Hello Beautiful

Sylvie frowned. Did she look that bad? She was the maid of honor, which meant she would stand at the front of the church next to her sister during the ceremony. She wanted to look pleasing for Julia, but that required one of those magical good-hair days; Sylvie was never able to convince her own hair to look presentable. She hadn’t checked in the mirror this morning, but Mr. Luis seemed to suggest that she wasn’t in luck. Sylvie thanked him and left the shop. She counted how many steps she had to travel away from the door before she could no longer smell roses: thirteen.

She passed the library, which was just about to open, and waved through the window at the girls behind the desk. She felt an urge to duck inside and work a shift. To spend this day within the library’s cool stacks. The wedding, the sunlight, the mandatory smiling — it all seemed exhausting to her. She knew it was a strange contradiction, but despite her interest in love, weddings made her uncomfortable. They were too showy, too public. Deep love between two people was a private, wordless endeavor, and to place the lovers in fancy clothes in front of a crowd seemed antithetical to the nature of the thing. No one could see love — this was what Sylvie believed, anyway. It was an internal state. Watching that moment between two lovers felt wrong to her, almost blasphemous.

Sylvie was happy for Julia and William, but still, she would have to pretend the kind of girlish joy that she knew weddings were supposed to elicit in her. She would be kissed by all the old women in the neighborhood. You’re next would be said to her again and again, and this would make her feel melancholy too, because her true love hadn’t yet appeared, and what were the odds of him showing up at the Lozano Library, where she spent most of her time? What if she never found him?

Sylvie almost tripped over Cecelia, who was sitting on the curb just beyond the library. “What are you doing here?” she asked, surprised. Had Rose built time into the schedule for sitting on curbs, staring into space?

“Oh,” Cecelia said. “I’m waiting for Emeline. She went into the pharmacy.”

Sylvie sat down on the concrete, next to her sister. If there was time built into the schedule for this, she wanted part of it. She could use a quiet moment before reentering the manic energy of their house.

“I’m Beth today,” Cecelia said.

Sylvie nodded. This was from a long-running conversation between the four Padavano sisters. When Julia had first read Little Women, she told her sisters about the four fictional sisters in the book, and they began to argue over which of them was which March girl. Julia and Sylvie both saw themselves as the feisty Jo, and they were both right, Sylvie thought. They had Jo divided between them. Julia had Jo March’s exuberance and passion, and Sylvie had her independence and literary leaning. Emeline and Cecelia passed the identities of Meg and Amy back and forth between them, but whenever any of the sisters was sick or forlorn, she’d declare herself Beth. One of us will be the first to die, they would take turns telling one another, and all four girls shuddered at the thought.

“What’s wrong? Do you not feel well?”

“I have a secret,” Cecelia said. “You can’t tell Julia. I’ll tell her after her honeymoon. Maybe.”

Sylvie waited. The neighborhood streamed around them. Loud teenagers jostled each other as they walked; a kid bounced a basketball, waiting to cross the street; a row of Hasidic men turned the corner. People with ancestors from every part of the world headed in every direction. It was a Saturday, and a beautiful June morning, so everyone looked a touch happier than normal, a touch more free.

“I’m pregnant.”

A breath caught in Sylvie’s throat, and she coughed. She thought, But I haven’t even had sex yet. She said, “No, you can’t be. You’re seventeen. You’re wrong.”

Cecelia shrugged. She and Emeline had just graduated from high school, an event that was overshadowed by Julia’s college graduation and wedding. Charlie had looked older this morning; Cecelia did now too. “It was a boy in my class who I’ve always liked. I drank too much at Laurie Genovese’s party. He doesn’t know. I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”