Hello Beautiful

They were eating pizzas one night on the living room floor when Emeline said, “Hearing all those stories again has made me remember myself, in a way. I know they mostly happened to you two and Julia”—she nodded at her sisters—“but I remember how I felt at every point.”

Sylvie and Cecelia smiled, to encourage her to go on. Emeline rarely spoke about herself; she focused her attention on the people around her. She brought toddlers home from daycare most afternoons, and the children would wait on her lap for their parents to pick them up. She remained a homebody, happiest on the couch with Josie in the evenings. The larger spread of the super-duplex — this was what Izzy had named the two houses — made perfect sense for Emeline; home now contained more rooms, more space, and the people she loved.

“What did you feel?” Izzy asked Emeline. She and William were playing chess on the couch, in between bites of pizza. William was the only grown-up in the family who would play her favorite game with her. Izzy was a terrible loser, but she worked to control herself with her uncle, and he liked the challenge of chess. Determining a strategy that involved two teams and a campaign for space reminded him of basketball.

“It made me remember how badly I wanted to be a mother,” Emeline said. “How that was all I ever wanted.”

William hesitated and started to stand up to leave the room; Sylvie knew he thought the conversation was getting too personal. He was always careful to allow the sisters space and, if they chose, secrets from him.

Emeline shook her head at him, though, so he sat back down. “Josie and I talked about all of this last night.” Her face was bright. “And we’re going to apply to foster newborns. There’s a need for that, and there are babies who need love.”

Josie squeezed Emeline’s shoulder. “Practically speaking,” she said, “we would take care of babies that have been born to drug-addicted mothers or young teens for two or three months, and then the foster agency would return the baby to his or her biological mother or find a permanent placement. The research shows”—now Josie brightened, because she loved research—“that if a newborn is held whenever he or she cries and is smiled at during their first three months of life, their chance for long-term health and happiness shoots up something like fifty percent.”

“Amazing,” Sylvie said. “Emmie, what a wonderful idea.”

Cecelia beamed at her sister and Josie. “Of course you should do that! We’ll have to get one of those baby swings that Izzy loved when she was tiny.”

“Ahem,” Izzy said, with a dark look on her face. “I hear that newborns cry a lot.”

“I promise I won’t ever ask you to babysit,” Emeline said. “And the baby will sleep with us, so you won’t hear anything at night.”

“Then you have my approval.”

The foster application went through quickly. The two women had worried that they might be declined — they sometimes got looks at the supermarket, and a family had pulled a child from their daycare because they were gay — but the foster-care system was so overwhelmed that they seemed thrilled to have applicants with Emeline and Josie’s excellent references and background in childcare. By the end of the summer, Emeline was wearing a tiny baby boy in a carrier while she walked through the fully renovated house.

Sylvie would think back on that summer as when her family fully accepted themselves. The super-duplex, with its shared houses and unusual layout, mirrored the unusual layout of the Padavanos, or what was left of them. Sylvie and her sisters and William had built their own lives to suit themselves, to serve the size and shape they occupied. The living space itself shared a backyard and a garden, which was a mixture of food and flowers. Cecelia used the attic in Emeline and Josie’s house as a secondary studio, because she liked the light in that space. Emeline built a drying cupboard in Cecelia’s house, which both households used to dry herbs and flowers from the garden. Both houses had baby swings and bottles, as well as cribs. William kept his toolbox in Emeline’s laundry room, and he and Sylvie had keys to both homes. The twins’ kitchen utensils and plates were mixed, from eating together outside and trading off on cleanup duty. Izzy had a bedroom in each house, and she moved back and forth whimsically. If she was in the middle of a good book, she stayed at Emeline’s, because her room there had a better bedside light. When her mother was between boyfriends, she slept at Cecelia’s.