A Fearful Foretelling

Dearest J,

Her mobile phone lighted up as she was trying to negotiate her trusty old blue sedan between a black car overlaid with a layer of gray dust and a pink one whose bumper was jutting out of the lane. Mommy, what's taking you so long at work? You're already late for lunch. And it's Saturday ü, the message read.

She let out a small laugh as she turned off the engine and grabbed her purse. It was her 12-year-old daughter, who, like her son and husband, never tired of sweetly taunting her about her compulsion to work all the time on one or several of the small Web sites she writes for and manages. She has grown used to working constantly for the last 13 years. Even at home at night or on weekends, she would steal moments to check the blogs, read up on the news, see her email. During vacati

ons, her family makes sure to strip her luggage of any gadget but they stop at taking away her notebook and pen, and with these she scribbles whenever she feels like it.

She put on her dark, round shades as she got off the car and gently closed the door. She stood under the shade as she waited to cross the street. She looked up and saw, through the swaying leaves of the coconut tree, a hazy sun, as white as her sundress. Her husband likes to point out that she still dresses the same way she did when she was in her 20s in dresses with the blazing colors of wild summer sunsets and monochromatic shade of fogged up, empty nights in the city.

She stepped into the hot March sun as traffic ground to a halt. A gust of wind gently lifted her long and wavy tresses as she made her way across two lanes of vehicles waiting impatiently for a green light. She did not see her family in the corner table under the trellised archway; the heat at this time of year drove them to the air-cooled indoor dining area. It was their favorite weekend restaurant because, as her son would say, its food was almost as comforting as her own cooking.

The doorman greeted her cheerfully, Hi ma'am, they've been waiting for you, same table. He tells her the same line, in varying degrees of chirpiness, as frequently as she arrives late for meals with her family at the restaurant. She always answers with a nod and a smile.

She saw them at the usual table closest to the farthest wall from the door, where a wood-framed mirror hung and through which they watched other diners and made commentaries about their food and lives. They were huddled close together, which they do when they are trying to devise a new prank or learn a card trick from their father. The head of her 10-year-old boy was the first to bob up. He was laughing so hard, holding his stomach, while his sister clamped her right hand over her mouth as she tousled her brother's thick hair with her left.

Her husband was arranging a deck of cards when he looked up and saw her coming toward them. He smiled and mouthed, Finally. The children turned and, upon seeing her, cried. Mommy!

Her son frowned as she bent down to kiss his forehead. Daddy wouldn't let me have ice cream for appetizer, he complained. You're acting like a big baby again just like daddy, she murmured against her son's cherubic cheeks, which elicited giggles from her daughter. She turned to the girl, rubbed her nose against hers and teased, You have not stopped sending me messages since you woke up.

If you came earlier, I would have stopped sending messages, she said with a pout.

She laughed at her adorable impertinence. Then, she kissed her husband softly. He smiled with his eyes. They just missed you at breakfast. They were carving boats and animals out of the fruits you brought home to make your salad more interesting.

But I bet you already ate all of them, she told her children as she settled into her favorite wing-backed old country chair.

The waiter appeared behind her and asked, The usual, ma'am? to which she gave her customary reply, Yes, please.

They continue the affectionate familial chatter as they munch on nuts and cheese while waiting for their food to be served. It would not take long; they come to the restaurant every Saturday at brunch without fail and order the almost the same fare of shredded buttered corn, four cheese pizza with an extra serving of bacon, buffalo wings with blue cheese dip and mashed potatoes on the side. They take turns picking the dessert, all of which they have tried. Sometimes they ask for a pasta dish, but they would always say it was never as good as their mother's.

It was a genuinely charmed domestic life. They did everything together with joy, from cooking and cleaning the house, to driving around town and going on vacation. They are always seen laughing and doting on each other. The couple still seemed in love after 13 years. Their children were healthy, active and bright both took after their mother's nose and thick, dark hair, and their father's mellow brown eyes and timid smile. They were cheerful, grounded, patient, just like their father. And just like him, they smothered her with attention.

Their world revolved around her, simply put. They have grown accustomed to her incurable workaholism and do not question it as the only abnormality in their domestic bliss, only an unexplainable oddity of an enigmatic woman. And in spite her obsessiveness to keep busy and thinking, they never wanted for time and attention from her. She cooks all their meals at home and packs their lunch to school and work. She buys them curious books and knickknacks. She and her husband never miss a school activity, and together they tuck the children to sleep every night.

Their life was what people fancied as perfect. But the mere concept of bliss, more so its actuality, was completely alien to her. Having grown up seeing unhappy homes and dysfunctional relationships, she had firmly concluded that bliss was not only unattainable, but also a cruel fantasy.

But her loving husband arranged for their family life to be such: solid, secure, safe. He infected the children with his optimism and devotion, and if she had passed her moodiness or temper to any of them, they never exhibited anything close to the fits of rage or melancholia that marked most of her youth.

She could not complain she felt shamefully ungrateful when even a flicker of doubt crosses her mind. She avoids brooding over lost dreams and her strange life by immersing herself in new projects or the week's menu. She has learned to fall back into various routines with them, and realized that these were not threatening to a stimulating life or the despicable hallmark of ennui predictability protected her from the darkness that engulfed her most of her life.

People, friends and strangers alike, often ask them the token, clichéd question, What's your secret? She never answers except to say, Ask my husband, for she sincerely does not know an appropriate response that would not dampen their misplaced sanguineness or mortify her husband's good intentions. All she had to do was follow his family's lead and life played out unimaginably blissful.

She often feels a mere role-player in a bizarre scheme of happiness she does not merit to live. It was an enviable life by all appearances, but one she remains uncertain if she ever wanted, at least with them.

Her husband's warm hand touching her knuckles broke her ungracious reverie. She realized she was unmindfully sipping an empty cup of tea. She looked away from a painting of a stormy sea with crashing waves and glinting stars against a gloomy night that had her transfixed, and turned to look at her children by each of her elbows. They held out in their hands yellow origami roses.

Count them, her husband prodded her. Her son and daughter held twenty each. Happy birthday, Mommy, they said in unison. She took the delicate flowers in her hands and kissed them all over their face.

Her husband was settling the bill while the children scrapped leftover chocolate off their plates. She held the roses close to her bosom and stroked them while staring at the mirror as has been her habit at this time, when the noonday sun tried to find its way through the cracks of the window shutter.

Her gaze was finding its way back to their table when she caught a familiar figure, two tables from them, that perturbed her fragile core. She turned around and was shocked into absolute silence.

She had not seen him, not even his shadow, in the last 13 years. Through a combination of will, though faltering, and cooperative fate, she was able to banish him from memory 13 years ago. She buried who she had been from birth until she was 27 along with their brief, stolen time together in inaccessible recesses of her memory, one no one had the slightest clue existed. She would always dream of him, which roused her from a restless slumber typically between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., her personal witching hour, and kept her from returning to sleep beside her husband.

He would be 57 then, and the closely cropped silver hair and deeper lines on his forehead were telltale signs of long years gone by. His thin lips, though, remained as pink as ever, defying aging and separation. A man in his early 20s who looked uncannily like him in his younger days sat beside him while a woman sat across them.

She wanted to dismiss it as a fluke, a callous deal of cards in an otherwise largely lucky hand. But he saw her too, and was looking at her in a way she could only recognize as longing.

Her husband stroked her cheek and gestured it was time to leave. Fortunately her children were already running toward the door and they did not see tears gushing down her face.

What's wrong? her husband bent down in alarm. Nothing, was all she could say. He helped her up and held her close while they walked to the door, past him. She was shaking violently, more so inside than out.

She could not afford to resurrect her self that died all those years ago. She had since lived in her family's lives, for them. She knew no other way to survive the long, dark years ahead.

She was walking back to her apartment after seeing her mother. She moved out a year ago, the biggest hurrah of independence in her adult life. She celebrated her 27th birthday the day before in the apartment she was renting by cooking for a handful of friends and family whom she asked to drop by, and just returned her mother's dinnerware that she borrowed for the occasion.

She only wanted to be preoccupied on her birthday and cooking for friends and family seemed a satisfying diversion. Frankly, she found no reason for revelry. She grew older by the year but lonelier by the day. She cherished the people she invited but has grown to become a stranger to them. She preferred, as time passed, to keep to herself. She knew many people, but no one really knew her, not anymore. Reticence enabled her to shield her miserable life from casual scrutiny. She kept up appearances for her sake, not theirs, for she loathed explaining her thoughts and feelings to people who could never grasp her sorrow.

She climbed the footbridge and stopped midway to look out at glaring headlights light up the darkened street. She looked down she held no fear of heights and calculated what jumping over would cause her. She wondered if it would be fatal, if it would be painful and abrupt, if it would hurt more than dying inside, slowly, in silence.

Contemplating more years like this one piling up terrified her to immobility. She could no longer believe in the fundamental values indispensable to a sound survival - hope, love, dreams, possibilities - after he could not choose her because the die has been cast for him, not even when another vowed to devote his life to making these come true for her. He was perfect but he was not who she had given up her soul for. She would, for ever, mourn a lost love, and because of which, she would never be worthy again.

She, simply, had died. And she found that an unacceptable way to live the rest of her existence.

Always,

J