“Then you have my approval.”
The foster application went through quickly. The two women had worried that they might be declined—they sometimes got looks at the supermarket, and a family had pulled a child from their daycare because they were gay—but the foster-care system was so overwhelmed that they seemed thrilled to have applicants with Emeline and Josie’s excellent references and background in childcare. By the end of the summer, Emeline was wearing a tiny baby boy in a carrier while she walked through the fully renovated house.
Sylvie would think back on that summer as when her family fully accepted themselves. The super-duplex, with its shared houses and unusual layout, mirrored the unusual layout of the Padavanos, or what was left of them. Sylvie and her sisters and William had built their own lives to suit themselves, to serve the size and shape they occupied. The living space itself shared a backyard and a garden, which was a mixture of food and flowers. Cecelia used the attic in Emeline and Josie’s house as a secondary studio, because she liked the light in that space. Emeline built a drying cupboard in Cecelia’s house, which both households used to dry herbs and flowers from the garden. Both houses had baby swings and bottles, as well as cribs. William kept his toolbox in Emeline’s laundry room, and he and Sylvie had keys to both homes. The twins’ kitchen utensils and plates were mixed, from eating together outside and trading off on cleanup duty. Izzy had a bedroom in each house, and she moved back and forth whimsically. If she was in the middle of a good book, she stayed at Emeline’s, because her room there had a better bedside light. When her mother was between boyfriends, she slept at Cecelia’s.
With William’s help, Izzy created a workshop in one of the spare bedrooms and built a speaker system that allowed the two side-by-side houses to communicate without using a phone. Both Cecelia and Emeline thought this was ridiculous at first, but they were soon using the invention daily. Emmie, where did you put my favorite brush? Josie, are you home? Can you make me a sandwich? Izzy, what are you doing over there that makes so much noise?
* * *
—
WHEN KENT FINISHED HIS residency, he and Nicole moved to Chicago, and he got a job with the Bulls too, as a sports doctor. The two couples met at the Mexican diner for dinner at least once a month, and sometimes Gus and Washington and their wives would join them. This was the only socializing Sylvie and William did, other than seeing the twins. But when Kent and Nicole found themselves struggling to get pregnant, Nicole stopped wanting to go out, and the dinners became less frequent. William and Sylvie were sad for their friends, but they didn’t mind having more nights at home. They were both awkward around strangers. When a new acquaintance asked Sylvie or William how they’d met, they were vague, because the true account was too provocative to tell. Sylvie had read somewhere that the more times a story was told, the less accurate it became. Humans were prone to exaggeration; they leaned away from the parts of the narrative they found boring and leaned into the exciting spots. Details and timelines changed over years of repetition. The story became more myth and less true. Sylvie thought about how she and William rarely told their story and felt pleased; by not being shared, their love story remained intact.
“You and William are so nice to each other,” Emeline said one afternoon when they were running errands. “I feel like I’m always throwing a baby at Josie or asking her to pick up her socks.”
Sylvie smiled. “Well, we don’t have babies, and we don’t live in a train station like you do.”
“True.” Emeline sighed, even though they both knew she loved living in a place rife with crying babies, and toddlers who hadn’t been picked up from daycare yet, and half-full paint cans, and a child who was liable to walk into the room with a vibrator and say, What is this?
Sylvie also knew that her sister was right—she and William were nicer to each other than most couples. She watched William swallow his pills before breakfast and bed and watched his eyes search out hers in a room when he was beginning to feel overwhelmed. She found herself reaching for his hand at the same moment he reached for hers. William made her lunch every morning to bring to work, and she made sure their life stayed quiet at the edges, because he did best that way. He whispered, “I am so lucky,” most nights before they went to sleep, and she knew he was and she was too. Sylvie had almost missed this life with this man, and because of this near miss, she appreciated their moments together, even as they accumulated.
Alice
SEPTEMBER 1997–FEBRUARY 2002
WHEN NINTH GRADE BEGAN, ALICE was six foot one. This shocked everyone who came in contact with her. The volleyball and basketball coaches at her private school followed her down the hallways, trying to entice her to join their teams even when she explained that she was too uncoordinated for sports. Her height also pulled her father back into the picture. Everyone from Mrs. Laven to the mailman to the headmaster seemed compelled to say some version of: Wow, your father must have been a really big guy, huh?
Julia and Alice now looked almost nothing alike. When Alice was young, there had been something about the shape of her eyes that tied her to her mother, but even that seemed to be gone. Their differing taste in clothes didn’t help either. Julia wore skirt suits and silk blouses during the week and skinny black pants and a type of drapey top on the weekends. Alice, on the other hand, had a sneaker collection and wore sweatpants in different colors. It was hard for her to find clothes and shoes that fit her, due to her skinniness and height. Sneakers, though, were unisex, which gave her more options. Her mother had studied her quizzically one morning and said, “You don’t look feminine at all.” Alice had laughed and said, “It’s 1997, Mom. I don’t need to look feminine.”