Izzy appeared at Alice’s side now. “You all right?” she whispered.
Alice made a face of some kind at her cousin, because she didn’t want to lie. She didn’t know if she was all right. She didn’t know anything. Alice had locked herself down years ago. She’d never told a boy she liked him, or driven too fast in a car, or gotten so drunk she lost track of the words leaving her mouth, but now she appeared on a mural somewhere in Chicago and in portraits on the walls of this house, and she saw herself in the man across the room. She existed outside her own body—she was scattered across this ground—but somehow this made her feel less vulnerable. She was painted into this family, mirrored in her father’s face. She was more abundant than she’d believed possible.
William sat down, and the other men and women in the room immediately stepped forward, as if they were an external structure designed to keep Alice’s father from collapse. Towering men leaned toward him, willing him their own great strength. Alice, in the same moment, stepped backward. Everyone here loves him, she thought in amazement. They love him so much. She realized she’d expected her father to have a smaller life than hers. After all, he’d given her up. That seemed like a retreat, a refusal to live. But someone who turned away from people didn’t inspire this kind of response. She had never been in a room with this much love and grief, this much emotion.
Alice backed up until she reached a wall, and she looked away, out the window onto the Pilsen street. Her father’s distress was personal, and she didn’t know him like these other people did. She didn’t want to appear to be gawking, as if at an accident on a highway. She also had the odd sense that she was a counterweight to this man who looked so much like her. They were both washed of color, tall and thin, somber in some elemental way. Alice felt like if she moved forward and pinned her eyes on him, then William Waters wouldn’t be able to rise from his chair. She would swamp him there, their energies mixing until he was too heavy to move. She had to stay at a distance, on her end of the seesaw that connected them, to give him any chance. In time, William stood and left the room. Still wearing his coat, he headed toward the back door of the house.
Alice felt like she’d exerted herself simply by standing against the wall. She was aware of her heart beating in her chest, as if she’d just sprinted up a hill. What is happening to me? she thought.
A man with dreadlocks and glasses walked over to her. He said, “I’m your father’s best friend. My name is Kent. It’s an honor to meet you, Alice.”
She shook his hand. Every piece of information was new. Her father had a best friend, his own version of Carrie.
“I held you in my arms when you were a baby,” he said, and then shook his head as if to clear it. “You must feel like you’ve walked into a whirlwind.”
Alice pictured a baby in this huge man’s arms. She’d come to understand that she’d had a life here as an infant, that for a short while before she had a memory, she was part of this world. These people remembered her, even though she had no recollection of them. “Sylvie loved you so much,” Emeline had told Alice. “She would have been so happy you’re home.”
“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.”
Alice considered this. Her world had always been so small, made up of many fewer people than currently filled this room. It had been Alice and her mother, their braided roots driven deep into the earth. When she looked around at her aunts, though, and at her mother, who was keeping her distance, and at her dark-haired cousin, whom Alice had somehow loved immediately when she’d thrown open the door in greeting, she knew something was happening to her own roots. Something was happening beneath the ground she was standing on.
“Your father needs a little more time,” Kent said. “Please don’t leave him.”
The last sentence surprised her. William had left her, after all. Was it even possible for her to leave a person she’d never met, who had legally declared, while she was still a baby, that he wanted nothing to do with her? But the big man in front of Alice looked like his ground had been pulled apart. He looked weary and kind, and so she said, “I won’t leave,” without knowing what time frame she was agreeing to or what not leaving meant.
* * *
—
The long day felt unbounded by the regular movements of a clock. The hours swelled into bubbles that floated across the crowded rooms. First, bagels were put out, then, later, pizzas and cookies. Occasionally a discussion would arise about funeral plans, but William was still outside and no one wanted to bother him, so no final decisions could be made. “Sylvie wouldn’t want a Catholic wake and funeral,” Cecelia said, and both her sisters nodded in agreement.
Rose arrived midafternoon, wearing a black dress, dramatic in her sadness. The night before, Izzy had listed for Alice the battles their grandmother had chosen a quarter century earlier. “She stopped talking to my mom when she got pregnant with me, she’s never acknowledged that I exist, and she’s mad at Aunt Emeline for being gay.” Izzy ticked these off on her fingers. “She was mad at Sylvie for marrying your dad. And I think she was angry at your mom for a little while for getting divorced, but she got over that.”
Just before Rose arrived, Cecelia said, “Mama’s going to pretend like we’ve been a happy family this whole time, and I think we should go along with it.”
Cecelia was right. Rose swept into the house and hugged each of her daughters as if she’d seen them the week before. When Izzy stepped forward, the grandmother and granddaughter stared each other down, a moment that evoked centuries of fierce women from their line. Then Izzy said, “You had a long trip. Are you hungry?” and Rose smiled with obvious relief. She accepted a cookie from Izzy and said it was one of the most delicious cookies she’d had in years. Rose complimented Josie on her hair color and told Emeline that the baby she was fostering had handsome features. She put her coat back on to go outside and talk to William for a few minutes and then took a seat at the kitchen table, as if claiming her throne. Rose wondered aloud how she could have survived her own child.