* * *
—
He showed up at Sylvie’s apartment on Christmas, but only because he thought one or all of the sisters would come and get him if he didn’t, and he didn’t want them to ruin their holiday waiting in the snow for a bus to Northwestern. He would have spent the holiday with Kent, but Kent was traveling to Des Moines to meet his girlfriend’s family for the first time. William understood that the three sisters were trying to continue to be a family to him, and he deeply appreciated their kindness, but he knew he had to stop spending time with them.
He had a clear vision of what his new life should look like. He would be a lone, monkish figure. That was the safest way not to hurt anyone else, after all. He had his hours with the basketball team, his friendship with Kent, and a roof over his head. Most of his new life would take place on the side of a basketball court, where he might be able to help young players avoid the kind of injury he’d suffered. It would be a fine life, full of purpose and friendship. He didn’t need family, or sisters-in-law, and he certainly didn’t need whatever Sylvie had become to him. He promised himself, on the bus ride to Pilsen, that this would be his last evening with the Padavanos. They would be better off without him.
He arrived with a wrapped fire engine for Izzy and three identical women’s sweaters he’d panic-bought in the Northwestern campus store. Sylvie’s apartment was small, especially with a Christmas tree taking up one corner, so William leaned against the wall, near the open window. The cold air felt good against his back. Izzy marched in circles around the space, wobbling occasionally because she’d been too excited that afternoon to nap. Sylvie served Charlie’s favorite holiday food: turkey sandwiches. The three sisters seemed happy together, but they took turns glancing at the closed apartment door. It occurred to William that they hoped their missing family members might magically appear: Julia and Alice, Rose, even their father. The Padavanos had never spent a holiday apart from one another like this, and the three sisters still here were haunted by ghosts.
William hadn’t asked, but he assumed Julia had no idea her sisters were spending Christmas with him. He wanted to apologize for giving them another reason to lie to their older sister, but he knew that would make everyone uncomfortable. He shouldn’t have come. Loss and ghosts were his shadow, and his darkness was spreading across the small apartment.
“You all right?” Emeline said, coming to stand next to him. She was wearing the white-and-purple-striped sweater he’d given her; so were Cecelia and Sylvie. They looked like members of some unidentified winter-season team.
He nodded and sipped his wine. “I’m going to head back soon. The city buses end early tonight.”
Emeline looked at him, her eyes wide, and then put her hand on his arm. William realized she was tipsy. “Do you know,” she said, “that I’m a lesbian? Did they tell you? I only just started calling myself that.”
He hadn’t known this. He considered it for a moment, then disregarded the subject as none of his business. “You look happy,” he said, because she did. Her face was wide open, and he realized he’d never seen Emeline look like this before. She’d carried a hesitation inside her ever since he’d met her at his basketball game when she was fourteen. Emeline had always seemed occupied with watching everyone else and trying to be helpful, but she’d stayed on the sidelines, as if it weren’t her turn to live. William had thought the hesitation was part of Emeline—part of her personality—but now it was gone. She seemed fully alive in front of him.
She leaned close to his ear and said, “I’m in love.”
Something happened inside William’s head; the words made his cheeks flush, and he felt a longing so powerful that for a moment he thought he might cry. That phrase—I’m in love—sent an ache like an arrow into his past. He knew that he never would have been able to love Julia in a true, deep way, nor she love him. And now, in his new, safe life, he was landlocked, and love was the sea; William had chosen stability over any more risk or loss. He smiled brusquely at Emeline, grabbed his coat off the couch, and said his goodbyes and Merry Christmases and thank-yous as he walked to and out of the apartment’s only door. He felt a great relief, under the snowfall, as he stood at the bus stop beneath the dim lights of the city. This was where he belonged, alone in the semi-darkness.
William had been back in his dorm for just half an hour—most of the building was emptied out, with only a few foreign students and committed athletes remaining over the holidays—when there was a knock at his door. He sighed, knowing it would be a lonely student, or perhaps the elderly security guard hoping William would offer him a drink. He tugged the door open slowly, reluctantly.
Sylvie stood in the hallway, with melting snow on the shoulders of her winter coat. She shrugged the coat off as she walked inside. She was still wearing her striped sweater.
He blinked at her, confused. “What are you doing here? Did you take the bus too?”
She walked past him, into the middle of the small room. “Do you think I don’t see what you’re doing?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re trying to pull away, to disappear. From me, from us. It’s like”—she bit her lip for a second—“Julia left and so you’re leaving too.”
The wall clock in the corner ticked loudly. It was one of the original furnishings in the apartment, provided perhaps to remind everyone who lived here that time was passing. Sweat broke out on the back of William’s neck. He’d worked hard, when he and Julia were first together, to convince the Padavano family to accept him. He’d read a book on plumbing to figure out how to fix a rusty pipe under their kitchen sink. He’d spent afternoons pulling weeds in Rose’s garden. He’d taken poetry books out of the library to try to understand the references Charlie made during conversations. Now he felt guilty about those efforts and how effective they’d been. He and his wife had split up, yet he was still somehow part of her family. A week earlier, Cecelia had called him when her bathroom flooded, and William had traveled there with tools. The three Padavano sisters still in Chicago seemed to be willfully oblivious to the truth of the situation: William didn’t deserve the family Julia had felt compelled to leave behind.
Please go away, he thought. His body and brain wanted to pull him to the dim, submerged place where he wasn’t aware of his emotions, where everything was dulled. But he couldn’t do that anymore.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said. “There are rules about having female guests after hours.”
“Oh, please,” Sylvie said.
He silently agreed with her. That excuse was weak. He was weak. The truth was, William felt awake, and uncomfortable, and he wanted things, in Sylvie’s presence. Things he didn’t deserve and that would create more mess. When he’d decided to separate himself from the Padavanos, he really meant Sylvie. Every time she’d entered his hospital room, his heart beat faster. He knew he needed to walk away from her. He could have done so more easily if Sylvie hadn’t asked to hold his hand on his last day in the hospital. For William’s entire life, he’d been trying to hold himself together. There was the little boy coughing in his closet, trying not to upset his parents. The unsteady college student, always a second too slow to smile or to return a high five. The basketball player, at home only with a ball in his hands. The young man who was relieved to be chosen by a powerhouse of a woman who’d handed him plans and schedules and even thoughts. He’d followed her every instruction, but eventually the directions had led him so far away from himself that he was no longer a person.