Afterlife - Julia Alvarez Page 0,15

to drive ten miles out of the way. Just as well. Tilly knows a coffee shop where they can sit and gossip. The place also has an outdoor patio where Tilly can smoke.

It’s too cold, Antonia says, shaking her head.

No, it’s not. They argue about whether it’s too cold or not. This time, though, Tilly acquiesces. It’s Antonia’s birthday tomorrow, first one without Sam. You deserve to be spoiled.

Deserve, mi-sherve, Antonia scoffs. The verb annoys her—the whole idea that you are entitled to special treatment, a sense of grievance when life doles out to you what it doles out to everybody: mortality, sorrow, loss.

Don’t knock it, sister. Nice to be spoiled. So anyhow, what made you change your mind and come?

What do you mean what? To see you, of course. She doesn’t want to get into the mixed bag of her motivations.

They sit quietly for a moment, holding hands, a rare quiet respite in their hectic sistering. All those moments she was too busy to help Sam dig up his potatoes in the garden, to come quick to the window and see an unusual bird that just landed on the feeder. There will be a lot of these little kicks at her heart in the days, months, years to come.

They bus their own table, still Mami’s daughters long after there is a mother to be daughters of. So, what are you up for? Tilly asks. Want to go to the Vietnamese market? There’s also treasure-hunting at secondhand shops. A neat little bistro on the way home, where they can have a glass of wine, rum, vodka. Along with being a smoker, Tilly is the serious drinker of the four. Anything special Antonia wants? Just say the word.

She wants Sam is what Antonia wants, but that is not one of the offerings. How about I shadow you through a typical day.

I don’t get it, Tilly says, frowning.

Act like I’m not here, Antonia elaborates.

Why would I want you to visit and then pretend you’re not here?

I get to have a little window on your life. Then, when I’m in Vermont, I can imagine what you are doing at any given moment.

Tilly’s frown deepens. I’m not that predictable. Do you know at any given time what you’ll be doing?

Of course, Antonia does. Even if she were not grieving, she knows that at six every morning, she’ll be doing her yoga exercises while listening to her bird CDs, the singsong of the robin, the three-or-more repetitions of the mockingbird, the whiney notes of the goldfinch. It would actually be a comfort knowing that at that exact moment Tilly is drinking her coffee, listening to the news while prepping for the meals ahead, running a load of laundry—Tilly is a multitasker, a doer on steroids. Whenever Antonia calls, she can hear pots banging, a hose spraying, Tilly peeing, Tilly taping up the package she will have already mailed to Vermont for Antonia’s birthday, thinking that Antonia won’t be coming to Chicago to shadow her as she goes about her day.

I still don’t get it, Tilly says after listening to Antonia’s explanation. But then, you always had to be different from us.

So, will that continue to be her role going forward? The one who defines herself by being what the others are not?

They make the rounds of a typical Tilly day. At the Vietnamese market, Tilly fills up her cart with items Antonia recognizes from Tilly’s periodic care packages: dried mushrooms, candied ginger, boxes of teas with Chinese characters, peeled garlic in a jar. The store is pungent with nostalgic smells, reminding Antonia of mercados back home in the DR, she and her sisters trailing behind Mami and the tías down rows of piled vegetables, fruits fly-speckled, bloody strips of meat hanging from hooks, a calf bawling in the abattoir next door. Such are the madeleines that recall the sisterhood’s island childhood.

But Tilly’s favorite activity is shopping in the secondhand shops that abound in her suburb. They all have playful names, as if poking fun at their own con, selling people’s discards: Sweet Charity, Déjà New, and the too-cute Twice Loved, which Tilly says used to be a sewing shop named Son of a Stitch that closed up. The owner got a lot of flak from what Tilly calls—with the same intonation with which she curses—Christians.

Tilly has often complained about her evangelical neighborhood. We have more churches per square root than anywhere, she says authoritatively, and Antonia doesn’t have the heart to correct her speech or