Hello Beautiful

Arash was a stocky man with powerful-looking forearms. “You protected it once or twice. I could also see how you used your other side to pivot and jump. That’s what happens when an injury occurs at a young age. The knee doesn’t operate in isolation. The hip and ankle start to get used differently, and your overall balance is thrown off. There’s interplay between the various joints, and no one told you to build the weak leg back to full strength. I bet you came out of the cast last time and immediately returned to the court without changing anything, right?”

William nodded.

“That’s what I thought.”

Julia arrived a few minutes after Arash had gone. She scanned William’s face; she could see he was riled up somehow. “Did something happen?”

“My knee is killing me.”

“You poor thing. Try to think about something else. Think about the wedding. You have something wonderful to look forward to, right?”

“That’s what Coach said too.”

She brightened. “How nice!”

She handed him her clipboard, which had pages of plans: the guest list, floral arrangements with taped photos of different flowers, a minute-by-minute schedule. A timeline of things to do and dates to have each item done by. A spreadsheet to show who was responsible for what. Almost every box had either Julia’s or Rose’s name beside it.

William flipped through the pages. The wedding was nine weeks away. It was a concrete event he could comprehend, like the reality of his knee. He needed to show up for one and be careful with the other.

Julia smoothed William’s hair; her touch felt good.

She was talking, so he tried to focus. “When I went into the history department to get your work, I asked around about teaching-assistant jobs. Turns out there’s a position for next fall that hasn’t been listed yet. Should I hand in your résumé for you?”

William would start the graduate program in history at Northwestern in September. He’d been surprised and relieved when the program accepted him. He thought of himself as a mediocre student, but the truth was that studying alongside Kent and Julia for the prior four years had changed that. His friend and girlfriend had modeled hard work and taught him how to study effectively. These skills, combined with William’s constant fear that a low grade-point average would knock him off the basketball team, had vaulted him onto the dean’s list.

The PhD application had required him to declare a historical period to focus on, and he’d struggled with the choice. His favorite part of history was its breadth, the sweeping connections between events and figures. How Leo Tolstoy had inspired Mahatma Gandhi, who had in turn inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. William didn’t see how he could confidently plant his feet in any particular century, continent, or war. When he’d discussed this quandary with Kent, his friend shook his head and said, “You already have an area of focus, dummy. You’re writing a book about the history of basketball.” This surprised William — it hadn’t occurred to him — and he said, “I can’t study basketball. That wouldn’t be seen as a serious academic subject.” But he’d applied to study American history from 1890 to 1969, a time frame that would allow his private interest and his legitimate work to at least exist side by side.

William would need teaching-assistant jobs to provide him and Julia with some income during the long PhD program. He arranged his face to show that he was paying attention to his fiancée and her plans, but somewhere inside was a repeated whisper of wedding, knee.

“Sure?” he said. “But I’m not sure my résumé is ready to go out.”

“I’ll clean it up; I’m good at that. I read so many résumés for Professor Cooper last summer, remember? You need a haircut when you get out of here.” Julia touched his arm. She paused and then said in a low voice, “I wish I could climb into bed with you.”

William imagined her curves fitting against his side. He imagined what would happen when he pulled the sheet over their heads.

“Kiss my hand?” he said.

She leaned forward and took his hand in hers. She kissed the outside, in the soft spot between his thumb and index finger. Then she turned his hand over and kissed the palm. Softly, over and over. Wedding. Knee.

—

Rose and Julia chaired a run-through meeting at the Padavanos’ dining room table a few days before the wedding. Charlie wasn’t there, but his absence wasn’t mentioned, and William wondered if the meeting had been timed for when he would be out. Sylvie sat in the corner farthest from her mother and read a book that she was holding on her lap. She paid attention only when she was addressed directly. Emeline had been told to take notes on decisions that were made, so she sat at the ready with a pad and pencil. Cecelia leaned against her twin’s arm, looking bored or sleepy.