—
A MONTH LATER, SYLVIE was back in college, thanks to her sister. Julia sat in the Lozano Library one afternoon and paid close attention to the regular patrons. One older man, who came in at lunchtime and read Sylvie her horoscope from the newspaper, happened to work in the neighborhood bank. Julia beelined for him, and when she explained the situation Sylvie was in, he said he’d be delighted to help. That same afternoon, he arranged for Sylvie to get a small student loan. “Can’t have a light like you buried under a bushel,” he said, when he handed Sylvie the papers.
This generosity—from the man and her sister—made Sylvie teary, even though she rarely cried. Head Librarian Elaine tutted at the sight of her pink face and streaming eyes and said, “Well, I suppose you’ll want to rework your schedule around your classes again.”
“Yes, please, ma’am.”
Her sisters baked her a cake, and Cecelia drew a banner that said, Congratulations, Sylvie! She hung the banner in Sylvie and Julia’s tiny bedroom, though, so the sight of it wouldn’t hurt Charlie’s feelings. He had been ignoring the fact that Sylvie was out of college—because it was his fault—and so would prefer to ignore that she’d had to re-enroll. The four girls ate the cake on the floor of the bedroom, cross-legged and talking over one another.
“This cake is for you too.” Sylvie nodded at her older sister. “I wouldn’t be going back if it weren’t for you.”
Julia swallowed a bite and said, “You should have thought of this solution yourself, you know. Everyone in that library adores you. If they’d known you needed help, you would have had it earlier.”
Voices erupted outside the door, from the direction of the living room, and the four girls went silent to listen. Rose’s voice climbed to a pitch that meant she was unhappy, then Charlie responded, and Rose’s voice leveled. What at first sounded like a marital fight subsided into a conversation, and the girls relaxed.
“Here’s what you’re going to do,” Julia said.
“Oh, goodie,” Cecelia said, and Emeline put down her fork in anticipation. The twins had just turned seventeen and started their senior year of high school. Sylvie was twenty, and Julia twenty-one. They were getting too old to play this game, which had started in early childhood, but they hadn’t been able to give it up. Julia ran the game and told each of them their future. She picked up an invisible fortune-teller’s ball and shook it like a snow globe to find different answers for the four girls each time. When they were in elementary school, she’d gone through an animal-loving phase in which she would be a veterinarian and Sylvie her assistant. Julia couldn’t bear to give the animals their shots, so she needed an assistant to take on that responsibility. In this future vision, Emeline and Cecelia would be zookeepers. There had been myriad professions and husbands since then, a kaleidoscope view of the years ahead.
“Sylvie will meet a tall, dark-eyed stranger named Balthazar on a train and commence the great love affair of her life. She’ll also write the great American novel and be awarded the Pulitzer Prize before she’s thirty.”
Sylvie pushed her bare foot against her sister’s thigh in appreciation, her mouth filled with sugary icing.
“I’ll marry William next summer and we’ll have two perfect children. We’ll live in a genteel single-family house with a proper yard—probably in Forest Glen—and you three will come over every Sunday, at least, for dinner. And I’ll run the school board at my children’s school and be the perfect faculty wife.”
“What if he makes it into the basketball league?” Emeline said. “Isn’t that what he really wants to do?”
Julia pushed her curls away from her face. “Being an athlete isn’t a career—it’s something you do during school.”
“So you’ll run everything,” Cecelia said, wanting Julia to move on.
“Yes. And you, Emmie, will marry a Scottish doctor and have three sets of twins. You’ll live on a farm next to a moor.”
One of the futures always featured a moor—the girls were collectively fascinated by the idea of that mysterious landscape, which featured in nearly all the English novels they loved.
“Ooooh,” Emeline said, and fell back on the bed in delight. Her greatest wish was to be a mother, a role she’d been practicing for her entire life. Ever since she was a toddler, she’d carried snacks and Band-Aids in a little purse, to minister to her sisters whenever they were hungry or hurt. The younger children on their block waddled after Emeline like baby ducks, basking in the attention she gave them. She was the most sought-after babysitter on their side of Pilsen and, as a result, had an impressive bankroll stored under her mattress.
“Three boys and three girls,” Julia said, before Emeline could ask. The girl nodded, satisfied.
“My turn!” Cecelia said.
“You’ll go to art school and become a famous painter. You can’t be too far from Emeline for too long—”
“Or we’ll die,” Emeline said.
“—so you’ll keep an apartment in Paris and one in Scotland near her farm, which makes sense because you love the rain.”
“Yes,” Cecelia said. “I’d like to paint the rain in the same way Van Gogh painted the night sky.”
Emeline nodded. “I’ll hang your paintings all over my farmhouse.”
Sylvie had to force herself to swallow her next bite of cake, because the taste was suddenly laced with bitterness. She almost said something unkind, like None of this will ever happen. But she stopped herself. The game was no longer fun for her, and she could tell that Julia had to feign enthusiasm for it as well. Sylvie had never admitted, even to herself, that writing a novel was a dream. But her sister had snaked the truth out of her and said it in front of everyone, and—even though Sylvie knew Julia had meant well—that felt painfully, strangely, like a loss. The dream was now in the air, at risk of the elements, beyond her grasp.
* * *
—
ON JULIA’S WEDDING DAY, Rose woke the four girls at dawn.
“What’s wrong, Mama?” Emeline said, in response to Rose’s frantic expression.
The girls rubbed their eyes and yawned their way into a panicked silence, awaiting the worst. William had died, or run away, or the church had burned down, or Charlie was too drunk to make it to the wedding. Or perhaps something terrible had happened to the garden: a flash flood or an army of killer ants.
“There’s. So much. To do,” Rose said, winded by having to speak the words. “Get up!”
Julia was already standing, smoothing her hair. She followed her mother into the kitchen, narrating her own to-do list aloud. “We need to make sure there’s a chair for William—separate from the ones for the old people. He can’t stand for long because of his knee. Sylvie will get the flowers from Mr. Luis. The cookies?”
“Are ready to go into the ovens.”