Afterlife - Julia Alvarez Page 0,24
night then, say your prayers, Antonia imagines him saying. Be sure to lock the front and back doors, there are a lot of crazies out there—three of them have just visited the station, a fourth one is still on the loose.
The sisters finally decide to post a profile. Arguing the whole while about how to describe Izzy, even what picture to post, each one invoking what Izzy would want them to say, as if she is the target audience of the sketch they have titled “Beloved Sister.” She already sounds like she’s fucking dead, Tilly says, bawling.
The sisters check in with Officer Morgan or one of his colleagues several times a day. They’ve downloaded the Missing Person Checklist from outpostforhope.org. Made all the recommended phone calls, and then some: to family members, friends, former workplace, though Izzy hasn’t been employed for the past couple of years. It turns out she was fired from the Spanish-language mental health practice she helped start. Something about Izzy not keeping sufficiently clear professional boundaries—at one point even hosting an ad hoc refugee camp in her basement, bereft abuelitas mourning their disappeared children and grandchildren. Izzy did get some sort of severance/disability package, and while they were still alive, a monthly allowance from their parents. She also recently sold her house, so there’s that little stockpile, which is what she must be using to buy abandoned properties in Western Mass. Back in Boston, where she has been living, she seems to have been camping out with one friend or another, but then falling out with them and moving on. Only one friend, Maritza, recently heard from her. Izzy asked her to join the board of the Migrant Centro de Arte. I didn’t have the heart to say no, Maritza explains.
Her sisters were asked as well, and none of them had the heart to say yes. Why encourage Izzy’s craziness? But in spite of what the others have diagnosed as pathology, Antonia sometimes feels there is something noble about Izzy’s “craziness.” So unlike the ignoble craftiness and cunning she herself sometimes resorts to, part of the immigrant survival tool kit.
Maritza recalls the name of the town where the arts center is to be located. It sounds like asshole, Maritza says, spelling out the name, A-t-h-o-l. They Google the town, and there it is, in Worcester county.
The truth is, Tilly says, wagging her head.
What is the truth? Antonia jokes back.
You athol! Tilly grins, naughtily.
Even with Troy burning, the sisterhood can’t help throwing fuel into the fire.
They call hospitals, highway police, homeless shelters, roadside motels along the Google-mapped routes from Athol to Happy Valley Road in Ill-y-noise. It’s unreal, Antonia thinks, just the allegorical-sounding names are making her feel they’ve entered a modern-day Pilgrim’s Progress. But what good is a Google map? Knowing their sister, there’s no guarantee that Izzy would take either the fastest route or the scenic route or anything as straightforward as a route. Needle in a haystack doesn’t begin to describe it. More like a single grain of sand on a windy beach of shifting dunes.
As the days go by, Antonia’s homing instinct kicks in. She needs to get back, water her houseplants, fill her birdfeeders. Here at the very tail end of winter, the wrens, bluebirds, goldfinches are just beginning to arrive. This was supposed to be a short birthday trip, so she didn’t even put a hold on her mail. The box must be full, a sure signal to burglars. Although, come to think of it, what’s there to steal? The most valuable thing they could take is gone.
But it feels like a desertion to abandon the spot where Izzy was last headed, Tilly’s house on the ironically named street in the aptly named state. And although Antonia is/was/evermore shall be known as the selfish sister who pulls away from the others, she is now—temporarily, she hopes—the oldest sister who has to take charge of the sisterhood, leave no stone unturned, until they’ve dug their big sister out from whichever one she has crawled under or, God forbid, been buried beneath.
A sip, a nibble, Antonia keeps reminding herself.
Finally, after clinging to each other for over a week, and still no word from Izzy, the sisters come up with a plan. Mona will fly to Boston, lay over there for a few days, make a report at the local police department, talk to Maritza as well as Izzy’s former neighbors, colleagues, old friends. Meanwhile, Tilly will drive the route their sister might have