Hello Beautiful

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Sylvie said.

He looked at her, tried to express with his face that he was sorry, because he didn’t seem to be able to speak; he felt incapable of reaching into the maelstrom of feelings and language inside him and pushing words out of his mouth.

She shook her head, clearly frustrated. “I’m going to tell you something. Something I figured out because of you. When I was a kid, my dream was to find a great love, like the kind you read about in a Brontë novel. Or Tolstoy.”

William pictured this, as if flipping through an album: He turned from the image of his worn parents to Sylvie wearing a high-necked gown, standing in a Russian train station.

“When we were teenagers, my sisters wanted me to date boys and not do what I was doing, which was making out with them in the library. But I didn’t have any interest in being a girlfriend, and I didn’t care about becoming a wife. I knew that if I never found my great love, I would rather be single than settle for a mediocre relationship. I can’t bear to pretend happiness.” Sylvie waved her hands for a second, as if they were wet and she wanted them dry. “Here’s the thing I realized, though: I always thought that I wanted that dream because I was romantic and destined to live a big life, but that wasn’t true. I created that dream because real life scared me, and that dream seemed so far-fetched I didn’t think it would ever happen. I’d never seen that kind of love in person. My parents loved each other, but badly, and they were miserable. So were all the other couples in my neighborhood. Have you ever actually seen that kind of love?”

William shook his head. He had married out of fear, because he didn’t think he was capable of steering himself into adulthood. He’d needed Julia to be his parent more than his partner. He was ashamed of this, but it was true.

“I didn’t think I would ever find a man, other than my father, who truly understood me. Who would see the way I look at the world, what reading means to me, how I wonder about everything. Someone who would see the best version of me, and make me believe I could be that person.” Sylvie blinked several times, as if trying to hold back tears. Her hands were in fists at her sides. “I thought that type of love was a fairy tale. I thought that kind of man didn’t exist. Which meant I got to feel good about the fact that I had a dream and yet I could stay safe with my sisters.”

Sylvie gave him a long look, and William knew he was in terrible trouble. He wasn’t walking away — he was standing in fire. “I see all of you,” he said, but his voice was quiet.

“I know you do. I knew it was possible when I read your book. And when I held your hand.” She stopped.

He remembered Emeline saying, I’m in love.

“This can’t happen, Sylvie.” William spoke firmly now, from the center of the fire, to make this clear. I was married to your sister, he thought. He wished that when he’d first met Julia Padavano on the college quad, he’d walked away and left her alone. He’d known, even then, that there was something wrong with him; he just hadn’t known what it was or what to do. The eighteen-year-old Julia shone at him like a beacon, and he’d used her brightness to light the path in front of him. “I can leave Chicago,” he said, knowing even as he said the words that if he left the Padavanos, and the university grounds, and Arash, and the basketball team, he would break apart into pieces too small to be put back together. “Look,” William said, desperate now. “There must be other guys. Find another guy. Keep looking.”

“There is no other guy,” she said. “You’re the one.”

“I don’t deserve this.” He meant all of it: this moment, this woman in front of him, her hand in his, because she had crossed the room, and she was holding his hand now. Warmth rushed through him.

“Well, I do,” Sylvie said. And she leaned forward and kissed him.

Sylvie

December 1983–August 1984

The final day in the hospital, when Sylvie held William’s hand and admitted to herself that she loved him, she’d intended to keep the realization to herself. She would limit her contact with him. She would work extra hours at the library, take up new hobbies — what exactly, she wasn’t sure — to busy herself, and, starved of oxygen, the feelings inside her would go away. But that plan hadn’t worked. Nothing worked. The feelings seemed to only expand. In the library, Sylvie’s hands shook while she shelved books. She found she was unable to read, because if she turned her imagination on, she entered not the world of the novel but a room inhabited by William. Her eyes met his, and Sylvie and William silently told each other everything that mattered. She made herself go for long walks after leaving work, to tire herself out for sleep, but each night she climbed into bed and felt her invisible seams strain to the point of bursting.