Mia Alvar - In the Country - Stories

1985

Some say a phone never rings in Manila before breakfast, unless it’s an emergency. But given Jim’s work, all his sources and contacts abroad, theirs rang in the early morning all the time. When it happened that December, Milagros let herself hope it was D.C. or Berlin calling. Then Vivi answered, and Milagros watched her shoulders sink before she passed the phone to Jim. And to Milagros, Vivi whispered, “They found our boy.” A sentence like that had no room for good news. It never went, they found our boy and he is fine or he’s alive. Jim took the phone, listened, and let it go. The receiver struck the floor. “Oh no,” he said, shaking his head, bringing his fingers to his temples. “No.” Milagros watched her husband cover his face and fall to his knees before the kitchen sink, as if the time for praying, or begging, had not yet passed.

This book wouldn’t exist without my family. Along with the beloved cousins, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, in-laws, and honoraries who inspired and cheered on its creation, I especially thank my parents, Concepcion and Jose Alvar, and Josefina and Gerard Couture; and my sister, Anna Newsom.

Deep thanks to Julie Barer, my agent and early adopter, whose faith in these stories made a lifelong dream come true. And to the Barer Literary team, past and present, for being so kind and so good at what they do: William Boggess, Gemma Purdy, Anna Wiener, and Anna Geller.

I couldn’t be more grateful to everyone at Knopf for their enthusiasm and hard work — in particular, Oliver Munday, Jaclyn Whalen, Susan Brown, Maria Massey, Helen Tobin, the wonderful and heroically patient Tom Pold, and of course my editor, Lexy Bloom. Thank you, Lexy, for taking on my work with such care and imagination, for asking the smartest questions, and for leaving the collection so much better than you found it.

Columbia University, SLS, the Blue Mountain Center, the Corporation of Yaddo, Sarah Lawrence College, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the Sirenland Writers Conference generously provided the time, space, and support I needed to finish this thing, as well as the fantastic company of other writers and artists.

Thank you to the editors who found space for me in their magazines, and made these stories better in the process: Brock Clarke and Nicola Mason; Speer Morgan, Evelyn Somers, and Michael Nye; David Daley; Adina Talve-Goodman, Maribeth Batcha, and especially Hannah Tinti.

For their wisdom, encouragement, and example, I thank my teachers Cathy Blackburn, Patricia Powell, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Jaime Manrique, Nathan Englander, Sigrid Nunez, Mark Slouka, and Joan Silber. And all my workshop-mates, from St. Petersburg to Cambridge to the Upper West Side, who taught me too.

Thank you to the friends I laughed with and leaned on at various times while writing this book, and whose domain expertise I occasionally abused for story “research,” including Joy Somberg, Misha Wright, Ammie Hwang, Maya Rock, Jonathan Tze, Nina Hein, Ana Martínez, David Petersen, and Pia Wilson.

And to bring it back around to family, my last and deepest thanks go to the king of husbands, Glenn Nano, whose excellent love makes life and work worthwhile.

Mia Alvar was born in Manila and grew up in Bahrain and New York City. Her work has appeared in One Story, The Missouri Review, FiveChapters, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Yaddo, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. A graduate of Harvard College and the School of the Arts at Columbia University, she lives in New York City.