Self’s horoscope for the day said: “There’s only so much external stress you can take.”
Which gave her absolutely no idea — zip, nada — about what this day was going to be like.
When self read that, at 7:30 AM this morning, she thought: Oh, it’s about those disappearing books for the fiction award self was asked to judge. She thought also, Oh, it’s about son’s car problem. She thought also, Oh, it’s about upcoming trip to VCCA and how self is so worried about all her plants dying while she’s gone.
Self decided to call Montauk Tita, whose name is Cora, who is not really her Tita, but who self has known for so long she doesn’t recall any longer how this relationship developed. And when she called, and the housekeeper picked up the phone, and self asked to speak to her Tita, there was a very mysterious pause, and then the housekeeper said: “Oh, I’m sorry, she died.”
Self sat there, with the phone in her hand, going: “She (gulp) died? When?”
And the housekeeper said, two days ago.
So self asked how. And the housekeeper said, “Pneumonia.”
So self asked to speak to her uncle, Fidel. And the housekeeper said, “Oh, I’m very sorry, he died last month.”
And then self sat there, and BAWLED like an absolute baby, for what felt like hours but turned out to be only five minutes.
It turned out that uncle and aunt’s only child, a daughter, was at that moment getting ready to return home to Toronto. There had been no funeral. Both my uncle and aunt were cremated.
So self got to speak to the daughter, who self has actually never met, and she said yes, she knew who self was; yes, she had seen all my letters to her mother; yes, we must keep in touch (fat chance that self will ever get to Toronto, though).
And then self thought how very very lucky it was that she had scheduled a massage that afternoon, with Radha who is named after an Indian goddess, as she felt simply on the point of collapse.
So then self had to figure out who to tell. And the first person she thought of, dear blog readers, was her brother-in-law in New York. But when she called his office, his male assistant answered and said R was not in, and he asked who self was and self said she was R’s sister-in-law (and self still keeps calling herself that, even though R has re-married and self’s sister, who used to be R’s wife, has died), and the assistant said self sounded so much like M, R’s wife, and self said, rather irrelevantly, “That’s because we’re both Filipina.”
Self felt she simply could not face calling Dearest Mum, who would go into hysterics at the drop of a hat, and so she sat down and wrote extremely melancholy e-mail to her favorite brother (whose wife is somewhere in the Bay Area, though where exactly self has no idea, as sister-in-law stopped returning self’s calls three days ago . . . )
To think, dear blog readers, that last night self was watching Democratic candidates debate, and was laughing at the You-Tube segments, while one of self’s favorite people, Tita Cora, who was the sister of Arturo B. Rotor, the great Filipino short story writer (who wrote “Zita” — and if there’s ever a short story that could break your heart, it would be that one), had died and was about to be cremated, and self thinks of Montauk and Sag Harbor, those summers with her sister there, in Tita Cora’s house by the beach, the house with the huge blue hydrangea bushes, and her sister has died so there is no one anymore who remembers that house except her brother - in - law, who is now married to someone else, and self really can’t stand it, she’ll have to write a story, someday she’ll have to write a story.
