“I’ve not seen you at this park before. Do you come often?” he said.
“Do you?” I hadn’t pictured him as a strolling-the-park kind of fellow. I’m happy to imagine that maybe he is.
He laughed. “No.”
“Oh. My sister Willa and her friend like this one best because of the fountain. It’s their favorite. We come here sometimes.”
He looked down at my book. “Haven’t read that one. Should I?”
“You might like it. What other of Dickens’s books have you read?” I said, thinking that I’d compare it for him to A Tale of Two Cities or Oliver Twist. I was also thinking how immensely wonderful it was to be having a conversation about literature in the park with Gilbert Keane.
Gilbert’s grin widened. “Will you still like me if I say I haven’t read any Dickens?”
Something in the way he said this filled me with warmth and instant joy. It was as though I had been sipping hot cocoa and the liquid was sliding down my throat and into my tummy on the coldest winter day. The feeling was lovely and exhilarating, even though it was surely ninety degrees in the park. It was of no consequence to me that he hadn’t read Dickens. He knew I liked him. It mattered to him that I liked him.
“Of course I will still like you,” I said a second later, unable to tame my own smile.
He stayed on the bench for a little while longer, and we talked about school and our teachers and the music we like and where we would go if we could visit any place on earth.
“I want to see the Valley of the Kings in Egypt,” I said.
“I can see you there,” he responded with a knowing look, like he knew enough about me now to imagine me in a place that fascinates me. “I want to go to London’s West End and see a play every night for a week,” he continued.
“That does sound lovely.” It was easy to picture myself with him, my hand on his arm, as we strolled the streets on our way to a show. Gilbert in a black tuxedo and me in a shimmering gown of silk and lace. He smiled at me. Maybe he was picturing it, too.
And then too soon he rose to leave. “I’m expected back home, I’m afraid.”
“Must you go?”
“Sadly, I must.”
“It was so nice to see you.” It was. So very nice.
“See you next month in class?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Or maybe here in the park again?”
My heart did a somersault. “We’re . . . we’re going to my grandparents’ in Quakertown for two weeks.” I had been looking forward to our trip home to see the family, but I suddenly wished we were not going.
“Then at school,” he said, tipping his hat to me as he and the little dog walked away. He turned after he was a few yards away, as if he knew I was still watching him walk away. He smiled.
I’ll be counting the days until classes start up again.
There had been talk at the end of the term that I might be advanced to the next level when I return to school, which would put me in line to graduate a year early. Mama and Papa said the decision was mine to make.
If I made the jump, I wouldn’t be in the same art and music classes as Gilbert anymore.
I hadn’t decided what I wanted to do until today.
I see no need to rush things. I will stay right where I am.
CHAPTER 14
• August 1918 •
Willa
Today it is too hot to do anything.
Evie said she’d take me to the park later if I want to go, but it’s too hot to even do that.
If Flossie was home her mother would probably take us to their friend’s house. They’re rich and they have a swimming pool. We could spend the whole day in that pool, and it wouldn’t bother us how hot it was. That would sure be better than sitting here in the house, making paper fans out of catalog pages. But Flossie had to go with her family to Ohio because her cousin died. He was a soldier in the army, and he got sick and died. They brought his dead body back from France all dressed up in his uniform.
I have seen lots of dead bodies since we moved here. Probably ten.
I’d sure like to go downstairs where it’s cooler, but Uncle Fred has some of his secret people over for a lunch meeting and they are talking about secret things and I am not allowed to come down until they are gone. Mama and Maggie are downstairs, in the Elm Bonning Room, but Evie and I are stuck up here.
I asked Evie what Uncle Fred and his friends are talking about down there and she said it’s just war talk. I’ve been listening at the grate to what they are saying and it doesn’t sound like it’s about the war. Right now they are talking about a raid at a dance hall where five hundred slackers were arrested.
I don’t even know what slackers are or why they aren’t allowed to dance. Wars and dances are two different things.
It’s so hot I don’t care what slackers are and why they’re not supposed to be dancing and why that has anything to do with the war in France.
I wish Flossie’s cousin hadn’t died. If he hadn’t, Flossie would be here instead of in Ohio and I wouldn’t be stuck upstairs with Evie. I’d be with Flossie and we’d be splashing and swimming and pretending we are mermaids.
CHAPTER 15
Maggie
The summer recess from school has been long, hot, and boring. We’ve lived in Philadelphia eight months, and I still feel like I’m the new girl. Going home to Quakertown for two weeks wasn’t as much fun as I thought it was going to be, either. My old friends somehow filled in the gap of my leaving and are just fine without me. I suppose that’s how it is when a friend moves away and you stay right where you are; you figure out how to live without that friend. We really don’t have anything in common anymore, my old friends and I. They’ve stayed exactly the same, but I feel different after nearly a year in the city.
Before we left for our visit to Quakertown, a school chum named Sally invited me to her house along with her friend Ruby. She was probably just being nice to me, because she and Ruby are best pals, but I had fun with them. Sally is not someone I can tell all my secrets to yet, and I don’t know if she ever will be. Still, it was nice to be included, and it will make returning to classes a little easier. The person I spend most of my time with these days is Charlie. He’s a bit like Willa in the way he thinks, but he’s kinder than Willa and only wants to make people happy. Willa just wants to make Willa happy.
Today was better than most days have been. I got a letter from Jamie Sutcliff. I’ve written to him five times already, but this is the first I’ve heard back from him. It was dated the twelfth of July and here it is mid-August and I got it today. In his letter he wrote that he had just arrived in France. He sailed to Europe on a troop ship called the America, and he couldn’t say much about it except that they had to take turns sleeping on the cots because there were too many soldiers for the number of beds. He also said that he had to turn in his flashlight and matches when he got on board because no one was allowed to shine a light or strike a match on deck after dark. The voyage took nine days. It was strange walking on land again, he said, but he was very glad to get off that ship. He didn’t say more, but I remember Charlie saying Jamie didn’t care for ships, only trains. Then he wrote something that surprised me. France isn’t all that different than Pennsylvania, he said. They have schoolhouses and vegetable gardens and birthday parties just like we do. They hang their laundry out to dry under the same sun. They kiss those they love and put diapers on their little ones and hold memorial services for their dead, just like we do. Germany is probably just the same, he said. Just the same. Not even the language in France seems that strange. It isn’t until the marching starts that Europe seems like a different place.
In one of my letters to Jamie, I told him how hard it has been making close friends and that the summer has been especially boring. He wrote to me that sometimes people can be slow to give new things a try. He tol
d me to be patient. The right friend will come along in due time. He said not to go sour on people just because they haven’t given me a chance yet.
Reading those words that he wrote special to me made me feel light as a feather. There were only two people I could think of who would be as happy as I was at that moment to have heard from Jamie.
• • •
I open the front door and take off across the street to show Mrs. Sutcliff and Charlie my letter. Mrs. Sutcliff comes to her door with a polishing cloth in her hand. She invites me inside, and I can see that she’d been polishing a silver tea service set atop newspaper pages on her dining room table.
“Is Charlie home?” I say as I close the door behind me, a bit out of breath from running across the street and up the stairs to their apartment.
“I’m afraid you’ve just missed him,” Mrs. Sutcliff says, stuffing her polishing cloth into her apron pocket. “He’s gone to the mechanic’s with Mr. Sutcliff. The car needed servicing.”
I am only momentarily disappointed. “I’ve a letter from Jamie!” I say, showing her the envelope, and suddenly realizing I am quite likely offering to let Dora Sutcliff read it. Why else have I brought it?
“Do you, now?” she says brightly. “We received one today, too.”
She turns to a little writing table behind her on which a little stack of mail is resting, along with a tin of peppermints, an electric lamp with an emerald green shade, and a brass dish with a handful of coins in it. Mrs. Sutcliff reaches for an envelope and turns back around. The outside of her letter looks exactly like mine.
“Shall we trade for a moment?” Mrs. Sutcliff says happily.
“Sure.” I hand over my precious letter and she gives me hers.
When I take her letter out of its envelope, I’m surprised and pleased that my letter is twice as long as the one Jamie wrote to his parents and Charlie. But I say nothing about that, of course. Mrs. Sutcliff takes mine out and easily sees it for herself. She looks surprised, too.
Jamie wrote to his parents about the voyage on the troop ship, just like he wrote to me. He wrote about the weather in France and the army food they were eating and how much he missed home-cooked meals. He also said there had been reports of influenza spreading from camp to camp, but that his mother needn’t worry. It wasn’t showing up in his regiment. He said nothing about how strangely the same we all are no matter where we live. That was something special he wrote just to me, as well as the advice about making friends at school.
“What a very nice letter,” Mrs. Sutcliff says as she folds mine into thirds and slips it back inside its envelope, but her voice has a funny little lift to it, like she is saying one thing and thinking another.
“Yours is, too,” I reply.
We exchange envelopes and I’m glad to have mine back.
“I’m glad you’re writing to him, Maggie,” Mrs. Sutcliff tells me, and this time I can tell she means what she says.
I stay for a bit longer, hoping Charlie will arrive home. But he doesn’t and I need to get back myself.
Mrs. Sutcliff thanks me for coming over to show her my letter and offers to send Charlie over when he returns if I want. I tell her I do.
When I am back inside my house, my feet head to the funeral parlor without my thinking about it. Mama is in the embalming room applying flesh-colored paste to the cheeks of an older woman whose white hair looks as soft and fluffy as candy floss.
She smiles up at me. “Did you see your letter?”
I smile back. I cannot help it. “Want me to read it to you?”
“Certainly.”
I read Mama the letter, and Jamie’s words sound even nicer said out loud. When I get to the part where he wrote that people aren’t so very different from one another no matter where they live, I look down at the dead woman Mama is caring for, and I can’t help thinking that somewhere in France, somewhere in Germany, somewhere in all the places in the world, people like Mama are doing the same thing for loved ones who’ve just died and are being made ready for their last moments above the ground.
CHAPTER 16
• September 1918 •
Pauline
I can’t sleep.
Thomas is lying next to me for the last time before he leaves us for the army camp. I am still stunned that this is happening. He is not young anymore. He is not like Jamie Sutcliff or any of the other men who’ve already been called up to serve. He’s thirty-six years old. A husband. A father!
I want to blame Uncle Fred and his APL for this even though I know it’s not his fault. He doesn’t want Thomas to leave us, either. If Thomas was my only source of provision, he wouldn’t have to go. But Uncle Fred can run the business without him and also take care of the girls and me. Congress has decided the war in Europe can’t be won unless more men are sent over to fight. It’s not just young men they want now. All men older than eighteen and under the age of forty-five must register. It would have made no difference if we had stayed in Quakertown, Thomas told me. The draft is the draft no matter where you live.
There is a plumber here in Philadelphia whom Thomas knows who is a forty-four-year-old grandfather. A grandfather! And that man must now sign up for the draft. If he fails to register he can be arrested. The day Congress enacted the new draft law, Thomas told me he was going to volunteer so that he could ask to be placed in the medical corps. He knows so much about the human body now after working with Uncle Fred, he’d be of better use in the field hospital than in the trenches. And none of us wants him in the trenches.
So that was what he did. He volunteered and now he’s headed to Fort Meade at dawn tomorrow.
The girls haven’t known what to make of this. None of us knows what to make of it. And on top of all that, that dreadful influenza that has been killing people in Europe and the Orient is now here in the States and the paper is saying it’s showing up at the navy shipyards and military camps. Places just like Fort Meade.
“I’ll be careful,” Thomas said to me when I told him this. We were all in the sitting room after supper.
“This flu doesn’t care how careful you are,” I replied quietly so that Willa playing with one of her dolls on the rug wouldn’t hear me. “I’ve read about it.”
“The flu is not a thing that can care or not care.”
“This one is different,” I murmured. “It seeks out the young and healthy, and there is no cure for it. You are as likely to die from it as survive.”
And he kissed my forehead, something he never does if we aren’t alone in our bedroom, and said, “I’m coming home to you and the girls. I promise. As soon as the war is over, I’m coming home.”
But as I lie here next to him now, feeling the warmth of his body next to mine, I know he can’t promise me this. He wants it to be true. But wanting something is not the same as having it.
I called my parents at the restaurant they’ve owned since I was a little girl to tell them Thomas was enlisting and why, and to ask them to keep him in their prayers. My mother answered and said they surely would. But the call was awkward and the conversation stilted. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.
I took the girls home to Quakertown to see my parents last month before the new school term began, and our visit was greatly overshadowed by my sister Jane’s remarkable news that she was again expecting, and their miracle baby, Curtis, was only just eight months old. I was very happy for my sister and her husband and had been so looking forward to seeing my sweet nephew again. The girls were, too. But as soon as we stepped off the train, I felt as though I were a distant relative who had picked an inopportune time to visit. My mother seemed hesitant to fully welcome us back home. It was as if she couldn’t quite believe we were actually there. My mother and father have always been careful with their emotions, preferring a life of steadiness and calm, even when my sister and I were young, but there was a dignified happiness for Jane, and I felt o
n the fringe of it. A spectator. Especially around my mother. It was almost as if she wanted to punish me for having moved away by lavishing all her affection, subdued though it was, on Baby Curtis and pregnant Jane. When I hinted about how I felt, she seemed offended and in a roundabout way accused me of being jealous of my sister.
“I can understand why you might be feeling that way because you lost Henry,” she’d said, “but it’s not becoming, Pauline. And think of the example you are setting for the girls.”
“I am thinking of the girls,” I’d said. My mother and I were in the kitchen, speaking in hushed tones while we shelled peas. “They have missed you. We are only here for a short while, and then we’ll have to go back to the city.”
Her eyes had filled with tears then, something I rarely saw. But she held those tears in, blinked them all away as she held her hand motionless over the bowl of peas in the sink. “It’s not my fault you and Thomas wanted to leave and take the girls,” she said evenly, with the barest hint of anger. Or maybe fear. “You should have thought through how this move would affect your girls—and your father and me—before you left. You’ll be back on that train before you know it, and I’ll have to say good-bye all over again.”
She tossed the peas she was holding into the bowl, and they rolled about every which way.
“But we’ll visit again!” I replied, still unaware of what she was really telling me.
“I have laundry to bring in,” she said, as if I had asked her what she wanted to get done after the peas were shelled. She pulled off her apron and left the kitchen.
There was so much I wanted to talk about with my mother on that visit. Her letters to me since we had left—as well as our few phone calls—had been short and only about things like the restaurant and the weather and what the rest of the family was doing. I thought it was because she preferred seeing someone she loved in person, so my expectation when we arrived was that she’d make up for the little she’d written in her letters with meaningful face-to-face conversations. While my parents have never displayed a great deal of physical affection toward Jane and me, I’ve never doubted their loyalty or love. I had always thought they would take on hell itself to save one of us. I had been looking forward to at last telling my mother about the shadow that has been following me since Henry died. My mother has the benefit of years and, with her emotional modesty, a cool head. I’d been an undertaker’s wife for nine months and was still pondering why Death hovers over me like a tender shepherd, and why this doesn’t alarm me. It should, shouldn’t it? I’d wanted to confide in her and ask for advice.
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