When they are done, Mario again grabs her hands. Ya, ya, she stops him. He must not confuse her with a truly good person—a truly good person would not feel relieved about hightailing it to Chicago and leaving these kids in the lurch. But how much can one person take on? We live in America, she reminds the disapproving Sam in her head, where you put your oxygen mask on first.
But either way, the plane is going to crash. So why not tender a little kindness before she, too, is a body in a ditch on the side of the road, availing herself of whatever afterlife will be afforded in somebody else’s head, if that? Unlike Sam, who can enjoy his afterlife romping through her head, Antonia will not have Sam to keep her alive in his imagination.
On the ride back to Roger’s with Mario, Antonia sees the sheriff’s car in her rearview. Very calmly, as if she were speaking to a highly sensitive person, Antonia tells Mario la policía is behind them. He is to slide down in his seat. Clear the window. Mario does as he is told. She turns on her blinker to go into Roger’s driveway, the cautious widow making a breakfast purchase at the honor store. The cruiser goes by, someone is riding with the sheriff, someone with disarmingly blonde, shoulder-length hair. The sheriff does not wave or look over her way.
Antonia calls Izzy purportedly to report on her plans for her birthday. Mostly, she wants to gauge her sister’s state of mind for herself. Too often in their family, things are blown out of proportion. Was it growing up in a dictatorship that skewed their temperaments toward doom and gloom?
Izzy is full of news about her own plans. You know that Latino arts center I told you about? I found the perfect place. Western Mass! It’ll be a way of importing diversity into that part of the state, a model to be copied throughout other white-bread areas of the country. Instead of migrant workers on farms, a cultural takeover: migrant poets, dancers, and artists. Would Antonia agree to be on the board, convince some of her writer friends to join?
Izzy, honey, how are you going to pay for all this?
We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it, Izzy proclaims. (Precisely what she would do, Antonia thinks.) For starters, maybe Antonia’s publisher is interested in putting together an anthology of their stories, profits to go to—
Antonia cuts her off. Izzy, honey, I haven’t been in touch with my publisher forever. I’m really not up to it right now.
It’d be a way for you to get back in the saddle, Izzy says in her older-sister voice. Anyhow, think about it, okay? Izzy’s actually headed to Western Mass now. Would Antonia like to join her for her birthday?
I’m going to Tilly’s, Antonia’s decision is now definite. I just bought my ticket. A little white lie. Antonia has a stash of them locked away in that closet of half-truths she has told the sisters over the years to avoid their disappointment, ire, or worse.
But I heard you didn’t want to go anywhere for your birthday. What made you change your mind?
Oh, I don’t know, Antonia hedges. It might be nice to get away. Chicago is a few weeks ahead of Vermont in spring weather. As if her whole reason for going to Tilly’s is to check in on her sister’s daffodils.
Well, whatever, I think it’s a great idea, Izzy opines. Antonia is always impressed by other people’s certainties—she often has to borrow from their assurances to make up her own mind. Along with their checkbook, decision-making was another area of their lives she ceded to Sam. He never second-guessed himself, never fished any of his cast-off bread back out of the waters. A good cop with no self-doubt. Was that a good thing for a cop? One of these days, she had cautioned herself, Sam would leave her, tired of her questions, of her intense need to get not just the words but the world right.
One of these days is here. Sam has left her, but not in the way she had feared.
Don’t be so sure he isn’t getting something out of it, her therapist had said, shaking her head, full of her own certainties. Have you ever asked yourself why he married you? Here’s a thought, the therapist had offered, as if setting a piece of merchandise down on the counter for Antonia to consider buying. Maybe you are the one carrying the doubts in the relationship? Maybe your husband needs the balance of a highly sensitive wife? Maybe Sam isn’t all that sure himself where Burkina Faso lies?
three
Rules of the sisterhood
Her sister is waiting at baggage claim. Antoni-AH! Tilly shouts, making a point of calling Antonia by the name she prefers, rather than by Toni, the childhood nickname the extended family still insists on using.
People turn to look. Foreigners with loud voices, expressive faces, gesticulating. Pipe down, their American classmates were always hushing them those first years after their arrival.
The two sisters hug, let go, hug again, ready, not ready to let go.
The first rule of sisterhood: Always act pleased to see them.
Antonia is pleased to see Tilly. They are the middle sisters—Izzy and Mona at either end. A mere eleven months separate each sister from the next in line. Sometimes it feels as if only together are they a whole person—referred to reverentially as “the sisterhood.”
Antonia and Tilly last saw each other in Vermont right after Sam’s death. Tilly flew in the morning after. The first responder of all Antonia’s friends and family.
But then, that’s always been Tilly’s role. She is the doer—whether true or not anymore, by now their roles have self-perpetuating lives of their own. The mask stuck to the face; take it off at your own peril. Who am I going to be anymore? Antonia had asked Tilly in the wake of the wake. No longer a teacher at the college, no longer volunteering and serving on a half dozen boards, no longer in the thick of the writing whirl—she has withdrawn from every narrative, including the ones she makes up for sale. Who am I? the plaintive cry.
I don’t know. Tilly had shrugged, eyebrows and shoulders riding up, emphasizing the extent of her ignorance. Ask your sisters, Tilly had advised. I’m no good at all that shrink stuff.
Apparently, they’ve divvied up the skills in the sisterhood. You need something done, funeral meats and cheeses set out on the table after a memorial service—that’s where Tilly shines. In emotional anguish—you aren’t sure what you want, whether to leave or not leave your philandering husband, throw in the towel on a friendship, call Izzy. For answers of the miscellaneous kind—the perfect breed of dog, the real estate market, the best shampoo for thinning hair, Mona’s your gal.
So, what can Antonia contribute to the sisterhood? Its pundit, with a head full of quotes? Its nervous system, as a highly sensitive person? But all the sisters are nervous types, high strung.
Whoever she will be now, she knows better than to trespass into another sister’s domain. Honor thy sister’s turf, another of the rules of the sisterhood.
Welcome to Ill-y-noise, Tilly jokes, imitating their father. Ill-y-noise, Papi would parse out the name. How can it be a good place to live with a name like that? Now that he’s gone, his corny jokes are part of their nostalgia riffs. Papi was always trying to convince Tilly to move east with the grandchildren, closer to Mami and him. Of course, bring Kaspar, too, Papi added if prodded—the sons-in-law always an afterthought with paterfamilias.
Where’s Kaspar? Antonia asks out of politeness. When Tilly first introduced her husband-to-be to the sisterhood, they didn’t think he’d be a keeper. He took himself too seriously. He might be a math-whiz scientist, but his sense of humor was in the minus numbers.