“Why don’t you drive to New York to see Alice?” Izzy had said. “Aren’t you curious what she’s like? What if she’s not okay because you’re not in her life?”
William had forced himself to stay still, to answer. If Izzy had been an adult, he would have left the room. He’d said, “You’re fine without your father.”
Izzy seemed to consider this. “Yes. But I have you and my whole family. Who does Alice have?”
“She has her mother.” This, for William, had always been the bottom line.
Everyone else—Kent, Sylvie, the twins—understood that if they had something to say about Julia or Alice, they said it out of his hearing. This new situation, waiting for a bomb William had lit to explode, or not, was exhausting. William showed up for his days—watched players play, ate lunch with Kent, ate dinner with Sylvie—and waited. He was no longer trying to be comfortable. He was engaged in the long-term project of eradicating the bullshit and secrets from his life and taking care of Sylvie in any way he could think of.
One morning after Sylvie had left for the library, William opened their bedroom closet and took down a medium-sized cardboard box with only one item inside. He pulled the framed photo of Caroline out of the box and looked at it for the first time since it had arrived in the mail after his parents’ deaths, two years earlier. The night Sylvie had told her sisters about her diagnosis, William’s sister arrived like a surprise guest in his mind. Life seemed littered with small surprises since Sylvie had gotten sick. Emeline yelling about a character from a childhood novel. William calling his first wife. His sister occupying a new place in his heart. And once Caroline had appeared, she’d stayed. The small redheaded girl, from so far in his past, was accompanying him through his days. He’d wanted to see her face.
William’s mother had apparently died first, of liver disease. His father had a massive heart attack at his office desk a few months later. They’d left their assets to their Catholic parish. Their lawyer had called to tell William the news and to ask him to come back to Boston to pack up the house and decide what to do with personal items. “Like what?” William had asked, truly unable to imagine what they might be. “Photo albums,” the lawyer said. “China? Jewelry?” William had hired a service to pack up and sell or give away everything in the house, with the exception of the framed photograph of the redheaded little girl that had sat on the end table in his parents’ living room. This was shipped to him, and although Sylvie—who was as delighted to see the photo as she might have been to meet William’s sister—wanted to hang it on the wall, William had stored it in their bedroom closet.
He ran his thumb lightly across his sister’s face now. He remembered telling Sylvie about Caroline when he was in the hospital, but then he’d sealed her back up inside him. He’d always known that his parents would have preferred that he had died instead of his sister. It had been clear, in the house he’d grown up in, that the loss of a little girl was the worst pain imaginable. Losing Caroline had ruined William’s parents, and living with those two wrecked people had made William a little frightened of his sister too. He realized now, with the photo in his hands, that he’d turned away from his sister and his daughter to protect himself from that specific devastation. He’d made sure that he couldn’t lose a little girl. Of course, the irony was that, to ensure that, he’d cut them out of his life.
William’s hands grew sweaty, while he felt truths fall into place inside him. His mother and father had shut down under the weight of their immense pain; they’d chosen to go through the motions of living a life, which was very different from living. William thought that he might have made the same choice after being released from the hospital if it hadn’t been for Sylvie. He would have ticked through days like minutes on a clock, everything locked up inside him, if Sylvie hadn’t insisted that he let himself love her. But his parents had no one to save them, and they couldn’t look at their son without remembering the loss of their daughter. They’d turned away from William, and he understood now that he’d done the same to Caroline and Alice. He was no better than his mom and dad, really. All three of them had lost time and love with people who deserved both. When William thought of himself as a lonely little boy dribbling a basketball in the park, he believed, perhaps for the first time, that he had deserved his parents’ attention. And in that moment, he forgave them.
His sister beamed at him from inside the frame, oblivious to her own power. She looked excited and ready for fun. What would William’s life have been like if she had lived? If he’d grown up with a big sister, in a family that wasn’t silenced by loss?
With his parents dead, this photo was the only proof of Caroline’s existence, and he was the only one who knew she’d lived. William left the apartment with the framed photo. He walked through the zigzag of blocks that took him to the super-duplex. He shook his head, amused, every time he referred to the two houses by the name Izzy had given them years earlier. He’d thought it was ridiculous at the time, but the nickname had stuck. He knocked on the front door of Cecelia’s house, knowing she might be next door or up a ladder somewhere in the city, painting. He hadn’t seen her or Emeline since Sylvie had told them her news.
He was relieved when Cecelia opened the door. She was wearing jeans, and her hair was pulled back with the yellow bandanna she wore while she was working. She looked pale, but she still looked like Cecelia. William realized that he’d been worried, after watching the usually placid Emeline rage and the usually tough Cecelia weep, that the prospect of losing Sylvie might have rendered them unrecognizable. He had never heard Emeline raise her voice, until that day. Of course, Cecelia might be changed completely under her skin—William was—but her familiar face was still a relief. William loved his wife’s younger sisters; this knowledge had crept up on him, with the years. The twins had taken him back after his actions had pulled their family apart. This act of generosity—Cecelia and Emeline had nothing to gain from him, personally—still struck him as extraordinary.
“William,” Cecelia said, with surprise in her voice. “What’s up? Is Sylvie…?”
“She’s fine,” he said. “I’m not here about her.” He held the framed photo out. “I’d like you to paint her. Caroline.” He cleared his throat. His breath was short again; his lungs felt full. “Please,” he said.
Cecelia looked down at the photo. “This is your sister,” she said in a wondering tone, and studied the image. “William, she was beautiful.”
William was afraid that if he stayed still in front of Cecelia, he would cry. He wanted to leave his beautiful sister with her, to be replicated and perhaps painted onto an enormous canvas. That way, she would continue to exist, apart from him. William had done Caroline a disservice for all these years by sequestering her inside himself. He’d somehow feared that if he opened his eyes and heart to her, she would hurt him like she’d hurt their parents. But that had been absurd. The little girl in the picture deserved much better. “Will you do it?” he said.
“Of course.” Cecelia held the frame with both hands, as if afraid she might drop it.
William nodded—he couldn’t speak—and started to walk away.
“Thank you for asking me,” she called after him.
* * *