Sylvie had sighed. “The tragedy isn’t the point,” she said. “We read those books today because the romance is so enormous and true that we can’t look away. It’s not obliteration; it’s a kind of expanding, I think. If I’m lucky enough to know love like that…” She went quiet, unable to put into words how meaningful this would be.
Julia shook her head at the sight of her sister’s red lips, because this dream was bound to backfire. Sylvie cared too much and lived too much in her head. She would be branded a slut and eventually marry a good-looking loser because he stared at Sylvie in a way that reminded her of Heathcliff.
Emeline was talking about her homeroom teacher, who was on probation for smoking marijuana. “He’s so honest,” she said. “He told us how he got caught and everything. I’m worried he’s going to get in more trouble for telling us about it. He doesn’t seem to understand the grown-up rules for what to say and what to keep to himself. I kept wanting to tell him to shush.”
“You should also tell him not to smoke pot,” Cecelia said.
“I suppose we should eat?” Rose had come out of her bedroom, clean and wearing one of her nicer housedresses. “It’s lovely to meet you, William. Do you like red wine?”
He stood, unfolding his long body from the low couch. He nodded. “Hello, ma’am.”
“Sweet mother of Mary.” Rose tipped her head back to look up at him. She was barely five feet tall. “You didn’t think to mention that he’s a giant, Julia?”
“He’s a marvel, though, isn’t he?” Charlie said. “He’s got our Julia soft around the edges, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. Look at her smile.”
“Daddy,” Julia said.
“What position do you play?” Charlie asked William.
“Small forward.”
“Ha! If you’re the small forward, I’d hate to meet the big one.”
“I wonder what the evolutionary explanation is for that kind of height,” Sylvie said. “Did we need people who could peer over walls to see if the enemy was coming?”
Everyone in the room, including William, laughed, and Julia thought he looked a little teary in the middle of the action. She made her way to him and whispered, “Are we too much for you?”
He squeezed her hand, a gesture she understood meant both yes and no.
Dinner wasn’t delicious. Despite the fact that she grew beautiful vegetables, Rose hated to cook, so they took turns battling dinner onto the table. The vegetables weren’t intended for them, anyway—they were sold by the twins each weekend at a farmers’ market in a nearby wealthy neighborhood. It was Emeline’s turn to cook, which meant they had frozen TV dinners. The guest got to choose his TV dinner first; William selected turkey, which came on a tray with small compartments for mashed potatoes, peas, and cranberry sauce. The family members chose carelessly after him and started eating. Emeline had also made Pillsbury crescent rolls, popped out of the tube and baked in the oven. Those elicited more enthusiasm and were gone in ten minutes.
“My mother made this same brand of dinner when I was growing up,” William said. “It’s nice to have it again. Thank you.”
“I’m glad you’re not appalled by our entertaining,” Rose said. “I’d like to know if you were raised Catholic.”
“I went to Catholic school in Boston all the way through.”
“Will you go into your pop’s line of work?” Charlie asked.
This question surprised Julia, and she could see that it startled her sisters too. Charlie never mentioned work, never asked anyone about their job. He hated his job at the paper plant. The only reason he wasn’t fired—according to Rose—was that the man who owned the company was his childhood friend. Charlie regularly told his daughters that a job did not make a person.
“What makes you, Daddy?” Emeline had asked a few years earlier in response to this comment. She’d spoken with all of her little-girl sweetness; it was commonly agreed that she was the gentlest and most earnest of the four girls. “Your smile,” Charlie had said. “The night sky. The flowering dogwood in front of Mrs. Ceccione’s house.”
Julia had listened and thought: That’s all nonsense. And useless to Mom, who’s doing strangers’ laundry every week to pay the bills.
Perhaps Charlie was trying to ask the kind of question he believed other fathers asked their daughters’ boyfriends. After the words left his mouth, he finished his drink and reached for the wine bottle.
“Daddy looked frightened,” Sylvie would note to Julia later that night, in the dark. “And did you hear Mom use the word appalled? She never talks like that. They were both showing off for William.”
“No, sir,” William said. “My father is in accounting. I—” He hesitated, and Julia thought, This is difficult for him because he doesn’t have the answer. He lacks answers. A shiver of pleasure climbed her spine. Julia specialized in answers. From the time she was old enough to speak, she’d bossed her sisters around, pointing out their problems and providing solutions. Sometimes her sisters found this irritating, but they would also admit that having a “master troubleshooter” in their own home was an asset. One by one, they would seek her out and say sheepishly, Julia, I have a problem. It would be about a mean boy, or a strict teacher, or a lost borrowed necklace. And Julia would thrill at their request, rub her hands together, and figure out what to do.
William said, “If basketball doesn’t work out, I might…” His voice stopped, and he looked as lost as Charlie had a moment earlier, suspended in time, as if his only hope was that the end of the sentence might magically appear.
Julia said, “He might become a professor.”
“Ooh,” Emeline said approvingly. “There’s a nice-looking professor two blocks over, and the ladies follow him around. He wears excellent jackets.”
“Professor of what?” Sylvie said.
“No idea,” Emeline said. “Doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Of course it matters.”
“A professor,” Charlie said, as if Julia had said astronaut or president of the United States. Rose talked about college all the time, but her education had ended after high school, and Charlie had dropped out of college after Julia was born. “That would be something.”
William shot Julia a look, part thanks, part something else, and the patter at the table continued around them.
Later that night, when they went for a walk around the neighborhood, William said, “What was that about me being a professor?”
Julia felt her cheeks flush. She said, “I wanted to help, and Kent told me you were writing a book about the history of basketball.”
William let go of her hand, without seeming to notice. “He did? It’s not a book—it’s more notes at this point. I don’t know if it will ever be a book. I don’t know what it will be.”
“It’s impressive,” she said. “I don’t know any other college kids who are writing a book in their free time. It’s very ambitious. Sounds like a future professor to me.”
He shrugged, but she could see him considering the idea.