The Turnover [EDITING]

Chapter 4

Soon enough, Wednesday night did come around, and both the main bakery and the new branch closed up shop early enough for dinner with the Carreon family.

At the head of the table sat Pappy—real name: Pablo Carreon—who held court before the family like a slick-haired, thick-browed king.  Next to him sat his wife Mommy Guada, handing the rice bowl clockwise around the table to her children: first Paul, then Eloisa, then their younger sister Neri, who had passed the bowl back to me.

“Have some more rice,” Neri insisted. “You’re going to need it for the pochero.”

Neri didn’t make her famous meatloaf that night, but I had heard so many good things about her chicken pochero from her sister that they decided to have it as the main course for the night.

“I hope you don’t mind pochero for dinner, Monica,” Mommy Guada said as Neri passed the bowl of pochero to her. “Every time Neri makes this dish, there’s enough sauce to skip the soup course.”

I piled the tomato sauce onto the hill of rice on my plate. “I like to put soup on my rice while I’m eating,” I said. “It makes the rice softer for me.”

“Everyone has that habit of putting soup on rice,” Eloisa volunteered. “People used to think I was crazy for doing that when I lived in New York. I always tell them it’s a Filipino thing.”

“You’ve always done the ‘Filipino thing’ when you used to live abroad,” Paul shot back. “Whatever happened to—”

Pappy put the bowl of pochero down on the table. “Monica, how is your Tita Violet doing?”  

Thank God for sanity, I thought. “She’s doing well,” I answered. “Between the Mother Butler Guild and the ballroom dancing lessons, I’d say that she’s as active as ever.”

“Ballroom dancing,” Mommy Guada noted. “Pappy and I used to go ballroom dancing before my knee went bad. I think that we have a few dance steps memorized now.”

“Pappy is a great dancer,” Eloisa added. “He would always dance the waltz with us girls when we were kids. He said that it was proper for us to learn how to dance like ladies.”

“Too bad Paul didn’t get any of Pappy’s dance moves,” Neri added.

There was no way that any of these siblings are going to snap at each other at this moment.

“There are three things that Kuya Paul cannot do well,” Eloisa said. “He can’t dance, he can’t cook, and he can’t bake.”

“Of course I can cook!” Paul responded. “I know how to make corned beef!”

“Corned beef from a can,” Neri answered back.

Mommy Guada laughed softly. “Poor Paul,” she said to me. “He’s always the butt of his sisters’ jokes. I told him that he could always learn how to cook, but he’s so stubborn.”

“But he should,” Pappy added. “He will never get a girlfriend if he stays this way.”

“Don’t say that, Pappy!” Paul called out. “That’s too much information for Monica.”

I cut into my piece of chicken. “No, it’s all right. I understand—“

“I’m sorry,” Paul answered. “This is how we are at the dinner table. We like to argue a lot. Eloisa, tell her about the first time Sean had dinner with us.”

I did remember walking in on a conversation between Sean and Eloisa the morning after that dinner. “Was he traumatized?”

“He’s an only child,” Eloisa said. “He’s not used to having spirited arguments around the table, but he got used to it.”