Hello Beautiful

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.

But when Sylvie became sick, the worst thing that could have happened was already happening. He’d had to open himself in order to protect her. William reached out to his first wife for help, and just making that request — across the quarter century that separated them — had made him vulnerable not only to Julia but to a reckoning with the broken man he’d been during their time together. He’d always assumed openness was synonymous with danger and that if he wasn’t holding on tight to the new life he’d built, it would blow away. But with the barriers down, he’d discovered that life became bigger. A hidden photograph transformed into a mural. Alice and Caroline stood within arm’s reach of each other. His father-in-law had found a way to shine his affection across distance and time. And Sylvie’s love, once William let it out of his hands, had shown itself to be exponential in its power. It had expanded to fill all the space around him, which was his entire life.

Alice

November 2008

The cheapest flight to Chicago left at six a.m., so Rhoan borrowed his brother’s car early that morning, and he and Carrie drove Alice to the airport. She knew that if they hadn’t, she wouldn’t have made her way there on her own. She felt strange and heavy-limbed, after two weeks without speaking to her mother, knowing that she had a father. She needed her friends’ hands on her back. Carrie had offered to travel to Chicago with her, but Alice knew she had to do this by herself.

She wouldn’t let them hug her goodbye. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said.

“You can always change your ticket and stay longer,” Carrie said.