I haven’t talked to him in years, but his absence and Mom’s anger at him were like their own characters in our lives, coming out sideways, in between things. Every time someone let her down, she’d make a crack about him. I can see her standing in the kitchen, hand on hip, sour twist to her mouth, telling the story for the umpteenth time.He left without warning. In the end, he wasn’t really a person who wanted to be married.When she retook her maiden name, I begged her to let me do the same.
I swipe away the tab on my screen. I’ve made it this far without him. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
My phone buzzes, and it’s a text from my cousin Trisha.
Trisha:
hey Ate Ruby it’s been awhile my dad wanted me to tell you we’re having a family party weekend after next u should come
Idefinitelycan’t tell her. For one thing, Trisha is seventeen, and this would probably freak her the fuck out. Bad older cousin behavior—not that I was exactly in the running for Ate of the Year, anyway. I’ve never been that close with the rest of my family.
Maybe it’s because I felt like such a failure where Mom was concerned—I didn’t want to add more people I could disappoint to the mix.
The faces of Trisha’s parents, Tito Rob and Tita Rina, flash through my mind, well-meaning, concerned. They live in San Diego, and we’d go see them once or twice a year.
Mom would constantly tell me I should be closer with them. But even though she talked a big game about the importance of family, she was always finding excuses not to go.I can’t be away from home that long, we have a big project coming up in my department, I’m working lots of nights and weekends.
Then the realization emerges sharp and clear from the fog of my mind:Greg would get it.
And even though the thought makes me lightheaded, I instantly know it’s true. Yes, we’ve drifted apart since high school, and barely talked for the past five years. Our friendship didn’t cut off dramatically, after whatever went wrong when we kissed. It fizzled out slowly, less and less frequent contact, excuses and evasions and things unsaid.
But he knows my mom, and not just the way other people in the office do—from the casserole dishes of pancit she’d bringto office potlucks and her stiff emails and the sad story on the GoFundMe that circulated for her funeral expenses.
Greg knows her from spending holidays together, from hearing her lectures and laughing at her jokes. He knows her from chopping vegetables when he’d come by before I’d gotten home from school—and she’d put him to work,if he was going to stand around anyway.
He knows her fromlivingtogether, because when Greg and I were eleven, the market crashed, and he and his mom lost their house—so they moved in with us for a bit, just until Tita Wendy could get her bearings. At the time, it made me and Greg even closer. A couple months of staying up late whispering, getting scolded by our moms, talking in our own secret code. I cried so much when they went to stay with Tita Wendy’s sister up north while she rebuilt her savings. They moved back and rented a place a couple years later, at the start of eighth grade, and the fact that Greg and I had survived two years of long distance made our friendship seem invincible.
And even though I spent years feeling bitter that it wasn’t, it’s so clear to me, right then, that I can tell him about this.
Greg might be the only other person in the world who can viscerally understand why it’s hard to talk to Mom, now that I have a chance again. Because Mom loved him like family, and if there’s anyone she was harder on than me, it’s Greg.
Back before we kissed—back in the sun-dappled time when we were solidly, safely friends—whenever one of us was upset and needed to talk, we had a tradition. We’d meet at the playground after dinner. Just the name of the park it’s in, Sterling Field, became our shorthand forEmergency meeting! I hate talking to people but if I don’t talk to someone I’m probably going to explode.
I haven’t used it in years. But when I was home from the East Coast for holidays, sometimes I’d still text GregSterlingto see if I could, and he’d always show up.
When I was back for Christmas once and found out my boyfriend had cheated on me, and I needed a shoulder to cry on. Right after my interview with my old company in New York, when I thought I’d bombed and would never get hired there—but a couple days later, I got an offer email. When I was so acutely jealous of his new girlfriend, a couple years after college, that I called him to the playground just to talk about my existential dread (and regretted it shortly afterward). I decided then that it was unhealthy, the way I wasn’t moving on, and we drifted apart.
But a literal haunting has to qualify asdesperate times.With shaking hands, I text Greg:
Ruby:
sterling?
Greg:
i’ll be there
The way he barely missed a beat leaves my heart pounding in my ears for a while after.
Chapter
10
When I show up at the park, I’m surprised to find Greg already there, waiting for me. Sitting on the swing, pushing himself lazily back and forth with his feet.
Mom used to joke about how he’d be late to everything.He and Wendy are on Filipino time.But my mother lived for business advice books, and somewhere along the line, she picked up the maxim thaton time is already late.
As if enough things weren’t out of joint already. Greg could at least do me the courtesy of keeping to his usual patterns.
