Afterlife - Julia Alvarez Page 0,53

the best of each other, it’s best not to know it.

And Antonia would feel the same way if someone parked their worthy cause at her door. In fact, someone did, knocked, and then vanished. I can try someone else, Antonia offers.

No, no! Just thinking out loud. Of course she can stay here, Beth Trotter insists. How can I say no to an old friend?

Actually, it was Sam who was her colleague on the staff of the hospital. In fact, Sam was on the search committee that brought Beth here. Is there an expiration date on the tendrils of a gratitude after the mother root expires?

I really appreciate it, Beth. I know it’s a lot to ask.

Are you kidding? Beth says generously. The least I can do. Did I tell you about the time that Sam spelled me when Emily had her ski accident?

Antonia has heard the story a number of times before. But she owes it to Beth to listen. In their small town, it seems everyone wants to tell Antonia their Sam story. A testament to how much he was respected and loved. These narratives are a kind of offering—to what god Antonia cannot guess. All she knows is that for the moment she is its reluctant priestess.

Mona and Tilly have booked side-by-side rooms at the Comfort Inn an hour out of Boston: Tilly and Kaspar in one, and Mona and Izzy in the suite, which has a pullout couch in the living area where Antonia can sleep. It’s only for a couple of nights, Mona points out crossly when Antonia at first insists on getting her own room. This isn’t childhood. Get over it.

Tomorrow morning the sisters are meeting with the psychiatrist; the hope is that Izzy will consent to go into residential care, where she can be evaluated and her medications monitored. Afterward, the three sisters will have to come up with a long-term plan for managing Izzy’s illness. Her bills will need to be paid as well as other expenses incurred in hunting her down and procuring this sort of happy ending. Realtor Nancy has convinced the motel owners to tear up Izzy’s purchase agreement. Everything under control, as their mother’s caretaker used to say when the sisters would call in for a daily report.

Izzy has retreated to the suite bedroom with one of her migraines, no doubt brought on by the fact that she is furious at her sisters for engineering this intervention. Not to mention, which she does, often, having the state police hold her like a common criminal. The room is dark, the shades drawn, when Antonia enters, announcing that she wants a big hug. Start with the positive.

Go fuck yourself, Izzy greets her back. This is more Tilly’s foul mouth talk than Izzy’s, whose frustrations tend more toward those air quotes and a lot of yadda yadda yaddas for stuff she doesn’t want to go into.

You’re all allowed to have your lives, but I’m not allowed to have mine. Like you’re all so competent and healthy. Izzy launches into her laundry list of the destructive, hypocritical behaviors of each sister: booze, cigarettes, weed, workaholism, greed, and the most recent, animal cruelty. Oh, yes! Mo-mo, the big dog lover and animal rights activist, called a shelter. The llamas have been taken away to who knows what grim fate. You’re all a bunch of narcissists. The problem with having sisters who are therapists, Antonia has often noted, is that you get all kinds of diagnoses thrown at you that you can’t defend yourself against.

We are awful. You’re absolutely right, Antonia responds, some long-ago buried instruction resurfacing to always agree with the mad and the furious. She is perched at the edge of Izzy’s bed after a sobbing reunion—on her part, that is; dry-eyed Izzy sits by, observing her with narrowed eyes. Antonia, too, has betrayed her, by joining this plot against her happiness.

On the other side of the closed door, Mona is speaking on the phone, updating the psychiatrist contact. Their sister is still refusing to cooperate. It seems the next step will have to be contacting a lawyer to issue an emergency guardianship order so the sisters can proceed in getting Izzy the help she needs. They have plenty of evidence of her craziness. Antonia is not sure she will volunteer the messages left on her answering machine. Of course she wants to help Izzy, but she is feeling a familiar discomfort at being in a majority against the lone holdout; so often