That conversation had helped Sylvie understand herself in a new way. She looked for third doors because she was like her father. Julia sought to collect labels like honors student, girlfriend, and wife, but Sylvie steered away from labels. She wanted to be true to herself with every word she uttered, every action she took, and every belief she held. There was no label for kissing boys for ninety seconds in the library, which was part of why it made Sylvie happy and Julia uncomfortable. Sylvie would keep boycotting boring classes to read in parks. She wouldn’t settle for less than true love, even though her sisters had issued a collective sigh when she told them that Ernie had asked her out on a proper date and she’d turned him down. She would wait, forever if necessary, for a man who saw the expanse of her, the way her father had. Sylvie shifted in the pew, her thoughts bunched up in her head. Rushed and hot and mucky with the tears she hadn’t yet shed. She knew now—inside her body, her bones, her cells—that her father was gone. He was gone and no one else really knew her. Julia, Emeline, and Cecelia each saw a slightly different Sylvie: She was soft with Emeline, in response to her sister’s softness, and playful with Julia because they enjoyed challenging each other. Sylvie was curious in Cecelia’s presence, because her artist sister spoke and thought differently from anyone else she knew.
Sylvie looked around at the bent heads, her sweating, weeping sisters and her rock-faced mother, and knew they were all in trouble. Charlie had seen and loved each of them for who they were. When any of his girls—including Rose—had come into view, he’d always given them the same welcome, calling out, Hello beautiful! The greeting was nice enough to make them want to leave the room and come in all over again. He’d delighted in Julia’s ambition and nicknamed her his rocket. He’d taken Cecelia to the art museum on Saturday mornings. He’d kept a shared inventory of the neighborhood kids with Emeline, because Charlie loved to watch his daughter light up while explaining a child’s interests and the specific reasons he or she was remarkable. Sylvie and her sisters had known themselves under their father’s gaze. And with that gaze gone, the threads that had tied their family so tightly together had loosened. What had been effortless would now take effort. What had been home for all of them was now merely Rose’s house. Emeline was already sleeping on Cecelia’s floor at Mrs. Ceccione’s to help with the baby. Julia was married. Sylvie knew in that moment that she would have to move out too.
She walked back to the house with Rose after the funeral; she intended to talk to her mother about moving out but didn’t want to do it that day. Perhaps they could agree on a timeline that wouldn’t seem too abrupt for either of them—maybe a month? But Rose didn’t look at her, or speak, while they made their way home. Rose walked straight into her bedroom and changed into her gardening clothes. On her way outside, she passed Sylvie with her face turned away.
“Can I do something for you, Mama?” Sylvie said. “What would you like for dinner?”
Rose stopped. “Your sisters all left me,” she said, her voice thin. “Everyone has left.”
Sylvie said, “I’m right here,” but her mother gave no indication of having heard her, and Sylvie wondered if maybe she wasn’t right here. Her certainty wavered, and with it her sense of self. Sylvie had the sensation of fading away in her black dress and tights. Under Charlie’s gaze, Sylvie had been whole; now, in front of her mother, she was porous, disappearing.
“You should go stay with one of your sisters,” Rose said. “I’d like to be alone.” She opened the back door and walked outside. Sylvie stood still for a moment in the empty house, fighting for air, because it felt like her lungs had seized up. Rose’s second daughter wasn’t enough, and would never be enough. When she was able to breathe normally, Sylvie went to her room to pack her belongings.
That night she slept on William and Julia’s couch. She brought her clothes in paper grocery bags. Sylvie was surprised at how little she owned. The room she and Julia had shared all their lives was so tiny, there had never been room for more than their single beds and a dresser. Sylvie had never bought books, because of her relationship with the library. Lying on the couch in her nightgown, under a rough blanket, with the grocery bags lined up neatly in sight, she felt tangled in a net of grief. Her father was dead, and her mother had turned her away. My soulmate would save me, she thought. He would see me, and I would feel more solid. But this brought a fresh sadness, because if she ever did meet this man, he would never have known her father. Sylvie studied the ceiling for most of the night. She felt tears deep inside her, but they couldn’t seem to find a way out. She still hadn’t cried.
The next morning at the library, she pinned a notice to the huge public bulletin board: In need of a house sitter or pet sitter? Need someone to water your plants while you’re on vacation? I will do chores in exchange for a bed. Please find Assistant Librarian Sylvie at the front desk.
No one came near her, though. Not even her boys, though she would have loved to have been kissed or held, even for a moment. Two of them, Ernie and Miles, had attended the wake but avoided making eye contact with her. She hadn’t told them about her father, but someone had hung the funeral mass and death announcement on the library bulletin board. Everyone Sylvie encountered seemed to sense that she was wearing death, so they gave her a wide berth. Once or twice she sniffed her clothes, to make sure she wasn’t emitting a terrible odor. She pushed her cart up and down the stacks. She did her college reading in the library when she wasn’t on a shift, and then slept on Julia and William’s couch at night.
“Did you tell Mom you’d be staying here for a while?” Julia asked.
Sylvie shook her head. “She’s relieved I’m not there.”
“But she’s so alone,” Julia said. “She’s never lived alone before.”
“You visited her this afternoon.”
Julia reached up to make sure her hair was behaving itself. “I think she’s in the garden all day, every day. She hardly spoke while I was there. I know she’s mourning, but…”
Sylvie spoke with certainty. “Mama doesn’t want me there.”
The next afternoon at the library, Sylvie saw her mother walk past the wide windows. Rose was still in black, though she no longer had the piece of lace on her head. She walked slowly, with an erect carriage. She didn’t look into the library, even though the chance of her daughter being there was always high. Sylvie didn’t run outside to speak with her either. She stayed frozen at the desk and watched as Rose walked the full length of the windows before she disappeared.
* * *
—
JULIA DEVELOPED A HABIT of climbing onto the couch with Sylvie in the middle of the night. Because Julia had a new curviness—she wasn’t visibly pregnant to strangers, but she’d had to buy larger bras—this involved Sylvie lying on her side on the very edge of the cushions. She had to wrap her arms around Julia to keep from falling off. The night pulsed around them, and Sylvie was grateful to be crushed against her sister. It was late November; several blurry weeks had passed since their father had died.
“What are we going to do?” Julia whispered.
With her eyes closed, Sylvie could pretend they were in their single beds, in their childhood room. They had, after all, talked back and forth in the darkness for as long as either of them could remember. She said, “You’re going to have a baby. I’m going to qualify for a higher paycheck soon, and I’ll find my own place.”
Sylvie had switched her college focus from English literature to library sciences, because she knew Head Librarian Elaine needed a new librarian and would hire her if she had the necessary qualifications. Every day, Sylvie looked at studio apartments in the classifieds, reassured that with the new job she would be able to afford a tiny studio.
Julia said, “I feel like Beth.”
Sylvie hugged her sister closer. While they were growing up, only Sylvie, Emeline, and Cecelia ever made that pronouncement. Julia had never said she was Beth before. When Julia was sick with the flu or a cold, she drank orange juice and sucked zinc tablets and ate salads, in order to fuel herself to get to the other side. Sickness or disappointment was simply something to be conquered. She wouldn’t even joke about surrendering.
But Julia’s eyes had looked panicked ever since Charlie’s death. Because Sylvie understood her older sister so well, she knew Julia was not only mourning him but reeling from the fact that he had died at all. Julia hadn’t planned for him to die, and that shock threatened her entire worldview. Their father’s absence was, after all, unfixable.
“We’ll figure it out,” Sylvie said. “You’ll come up with a new plan. You always do. It’s probably just hard to do that when you’re pregnant. Give yourself some time.”