Hello Beautiful

by Ann Napolitano

With his palm pressed against his father’s, William had the strange thought that he might never see his parents again—that they’d only ever had one child, and it wasn’t him.

He was interested in questions and uncertain in his answers; he was moldable.

Cecelia had special access to the art room at the high school, and she considered everything in her sightline to be source material for future paintings.

Emeline read the emotional tenor of every room and wanted everyone to feel comfortable and content at all times.

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.

Sylvie was naturally shy and bookish; she’d blushed when Ernie looked into her eyes.

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.

“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.”

Sylvie watched her mother try to change her father every day, and now she could see Julia lovingly nudging William into the shape of her ideal future husband. Sylvie would love differently. She would celebrate whoever her beloved happened to be; she would be curious about his distinctiveness and sink into a love that was unblinkingly honest.

The dream was now in the air, at risk of the elements, beyond her grasp.

He’d stuck the envelope under his pillow while he worked to shoo the hope out of him, like a bird out a window.

“We’re part of the sky, and the rocks in your mother’s garden, and that old man who sleeps by the train station. We’re all interconnected, and when you see that, you see how beautiful life is. Your mother and sisters don’t have that awareness. Not yet, anyway. They believe they’re contained in their bodies, in the biographical facts of their lives.”

Sylvie and her sisters had known themselves under their father’s gaze. And with that gaze gone, the threads that had tied their family so tightly together had loosened. What had been effortless would now take effort. What had been home for all of them was now merely Rose’s house.

She and her brother-in-law were both struggling to inhabit their own skin, a goal that would sound absurd to almost anyone else.

The beats of this exact routine gave William an infrastructure, and the idea of any alteration made him stare blankly at his wife, even though he knew she was being reasonable and he was not.

“That kind of loss…must be hard.” “I didn’t expect”—she paused—“for it to be part of everything, every minute. I didn’t know that you could lose someone, and that meant you lost so much else.”

When Julia gazed at William, she was trying to see the man she wanted him to be. She couldn’t see, or didn’t want to see, who he actually was.

“They need to let that out to someone. We hardly ever ask each other how we’ve been hurt.

It occurred to him, for the first time, that just because you never thought about someone didn’t mean they weren’t inside you.

homework. “I want you to write down every secret, every part of your life that you kept from the people close to you.”

He wasn’t ready yet, though. It was enough to simply know that the time was coming and that he could no longer hide.

He didn’t blame his wife for this conditional acceptance; he’d grown up with parents who’d never accepted him at all.

“You’re depressed, not crazy. It’s not insane to be depressed in this world. It’s more sane than being happy. I never trust those upbeat individuals who grin no matter what’s going on. Those are the ones with a screw loose, if you ask me.

No bullshit and no secrets.

“Alice is a lamp. A bright lamp, from the moment she was born. She kind of shines. Looking at her hurt my eyes, and I was afraid to touch her.” “You were afraid of her light?” “No. I was afraid I was going to put her light out. That my darkness would swamp her light.”

She hadn’t damaged him, and she wasn’t required to fix him.

She was all of herself with him and even felt there was room for her to become more.

“He said that basketball was William’s first language. That he dribbled a ball more than he spoke when he was a kid.”

“It’s not about making it good.” She had gotten the idea, the possibility, from reading William’s book, of course. And from Whitman too. Sylvie had always thought that when, if, she wrote, it would have to be perfect. A beautifully crafted novel, ready to hand to the world. But William had shown her she could write for, and to, herself. And Whitman had rewritten, expanded, cut, and reimagined his poems across his life. He’d created not one beautiful book but different attempts at excellence and beauty as he aged and loved and reconsidered everything.

And now, in his new, safe life, he was landlocked, and love was the sea; William had chosen stability over any more risk or loss.

It wasn’t a feeling she and William gave each other, though; they were their love.

“Stop thinking about who you were when you were living the wrong life, William. You’re built for the life you’re living now.

you can’t fail when you’re doing what you love.”

Opportunity did not knock until I built the door.

She wondered if dying was simply going to be an exercise in letting go of one thing after another.

His mother and father had shut down under the weight of their immense pain; they’d chosen to go through the motions of living a life, which was very different from living.

You have the best heart, and you don’t use it.

“You’re a grown-up,” Carrie said. “You’re twenty-five years old. You don’t need a dad. You just have to meet him and ask him what’s what, so you can move on with your own life.”

I’m proud of myself. I guess for living a brave life.”

When your love for a person is so profound that it’s part of who you are, then the absence of the person becomes part of your DNA, your bones, and your skin.