Hello Beautiful

by Ann Napolitano

He asked questions that let her know he was interested in understanding her.

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

Rose was in a black mood, and so she only saw darkness.

“It’s because you know that more is possible that you’ll always see the pointlessness in following a stupid rule or clocking in and out of a boring class. Most people can’t see that distinction, so they just do as they’re told. Of course, this makes them bored and irritated, but they think that’s the human condition. You and I are lucky enough to see that it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Charlie had seen and loved each of them for who they were. When any of his girls—including Rose—had come into view, he’d always given them the same welcome, calling out, Hello beautiful!

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.

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.

Her family was a mirror in which she recognized her reflection.

William was able to see the pain in Charlie, the same way he’d seen it in the college basketball players, the way he’d seen it in Sylvie on the bench. His overtaxed liver, his unsatisfying work, his broken heart: William saw it all and said, “I’m glad to see you,” because he was. But by the time the words left his mouth, Charlie had disappeared.

She hadn’t known, hadn’t wanted to know, who William was for a long time. When her husband came home after being out for the day, she never asked him where—or who—he’d been.

the similarities between her husband and her father. She’d wanted to marry someone the opposite of Charlie. She’d chosen William because she thought he was that: serious, mature, sober, attentive. Charlie was a dreamer—Rose used to say that he walked among the clouds. He was also regularly demoted at work and spent money that Rose needed to pay bills at the bars in their neighborhood.

William did not walk among the clouds, but, like her father, he lacked ambition and reliability. Charlie had been a loving father but a deadweight as a husband. He’d given Rose nothing she could use. Perhaps Charlie had recognized that facet of himself in William.

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

“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. Also, I’m not offering you a job. I’m offering a room.”

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.

he’d done things he didn’t want to do all the time, and he’d gotten so good at muffling his own preferences that he was rarely aware of them.

“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.”

Opportunity did not knock until I built the door.

She carried a book at all times—to read, yes, but also as a handy shield for when she wanted to deflect the attention of other people. She would position a book in front of her face and think, or simply hide.

Charlie had been deemed a failure in his lifetime, but almost thirty years after his death, his daughters’ love for him ran so deep that he could be considered the most successful person William had ever known.

“When an old person dies,” Kent said, “even if that person is wonderful, he or she is still somewhat ready, and so are the people who loved them. They’re like old trees, whose roots have loosened in the ground. They fall gently. But when someone like your aunt Sylvie dies—before her time—her roots get pulled out and the ground is ripped up. Everyone nearby is in danger of being knocked over.”

“Grief is love.” Now Alice thought: Forgiveness is too. The

Depression meant disconnection, shutting down, a dangerous quiet.