Saving the World Read Online Free Page A

has learned from her e-mail correspondence with the historian in Spain who tends the Web site. There is a Web site on Balmis! A Web site on everyone.
    Alma’s mind wanders. What would it be like to live without Richard? It’s not a new question. She has been bracing herself, ever since they lost both Richard’s parents within months of each other almost two years ago now. Her own have moved to Miami, close enough to “home” to be flown back to the island easily for their last days, as they have instructed. Mamasita and Papote—sweet, slightly buffoonish names, courtesy of the grandkids—are now tottering on the edge of their graves, reaching out for Alma’s hand. “I can’t see anymore from my left eye. No, it’s not a cataract. The doctor says there’s nothing to do about it. Eat spinach. Can you imagine, I’m paying this doctor una fortuna and he tells me to eat spinach! Papote? You know how he is: Today he asked me if he had children. Yesterday he was quoting Dante. In and out. His blood pressure is up. Of course, I’m worried about his diabetes. He hasn’t had a bowel movement in days. So, how are you?”
    The losses that lie ahead … Alma is not looking forward to this next stage of her life. “Don’t dwell on the inevitable,” Helen often counsels as she creeps around her drafty kitchen, preparing their tea, Alma’s visit the day’s event. But like the proverbial child told not to spill her glass of milk, that’s all Alma can think about. Maybe if she had hadchildren, she’d throw her gaze over her shoulder, see the next generation coming up and feel heartened. Having stepsons doesn’t help, though she tries to pretend that it does. David and Ben and Sam are not her babies; she never pored over their little bodies, nuzzling and grooming them; and it’s that primal, animal comfort that is called for, the creature surrounded by what it has spawned. She is proud of them, her handsome, good-hearted stepsons, but she can’t get over their size, their big jaws, their flushed faces when she fusses over them too much in front of their fancy New York City girlfriends.
    â€œNothing in the world like having children,” her mother, who never seemed to enjoy having her own, would lecture Alma over the phone during the early years of her marriage. But Alma was never swayed. Not much of her mother’s advice ever worked Stateside anyway. Besides, a new husband and three young stepsons were challenge enough. By then, Alma’s first novel had been published, and she was in the thick of a family fallout. The idea of generating more family was terrifying.
    Cosas de la vida, cosas de la vida … You look up one day, and the adults of your childhood are gone, and the big questions you still haven’t answered come flooding into your head at three o’clock in the morning. Who to turn to for answers? Alma wonders, remembering the lines in a poem she recently read and copied in her journal:
    How to live—someone asked me in a letter,
someone I had wanted
to ask the same thing.
    Her writing woes, though absorbing, are minor when compared with the winds of time blowing right in their faces as the windrow of parents goes down.
    Losing Richard is what she has been bracing herself for. A fatal heart attack; a car accident, the body she loves strewn across the pavement like so much roadkill. For a while, after the deaths of his parents, Alma readied herself. She bought a small, spiral notebook and tailed him for days, writing down instructions on how to do all the things inthe house that Richard always took care of, mysteries to her: hooking up the generator if the electricity failed, refilling the water softener, programming the thermostats. When she asked him to teach her how to plow the driveway, Richard said, “What on earth do you want to know all this for?”
    â€œSo I can live without you,” Alma