Afterlife - Julia Alvarez Page 0,4
in their affairs. Besides, Sam was better at arguing, sticking to the topic, not getting teary and tongue-tied when someone disputed her facts. Over the years, there was so much overlap in their opinions. She could tell what he thought from a glance at his face, the tone of his voice as he spoke on the phone in another room. Nice to get to that place with someone where you don’t have to ask. A different kind of silence now. She has the radio going constantly. She makes a mental note to up her contribution to VPR during the next membership drive.
She’s out collecting the mail when she spots the sheriff’s car coming slowly down the road toward her house. Instantly, she is alert, some instinctive reaction, like seeing a hornet in her vicinity. She runs down a checklist. What could she be doing wrong? On the top of the list would be the small brown undocumented man cleaning her gutters. But Mario has finally made it to the back of the house. Antonia lifts a hand casually in greeting, a performed rather than an innocent gesture. One may smile, and smile, and be a villain. Would the sheriff recognize Hamlet? Most of the law enforcement in town are local boys whose family farms have gone under. Many didn’t even finish high school, thinking they’d end up farming. Besides, as Sam often reminded her with a bemused chuckle: not everyone in the world walks around with a whole bunch of famous people talking to them in their heads.
Once she’s inside, she hurries toward the back of the house, sliding open the glass door off the living room. Ven, ven, she calls out. Rápido, rápido! La migra! she adds to hurry him. It works. Mario scrambles down from the ladder, missing a rung, and bounds toward her, still clutching a fistful of leaves.
She hurries him inside, points to a chair in the corner, out of view of any windows. Harboring a fugitive, the phrase runs through her head. What Sam would have done, unquestioningly. He was the bold one. She, the reluctant activist, though everyone assumed it was she who was the political one by virtue of her ethnicity, as if being Latina automatically conferred a certain radical stance.
Mario glances around the room wildly. Does he think Antonia has laid a trap for him? There’s a knocking at the door. Who could it be? Stay here, tranquilo, away from the windows. In the driveway, the UPS truck is already pulling away. The book she ordered that’s supposed to help with grief lies on the welcome mat. Antonia checks the road again: the sheriff’s car has stopped at Roger’s. Good thing Mario’s here. But then there’s José, Mario’s co-worker, perhaps cleaning stalls or mixing the feed, or if he’s on break, napping or listening to his tapes of Mexican music in the trailer behind the farmhouse.
As Antonia watches, the sheriff gets back in his cruiser and heads down the road, turning right at the corner, toward the rumbly bridge, where there’s a pull-off. Time for his lunch, riding beside him in a cooler, or maybe he’s meeting someone he can’t invite home. Antonia has heard he’s divorced, living with his mother.
Years ago, Mona talked her and Sam into making an annual donation to their local sheriff’s fund. They send you a sticker, Mona explained. You put it on your car window. You’ll never get a ticket again, I swear.
Smart cookie, baby sister Mo-mo. But Sam was doubtful. Another one of your sister’s theories. Let’s try it for a year, Antonia persuaded him. Against his better judgment, he had affixed the sticker to their Subaru.
That was over five years ago. They haven’t gotten a ticket since.
Other people are sometimes right, she reminded him. Other people, meaning her sisters, herself.
I never said they weren’t. He was too damn quick with his comebacks, right even about not always being right.
Roger comes to collect Mario. What’s he doing? Putting on a new roof or what?
She takes the blame. She had him come inside. Sheriff was on the prowl.
Came by my place, too, asking how things were going. Somebody’s talking. Roger looks at her pointedly, so she feels she has to deny that she has spoken to anyone. Why would she endanger one of her own?
Roger shrugs. A shrug that implicates her whole gender. Women. Always talking. They talk when they’re having their hair done; they talk waiting on line at the grocery store; they talk when