Chapter 2: Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

What was her name?

Who?

Your wife's, stupid! [I should explain. The literal translation for the Tagalog word bobo, which is what she said, is 'stupid'. However, it can have and, often does have, a soft edge to it; there is a sense of kidding and playfulness.]

Oh, Flor.

You learn to cook Filipino by Flor? I had served her a dish that was essentially a Filipino recipe.

Yes, I guess so. It would be hard to cook American here. Things are different here.

You like Filipino food? You eat rice? We had rice for supper, so in a literal way she knew I would eat rice. This was a deeper, a more global question. She wanted to know if I was comfortable with the concept of a rice-based diet. One where there was rice at essentially every meal.

We ate the rest of the supper in silence, or I should say, I ate, as Nene ate very little before indicating that she was full. When I finished and started to clean the dishes from the table Nene stopped me. Go away! Go into the sala. I will clean up. Go, Go!

Oh, God preserve me if I didn't hear echoes of my wife in those words. I did as instructed by this fourteen year old. I was being bossed around by someone fifty-two years my junior, but no differently than I had experienced with my wife. I allowed it because I wanted to allow it. There is no other way to explain it.

I sat in my easy chair in the Sala and picked up a book I had been reading before Flor died. The book had not been touched for forty-three days, and now it was back in my hands and I was reading it. In the kitchen, wearing a simple top and shorts of Flor's, Nene was scrubbing the pot I had used to cook our meal. She was humming to herself.

The next thing I knew, I had made it through a few chapters, it was nine o'clock and all the lights, save those in the sala had been turned off. The house was quiet. I found Nene in my bed, under a comforter and wrapped up in the silk robe I have given her to wear earlier. I was tired, confused, giddy, feeling pangs of something I could not assess. I undressed and climbed into bed on the opposite side from Nene. She could not have known, that the side she had taken was Flor's side ... there was no way she could have known. I lay down and went to sleep, and for the first time in many, many months, I slept through the entire night without once arising.

You have now almost caught up to me. This is the forty-forth day and it is this morning I am writing about now. When I awoke, I was alone in the bed. The robe Nene had worn was hanging from a hook. I got up, slipped into the master bathroom, toileted, showered, and shaved before reentering the bedroom, only to find clothing laid out for me. It was my clothing but it had been ironed. Flor had ironed my clothing but I hadn't and so after 44 days, nothing I owned had been ironed until ... this morning.

Once dressed, as my fourteen year old would have me dressed, I entered the kitchen to find a freshly washed, smiling face, dressed in one of my wife's dresses and a pair of pretty slippers. Granted the dress went below her knees and was never so long on my wife, but she looked good in it. The dining room table was replete with a bowl of fried rice and a mango sliced in three sections. What do you want to drink Howard? I found three-in-one packets. Is that what you drink?

I told her. We discussed where she could get a tricycle and how to get through the gate. And then she was gone. I wrote the first part of this while she was shopping. That was four hours of solid writing during which I did not know if she would really come back. The writing was a way of trying to understand what had happened to me. A sort of self-therapy, if you will, like the journal writing that patients sometimes do for their high dollar head shrinking therapists. There sure are a lot of them around Thousand Oaks, California.

I was pretty much at the end of the first chapter, and had tears in my eyes when Nene returned. I don't know whether the tears were for my greatly missed Flor or my fear that Nene might not come back. But return the imp did. She had bags, and receipts, and money to return. She wanted me to review her receipts and check the accuracy of the receipts plus the returned cash and made sure that the numbers equaled P24 less than P4000, as P24 are what the tricycles had cost. P8 each hop. I didn't think it was necessary to do that, but Nene got panicky when it looked like I might not check. So check I did. I totaled the whole damned thing up and put on a sour face. Oh God, Howard, what did I do wrong?

You didn't eat any lunch. You didn't grab even a drink for four hours. Next time you are gone so long I want you to sit down somewhere, relax and get some food Nene! God damn it, there is not a single peso unaccounted for. You spent nothing on yourself!

I screwed up, because the girl came all apart, sobbing and wailing and alternately hitting me and hugging me. Why? Howard why?! Why are you doing this to me? Why are you doing this? Why me? Why are you so nice? Why? Howard, WHY?

I don't know. Maybe because I am lonely? Maybe because you were in so much need of help? Maybe because, even if I can't help everyone, I can help you? Maybe because I need you to love me? Maybe because I am an old fool? I DON'T KNOW!

She's sobbing, holding on to me. She is so little. She can't weigh 35K. I have hard time even holding her, she is so far down below my arms. She is crying. I am crying. We are a couple of loons.