Hello Beautiful

Julia tried to frown, but her face wouldn’t stop smiling. She was happy to be the subject of her sisters’ collective attention. She knew she was beaming, and she could see the girls’ pleasure in causing it. “Next week, I said. I wanted to add some touches first, hang pictures. So it looked really nice when you saw it for the first time.”

“Was the honeymoon terribly romantic?” Emeline leaned against the wall, as if in a mild swoon.

“We’re not here to see your house,” Cecelia said. “Let’s go inside, though.”

Julia handed off her shopping bags and opened the door with the key.

Her sisters gave similar sighs of pleasure.

“How lovely!” Sylvie said.

It did look lovely, with the morning sun streaming in. The three visitors understood the preciousness of having your own space. When you grew up in a crowded, small house like they had, much of the dream of adulthood became living somewhere less crowded. Somewhere that was your own and didn’t need to be shared.

Julia gave them a brief tour, and then they sank down onto the sofa and armchair in the living room. Julia noticed that Cecelia was carrying something under her arm, and said, “What is that?”

“Oh.” Cecelia pulled it free. “It’s my scarlet letter, from Mama. She wants me to carry it everywhere for a week, at least. I told her I would.” It was one of the framed saints from the dining room wall. Julia stared at it, trying to match the woman with her name. She knew the saints only in context, listed in a row, on the wall of their house.

“St. Clare of Assisi,” Cecelia said.

Sylvie and Emeline looked down, as if to study their own legs and feet. Their mother had taught them lessons related to each saint, but she’d never removed a saint from the wall, much less assigned one as a traveling penance to a daughter.

Julia remembered this saint now. St. Clare had refused to marry at the age of fifteen and had run away from home. She’d cut off all her hair and devoted her life to God. She created the Order of Poor Ladies, and her own sister and mother went to live with her in her abbey. She was the first woman in history to write a monastic rule, which the Order of Poor Ladies lived by. Julia studied her youngest sister. Cecelia had been born three minutes after Emeline, so they sometimes called her Baby. Charlie liked to croon Frank Sinatra at her: Yes sir, that’s my baby. No sir, I don’t mean maybe.

“What happened?” Julia was aware that her hands were freezing and she was scared.

“I’m pregnant. Almost five months along.” Cecelia spoke the words calmly. “Mom has decided that I’m headed for a life of destitution. But I’m going to keep the baby. I’m not telling the father, because—” She stopped for a second. “Because there’s no good to come from his knowing.”

Julia shook her head in refusal. This couldn’t be correct. “You’re pregnant?”

“Yes.”

“You’re having a baby, at the age of seventeen.”

“I’ll be eighteen when the baby’s born.”

Julia felt something inside her harden. She studied her other sisters; clearly she was the last to know. They had already swallowed this news and found a way to accept it. Emeline was unconditionally loyal to her twin, and besides, she adored babies. Sylvie was disappointed in Cecelia — Julia had seen this in her sister’s eyes — but Sylvie looked at life like a story, and she would be impressed at how their younger sister had made herself a main character in their shared narrative.

Julia said, “I’m supposed to have the first baby.”

Sylvie and Emeline looked up from their feet, surprised.

“I’m sorry,” Julia said. “But this is ridiculous. You should obviously give the baby up for adoption. Why should you ruin your life because of a mistake?”

Cecelia stood, and when she did, she straightened her posture and the pregnancy was visible for the first time. How long had she been walking slumped over, with carefully arranged clothes? She was wearing a lavender button-down shirt, and the hard mound of her belly pushed the fabric outward. “You and Sylvie see us as children,” she said. “Mama thinks everyone is on the verge of catastrophe at all times. I’m neither of those things. I never wanted to go to college. I’ll study and make art on my own, with my baby. This is my life, and my choice. I’ll never be a burden on anyone.” Five foot two, shoulders back, she growled the last sentence.

Emeline said, “Mrs. Ceccione said Cecelia could move into Frank’s room and that she would help with the baby, if we cooked dinner and did chores. I’ll start college in the fall, of course, but I’ll work too. And I have a fair amount of money from babysitting that will help us buy what we need.”

Julia stared. “You’re going to move two doors down?”

“I can’t stay home,” Cecelia said. “Mama made that clear. And I’m sorry you feel like I unseated you, Julia. I know how much you like to be first.”