Hello Beautiful

It hurt her that William didn’t feel the same way. But still, she thought, it was brave of him to leave. He’d always struggled with decisions, and this had to be the boldest move of his life. Julia thought she’d masked her new sense of independence after Alice’s birth, but he saw through her. He saw that she didn’t need him. He noticed that she’d taken her hands off his back and that he was no longer being moved forward in a direction she’d chosen.

Julia called Sylvie when the sun rose, then showered and put some care into her appearance. She would set the stage for her new life by making sure the woman in the mirror looked presentable. She’d always believed in dressing for the part she wanted, and she didn’t want to appear like a disheveled victim. Julia remembered her childhood self twirling into a room, singing, Ta-da! She took her time in front of the mirror and put on some lipstick and a little eyeliner. She wove her hair into a neat updo. When Julia was fully dressed, she left a professional-sounding message on Professor Cooper’s machine, explaining that she was available to work and that she was sure she could bring a lot of value to his company.

I can do this, she thought, when she hung up. I can do anything.

But this confidence twanged, like a rubber band, into doubt. Did she have a good sense of what she was capable of? Julia had known that she wouldn’t leave William, even when he’d disappointed and irritated her. She had married him for better and for worse. But she’d also known that if their marriage were ever to end, it would be her decision, not his. William had needed her; she hadn’t needed him. How was it possible that she was the one being left behind?

Julia rubbed her forehead and forced her thoughts elsewhere. As if answering an essay question for school, she tried to figure out who William would be without her pushing him. He’d probably like to be a high school basketball coach, she thought, and felt pleased with herself for being so mature and generous about the man who had lied to her and walked out on his family. Equally true was the fact that she never would have married a high school basketball coach. Men like that lived in small houses in Pilsen like the one she’d grown up in. They wore sweatshirts on workdays and barely made enough money to pay the rent.

Julia had wanted to be married to a college professor. She’d had secret aspirations for William: that he would be a college president in his later career or perhaps even run for public office. These aspirations had disappeared after she’d read his book, though. She realized then that there was something wrong deep inside him — after all, what kind of man would type the words I’m terrible on a page? — which meant he would never be successful. A college professor still seemed possible, though, and even inevitable. Julia had sat in on one of William’s classes during the spring, and at the end he’d said, nicely, that the sight of her grinning like a Cheshire cat at the back of the room had made it hard for him to concentrate. But William had been remarkable, breaking up the material with small jokes, fostering an interesting discussion on the ethics of war even though it was a lecture course. For the first time, he’d seemed to utilize his size off the basketball court. His height gave his presence significance. He was meant to stand out, so it made sense for him to be alone in the front of the room.

Look at me, his body said, and the students complied.

Julia would have stayed married to the man at the front of the classroom. But the man who had just walked out, the one who had hidden ten thousand dollars and who knew what else, was a stranger. She hadn’t known, hadn’t wanted to know, who William was for a long time. When her husband came home after being out for the day, she never asked him where — or who—he’d been.

Julia needed to see Sylvie, because nothing in her life seemed real unless her sister shared it. But Sylvie showed up pale and panicked, as if the building were on fire. Julia was unsettled by her sister’s intensity from the moment she opened the door. It felt like her sister had arrived with a problem, instead of showing up to help Julia with hers.

Sylvie studied the evidence on the coffee table: the five sentences, the check. She said, “Before he left, did William explain why he’d missed his classes? What else did he say to you?”

“He didn’t say anything.”

“Nothing at all?”