Hello Beautiful

“Have you told your therapist?” Kent studied his friend’s face. “No? That’s no good. You have to tell everyone. That’s crucial.” Crucial for William to survive, Kent’s expression said. “You can’t hide love,” he said, and Sylvie, her hands still over her face, wondered, Is that true?

Where was their love? Could it be hidden? Sylvie saw love coming out of William’s face when he looked at her, like light streaming through cracks in a wall. Sylvie’s love for him was as much a part of her as her own hands, her face. She never would have chosen to love William; she never would have chosen to sweep her sister’s husband into her own heart. It wasn’t a feeling she and William gave each other, though; they were their love. Sylvie felt that if she walked away from him, she would end. She would no longer be Sylvie; she would be a shell of who she had been, moving through days that meant nothing.

Kent said, “To be clear, you have to either break up or tell everyone.” He looked at Sylvie. “Those are the only two options.”

A fog inside Sylvie cleared. She knew that William’s survival required him to live his life on his own terms. Lying to himself, and lying to others, was a departure from solid ground, and Sylvie couldn’t be party to that. William had been right, since their first kiss, that this secret needed to be temporary, and Sylvie had known, since their first kiss, that she couldn’t go back to living without William. He had become oxygen that she needed to breathe. Sylvie just hadn’t been able to merge those truths, until now.

Kent was still walking the floor. “You’ll tell your doctor, William. I’ll tell Arash. Don’t worry, I’ll be casual about it. And he’ll be thrilled — he loves Sylvie. That will take care of the people you spend your days around. Sylvie.” Kent looked at her, to chart her progress. He nodded, seeing that she had caught up. “You have to tell everyone else.”

Sylvie nodded and said, “Yes, Captain.”

—

She told the twins together. She called them to her apartment on a sunny May afternoon. The window was open, and the air traveling inside smelled of spring.

Cecelia was wearing painting clothes — a pair of olive-colored overalls with many pockets for brushes and rags. She was working on a mural on Loomis Street almost around the clock. She would paint during the day but then leave her house again at two o’clock in the morning — Izzy safe with Emeline — and work on the wall until she wanted to sleep again. This was the first mural commission she’d received, from a local arts council, for which she could paint whatever she wanted. Sylvie stopped by to visit her sister on her way to and from the library each day. She knew Cecelia didn’t like to talk about a painting while it was in progress, so she just watched. The outline of a woman’s face and shoulders had appeared on the wall first. In the past week, as the woman was filled in, she’d begun to seem familiar to Sylvie. She looked proud and fierce. Sylvie wondered if the woman was Cecelia herself, or perhaps Emeline or Julia. Today she’d felt a shiver of worry that her sister might be painting her. Cecelia might be revealing Sylvie’s own true self on the wall. If the woman on the wall was Sylvie, then her love and unfurling would be on display for everyone to see. It was this possibility that had made Sylvie stop procrastinating, made her call her sisters and ask them to come over. The idea of being revealed by Cecelia’s brush was unacceptable; she needed to reveal herself.

“We knew something was coming,” Emeline said, “because you’ve been acting weird.” She’d come from the daycare, which meant she looked slightly sticky with jelly and Play-Doh.

“Are you gay too?” Cecelia said with a smile. She sat down next to her sister at Sylvie’s small kitchen table.

Sylvie shook her head. She thought, I wish that was my news. “Would you like water? Or”—she tried to think what she had in her cupboards—“crackers?”

“Spill it,” Cecelia said. “Em has a class tonight and Mrs. Ceccione is watching Iz, so I need to get home soon.”

Sylvie took a deep, gathering breath, as if she were about to dive underwater, and told them the contents of her heart. She started with taking William’s hand by the side of the lake and explained that she was alive with him, a whole circle with him, her whole messy self with him. “When we hold hands…” she said, but she hadn’t been able to finish that sentence with William, and she couldn’t now. Sometimes words were like pebbles thrown against a window, and what she was reaching for was the window itself.

Her sisters were quiet when she was done. There was faint traffic noise from outside. The squealing brakes of a bus.

“Oh, Sylvie.” Cecelia looked tired from lack of sleep, from holding her world together by herself. Izzy had discovered the word no, and the toddler woke up in the morning yelling it from her crib.