We took a right turn off route 10, just after a Wendy's, a left on a rocky dirt road that ran behind Untalan Middle School and another right up a second, more dirtier, dirt road. We climbed a small hill, neared the end of the road and parked in front of the house that didn't look abandoned. Dogs were barking from somewhere. Three or four skinny cats lounging on a rusted out Toyota truck perked up and stared at us wide eyed as we discussed whether we were at the right place at the right time. I reread the directions in my notebook. Sloan always teases my notebook. It has a black and white sticker of Kim Basinger on it and a lot of important notes in it: like playlists for long drives and drawings of stuff. "It seems right," I said, showing her my diagram of the houses at the end of the street Laurie had described over the phone. "Did she mention dogs?"
Two giddy white mutts traded off barks from behind a chain link fence on the side of the house. The cats stared. I shut the truck door deliberately loud and Laurie came to the window in a tank top, her hair still wet from the shower. We were on time, in other words, a good hour and a half too early.
She let us in and the dogs ran laps in the back yard. I got a canned beer and we pushed our way through the dogs to get out to the back patio. One had a bloody neck from the ticks they had pulled off that afternoon.
We met Simon, cheerful with short dreadlocks, who was barbecuing in the yard. Simon is Maia's boyfriend. Maia is Laurie's daughter. We sat down on plastic lawn chairs under a corrugated tin roof surrounded by hanging wooden ornaments and honeysuckle bushes. It started raining hard and things got complicated.
But first, some background. Laurie is an old friend of my dad, from Dumaguete. She knew me when I was little, down around her knees. She moved to Guam with Maia, who's about my sister's age, to work at the University of Guam Marine Lab in '96.
Maia came out of the house with an umbrella to join Simon in the yard. Mark arrived with a small ceramic bowl of hummus. I didn't think I had ever met Mark before. Why should I have, we're on Guam. He was fit, had a chiseled face and fat-less arms, and was of indeterminable age. My first guess was rock climber and/or vegan and/or one of those macrobiotic types. What is it they eat? Limpets? No, that's not right. Anyway, I was wrong on all accounts. Mark was a devout carnivore and not
just a rock climber, he was an ultra-outdoorsman, and I
had met him before - on Maui, of course. He was the preserve manager at Haleakala when I was doing an internship with The Nature Conservancy, again in '96.
"'96? That might have been the year I got all three suv's stuck in the mud," he said. "I got the first one stuck and then I marched right over, took the wheel and got the second one stuck, followed by the third. I was the preserve manager, I was the only one who could to it, you know, drive them through the mud. Was that your year?"
I honestly couldn't remember but it was a good story so now it is my year - the year the trucks got stuck. Peter showed up next, with a six pack of Asahi Blue. This is some kind of new Asahi, it could be a light beer, it could be organic or something, it's hard to say because the can's covered in Japanese. Peter is going to be Sloan's new boss so I better not say anything incriminating about him. Peter's German, or
from Germany, and a hot shot at the University of Guam Marine Lab. He gets most of his funding from the federal government which, believe it or not, is far more reliable than funding from the University.
The rain was smacking on the patio roof and so we yelled at each other, ate hummus and cut away at a wedge of fontina cheese. Maia and Simon had moved the barbecue indoors to an electric grill and the house was filling with smoke. Delicious tear-inducing meat smoke. Maia and her mom discussed who could give the better stink eye. Maia could deliver a pretty rank stink eye. I informed them of a new trend in stink eye evolution: the fade away stink eye. This is where you linger in the vicinity of your opponent, but half obscured behind a wall or piece of furniture. When you manage to catch the eye of your adversary you engage the stink eye and "fade away" behind the obscuring agent. It is a nearly perfect and indefensible attack, enveloping your nemesis in a clammy funk as though they had just seen a ghost or driven past a sulfur mine (one of Mark's favorite smells).
The food was ready. We waded through the smoky living room and filled our plates with rice, sausages, barbecue chicken, corn and salad. In Simon and Mark's case, just chicken and sausage.
Over the buffet table Simon asked me, "Roy is your uncle? He was my advisor, in college. He was my favorite teacher."
"He is a smart guy. He would always meet us at the airport," I said. "He was the only relative (on my mom's side) who would visit us in Hawaii."
"He would give us sheets of folded up butcher block paper for exams and told us to
show your work. He was my favorite teacher," he said again.
"I haven't talked to him in a long while," I said, and it made me a little sad to say because even though we saw heaps of relatives and family at our wedding there were still tons we didn't see.
Laurie put a CD on the stereo that we could barely hear. She came outside with a grin. "Do you know who this is?"
"I can't hear it," I said.
"It's your father."
Kind of a Darth Vader moment, if Darth Vader was more like James Taylor or CSN or Y, and hadn't just sliced my hand off with a laser sword. It was a CD from a tape that he and Tito Junix had made for Laurie on her 19th birthday. You could hear her laughing and singing along in the back of the tape. My dad and Tito Junix used to play in the bars and clubs around Dumaguete, maybe other places too. I've lost track of the stories. They had an act that admittedly I barely understood because I don't know more than a lick of Filipino but according to Laurie, and I believe her wholeheartedly, it was awesome. They translated traditional Filipino songs into other dialects to sound ridiculous, they mock broadcasted from Radio DUMB, they played guitar throughout and sang wacky and but remarkably endearing songs like precursors to Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement. The tape that Laurie was given for her birthday was the only known recording of their show until a couple of years ago when Junix and my dad were reunited with the tape and promptly turned it into a CD. Ta da.
One thing about getting older and steadily boxing up and storing away adventures and experiences, so much so that I can barely remember the things I did a year ago, I realize that my parents lived many lives too, a lot of them before I was born. And sometimes it takes hearing it from their friends before it really sinks in. So thank you Laurie, for dinner and making me even more proud of where I came from.
s dish - the pinoy mac and cheese. Here's the recipe (originally from the Palmore family vault). If you have any variations let me know:
Posts
