“I feel like I need to poop,” Cecelia said, in a loud whisper.
“That means it’s time to push the baby out.” This came from the bored-looking nurse in the corner, whom Julia hadn’t even noticed was there. “I’ll get the doctor.”
The infant arrived—yelling, pink, wrinkled—so furious that Julia and Cecelia both cried in relief.
“She’s here,” Cecelia said, when the baby was lying on her chest.
The infant patted her fist against her mother’s skin. Julia watched her take in quick breaths and then let them go. This brand-new being seemed to be concentrating all of her tiny form on the act of living.
Julia said, “Look at her.” She wished everyone they knew was in the room with them to look. In fact, she wished thousands of people were crowded in here with them—all of humanity—because the sight was so amazing.
“Isabella Rose Padavano,” Cecelia said. “We’ll call you Izzy. Welcome to the world.”
“Mama’s not going to be able to resist her.” Julia stared in wonder at the infant. Her perfect eyes, perfect tiny nose, perfect pink mouth. “She’s irresistible.”
* * *
—
LATER THAT NIGHT, AFTER Julia and her sisters left the hospital, Charlie visited. Mrs. Ceccione must have told him the news.
When he appeared in the doorway of Cecelia’s room, he didn’t mention the prior five months, or Rose’s anger, or the fact that he had never walked the twenty-four steps from his house to Mrs. Ceccione’s to visit his shunned daughter. Charlie just looked at Cecelia and the baby for a long moment. Then he smiled with so much warmth it was as if a sun had risen inside him. “Hello beautiful,” he said. And with those words, Cecelia knew that she was forgiven, and she forgave him too.
He kissed Cecelia’s cheek and sat in the chair next to her bed with the baby in his arms. Izzy stared up at her grandfather, her dark eyes serious and bright. Charlie gazed down at her and said, “She’s hardly heard any language yet. Shall we start her off with an incantation, with some magic?”
“Yes, please,” Cecelia said.
He cradled the baby to him and whispered into her tiny ear: “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” He pressed kisses into her soft cheek. He appeared to be sober, and he gave his granddaughter all of his love, Cecelia said to her sisters later. Then he stood up and carefully handed Izzy back to Cecelia. He kissed his daughter again. “Thank you, sweetheart,” he said.
Charlie made it halfway down the hospital hallway before collapsing to the floor. A nurse around the corner heard and recognized the sound of a human body in surrender. She reached him in less than a minute, but his heart had already stopped. None of the machines or experts in the hospital were able to bring him back.
Sylvie
OCTOBER 1982–MARCH 1983
THERE WAS A LINE OUTSIDE the funeral home during the three sessions of the wake. Inside, Sylvie stood in a row beside Rose, Julia, and Emeline and said thank you so much every time a stranger told her how wonderful her father had been. One woman said she’d stood next to Charlie at the bus stop on Loomis every day for years, because their commutes lined up, and he’d been kinder to her than anyone else in her life. Mr. Luis, who had provided the flowers for Julia’s wedding and now for the wake and funeral, said that when he’d first moved to Pilsen, Charlie had helped him negotiate a low rent for the flower shop. “My business never would have existed without him,” Mr. Luis told the Padavano women. “I didn’t believe in myself, but Charlie, who had just met me, somehow did.”
Charlie seemed to have had a habit of helping young mothers: Several women said he had bought them baby formula when they couldn’t afford it. Head Librarian Elaine appeared before Sylvie at the second wake and told her, in a stern voice, that her father had been a lovely gentleman and that he’d once done her a meaningful favor. Sylvie wasn’t aware that her father and Head Librarian Elaine—who was fifteen years older than her parents—had ever met or even been in the same room together. A few men, who must have been drinking buddies, entered the funeral home worse for wear and were eyed nervously by Rose’s friends. Co-workers from the paper factory arrived wearing white shirts and dark ties, as if it was their uniform. “It’s impossible he’s gone,” one of the youngest workers said.
Sylvie agreed. It was impossible.
Many guests wept, on and off, as if their tears were for Charlie but also for their own personal heartbreaks. An early lost love, a miscarriage, the pounding headache of never having enough money. In a setting where weeping was acceptable, they would take their opportunity. They followed a clear path: First they waited on the line that hugged the far wall, then stopped in front of the open casket, then turned left to give their condolences to the Padavano women. At that point, they either exited the room or moved into the center, where there were seats. The Padavano women never spoke publicly at the wake, but during each session a different man, from a different part of Charlie’s life, would rise and speak about him in a choked voice.
Sylvie never approached the casket. She’d glimpsed her father when they’d first arrived in the room. Dead Charlie looked still, waxy, gone, and she had no desire to see his empty body up close. She stayed rooted to her spot as if it were a locked cell. She listened to her voice express thanks or whatever other words seemed appropriate. She watched her hands be enveloped by strangers’ hands. When old women insisted on kissing her, she allowed them her cheek. William carried over a chair at one point for his pregnant wife, but Rose sat down on it instead, despite the fact that she had been turning down offers of chairs the entire night.
Mrs. Ceccione ducked in and out without coming near the Padavano women. She had been avoiding Rose since Cecelia moved in with her, but she was no doubt worried she would go to hell if she didn’t show her respect for the dead. Relatives and cousins Sylvie had met only a handful of times because so-and-so hated so-and-so arrived and departed in tears or huffs. “That woman,” Rose whispered angrily to her daughters at least once per wake session, but usually Sylvie didn’t even know to whom she was referring. There was an infrastructure of grudges that had shaped Charlie’s and Rose’s extended families and kept them away from one another. When the Padavano sisters thought of family, they’d always pictured only the six people who lived under their roof. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins had always been framed as enemies or potential enemies. Sylvie watched people wash in and out of the room on a tidal schedule of theatrical grief, but she was mostly aware of who was missing: Cecelia and the baby.
Cecelia and Izzy had been released from the hospital that afternoon. The original plan, constructed largely by Julia, had been for Cecelia to go straight from the hospital to Rose, where the baby would serve as a peace offering between the mother and her youngest daughter. But that plan had evaporated when Charlie died. Sylvie had been the one to answer the kitchen phone when Cecelia called from the hospital, crying so hard Sylvie didn’t know who it was at first. Rose had taken the news as if it were a bolt of lightning. Her body tightened, then released, and she fell to the living room floor. Sylvie knelt next to her. Emeline—the terrible sentence, Dad is dead, still in her ears—ran back to the hospital to be with Cecelia. Julia didn’t know yet; she was sitting peacefully on a bus to Northwestern.