“No. Check this out: I have a cousin who’s less than a year older than me. Isabella. Cecelia had a daughter. She looks like all the Padavanos except me.”
They were at the kitchen table. They’d just eaten spaghetti, one of the only meals Alice was able to prepare that tasted good. This was her go-to meal to cook; Carrie’s was a salad into which she put everything she could find, with mixed results.
“Did you finish copyediting that sad novel?”
“The Little Women one? Yes.”
“Then it’s time to go to Chicago,” Carrie said. “You can take some days off work. And you have all the information there is in that folder.”
“There might be more,” Alice said. Her body felt heavy, as though it were rooted to the chair. She searched the room for a distraction, but none appeared. All she could see was hand-me-down furniture and a sink full of dishes that needed to be cleaned. She said, “Carrie, he doesn’t want to meet me. He never wanted anything to do with me.”
Carrie looked at her with her wide eyes.
“Don’t cry,” Alice said, in warning.
“I won’t. Listen. He made that decision a long time ago, when he was in a terrible emotional place. He might feel entirely differently now. He might have spent the last twenty-five years regretting giving you up. Or Julia might be lying to you about some part of this story. Hell, Julia might have paid your dad to stay away. Rhoan can’t find those kinds of answers in old newspapers. You have to go there and ask him.”
Go there, Alice thought. She had done very little traveling in her life. She was familiar with the four-hour drive to Boston. And she’d visited Rose in Florida. But she’d turned down the option to study abroad and had never understood why people left New York City. This was her home, and surely nowhere else could compete.
“You’re a grown-up,” Carrie said. “You’re twenty-five years old. You don’t need a dad. You just have to meet him and ask him what’s what, so you can move on with your own life.”
Alice listened to her friend talk and tried to take the words in, but the ideas of going to Chicago to meet her father and moving on with her life were at odds. She was in her life now; simply boarding that plane would detonate the safe, careful, calm young woman she’d been constructing since she was a child.
William
NOVEMBER 2008
THERE WERE A FEW THINGS that William knew without being told. He knew that Kent had called his psychiatrist, to make sure William’s medications were airtight, and that his psychiatrist scrutinized him during their sessions with a new level of concern. William could feel Kent’s worry too, a presence that had existed at different levels since the two men had met. When Nicole had moved out of her and Kent’s townhouse during the divorce, William slept in the guest room for a few nights so Kent wouldn’t go from married to completely alone. He’d been grateful for the chance to help his friend during that period. When Kent had apologized for his sadness, William told him that it was a relief to direct some worry at him after so many years of feeling it pointed at himself. On the other side of the divorce, even though Kent had regained his enthusiasm and love of life, the giant doctor was still a bit weary, and William felt that too. He hated that his friend had to resume the duty of standing guard over his depression.
William also knew that he was the reason Julia was staying away from Chicago. With him in Sylvie’s life, Julia wouldn’t budge, even though Sylvie deserved her older sister’s devotion. And finally, he knew that Sylvie had lost weight over the previous weeks. She hadn’t said anything, but she was smaller, and she was always cold.
He made dinner every night now, trying to cater to Sylvie’s diminishing appetite. He roasted chickpeas with extra salt to accompany their meals, because he knew she would eat those. He stocked mint chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer and went out first thing every morning to buy fresh donuts. Sylvie smiled when he offered her a granola bar or nudged the bowl of chickpeas in her direction. She saw what he was doing; she always had, after all.
During dinner one night, she said, “I’m sorry. I know I’m not talking much lately.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “You’re tired.”
“It’s more that…” She paused, as if searching for words. “Everything is so rich inside me now…that it holds my attention. You know the Mark Twain quote about how the only reason for time is so everything doesn’t happen at once? I feel like everything that’s ever happened in my life is happening inside me. I’m never bored anymore. I think about everyone and everything. I’m with you now, and you’re with me in here too.” She pointed at her head. “My dad is here too. He and I are in the back of the grocer’s.”
William nodded, to show that he was listening more than that he understood. He knew he probably couldn’t understand. “Is that nice?”
She considered this and nodded. “It’s nice.”
They went straight to bed after William put the dinner dishes in the dishwasher. Sylvie needed lots of sleep, so they no longer spent an hour or two of their evenings on the couch, reading and watching basketball. After they made love that night, they slept naked, for the first time since they were young. They were dismantling their habits and routines, and it was like pulling up floorboards and finding joy underneath.
Before they fell asleep, Sylvie said, “Oh, I did want to tell you something.” She propped herself up on an elbow. “I’m proud of myself.”
The surprise in her voice, and the unexpectedness of the comment, made William laugh.
She smiled. “It’s just, I didn’t expect to be. When you and I got together, I thought I was going to hate myself, a little bit, forever. Because if I was a good person, I would have stayed away from you. Stayed miserable. But when I made this choice…” Sylvie paused, and William realized that she was doing that more and more. Words seemed to be harder for her to reach, like fruit in the highest branches of a tree.
“It’s hard to explain, but our love was so deep and wide that it made me love everyone and everything in sight. Which included me.” She smiled wider. “I know it sounds silly, but I’m proud of myself. I guess for living a brave life.”
William nodded, unable to speak for a second. “You should be proud,” he said.
She closed her eyes, the smile still on her face. She fell asleep quickly, and William lay awake for a long time in the dark bedroom. He listened to his wife breathe. Was he proud of himself? William had never considered this before. Maybe he’d felt that way a handful of times, for fleeting moments. When he truly helped a struggling player; when he spotted a problem no one else had seen and found a solution. He searched inside himself and realized, with surprise, that he was proud of himself for calling Julia.
He remembered kissing Sylvie for the first time in his dorm room and how their love had stayed in that room during the first few months they were together. In a way, William never stopped containing their love, cupping it in his hands. He’d felt safer that way. He’d known he couldn’t lose Sylvie’s love if he knew where it was. His wife had been brave—she’d been the one to lose Julia and hurt the twins—but William had never risked anything. He’d been an eternal coward, scared of what he might lose.