Hello Beautiful

Julia and Rose don’t speak as Julia drives her mother to the airport. At the airport, Cecelia is waiting on them with Izzy in her arms. She says she won’t let Rose leave without meeting her first grandchild, but Rose refuses to acknowledge her and once more blames her for Charlie’s death. Cecelia says she will tell Izzy good stories about Rose and forgive her so she doesn’t also turn out bitter.

As their mother boards her plane, Julia goes into labor. Cecelia drives Julia to the hospital and goes into the room with her. After giving birth, Julia feels strong and empowered. When William comes into the room to meet his daughter, she feels a surge of love but also independence, thinking, “I thought I needed a husband, but I don’t actually need anyone. I could have done everything by myself” (110-11). Being a mother empowers Julia, but she is concerned about William’s seeming lack of interest in being a father and, one night, scolds him for coming to her with too many questions.

Sylvie stops sleeping over at William and Julia’s place and spends a three-month period without a residence, sleeping with Emeline and coworkers. She lies to Julia, telling her she’s moved into a new place. Eventually, she receives a promotion and raise at the library, enabling her to put down a deposit for a small studio apartment. Shortly after, she graduates from community college.

Three months after moving into her new place, Sylvie runs into Ernie, a boy she used to kiss in her stolen moments at the library. Although she feels that her life has changed and she herself has changed, she still kisses him and invites him to her new apartment. There, she has sex for the first time.

The next morning, she receives a call from Julia, who tells her that William might be put on academic probation: Julia called the history department to ask a question, and they informed her that William had not shown up for his classes in a week. Sylvie tells her they can figure this out, but Julia tells her that when she confronted William about his absences last night, he said he didn’t want to be married to her anymore and left.

During the late summer, Arash asks for William to assist him at the summer training camp for the basketball players. Initially, William glosses over his own injury, but eventually he tells the players the truth: His knee is permanently damaged because it wasn’t rehabilitated properly. The players begin opening up about their own situations to William, and he enjoys being able to help them.

One day, as he’s walking across campus, he spots the history professor who taught the class in which he and Julia met. The professor asks him to sit for a while. While sitting there, William falls asleep on the bench, and when he wakes up, it’s twilight and he’s missed his classes. He feels shaken by this mistake. As he walks home, he considers telling Julia and asking for her help, but he feels that with the arrival of the baby, she is no longer interested in answering his questions for him.

The next morning, he wakes up and sees that the old history professor, the man he sat next to on the bench the previous day, has died: “With this news, and the weight of that word, the silence inside William expanded until it filled him completely. He’d had to fight for coherence, to make sense of his life, for a while now, but the fight was no longer possible” (132-33). For the next five days, William keeps up the semblance of going to his classes each day but instead only goes to the gym or walks around the campus.

When Julia finds out and asks him why, William has no answer for her; he feels he is incapable of acting correctly and considers himself a “defective machine.” He apologizes for his failure and gathers some personal items, handing Julia the check from his parents before he leaves.

He walks around Chicago all night and winds up at the shores of Lake Michigan, which reminds him of the choppy waters around Boston. He feels that the history teacher’s death has effectively ended the sham of his life, putting an end to an identity that never felt real to him anyway. The next day, he continues to wander through Chicago, and no one stops or questions him. Then, in the middle of the night, he sees Charlie standing in a doorway and recognizes that Charlie carries pain with him. He tells Charlie he is glad to see him, but Charlie vanishes, and William is alone once more.

After William leaves, Julia examines the note he left her, wherein he apologizes for leaving and claims that if he stayed, he would ruin her and Alice’s lives. She reflects on what went wrong in their marriage, realizing that after Alice’s birth, she also realized that the marriage no longer worked. In the morning, she wakes up, gets dressed, calls Sylvie, and then calls Professor Cooper to request work.

When Sylvie shows up, she is concerned. She examines the note, and Julia tells her that she has realized she never really needed a husband and says that she and Alice will be fine. Sylvie asks if William is okay, which puzzles Julia. Sylvie decides to call William’s friend Kent, and Julia lays down to take a nap. When she awakes, it is midafternoon, and Sylvie has left a note saying that she is with Kent, who has organized a search party for William.

That evening, Cecelia, Izzy, and Emeline show up. They console Julia and ask how they can help, but Julia feels a new responsibility as a mother and knows she must take the next steps of her life alone.

Sylvie and the group of basketball players scour Chicago all day searching for William. Sylvie keeps thinking she will break away from the group and go back to her sister but feels in her gut that something is very wrong. All night, they search the Northwestern campus and the city, checking parks and public areas. Finally, while they are trying to figure out their next step, they hear a siren and chase after the sound, heading toward the lake. At the edge of the lake, the paramedics pull a man from a boat and load him onto a stretcher. When the man’s face turns to the side, Sylvie recognizes that it is William. The paramedics ask if Sylvie is William’s wife, and she nods yes, knowing that this will allow her to accompany him in the ambulance. He’s unconscious but still breathing.

At the hospital, Sylvie calls Julia and tells her that William attempted to die by suicide. When Sylvie tells her sister she’ll call a cab for her to join them at the hospital, Julia insists that William wouldn’t want her there. Kent asks Sylvie to continue pretending to be William’s wife so she can check on him and make sure he has a psychiatric consultant. In William’s room, Sylvie realizes she feels relieved that he is still alive and hopes to share some strength with him.

When William wakes up in the hospital, he remembers trying to drown himself the night before. He is exhausted and feels even worse because his attempt was a failure. After a week of evaluation, William is moved to an inpatient psychiatric facility in downtown Chicago. In between sleeping and recovering, he wakes to see either Kent or Sylvie in his room. Although Sylvie does not speak to him at first, one day she asks him if he wants to see Julia and Alice. William says no and tells her that he will give up his parental rights to Alice.

One day, Sylvie asks William if he wants her to stop visiting him. William considers this, and although his mind is clouded from new medications and the exhaustion of recovery, he asks her to stay. A silence follows that William is unsure how to fill until Sylvie asks him a question about a basketball player. Realizing this gives him some energy, she continues to talk to him about basketball during her visits.

Dr. Dembria assigns William the homework of writing down every secret he has kept from those close to him. After he’s been in the hospital for two months, he asks Sylvie if she can help him with the homework and confides that he knows she read his manuscript. As Sylvie transcribes, William dictates his list of secrets: that he never wanted to be a professor, that he continued to visit the Northwestern gym, that he didn’t want Julia to read his manuscript, that he never wanted to have a child, and that he once had a sister. He tells her she can share the secrets with Emeline and Cecelia, who have sent him gifts during his recovery.

As he prepares to leave the hospital, Arash visits and offers him a job as a resident advisor with the promise of a dorm room. William begins to feel more certain and hopeful about his future. In a final conversation, Dr. Dembria asks William why he never mentions his daughter. William says that Alice was a bright light that he was afraid of dimming with his darkness.