But what do they report? Felicia Isabel Vega is missing? But they can’t be sure. Knowing Izzy, she might have found someone on the side of the road who needed a ride several states over. She might have discovered an alternative location for her Latino center and checked herself into a roadside motel, waiting till morning to call local real estate agents about possible properties for sale.
They wait, all morning, most of the afternoon. Soon, it’s time to go pick up Mona at the airport. Kaspar comes along and waits outside in the car while the two sisters run in, glad for the distraction of orchestrating their reunion with Mona, texting back and forth, minutely tracking where she is, as if remotely landing a capsule from outer space. As they wait, Tilly looks around warily. New Zealand is on their minds. To tell you the truth, I feel weird anymore in airports, she says. I mean, doesn’t that man over there look suspicious?
What man? Antonia asks. Either everyone looks suspicious or no one does.
Tilly points.
Oh my God, Tilly! Antonia pulls her sister’s hand down. She is having a hard enough time managing one sister, how will she manage with two or possibly three sisters: one on a manic high, another with no self-control, a third arriving with grievances to sort? Remember, be nice, Antonia reminds Tilly when they spot Mona coming down the escalator, already looking irritated. It’s what I want for my birthday.
Tilly emits a low snarl, an animal in attack mode. But she drops her attitude to wave eagerly at Mona. And, Antonia notes, Tilly does not call out Bitch! for hello. The sister does have some self-control, after all.
Mona and Tilly gossip on the drive to Happy Valley Road. Tilly has scaled back on her catering. Mona is shifting her therapy practice to just dogs. No, no, no. Not a therapist for dogs, but a therapist using dogs with trauma victims. The kids are fine, Tilly recounts. A big contract. A new house. A hard time juggling motherhood with a full-time job. Promotions, demotions, the stock market of life. The grandkids are incredible, beautiful, bright, destined for glory, as all grandkids are. (Antonia wouldn’t dare say so, but it does seem all her friends who are grandparents and in every other way modest boast unabashedly about their extraordinary grandchildren. Who is having the unremarkable babies anymore? she’d ask Sam after a dinner party in which cell phone videos of little Sophie or Olivia or Timothy made the rounds at the table.) Their only flaw is they do not speak Spanish. What a shame. Or German, Kaspar puts in from the front seat. Monolinguals, he mutters, as if it were a vitamin deficiency that will come back later to haunt them.
The three sisters are in back, Kaspar alone in front, relegated to chauffeur, the gofers all the brothers-in-law become when the sisters are together. Antonia would just as soon have sat quietly in the front with Kaspar. But even though she is not saying much of anything, her presence is required.
In the past few years, even before Sam’s death, Antonia has often felt disconnected from her sisters. (Don’t ever let on that you can survive, or would want to, without them.) She has snapped off the thread that strung them together. Maybe it was the influence of Sam’s equanimity and his quieter, consistent affections. Her own family felt so reactive, hyper, over the top—not just Izzy. Papi with his disownings. Mami’s meltdowns. The shouting, the threats, the beatings with a belt, followed by profuse apologies and gifts.
What’s a matter, birthday girl? her sisters keep asking Antonia, and then Mona answers for her. It’s so unfair that this is happening on your birthday.
Antonia shrugs. But in the dark of the car, the shrug goes unnoticed. It’s not like the Fates would call a moratorium on wickedness: Wait! Wait! Let’s not ruin Antonia’s day. Let’s have the Christchurch shooting the day after her birthday.
You’re being so quiet, Mona keeps prodding. Is something wrong?
Just listening, Antonia says. And then, to make her point, she asks if she has ever told them about what the quiet man says at a dinner party in one of Kingsolver’s novels?
Before she can go on with the story, Tilly and Mona cut her short with a peal of laughter. Yes, sister, we have heard that quote many, many times. Her tediousness is reassuring. They go back to their gossip, as Antonia looks out the window, her reflection superimposed on the endless strip of shops, malls, gas stations flashing by, all vulnerable to someone with a gun in their backpack, an explosive device strapped to their belly, someone intent on doing harm.
She shakes away the horror. A nibble, a sip, the narrow path.
It’s that time of day when the waning light can put her in a dark mood. She thinks of Demeter punishing the earth for the disappearance of her daughter. One loss Antonia doesn’t have to anticipate or experience, as she has never had a daughter. No hay mal que por bien no venga, Mami would say. But then, Antonia will never experience the ground-shifting love of a mother for her daughter. She has had twinges of what that might feel like, over the years, with Tilly’s kids, her friends’ kids, a few special students. And most recently with Mario and Estela, pangs she has told herself she cannot afford to indulge now.
Shall we take a vote? Tilly is asking. Antonia has lost track of what it is they’re voting on. Whether to head for the police station or not. Her two sisters concur, Kaspar disagrees, and Antonia, the tie-breaker, betrays the sisterhood by casting her vote with the brother-in-law. They should all take a step back, make some other calls—Izzy’s old friends back in Boston; wasn’t there a recent love interest?; their last remaining aunt, whom Izzy sometimes listens to—before they react.
It’s a gloomy night, but they soldier on, Antonia’s birthday supper, after all. Tilly has prepared a special meal of Antonia’s favorite foods Antonia doesn’t recall being favorites, but she obliges. By now she has become that fictive being, the sisterhood Antonia, with tastes and predilections attached to her. She plays the part, exclaiming over the stuffed peppers, roasted squash with gruyere, spinach soufflé—the platters keep coming to the table. Did Tilly invite a whole village to Antonia’s sixty-sixth birthday party?
Tilly clears the dinner plates, insisting everyone stay put, and after much clattering, and a quiet hiatus in which the side door creaks open—Tilly stepping out for a smoke, no doubt—she returns, bearing a wedding-size cake, blazing with what must be two dozen candles. Feliz cumpleaños, she sings, and Mona and Kaspar join in. Make a wish! they all insist. Antonia closes her eyes, her first birthday without Sam, Izzy missing, the shooting in Christchurch, the dark mood ambushes her again. She lets out the sob she cannot contain, tears streaming down her cheeks. Mona and Tilly swoop to her side, alarmed. ¿Qué te pasa? ¿Qué te pasa? All it takes is one sister, and soon, they are all bawling.
Never remain dry-eyed when a sister is crying: another rule of the sisterhood.
four
To be missing is not a crime
It is not a crime to go missing, Officer Morgan informs them. If you are an adult you can disappear, and it’s your own darn business. However, in one of those conundrums of law enforcement, such persons should be reported promptly. For although nothing can be done, strictly speaking, the authorities want to know if someone has exercised their freedom as an adult to go missing.
The sisters express their surprise. They were convinced that the police would jump all over this case. What about all those shows on TV?