Afterlife - Julia Alvarez Page 0,41
things going with Mario? How did the visit with la doctora go? It’s almost hormonal—like a mother with her newborn—this pull toward this stranger. If she’s not careful, Antonia’s breasts will soon start flowing with milk—the milk of human kindness it would have to be! Her old-biddy titties have closed up shop. That, too, has crossed her mind. Will there be sex after Sam?
And what if there is no “after Sam”? If he’s living inside her now? Much closer than she had imagined, like that warning on the side-view mirror reads: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Again, the seemingly ordinary phrase or random detail that offers life shape and meaning. Hold through the silence, the customer-service recording instructs her. A perfect meditation instruction! Take in my give, Mami would say when they made the beds together and one side of the sheet was longer than the other. If only Antonia had taken that hint as a way to deal with her overbearing mother. Or the lovely recalculating from her nonjudgmental GPS when Antonia takes a wrong turn, no impatience, no berating her for making a mistake. In the textbook Antonia used to use with her students, there was a whole paragraph devoted to these instances in a story: narrative bumps the writer puts in so the reader has to slow down and pay attention.
But Antonia’s problem is that she pays too much attention. She’s always slowing down. Reading prose as if it were poetry.
You read each word? Sam was astonished. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to speed read?
What would be the point? she had challenged him back. Sometimes when he said such things, Antonia wondered if Sam and she were even of the same species. And now his spirit DNA is circulating in her system.
Closer than he appears to be, a form of immortality.
SAM! Antonia shouts his name, trying to flush him out. SAA-AM!
She swerves, pulling the wheel back just in time to avoid going over the side of the mountain.
The Airbnb just outside Athol is a sweet cuckoo-clock-type cottage with a cobblestone path leading up to the front door. Instead of a little bird, a pair of barking dogs come bounding out to greet Antonia as she gets out of the car, almost knocking her over. Mona follows, swooping down the front steps, arms out, her face a tragic mask. Oh sister, oh sister! She collapses into Antonia’s arms. Another woman hangs back at a respectful distance. This must be the beautiful Maritza, or so Izzy always described her friend. A beauty, really? Broad hips and thick thighs. Her hair a boosted brown, the gray showing at the roots, her eyebrows still dark and struggling to grow in where they were once severely plucked, back in the day before Frida Kahlo or some actress playing Frida Kahlo popularized the thick brows. But maybe Maritza was a beauty once upon a time, turning the heads of men and women, with whom she was always having dramatic affairs that ended badly. Antonia recalls some story of a kidnapping, or was it a stabbing—a lover turned deadly? The beautiful Maritza, a modern-day Helen of Troy. If so, Maritza, too, has gotten older and broader. The time after the happily ever after of fairy tales. They all live there now.
Two more women step out of the cottage. A slender blonde, who seems to be a dog person, too, judging by how she crouches down to pet and baby-talk Maritza’s pair, and a second older woman, soft and huggable, like a stuffed animal. Somebody’s grandmother, with a messy bun on top of her head and funky fire-engine-red glasses speckled with tiny black stars.
Who are all these people? Antonia whispers in her sister’s ear.
Izzy’s posse, Mona explains, calling them over to meet her big sister. Just saying “big sister” brings on tears. The title already transferred to the next in line.
The blonde woman introduces herself: Nancy, the Realtor. She seems unsure whether to shake hands or hug—a dilemma Antonia promptly solves by sticking out her hand. She doesn’t need one more dubious friend. Nancy is tiresome with her commiserations. She is so, so sorry! Anything she can do to help, she says, handing out her cards like tissues at a funeral. I honestly had no idea. Your sister just seemed like a free spirit, super nice, generous to a fault.
All this retrospective praise is making Antonia nervous. Has her sister’s body been found?
No, no, no, nothing like that, Nancy reassures her. Her