January 8

1/8

Yesterday, Abigail turned thirteen. Today, I was also forced to grow up a little - it was my first day at the fancy new internship I've been talking about since Teresa Riviera-Lo offered it to me when she visited Filipina Club at her alma mater Radcliffe in December. In the common room over trays of Chinese delivery, Teresa and her interns Reese and Christopher talked about their NGO Growing Capiz and forced each of us to say something deep and interesting about ourselves and our goals for the club. All I said was that I was an Environmental Studies major - I had just declared about two weeks earlier - and before I even finished my sentence she said she wanted me on the team. The opportunity alarms in my head started sounding and I accepted.

But by god, did I ever not want to go as I stuffed down cheese wontons and tacos at Abigail's birthday feast last night. I thought of my pimply face and my recent weight gain and of my nonexistent office-clothes supply (the latter no longer able to be supplemented by Mom's collection because of the weight gain). I couldn't sleep from anxiety.

Still I forced myself up this morning and pulled on the black chiffon skirt from my weight-gain wardrobe and a top from Mom's closet (luckily only my bottom half has really blossomed). I put on my favorite lace-up heels and painted my face like a shaky-handed whore of Babylon. I even attempted to do something about my hair (and failed).

Mom drove me to the train station. It was freezing on the platform, even in my puffy down coat and my three pairs of tights, and I sat on the frozen bench and stared at Mom's car where she parked until the train to Manhattan finally arrived. "Bye, sweetheart," she called as I got on, and blew a kiss. I did not blow one back.

I fell asleep on the train - understandable considering I stayed up until three being nervous and watching Youtube mash-ups insinuating a homosexual relationship between Ferris and Cameron of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. But I woke up on time, and I navigated Penn Station all right, and I coolly braved the rush-hour crush waiting for the C train. It was fun to be just one black-clad body in a mass of countless others (although most of the others weren't wearing fishnet lace tights).

The C train was packed when I got on, but by the time I reached my stop at 86th street a family of English tourists and I were the only people left. I got off and then I had to walk all the way across the frozen park in my fishnet tights and my stupid shoes. I had done the same walk once before through half a foot of slush and spent most of the walk trying to decide whether or not that was better than a slick of fresh black ice.

At last I arrived on Museum Row. I turned onto one of the headachingly expensive residential streets - the ones that make you whisper as you pass the doors, like walking through a church - and saw that one of the pristine green awnings said "eight" in cursive white letters. I glanced through the tinted door and saw a uniformed doorman standing before a gold-colored wrought-iron gate.

I checked the address I wrote down in this book. Yup, ten. Then finally I squared my shoulders as much as my permanent slouch would allow and went in.

"I'm looking for Growing Capiz," I said, with the suggestion of a question mark on the end.

"Is she expecting you?" said the doorman.

"Yes, she should be expecting Jane Flemson," I said, and called to ask, and I was buzzed up.

"Sorry about the wait. She's in 8B," he said as I walked to the elevator, so I pressed the button 8. Some seconds later I found myself in a dark little space with a little table and flowers and four doors. I rang the one that said "B".

Teresa opened the door for me. She was wearing a baggy sweater and baggy jeans and bare feet. Behind her was a bright and airy and pristinely tidy apartment, not the drop ceilings and office carpets I expected. "We're shoes-off here," she said, gesturing to a mat holding several pairs and then to my bimbo pumps.

Off they went and I padded across the floor in my fishnet stocking feet. Christopher, the intern who had come to the dinner at Radcliffe, was in the kitchen working at a mystical-looking stone teapot on the stove. I was not pleased to see that I'd be working with a young man - one of the reasonings I placated myself with as I lay awake in the throes of anxiety last night was that I at least wouldn't have to deal with any prospective mates. He suggested that I sit down so I did, on the firm sofa in the middle of the room.

Teresa talked to me for a while there and then led me to the work table at the other end of the room. I sat at the end of the table so that I wouldn't have to be across from the enormous mirror behind it. I was given an old Mac laptop and some forms to sign, and I signed them, and then Teresa had me make an agenda, so I did. Christopher served us muddy coffee in thin white cups and I was very grateful for it, having had no time to drink any before to train (and having only slept about three hours). Then, following my agenda, I worked. I sent emails. I read papers. I typed purposefully. I didn't spend a single minute online shopping.

At noon suddenly Teresa declared it was time for lunch and we put on our coats and shoes and walked out into the cold bright light, the doorman grandly sweeping the door open for us as we went. I remembered Manila, the only place I've ever been considered an elite, and it was an odd feeling.

We walked two blocks to a French restaurant. Inside was warm and bustling, all brown and copper and lunchy smells. Waiting for us in the foyer was the person we were there to meet - Brad Panganiban, president of the Fil-Am club at Berry College. He was soft-faced and sharp-haired, crisply stylish in wire glasses and a J.Crew sweater. Hands were shaken all around and then a hostess appeared and said there was a fifteen-minute wait for a table. Teresa decided she would rather not wait and we stepped back into the polar-vortex cold and walked another block to an Italian restaurant where the maitre-d greeted Teresa like he knew her and guided us to a quiet back room. There were white tablecloths and gold chandeliers and paintings on the walls depicting the restaurant at different years in the past century. The menu arrived, bound in soft real leather, and the prices were equally grand. I had my eye on a black-truffle pizza for $35, but I knew that I had only $15 in my wallet. Christopher said he would order the sausage pizza and I offered to split it with him, hoping we could also split the price, but he looked taken aback at that idea. I looked at the menu again and chose a $25 plate of mushroom ravioli, reasoning that it would be easier to eat that politely than spaghetti or a salad, and hoped the remaining $10 would materialize somehow.

Conversation ensued. Brad was very good at talking. He treated silence like it was a ball in a game he had to catch before it fell, and he caught it again and again: "What made you decide to start GC?" "How did you get into banking?" "What is your end goal?" etc. He even got a monologue out of Christopher. Not even Teresa could do that at the dinner at Radcliffe - she tried to have him give us a male perspective on relationships and all he said was a lot of um's and a few words on being raised by a single mother. And now here he was draping his black-clad slim arms in various elegant positions and describing his path from architecture student to country-club line cook to whatever exactly it is he's doing now. Meanwhile I kept an eye on Brad and watched him fall for my fellow intern. I thought they'd made a pretty cute couple.

Bread arrived, dense beautiful foccacia speckled with rosemary and almost translucent with olive oil, hot and steaming - but no one took a piece, so I couldn't either. It steamed away until the fat frolicking wisps thinned into wispier ones and then disappeared altogether. At that point Christian finally took a piece, so I waited a judicious few moments and then took one, too. It was delicious, almost as good as the foccacia my boss at Trattoria used to bake for the staff and which was my only food all day when I worked there.

When the entrees came Teresa said, mercifully and bluntly, "Let's stop talking for a while so we can eat." So we did, sort of. My dish consisted of five ravioli - so, $5 each. It was very good, and I could probably have eaten all five in two bites, but I noticed that Christopher ate only half of his sausage pizza and Teresa half of her salmon salad and even Brad despite his softness barely a third of his orecchiette, so I very slowly and tidily consumed one and a half ravioli and left the rest to coagulate into a cohesive mass on my plate.

You can see where my priorities are, but let me try to remember a little of the conversation for the sake of posterity. Brad talked about all the fundraisers his club had been doing for GC: $20 to pie an RA, very expensive bake sales, straight-up begging, etc. In all, they had raised $6000. I said "amazing" and "impressive" until I sounded like a wind-up doll. 

"You should have a competition with Radcliffe," said Teresa. "Whoever can get to $10,000 first wins."

I thought of the $200 in dried mangoes we were so proud of at Filipina Club and declined, but Brad just widened his eyes slightly behind his stylish glasses and said, "Ok, let's do it!"

The talk went on and on. Teresa had finally met her match in talking and nothing could stop her now. The waiter filled our glasses and eyed the plates that stayed resolutely half-full. After several concerned passes-by he finally asked if we wanted to wrap up our plates to go.

"I'm still eating," said Teresa over her quarter-consumed slab of salmon. So they went on talking. 

At some point the other server, a strong sturdy-looking woman, approached our table. When she asked if we wanted our leftovers to go, Teresa accepted. She took them and wrapped them nicely, and when we had our food back in our hands we said goodbye to Brad and went back to the apartment. 

By then it was past two - just three more working hours left. Well, not quite three. At four forty-five, Teresa pulled on her down coat and said she was going to see the acupuncturist. She told me I could go home if I wanted. I decided I'd finish a few things first, but when she slammed the copper-covered door shut I realized I was alone in the room with Christopher and I started to feel strange. Warnings from Victorian novels about unchaperoned young women came into my head. I know this was just my paranoia working - I'm pretty positive Christopher stands squarely on the other side, and even if he didn't he's out of my age range and my league. Even if he does have a nice nose for a Filipino.

I was thankful that the radio was on so that it wasn't completely quiet. I was not thankful that it was playing some hipster ballad about two people alone in a room or something like that. Right after the vocalist whined "I've never been so attracted to you before," Christopher decided he wanted to make conversation. 

"Do you like this station?" he asked.

"Yes, it's nice," I said, polite society smile on full power.

"What kind of music do you usually listen to?"

I looked at his shaggy hair and calculatingly disheveled clothes and decided that he probably wasn't that into classical music. So, "Classical," I said. 

"Just classical?"

"Yes, I pretty much always listen to classical. I like opera a lot."

He got up and looked through the CDs by the stereo. "I don't think there are any opera albums here," he said. Instead he found a Beethoven collection and put it on, then sat back down. The maestro's passionate swells filled the room.

"So what year are you in college?" Christopher asked.

"I'm a second year."

"Oh, so you're twenty years old?"

"I'll be turning in two weeks," I said, smiling virginally.

"Nice," he said.

Then I decided I'd done enough work that day and stepped back into my whore oxfords and said goodbye. I arrived home an hour later, too late to cook dinner but early enough to stuff myself on the remainder of Catherine's birthday feast. It's a good thing I grew so fat and unattractive these past few months or I would be even more self conscious. (But it would be a more pleasant kind of self conscious.)