“Oh, I’m sorry. I misspoke. Julia. I really do appreciate your speaking with me.”
After she hung up, Julia wondered why Sylvie’s name had been on the doctor’s mind. Had Dr. Dembia seen Sylvie recently? Had her sister been standing in front of her during the conversation? The doctor’s verbal slip may have meant nothing, but now Julia had questions, and those questions put Sylvie at a distance from her. She decided to call Emeline to tell her about moving to New York. Emeline had a kind voice and was almost always holding a baby, so she never shouted. Cecelia was prone to anger when she was surprised with what she might consider bad news. So on a Wednesday in the last week of October, Julia called Emeline at the daycare.
“It’s the busiest time of the day,” Emeline said. “The babies are losing their minds. Can I call you back when I get home later?”
“I need to tell you that I took a job with Professor Cooper.”
“Oh, congratulations! That’s wonderful.”
“The first six months will be in New York City, and then I’ll be back working here.”
There was a silence, and Julia heard Emeline say, away from the phone, “Josie, can you cover for me? I need to take this call in the kitchen.” There was a pause, presumably while Josie held the phone until Emeline picked up the line in the kitchen. “Thanks, Josie,” Emeline said, and the other extension clicked off.
“New York City?” Emeline said.
“Just for six months. It’s a great opportunity, and I need the job.”
“You can’t do that,” Emeline said, and her voice sounded sharp, like Cecelia’s. Emeline was a butter knife; Cecelia, a steak knife. “You can’t leave now. In the middle of everything. That’s a mistake, Julia. You can’t run away.”
“It’s short term. I’m not running away.” This frustrated Julia, though, because she knew Emeline meant running away from her marriage, and as far as Julia was concerned, that wasn’t even possible. William had been perfectly clear. Their marriage was over. There was nothing to run away from.
“You need us with you,” Emeline said. “You might not realize that, but you do. We need each other right now.”
“You can come visit me in New York, Emmie. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“I’m disappointed,” Emeline said, and Julia realized that she’d had her calculus all wrong. She’d called the wrong sister. Emeline was their conscience. Julia should have called Cecelia and they could have shouted at each other. She could have even called Sylvie and listened to the news bounce off her sister’s silence. Emeline was operating from a place of right and wrong. She wasn’t trying to win an argument. Cecelia and Sylvie would have been trying to win. Julia would have been better able to find a foothold in those contests.
“Alice is crying,” Julia said. “I love you. I have to go.”
When she hung up, she knew she’d failed even in ending the conversation. Crying babies were life to Emeline. Five or six were probably crying their way to nap time in her presence right now. Julia could picture her sister making her way back to her responsibilities, picking up babies and perching them on her hips, pushing pacifiers into mouths, cooing love at infants she had no relation to, simply because it was the right thing to do.
Sylvie
August 1983–November 1983
During the first ten days of William’s hospitalization, the nurses and doctors all believed that Sylvie was William’s wife. Sylvie had claimed that she was, after all, the day William tried to kill himself. She never used those words again, but neither she nor Kent corrected the mistake either. As a spouse, Sylvie was privy to information about William’s medical care. Doctors and nurses treated her with respect and showed her William’s chart, and Sylvie told Kent everything they said.
A few days after William was transferred to the second hospital, though, Sylvie told Dr. Dembia the truth. The aim in this unit was to treat William’s diagnosed severe depression, and when Sylvie heard Dr. Dembia tell William, “I need you to be ruthlessly honest,” she was immediately swamped with guilt. She felt like she had been caught lying during confession at St. Procopius. Sylvie followed the doctor into the hall and struggled to explain how she’d ended up in this situation. She was grateful that Dr. Dembia was a woman; Sylvie tried, while she talked, to pretend that the intense doctor with short gray hair was one of her sisters.
“William told my sister Julia that their marriage was over right before he tried to kill himself. So Julia didn’t want to come to the hospital when it happened, and William’s parents…I don’t know what the issue is there, but they have nothing to do with him. Kent couldn’t claim to be William’s brother, for obvious reasons, and someone needed to advocate for William while he was unconscious. The ambulance driver assumed I was his wife, and I didn’t correct him. So that’s how this happened.” Sylvie shrugged, feeling slightly dizzy at the contents of the paragraph leaving her mouth.
Dr. Dembia raised her eyebrows. “It sounds like you did the right thing,” she said. “I’ll change your designation to sister-in-law on the visitors’ sheet. Thank you for letting me know.”
If Sylvie’s sisters had heard any of this, they would have been surprised; Sylvie was surprised too. She felt like a stranger to herself. She had been changed by the night and day she’d spent running through the city streets with William’s friends. That time had been different from any other set of hours in Sylvie’s life—the exertion, the company, the fear, the sleeplessness. She would never forget it; she felt marked by the experience, as if she’d gotten a tattoo.
Sylvie told herself that she continued to visit William for two reasons: First, because William was still physically unwell and unable to take charge of his own medical care, so it helped to have someone there to speak to the doctor. Kent couldn’t do it, because he’d had to return to medical school. And second, because Julia had asked Sylvie to find out if she had to come to the hospital, if she still had to be a wife. “Do I need to do something?” Julia had asked when Sylvie visited. Sylvie had already disappointed her sister once, by leaving her to search for William, and she didn’t want to disappoint her again. Sylvie waited by William’s bedside for him to become alert enough to talk.