Head Librarian Elaine made Sylvie’s promotion and new salary official a few weeks before she received the requisite credits for her library-sciences degree. Sylvie had enough money saved by now for a deposit, so she rented a tiny studio around the corner from the library that same day. When the realtor put the key in her hand, Sylvie said, “I’m sorry I’m so emotional.”
The realtor, who had been working in Pilsen for decades, shrugged. “More people cry than you would think. Having your own apartment is a big deal.”
Sylvie owned no furniture, so moving in was simple; Julia and the twins had removed a few items from their childhood home before Rose left, but Sylvie had been homeless and so had taken nothing. She bought a mattress for the floor and paid a neighborhood kid two bucks to help carry a kitchen table she’d found on the street up into the apartment. Because Rose had always spent trash night trawling the neighborhood for treasures other people were throwing away, Sylvie knew where to find what she needed. Bookshelves, a box of dishes, a pot and frying pan. Pretty embroidered pillows and curtains that looked brand-new. She wondered what could make people throw away items in such good condition.
After months of trying to make herself small in other people’s homes, Sylvie slept spread-eagled on the mattress. She kept the window open for the breeze. She invited her sisters and nieces over for eggs, which she cooked in her scavenged pan. She listened to the noises of her apartment and the surrounding streets—children laughing at the playground, the city bus hissing to a stop, the man who ran the bodega downstairs talking in Spanish while he drank endless cups of coffee on the store’s steps. Sylvie started reading novels again and had the giddy pleasure of tipping into new fictional worlds. She was grateful she was steady enough on her feet to do so.
She called her sisters from her own phone line whenever she desired to hear their voices. She was careful to call Julia only when she knew William was at work, though. She didn’t trust herself on the phone with him. She still thought about their half hour on the bench while she lay in bed at night. She’d memorized their short conversation and played the scene over in her mind. She told herself that it had been no big deal. She was simply a mess, and had been since Charlie died, and so what she wanted or even dwelled on no longer made sense. But Sylvie couldn’t imagine making small talk on the phone with William; the polite words would get stuck in her mouth. She wanted to ask, What is it like to be William Waters? What was your experience on the bench that night?
Sylvie secretly thought it was Julia’s fault that she’d ended up in this odd predicament with her brother-in-law; her sister knew about the footnotes, knew the manuscript included William’s personal thoughts and questions, and she’d asked Sylvie to read it anyway. If Sylvie hadn’t read his manuscript, none of this would have happened. The day after she’d cried on the bench beside William, she lied to her older sister for the first time. She told Julia that her fictional new apartment didn’t have a phone and that, no, Julia couldn’t visit her there, because it was too small and messy. “I’m fine,” Sylvie had insisted to Julia over and over during those three months, even though she knew her sister could tell she was lying. That lie chipped away at both of them every time Sylvie uttered it.
Sylvie’s college graduation took place in the stuffy community college auditorium on a Tuesday morning in June. She told her sisters not to come, because the ceremony would be hot and boring. And anti-climactic, she thought, when she threw her cardboard mortarboard in a garbage can on her walk home. Sylvie was now a college graduate, which was what her mother had always wanted, but her mother no longer cared. Sylvie didn’t even tell Rose that she’d officially graduated. She didn’t want to hear her mother sigh at the news; Sylvie knew Rose had lost faith, and perhaps interest, in the finish line she’d set for her daughters when they were young.
Three months after Sylvie moved into her studio, on an August afternoon, Ernie walked into the library and into the row where she was shelving young-adult literature.
Sylvie stared; she hadn’t seen him since Charlie’s wake. She hadn’t seen any of her boys since then. She’d been walking the library rows alone for all this time. She managed to say, “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”
“I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. “Been busy. I just graduated—I’m officially an electrician.”
“Congratulations. I graduated too.”
They smiled at each other, and she took in his wavy hair and the dimple in his chin. They’d known each other since elementary school; she’d watched him grow from a skinny boy into a thickset young man. Sylvie inventoried what was inside her: She’d wanted this boy in her arms once upon a time, but she was no longer sure she did. She wasn’t the girl she used to be; that girl had a father and a mother and dreams for her future. Now Sylvie was a librarian struggling to make her own home. Her fantasies had gone on hold when her father died, the third doors had sealed shut, and the only man she thought about was the one married to her sister.
Sylvie shook her head, trying to clear away those thoughts, and said, “Are you going to kiss me or what?”
Ernie’s smile deepened and they each took a step forward, till their bodies met. Her hands on the back of his neck, his arms around her waist. Sylvie felt her body issue a silent moan of relief. It felt nice, like it used to. Thank goodness. She wondered over the synchronicity of Ernie showing up now, when her apartment key was sitting in her hip pocket, when she needed to be distracted. Maybe this was a chance for Sylvie to start over. Maybe this version of her would date Ernie, like her sisters had wanted her to.
When they stepped apart and glanced around for patrons or Head Librarian Elaine, Sylvie said, “Did you know that I got my own apartment?”
He shook his head. “No way. That’s amazing.”
It was amazing that she had her own place. Most of the kids they’d gone to school with either still lived with their parents or had, like Julia, moved directly from their father’s house into their married home. Sylvie appreciated that she was unusual. Cecelia was even more unusual, of course, with her fatherless baby and apartment with Emeline. Julia was the only one toeing the traditional line. Looking at Ernie, with the key in her pocket, Sylvie felt hopeful. She was back in her own life, on her own terms.
She said, “Would you like to see it? My apartment?”
Ernie tilted his head to the side, then said, “Sure.”
They made a plan, and when he left the library, she walked to the empty desk in the back corner and picked up the phone. She knew William might be home at this hour, so she dialed her other sisters.
Emeline answered the phone. “Padavano sisters’ residence.”
Sylvie laughed. “Why are you answering the phone like that?”
“For some reason it amuses Izzy. Are you at the library?”
“I just needed to tell someone that Ernie came back. Today. He found me in the stacks.”
“Oh, thank goodness!” All the sisters knew that Sylvie’s boys had evaporated when Charlie died. They’d discussed, numerous times, why this might be the case. “Did he say why he’d stayed away?”