"Mom, I’d like you to meet Tunting Cruz Matters," my daughter Risa said.
"Your name? Sounds like a sentence," I said, and we all laughed.
They were talking about the Martel case. Tunting handles Melissa who is asking for support. Of course, Robby Martel doesn’t want to give it. He has his children. He will not support Melissa. Apparently he made her sign a document (after shooting her in the stomach) that said something like she would not sue if he paid her hospital bills. Then he paid the hospital bills – three million more or less for four months of confinement. Now what about her? She needs some compensation for all the years she stayed married to him and allowed him to beat her up but Philippine law does not seem to protect these women – rich or poor – not from the way the law is written but according to the way it is interpreted, implemented or bought. "Therefore, men here remain jerks," I think Tunting said. I am not sure whether she said that or I did. "In the United States, you better support your children and your wife or you go to jail." That one she said. Tunting is New York-based.
"You remember Robby, Mom?" Risa asked. Yes, I will never forget. More than 25 years ago, in the middle of the night, my telephone rang. It was Joey. He claimed that he and Rosanna were with Risa and Robby driving around the hills of Puerto Azul when they had an accident. They were now in Makati Medical getting treatment. Everyone was okay. I looked at my watch. It was almost 2 a.m. "May I talk to her?" I asked.
He hesitated, then said, "She’s being examined now."
"Joey," I said, "I don’t drive. I will take a cab to go to the hospital right now. I want to know if I will find her dead or alive. You better tell me the truth."
"Hold on, please," he said, then pulled Risa’s bed out from under the doctor’s hands and brought her to the telephone to talk to me. I knew then with so much relief that my daughter was alive.
I brushed her hair and clods of earth, broken twigs and pebbles fell out. She had been thrown out of the Mercedes sky light and rolled down the side of a hill, my poor child, my beloved daughter. I could have killed this brutal driver but that would have solved nothing at all. Her father and I restrained ourselves. His father told me he would pay for her hospitalization and moved her up to the 9th floor. The accident had injured her spine, an injury she would keep forever. In fact, she was the most injured of the parties but we did not pursue anything beyond the hospital bills because, frankly, afterwards, I wanted her to stay as far away from Robby Martel as possible. To her credit, she did.
But she did not avoid marital woes nor did I for that matter but I only went through marital woes once. From him I am twice-divorced and finally annulled; married once, parted thrice. Does it feel any different? No, but I am free to marry again should I want to, a question I ask myself on and off and always I come up with stranger questions. Whatever for? Do I want to nurse an older man to death or does he want to nurse me to mine? Maybe I just lack the feeling it takes to get married again or maybe I just haven’t met anyone who can make me feel that way or maybe I just never want to do it again. I could live with another person. Yes, to that. But marriage? All those papers? I don’t think it’s for me.
My Risa, however, believes it is for her, and we are seated at the height of a storm having lunch with her lawyer, her present husband whom I love, and we are discussing troubled marriages, not what causes them but what people must do after they end. We have to do enough to ensure that all the lives that depended upon the marriage have some money to grow on and this, whether we like it or not, refers to the children and the wife. Money – no matter how small the amount – must be set aside for the children, first and foremost. The children did not ask to be alive, they must be supported. As we go up the demographic scale, there must be also some kindness of heart to compensate the wife for the years she invested in her marriage only to see it fail.
But we shall see how events roll out. "When I was graduating," Tunting recalls amused, "all I could say was, ‘I want to be happily married.’"
"We all say that until we get married," I said. And we all laughed, said good-bye to the lunch and to each other, while I returned to the remaining terrible day, to my continued testing, a post-stroke brain test to see how damaged the goods are.