As Bright as Heaven

by Susan Meissner

  Mr. Galway also died from the flu. And two of the girls who’d always derived much pleasure from snubbing me. The flu flattened all the differences between me and the other girls who remained, though. They sought out my friendship the first day we returned to classes and counted our number. Death had touched us all in one way or another and we now had far more in common than not.

  Maggie is putting on her coat now to take Alex over to the Sutcliffs’. I know why she spends so much time over there. Dora Sutcliff, still wrapped in grief over losing Charlie, finds comfort in caring for our orphan baby, and when she is experiencing that solace with this beautiful child, she talks of Jamie. If I were to let on to Maggie that I know this, she would accuse me of sticking my nose into her business.

  That she is somewhat infatuated with a man eight years older than she is not a concern of mine. I am far more interested in why she continues to lie about how she found Alex. I’ve no doubt most of her account of that day is true. The fact that no one ever went to the police to report Alex’s disappearance is ample proof that Alex’s mother died of the flu and there is no father or other immediate family.

  I believe that part of her story.

  But she is not one to forget details. Not Maggie.

  She knows in which row house she found Alex. She is purposely withholding that information.

  It can only be because she thinks if she were to reveal it, Alex might be taken from us.

  This is not my dilemma, I tell myself. This is not my lie. If there is someone to whom Alex belongs, they would come forward, wouldn’t they?

  The front door opens and shuts and Maggie heads across the street with Alex. I walk to the front windows to watch them, and confetti swirls about their heads like ash.

  CHAPTER 43

  • December 1918 •

  Willa

  Today is Christmas, but it doesn’t feel like it.

  Evie tried to make a ham the way Mama did, but it didn’t taste like Mama’s ham. Mr. and Mrs. Sutcliff came for supper. Dora Sutcliff spent a lot of time just holding Alex on her lap. Even though the war is over, Jamie Sutcliff isn’t home yet. Maggie asked them why not. Mr. Sutcliff said it takes a while for the dust of war to settle.

  “What dust?” I asked.

  But Mr. Sutcliff just sipped his sherry like I was asking Maggie instead of him. But Maggie didn’t say anything. She doesn’t know what kind of dust he’s talking about, either.

  Grandma and Grandpa Adler came on Christmas Eve, but they didn’t stay over.

  When they got here on the train, Papa took us all over the river to the cemetery where Mama and Uncle Fred are buried. Charlie is buried in some other graveyard. Mama’s cemetery is called the Woodlands, which sounds pretty, but because it’s December all the trees were like skeletons and the big white statues and towers looked sad and cold. There’s no stone with her and Uncle Fred’s names because Papa is having one made out of marble, like the steps to our front door, and it’s not done yet. Grandpa and Grandma wanted to put flowers on Mama’s grave. All that’s there on her spot is dead grass and a little wooden sign painted white that says P. Bright. They put the flowers, little white roses, under the P.

  But it was cold and windy and we didn’t stay long. Evie had made a big pot of stew for dinner, so we came home and ate and then we opened presents.

  That part didn’t feel like Christmas, either. Grandma and Grandpa were still sad from going out to the graveyard, so Grandma kept dabbing her eyes and blowing her nose. And Grandpa kept looking sideways at Alex. When Grandma Adler asked Papa if he thought it was wise to take in another person’s child when there was no mother in the house, he said, “What goes on in this house is not your concern, though, is it, Eunice?” And her mouth dropped open like a fish’s.

  “There’s no cause to speak that way, Thomas,” Grandpa Adler said, his voice real low, but his eyebrows all scrunched.

  “What way?” Papa said, in his normal voice with normal eyebrows. “I am only stating what is true. You decided what was best for your house, and now I am deciding what is best for mine. If you will excuse me.”

  Papa stood up and went into Uncle Fred’s office to go smoke one of the cigars Grandad—his papa—had sent him.

  I think Papa is mad at Grandma and Grandpa Adler.

  I got a new doll and mittens and a necklace and a miniature tea set for Christmas. Evie got books and two hair combs and perfume. Maggie got a bracelet and ice skates and a fur muffler. Alex got toys and a cuddly blue elephant with a curly trunk. There was fruitcake and peppermints and punch and oranges. There was music on the wireless. There was a tree in the sitting room with garlands and lights. There were stockings at the fireplace.

  But it still didn’t feel like Christmas. Not without Mama.

  I wanted this day to end. I wanted Christmas to stop. After the Sutcliffs left I took my new doll and tea set up to my room and I shoved them under my bed. I threw my new mittens in the corner by my toy shelves. I took my new necklace and dropped it into one of my old shoes that doesn’t fit me anymore.

  I didn’t know that Maggie was at the doorway watching me. She had Alex in her arms and he was asleep.

  “Go away,” I said.

  And she said, “Come with me.”

  “No.”

  “Come with me,” she said again. “I have a present for you from Mama.”

  “No, you don’t,” I said.

  She cocked her head toward her new room. Mama’s old one. “Come and see.”

  I followed her into the room. She laid Alex in the baby crib that Papa had bought and then she turned toward Mama’s dressing table. She opened a drawer and took out the jewelry box with the roses carved on it. Mama’s jewelry box.

  Maggie sat on her bed and patted the space next to her. I walked over and sat down.

  She opened the box. All of Mama’s pretty things were in there. Necklaces, brooches, earbobs, hair combs, bracelets.

  “Which one do you want for Christmas?” Maggie said.

  At first I wanted to say that those were all Mama’s. But Mama is in heaven, where you don’t need jewelry.

  I had always liked the hat pin with the blue butterfly. It has a sharp point at the bottom, though, so Mama never let me touch it. That was what I wanted. The butterfly hat pin. I pointed to it.

  “It’s yours, Willa. Merry Christmas.”

  I felt a smile tug at me, and I lifted the hat pin from the velvety place where it had been lying. It felt warm in my hands. And not dangerous at all. I ran my finger across the butterfly’s silvery blue wings. Each side looked like half a heart.

  I looked up at Maggie. “Which one do you want?”

  Maggie looked into the box. She took out a cameo pin. The little lady made of white had pretty hair, all piled on her head like a queen. Mama told me once her grandmother had given her that pin.

  “And Evie?” I said.

  “Which one do you think Evie would like?” Maggie said.

  I pointed to a hair comb with pale roses on it. I knew Evie had just gotten two new hair combs, but they weren’t like this one. This one had been Mama’s.

  “Perfect,” Maggie said, and she handed it to me. “Let’s go put it by her bed so she will see it when she comes upstairs tonight. You can take some of your drawing paper and color a little Christmas tree and I’ll write, ‘Merry Christmas, Evie. With love, from Mama,’ on it.”

  So we did.

  Then I took the hat pin to my room. I sat with it for a while. I got my new doll out from under my bed, and I slid the pin into her curls. So now she has a sparkly butterfly in her hair. And she looks beautiful.

  CHAPTER 44

  • January 1919 •

  Maggie

  Finally, finally, I’ve a new letter from Jamie. It’s been so long since the last one, so very long. I’d hoped Jamie might write home right after the armistice or
after he got the notice about Charlie, but it wasn’t until nearly Christmas that he finally wrote to his parents. Dora Sutcliff showed me that letter. It was short. Jamie had gotten word that Charlie had died and he was so very sorry and he wished he could have been there when his brother was laid to rest.

  He didn’t say much of anything else in that letter. Not how he was. Not where he had been when the Germans surrendered. Not why he hadn’t written anybody in weeks and weeks. Not even when he was coming home. He didn’t seem like he was himself. It was like someone else had written that letter. And he didn’t write one to me.

  “You’re still writing to him, aren’t you?” Mrs. Sutcliff had said, when she took the letter from me after I’d finished reading it. I told her I was.

  I had in fact gone back home and written him that very day. I had already written him about what Philadelphia was like when the war ended—the parades, the noise, the celebrations. And that I missed my mother but that I had a good friend in Ruby now. That time, though, I decided to write that I’m doing the hair in the embalming room now that the flu is gone, just like Mama had done. I didn’t know if he would find that bizarre. I was hoping he wouldn’t. Ruby thinks it’s bizarre. I also told him how much Alex likes being over at Jamie’s house when we’re all in school and that his mama, “Auntie Dora,” as she calls herself, spoils him. I wrote that Alex is going to be our permanent foster child when all the papers come through and after the city people make sure sufficient time has gone by for any of Alex’s extended family to inquire about him.

  I’d sent it off the next afternoon, and I’d written him twice more since.

  But today is the first time I’ve received a letter in return since just before the Liberty Loan Parade back in September.

  I come inside from having spent the afternoon at Ruby’s and there it is on the table inside the front door with the rest of the day’s mail. I can’t get my mittens off fast enough. I tear the envelope open and I stand there reading the letter in the foyer with my boots dripping melted snow all over the rug.

  Jamie’s letter to me fits on just one side of the thin piece of paper:

  Dear Maggie:

  I am very grateful for what you have done for my family even in the midst of your own loss. Mother has written to me about how much she loves caring for your orphan child during the day. Thank you, too, for the special attention you gave Charlie, before he died and afterward. I still can’t believe he is gone. I fear I’ll be coming home in the spring to a different world. I wonder if it will even seem like home.

  I wish the war had never come, but I am grateful for all your letters.

  I remain,

  Yours sincerely,

  Jamie Sutcliff

  When I finish reading, my eyes travel back to the line “I wonder if it will even seem like home.”

  I’m glad he is grateful for all my letters, but that line pokes at me. And the one before it, too. The one about coming home to a different world, which somehow makes it sound like it’s not a good thing. Different doesn’t have to mean things can’t be made good again, does it?

  Besides. Home isn’t a place where everything stays the same; it’s a place where you are safe and loved despite nothing staying the same. Change always happens. Always. Surely Jamie knows that.

  We adjust to it. Somehow we figure out a way. We straighten what we can or learn how to like something a little crooked. That’s how it is. Something breaks, you fix it as best you can. There’s always a way to make something better, even if it means sweeping up the broken pieces and starting all over. That’s how we keep moving, keep breathing, keep opening our eyes every morning, even when the only thing we know for sure is that we’re still alive.

  All these thoughts are tumbling around in my head as I hold Jamie’s letter. I’m a second away from writing him back this very moment when I realize these thoughts have shaken loose something I haven’t wanted to think about since the day I found Alex. I suddenly know what I must do before I can write those words to Jamie and know beyond all doubt they are true.

  I look at the grandfather clock ticking away the minutes. Alex is asleep for his nap. It’s a Saturday and Willa is at Flossie’s house. Evie is making bread even though it’s her birthday today. She’s sixteen now, and Dora Sutcliff is having us all over for cake later. Papa is at a meeting with other businessmen. I poke my head into the kitchen where Evie is, kneading a mound of dough. She looks up at me.

  “Can you listen for Alex? I need to run over to Ruby’s for a little bit,” I say. “It’s for school. I won’t be long.”

  “I suppose,” she says, and goes right back to her task.

  I turn from her and then feel in my coat pocket for streetcar fare. I have enough. I go back outside. I pull my scarf tight around my neck and lower face and hurry to the streetcar stop down the block. Some minutes later I am on South Street, standing by the barbershop with the green awning. Even though it is icy cold and snow threatens, the streets and alleys are bustling with people. Old men, teenage boys, mothers, children in tattered wool coats. People are shopping and talking and yelling and selling. The scene is very different from how it had been on that day in October when Mama and I walked all the way down here. I turn up the street where I had seen the cat, and to the tumbledown row house that Mama left me outside of to wait for her. I know which alley to turn down after that. I know which building to stop in front of. Which window to look in.

  I stand in front of Alex’s old home, silently challenging anyone inside that front room window to see me, talk to me, ask me what I am doing there.

  But no one does. The broken window has been replaced. New curtains are pushed to the sides. A tall woman with jet-black curls caught up in a ribbon is just on the other side of the new glass. She is standing over a little boy about seven and cutting his hair with long scissors. A man sits in a chair behind them, looking at a newspaper.

  The woman looks up at me, and our eyes meet for just a second. Then she looks back down at the child. She doesn’t care who I am.

  This woman and the man and the boy are new to the building.

  The busted window has been fixed.

  New curtains have been hung.

  A new family now calls the little apartment home because its previous occupants are gone, victims of the killing flu.

  Life has remade itself here.

  You see? I’m right. We find a way to move forward, even if it means starting all over.

  That’s how it is.

  That’s what we do.

  I make my way back to the streetcar stop. When I’d arrived on South Street just minutes earlier, I’d felt like I’d been carrying heavy rocks in my pockets that had been weighing me down for weeks. But now they are gone.

  Everything is setting itself to rights again, as best it can. Jamie might not believe me if I tell him all this in a letter, though. Maybe he will need to see it for himself, like I just did.

  I can tell him the truth. I can tell him the whole truth about what happened the day I found Alex. I can bring Jamie here when he’s home at last and show him that life begins new again every time we think all is lost, because that’s what life does.

  I will trust him with my secret.

  Until then, I will keep writing to him. I will tell him every good and lovely thing that happens, even if it’s just that I saw a chickadee or that Alex got a new tooth or that his mother made a fudge cake.

  And then when he gets home in the spring—spring!—I will prove to him there is always a way to make right again what has been skewed wrong.

  CHAPTER 45

  • May 1919 •

  Evelyn

  Jamie Sutcliff is finally home. He arrived today with the remainder of the 315th on the USS Santa Rosa. Dora and Roland asked us to stand with them at the Snyder Avenue Dock to greet the ship and welcome him.

  Two weeks before, the 28th Div
ision had arrived to a parade and cheers and speeches. City officials had offered to do the same for Jamie’s regiment, but he and the other soldiers aboard the Santa Rosa had opted to forgo the fanfare. They said they just wanted to go home.

  It had been a year since we’d seen Jamie, but it seemed like more time than that when we saw him. He had changed so much. He strode slowly toward his parents, dazzling in his uniform, yet as one hindered by a ball and chain around his leg. His countenance seemed to have been thinned by his experience somehow, like taffy stretched too far. His eyes looked vacant to me, as though some of the color in his irises had been squeezed out. He held on to his mother for a long time. Or maybe it was Dora who could not let go.

  Maggie waited patiently for the Sutcliffs to break from their embraces and for Jamie to turn to us. When he finally did, Jamie seemed both glad and glum that we were there. His expression was a strange mix of both. He shook Papa’s hand and said hello to Alex, who was hoisted in the crook of Papa’s left arm. He kissed me on the cheek first—his lips were as light as a moth—and then Maggie. He then bent down to say hello to Willa.

  “Thank you all for coming,” he said to us. “You didn’t have to.”

  “It’s our pleasure,” Papa said. “We’re all very grateful for your service.”

  Jamie seemed frozen by Papa’s words for a second, as though he needed a moment to figure out what he’d done that we Brights should be thankful for.

  “Thank you, sir,” Jamie finally said. But I could tell it was good manners speaking. He was still pondering my father’s expression of gratitude.

  Dora linked her arm through Jamie’s, and Roland Sutcliff picked up Jamie’s duffel. We made our way through the pockets of reunions happening all around and walked to our vehicles.

  Dora had earlier invited us to come back to their house for a welcome-home lunch. Maggie had made a banana cream pie for the occasion, and so after parking the Overland at home and getting the pie, we walked across the street and up the stairs to the Sutcliffs’ living quarters.