Julia felt better with the twins there. Sylvie had made her feel like there was a problem in addition to her husband walking out, and that had been disorienting. But Julia had her feet under her now; she knew that William had ended their marriage at the start of the night, and almost twenty-four hours later, Julia had caught up. They were both done. She believed she would be okay on her own, but to convince herself, she tried to imagine a possible day in a possible future. The future Julia was wearing a gorgeous business suit and sitting behind a modern black desk. Her hair was contained in a masterful bun. Her competence was on full display. I’ll be better than okay, she thought, and felt her face light up. I’ll be amazing.
She saw that Cecelia and Emeline looked concerned. They didn’t trust her optimism in this moment and thought it might be a warning sign of an impending collapse. Julia turned her attention to the baby blanket in the middle of the room. Cecelia had placed her daughter beside Alice, and Izzy was handing the younger baby a toy. Julia remembered the earlier version of herself that had gotten pregnant in order to place her baby beside this one on a sun-soaked blanket. The two babies were meant to be the magnet that drew all the grown-ups together, but in reality they had done the opposite. The babies had arrived, and the adults had scattered. Izzy had started something, the same way Julia had started something with her own birth, but what trajectory had Izzy hurled everyone on? Charlie died, Rose left, and now so had William. Julia didn’t blame the baby, of course; she felt a shot of love while gazing at the dark-haired, dark-eyed child.
“Have you called Mama?” Cecelia asked.
Julia looked at her sister, who had a streak of bright-yellow paint on her right hand, and knew that because Rose had abandoned Cecelia, she would always think of their mother first. “Not yet,” Julia said. “There’s nothing she could do but worry. I wish Sylvie was here, though. She’s acting so oddly.”
“What can we do to help?” Emeline was standing by the window. She was looking for Sylvie, or perhaps William, the same way, as a tiny child, she’d stared out the front window after school was dismissed, watching for her older sisters. “We could make you dinner? Do you want us to sleep here?”
Julia shook her head. She appreciated that Emeline and Cecelia had shown up for her, the same way she’d shown up for Rose in her garden when their mother’s heart was broken. But Julia’s sisters couldn’t take the next steps with her, even though pulling herself together had always meant pulling her sisters to her side. Now being strong meant standing on her own, with her child in her arms. This was a lonely position, even though it felt like the correct one. She was a grown-up, and a mother.
“If Mama was here,” Cecelia said, “she’d drag us all to St. Procopius to pray.”
This statement rang true. The four girls had gone to church and said rosaries for Rose, not God. There had been no way to know this while they all lived on 18th Place, because the church and their mother were so intertwined. Catholicism succeeded because it kept its parishioners feeling guilty and therefore in the pews every Sunday, but none of the Padavano girls had stepped inside St. Procopius since their mother moved away. The girls’ only genuine beliefs, growing up, had been in fictional characters and their games and one another.
When Julia was in middle school, a girl had accused her and her sisters of being a coven of witches. Julia hadn’t known what a coven was and had to look the word up. The definition had delighted her, and she’d hoped the girl was correct. The four Padavano sisters dressed up as witches for Halloween that year, and Charlie gleefully quoted Macbeth at them. Julia, in the height of her girlhood, with a pointed black hat on her head, knew that they were a coven of witches, at least to some extent. She, Sylvie, Cecelia, and Emeline had a shared power, a fierceness.
“You should go,” Julia said. “I’m fine, and the little girls need to go to bed.”
The twins kissed Julia’s cheek in turn when they left. They pressed their bodies to hers, briefly, before walking through the door.
Julia returned to the couch. It had been a strange day, and she felt strange. William’s departure had been sudden, but it had struck like lightning in the middle of a storm. Unexpected yet natural. In the bright flash of electricity, Julia had been able to see clearly, for the first time, the similarities between her husband and her father. She’d wanted to marry someone the opposite of Charlie. She’d chosen William because she thought he was that: serious, mature, sober, attentive. Charlie was a dreamer—Rose used to say that he walked among the clouds. He was also regularly demoted at work and spent money that Rose needed to pay bills at the bars in their neighborhood.
William did not walk among the clouds, but, like her father, he lacked ambition and reliability. Charlie had been a loving father but a deadweight as a husband. He’d given Rose nothing she could use. Perhaps Charlie had recognized that facet of himself in William. Julia remembered the disappointment on her father’s face when she’d told him about this marriage. Her father had known so much, she thought. She’d never given Charlie enough credit when he was alive, but she knew enough to understand that if her father were here now, he would wink at her and say, Let’s see what my rocket can do.
Sylvie
August 1983
Sylvie walked the city with Kent and the other basketball players, even though she slowed them down with her normal-length legs and normal-person fitness. They were all over six feet tall, most of them six foot five, at least. They strode ahead of her, a visually intimidating pack that cleared the sidewalk. More than once, Sylvie saw people stop to watch them. It wasn’t just their height that was arresting but the purpose with which the men walked. They moved as the team they’d been in college—matching strides, taking directional cues from one another. Several of the guys addressed Kent as Captain, which amused Sylvie at first, since Kent hadn’t been their captain for two years and they were no longer on a team together. But they referred to William as their teammate too, and Sylvie began to wonder if being on a team was a different kind of commitment than she had previously understood. Neither she nor her sisters had ever played sports—it hadn’t been an option for girls in their neighborhood—so she had no way of knowing. She admired the unspoken understanding between these men: Kent made the decisions, and the others followed his orders in the most efficient way possible. When the group crossed roads, one of them would wave a long arm, as if greeting the waiting cars, while they continued to move at a pace only they could keep.
Sylvie kept thinking she would break away, turn a corner, and walk back to Julia. She hadn’t meant to leave with Kent. She’d spoken to him in front of the apartment building, the sun beating down on them. She’d planned to hand over the news like a bowl of bad apples and then back away. But she hadn’t been able to do it; she’d followed him to meet his and William’s friends, driven by a strong feeling that if she didn’t help, William wouldn’t be found. This made no sense, of course, but from the moment Julia called her, Sylvie had been scared—scared as if her body knew something about this situation that her brain did not.
She remembered feeling William’s emotions on the bench that night and how tired he’d been. She remembered how little light he’d contained. She remembered the questions in his manuscript. Sylvie had talked to William about missing her father and only later remembered that he had a father and mother who wanted nothing to do with him. She’d showed Kent the note and the check because she wanted him to make up his own mind. Maybe Sylvie was wrong. If Kent thought the situation was as clear-cut as Julia did—simply a man leaving his wife—Sylvie would force herself to calm down. She would climb into the bed beside Julia and lie there until her sister woke from her nap. Sylvie would make Julia a comforting dinner, and she would stay with her sister until she was back on her feet. For weeks, or months if necessary. Until the ache had disappeared from living in that apartment without her husband.