Afterlife - Julia Alvarez Page 0,59

would have guessed a couple of the emoticons Antonia so decried as lazy shorthand—the intense need to find the right words—would fell her own defenses? Antonia again felt that rush of the maternal.

At dinner that night, Antonia informed the others of the news. Izzy was eager for the details. Again, Antonia was struck by how quickly her sister could forget her own angst and enter into a stranger’s situation. This would stand her in good stead, this ability to put herself in perspective.

What’re you waiting for? Get going! Izzy commanded in her bossy voice. You can’t leave her alone at a time like this!

She’s not alone, Antonia countered, and the hospital has this translating device.

Izzy shook her head in a what-has-the-world-come-to? way that recalled their mother in bafflement over one or another of their Americanized behaviors. Since when is it okay to outsource basic human presence? Please? Izzy asked sarcastically.

What about leaving you? Antonia answered. Who is the most important one? Sometime during one of her future visits, Antonia would tell Izzy the Tolstoy story with the three questions. She might find it helpful, just knowing that even the world’s geniuses struggled with choices as they sought to live lives of purpose and meaning.

But you’re not leaving me alone. Izzy gestured with her head at her sisters, who sat by with thumbtack looks on their faces—pinning Antonia back in her place among them. I already have two bodyguards. I don’t need a third.

Thanks a lot, Mona pouted. In a flash, Antonia could see the ghost of Mona Past sweep across her baby sister’s features. We have a life, too, you know? she added, turning on Antonia. You’re not the only one with people who need you back home.

This is different, Izzy defended their sister. This girl doesn’t speak English. And her boyfriend threw her out. And she’s all of—what? Fifteen?

A slight exaggeration, which Antonia would normally have corrected, but she let it pass, hoping the error might mitigate her desertion if she decided to go.

Tilly and Mona glared at Antonia, their grievances momentarily bigger than their hearts. Their mouths twisted like their mother’s in disapproval. Not that Antonia and Izzy didn’t have their own self-interest in mind. Antonia was longing to get away, and Estela’s situation gave her the excuse she needed, while still claiming the moral high ground of helping someone else. And Izzy? Only later would Antonia suspect her sister of wanting to get Antonia out of the way. The sister of church bells, the dutiful, vigilant sister on the pullout couch who’d wake up if anyone tried to slip by on her way to the bathroom with a handbag full of pills, while the others slept on. Later, they discovered Izzy had also raided their suitcases for whatever medications they’d brought along. Ingredients for her deadly cocktail.

Sunday, after a tense brunch, Antonia said her good-byes. She had finally appeased Tilly and Mona by pointing out that in a few days both sisters would be gone, back home, and she, Antonia, would be the closest-by sister on call.

Okay, do what you have to do, they finally said, a grudging blessing on her departure. And Antonia had driven off, feeling oh so relieved to be free of the sisterhood. But as she put more and more miles between herself and them, she wondered: What was it she was so eager to get back to? An empty house, which, unless she changed her mind about Estela, would remain empty? A bleak world of self-protections: did she really want to live in it? Everyone barricaded against the suffering of others, hoarding their investment in their privatized versions of reality, giving their indifference the spin they needed in order to live exonerated, their therapist-office noise machines drowning out the cuckoo’s crying. What was the bird saying with its penetrating cries?

You must change your life, Rilke had written at the end of a poem her students always responded to.

So when do you change it? And how do you start? she pressed them.

On the drive home, Antonia found herself playing back the moment in bed with Izzy. What should she have said to her sister? Was Izzy ill or not? As crazy as the world was, Izzy’s flamboyant schemes sometimes seemed a soulful, if not sustainable, response. And in fact, Antonia felt some of the same inclinations, the wild energy, the dark moods, but she had found a place to put them: in her writing, in her students, in Sam. Each of those safeguards