Hello Beautiful

“William left me, Mama, before he ended up in the hospital. We’re getting divorced. This has been a very hard time.”

“Don’t use that ugly, ugly word. I heard that William left you a note.” Rose said note in a dismissive tone. “Your husband is in the hospital because he’s sick, Julia. Have you spoken to him?”

“No,” Julia said. “He said he didn’t want me to visit. And, Mama, you won’t believe this, but he doesn’t want Alice to be his daughter anymore. He’s giving up his rights to her.”

She expected her mother to be horrified by this statement, but Rose sighed, a noise that sounded exactly like the sighs of Julia’s sisters. The blurring of the sound and the women made Julia rub her forehead. Her mother and sisters were all tied together in her mind and heart, but no one could make Julia trip over the cords that bound them like Rose.

“William’s not well,” Rose said. “No person in their right mind would say that about their child. It’s blasphemy.”

Julia wanted to say, You gave up a child. You gave up Cecelia. But she didn’t want to hurt her mother, and she knew Rose would say that was completely different because Cecelia was already grown. When Julia played this argument out in her head, at the end, she and her mother both lost. She sighed and said, “William meant it.”

“He’s upset, and you’re upset too. Listen to me. Your husband is a nice man. He doesn’t drink, and he doesn’t play around. Maybe graduate school didn’t work out, but he can get a job. You have a baby, for heaven’s sake. You have to think clearly. It’s a horrible thing to be a divorced woman. Men can recover from a marriage ending, but women don’t. Do you really want to throw your life away? You’re only twenty-three.”

Julia shook her head. “More people get divorced now than they did in your day, Mama. It’s not that big a deal.”

Rose blew air into the phone. “Not a big deal! It’s a big deal in the church, I can tell you that. And we’re the talk of the neighborhood,” she said. “Everyone loves a disaster. Father Cole baptized and married you — imagine how heartbroken he’ll be if you go through with this. Remember how Mrs. Callahan stopped combing her hair after her husband left and no one else wanted her?”

“I would never be like that,” Julia said, offended.

“William is going through a rough time, but we all do. Nothing as flashy as trying to drown in Lake Michigan, hopefully, but we all run into a wall at full speed at one point or another. A wife’s role is to stand by her husband when that happens. Twenty years from now, you’ll look back together on this time and it’ll look like a small blip in your marriage. You’ll be glad you stuck it out.”

Julia surveyed the boxes that surrounded her. She thought of the broken expression on Rose’s face in the garden after Cecelia announced she was pregnant. Rose had run into a wall. And William had too, of course. But Julia hadn’t. She was healthy, and whole, and full of capacity. She had watched her mother stick out her own marriage, and that path wasn’t for Julia. She was her father’s rocket. She and Alice would be better on their own. “I’m going to move,” she said. “I’m waiting to hear about work from Professor Cooper, and I have to leave this apartment, because William is no longer enrolled at Northwestern.”

“Right now you have to move? Those people won’t give you an extra month, after what happened?”

“No, they won’t.” This wasn’t true, or at least it wasn’t true as far as Julia knew. She didn’t know when she had to move out by. She had a stack of mail to go through, and perhaps some of it was from Northwestern, but she’d already put the mail, unopened, into a box labeled Julia. Almost all the boxes were labeled Julia or Alice. Her husband seemed to own only clothes, a few basketballs, and his manuscript, which was still wrapped in its paper bag.

“That’s ridiculous,” Rose said, and Julia could tell she didn’t believe her. “You want me to help you find an apartment in Pilsen? The ladies I’m friends with here have real estate connections everywhere. Let’s take care of this. I can make some calls in the neighborhood. We can get you moved, and when your head’s clear, you’ll reconsider things with William.”

“You’re too far away to help with moving,” Julia said. “Thank you, though.”

“Don’t be a fool. And don’t use me as an excuse for bad behavior, Julia. You were raised better than that. How’s my grandbaby?”

Julia looked over and smiled, because Alice had fallen asleep on the blanket. In the middle of stacks of boxes; in front of her mother, who was wearing jeans and an old sweatshirt; despite her grandmother hollering through the phone into Julia’s soul.

“She’s perfect,” Julia said. “I’m going to make sure she stays perfect.”

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