Rosethorn (41 page)

“Nothing,
anak
,” her grandmother had patted her arm before looking out the window in a distant voice. “I want you to call me after you’ve settled in.”

“What? What is it?”

“No time now,” her grandmother pointed to the passenger drop off. “Your plane leaves in 45 minutes.”

“What’s wrong?” Guilt seized her. Preoccupied with Andrew once again, she had neglected her grandmother in her brief return and forgot to ask about her recent doctor’s appointment. “What did the doctor say about your heart?”

“My heart is just fine.” Her grandmother shooed her with her hand. “Just call me after you’ve rested.”

Her grandmother hugged her tight and reached up to kiss her on her forehead. “Don’t worry about me,
anak
. Have a safe trip.”

With only her carryon luggage and laptop, Sera quickly went through check in and security.

How many airports had she been in and her possessions scrutinized by bored machine readers? She was always in a terminal, waiting in line, leaving something behind, running towards something else. She fled from place to place, never staying long enough to find the root of her restlessness.

As her flight started boarding, Sera stood last behind the swelling crowd and dialed Chase’s number on her cell phone.

“I was beginning to worry,” he answered lightly with a hint of reproach.

“Chase, I’ve done something bad
,” she blurted out, sobbing.

“What happened?”

“I’m damaged. And I’ve hurt you.” The people ahead of her started turning their heads and looking back at her curiously.  

“Sera, you’re breaking up. I can barely hear you.”

“I’m so sorry, Chase, but I can’t move to Paris with you now. Not after what I’ve done.”

“What happened, Sera?” He made a sound of frustration. “Look, I can be in New York by tomorrow. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” she said, scared and relieved as she wiped her runny nose. “I hear you.”

“Wait for-” Sera looked at her cell display. It was dead. She had, among other things, forgotten to charge it this weekend.

The flight attendant held her soggy boarding pass with the tip of his fingers, looking askance at her disheveled state, the fresh gash on her arm.

Sera was falling apart for everyone to see.

She tried unsuccessfully to nap during the interminable five-hour flight to New York. Despite the exhaustion of flying thousands of miles and the emotional upheaval of the past few hours, she couldn’t escape her dread with even a few moments of respite.

She moved slowly through JFK, unseeing and unhurried. She could feel herself getting a cold, her head starting to ache. She slapped some water on her face at the airport bathroom, glancing dully at her overly haggard face in the mirror. She sprang the $50 for a cab ride home, unable to face a long subway ride and several train changes just to save a few dollars, like she usually did.

It was early morning by the time she unlocked the door to her studio. Leaving her bag by the door and still in her coat, she curled up in her bed and sobbed in the darkness until she reached long-awaited oblivion.

She awoke some hours later to the noise and bustle of a New York day and sunshine peeking through the slits of her drawn drapes.

Only slightly less weary than before she had fallen asleep, she started unpacking in a semblance of her normal routine. Beneath her clothes lay the kilim she had bought in Marrakech, bars of olive soap, the still packaged bottle of jasmine perfume she had forgotten to give to her grandmother.

For some reason, an image of her mother came to her then, as she was in all the dreams Sera had dreamt. Her mother’s life had been cut short, all her hopes drowned.

Yet what had Sera done with her own life since leaving Andrew that first time? Nothing of consequence, it seemed. She had wronged the only man who had never hurt her, and her mother, in whose name she vowed to confront her feckless lover, still lay in some obscure grave, unavenged.

Coming to yet another decision, for there was no turning back now, Sera quickly changed into a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She ran to catch the next train to 91st Street and Riverside Drive as if she did not want to be late for an appointment, when in reality, she had delayed this moment for many years now. She ran because she did not want to change her mind.

Like before, she stood at the edge of Riverside Park as she surveyed the elegant building at 1152 Riverside Drive. And as if by design, signaling to her that it was indeed time, a UPS truck pulled up. Quickly, she dashed across the street, and as the driver was buzzed in, she helped him with the door, smiling a friendly, guileless smile. She stepped into the cool marble foyer after him.

She was finally in.

Avoiding taking the elevator with the UPS driver, Sera mounted the velvet-covered terrazzo stairs instead, suddenly rejuvenated with the prospect of confrontation. Apartment number 11 was on the third floor, which was quiet and insulated with lush maroon Berber carpet. She tiptoed to the chocolate mahogany door and knocked.

Her heart beating wildly and palms sweating, Sera stood waiting, more and more anxious as she heard footsteps approaching the door. She could tell that the person on the other side was now looking at her through the peephole. An eternity passed, during which she could feel hesitation being weighed on the other side.

Then, thankfully, the relief of the lock being undone, the knob turning, and the door creaking open.

Sera gasped in horrified recognition.

It had to be a mirage borne of her guilt and sorrow, for whomever she had expected to meet at long last on the other side of this door—it was not the woman now standing before her like a distortion of her own reflection.

“Stella?”

Chapter 26

“Serafina.”

The woman at the door was guarded, yet resigned, as if the moment she had been dreading for a long time was now coming to pass. She did not flinch from Sera’s shock and staunchly met her eyes, but then she’d had ample time to prepare for this meeting.

She did not ask Sera to come in, perhaps as transfixed and stunned by the woman before her as Sera was. She bore the face which greeted Sera every morning-the same slanted brown eyes, the same full lips, the same shade of thick glossy black hair. Sera could have been looking at a mirror of her future self, the other resembled her so much. 

Sera’s head started to spin and her knees threatened to give way.

“Are you alright?” Stella asked, awkwardly placing a hand on her arm.

Sera shook her head, trying to excavate words from the depths of her throat. “No, I’m not alright.”

Stella somehow led her from the door, touching her gingerly, then quickly letting go once Sera sank onto a chaise. Weakened, she closed her eyes and leaned onto its plush velvet back.

“I’ll get you some water.”

With her eyes still closed, Sera noted the musical quality of her mother’s voice; it sounded exactly as she had imagined it would or perhaps remembered from long ago-a voice meant for singing.

Some muffled movements and then the click of heels on tiled floors in another part of the apartment.

After an interminable span in which Sera waited for her head to stop spinning, she opened her eyes.

She was in a sitting room whose walls were painted in aubergine. Some chairs and the chaise lounge she was sitting on were upholstered in dark red velvet. A chandelier made of hundreds of Venetian crystal teardrops hung from the center of the room, as did giant green ferns in wrought iron planters. Behind the partly drawn drapes was a large window which probably overlooked Riverside Park. A quick glance around noted Tiffany lamps, velvet cushions, a center table made entirely of mirrored glass that reflected the crystal chandelier overhead. Thick, cloying perfume hung in the air.

Sera wanted to avert her gaze from the ostentation of the room, repulsed by its boudoir-like heaviness. So overwhelming was the assault on her senses that it took Sera a second glance to notice the wall towards which all the seating was angled. A fireplace tiled with colorful Moroccan mosaics of teal, cobalt, and red was in the center, but as exotic as it looked, it was overpowered by the dozens of framed theater posters hanging around it from top to bottom.

Sera walked over to the frames and examined them.

Some were Playbills that featured Stella Wood in some minor parts in West Side Story and the Flower Drum Song. Most, however, were of posters of her mother in the title role in Miss Saigon, as played in theaters in Paris, Munich, Vienna, Amsterdam, Rome, Sydney, on and on, in varied typeface and language, but with the same picture in each one, her mother luminous in her beauty, despite her costume of tattered gray, as the woman who commits the ultimate sacrifice so that her lover, who has married another, would take their child away to America.

Hysteria started building in Sera as she gazed at her mother’s picture, so convincing in its pathos, rising even more when she spied a poster of the off-Broadway production of Bleak House, the musical, with her mother barely discernible in the background as a veiled figure.

She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Stella approaching with a goblet in her hand. “Ah, Lady Dedlock,” she muttered as she accepted the water from her.

Better oriented than she had been at the door, Sera now looked fully at her mother, examining her from head to foot with an intensity that she knew was rude.

She was petite, smaller than Sera, with a youthful slimness. Her shoulder-length hair was perfectly set, and her expertly made up face was almost entirely devoid of any lines. She was dressed in a black velour pantsuit and high heels, and her wrists jangled with gold bracelets. She looked as if this was what she considered to be a casual, natural look.

She seemed uncomfortable under Sera’s scrutiny, but not because she was being watched. She had the air of a woman who has drawn and held watchers her whole life.

Stella sat down on one of the plush velvet armchairs and indicated that Sera do the same. Sera returned to the chaise opposite her mother and drank her water in silence, unable to determine how to voice the confusion, shock, and anger overwhelming her.

As if she were granting an interview, her mother raised a sylph-like, braceleted arm towards the Miss Saigon posters and said, “You know, another Filipina won the Tony for that role, but I’ve played Kim in more productions and in more countries than any other actress.”

Sera quickly gulped before blurting out, “So you’re best known for playing a mother who kills herself so that her child could have a better life?”

The graceful arm faltered, but Stella did not hesitate in replying coolly, “Yes, hard to believe, isn’t it? But then theater makes anything seem possible.”

She crossed her legs and laid her arms on either side of her armchair, in imitation of a grave queen.

“You get that from me. That mouth of yours,” she noted with a subtle intonation of pride. “Does it get you in as much trouble as it does me?”

“I think I can be forgiven for being rude, Stella,” she spat out in incredulity, unable to call the woman sitting across from her as mother, “Considering that I’ve been lied to all these years.”

“What, what, what?” she stammered, her sarcasm floundering in the chaos of inner revelation. “I’ve seen you haven’t I? You’re the woman with the hats and the sunglasses and the stilettos. And you’ve seen me watching this building. You’ve known all this time.” Rapid-fire thoughts were spilling out from her unbridled mouth.

“Yes, I’ve seen you. I could have stayed inside, but I deliberately tempted fate and let you see me. I really don’t know why. I suppose I wanted this,” she made a vague gesture with French-manicured nails, “To be over with.”

“
Lola
kept your secret for you,” Sera said, just beginning to grasp the enormity of her betrayal.

Stella looked stern. “I forced her to. It was not her idea to keep this from you. I asked her to tell you I was dead, but she wouldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it. She’s incapable of lying. But she didn’t want to tell you the truth either, because she knew it would hurt you more.”

Sera remembered all the times she had questioned her grandmother, who would bury her face in her hands, unable to answer her. What she mistook for inconsolable grief was deep shame over her daughter.

“So she just let me think you were dead. It was you who sent the money. I assumed it was my father. I assumed lots of things.”

“Indirectly, yes.” Stella nodded. “He’s made it possible for me to live comfortably so that when I was working, I was able to send some money. I didn’t totally abandon you.”

“So you married my father and you both decided to abandon me?”

“Your father married his college sweetheart,” Stella corrected, her mouth curving in mockery. “They live in New Haven. You have two half-brothers.”

“But, your name--,” Sera’s head was beginning to reel again. “I have no idea what’s going on. All I know is what I read from your diary. Is everything made up? Has everyone been lying to me all my life?” She realized that she was shouting, but the woman across from her didn’t flinch from her outrage.