Hello Beautiful

Sylvie walked out of the hospital with those three men an hour later, the hand William had held tingling at her side. The November sky was gray, and the forecast predicted the first snowfall of the year that night. They walked beneath a canopy of leafless trees on the way to Kent’s car, and Sylvie thought about the memory she’d written down at her small desk the night before. She wasn’t writing her family history in any particular order, though the recollections did seem to lap into one another like waves. Last night she’d found herself remembering the time when Mrs. Ceccione’s mean, yippy dog had chased Emeline up a tree. Even after the dog was put away, the eight-year-old girl had refused to come down. Julia, Sylvie, and Cecelia stood at the bottom of the tree for an hour, coaxing Emeline with snacks and promises to braid her hair — she loved to have her hair played with — to no avail. I can’t live without you, Cecelia said at one point, as if in warning. Don’t be ridiculous, Julia said. None of us can live without each other. Rose was alerted, and she yelled at her daughter to get her little bippy down on the ground immediately. No, thank you, Emeline said, gripping the tree branch. I have a nice view. I can’t come down. Kids from the neighborhood gathered around the trunk too, wanting to see how the story would end. Sylvie remembered that her neck had ached from gazing upward for so long. Cecelia started to cry, which made Emeline cry too, but she now seemed rooted in the tree, unable to leave her perch. It was hard for her sisters to imagine her returning to them as the sun set and darkness began to fall. When Charlie got home from work, he joined the crowd at the bottom of the tree, still wearing his white short-sleeved shirt and tie. He didn’t speak. He gazed up at his daughter, like a tractor beam sending love. Emeline didn’t say a word either, but she climbed down into his arms.

Sylvie had avoided thinking about what her life would look like after William checked out of the hospital. She’d kept her head down and showed up in his room, knowing that that was where she belonged. She’d hoped, at first, that his release from the hospital would return her to her former self. But now she felt like she was seated on the tree branch beside the small Emeline, not wanting to get down. Her previous life was the ground beneath her. She saw Ernie, with his dimpled chin and jovial expression. Her solo commute from her studio to the library. Her co-workers chatting about quirky patrons, the weather, their weekend plans. But there was no tractor-beam gaze from Charlie, because there was no Charlie, and there was no Julia either. She would see William less, or perhaps not at all, because the crisis was over, and it would be dangerous for her to spend time with him. She might reach for his hand or be unable to silence her feelings. Sylvie scooched closer to Emeline’s small body and held tight to the branch. There was no way she could go back to that heartbroken, lonely ground, where the sisters, who’d believed they would die if they were separated, had separated.

William

November 1983–December 1983

After he left the hospital, William lived the way he imagined drunks did after they stopped drinking: carefully, and one day at a time. He felt newly housed in his body, aware that any negligence could cause the entire building to collapse. Each morning, he got out of his single bed, took four of the eight pills he had to swallow every day, and did as many push-ups as he could — five, at first — and then the knee exercises the surgeon had assigned him years earlier, which he’d ignored. William was almost amused at how his knee audibly creaked during the stretches, issuing loud complaints about being asked to function. But he didn’t stop, and he never missed a day; he had to take deliberate actions toward stability and health. “When I visit, we’re going to go for runs together,” Kent said, on one of their phone calls. “You have to get in shape.”

William nodded into the empty room. He’d been lucky that the dorm suite was furnished with a couch and bed when he arrived; these walls had seen a revolving door of questionable adults over the years: grown men who had lives small enough to fit into the miniature set of rooms, who were willing to handle middle-of-the-night emergencies and usher college students out of the building if there was a fire. “Another divorced guy, huh,” the aged security guard had noted when he gave William his keys, as if he was keeping an inventory of the reasons men ended up here. William could have said, Mental hospital, actually, to shock him, but he didn’t. The fewer people who knew where he’d come from, the better.