ALICE FELT LIKE AN ASTRONAUT in her aunts’ house, as if she had to wear a clunky suit and helmet because she couldn’t breathe the native atmosphere and had to pay attention while she walked to make sure she didn’t fall over. Her normal, safe life had been stripped away, and she had no idea how to act, think, or feel. Her aunts kept pulling her close for hugs. Emeline and Cecelia looked both similar and dissimilar to her mother. Emeline kissed Alice’s cheek the same way Julia did, and Cecelia’s voice sounded almost exactly like her mother’s. Izzy was so excited about Alice’s arrival, it was clear that she’d been waiting for her cousin her entire life. Izzy talked a lot, and Alice wondered if, in her distress about her aunt, Izzy was talking more than usual to try to quell her sadness. She told Alice stories about their family and chatted about the future as if Alice was going to be part of it. Alice’s aunts, too, spoke as if her presence was inevitable, as if she’d gone out on an errand and been terrifically delayed but had finally returned home.
Alice had spent the night in the same bedroom as Izzy, each of them in a single bed. “We shouldn’t be alone,” Izzy had said to her, “after what’s happened.” What has happened? Alice wanted to say, because she would have liked to hear it as a list, in a form she could try to comprehend. She had arrived in Chicago to meet her father, and on the same day, his wife had died. Now Alice’s mother and Rose were on their way here, and she was surrounded by devastated people she’d only just met. Alice had slept with her cousin in side-by-side beds, in a world where two side-by-side houses were shared by all of the inhabitants, most of whom Alice was related to. There was a tiny baby living in Emeline’s house—another mysterious development, because apparently the baby was staying there only temporarily. The infant erupted into cries sometimes, and Alice wished it were appropriate for her to do the same. She was alone only when she was in the bathroom. Every time she entered a room, the people there were obviously delighted to see her, even if they’d just seen her a few moments earlier.
Alice had woken up very early that morning, before anyone else, and walked the hallways. She wanted to look at Cecelia’s paintings, which were everywhere. No matter where she turned, six-inch-high portraits of women’s faces filled the spaces between the floorboards and the ceiling. There was a painting of Julia as a teenager that Alice had stood in front of for a few minutes. The idea of her mother being as young and open as she appeared on that canvas was hard for Alice to believe. There was the ancient, fierce-looking woman whom Alice had seen in prints of Cecelia’s art and who also existed on sides of Chicago buildings. Izzy had told Alice that she was a saint, St. Clare of Assisi, who was important to the Padavano sisters. “She looks like a real badass, doesn’t she?” Izzy had said.
Cecelia had painted Rose when she was young and beautiful, with her black hair pulled away from her face. A stern great-grandmother, whom apparently no one other than Rose had met, appeared on the wall too; Cecelia had painted her from the one photo Rose had of her parents. The walls were decorated with the matriarchal line of the Padavano family, plus the female saint who somehow marked both their strength and their follies. There was a painting of a red-haired little girl; Izzy told Alice that this was William’s sister, who’d died when she was young. Another aunt, Alice thought, because having a three-year-old dead aunt made as much sense as anything else. Only one man appeared on the wall: Charlie, the grandfather who was clearly beloved by everyone, and the only family member both Rose and Julia had told Alice stories about while she was growing up. In the portrait, Charlie was sitting in an armchair, his face lit up by his smile. There were portraits of Alice and Izzy as babies and individual paintings of the two girls as they grew older. Alice was moved to find herself, at different ages, on nearly every wall. She had been inside these houses before she knew they existed. Perhaps this explained the familiarity with which her cousin and aunts had greeted her. They seemed to know her, if only because she was one of them, in a way Alice wasn’t sure she knew herself.
When Julia arrived, Alice hugged her mother hello, but the two women kept their distance after that. Alice wasn’t ready, and she was grateful that Julia knew better than to force her to talk. In any case, there were so many other people who wanted their attention that neither woman had a minute when she wasn’t squinting in the direction of an emotional sister, aunt, niece, or cousin, trying to come up with the right words in a disorienting situation. Also, Alice thought at her mother, I came here for him, not you. You gave me questions, and I need answers.
Alice kept glancing at the front door, knowing that her father would be here soon. She wanted to be prepared, to compose herself as much as possible. She hoped she could give an impression of independence or even nonchalance, her body saying, I never needed you, and I certainly don’t need you now. But her father entered through the back door, at the same time that the doorbell rang and the baby Josie was holding started to wail. The air seemed to evaporate from the room, and Alice couldn’t breathe. There was a rushing noise in her head. Don’t look at me, she thought, and thankfully he didn’t, so she had a chance to take him in. William Waters was accompanied by a few giant men, all of them with grave expressions. Her father didn’t look overtly mean or as if he was someone who disliked children and thus had easily abandoned his own. His expression was one of unarmed sadness. He had Alice’s face and her eyes. It was true, as Alice had long suspected, that when she’d looked in the mirror, her father had been looking back.
She watched her father walk toward her mother. William was now speaking to Julia, fifteen feet away. The man who had given her up, and the woman who had been Alice’s entire family until twenty-four hours earlier.
Late the night before, from her adjacent bed, Alice had asked, “Do you know why William didn’t want to be my father?” Izzy had been quiet for a minute, then said, “I think he was afraid he would mess you up, because of his depression.”
Izzy appeared at Alice’s side now. “You all right?” she whispered.
Alice made a face of some kind at her cousin, because she didn’t want to lie. She didn’t know if she was all right. She didn’t know anything. Alice had locked herself down years ago. She’d never told a boy she liked him, or driven too fast in a car, or gotten so drunk she lost track of the words leaving her mouth, but now she appeared on a mural somewhere in Chicago and in portraits on the walls of this house, and she saw herself in the man across the room. She existed outside her own body—she was scattered across this ground—but somehow this made her feel less vulnerable. She was painted into this family, mirrored in her father’s face. She was more abundant than she’d believed possible.
William sat down, and the other men and women in the room immediately stepped forward, as if they were an external structure designed to keep Alice’s father from collapse. Towering men leaned toward him, willing him their own great strength. Alice, in the same moment, stepped backward. Everyone here loves him, she thought in amazement. They love him so much. She realized she’d expected her father to have a smaller life than hers. After all, he’d given her up. That seemed like a retreat, a refusal to live. But someone who turned away from people didn’t inspire this kind of response. She had never been in a room with this much love and grief, this much emotion.
Alice backed up until she reached a wall, and she looked away, out the window onto the Pilsen street. Her father’s distress was personal, and she didn’t know him like these other people did. She didn’t want to appear to be gawking, as if at an accident on a highway. She also had the odd sense that she was a counterweight to this man who looked so much like her. They were both washed of color, tall and thin, somber in some elemental way. Alice felt like if she moved forward and pinned her eyes on him, then William Waters wouldn’t be able to rise from his chair. She would swamp him there, their energies mixing until he was too heavy to move. She had to stay at a distance, on her end of the seesaw that connected them, to give him any chance. In time, William stood and left the room. Still wearing his coat, he headed toward the back door of the house.
Alice felt like she’d exerted herself simply by standing against the wall. She was aware of her heart beating in her chest, as if she’d just sprinted up a hill. What is happening to me? she thought.