Free The Canterbury Sisters by Kim Wright Page A

Guatemala was not always safe for Americans who were known to be rich, and all Americans were rich by Guatemalan standards. Allen wanted me to stay in Houston with the kids, but I couldn’t bear the thought we’d be separated for so long, that the children would only see their father two or three times a year.” She sighs. “So it was all my fault in a way, you see, everything that happened while we were down there. Because I was the one who insisted we pack up and go with him. Even the dog. Even Taffy. He was supposed to be for the boys, this big bounding golden retriever. But he always slept on your bed, do you remember, Rebecca?”
    Becca doesn’t answer. She’s evidently thrown in the towel. Decided to force her mother to tell this guilty tale on her own, for better or for worse.
    Jean lets a beat pass, then continues. “We had so much to take and we had the dog, so we drove. It took forever and it seemed with each mile of road we put behind us that we were leaving more of the world we once knew. I think I began to realize, somewhere in the southern part of Mexico, that it might have been a mistake. It always works like that, doesn’t it? You get these little glimmers now and then that you’ve lost your way, that you’ve somehow gotten on the wrong road, but by the time you realize it . . . there was no turning back. I’d pulled the children out of school, leased the house. Everything we owned was in that U-Haul.”
    She pauses midstride and automatically we all match her rhythm, stopping to adjust our backpacks, bending to pull wrinkles out of our socks. We’ve walked just long enough to realize what’s chafing, which of our clothing or packing choices may have been a mistake.
    “But that’s what makes a marriage a marriage, right?” Valerie says. “What holds it together? Doesn’t every couple get to a point somewhere in Mexico and you realize it would be even more trouble to turn back than it is to go forward?”
    She’s probably right. It sounds right. But none of the married women say anything and the silence just sits there like a brick. Finally Valerie shrugs. “I’m only guessing,” she says. “I’ll always be single . . .”
    Okay, another beat. Another awkward moment, all of us standing in a circle, facing each other for once, scratching and stretching and drinking water, and here out of nowhere Valerie feels compelled to announce not just that she’s single—which puts her in the same category as me and probably several of the others—but that she’ll always be single. That’s completely different, and a rather extraordinary thing to say. Such a matter-of-fact closing of a door, and marriage is a door that sooner or later almost everyone walks through.
    Maybe she’s gay, I think. I should try to like her better.
    But Jean has bristled at Valerie’s comment. “I never seriously entertained the notion of turning back,” she says, a bit snappishly, as we all re-heft our packs and resume the trail. “I had made the decision to follow my husband and that’s not the sort of commitment a woman breaks. And besides, Guatemala turned out to be wonderful in its own way, at least when we first got there. We had a bigger house, much larger than the one in Texas, almost an estate, really. The owners before us had named it Paradiso Blanco, and there was all sorts of security. There was even a school within the American enclave, although there weren’t many children and I don’t think the kids liked it much. They missed their friends back home, and I missed mine, but we did have the servants. Five of them, counting the chauffeur.”
    Suddenly, out of nowhere, she laughs. “When I say it that way, it all sounds very grand, doesn’t it? Like we were characters in a movie with a cook and a gardener and both an upstairs and downstairs maid and of course Antonio, the driver. He’s the one I’ll always remember best because he was always with us. Allen said it wasn’t safe for me to