Hello Beautiful

by Ann Napolitano

The thought of her sister’s approval fish-hooked Julia’s heart, and she had to close her eyes because of the pain.

She had closed the valve to her past—to her heart, really—and a half-open valve was a broken one.

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. Charlie’s and Sylvie’s deaths were now part of Julia’s topography; the losses ran like a river inside her.

Julia hugged both women at the same time, her face buried in their hair. The sisters held one another, breathing into this three-person structure, trying to find a new kind of stability, even if just for one moment.

The long day felt unbounded by the regular movements of a clock. The hours swelled into bubbles that floated across the crowded rooms.

The mother and daughter had arrived here from the same place, and they were bound by a tight cord of love. For Alice, part of the strangeness of this new Chicago family was that they conducted a kind of love that seemed voluminous; it required talking over one another and living on top of one another, and it was a force that appeared to include people both present and absent, alive and dead.

Alice had always liked to keep things small so she could, if necessary, grab what mattered and run to higher ground.

Was life constructed of arrivals and departures?

Life had surprised them all—as if the sea had risen dramatically, lifting their boats precipitously high—in the midst of a moment of sadness.

Alice turned her face upward, as if to study the night sky, as if she required a different vantage point to sort through what was inside her.