Afterlife - Julia Alvarez Page 0,5
they stop by to pick up their Thanksgiving turkeys from Roger’s honor store.
He’s in the living room, Antonia says, stepping to one side for Roger to come in, casting a look at his dirty boots. She considers asking him to remove them, as he seems to have missed the hint of shoes lined up below the mudroom pegs. But she might as well ask him to take off his clothes. No way this old Vermonter’s going to walk around in stocking feet indoors.
Mario is not in the living room where she left him, but there’s a fistful of leaves piled on the seat of the chair in the corner.
Mario! she calls. Es el patrón. To Roger, she says, he probably got scared. I told him it was la migra.
Roger lets out an audible sigh. Women overreacting. Mario! he calls in a commanding voice. They hear footsteps coming down the hall. Someone else who didn’t remove his shoes. But what unsettles her is that Mario took the liberty of hiding in the bedroom wing, a private part of the house.
Took the liberty? Sam would have challenged her. What does that even mean, when you are facing deportation?
Me agarró el temor, Mario says. Grabbed by fear. Personification is not merely a literary term, she used to tell her classes. Literature has to pull its weight in the real world or else it’s of no use to us. It’s not just Sam at dinner parties who could get in high dudgeon. Mario is holding himself, presumably to stop shaking. The red string bracelet he wears as a talisman on his left hand dangles its two loose ends. Suerte y protección, he had explained, wincing as she bandaged his hand. A lot of good it did you, she thought but didn’t say, concentrating on administering the first aid she’d picked up from Sam over the years. She had felt such tenderness then, and now again, at this boy-man who believes he can tame the dragons with a piece of braided string. No different from her literary cache of salutary lines. Tranquilo, tranquilo, she calms him. Estamos en Vermont. Here there be no torture of prisoners. He stares back, unconvinced. The world is crazy. Who knows what angry people will do.
Maybe you should wait a while before you take him back, Antonia advises. If you can spare him a little longer, I could use his help with a few things. Windows to wash. Lawn furniture to haul out of the shed. She makes up a list of improvised chores to delay his return. Best not to mention the promised phone call.
Roger scowls, looking them both over, probably suspecting they’re up to something. Okay, but I need the ladder back. Roger heads out the front door, and moments later his pickup pulls into the backyard, where she and Mario are waiting. After the two men load the ladder, Roger points to his left wrist, where he’d wear a watch if he wore such things. Be back by the afternoon milking.
Sí, patrón, sí, Mario answers, in a voice so submissive it pains Antonia to hear it.
Roger drives away, the ladder poking out the back of the lowered flatbed. Antonia notes the red plastic ribbon tied to one end to alert cars to keep their distance.
Mario pulls out a wallet from his back pocket. Monogrammed RL, Ralph Lauren? A fancy brand for a poor man, but then most of these brands are now pirated, cheap imitations sold on city streets by migrants in stocking caps, calling her over in accents from Haiti, Mexico, Ethiopia, countries she isn’t sure where they are on the map. Burkina Faso was the last one that took her by surprise. Remind me where it is, she had asked Sam, as if she had only momentarily forgotten. She didn’t want him teasing her about one more deficiency of her Dominican primary school education, adding her poor sense of geography to her deplorable math skills. He wouldn’t let her reconcile their checkbook.
Tucked inside the sleeve of Mario’s wallet is a worn piece of paper. Soon it will disintegrate with all the unfolding, refolding. Mario holds it out to her. Estela, written in a rough hand, then an area code and phone number. That’s all? she asks, and he nods. I thought for Mexico you needed more? Yes, you do, but she is not in Mexico. She is in Colorado. The way he pronounces the name, it sounds like a state in Mexico. But no, his