thE lady in polka dots
Normally, Elizabeth didn’t mind preparing for dinner, but Friday night was quite special. Her sister, Lilly, was coming all the way from London, to spend the rest of the summer with her and to see their parents, too.
It had been ages since Elizabeth saw Lilly, and she wondered if her sister was still that same hilarious Stephanie Plum she remembered most about her. Only this time, Elizabeth hoped Lilly was now on the road to redemption, after a life in ruins.
She remembered Francheska, too.
Yes, the poor Francheska. The three of them were Randy’s precious Tres Marias.
Elizabeth flashed back to the times when she and her sisters were just little girls, dreaming of the fancy things life could offer them, and that Elizabeth would become a lawyer (which she had achieved but she became a full-time mother, by choice). Lilly would become one of the world’s greatest chefs (which she hadn’t achieved, and indeed, she had always been messing up, until now). And Francheska would become a teenage superstar (but nobody knew because she had been gone, since then, and hadn’t communicated with the family).
Elizabeth held back a tear. Though it was far from happening, she wished her sister Francheska would be coming to visit, too. She longed so much for her sister to finally take a glance at Sophia, to let her see how the latter turned out, as Francheska’s exact doppelganger: those same sultry ocean eyes, radiant olive skin, and brown hair— some of the many features they had in common. How would Francheska react once she learned about everything, especially about Sophia?
A cab stopped by their house, and Alex saw it through the open windows.
“Mom, Aunt Lilly is here already,” he yelled, while he and Nadine were watching their favorite HBO series in the living room.
Everyone gathered to welcome Lilly, except for Sophia. She was there in her room, writing on her diary after finishing a canvas of a girl gone in the wilds, so dark and misty. The same daily activities had bored her since they arrived from their stint at Forest Green. When she heard the welcoming voices from downstairs, she tried to come down and join in, knowing someone was coming. Nadine happened to share it to her when the former visited her room the other night.
The problem was… Sophia was absolutely clueless about her Aunt Lilly. Aside from the fact that she couldn’t recall her, she also hadn’t seen Aunt Lilly mentioned in any of her diaries, and it frightened her. It frightened her that her aunt might ignore her… or treat her differently. It seemed that Sophia’s diaries were not as comprehensive as she hoped.
On the last step of the staircase, Sophia was thrown off balance when the lady in polka dots, who was then warmly welcomed into the living room, turned to glimpse at her.
“Hello. I suppose you are Sophia,” the strange lady said. The voice from those pink lips sounded calm and friendly.
Somehow, the drum roll in Sophia’s chest mellowed down. She didn’t expect that her aunt would greet her first—a good sign that her aunt wasn’t aloof. But she wondered why new people were suddenly entering in their lives lately. Did it have something to do with her running away?
Lilly didn’t look strange to Sophia, or maybe it was because Lilly had the dominant genes of the Roberts, Sophia’s maternal side. However, her small height was uncharacteristic of the Roberts. She was unmistakably smaller than Elizabeth, had a stout body build-up, and a few wrinkles on her face. Perhaps the presumptions were true, that she had been on drugs, at some point in her glum life as a woman who was always rejected.
Like a glass that would break at any moment, Sophia watched her aunt walk towards her. Lilly was bestowing her a careful scrutiny. Sophia’s brooding look reminded Lilly so much of someone else.
The sight of Sophia’s humid eyes shredded Lilly’s heart. She could sense the solitude in her niece. Anguish even. And just like everyone else, she wished that Sophia could be seen by Francheska, too. Francheska needed to have her past life fall back into place, now. But this was not the time for nostalgia. Lilly had to stay casual and focused. She had just met her niece.
Wonder came silently, to Sophia. Why was her aunt looking at her like that? Was there something wrong with her? Or with her face? She was pretty sure she’d fixed herself in the mirror before leaving her room.
Her wonders fell into pieces when Lilly uttered again. “How’s my dearest niece?” Lilly was sweeter than syrup, and way too careful when touching her.
Sophia’s heartbeat drummed quicker and louder as her aunt enclosed her and made her feel like there was no way out. And that was the time when Elizabeth butted in.
“Oh, it’s been a long trip, Lil! Mom and I prepared for a little festivity,” she said, and the attention was suddenly shifted to dinner.
Altogether, they gathered around the elliptical table, with zest burgeoning in the air. Before the prayer, Sophia was bordered with curiosity. New people had been showing her some sympathy lately, and she found it bearable. There must be something in her life, in her past that had been hovering, waiting to be uncovered. But what was it? What was there? What had happened in the past that made her present life much too hard?
Heavens, if only her memory didn’t keep failing her!
“So this is your idea of a little festivity?” Lilly laughed at Elizabeth’s irony, right after Nadine led the prayer. The ethnically diverse cuisines loaded on the table had quickly resolved Lilly’s lassitude from the long trip, and she began digging in. She’d still got it, that effortless humor that everyone liked so much.
The dinner commenced with so much chats about each other’s goings-on and it ended with a great deal of recollecting… digging up old memories, except for those that involved Francheska. The adults had it that way in the fear that Sophia might catch up onto something in their stories, and it wasn’t the right time yet to reveal anything bad, from the old days.
The whole time, Sophia was plainly a listener. She was already entertained, just watching everyone turn their heads to each other and talk about life. They were lively, but it seemed they were a bit careful with their words. She wasn’t that naïve not to notice.
At midnight, a careful knock distracted Sophia’s reading of Great Expectations. She got up from the bed and discovered her aunt’s presence in her door.
“Hey, are you about to sleep now?” Lilly asked beaming, allowing her snowy white teeth to glitter with the lights from overhead.
Sophia was almost icy in her reply. It was the best act of politeness she could muster—to return a smile and welcome her visitor-aunt to her room, but she failed to do so. She was merely surprised and shy, and that was always a bad combination for her.
Lilly narrowed her eyes then and gladly repeated her question. This time, Sophia was now attentive. “Ah, not yet… Aunt,” she said, shaking her head.
“Good. I can’t go to bed, so I thought that maybe, I could come and talk to you. Is that all right with you?”
Sophia seemed to have regained some confidence, and she now invited her aunt to her room. “Sure, I’d love to,” she said.
The first thing Lilly did was to delve through her niece’s framed photos on the wooden desk, and saw nothing but Sophia’s face and her best friend’s. “Um, any picture of a boyfriend?” she asked, with the attempt to open up a girly dialogue.
For a split-second, Sophia could not give her any response. She didn’t know the words to say. Surely Aunt Lilly would not need to know she had some flings in the past… but she was quite uncertain with the number. She was unsure if she had to include Abanir, or even Jericho. And the funny thing about the latter was… at the moment she couldn’t even point out if they were still on or it was over-and-done-with kind of thing.
Then Lilly saw Charles Dickens’ book unfolded on her niece’s bed, saving Sophia from a reply.
“In high school, I was forced to read that book,” Lilly began sharing. “And what was remarkable to me is the line,” she paused in her thinking, and proceeded the moment she remembered, “The success is not mine, the failure is not mine—”
“But the two together make me,” Sophia continued it for her. “I like that line, too.” That moment seemed to bind her to Lilly effortlessly.
Yet Lilly’s blue eyes seemed to be more inquisitive. “So, I’m guessing you don’t have a boyfriend.” It sounded as though it was a shock.
With her head down now, Sophia did not know if she would smile or feel sorry for herself. There was this urge to share a few things to her aunt—confessions actually, about her current state with Jericho—but she was rather afraid that Lilly would judge her, or relay all the information to her mom. It might cause her another pandemonium.
Then Lilly looked at her niece with dawning knowledge. “Hey, wait a second,” she was grumbling, “are you not allowed to date? Like your mom is playing the mother superior thing?” Lilly then brought herself closer to Sophia, and looked like she was about to discharge a big laugh.
Sophia was mid-way between feeling embarrassment and self-pity. “Um, kind of,” she shrugged, confused at why her aunt found it funny.
“Gosh, so this house must be a nunnery!” All at once, Lilly laughed, which made Sophia stagger all the more and eventually laugh, too, in unison.
A linking quickly bloomed between them. Despite the short time of exchanging a few words with each other, Sophia seemed to like her aunt already.
“You know what? I remember your mom.” Lilly began sharing. “Since she is the eldest among us, she used to be very strict. But you know, we accepted her the way she was. I guess she had to.” Lilly was gesturing as she spoke, and she recalled that one summertime in the west coast when Elizabeth scolded the young Francheska not to dive deep into the sand castle or she might die of suffocation.
Recovering from the flashback, Lilly didn’t know Sophia was already in the middle of her pondering. She captured the word among from Lilly’s story, and it gave her the idea her mother must have had more siblings.
“Did you just say among? You mean, you’re not the only sibling of mom?” Sophia queried, her eyes alight with enough curiosity.
“Yes, Sophia. How come you don’t know?” Then Lilly realized quickly that Sophia had amnesia. And before her niece could ask another question, she began the details saying Elizabeth was the eldest, she was the middle kid, and Francheska was the youngest.
The last name quickly sent electrical impulses to Sophia’s every nerve, and ignited her to the max.
“So where is Aunt Francheska now?” she asked, her face burning with interest, and fell into a series of wonders, memoirs, and even theories.
Lilly became silent all of a sudden, feeling stupid for her lack of discretion. This gave Sophia the impression that there was truly something with this Francheska—something tinged with fear. Or trouble. Or secrets and mysteries. Yet she felt so much anticipation: she wanted to find out about this other aunt. What was she like? Was she the same as her Aunt Lilly? Or was she more of her mom?
For Lilly, there was now this very need to be selective with her words. Another set of slipped words could mean real chaos. And if the bomb was about to explode now, it is safer if she wasn’t the one pressing the button.
“She’s in New York,” Lilly then answered safely, her tone slow and edgy.
“And…?” Sophia looked more fascinated, such an eager beaver. Lilly was thrown into a bigger quandary.
To act dumb was now the best option for Lilly. She had to dismiss this early, before additional questions could widen into oceans.
“Well, time for bed now, Sophia. Good night,” she concluded fast, and hurried to her own other room.
Left hanging, Sophia couldn’t pull through, her thoughts branching immensely in her head. Something was peculiar with the name Francheska, like a déjà vu, and it disturbed her the whole night.