Hello Beautiful

Sylvie had never known a lesbian personally. There was a lady who rode her bicycle around the neighborhood wearing a baseball cap, and it was rumored that she lived with another woman, but she never came into the library, so Sylvie had never seen her up close. She thought of lesbians as being somehow hard and manly, and Emeline was the opposite of that. She was the sweetest and softest of the sisters.

“Oh, Emmie,” Cecelia said. “Are you sure?”

Emeline’s eyes filled with tears. Sylvie reached into the back seat to touch her younger sister’s knee. “We love you,” she said. “This is just…unexpected, that’s all.”

“I have no idea if Josie likes me in that way,” Emeline said. “She probably doesn’t.”

“Mom would be horrified,” Cecelia said. This was undoubtedly true; Rose was Catholic all the way to her bones and had said several disparaging or insulting things about gay people in front of the girls over the course of their lives. A terrible new disease that seemed to afflict mostly gay men had been identified recently, and this news story disgusted and fascinated Rose in equal measure.

“I know. It’s the first time I’ve been happy that she moved away.”

The relief in Emeline’s eyes made the other women laugh.

“I thought if I told you, you would hate me. But William told you awful things, and I only feel sympathy for him.” She hesitated. “I won’t be able to have babies, though,” she whispered. “I won’t be able to be a mother.”

Sylvie and Cecelia traded the quickest of glances, to share their surprise at what they’d just learned and their grief at the last statement. William didn’t want to be a father, and Emeline couldn’t have what she most wanted, to be a mother. “You can adopt, maybe?” Sylvie said. She felt another small fissure inside herself; another piece of life was separating the sisters from the dreams they’d once held for themselves and one another.

Emeline shook her head. “I wonder how William feels. I feel better.” Her face was brighter; she sat taller. “Now you have to tell me a truth from your lives,” she said. “Your turns. In honor of William.”

This reminded Sylvie of the future-predicting game they used to play. Even though they’d just left Julia, Sylvie missed her sister, a sensation like a painful stab in her side. She could see that her sisters had also remembered the game, and there was a crease between Emeline’s eyebrows that meant she regretted how she’d phrased the request. They had recently learned that Julia was leaving them for six months. The departure had struck each of them as a mistake. “The timing is awful,” Cecelia said. “She’s running away,” Emeline said. But Sylvie suspected her sister was running toward something. A new life. Julia wanted to reimagine herself, and it was hard to do that in the presence of people who had known her since she was a small girl. Sylvie worried, though, that Julia had sensed Sylvie was keeping something secret from her, and that secret had opened space for Julia to leave. If Sylvie and Julia had stayed close-knit, and stayed honest, the older sister wouldn’t have considered departure a possibility. Deep inside herself, Sylvie believed it was her fault that Julia would soon be gone.

“I’ll go first,” Cecelia said. “I wish I could have sex. I’ve only had it once.”

Emeline must have known this, but Sylvie was surprised. She had assumed that Cecelia had bedded many lovers on a painter’s tarp, before or after a project. She felt like Cecelia had pulled on the fabric of adulthood more easily than the rest of them. She moved with a confidence that Sylvie lacked and seemed unfazed by other people’s expectations. When Cecelia was with Izzy, they both laughed a great deal; they visibly delighted each other. Sylvie had assumed that her sister had cherry-picked men to delight her physically too.

“I know I make it look like everything is great,” Cecelia said, to answer Sylvie’s expression. “And it’s really good, but not great. The guy who owns this car would happily have sex with me, but he’s a billion years old, and sleazy. I have bills to pay, and the boys anywhere near my age are so immature I can’t stand it.”

“Sylvie?” Emeline said.

“Oh,” Sylvie said, and the syllable came out like a little moan. It was warm in the car now, and the windows were fogged up. Sylvie had become a secret. She was changing in ways she couldn’t keep track of, much less explain. Would she tell them that she thought about William all the time and missed him as soon as she left his room? That sometimes, when he was sleeping in the hospital bed, Sylvie wanted to lie down next to him in the hope that he might mistake her for his wife and hold her? Instead, she said, “I’m writing something.”

Her sisters’ faces opened with pleasure. Of course, Sylvie saw them think.