Letting Go
By Susan S. Lara
As the car drew near the south end of the North Expressway, Mr. Augusto rolled down the window and let the wind lash his face. The sun, its fevered flare already chastened to a shimmer, was sliding toward the west, while grey soot started to smudge the east and prepared to dim the limitless expanse of blue. In the advancing afternoon, the light languished and mellowed; shadows quelled garish tones to hushed greys and browns.
His stay in Manila would be all to the good, he tried to convince himself. He would stay with Teresa for as long as Scotty needed him. “You will be good for Scotty,” Teresa had said, with a positiveness that swelled his heart almost to bursting point. He had thrown a tiptoeing glance at his wife to see if she had heard it, and was dismayed to see the remark was singularly wasted on her.
It was hard to believe how his wife had slowly taken hold of the domestic scepter soon after he retired, when she had not shown the slightest inclination to even equal him before. But then, he thought, old age had been kind to her. It did not wrench her from any profession and throw her into a sudden and total idleness. She had run the home all her life, and old age had done nothing to change that. Her work and life were soldered together by the simple principle of marriage. After his retirement she had assumed a greater consequence than he, and had taken no great effort to hide the satisfaction she derived from this.
He especially felt superfluous when his daughters or his daughter-in-law gave birth, which had happened three times after his retirement. His wife had received telegrams, saying how badly she was needed. She had always obliged, happily grumbling that her children would never learn to live without her. It was hard to be polite when she came back after each trip, puffed up with her own sense of importance. Every time she went to the city, she said, there were always things that must be put in order. Would they never let her rest, she wondered, while he kept quiet, inspecting his fingernails.
But now, he thought with undiluted satisfaction, now was the time his grandchildren needed him. Scotty’s still supple mind, especially, stood in need of his calm understanding of life that only years could give. He chose not to ask himself why his children had never thought of placing their kids under his care be-fore. It was enough to know that he would now be of some use.
He didn’t exactly snap at the chance to go to Manila. To leave his hometown, where he had spent his days since birth, would amount to a rupture with a whole chunk of his past, and at his age, to be plucked up from his base was not exactly a rejuvenating move. But the thought that his presence in Manila was called for was enough to bring him round.
“Isn’t the wind a bit too cold, Papa?” Teresa’s voice was colored with shyness, entirely typical of her when speaking to her father.
Mr. Augusto rolled up the window in the manner of a man who was sure of his place and could therefore afford to leave it gracefully for a while. No sense in making his daughter feel that he made light of her. She had been uncomfortable enough for being the youngest child, and therefore the one taken least seriously.
This was partly why he chose to stay with Teresa, instead of with Nestor or Amanda. He reminded himself that he should mention this to them when he explained the reason for his decision. They would probably understand, but just the same he should be careful not to make them feel he was partial to Teresa. To please them, he might even say that their youngest sister had not yet weaned herself totally from her dependence on him. On second thought, he should perhaps leave that out. Teresa wouldn’t like that at all.
“Milk, Mommy,” Scotty’s falsetto made him look back, and he saw Teresa preparing a bottle of milk for her three-year-old. The old man shook his head but said nothing. He should tell her one of these days that her son should be stopped from drinking from a feeding bottle. He had a sneaking fondness for the boy, who bore a decidedly more than passing resemblance to him. They had the same prominent forehead, the same pointed chin, the same eyes that seemed to see more than they must, even, alas, the same nose that looked like a question mark turned upside down.
“Would you like a sandwich, Pa?” Teresa’s voice floated from the backseat and scattered his thoughts. He was grateful his back was turned to her, or he would have had some difficulty hiding his irritation. These days he had trouble threading his thoughts together, and Teresa’s constant interruptions were not much help.
“No,” his lips moved, but the sound seeped out only in a spent aspiration.
“Pa,” said Teresa, a little louder now, “I said would you like to have a sandwich?”
Jesus Christ, he was about to say, but checked himself. He should know better. Listening was a lost art, even in classrooms.
“No,” he repeated patiently, with the stateliness so instinctive to him, in a voice that splintered through sheer effort. It was the same voice that, years before, had never had to clamber above the normal pitch.
Mr. Augusto had been a high school teacher in his hometown up north, from the time he graduated from college to the time he retired. Teaching was the core of his universe around which turned his other concerns — mere dim constellations that one must learn to live with. He loved to speak before a class of about forty pupils who listened to him after the fashion of a movie audience. It gave him the feeling of having ascendancy over young minds. For the old man loved to be in control, and had generally succeeded in this. In fact he had but a small affection for those who had little control over their own selves, much less of others. He was quick to smell this weakness in people, and when he did, he made sure not to traffic with them, afraid of getting infected.
There had not been any hint of laxity in his countenance. His taller-than-average height had been accentuated by an upright bearing. He had a quiet, unhurried gait, which could only be put down to the conviction that his presence was important and that others would always wait for him. He had his Opinions cut and dried, and, if voices were visible, his would probably move with a swagger.
So great was the store he laid on the dignity of his profession that when his children were still babies who could only coo and cackle, he was careful not to talk to them in the presence of others, for it made him feel like a fool. But he more than made up for this when they became old enough to communicate. He had been very patient in answering their questions, and had not minded if his answers had given rise to more questions. He had taken them on long walks, let them see and touch things, then urged them to look for the precise word to describe a cluster of clouds, a flower, a sound, a sensation. He remembered with particular vividness and special fondness how Teresa pointed once to a bird pulling a worm out of the soil and said it looked like a boy playing tug-of-war.
A street urchin crossed the highway without warning, making his son-in-law jam on the brakes. Mr. Augusto would have hit the dashboard, had Dan not promptly swung his arm to hold him in place. Long after the old man had regained his balance, Dan’s arm stayed on his shoulder, a fatherly gesture that nettled him for reasons he did not care to dwell on.
“Are you all right, Pa?” asked Teresa.
“Yes,” he answered, barely managing to make the “s” audible enough, and still keeping on the magisterial air he had worn for so long. Mr. Augusto was already well on in years and was proud of it, for it took a lot of doing for one to reach eighty. A good man, he believed, was like a good book that grew richer with every reading. Old age was a sacrosanct state, attained only by those who had the courage to live, Eighty years had been good to him, something he only considered his just reward for a life untainted by any indignity. This conviction was undimmed by his growing feebleness after his stroke. He had become short of breath, that was true. But who wouldn’t feel out of sorts after an illness any-way? And who didn’t get sick every now and then?
By the time they reached the suburbs the ineffectual transparency of the moon had given way to a throbbing radiance. Dan rolled the car into the garage of a sprawling bungalow just a block off the main road. He helped the old man out of the car and held him by the elbow as they entered the house.
Mr. Augusto looked around and decided that the house had not changed much since he first came here on Scotty’s baptism. It still had the tentative air of a rented apartment, as though the occupants had not really planned to settle down. Dan’s hand still cupped his father-in-law’s elbow even when they were well inside his room. The old man testily twisted himself free.
When Dan had left, Mr. Augusto sat on the bed and heard the linen crackle. The granulitic tiles shimmered like flattened cowrie shells. The viscous smell of recently-dried paint still faintly lingered. All things inside the room — from the books to the mahogany shelves and desk — smelt of newness. He wouldn’t have been surprised if he saw price tags clinging to them. Yet there was something about the room that made him flinch a little. Then the reason came to him like a hammer-blow: he was in what used to be the storeroom — a kind of limbo for all things that had fallen into disuse. The sight of a urinal brooding on the night table offered scant relief from the wave of depression that was beginning to sweep over him. He drove away the vague disquiet and sat down before the desk. He peered at the books and chose one.
Teachers are apprehensive and bewildered, uncertain about the relevance of what they are doing, and increasingly resented by their students. The words didn’t carry any meaning to him. He tried again. Teachers are apprehensive and bewildered, uncertain … apprehensive and bewildered … bewildered. He took off his reading glasses and rubbed the reddened, smocked area between his eyes. He was dead beat, that was all, and drowsy, too, he assured him-self. He had traveled for five hours at a stretch. Anybody would have found it hard to concentrate after that tiring trip.
He placed a bookmark on the page he was reading. He had not gone beyond the second paragraph of the preface although he had been trying to read for the past half-hour. With a weary air he pressed his palms on the table and raised himself, his arms quivering as they supported his wizened, jaded body. What was left of his frazzled flesh flapped at his slightest movement, like swaddling clothes hung on a thin wire. He was a bag of bones, and he was almost afraid he would produce a rattling sound if he didn’t move carefully. He trudged out of the room, holding on to the wall and the door jamb for support.
In the kitchen he tried to see what he could do to help. Teresa had already made up some broiled fish and chop suey for supper. The table had been set. Everything appeared to have been taken care of. Ah, the frying pan was in the sink, still caked with a thin layer of burnt fried rice. He had started to scrape it off with a spatula when Teresa came in from the dining room and took the pan from him.
“You must be very tired, Pa. Why don’t you rest in your room and I’ll just call you when it’s time to eat?” she said, in a tone that struck him as a trifle too motherly. He stared at her for a moment, like a student confronted by a lesson that was out of his depth.
The old man hobbled back to his room, telling himself he should be glad his daughter spared him from a task for which he had too little talent. But the incident marked the muted birth of a deep sense of something still undefined and shapeless, but distinctly alarming, that began to nibble its way into his gaunt heart. The feeling flitted by, hardly willing to be pinned down so easily, but it left a sinister ring, like the stealthy crunching of a key working itself into the lock of one’s door in the dead of night.
* * *
A month of rest in the city did little for his health, he reflected, as he painfully picked his way from his room to the living room. His chest was sunken, his head and shoulders yielded to gravity. Scotty was nestled on the sofa, but was off like a shot when he saw his grandfather. The old man was about to settle himself on the sofa and read the morning paper, when he noticed a few drops of liquid trickling down from the very spot he had always chosen to sit on.
Muttering to himself, he limped to the kitchen, where he found Teresa preparing breakfast. “Your son,” he began in a voice that seemed to come through a mince-meat machine, “wet … the sofa.” The voice whittled down to a whisper somewhere in the middle of the sentence and finally ended in a whistling sigh, which did not draw the sting from the reproach.
Teresa wiped the sofa without a word and placed a folded Ilokano blanket on the still damp spot so that her father could sit and read, for he wouldn’t sit or read elsewhere. It was part of the routine that he had established in the past month because it was too tiring to have to think every morning of what he would do the whole day. And it pained him to know that whatever he did didn’t really matter in any way. Moreover, a clearly defined timetable, he discovered, made today exactly identical with yesterday and assured him of a somewhat similar tomorrow. Habits congealed time into stasis, rendering it incapable of catching up with him.
It was not mere whimsicality that threw him into a rage and even made him weep when something upset his routine: the shifting of the radio dial from his favorite radio station, a delayed lunch, a jangle of voices that woke him up earlier than usual, and even the desk lamp tilted at an angle different from the one to which he had become accustomed.
Teresa took everything in, first with a baffled expression, then with stoic patience which he found rather insulting. Later he perceived with a slumping heart how his words slipped from her mind like water off a duck’s back. In fact, lately he had often caught his daughter giving him a look that he roughly translated to mean “Come now, be a good boy and stop these tantrums.” Even his son-in-law had begun talking to him in the same tone he used for Scotty. Once, after one of his rages, he caught Dan giving his wife sympathetic nod. He was even more hurt when Teresa decided, over his head, to send Scotty to a nursery school despite his presence. He felt slighted by the facility with which his daughter had shown that he wasn’t as badly needed as all that.
Mealtimes were particularly excruciating. He felt transparent, unseen. He always tried to join in the conversation, but he couldn’t get a word in edgeways. His voice had become so soft it couldn’t even reach the other side of the dining table. Often he would start to say something only to be pulled up short by Dan or Teresa, who very likely didn’t even hear him talking. If he managed to get their attention, they would listen to him politely, nodding and saying “uh-huh,” which pleased him, until he asked something and they continued nodding and saying “uh-huh” stupidly.
The incident with Scotty that morning made him sulk in his room all day, with Teresa bringing in his meals. And when dark-ness deepened and shadows crept on all objects around him, he again felt but fought the almost maniacal need to be close to the people from whom night disengaged him.
He had begun to fear the dark. He was afraid some kind of pain would catch him by surprise and not give him any chance to cry out for help. Against the dead stillness of the night his heart sounded thunderous as though he heard it through a stethoscope. He passed the long hours away watching the shafts of light that glided across the ceiling as occasional cars passed by. He also tried to recover his naphthalene-laden past, but no sooner had he remembered a person’s name than he began to wonder what he remembered him for. His memory, to his surprise and dismay, had flown free of his grasp. A great deal of his past was now a good way beyond retrieving, had grown vestigial, leaving him with a present that was always setting off in a hurry to fuse with the past, and a future that kept shrinking.
Just after midnight, Teresa as usual walked into the room and touched his forehead with her palm and cheek while he kept his eyes closed and pretended to sleep. She seemed to bring into the room the most unlikely mixture of safety and threat.
Toward the pre-dawn hours he managed to force himself to sleep, and for what seemed like a whit of a moment, he was dead to the world. His last thought before he gratefully sank into sleep was of mapping out a toilet training program for Scotty. He thought it a shame to let a three-year-old run around, unaware of how to master his own body.
When the frenzied sounds of the suburban morning reached him through the jalousies, Mr. Augusto opened his eyes, feeling like he had not slept at all but had merely closed his eyes through the bleak black night.
His still befuddled eyes meandered around the room. Strange how he had learned to come to terms with this room, which had incensed him before. He inhaled the grey walls that seemed to bow toward him, then looked out the window. He discovered that by paying close attention to things around him, he was able to fight off the lassitude that often came over him now. The window screen chopped the grizzled sky into countless tiny squares. It must have drizzled while he slept, for beads of rain still hung and slid delicately on the telephone wires, as though afraid to let go and blend with the earth.
He smelled before he felt the warmth that stole wetly under him, creeping up to his waist. He remained lying down, unable to move, bewildered, and sat up only when the wetness acquired a dog-nose coldness. He saw with piercing clarity the splotch of yellowish moisture that glared from the bedsheet and blanket. He looked at it, with eyes that flickered with exquisite pain and a glimmer of hope in alternating flashes, as if he had just heard a bad news but was hoping it was a practical joke. Then hope finally passed off. His insides suddenly felt all churned up, and his face felt so hot he almost expected it to steam. So it had come to this, he thought, as he changed into a fresh pair of pants. His body had started going about its own business without consulting him.
He was still in a daze when Teresa, her eyes still puffy with sleep, knocked and rustled in to bring in his breakfast. She gave no sign of surprise upon finding his bed wet, and would not have behaved differently had the bed been Scotty’s.
“The blanket — and pajamas — are — wet, too,” he said, quite needlessly, his arms coddling the soggy witnesses to his incontinence. He took extreme care not to let his voice carry any trace of embarrassment or guilt, or even of defiance. But there was in his eyes something that faintly resembled supplication.
