Free Ways of Going Home: A Novel by Alejandro Zambra, Megan McDowell

to me with a self-help book open on his chest. And then I thought how my mother had died ten years ago, how my father had just died, and instead of silently honoring their deaths I felt an imperative need to talk. The wish to say: I. The vague, strange pleasure, even, of answering: ‘My name is Claudia and I’m thirty-three years old.’”
    The thing she most wished for during that long trip to Santiago was for the stranger traveling next to her to wake up and ask: Who are you, what’s your name? She wanted to answer him quickly, cheerfully, even flirtatiously. She wanted to tell him, like they do in novels: My name is Claudia, I’m thirty-three years old, and this is my story. And then begin to tell it, finally, as if it didn’t hurt.
    By now it is night, and we are still sitting on the cafe terrace. “You’re tired of listening to me,” she says suddenly. I deny it with a sharp shake of the head. “But later I’m going to listen to you,” she says. “And I promise that when I get tired of listening to you, you won’t realize it. I’ll pretend really well,” she says, smiling.

 
     
    Claudia arrived when the wake was just about to start. She accepted people’s condolences with something like boredom: she preferred silent hugs, without those terrible phrases ready-made for the occasion. After the funeral she unpacked her suitcases in what had once been her room. She thought how she was, after all, coming home; how the only space she had ever really felt comfortable in was that small room in the house in La Reina, although that stability hadn’t lasted long, barely a few years toward the end of the eighties when her grandmother, her mother, and her father were all still alive.
    As if she had cruelly guessed Claudia’s thoughts, as if she’d spent a long time waiting to pronounce certain sentences, Ximena came in suddenly and said: “This isn’t your house anymore. You can stay here a few weeks, but don’t get used to it. I took care of Dad, so the house is mine; I’m not going to sell it, don’t even think about it. And it would be a lot better if you found a hotel.”
    Claudia agreed, thinking that as the days passed her sister would regain her calm, her senses. She lay on the bed to read a novel; she wanted to forget that bitter conversation and be carried along by the plot, but it was impossible, because the book was about parents who abandoned their children or children who abandoned their parents. Ultimately, that’s what all books are about, she thought.
    She went to the living room, where Ximena was watching TV, and sat down next to her. Gregory House was in the middle of saying something crude to Dr. Cuddy, and Claudia remembers that she and Ximena laughed in unison. Then she made tea and offered Ximena a cup. She thought her sister had the face of someone who had suffered not just a day or a week but all her life. “I’m sorry,” said Ximena as she took the tea. “You can stay here as long as you like, but don’t ask me to sell the house. It’s all I have, all we have.”
    Claudia was about to reply with some opportune, empty phrase: we have each other, we’ll get through this together, something along those lines. But she held back. It wouldn’t have been true. It had been a long time since they’d been able to live together without animosity. “Let’s talk about the house later,” she said.

 
     
    We walk without a destination but I don’t realize it, I simply accompany Claudia, thinking we’re going somewhere. It’s very late now, the movie theater is closed; we stop to look at the movie posters as if we were a couple out looking for something to do.
    “It’s good to live close to a cinema,” she says, and we start talking animatedly about movies. We discover coincidences that inevitably bring us back to real life, to our youth, to childhood. Because we can’t, we don’t know how to talk about a movie or a book anymore; the moment has come when movies and novels