I don’t know about that part, but tell me, how did you end up together?” he said and opened his ears for good gossip. The girls had already started their own, but I didn’t know what to tell him. While warming up the broth and adding chicken and noodles, I told him the whole story—the things that happened years ago, my decision to leave the country, telling him about Marina, and the people I met there, and why I was angry at Calysta when I met her. I told him her part of the story as well.

Everything.

After that, I felt much lighter. Now he knew as much I Knew.

“To answer your question, yes, you are an idiot,” he said while attacking the soup I put in front of him.

“Slow down. Don’t choke yourself,” I said and sat across him.

“I mean, you were with lots of girls, and you didn’t do anything. What is the point of what you do if you are trying to be nice all the time? And for who? I know that you don’t believe in any supernatural things,” he asked and challenged an answer.

“How many times have you eaten something delicious?” I asked him.

“Don’t change the subject,” he said. Aiko and Calysta walked in, and they saw Marshal was busy eating.

“No waiting, I guess, huh?” Aiko asked him.

“He told me to eat, or it won’t taste the same,” he lied.

“Help yourself as well, or do you want me to come and help you?” I offered.

“No, I would be fine,” she said and called the children to come and eat.

“You didn’t answer me,” I asked Marshal. He tried to avoid the answer again, but I insisted on it.

“A few times. Why?” He looked at me suspiciously. He thought I was trying to make a problem for him in front of Calysta and Aiko.

“Did they taste the same after you tried it for the second time?” I asked.

“Yeah?” he said and wasn’t sure where I was going with that. I understood he didn’t grasp what I tried to tell him.

“I mean, did it feel the same? Did you have the same experience when you tried it for the first time? Did you have the same amount of joy when you discovered something new and delicious?” I asked him.

“No,” he answered.

“Then you have your answer there. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to you why I didn’t do it. It was because I wanted to hold to that first-time experience. Perhaps I never experience it, or it becomes too awful to try it first and have the opposite process, like hating it first and loving it later, but I will hold on to that first experience if I can. Good or bad, make sense or not, that would be my first-time experience. I want to experience it the way I like to. I hope it doesn’t sound like preaching to you because it isn’t,” I said. As I was telling him, I felt stupid. How could he understand me if he wasn’t me? Maybe I gave him a simulation of my thought process, but he would never understand it the way I did. If he hadn’t experienced it or never put thought into it, it would be a mundane and boring explanation. It was as if to answer a mathematics problem, if he didn’t think about it thoroughly and didn’t come up with an answer by himself, how could he appreciate it if that answer was given to him.

As I expected, he just nodded his head and continued eating. Maybe he didn’t want to challenge me more in front of his wife.

“What are you two talking about?” Aiko asked.

“Food. Love,” he said. I smiled at how he cleverly told her the truth while hiding it at the same time.

“Food, food . . . do you think about anything else?” Aiko complained. She missed the second part of his statement, which was love. She thought he was addressing her. However, it made Calysta laugh.

“Oh, I think a lot. I think a lot about how to punish this naughty girl,” Marshal responded. He gave me a dashing smile and a wink.

“Marshal!” Aiko said, but she couldn’t hide her smile.

The children started eating as well and were oblivious to the grown-ups’ talk. Meleta explained to her counter that she made the food and asked her mom to back her story, which she did. Then they jumped from one subject to another. The excitement they had when they were talking, the simple joy of meeting unexpected friends in a place that they never thought was possible resembled exactly like their grown-up’s version who believed the same. Marshal and Aiko were happy to see their friends in unexpected places as well. Then they started on the desserts that I gave Calysta’s children then Marshal and his family. Calysta’s children wanted a piece of it again. After a bit of back-and-forth between Calysta and her children, she gave them permission to have a little more piece. When they finished, I packed the remaining for them to take for later.

“Do you think we should call Bernadina to come too? She won’t be happy if she is not involved,” I suggested to Marshal.

“I don’t know. It’s your call. Going to hell or heaven will be yours as well,” Marshal responded.

“I don’t know, man. Can you persuade me otherwise?” I almost begged, and his response was to throw up his shoulder.

“I do know what kind of hell I will get into if I call her, but I don’t know what kind of hell will rise if I don’t,” I responded. Marshal looked at me and gave me the look of “It’s your funeral” vibe.

I braved my cowardness and called her. One hour later, she was at my door. She embraced her friends, but the hurtful look she tried to hide broke my heart. After that day of her confession, we didn’t bring up the subject again. There was no time for it. First, she was more curious about the videos and asked me all sorts of questions about them—the people in them, the places, and the memories I had from those times. Then she found out about my parents. Knowing her, I guessed she didn’t see it appropriate to bring up that subject. I reminded myself that she wouldn’t need my pity. It would be wrong to assume that she wasn’t strong enough to handle her feelings. In our group, she had always been like that.

The gang was together again. This time, it wasn’t as awkward as last time. We laughed at our memories of the past. Once again, I became the butt joke of Marshal. They laughed at my expense, but I never minded that. Calysta’s laugh made a beautiful symphony in my heart. She was made to laugh, but the cruel world didn’t care about that. The universe saw it as an abnormality that needed to be weeded out. That was what the world was asking me, and if I tried to interpret that to her, she wouldn’t understand. Her use in this world wasn’t that of being adapted to this world; it was to escape from it. I looked at her, and the problems I had wouldn’t diminish. Instead, they were put aside to be solved later. The sound of her laughter would bring me to a euphoric state. She was the brake pedal in a speeding car that was about to crash. It took me years to understand her nature. That night, I understood. My way of lifestyle needed her. It craved for her. I had been with beautiful girls after her, but none could do the things she could do to me. She was my ticket to another dimension.

My mom was lying down on my bed and missing a son and a husband that she could never see again, and here I was just wanting more laughter from Calysta. The sad feeling about my mom was there, but Calysta gave me a breather just by being there. I felt like I was under the water this whole time and my body was screaming for oxygen. Calysta was just that. Her sapphire eyes were in harmony with the sound of her laughter. The way she could manipulate me and change my feelings and mood at her whims was so unfair. Nonetheless, what did I know about controlling the feeling? Shouldn’t it be in the hands of someone else who knew when to use it?

Knowing all that, my body involuntary raised its guard. The road that I stepped in years ago was treacherous. She had control of my feelings before, and it didn’t bode well for both of us. If I decided to be with her again, I should make sure that I do my part of the job. If she were looking at the sky and telling me about that, my job would be to look at the ground and be careful of the potholes or the pits. If she told me about the beauty above, I should tell her where the dangers were under her feet.