Eden Reyes Blanco sifted listlessly through the manila envelope of documents labeled Fairview House which her secretary had brought to her. She was having her glutathione drip in her dressing room. Although she co-owned the chain of La Eleganza Wellness and Enhancement Centers, she preferred to have all her procedures done in the privacy of one of her homes. Luckily the Fairview House file was in her Makati Tuscany condo. Otherwise, her youngest sister Nerissa would have made the trek from the distant northern reaches of Quezon City to the Makati Central Business District for nothing. Eden shuddered to think that she had actually grown up there. Her parents had embarrassingly prided themselves in being pioneers in what had been laughably known as Far View back in the day. She had long since shaken its dust from her perfectly formed feet.
The old title was there, the folded lot and survey plans and several promissory notes. Curiously there was also a bond paper with a child’s drawing in pencil and cray pas: a tall angel loomed on the right side, and on the left was a grub-like Baby Jesus with two stick figures flanking it. Eden snorted. One wouldn’t think it to look at her now, but she was actually ten years older than her youngest sister Nerissa, and eight years older than the middle sister Lotta. The drawing had been an offering from when Nerissa was in the first grade and Eden was already a high school senior. Eden wondered why she had kept it. Their mother must have slipped it into the envelope in a paroxysm of sentimentality, to remind Eden that as the eldest and the wealthiest, she had a filial obligation towards her feckless younger sisters. Angels Lotta and Nerissa had tepee-like dresses and plain triangular wings but Angel Eden was very fancy, with a diamond tiara for a halo, scalloped wings and a broad wavy belt to give her figure a more pulchritudinous shape, as she was already in her teens when the drawing was made.
It was as though their parents had given their utmost to their first effort at procreation with Eden, leaving only weak sputterings and watery dregs for Lotta and Nerissa, trailing far behind her, not just in the timing of their births, but in practically everything else. The unimaginative who learned that they were three sisters, tritely referred to them as Tres Marias, but Eden preferred to think of themselves as modern fairy tale princesses. This time, there was a twist: it was that not the third or youngest princess who received the greatest shares of beauty, virtue, and good fortune. In real life, the traditional folkloric order was reversed. The first was still first.
This was confirmed early in their youth, whenever they were introduced as a family. Strangers were invariably delighted and agog, at how mestiza Eden looked: Artistahin! Pang- Miss Universe. She could be a real model, not just for print, but even on the runway, because she was so tall. Better yet, she might become an A list beauty queen with lucrative product endorsement deals, and hook herself a rich husband. When they learned that she was a medical doctor, too, their awe of her was complete.
Then their parents would introduce Lotta and Nerissa. The surprised and puzzled looks at how these two much shorter, flat-faced chinita darkies were even related to Eden was a mystery to mere acquaintances. They were often mistaken for her alalay, or later, as the yaya’s for Eden’s children. If our usual positive feelings for family are all about our biological urge to perpetuate our genes, hence our warm affinity towards those who share their DNA with us, whatever genes Eden might have in common with her sisters must have been recessive, as the lack of any family resemblance showed. As a manifestation of their lack of commonality, Eden felt not simply indifference for her sisters, as she would have towards strangers, but actual aversion. As they grew older and more of a burden to her, any sisterly feelings curdled into annoyance, hostility, even masked hatred. Eden refrained from overt displays of hate which deepened those dratted naso-labial creases. Over-using botox to erase these caused the space where one’s philtrum was, to elongate and droop into a simian-like muzzle.
Fortunately, after their parents had passed away, there were no longer any social occasions when they had to be together, except during the very occasional family reunions, weddings, and funerals, in which case there was no need to explain why her sisters were that way. Truly when it rains blessings it pours, just as when misfortunes are sadly one’s lot, there was conversely a tsunami of tragedy. Her parents had placed the Fairview House, their only real property, in Nerissa’s and Lotta’s names, reasoning that the two were unmarried and not even licensed professionals, while Eden was a doctora and had married rich besides. She had more real property in the Philippines and abroad, than she knew what to do with. Yet being the Ate, Eden was expected to administer the old family home for her sisters, advancing the amellar and any repairs for the nearly four-decades-old structure. After she married into the Blanco family, their parents made Eden promise she would always make sure that her sisters had a home. Eden believed that they should just sell it and live in a condo. But the two clung to the only security which they knew.
Nerissa would be waiting for her in the lanai overlooking Ayala Avenue. Her sisters were not welcome inside her bedroom. Since they had been orphaned, she had not invited them for so much as merienda. They had never bonded that way. When they used to eat together, Eden averted her gaze from Lotta’s slack jawed chewing, and glared at Nerissa for always taking more food than she could finish, then slicing this into tiny bits, as though she was still the family’s baby, unable to handle more than a morsel at a time. Eden called kanin baboy, the mess she left on her plate.
When they were very young, Eden didn’t let on how ashamed she was of her sisters. Unless they are seriously deformed, all children are endowed with an innate charm, which is nature’s way of ensuring their survival into puberty, so that they might henceforth multiply and spawn more in their likeness. She was grateful that at least Lotta and Nerissa had not done so. Besides, when they were growing up, they had made Eden look so good in comparison or rather by the contrast which they offered. Back then, she didn’t mind playing at being their caring Ate in public, as she towered over them. She could have encompassed their very persons into her own, like those Russian nesting dolls.
Eden was already in medical school when she realized how embarrassingly deficient Lotta and Nerissa were, how unlike herself or even their cousins or her friends’ siblings, as though they were a mutant or alien species who had popped up within their clan. There was nothing to distinguish them, beyond their possessing the barest modicum of the nobler human traits. Although she was a medical doctor, she had no sympathy for their health problems. Becoming a doctor was the surest way to prove that she was doubly endowed, not merely with beauty but also with brains. Disease was its own consequential comeuppance, a natural retribution for inherent shortcomings. The ailing must have done something to deserve this, like fail to get the better genes or good grades.
Her younger sisters’ uneventful lackluster childhood took a downturn when Lotta was stricken with viral encephalitis at age twelve. She had recovered, but was left with a seizure disorder. Fortunately, since their mother was the school doctor, she could monitor Lotta closely. Mom foolishly made light of it by calling Lotta their Sleeping Beauty. Although Eden was herself an adult by then, she took offense, as the title of beauty had always been associated with her. For this to be undeservedly bestowed upon Lotta, even as a euphemism, was a lie in poor taste. Lotta had never been exceptional, and was certainly no beauty. The encephalitis had left her barely able to keep up in school. It was only through intensive tutoring, repeating two levels, and their parents’ blandishments toward the school administration, that Lotta eventually managed to get a high-school diploma.
For Eden, it was the height of unfairness that she had to give up her big bedroom on the second floor of the Fairview house and move into the smaller room downstairs, near the maid’s room and kitchen, which the two younger sisters had previously occupied—wherever Lotta went, Nerissa had to be there, too. Lotta’s getting sick meant she now had to have a maid sleeping in the room with them always. Their parents explained that with her health problems, it was better that Lotta be in the bedroom closer to them. It was small consolation to Eden that she still had a room all to herself and that her parents got this air-conditioned, too. Only Eden and their parents used to have air-conditioning. She did not appreciate this further erosion of her favored and superior status, considering that she had never been a burden, but had always been healthy, and excelled in everything she set out to do.
Lotta’s endless medical expenses also meant that after she graduated from med school and passed the board, Eden didn’t get the trip to the States which she believed she deserved, but just a 6-day Hong Kong/Macau/Taipei sojourn. Anyway, Vincent Blanco was already her boyfriend by then and very soon, a jet-setting lifestyle with the other women in the Blanco clan, was so humdrum ordinary that she no longer got a thrill from visiting a new place. All the major holidays were spent as a family abroad, including their wedding anniversaries, birthdays, and later, their children’s birthdays, too.
Vincent was tight with the new president, while his older sister was said to be among the few friends the First Lady could truly trust. Thus they had even been part of the official delegation on several state visits, something that her late parents had not lived to see, and which she imagined they would have found every opportunity to mention in conversations. When the Blanco’s flew commercial, they were always in first class with the certainty that except for their executive assistants, secretaries, makeup artists and yaya’s, no peasants would breach that wall-like curtain.
Being of delicate and refined sensibilities, Eden cringed at the typical OFW’s lack of table manners. She used to sit amongst them when she was still single and flying economy class. She tried not to drink any liquids before or during a flight then, as she had dreaded the muddy toilet seats and floors caused by the common Filipino practice of balancing upon the rim, instead of sitting solidly on the toilet seat. It was mortifying that these OFWs were our most numerous representatives abroad, and a blemish on the Filipino image in international rest rooms and cafeterias worldwide. Though she was now far removed from flying coach, she still thought of them. Thus she wrote to the PAL Board of Directors to suggest that as their corporate social responsibility initiative, the airline might give all their Filipino OFW customers a crash course in air travel etiquette. Apart from the usual safety advisories on seatbelts and using oxygen masks which the flight attendants were required to make, they might also demonstrate the proper wielding of the plastic flatware, the use of paper napkins and toilet etiquette. She was still waiting to hear back from the PAL President on this.
Nerissa had come alone which must mean that Lotta was ill again. After her encephalitis left her considerably cognitively diminished, Lotta still managed to get an online certificate in graphic design, a course that no one expected her to make a living with. A poor relation whom her parents were helping to send to school had done most of her plates and general education requirements. Eden considered this another affront and deprivation, as this useless course was a further unnecessary expense by her deluded parents. Lotta’s misguided higher education was why Eden had to drive a six-year-old second-hand car throughout med school, instead of a late model sedan. Their parents were big believers in the cliché that an education was the best preparation for life and the only real inheritance which they might leave to their children, apart from their family home, that is the Fairview House. Even Lotta, kindly described as special, was not denied a tertiary education, just so their parents would rest easy in the conviction that they had fulfilled their obligations by her.
Their sacrifices to give all their daughters the best education which they could afford were for naught, as far as the two younger ones were concerned, in comparison to Eden’s own medical and her husband’s law degrees—a double coup light years beyond what Mom and Dad had achieved, for which they should forever be grateful to her. She was the rising tide that raised their ships, although for Lotta and Nerissa, their vessels were just outrigger banca’s at best, trailing in Eden’s wake, and probably rudderless from the lack of any meaningful purpose or direction in their insignificant lives.
At least, Lotta had served as her parents’ human pet, ambling awkwardly alongside them when they used to be able to get around. They had been so patient with her spouting banalities in lugubrious, singsong tones, making tiresome pronouncements on the traffic and the weather and the state of her digestive and excretory processes. She adored her Ate Eden and would even beg her to teach her how to be as pretty and intelligent as her. The encephalitis had also made Lotta unusually emotionally sensitive. She sensed when she was being insulted or attacked and would burst into tears when Eden ignored her or, worse, rolled her eyes and snapped at her. Fortunately, they saw so little of each other with their parents being gone, that there was little opportunity for her to get irritated by Lotta or for Lotta to feel slighted by her.
The youngest Nerissa, the artist who had innocently drawn them as angels, was no consolation to their parents either. She had aspired to equal Eden’s accomplishments by studying law. Every buena familia should have a doctor and a lawyer, had been dunned into them when they were growing up. Their parents had only made it as far as the lower middle rungs of the steep ladder of professional success: Mommy was a general practitioner, and had been the doctor at the school clinic where they had all studied from kindergarten through high school, which was also why Lotta got to graduate there despite her illness. Daddy had been a fiscal in Bulacan, not even a judge. He had never been savvy at making social connections, taking inordinate pride in his incorruptibility or his plain lack of ballsiness to get ahead. Early on Eden had written him off as hindi marunong mag-diskarte, walang alam sa tunay na buhay.
Despite his limitations, she appreciated her father’s adoration, and that he strove to give her the best which his modest means could afford. This had prompted her to marry a lawyer like him, yet head and shoulders above him. Her choice of Vincent Blanco, or rather Vince’s choosing her, was like her telling her father, “See, Daddy. This is what a real lawyer is.” Vincent Blanco was a congressman and an uber abogado de campanilla. He had taken his masters at Michigan State, and was a partner in the venerable AGORA Law Firm. There was nothing pipitsugin or small time about Vincent. As her father-in-law liked to say, “Kahit sinong abogado, kayang bilhin.” For the Blanco’s though, it was a buyer’s market.
Their parents were in awe of what Eden as an MD with a thriving practice in the aesthetics industry had accomplished. Admittedly it was her lawyer husband, who had put up her share in the La Eleganza Wellness and Enhancement Centers, but that she had managed to snare him was already such a feat, the beginning of great things. Being pregnant with Vincent II had helped. The Blanco’s were kingpins of local politics in the Southern Tagalog Region with shipping, real estate, and power generation among their many concerns. Her in-law’s recognized Eden as an asset. There were plans to have to run for congress after Vince’s term expired, with the slogan “The doctora is always in.” Vince would be making a play for the Senate. She would rather focus on helping people to be their best selves with La Eleganza but someone had to keep the seat warm for their son Vincent II who was in college abroad. She knew her duty as a wife and mother.
For the last six years, Nerissa had been asking Eden to pay for her law school tuition and to give her an allowance besides. Eden had bridled at her temerity in even attempting to approximate, if not equal Vincent’s status. This was another of Nerissa’s dead-end plans. So far, all that she had done was to enroll in a succession of law schools, in descending order of excellence, if their performance in the Bar Exams was any gauge. She invariably left each one after a couple of years with incomplete grades. Back in high school, Nerissa had been diagnosed with ADHD and oppositional behavioral disorder, which Eden dismissed as just psychobabble for being matigas ang ulo. It was time for Nerissa to grow up. Unlike their parents, Eden was no pushover. Ano siya—sinuswerte?
Nerissa also fancied herself an entrepreneur, and would importune Eden’s former classmates who might have had some residual fondness for her as the chubby little girl they recalled from their high-school days, to be part of her down-line for oral stem cells or probiotics or whatever new health supplement happened to be on the market. Nerissa was allergic to the skin whitening agents which were La Eleganza’s mainstay product. Besides she didn’t want to be part of her sister’s company, where her inferior position would only be magnified for all to realize, as her Ate Eden showed everyone how fair she was by treating her youngest sister as just another cog in the beauty industry machine.
Recently, Nerissa had declared that she wanted to strike out on her own, a sensible enough position since her closest relatives didn’t want anything to do with her when this involved money. Very briefly, she had worked in the purchasing department of Eden’s brother-in-law’s construction firm. There had been careless discrepancies in the inventory reports but no actual criminality. Still, Eden had quickly extricated her, before Nerissa’s negligence and incompetence caused serious setbacks. The Blanco’s were her family now. Reyes was a common enough name, and she could still pretend that her biological father, the lowly but honest fiscal, was related to the branch with Supreme Court justices and successful restaurateur and food entrepreneurs. Looking at her, no one would think to question her pedigree. After keeping Nerissa waiting for nearly two hours, Eden finally emerged into the breakfast nook which opened out onto the balcony. Nerissa was playing games on her phone.
“Ate! Thanks be to God, you’re here!” Nerissa dramatically greeted her. “Nagpapa-glutathione drip ka raw. Your skin looks like marble—flawless.”
Eden recoiled as Nerissa leaned to touch her cheek and kiss her. “We better make this fast or you’ll get caught in the rush hour traffic heading back north. Baka hindi ka makasakay.” She was not about to offer any one of the half dozen or so drivers at her beck and call, and an undetermined number of cars at her disposal, to bring Nerissa home. It might give her ideas.
“Ate, alanganin na si Lotta. The doctors said she has an aneurysm. They gave her a tracheostomy and they want to keep her on the ventilator until she’s stable. Ang mahal, Ate. The ventilator alone costs P15,000 a day, then we need a private duty nurse at P500 per hour to suction her every thirty minutes because they don’t have enough nurses in the ward. I still have to feed the nurse even if she’s getting paid so much already.”
Eden nodded sagely. “Really, renting out these vents is such a racket by the same doctors who prescribe them in the first place. They own the medical equipment companies, so it’s like they’re sticking it to the patient in every hole. Walang takas. There’s no escape for the poor patients. But then they have to make a living, too, I suppose. Medical school ain’t cheap and you make so many sacrifices when you’re in your prime. Good that Lotta’s being looked after, anyway. I already sent you P250,000 for the hospital deposit last week. Why are you here? What is it that you need now? I have a cocktail to attend at Sofitel.”
“Sorry, Ate, but I need a lot more. For the nurse and the ventilator alone, it’s already almost P30,000 a day, and that doesn’t include the room yet, or the medicines, supplies, laboratory, and tests. But they told me if she goes to the ICU, we’ll spend more than double that daily easily.”
Eden’s assistant Gennalyn discreetly appeared with the envelope labeled Fairview House. Silently, Nerissa showed her the thick sheaf of receipts and bills accumulated from Lotta’s week in the hospital. In turn, Eden showed Nerissa the previous IOU’s, petty cash vouchers, and a deed of sale for the Fairview house transferring ownership from Lotta and Nerissa to La Eleganza, Inc. Nerissa was taken aback. Eden continued.
“Lotta can just make an X if she can’t sign, and you will also sign an affidavit which the law office will prepare, that she has become incapacitated, so she cannot sign for herself. Gennalyn and someone from Vince’s law office will witness the sale.”
“But, Ate, where will we live if you own Fairview? And why do you even want it? You have so much property already.”
“Don’t worry. You can still live there for the meantime. When the construction on the MRT is almost done—which is taking forever, because, you know, the government—La Eleganza might put up a less upscale clinic and spa there, more pang-masa, but that’s for later. Property values will go up there by then, and it’s lucky Daddy had the sense at least to buy the corner lot beside the guardhouse so now, that’s right where the marketplace is, and very strategic. Later, there will be a more well-to-do clientele, but for now, you can still stay there.”
“But Mommy and Daddy gave us the house because our education didn’t cost as much as yours did with your medical school. Also, you have so, so much already.”
“And why am I so blessed, while you…” Eden gestured dismissively and shrugged. “Read the contract to sell, and sign the deed of sale. With all your years of studying law, that should be easy. Then I’ll release the check for the hospital.”
“Ate, if I’m not up to date on the hospital bills, they will withdraw the ventilator and I will have to use the ambo bag on Ate Lotta. I can’t do that, Ate. You know I have carpal tunnel in both wrists and asthma, too.” Nerissa sobbed, her words coming between hiccups of tears. Still believing she’s the baby of the family, Eden thought. When would she ever grow up?
“I was thinking, Lotta doesn’t really need the private duty nurse. At the Philippine General Hospital, they don’t have private duty nurses. The bantay learns how to pitch in and do their part. Suctioning isn’t that hard. If they’re careful, it’s not that often that they puncture the lung or the patient gets a localized infection at the tracheostomy site. You should learn how to do your part. I’ll let you have the nurse for three more days, so she can train you well on how to suction Lotta’s tracheostomy by yourself. Gennalyn, please compute how much we have to deposit with the hospital again to stay up to date, then approximately how much the next billing cycle will be, if we just have to rent the ventilator, with no more salary for a private duty nurse. Thanks, dear.”
Eden turned to Nerissa again. “I’m willing to buy Fairview from you two even if I’ve been paying for everything for the last seven years and more. Remember, I paid for all our parents’ medical bills but they let you two have the house. You’ve been making such a profit off of me, but what are sisters for, after all. But even I have my limits.”
“What happens if Lotta gets sick again, Ate?” Nerissa said. “What you want to pay for Fairview is just the market price in the real property tax report, but we both know it could really sell for much more, that it’s really worth much more. The price you put—it won’t be enough for us to buy another place in Quezon City and still have enough to live on. What I make from selling probiotics, it’s not regular and it won’t even pay for one day in the hospital. And you know Lotta has medicine for her seizures and her diabetes.”
Nerissa was getting tiresome and Eden was getting bored. “My offer is fair, considering everything I’ve done for you since Mommy and Daddy died. Now I have to get ready for my cocktail party. You just think about it.”
There really wasn’t much to think about. Nerissa and Lotta needed her money to pay the hospital. There wasn’t time for Nerissa to make her usual begging rounds among their other relatives, and anything she collected would probably only be enough to pay for a few days’ worth of hospital bills. And if Lotta didn’t make it, that would mean more for Nerissa to keep for herself and stop bothering her. It was a win-win situation. Eden had won again.
