Afterlife Page 24
All it would take . . . A little of this, a little of that, the English version of Izzy’s beloved -itos in Spanish.
I’ll pay for it with my own money, Izzy adds, her stock phrase when she does not want to abide by majority rule. A few years back it was decisions around their parents’ care. Izzy wanted her sisters to pitch in and buy their mother eighty-three orchid plants for her eighty-third birthday. The sisters declined. Mami was already so forgetful with her Alzheimer’s. How was she to take care of them? And where on earth would she put eighty-three orchids in the cramped apartment?
In the yard, of course! Izzy replied, with a tone of What do you take me for? A dummy?
But Izzy knew very well that Mami never went down to the yard anymore. The stairs were too steep.
So, we put in one of those electric chair elevators. They have seatbelts, you know?
Izzy, honey, don’t you hear how crazy this sounds? Antonia tried to reason. So did Tilly and Mona when Izzy called them up to complain about your sister Antonia, always raining on our parades. For once, the three hung together, united against Izzy’s wild schemes.
Never mind then! Izzy would go ahead and get Mami her birthday orchids with her own money and sign the card from your four daughters, shaming them into complying.
Antonia had to wonder: what own money did Izzy have left by now for rescuing llamas, no less buying a motel or a farm? How much did she get on the sale of her house? Has it even closed yet? Antonia was surprised to learn that Izzy had as much as ten grand in an account. Last time she and Sam had invited Izzy for a visit—was it only last March for Antonia’s sixty-fifth birthday? A stab of pain, remembering how much can happen in a year!—her sister’s excuse was she didn’t have any money for gas.
At the time, Izzy was still living in Boston in her house. You don’t even need a full tank to get here, Antonia pointed out. I’ll pay for your gas with my own money, Antonia added, not without irony, the unkind kind.
On her call yesterday, Izzy had lamented that she didn’t have any money left to finish paying for the motel. So how can she afford maintaining a family of llamas? But Izzy has never been one to be bothered with such practical details. Besides, she had moved on to the bad photo on her wanted poster at the rest stop bathroom. Izzy, pobrecita, with her runaway mind. No root system for that larger-than-life spirit. There must be an opera, maybe a modern one, about someone like her.
Antonia is about to erase Izzy’s rambling messages, but she decides to keep them. In case the sisters have to prove to some judge that their sister needs their guardianship to help her navigate her way between the Scylla and Charybdis of her manic highs and depressive lows.
Does anyone know what I’m referring to? Antonia had asked her students, noting their baffled looks when she mentioned Scylla and Charybdis. Another way she marked the passing of her generation, their expressions, tastes, habits—eye-rollingly passé to these new arrivals in the field of time. Like, is it a movie about two rogue women taking off together? one girl surmised with that questioning uplift of the female voice, answering a question with a question.
She’s thinking of Thelma & Louise, I think, a classmate offered, turning a puzzled look at Professor Vega. Weren’t they, like, dragons or monsters?
Antonia loved those moments when her students betrayed a childlike wonder and curiosity in learning the names of things. Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy. But there are those who never get to enjoy that heaven even in infancy, she would tell her students now. The default for most of the world is not happiness. Why then do we feel aggrieved when suffering strikes us? Who can Antonia ask?
The last message is from Sheriff Boyer. He clears his throat when the beep sounds and he’s suddenly on the spot. Just checking in that, hmm, that everything’s okay. He’s driven by the house several times and the place looked awful quiet. He’ll swing by on his way home. Time of his call three thirty this very afternoon. It’s closing on six now. Antonia better call him right away and cut him off at the pass before he shows up.
His card is under the Uncle Sam Wants You magnet on her refrigerator, the “Uncle” crossed out—one of the many magnets sent by her sisters over the years and one of the few she has kept. Antonia scrapped the majority of them. After Sam’s death, their banalities irritated her. She’d slam the fridge door so hard, the wise words fell to the floor. Life is What Happens While We Are Making Other Plans. Don’t Let Yesterday Take Up Too Much of Today. You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to Be Amazing. If You’re Going Through Hell, Keep Going. (That one she has kept as well.) The sheriff picks up on the second ring. Well, howdy—
She got his message, just got in herself, been away, a bunch of other calls to make, thanks so much for checking in.
Glad everything’s okay, just thought he’d drop over on his way to the Mexican place.
The Mexican place? He must mean Lulu’s. One of the undocumented migrant mothers, an enterprising older women, Lulu began by making meals for the growing migrant population homesick for home cooking. The wife on the farm where Lulu was living with her son approached her about starting a business together. The wife would front the operation. After a few months they had to rent space—a small house on the way to the town dump that used to be a florist shop, then a beauty salon; now it’s the Mexican place with no shingle out front for obvious reasons. It’s all word of mouth, which is why it’s unsettling that the sheriff knows about it. They do a lot of takeout, home deliveries to different farms. Lulu’s son even built a stand on wheels, which the farm wife and her daughter haul out to the parking lot at Shaw’s at lunch. It’s like a big open secret: the county is flooded with undocumented workers doing everything from milking to cooking tasty lunches: enchiladas, tacos, chili con carne, refried beans, you say how hot you want them.
Love her cooking, the sheriff smacks his lips to prove it. Hey, can he interest Antonia in some takeout this evening?
Could the man be serious? It’s not yet a year after losing Sam. When is the right time to ask a widow on a date? But even if it had been years, let’s face it, she has zero interest in Sheriff Boyer. Why postpone a permanent no?
Because in Izzy’s universe and Sam’s, the universe Antonia wants to live in, there’s always room for one more. And maybe Sheriff Boyer’s just being a good neighbor. Or maybe the man himself is needing to find something or someone to help him plug the hole in his own heart? He is in his late fifties, she guesses, living with his mother, divorced, perhaps with scattered or estranged children.
Antonia hesitates, a hair’s-breadth pause that always gets her in trouble—it used to with Sam, now with Mario, Estela, always with Izzy. Maybe some other time, Antonia says, her voice lifting like her female students. I just got back, a bunch of calls . . .
Okay then, no takeout tonight. But he’d still like to swing by. Something he needs to talk to her about. Of a personal nature.
Antonia’s skin prickles. She has developed an allergy to surprises of a personal nature. Any hint what it’s about?
It should take up only a few minutes of your time, he answers with a nonanswer.
A few minutes of her time. All it would take. Three llamas. Eighty-three orchids. In a matter of months, Mami’s orchids had died in their hanging gourd planters from overwatering or neglect. An omen, Izzy pronounced, heartbroken, that Mami would die before her eighty-third year was over. And that time, Izzy had been right.
While Antonia awaits the sheriff, she puts in a call next door. Mario, how are things?
Bien.
?Y Estela? ?Cómo está? ?Bien?
Sí.
Curt, one-word answers. The do?itas have gone out of his voice. The same frustrating generic summaries that Sam would always give her instead of newsy reports. As for putting on Estela, she’s not there, next door cleaning for el patrón. With that huge belly, days from giving birth? Better not chide the disgruntled boyfriend and get on his bad side. Antonia is still hoping for a lovers’ reconciliation. Too many years of teaching Pride and Prejudice and Romeo and Juliet. It gets in your blood.