“Beautiful dreamer…wake unto me…starlight and dewbright are waiting for thee…beautiful dreamer…queen of my song…”
He is laughing and she is laughing too and he is looking at her kind of endearing and kind of funny, and nothing is what it is now, it just is
.
How could he do this to me? He loved me so much, how could he do this…?
What did Dante say was the worst sin? Not that Dante was such an authority on sin. Larissa doesn’t know Dante’s personal history, but she’d staged enough Shakespeare and read enough of the Greeks, and most important, she’d seen
The Godfather
, and taken a Corleone course in college, to know that all the poets and all the writers, pulp and classical, the United States
government and Jesus himself were pretty specific and consistent on what constituted the gravest of all sins. It wasn’t a toss-up between murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. It wasn’t between gluttony or perjury. It wasn’t fortune-telling or indolence.
It was betrayal.
Oh, Kai.
That was the one. The U.S. Constitution was plain. “
The President of the United States shall be removed from office for Treason
.” And just so you knew where you stood, the Founding Fathers capitalized Treason for you, in case you had any doubts.
Mark Antony’s eulogy of Caesar was no less indicting. “
Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel. Judge, o ye gods, how dearly Caesar loved him…then I and you and all of us fell down, whilst bloody treason flourished over us
.”
Father Emilio:
Man is not punished for his sin. He is punished with his sin
.
Larissa’s skin is bubbling up under the sun.
My question to Father Emilio, when I see him next, is this: why is the gravest of sins, the hardest of all the commandments to keep? Why is it the easiest to break? If it’s so terrible, why do we all do it?
Why are so many of us faithless?
Betrayal:
be
: to completely;
tray
: to hand over. Betrayed:
utterly handed over
.
Larissa can almost hear the voice of the man of the cloth replying: first answer about yourself, Larissa Stark. Not why are others faithless. Why were
you
faithless?
I wasn’t faithless! she argues, bristling. Perhaps she needs more time to think about that one a little later. Her priority now is to get to the horse. She is almost there! The horse is still and Larissa is moving. Her left side from her shoulder to her ankle is scraping the dusty ground.
I wasn’t faithless! I loved them. I love them still. I don’t
let myself think of Emily’s nails she keeps breaking when she plays volleyball but keeps wanting to grow because she wants them long like mine. I don’t let myself think of Asher sitting on my bed playing me a song on his guitar he learned just yesterday, or of Michelangelo running through the porch door in Lillypond saying, Mom, come, I caught a whole family of frogs, I put them in our boat, come.
It wasn’t because I didn’t love them. I just wanted what I wanted. The allegiance was to me first. I hoped Jared would get on with it. I hoped the children would get over it. What’s the big deal anyway? People do it all the time.
That last one is true. People do it all the time, betray the ones they love.
That Ninth Circle must be filling up by now, spilling over the Hades banks. No more room in Lucifer’s mouth. The icy rooms are full.
But why am I singled out? Larissa cried, crawling on one side, on one arm, when other people do it too? We talk about how betrayal is really an act of rebellion against possession. Obligation is all about what you owe someone else. It’s about commitment, vows, the promises you made. Well, we rebel. We don’t like to be told what to do. It’s not so much betrayal as assertion. We proclaim who we are to the universe. This is what I am! I don’t want to be pigeon-holed. I don’t want to be narrowed. Obligations are anchors around your neck, and you want to be free like a bird.
It isn’t about other people. It isn’t about husbands. Or even about children. It is about Larissa.
Larissa wanted Kai. Larissa wanted adventure. She wanted passion. She wanted, period. In the end, that trumped everything.
A small thought bubble takes the breeze out of her self-righteous sails for a moment. Then why is Kai’s betrayal so devastating to her? He also wanted what he wanted. Why is
she steeped in justification when thinking about herself, but deems it unforgivable when thinking about him? Look how upset she was: she lost her mind, she shoved him. They fell. Now he is dead.
Why did he have to die for no longer wanting to carry his obligation to her?
She didn’t mean to hurt him.
Certainly
she didn’t mean to hurt herself. She lost her mind. Now it’s back. She was so angry. She didn’t meant to hurt him. Still, though. What he did was unforgivable. She fully believes it.
She can’t get to the truth of it, like a needle in the heart. Why is the consequence of
her
action nothing but a beautiful execution of her noblest instinct, and yet the worst thing
he
could ever do?
Ah! She is getting closer to the truth here in the blinding white wilderness. It is only betrayal when your lover turns his back on you. When you walk away from your family, it is principled self-determination, independence, personhood. It is freedom. It is love. All falling under the category of positive qualities. Almost like virtue.
It occurs to Larissa that this is the first time she even words her abandonment in these terms. She has been calling it all sorts of things, starchy, self-justified. She has never called it betrayal.
Betrayal is what someone else does to you.
We expect so much of other people, thinks Larissa. So much of them, and yet so little of ourselves. Is that unfair? Oh, well. What’s done is done. And it is done. You know what’s unfair? That she can’t move her leg! That she can’t find the horse.
“All I do is pick up after the children. That’s what I do. I went to school, grew up, went to college, worked hard, studied hard, dreamed BIG, got a job, briefly, thought much of myself, my talents, my intellectual gifts. I rocked to music, devoured books, baked, painted, danced, smoked. I was so happening. And then I had one child and another and another. And now all I do from morning till night is direct them and clean up their cereal bowls. Go get your glasses. Go get your folder. Go get the letter for me to sign. Go get your shoes. Go get your bag, your lunch money, your coat, your sister, your clarinet. Or: put your shoes away. Put your bowl away. Put the cereal box away. Throw away that wrapper. Close the pantry door. Pick up the straw off the floor. Close the dishwasher. Clothes go in the hamper, not right outside. Make your bed. Fold your couch blanket. Give Riot some water. The tissues from your nose, do they belong on the table or in the garbage? The empty cups, the paper cups, the empty boxes, the open jar of peanut butter, when when when when when will it ever stop?”
Evelyn sat smiling lightly. “I agree with everything you say, Larissa. My back is bent because there’s always something on the floor I need to pick up. I was, I am, just like you. I can’t believe I’m doing this instead of reading, or writing, or acting on stage. Do you remember how much I loved the stage? It was my life! And now this is what I do while the kids run off to their friends. I bend down and down.” Evelyn nodded. “Larissa, I know. But this I also know. When you spend your day, each and every day, all the time, picking up after other people, and not just other people, but your children, your flesh and blood children, you bend, you sigh, you pick up the toy they dropped, the milk cover, the money they had to take with them on a trip and didn’t, when you do all those things for them, day in and day out, that’s when you find the Divine inside yourself. You know why? Because it’s only the Divine in you that would do it. Do you know what I mean? You do it because that is what Love looks like, bent at the basin on the floor, washing their feet.”
Larissa nodded. “You are so right, Ev,” she said. “That’s so smart. That’s exactly how it is, how I feel. Now look. I’m sorry I have to run. But I must get to the store, or otherwise, those children I love so dearly and that husband so hungry will have nothing to eat. Sorry, I must run. Look at the time. It’s nearly noon. You don’t mind, do you?” She was so late! Kai had been waiting since eleven!
Women are saved through childbirth, Evelyn said to her as a goodbye
.
To begin, to end, all the traffic in between.
Larissa now knows what the lie is: that the sun always goes down. Not here. Not this sun. It is never going down.
Her eyes see something close to her, and she tries to focus. She is having a harder time focusing. She squints, gleans through the diminishing fog of her blurred vision, a shape in front of her, supine, on its side, so familiar, yet alien, close, yet supernaturally distant.
She shakes her head, blinks and blinks again.
To her uncomprehending gaze, the shape in front of her is morphing into what looks like Kai!
But that can’t be! She has been crawling away from him for hours! The horse is just over there, a few feet away. She is far away from Kai. This is an illusion. It can’t be.
And yet. Here he is. He is just as she had left him. Except swollen, nearly unrecognizable.
But if he is right here, it means that she is right there, too! It means she hasn’t moved at all in all this time. A bubble on her skin bursts, starts to leak weak clear fluid, viscous light-hued blood. Another bubble bursts. And another.
She is just where she left herself. She is in exactly the same place.
Lowering her head, Larissa bends to Kai, lies down next to his body in the sand. She is so tired. She is going to rest for a few minutes before she begins again.
Minutes pass.
Or is it hours?
Maybe no time at all passes since the sun doesn’t move.
Maybe there is no more time.
A thought flashes by her. What if I can’t get out of this? What if no one comes and I can’t get on the horse? What if this is out of my hands? She pushes it out of her head. Ezra was right. Matter could not contemplate its own extinction, could not conceive of itself not being. Atoms could not swirl and contemplate the end of their own electrical charge, could not betray or be betrayed. Could not abandon, or be abandoned. Atoms could not love…or be loved.
The soul could. And her soul kept searching for the faithless horse in the blinding white. If only she could get on it, all would be well. Paradise was lost, but it could be regained. What did Father Emilio say?
We have the power in us to begin the world anew
. She would get herself to a hospital and when she was better, she would fly to Manila and go back to San Agustin, work at the orphanage, do her obediences, pay her penance, and take care of Nalini, and if Che hadn’t come back yet, they would take what was left of Jared’s money and fly back to the U.S. stopping off for a few days in Hong Kong because Larissa had never seen Hong Kong and always wanted to, and then they would go and visit Summit, such a nice town to raise a family. Larissa could show the young girl where she had once lived, introduce her to the husband and children she had left behind.
B
enevolence, Goodness, Kindness, Mercy, Humility, there it was, Humility. She couldn’t believe how well she remembered the layout of the streets, the familiar names. She walked faster and faster through the old neighborhood, passing the market, still selling the shoes and pears side by side, reveled in the pressed together streets, in the bustle of the afternoon. Faster and faster until she started to run, her little bag on her back, well, she didn’t have a lot left. When they discharged her, they gave her back the few things she had, so she ran a little now, it wouldn’t kill her, to run outside again, to be free.
Moonwalk, what a nice name for a town. Everything about it pleased her today, the closeness of the buildings, the smells of fish and smoke, the briny bay. She couldn’t believe she was
finally
back. She had written Father Emilio four months earlier when she knew she was going to be released early for good behavior from that fuckhole of a Mindanao medium security prison for women, and he was, as always, good enough to write back. He even sent her a parcel, a care package of dried crackers and cookies, and some potato chips; he sent her a Bible and pictures of her unbelievable baby, he forwarded her a letter
from Jared that was too painful for Che to think about then or now—not when she was hurrying to see her own child—Jared’s letter about Larissa that broke Che’s unmended heart. Though the picture Jared included of his growing family comforted Che a tiny bit: his very pregnant Slovakian wife, his new baby, his children with Larissa, Emily, grown up, looking so much like her mother when young, Asher, shaggy-haired and unshaved, and Michelangelo, nearly a teenager, nearly as tall as his dad but with a floppy head of curly blond hair…the girls must love him, thought Che, as she wept for her dearest poorest Larissa.
She almost ran past San Agustin in her reverie.
“Che!” Father Emilio called, standing on the church steps, like always, open door behind him, looking out at the laity rushing by. Dropping her bag, she rushed to him. He hugged her. He was older and grayer, and his back was more stooped than she remembered, but that’s because he was always bending to bless the old people in their beds, to bless the hands of the little orphans.
“I’m so glad to see you, Che.”
“Not as glad as I am to see you, dear Father,” she said, kissing his hands, bending her head to be blessed by him.
“You’ve had a safe journey?”
She rolled her eyes. “I got sick, caught some viral island thing a few weeks ago.”
“You do look very thin.”
“I’m okay now. A little rice pudding, a little
pandesal
, some
halo-halo
, I’ll be as good as new.”
He motioned her inside. “Come. No use standing here,” he said, “when there is someone who has been waiting so long to see you.”