Hello Beautiful

by Ann Napolitano

Kids and adults had always looked past him, as if he were invisible. His parents hardly looked at him at all. William had accepted all of this and thought it was understandable; he was, after all, boring and forgettable.

he had no usefulness. No one would miss him. If he disappeared, it would be like he’d never existed.

forbidden any celebration of her birthday, a personal declaration of war against the passage of time.

he were a ship eyeing the ideal harbor.

when my real life starts. Nothing starts here; you saw my family. People get stuck here.”

“I like them too,” she said. “I just don’t want to be them.”

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.

Emeline, in particular, looked startled when another member of the family joined a conversation she was having with Cecelia, as if she’d forgotten that other people lived in the house.

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.

She knew it was a strange contradiction, but despite her interest in love, weddings made her uncomfortable. They were too showy, too public. Deep love between two people was a private, wordless endeavor, and to place the lovers in fancy clothes in front of a crowd seemed antithetical to the nature of the thing. No one could see love—this was what Sylvie believed, anyway. It was an internal state. Watching that moment between two lovers felt wrong to her, almost blasphemous.

she would have to pretend the kind of girlish joy that she knew weddings were supposed to elicit in her. She would be kissed by all the old women in the neighborhood. You’re next would be said to her again and again, and this would make her feel melancholy too, because her true love hadn’t yet appeared,

She could use a quiet moment before reentering the manic energy of their house.

he admired how Julia saw her life as a system of highways to be expertly navigated, and he was grateful to be in her car.

She looked like she had been plugged in to a power source the rest of them didn’t have access to.

When the Padavano sisters thought of family, they’d always pictured only the six people who lived under their roof. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins had always been framed as enemies or potential enemies.

If I’m not interested in something, I have no hope of learning it.”

Neither of us would expect school or work to fill us up. We look out the window, or into ourselves, for something more.”

“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.”

“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.”

She wanted to be true to herself with every word she uttered, every action she took, and every belief she held.

“I feel like Beth.”

William didn’t seem to recognize the person in the mirror, or perhaps he didn’t see anyone there.

struggling to inhabit their own skin, a goal that would sound absurd to almost anyone else.

Her mother was in front of them, blood pumping through her body, but she was absent.

had she been wanting to be somewhere else for years, and now she saw the chance to break free?

William wondered if the professor still cared about the subjects he lectured on. Did he have new thoughts on the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 or the capture of Berlin? Or were these just words the old man recited, like lines from a play?

Where are you? he wanted to ask her. Do you know where you’re going? Are you sure it’s the right way?

Nothing and no one existed in a vacuum.

he felt bad for his wife. She had to pretend she thought he was better than he was. She had to pretend she wasn’t worried she’d hitched herself to a bad horse. This wasn’t the first time William had seen this kind of strained smile on Julia’s face, and he hated that he’d put her in this position.

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.

Not for you, Mom. I’m going to do that for me. I don’t want to get bitter and angry like you.

Why can I only say stupid things?

Julia must have unknowingly been a mother all along, simply waiting to be joined by her child.

What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Who am I?

studied herself in the mirror. She had never done this before. She’d never been particularly vain or interested in her appearance, but now she needed to remind the girl standing in front of the mirror that she was roughly the same person day after day.

What do I do? he thought, so many times that he forgot what problem he was swimming away from in the darkness.

he was a defective machine.

He couldn’t explain; he couldn’t build a case. William was a fake, a liar, a pretender.

He had the sensation that he had cut himself out of his own life,

No one wants to be near someone who’s that close to gone.

She’d finished her normal evening routine, even if this wasn’t a normal evening.

Julia wasn’t ready to talk, but she was alone in a way that felt dangerous.

It felt like a memory from another life.

I’m not anywhere I’m supposed to be, she thought. And I have no idea where I am.

The fact that he had failed meant he had to continue to walk forward with his life history—his mistakes—slung over his shoulders like a heavy backpack. This fact exhausted him, but he was too tired to reject it.

“Sleep is a great healer,”

His old life sat at the bottom of the lake.

You deserve, and deserved, better from your parents. You were born to two broken people,

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 don’t deserve to be alone.”