In the Country Read Free Page B

match her frame. I set the yellow box on the counter and reached into my pocket.
    “Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “This is on the house.”
    “Absolutely not,” I said.
    “We’re a Filipino store; we don’t accept American dollars.”
    “Nice try. I exchanged my money at the airport.”
    “Your money’s no good here.”
    “Stop giving things away for free.” I unwrapped one of the
pastillas,
knowing she wouldn’t start ahead of me. “That’s no way to keep a business afloat. There’s my first piece of advice for you.”
    “It’s your second,” she said. “Yesterday you said it was too hot in here.” She pointed at the whirling blades on the ceiling. “People pay all kinds of money for good business advice, don’t they? So I’m not giving anything away for free.” She frowned as she bit into a
pastilla,
as if eating required all her concentration.
    I took my hand from my pocket, and we crunched for a while without speaking.
    “If I ever leave the hospital and open my own pharmacy,” I said, “it will be a lot like this.” I walked her through my rather old-fashioned vision: tinctures and powders in rows, a mortar and pestle here, a pill counter and weighing scale there.
    “Oh,
anak.
” I’d become her young son again, pointing at a mansion in Forbes Park or a gown in a shop window, luxuries I vowed to provide her in the future. My mother’s eyes filled with tears. “Your pharmacy will be fancier than this. And you could have built it years ago, if you hadn’t been busy helping us.”
    That settled it. Nothing disturbed me more than the sight of her crying. It was time to end her call-button servitude, once and for all. “Ma,” I began, “I’ve given everyone their
pasalubong,
except you.”
    The baby monitor groaned, bringing her to her feet. “You’ve given me so much already.” She wiped her eyes. “
Pastillas,
free advice…” Setting down the call bell and the SERVICE sign, she rushed out, again, to attend to him.
    I dropped five hundred pesos into the cashbox and brought the rest of the candy to my relatives in the living room. Once they’d emptied the box, I took it to my room and filled it with the patches of Succorol, then went to the sickroom and closed the door behind me.
    My mother was pressing a washcloth to his forehead. “You’re a CEO, not a slave,” I said. “No more scurrying around. You’ve got a business to run.” I showed her the Succorol and how to use it, peeling a square from its adhesive backing and pressing it to my father’s side. “Remove this and apply a new one at the same time tomorrow,” I said. “On his back, or arm—anywhere there isn’t hair. Rotate or you’ll irritate the skin.” In my mother’s notebook I started a new page and recorded the dose. “So we don’t double up,” I said. “This isn’t Tylenol, if you know what I mean.”
    We stayed until my father quieted and slept. I closed the yellow box, now full of Succorol, and placed it in the top drawer of the dresser. Before we left the sickroom, she touched my cheek. “You’re home,” she said. “All the
pasalubong
I need.”
    In the living room the family had switched from karaoke to a Tagalog movie. Even in green it looked familiar, observing the rules of every melodrama I’d grown up watching: a
bida,
or hero, fought a
kontrabida,
or villain, for the love of a beautiful woman. The oldest films would even cast a pale, fair-haired American as the
bida
and a dusky, slick-mustachioed Spaniard as the
kontrabida.
Between them, the woman spent her time batting her eyelashes or being swept off her feet; peeking out from behind lace fans; fainting or weeping; clutching a handkerchief to her heart or dangling it from the window as a signal; being abducted at night, or rescued from a tower, or carried away on a horse. My relatives talked back to the screen as it played.
Kiss! Kiss!
they insisted, not with any delight or romantic excitement but in a nearly hostile way,