The many hours William spent in the lake had temporarily affected his eyesight, his electrolyte levels, and his thyroid. He had a hard time staying awake, and Sylvie read a favorite collection of poems while he slept. Poems suited her fractured attention span, but she also chose them to feel closer to her father. Charlie was almost always on Sylvie’s mind while she sat beside the sleeping patient. Her father had understood her, and she knew he would have recognized William’s brokenness too. Sylvie knew with all her heart that if Charlie had been alive, he would also be in this hospital room, able, like his middle daughter, to follow the inner journey of the man in the bed.
One afternoon, William blinked awake and pulled himself up to a seated position, and Sylvie put her book down. Her body became fretful beneath her, and she knew it was time. She could almost feel Julia fretful in her own apartment across town. Did William mean what he had written in the note? Did he really not want Julia to be his wife? When William said—in a flat, clear voice—that, no, he didn’t want Julia to visit, and he didn’t want Alice either, and he was giving both of them up more completely than Sylvie or Julia or the twins would have considered possible, Sylvie looked at his turned-away face, his long body in the bed, the white sky out the window, and felt her body gather and release into silent sobs.
It turned out that she had needed that answer too. Sylvie was composed of question marks and feelings that she didn’t know what to do with, as if her hands were full and she was wearing pants with no pockets. Sylvie was going through something herself in this hospital room. She missed her sister, but if Julia showed up at the hospital, there would no longer be a place for Sylvie beside William’s bed. And if Julia and her husband reunited, Sylvie knew she would fit nowhere; their apartment and this room would somehow no longer hold space for her. Sylvie felt like she’d checked into this hospital room alongside William, and she needed more time. She wasn’t sick, but she wasn’t well either.
Sylvie intended to stop visiting after that. She’d met both of her goals: William was well enough to speak to the doctor, and Julia had been given the news she desired. But Sylvie found that she couldn’t stay away. She told herself every morning that she wouldn’t visit that day and then climbed onto the bus that traveled to the hospital. She felt pulled, as if by magnetic force, between the library, the hospital, and her older sister’s apartment. She stamped books, sent out overdue notices, sat by William’s bed, and ate takeout with her sisters.
What am I doing? she asked herself repeatedly, and she never had a good answer. In the hospital, Sylvie spent hours sitting next to someone who had wanted to be dead. He certainly didn’t seem to be fully alive. Sometimes his eyes were blank when he looked at Sylvie, and she could tell he had to work to remember her name. She sat in silence, a book open in her lap, willing the man in the bed to restitch himself to life’s fabric. Dr. Dembia had talked to her about the stickiness of depression, about the art and science of finding the right mixture and levels of medication. “He’ll need to be on medication for the rest of his life,” Dr. Dembia said. “He won’t be able to manage this depression without it. It’s remarkable he made it this far.”
Sylvie struggled to think of a safe subject to talk to William about as he became more alert. She couldn’t attempt small talk; she couldn’t bear to talk to him about the weather or the terrible hospital food. The idea of chatting with William about nonsense made her mouth so dry she couldn’t say anything at all. Once, out of desperation, she asked him a basketball-related question. This worked and became the solution for conversations that weren’t stilted or awkward. Sylvie recalled a specific player or a piece of basketball history from his book and asked him about it. She felt a wave of relief because of the relief on William’s face when he answered. A light went on behind his eyes in those moments, which made Sylvie think of the pilot light on a stove. She found a basketball encyclopedia in the library and took notes on possible questions she could ask. She wanted to turn that pilot light on again. She wondered whether, if she asked enough questions, it might turn on for good.
* * *
—
Sylvie, Cecelia, and Emeline left Julia’s apartment one night after a dinner. Julia had looked lighter since hearing that William didn’t want her or Alice. She smiled, and teased her sisters, and gave opinions on the food they were eating, and talked about Alice and Izzy. Sylvie watched her older sister and envied her lightness. Sylvie felt trapped within herself, as if she were snowed in with secrets. Whenever she opened her mouth to speak during dinner, she felt a bleary confusion about what she was free to say and what she wasn’t.
Cecelia had borrowed a car from a sculptor who wanted to date her, so they climbed into his small green sedan. Emeline sat in the back next to a sleepy Izzy, who was buckled into a car seat.
“No speeding,” Emeline said, in warning. When Cecelia drove, she drove fast.
“I don’t think I like Buffalo wings,” Cecelia said. “What chickens have wings that small, anyway? It seems suspicious.”
“And she’s out,” Emeline said, because Izzy had fallen asleep. The little girl’s expression was serious, as if her unconscious mind was contemplating difficult problems: how to optimize budget deficits in a modern economy, perhaps, or whether free will is compatible with determinism.
Sylvie’s muscles were so tight she had struggled to buckle her seatbelt. When the car accelerated after turning a corner, she knew she had to say something or she would be entirely snowed in and unable to speak at all. She coughed and said in a rush, “I have to tell you both something. I’ve been visiting William. Sometimes. I’ve visited him a few times. I don’t want to tell Julia, but I can’t not tell you too.”
Cecelia looked at Sylvie from the driver’s seat. Sylvie could see her sister weighing up what she’d said.
“Oh, I’m glad,” Emeline said, with obvious relief.
Sylvie turned to look over her shoulder.
“I’ve been really worried about William,” Emeline said. “He has no family. I know we’re supposed to side with Julia, and I do, of course”—Emeline’s eyes were wide—“but William isn’t a jerk. He must have been in such terrible pain to do what he did. It’s an awful situation, really. I can’t bear it. I’m so glad you’re visiting him.”
“Oh, Emmie.” Sylvie felt her shoulders relax. She felt how stressed she’d been, carrying this secret. “That’s how I feel.”
Cecelia was bent over the steering wheel. “What?” she said, feeling her sisters’ eyes on her.
“Are you mad at me?” Sylvie said.
“I’m glad you told us,” Cecelia said, “but I’m not going to visit him.”
Sylvie knew Cecelia was angry at William for attempting suicide. “Any of us would have helped him, if he’d asked,” she’d said several times in the days after it happened. Sylvie thought that her sister couldn’t stand the idea that someone she cared about would try to wreck himself in secret. Cecelia operated with honesty and bluntness. She believed that if you were unhappy, you should say so. If you needed help, you should ask for it. William’s silence offended Cecelia as much as his choice to walk into the lake.