“Listen,” he said, “I know it would be strange not to invite them to the wedding, but I don’t think we need to invite them.” He saw her face and said, “I’m just being honest. I know it’s unusual.”
“You’ll call them tonight,” she said. “And I’ll be on the phone with you. I’m charming. They’ll adore me.”
William was quiet for a moment, and his eyelids drooped in a way that indicated he had gone far away from her. When he looked up, he regarded her as if she were a problem he needed to solve.
“You love me,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, and the word seemed to settle something inside him. “Okay, let’s do it.”
An hour later, sharing the hard wooden stool in the old-fashioned phone booth in his dorm hallway, they called Boston. William’s mother answered the call, and William said hello. The woman sounded surprised to hear from him, though she was polite. Then Julia spoke — her voice sounding overamplified to her own ears, as if she were speaking through a megaphone — and William’s mother sounded far away. She said she had something in the oven and it was nice they were getting married, but she had to go now.
The entire call was finished in less than ten minutes.
Julia gulped for air when she hung up the receiver, winded from trying to reach, to touch, the distant woman on the end of the line.
When she could speak, she said, “You were right. She doesn’t want to come.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know that’s disappointing to you. Your vision of the wedding had everyone there.”
Julia was pressed against William on the tiny seat. The hallway booth was warm. The temperature and the disappointment and Julia’s sympathy for this boy rose inside her — this boy who deserved parents who kissed his cheek the way her parents kissed hers. They had planned not to have sex until they were married, though they had come close to breaking that resolution once or twice. The remote woman on the phone had handed William off to Julia in a way that felt as significant as a wedding vow. She needed to take care of him; she needed to love him, with every part of her. In fact, she had to, right now. She was flushed, her skirt was twisted around her waist because of the seating arrangement, and she needed to be closer to him in order for anything to be all right.
She said, “Can we have privacy in your room?”
His roommate was gone for the summer. William nodded, a question on his face.
She took his hand and led him down the hall, into his room, and locked the door behind them.
Sylvie
August 1981–June 1982
The Lozano Library overlooked a three-way intersection in the center of Pilsen. Sylvie loved every inch of the spacious library and the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that showed whatever light and weather the city had to offer. She loved how the library welcomed everyone and how the librarians dutifully answered every question presented to them, no matter how arcane or ridiculous. Sylvie had been working in the library since she was thirteen; she’d started by shelving books and now, at the age of twenty, she bore the title of librarian’s assistant.
Sylvie was shelving copies of What Color Is Your Parachute? when Ernie, a boy her age with a dimple in his chin, smiled his way into her row. They had gone to high school together, and he sometimes stopped by after his morning session of electrician school. After checking that no one else was in sight, Sylvie stepped into his arms. They kissed for about ninety seconds, making two slow turns down the aisle with his hand on her lower back, and then she tapped him on the shoulder, and he was gone.
Sylvie told Julia she kissed boys to practice for her great love, and that was true. But she also did it because it was fun. She’d waited through her entire childhood, scanning classrooms for her person, her version of Gilbert Blythe from Anne of Green Gables. Sylvie hadn’t found him yet, but she enjoyed the thrill that accompanied a boy taking her in his arms. Sylvie was naturally shy and bookish; she’d blushed when Ernie looked into her eyes. “I’m getting better at kissing,” she told Julia when they returned to the subject at night in their beds. “It’s clearly a learned skill.”
Julia had shaken her head. “People are talking about what you’re doing with those boys. If Mama hears about it…” There was no need to finish this sentence, because they both knew Rose would be furious. And if Sylvie tried to explain that she was practicing for the love of her life, Rose would be bewildered and probably lock Sylvie in her room. Rose had never uttered the word love in front of the girls; they simply knew she loved them because of the furious attention she pinned on them. They also knew, in the same unspoken way, that Rose loved Charlie. It was because she loved him that Rose had been so disappointed by her marriage and why it was essential that her girls grow up strong and educated, able to stand on their own two feet, unbowed by something as tricky and undependable as love.
Julia used to dismiss the idea of love too, but now she was in love with William Waters. Sylvie found it fascinating to watch the person she knew better than anyone succumb to romance. Julia walked through her days smiling, unbothered by things that normally ruffled her: the sight of Charlie pouring a second or third drink; Cecelia sliding into her chair, late for dinner; Emeline playing outside with younger neighborhood kids, when Julia considered her too old to do so. Love had made Julia happier and lighter, but she saw it as part of a well-constructed life, not a reason for living, like Sylvie did.
Julia believed in several direct steps: Education led to a good marriage, which led to a reasonable number of children, to financial security and then real estate. Julia found Sylvie’s behavior in the library distressing because there was a murky abandon implied in allowing boys, plural, to cover Sylvie’s face with kisses, to slide a hand over her sweater and cup her breast, even though Head Librarian Elaine — she insisted everyone address her this way — was only two rows away. “Just date one of them at a time, like a normal person,” Julia pleaded with Sylvie. She wanted her sister to behave in a way that made sense.
“I have no interest in dating,” Sylvie said. “Dating is about getting dressed up and pretending you’re a pretty girl who thinks about nothing but marriage and babies. I don’t think about those things, and it makes me sad to pretend to be something I’m not. Oh—” She propped herself up on her elbow so she could see her sister in the dim light. “I thought of a metaphor today while I was shelving. Imagine that I’m a house, and when I find my great love, I’ll become the entire world. Our love will show me so much more than I’m able to see on my own.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Julia said, but she smiled while she said it, because she was tender inside her own love story and because she wanted Sylvie to be happy, even if Julia thought her dream was nonsensical.
Sylvie wasn’t entirely impractical. She would earn a degree in English literature, which would allow her to understand some of the mystery and beauty and symmetry in the novels she loved and qualify her for a job in teaching or publishing. She would give her mother whatever money she could spare, to make Rose’s life easier. She and her mother didn’t get along well; they picked small fights with each other all day long. Sylvie didn’t like how Rose left used drinking glasses and dishes all over the house; the twins did this too, but Sylvie excused them because they were the babies of the family. Rose would complain that Sylvie didn’t care about her garden, which was true. Sylvie was the only daughter who insisted that all her chores take place inside the house; she went out back only to hang laundry on the multitiered clothesline. When Rose came upon Sylvie reading a book, she made a face and then gave a noisy sigh. This mystified Sylvie — how could her mother disapprove of her reading, when she had been the one to demand that all four girls go to college? Sylvie had observed that her mother and Julia often shared a peaceful silence at the kitchen table. But when Sylvie and her mother were together, the air crackled as if filled with static electricity.