a family portrait

Cristina barely smiled when I walked in. She pretended to re-arrange the stack of glass coasters on the coffee table. I walked towards her. She straightened up and looked at me like I was a complete surprise which of course I wasn’t: they were expecting me. I extended my hand to shake hers, “How are you, Cristina ?” I said.

She limply took my hand, like I was some kind of a leper or something.

“Fine.” Despite the 35 degrees heat, I felt her coldness.

“Okay,” I said, pretending to ignore her icy reception. I looked around the small living room, examined the furniture and the frames hanging on the walls.

"Who should I shoot first?" I laughed to emphasize I was joking.

Benjamin looked at Cristina as he took her hand and made a shooting gesture towards his chest; his lips in a playful smile.

“We can start with Cristina or me first or both?” he said, more like a question rather than a statement.

“Good. Both of you stand right there,” I said even though I felt a small fang of jealousy gnawing inside. I tell myself I musn’t feel jealous. For God’s sakes, they’re married! I was just the ex-girlfriend, I reminded myself.

I asked permission to move the coffee table to one side. Benjamin quickly did it for me. I got them to stand together with the sunlight coming from the window to their right. It gave a soft shadow on half of their faces: Benjamin enthusiastically smiling, Cristina stretching her lips feigning a smile.

I took a few tentative shots and checked them on the monitor and showed them to Benjamin, who gushed at every shot, but Cristina showed no interest at all. I set up my tripod on the opposite end of the room and gave instructions to the two of them: smile, look at him, look at her, your arms around her shoulder. At some point I took Benjamin’s hands to put on Cristina's shoulder just enough to make his fingers visible in the photograph.

After several minutes, Benjamin left the room to get the grandkids. I sat beside Cristina on the couch.

“Cristina , I’m not your enemy nor am I here to take Benjamin away from you.”

"I know," she said.

"Couldn’t we forget about the past? Or, try forgetting it for a while? I’m really here as a friend. I really want to be your friend, too, not just his."

She looked away, I thought I saw a tinge of guilt but when she spoke, in her halting English and Tagalog, I saw the hurt in her face.

"No, you’re not the enemy," she said quietly. "I am." She pointed towards her chest, her heart.

"I don't understand." I felt quite puzzled.

"He might have married me, but I know he never stopped loving you. You’re always there between us." She turned to look outside. "I feel it, I know it." Outside the roofs of houses nearby seemed to spew steam. Manila was searing in 35 degrees heat.

"Ben and I are just friends, that’s how I feel about him. Honest."

"But that is not how he feels about you. He thinks of you every time. He tells me in more than words. He reminds me by his actions. I know when you’re near, even when he doesn’t know you’re in town. You are like an impending storm in the horizon. You send the breeze of your presence just before you show up. You have this effect on him that I never understood. That I could never equal, that I could never match."

I deliberately did not say anything, trying to digest what I just heard.

"And yet," she continued after a brief moment, "I want him to be happy and if that’s what makes him happy, that is enough for me."

"You are lucky," I said. "You have him. You bore his children. You make his breakfast every morning. You lay beside him in bed every night. For more than half of your life. I never had that. All I have is memories of us when we were young. And there’s not a lot of those memories."

"That maybe so. How would you feel when, in a moment’s passion, your lover calls another woman’s name?"

I pulled my upper body away from her, my one eyebrow arched upwards, and examined her face. “You’re kidding me, aren’t you?”

"All of our thirty five years together, Cynthia."

I sat beside her with my mouth open. I did not know what to say.

Just then a little boy more or less three years old, came rushing in and ran straight to Cristina's arms. She took him and hugged him and kissed him then hugged him again. The boy stared at me and smiled. I saw Benjamin’s smiling eyes in him. I got up and checked my camera. Cristina now smiled as I took three shots. Benjamin came in and sat beside her and the boy slipped from her to Benjamin’s lap.

“Smile!” I said, peering into the eyeview finder of my Nikon. Benjamin and the little one both smiled. But I was surprised when Cristina stole a kiss on Benjamin’s forehead as I pressed my shutter.

The First Time

The first time he approached her, he smelled of rhum.

She had seen him hanging around with his friends at the store just outside the school's massive gates. He was wearing his basketball uniform, white with light blue trimmings. It was the first time she had seen him and she didn't know who he was.

"Psssst! Psssst!" he said, but she pretended she didn't hear, and she tried not to look at him. She entered the gates and just before the guard closed the door shut, she glanced back to see him looking at her.

Two hours later, after she had finished practicing her oratorical piece, she saw him again with three boys including her boisterous classmate Vicente. She was crossing the almost empty quadrangle to the canteen when he took a few strides towards her.

"What's your name?"

She didn't know if it was a friendly question because she thought he wasn't even smiling. But boys had already started to notice and took interest in her and she thought it was just one of those boys. She felt her heart racing for no apparent reason. She started to say her name when she noticed the smell of rhum. Just a trace, but she was familiar with the smell: her father always had a shot of rhum in the evening.

"Why?" was all she managed to say, she herself not knowing if the why was for "why are you asking?" or "why did you drink?"

"Jason! Let's go." It was one of the boys he was with. And he walked away from her. She made a mental note to ask Vicente about him the next day.

PROMPT - a justifiable sin

From Judy Reeves' "A Writer's Book of Days" - "Write about a a justifiable sin."

A Justifiable Sin

I feel used and abused. And I feel cheap.

That's about how I felt every morning after Richard and I had a date. The routine was he would phone me at the office, ask if I'm free in the evening, convince me to see a movie with him. At the movie, in the darkest corner of the balcony section, we (or he, for most times, I happen to like watching the movie) would pet or neck until my lips were swollen from being sucked by him, my breasts aching from too much squeezing by him, and of late, when all has become too much for him to bear, he would do everything "except that" in the back seat of his car.

For two years that was the routine. A few months ago, he showed up at the office, all dressed up and carrying a big bunch of flowers. I got a good teasing from my officemates. We all thought I'd come back to work the next day with an engagement ring on my finger. Well, he did propose, sort of. He wanted me to be exclusively his and maybe someday we will get married. I took note of the word "maybe".

Instead of going to a restaurant, he drove up to an expensive and out-of-the-way motel, the kind where the rooms had a carport underneath so no one can recognize your car, just in case. The ante-room had a nice table for two with a small plastic flower arrangement in the middle. There was a menu card to order dinner at a nearby restaurant. The bedroom had a king size bed with white sheets and large pillows, and a checkered coverlet. The entire ceiling was mirrored. Yes, mirror-ed.

Needless to say, we went all the way that night. After that sex pretty much happened at least once a week since then. A pattern has developed. Somehow we managed to argue about something and fight. He won't call for days and when he does there's more arguing until somehow everything ends up being my fault. So I end up apologizing. Then he would "punish" me by not seeing me. I had come to a point when I really do not care if he sees me or not. But somehow, when he did come to see me, we always end up in a motel, having sex.

One night, he was on top of me, muttering how great it felt to be inside me, so on and so forth. When once I opened my eyes and caught a glimpse of myself in the ceiling mirror, with Richard's naked body on top of me, one leg stretched almost at a right angle from my body, the other wrapped around his waist as he holds me by the knee. This was the night I realized there was no love in me for him. Not anymore. But I do it with him for comfort's sake, my body had become comfortable with him. This was when I realized that love and sex do not necessarily go hand in hand.


So. Richard had punished me yet again, this time by making a business trip somewhere. He wanted me to think about my actions. I wanted to but I forgot what it was that I did to deserve such punishment. He would call. Everyday. Wanting me to apologize. I had already said I'm sorry, but he wanted me to articulate what it was that I had done. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember it. He got mad. "Think about it!" he told me.

John appears in my office holding an affidavit. Can I notarize it? Sure, I say. I take out my notarial journal, jot in the details of the affidavit and I stick a notarial stamp on the paper. I ask him to raise his hand and swear that all he says in the affidavit is true to the best of his knowledge. He does so and he signs the affidavit and I sign the notary's portion.

"No date tonight?" he asks. I shrug my shoulders and pout my lips. "Awww," he says.

Then the surprise: "I'll take you to dinner, come!"

John and I have been exchanging stories about anything, mostly about his marriage that is crumbling. There is no other woman. Yet.

He stands by my office door with a "So?" look on his face. As I lock my desk drawers, I look at him and I say, "Sure, why not?"

At dinner, I voice out my discontent about Richard. Suddenly, I have a friend I can tell my Richard troubles to. My girlfriends all think Richard is a great catch, a sweet man and no one believes me when I tell them how Richard actually treats me. They all think I just invent the stories of mental and emotional abuse.

The next time I stay late at work, John shows up. He has just arrived from a business trip in Germany and has been away for two weeks.

"Dinner?" he asks. Then, "I missed you!" He lobs a small flowery box of Nina Ricci perfume and I catch it with one hand.

"Well, I missed you, too, buddy," I say playfully. "I had no one intelligent to talk to around here. So glad you're back."

In the car, as he drives, I think he might have thought my knee is the gear shift.

At L'Orange, a fine dining French restaurant hidden in the farthest corner of Forbes Park, he holds my hand like I was a delicate porcelain figurine. We talk in whispers, giggle discreetly at "green" jokes, and taste each other's food. Looking at him over the rim of my glass of red wine, I smile and I run the tip of my tongue on my upper lip. When he rubs my leg with his leg, I rub back.

That night, John and I start our affair.

SHORT STORY - The Pink Panther

"Do you know where we are right now?" Sue Clarinton asks, her cheeks flushed from Salalah’s 45 degree heat, her plump right hand adjusting her Ray-Ban sunglasses while her left fans herself furiously with a leaf fan; the gold bangles she has bought earlier at the soukh in downtown Salalah make jingling sounds as she moves the fan. She wears a bright pink track suit and a large bright pink voile scarf wrapped around her head and her neck.

"Nope!" Beads of sweat form on my forehead and I reach to turn on the AC of the SAAB full blast. The engine roars as the car accelerates up the hill, my feet pumping on the gas pedal, unsure where we are going. Black goats and white sheeps dot the barren hillsides, feeding on dried bushes.

"This is not right!" Liz Phelan says from the back seat. She wipes her sweaty face with her palm. I tell her to use the box of Kleenex behind her. "We’re lost. Why those bloody bastards went ahead and not even wait for us is beyond me." She kicks the floor of the car. "It's just rocky hills, dried bushes and stupid goats and sheeps all around. I'm sure this is hell, what with this heat!"

Sue Clarinton is the General Manager of the Austin Eye Clinic and Liz Phelan is her Office Administrator. They have come with a team of eye doctors from Texas and have arrived two days ago in Muscat, the capital of Oman. The owner of the company I work for, Atlantic World Oil, has sponsored the team as a contribution to a project planned by Shiek Al Bin Khalfan, the Minister of Petroleum and patron of Atlantic World Oil. After visiting possible sites for a clinic in downtown Salalah and inspecting a few hospitals, Shiek Al Bin Khalfan tells us we will have a picnic atop the hills.

We have started earlier with our convoy of four cars: Shiek Al Bin Khalfan in a brand new Range Rover with Dr. Steve, Dr. Shawn, Dr. Billy and one bodyguard, Suleiman, who is also our guide. Seven more bodyguards are packed in like sardines in an older Range Rover. My boss, Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Al-Sajeed, the minister's assistant, drive in a rented Mercedes Benz while Sue and Liz ride with me in my rented SAAB. For thirty minutes, we follow the three cars, with Shiek Al Bin Khalfan at the head, as they zig-zag their way through traffic and highways up to the small town leading to the "hills" for the picnic. At a turn off, a small "tornado" forms, a mini-funnel like wind that gathers dirt and messes up the sands and effectively blocks our view of the three cars ahead of us. When the wind settles, we find ourselves on a rough path leading up the hills that suddenly appears in front of us.

Liz pushes her blond hair with the palm of her hand. "We have picnic at top of hills, beautiful view. You enjoy it, I know," she says, mimicking Shiek Bin Khalfan’s accent. "That fuckin’ asshole." She grabs the hem of her long skirt and dabs the sweat off her face and neck. "And you haven’t been there at all, have you, Victoria?"

"Are you kidding me?" I say, shrugging my shoulders and glancing at her through the rear-view mirror. "This is the first time I’ve come to Salalah. I don’t even know why I had to come!"

"Obviously they needed someone to drive Sue and me around," Liz says, the fabric of her skirt muffles her voice. "Those morons clearly don’t want women in their stupid cars. I want to kill that stupid minister."

"I don’t really care wherever we are right now, I just need to pee real bad," Sue declares. "I don’t know how much longer I can take it, Victoria, but my bladder is about to burst with this rough road we’re in."

A skinny dog darts from a thick bush and crosses the path in front of us.

"Shit!" Sue and Liz say in unison as I step on the brakes. Sue drops her leaf fan and her hands clasp her bulky gut, in an attempt not to urinate on the passenger seat.

"Fucking shitty dog, crossing the road like some idiot….hmp… hmp… dog." I say. I look sideways at Sue. "Did you go or what?"

She looks at me and seeing my dog-like grin, she yells, "Shut up, Victoria!"

I continue to drive, my own bladder building up its own pressure. The SAAB's AC couldn't keep up with the heat of three women, two of them on the verge of menopause.

"Shit, I got to go, too, damnit!" Liz says from the back seat. "Victoria, do you think we can stop somewhere and we can go behind a thick bush or something? There wouldn't be anybody around here, would you say?"

I pull over and roll down my window, the heat slapping my face. I stick my head out, careful not to release the break that my right foot is straining now to press. The sky is a clear blue and the sun hangs directly above us like it would not set for another ten or twelve hours. I hear the hodgepodge of crickets and goats and sheep’s sounds, and the distant whirl of the hot air being blown from the direction of the Yemeni desert. My left foot loses the clutch pedal and the car shakes before the engine stops dead. Seeing that we are parked on the very edge of the road with a deep ravine at their side, Sue and Liz holler "Watch out!"

I sit back and re-start the car. I look forward, backward (through the rear-view mirror), sideways.

"What?" both women ask.

"I don't know," I say. "It's 2:30, maybe the animal keepers are having their naps."

"Victoria," Sue says, "We never saw any houses or igloos around here. I'm sure the animal keepers are down in the village."

I giggle at the mention of "igloo" and drive the car a few feet before I say, "They have small caves around these hills, that's where they stay." Two pairs of eyes roll up in exasperation.

The car's engine strains as it follows the upward path. We drive for another ten minutes and we reach the top of the hill where we have a view of the valley below, dried brown bushes and bare trees among the maze of small dirt roads, going down to the village, where the color turns green with the date palms and olive orchards. On the horizon, the blueness of the sky meets the deep blue of the Arabian Ocean. A light wind blows and it suddenly feels pleasant. We got off the car and surveyed the place. A few feet away, we found a large bush.

"Perfect!" Liz exclaims. "I think we can do our bathroom duties here. We can see when people are coming."

"Oh no," Sue says, adjusting her large pink scarf. "We came from that side," she points west, "so if they come, they would be around there, not here," she points east.

"Which means?" Liz asks.

"Which means, we can pee and nobody will see us." Sue looks at me for approval.

"Up to you guys, I myself don't mind. We used to do this in the Philippines all the time."

"No," they both shake their heads. Liz says, "I haven't done anything like this at all in my entire life."

"The hell. Let's go." Sue proceeds to lower her pink track pants.

Liz follows. "Well, there's always a first time!"

I join the two women. We look around first just to make sure nobody can see us.

It seems endless, this bladder, I comment when it seems we could not stop peeing. A bee buzzes by.

"Damn you," Liz says.

Sue jokes, "What if it mistakes our assholes for its nest?"

We all laugh, the flow of our pee becoming choppy.

Another bee flies by.

"Another one!" For a moment, Liz makes an attempt to stand up, but crouches back again. "My pee won't stop, I'm not finished yet!"

Suddenly, from the distance, dusts rise and I spot sparkling reflections of the sun against glass. Then the image of a car appears. It’s Minister Al Bin Khalfan’s Range Rover, with the second Range Rover and the Mercedes in its dusty wake.

"Holy camoley," I say. Since I have finished, I pull up my drawers and, still in crouching position, move towards the other side of the bush, out of the cars' view.

Liz follows me. "Fuck, Sue, we are on the wrong side of the fucking bush!"

"Well, who's to know." Then Sue shouts,"Holy shit!" Her scarf gets caught in a small dried branch while pulling her pants up. She almost falls, her fat bum facing the path where the cars are now coming closer at full speed.

"Come on, Sue, quick!" Liz yells. "They're coming! They'll see you!"

"What the hell do you think I’m trying to do! Ballroom dancing?"

Sue swears and utters all obscenities while she tries to compose herself and pull up her blazing pink pants as well, as Liz and I fall on the ground, clutching our stomachs, laughing hard.

When the three cars reach us, the Minister comes out first, grinning. His bodyguards quickly unload mats and blankets, large containers of food and styrofoam boxes of beer, wine and juice buried in crushed ice.

"How you know this is where we go?" he asks in his heavily accented English. His tall imposing figure towers above me. He wears a long beige cardigan over his clothing and as he places his hand on his hip, I see a gun tucked together with his kanjah.

"I just followed the road," I reply, staring at the gun which is at my eye level.

"What took you so long?" Liz asks, her arms akimbo, not exactly hiding her displeasure.

But the Minister ignores her. "What you doing in the bush?" he asks again.

"There's no toilet around, here, Your Excellency," I say. "We had an emergency!"

I glance at Sue and Liz, their faces red from heat and embarrassment, darting angry glances at the Minister.

The Minister grins, a gold molar glinting in the bright afternoon sun, and turns to Sue, "Oh, is good we saw you. I thought there is pink panther in bushes." He smirks. "I ask Suleiman to shoot!"