Hello Beautiful

“I think that’s all,” he said. “Maybe you should tell all of this to Emeline and Cecelia too. These shouldn’t be secrets anymore.” William paused to take a breath. “I don’t think there’s anything else to add to the list. I wasn’t a good husband to Julia. She deserved much better.”

Sylvie shimmered in front of him, and that was how he realized he was crying.

When she was leaving — looking as exhausted as William, as if they had just run a marathon together — Sylvie stopped in the doorway. “You said you didn’t want to be a professor. Did you want to be a professional basketball player?”

“Yes, but I wasn’t good enough, even before the injury.”

“That must have been terribly disappointing,” Sylvie said, and he nodded.

—

William knew he had one more thing to say before Dr. Dembia would allow him to leave the hospital. She kept saying, “Just a few more days,” and he understood that he hadn’t said everything. He didn’t understand why he had to say everything, but there were rules to getting well, and he had to follow the rules. The doctor was pleased with the medication levels, and William no longer felt like he was hanging off the fender of a car that sped across town and then hurtled to a stop. His hands were no longer clammy, he could sleep at night, and there were moments of calm. He was learning the difference between calm and disconnected and was working to make his days more the former than the latter.

Arash visited and gave William a stern look. “Remember how I told you we keep tabs on our players?”

William nodded.

“Not everyone has good news to share when we follow up, and we try to help out when we can. You think you’re the first one who got in trouble? The coaching staff had a meeting about you.”

“Oh God,” William said, horrified.

“You brought value to our program when you interviewed the players this summer. I can’t guarantee you a job on staff. Obviously being here”—Arash frowned—“is a hurdle to overcome. But the university always needs resident advisers, and your doctor said you could handle the responsibility, so we’re going to get you a room in a dorm. That will cover your living expenses. We’ll see what happens from there.”

William found himself unable to speak. He’d been worrying about where he would sleep when he left here. He had very little money in the bank and no possibilities. The only option he’d been able to think of was to travel to Milwaukee and sleep on Kent’s floor, but that was problematic too, because Kent had a new girlfriend, a fellow medical student. She would understandably not be thrilled to have her boyfriend’s depressed former teammate taking up her space in the room.

“You pity me,” William said finally, and the words were sour in his mouth.

Arash shook his head, hard. “You’re depressed, not crazy. It’s not insane to be depressed in this world. It’s more sane than being happy. I never trust those upbeat individuals who grin no matter what’s going on. Those are the ones with a screw loose, if you ask me. Also, I’m not offering you a job. I’m offering a room.”

William’s brain clung to a new refrain, after the weeks in the hospital: No bullshit and no secrets. He could recognize both now, and when he reviewed what Arash had said, he knew it wasn’t bullshit. The coaches did track their players, and he had given value to the team in the past. The hours he’d spent listening to the boys explain how they’d been hurt meant something — to William, perhaps to the boys, and to Arash, in his mission to keep all the players strong and undamaged. The memory of those hours in the stuffy room — when so much else in his brain was water-damaged or frayed — remained intact, and it was a place William didn’t mind revisiting. When he considered this further, he realized it might be the only memory he had that didn’t cause feelings of regret or dismay. He had been helpful.

“Thank you,” William said.

When he walked the halls that day, he realized that he’d stopped feeling lake water against his skin. The cool liquid no longer tickled up his spine. He had a room to sleep in, which allowed him to believe, for the first time, that there would be a next step.

William wasn’t surprised that afternoon when Dr. Dembia said, “You never mention Alice.”

He was standing; he turned away to look out the window. This was what he needed to speak about. This was what he had to say in order to leave. This was what he had to know in order to start over. This was the last secret, which he could no longer keep.

He said, “I started getting darker — everything was getting darker — before she was born. It wasn’t because of her, but she showed up when nothing made sense anymore, and I had to keep turning off lights in my head to make it through the days. The thing was—” He stopped, looking for the right language.

“Yes?” the doctor said.

“Alice is a lamp. A bright lamp, from the moment she was born. She kind of shines. Looking at her hurt my eyes, and I was afraid to touch her.”

“You were afraid of her light?”