letter for camille

Camille, if you’re reading this, then something bad has happened, and I need help.  Please come as fast as you can. 

Please see if they’ll tell you where Garnet is.  I think they took her away.  She’s your goddaughter after all, and she’s only one year old, but if you get the chance, tell her I love her.

I don’t know how it could have gone so wrong.  Remember when we were in high school?  We thought we were gilded in gold.  We were bright and beautiful, and everything was ours for the taking. 

We were also young and very stupid.  Peter was going to university; I was going to be an actress.  Then I got pregnant.  I thought his mother would kill me, but I guess she thought I’d give her beautiful grandchildren, so I was forgiven.  They also had fat bank accounts, so it didn’t really matter.

You came to the wedding, but you never got to visit us in the new house.  I loved it.  You opened the door to space that reached up to the ceiling, and you looked up and there was this lovely crystal chandelier.  Swarovski, I’m told.  His grandmother’s gift.  The floor was marble.  On the left side the staircase curved up, sort of framing the space around the chandelier.  It ended at the hallway that led to the bedrooms.  When you opened your bedroom door in the morning, the first sight to greet you was the chandelier, with the sunlight from the tall windows striking the crystals.  The banisters at the top were waist-high, and it was easily twenty feet to the ground.  I liked imagining my daughter coming down the stairs when she’s eighteen, in a velvet evening gown.  I must have sent you the pictures that Peter took of me on the stairs.  Did I?  He said I sparkled so, the chandelier paled in comparison.  He said things like that, and they took my breath away.

And then Garnet came.  She was the love of Peter’s life.  It seems strange to resent my daughter for the smile that she put in Peter’s face, but I felt like I’d been replaced.

I was also no longer beautiful.  I was prom queen and had been in the cover of teen magazines, but now I sagged and bulged in all the wrong places.  I cried easily, and I got angry easily.

Did you know Peter got a bit successful with his camera?  He called himself a professional photographer, and he got projects that took him away from home for days at a time.  I guess that’s where the trouble started.  I found pictures of a woman hidden in Peter’s backpack.  Peter’s photography made me look like a sugar princess, but the woman in the pictures looked like a goddess.  I don’t believe they were commissioned photographs.  I wondered what honeyed words he used to get that smoking look in her eyes.  She was hot, and I hated her.

Of course he denied it.  He denied everything, until I caught them together.  Then we fought a lot, every night, it seemed, and he accused me of using post-partum depression to justify being a bitch.  He called me ugly.  Then he started hitting me when we fought.

But you see, I loved him.  I loved him then and I love him now.  I tried so hard to make it all better, said sorry, and could we start over?  I went to a shrink, got a makeover, started on a diet, but it didn’t get any better.  He came home to smile at Garnet, then he went out again.

Last week, he came home very late.  I waited up for him because I thought he might want some dinner, and I was in the baby’s room when he arrived.  He looked in, saw the baby was awake, and picked her up for a quick kiss.  Then he looked at me and said, I’m leaving you.  I’m taking Garnet.

I was stunned.  I was also very angry, and I didn’t understand what had gone wrong.  I thought we were good together.  I asked if it was the woman. 

I think maybe I started yelling, or throwing things around, because he backed out of the baby’s room in a hurry.  Garnet had started to cry, so I picked her up and followed him.

He was going down the stairs.  I was in the hallway, holding on to the banisters, looking at the fucking chandelier, when I realized he meant it, he would really leave me, and I called out, Peter, I love you. 

He yelled back, Fuck it, I don’t love you!

I held the baby up.  I thought I meant to shield myself from the words so they won’t hit me and break me, but the words must have hit anyway because something in me snapped.  After that I don’t remember.

I next remember looking down when I heard the sound.  It was a wet and horrible sound.  Peter was bending over something on the floor, he was screaming, and I started to go down to ask him if he had hurt himself when he got up and ran to me and slapped me and his eyes were wild and his hands were red.

That sound.  Like dropping a watermelon.  I wake up in the middle of the night hearing it.  I am talking to people and I suddenly hear it in my head and it hurts.

Peter said I held the baby up by one arm over the banister and the baby was giggling.  Peter said I was smiling, but how could that be, when my heart was broken?  He said he screamed at me to put Garnet down and I… he… I don’t remember.

Peter said he didn’t love me and that sounded so final.  He didn’t love me.

Please come, Camille.

brand (un)conscious

Last week, Harper's Bazaar posted an article on 'How to Pronounce Moschino, Miu Miu and More Designer Names.'  And admit it or not, I bet a lot of us spent a few minutes whispering air-vay lay-jah to ourselves, congratulating ourselves on the one piece of information that we will not mispronounce when we visit the newly-opened SM Megamall Fashion Hall with our more knowledgeable fashionable friends.

I grew up being happily ignorant of brands and what they meant.  I was already working in my third job, married and with children before I met people who wore labels with such gleeful abandon.  And although I was not easily impressed, I didn't mind learning either.

I had friends who taught me to wear Aldo and Nine West, Pedro and Charles and Keith.  I bought a lot of clothes from Celine before it got extra publicity from the TV series Ina, Kapatid, Anak and then I bought some more :-)  I like Forever 21 with its overwhelming selection of clothes.  I bought gifts at Marks & Spencer and Beauty Bar.  I bought Guess and Levi's from Amazon.com and contemplated Kate Spade.

That's a meager and unimpressive list, and some of my friends would raise eyebrows at how little I know.  I've seen Ferragamo and Jimmy Choo on the feet of officemates, and didn't know it.  I cannot distinguish Murano or Charriol jewelry, although  I have a couple of pieces.  I didn't know enough to get ecstatic over the opening of the H&M Store.  Aside from the fact that it comes from the same country that produced IKEA furniture, I didn't see what was so special about it.  I walk past it every night on my way to the transport terminal, and I am not tempted to look.

I can easily wear ukay-ukay finds as well as Zara, and nobody can tell the difference.  I've never met a person who would praise what I was wearing, then demand to know the price tag.  Designer labels to me are just proper nouns with capital-letter status that are, for the most part, beyond my means.  I have no dark desire deep inside to decapitate people who wear them.  But I also acknowledge that recognizing the labels, and sometimes owning an item or two, horribly expensive they might be, adds a certain distinction-- if not value-- to a person.

How many people would recognize a Montblanc pen, or know that a Limited Edition Agatha Christie Fountain Pen sells for $4,500?  Not many, perhaps, but in a meeting where you're merely the minute-taker, someone is bound to do a double-take when you start taking notes.  Right, Claire?

When I'm wearing something expensive, something special, I feel good about myself.  I like it when I meet old friends who look at my feet and smile with easy familiarity, because they recognize the shoes from where we bought them together.  We live in a society that places value on material things-- on brands-- and there are occasions when ignorance places you at a disadvantage, such as a gathering where someone asks you if you've ever heard of Christian Louboutin.  I'm sure it would give you savage pleasure to be able to say, oh yes, I'm wearing them.

More importantly, people may not always know that what you're carrying is an imitation Louis Vuitton, but you will always know.  I once bought one, and I carried it once to a party, to see if someone would take note.  Nobody did, and like the bag, I felt like a fake.  The thing is, I could have bought a real one.  I could have saved for it.  But it didn't make sense to own a 2,000-dollar handbag.  That's the amount of tuition for my two kids for one school year.  To me, there's a big difference between being able to afford one and deserving to own one.

A friend once told me that I should not sanitize my writing, but I have to remember that what I write may one day haunt me.  One day, when I become an Hermes-toting, globe-trotting socialite, I'll remember this blog and how I mouthed the syllables of the labels properly.  And I'll laugh, and I'll put it down to naivete, or inexperience.  Or honesty.  That's always forgivable than having too many social pretensions.

one hundred bags

A couple of weeks ago I went to my regular salon to get my hair fixed.  I was transferring to a new department and I figured I needed a new look.  Besides, it was the New Year.

My regular stylist wasn't around, so they asked me if it was okay if another stylist did my hair.  It was, and so Erika was called over.  She (he) was very thin, tall and tottering in her high heels, talked nonstop, and looked like she had a quarrel with her eye shadow palette.  She decided I needed to look glamorous, and she said she'd make me look like this antagonist Amor in this long-defunct TV show that I didn't even recall.  The trick with these stylists was to agree and make encouraging noises while they talk, lest they get carried away and I'd end up looking like a chicken that had a close encounter with a hawk.

And so, as she dyed and chopped my hair, I listened to her New Year's resolutions.  She said this year she'd start a collection, and she wanted 100 bags.  Not expensive ones, mind, because what can one afford on a hairstylist's salary these days?  And she doesn't mean buying all of them; she asks for bags as gifts, or takes hand-me-downs from friends.  

I was flabbergasted.  What would one do with a hundred bags?  We often hear about celebrities and their expensive bags in glass-fronted cabinets, but these people make a living out of showing off.  An ordinary working girl would carry a bag for about 240 days in a year, a few days more if she went out on weekends.  If you had 100 bags, you'd use each bag 2.4 times in a year.  I would consider it a great waste.  

I asked Erika what she'd do with her hundred bags at the end of the year.  She said she'd do a garage sale, then she'd think about her collection for the next year.

It brought to mind an officemate of mine, Sheila, who said she only had three bags: an office bag, a casual bag, and a dress-up bag for more formal occasions.  I was equally amazed at that.  Sheila said she'd use a bag till it falls apart, which may take years, considering that she bought Longchamp bags.  I admire the no-nonsense reasoning in that.  Three bags.  

For me, a bag was a receptacle for an umbrella, a small makeup kit that also contained Dolfenal tablets and mechanical pencils, a wallet, a hankie and my keys.  My bag should be spacious, sturdy, and doesn't easily get dirty.  I liked them to match my outfits, or better, my shoes.  I have about a dozen bags, but I regularly use only three or four, since I dress in neutral colors.  If I could have only three bags, like Sheila, I guess I'd get myself Hermes bags, so I'd feel like Jinkee Pacquiao, but then maybe I'd wrap them in plastic bags if it rained on my way to work.  Such bags are not meant for commuting working mothers.  Now if I were Erika, and I had some closet space, I'd get some Kate Spade, and some from Charles & Keith, and some from SM Department Store, only I'd probably sigh over them every day, because it would be such a shame to own so many things and not use them well, and I would be saving up for each piece that I add to my collection.  Remember me equating Promil pre-school milk for a pair of shoes a couple of years back?

Two hours' worth of chitchat later, I left the parlor with copper-red hair, and I was quite sure Erika did not succeed in making me look remotely like Amor-whoever-she-was.  I also had a few arguments with myself over the issue of bags.  

It's always nice to get a new bag, only I cannot justify buying one on a whim since I still have quite a few serviceable ones.  Now, for the sake of argument, let's say I could get rid of a couple of Nine Wests in their dust bags, the ones I very rarely use.  That would bring me closer to Shiela's bag count and I'd probably feel very efficient.  Now, arguing further, I could give the bags to Erika, bringing her closer to her dream of a hundred bags.  I admire her for the sheer fun-ness of that goal, and I would maybe see her at the end of the year to ask if she succeeded.  

But I am not Erika nor Sheila.  Getting rid of a few bags would leave quite some space in my closet.  So taking the argument further, one could say that a new bag would fit there quite nicely.  Well... the pretty bag in the picture is Anne Klein's It Takes Two handbag, $89.  

I could give it some thought, until my next haircut.