Afterlife - Julia Alvarez Page 0,19
drive a trailer in March with the weather so unpredictable? Is she moving in or what?
Tilly and Antonia exchange a look. The truth is, it’s a good thing we’re doing this interjection now, Tilly says.
Intervention, Antonia corrects.
Screw you! Tilly glowers, pouring herself another drink. Kaspar purses his lips in disapproval. There’s no call for that, he chides his wife.
Tilly turns away and gives Kaspar a middle finger for only Antonia to see. It’s like Tilly never left high school, Antonia thinks. Just as Izzy never left childhood, and baby Mona never left the womb. And she? What stage in life would her sisters say Antonia is stuck in?
That night, Tilly crawls in bed with Antonia. She uses the remote to turn on the news; both sisters are too agitated to sleep. It’s a habit Antonia has become well-acquainted with in her empty house, turning on the news—in her case the radio—for company, her own sadness put in perspective by the larger sadness of the world.
The screen explodes with the sounds and sights of urgency. A swarm of police cars, wailing ambulances; lights panning the street; people shouting, screaming, calling for help; a breathless reporter is speaking earnestly into a microphone. Another mass shooting, this time in New Zealand.
The horror! the horror! enters the house on Happy Valley Road, making its way into the bedroom on its small, furred feet. The world is crazy. And their sister Izzy has lost her way in it, and they, the sisters, must intervene, get her back on track.
At least she’s not in New Zealand, Tilly tries lamely for humor.
Please turn that off, Antonia pleads.
Tilly acquiesces but not without a jab at Antonia. You always have to get your way.
They lie in the dark, trading stories of the past, trying to track down when it was that they first noted big sister going off the rails.
Remember those fits she used to throw as a little kid? Hitting her head on the floor if you thwarted her? How she used to pull out her hair and had this huge bald spot? Or the time she tried to get a hold of Michelle Obama to offer to design her inauguration gown? Never mind that Izzy couldn’t even sew a button on a blouse. How she fell in love with the worst men and turned away the sweet ones. I like a challenge, she’d say. Like she wasn’t enough of a challenge to herself. Outrageous, hilarious, over the top—they’ve always laughed at Izzy’s antics—but in a certain light, weren’t these signs of a disconnect with reality that, untreated, has now become dangerous to Izzy herself? Antonia talks on and on before she realizes Tilly is snoring.
It’s not like we ever had a choice, Tilly says from inside her dream, apropos of nothing Antonia can figure out.
Antonia’s birthday dawns gray and worrisome. Outside, there’s a chill wind blowing, the chimes are clanging, a jarring sound that goes right through her. They are tolling for Christchurch, Sam, Estela, Mario, Izzy. Not sci-fi, the ringtone du jour, but this clamoring of metal. The din of the inferno.
They haven’t heard from Izzy again, though Antonia expects that, today being her birthday, Izzy will be calling. A date she’s not likely to forget, as it marks the four-week overlap between their two birthdays, when they are the same age. It used to grate on Izzy when they were kids, to be reminded by Antonia: I’m as old as you are! I’m as old as you are! You can’t boss me around! Which is why Antonia’s birthday would have to be engraved in Izzy’s memory. Since as far back as Antonia can remember, Izzy has been the first to call and wake her up on her birthday singing “Las Ma?anitas.”
They keep trying her number, but their calls instantly go into voicemail. It might be out of charge, Kaspar suggests, a not unlikely possibility given how remiss Izzy is with practicalities.
So, do we call the police? Tilly asks, curling her upper lip with distaste. The sisters all have an aversion to authority, an immigrant thing, they think, compounded by their hippie pasts.
But what do they report? Felicia Isabel Vega is missing? But they can’t be sure. Knowing Izzy, she might have found someone on the side of the road who needed a ride several states over. She might have discovered an alternative location for her Latino center and checked herself into a roadside motel, waiting till morning to call local real estate agents about possible