Hello Beautiful

There was information on William’s college degree, his single year of a graduate program in history, a completed master’s degree in sports physiology, and his job history. The notes detailed two hospitalizations, once for knee surgery during college, and then again in 1983—when Alice would have been a baby — in a psychiatric hospital. His mental illness was presumably why her parents had divorced and why her father had given her up. She and her mother had arrived in New York City right around when William Waters was in the hospital.

While she was leafing through the folder, her mother texted her: Can you tell me what it means in literature when a person loses their shadow? I feel like I remember Peter Pan stealing Wendy’s shadow?

She showed the text to Carrie. Carrie said, “Things are definitely getting interesting in your mother’s head. Are you going to answer?”

“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.