city on a typically hot and humid day, and you’d see all the women from Forbes Park and Dasmariñas wearing pashminas and fanning themselves silly.
I taped reality shows almost every night. From the Real World to Fear Factor , I watched them all. I had my favorites—the new show where twenty grossly overweight people tried to lose weight and were kicked out if they were caught eating chocolate cake was a stunner, and the one where international mail-order brides competed for old geezers with wrinkles and liver spots was another (my money was on the Russian to go all the way and win the big prize: marriage and citizenship to a seventy-year-old who owned an aboveground pool company).
Mom and Dad had no stomach for these shows. They liked “quality” programming, like 60 Minutes, 20/20 , and Primetime Live . Anything hosted by Diane Sawyer was fine by them—even if it was sensationalist dreck like yet another special on Princess Di (“Diana’s Secret Heartache Finally Revealed!”).
The other month when Diane Sawyer reported on the rash of “identity thefts,” Dad was convinced he was a victim of the crime when Blockbuster video called to ask him about a tape he had returned. The store had called because Mr. Arambullo had returned a tape containing sitcoms rather than Bruce Almighty . “Identity theft! Identity theft!” Dad had yelled. “I neverborrowed Bruce Almighty ! Someone’s using my card!”
“They must be some pretty honest thieves, Dad,” I pointed out, “since they actually tried to return the movie. And paid for it.” Still, Dad couldn’t be talked out of it. He even nailed our mailbox shut in accordance with Diane Sawyer’s advice. So now we had to pick up our mail from underneath our doormat.
Brittany was too young to work the VCR controls, so it was left up to me to make sure we had enough reel in the tapes, that they were labeled correctly, and then packed up in the brown cardboard boxes for Captain Punsalang to take on his next trip home.
The real-estate mogul fired the toothy blond stripper turned “marketing manager.” Damn! There went five bucks to Isobel.
“ Tama na , time for dinner,” Dad said, patting my shoulder. I waited until the closing credits rolled and joined my family at the table.
We rarely ate in restaurants anymore. McDonald’s was a treat reserved for Sundays after church. Our greatest ambition in life was to eat at Outback Steakhouse. On the very, very rare occasions we did go out to eat in a real restaurant (on birthdays, holidays, or their anniversary) to Sizzler, Chili’s, or Applebee’s, Mom would pick at her food, turn up her nose, and say, “Ugh. I can make this better at home,” almost as if she were insulted.She was usually right, but I was so happy to be filling my plate with thirty shrimp from Red Lobster that I didn’t care. Sometimes I would even argue with her. “No, you can’t! You put sugar in the spaghetti, Mom! They don’t do that at the Olive Garden!”
Dad was setting the table, so I helped him lay out the place mats, napkins, silverware, plates, salad bowls, and water glasses. Mom brought out a garlicky-smelling vegetable pinakbet full of okra and bitter melon; a platter of dark, smoky strips of beef tapa, fluffy white rice, a very salty fish sauce called patis; and the precious bagoong, which we were happy to find at an Asian market. Dinner was by far the highlight of each day, even if it was far from how it used to be. In Manila, we had a majestic round table in the formal dining room that could seat twelve people. Uniformed maids stood behind our chairs and fanned us with banana leaves. In the middle of our table here was a lazy Susan Mom had bought in Chinatown. I liked to spin it past Brittany and pretend she would never get anything to eat, just to make her cry.
“How was school today?” Mom asked, as she layered my plate with vegetables, meat, and rice.
“Okay,” I mumbled. “I got an A on my English essay.”
Whenever
Reed Farrel Coleman
Tara Westover
Polly Horvath
Alexandra Diaz
Brooke Page
Janet Lloyd and Paul Cartledge Vincent Azoulay
Anne Melville
Al Lacy
Laken Cane
Jennifer McNare