Hello Beautiful

Alice kept glancing at the front door, knowing that her father would be here soon. She wanted to be prepared, to compose herself as much as possible. She hoped she could give an impression of independence or even nonchalance, her body saying, I never needed you, and I certainly don’t need you now. But her father entered through the back door, at the same time that the doorbell rang and the baby Josie was holding started to wail. The air seemed to evaporate from the room, and Alice couldn’t breathe. There was a rushing noise in her head. Don’t look at me, she thought, and thankfully he didn’t, so she had a chance to take him in. William Waters was accompanied by a few giant men, all of them with grave expressions. Her father didn’t look overtly mean or as if he was someone who disliked children and thus had easily abandoned his own. His expression was one of unarmed sadness. He had Alice’s face and her eyes. It was true, as Alice had long suspected, that when she’d looked in the mirror, her father had been looking back.

She watched her father walk toward her mother. William was now speaking to Julia, fifteen feet away. The man who had given her up, and the woman who had been Alice’s entire family until twenty-four hours earlier.

Late the night before, from her adjacent bed, Alice had asked, “Do you know why William didn’t want to be my father?” Izzy had been quiet for a minute, then said, “I think he was afraid he would mess you up, because of his depression.”

Izzy appeared at Alice’s side now. “You all right?” she whispered.

Alice made a face of some kind at her cousin, because she didn’t want to lie. She didn’t know if she was all right. She didn’t know anything. Alice had locked herself down years ago. She’d never told a boy she liked him, or driven too fast in a car, or gotten so drunk she lost track of the words leaving her mouth, but now she appeared on a mural somewhere in Chicago and in portraits on the walls of this house, and she saw herself in the man across the room. She existed outside her own body — she was scattered across this ground — but somehow this made her feel less vulnerable. She was painted into this family, mirrored in her father’s face. She was more abundant than she’d believed possible.

William sat down, and the other men and women in the room immediately stepped forward, as if they were an external structure designed to keep Alice’s father from collapse. Towering men leaned toward him, willing him their own great strength. Alice, in the same moment, stepped backward. Everyone here loves him, she thought in amazement. They love him so much. She realized she’d expected her father to have a smaller life than hers. After all, he’d given her up. That seemed like a retreat, a refusal to live. But someone who turned away from people didn’t inspire this kind of response. She had never been in a room with this much love and grief, this much emotion.

Alice backed up until she reached a wall, and she looked away, out the window onto the Pilsen street. Her father’s distress was personal, and she didn’t know him like these other people did. She didn’t want to appear to be gawking, as if at an accident on a highway. She also had the odd sense that she was a counterweight to this man who looked so much like her. They were both washed of color, tall and thin, somber in some elemental way. Alice felt like if she moved forward and pinned her eyes on him, then William Waters wouldn’t be able to rise from his chair. She would swamp him there, their energies mixing until he was too heavy to move. She had to stay at a distance, on her end of the seesaw that connected them, to give him any chance. In time, William stood and left the room. Still wearing his coat, he headed toward the back door of the house.

Alice felt like she’d exerted herself simply by standing against the wall. She was aware of her heart beating in her chest, as if she’d just sprinted up a hill. What is happening to me? she thought.

A man with dreadlocks and glasses walked over to her. He said, “I’m your father’s best friend. My name is Kent. It’s an honor to meet you, Alice.”

She shook his hand. Every piece of information was new. Her father had a best friend, his own version of Carrie.

“I held you in my arms when you were a baby,” he said, and then shook his head as if to clear it. “You must feel like you’ve walked into a whirlwind.”

Alice pictured a baby in this huge man’s arms. She’d come to understand that she’d had a life here as an infant, that for a short while before she had a memory, she was part of this world. These people remembered her, even though she had no recollection of them. “Sylvie loved you so much,” Emeline had told Alice. “She would have been so happy you’re home.”