This is what I am thinking about as Foster brings me home tonight, what I might buy for Papa with all my silver dollars. It was a good night, Albert said. Standing room only. Everyone seemed to enjoy my show. There’s a four-piece band that plays and there’s Lila, of course, and there’s a man who tells jokes, and there’s me. I can tell when the customers enjoy a show by how quiet the room gets. It’s never completely quiet; there’s always a group of people laughing or talking. But sometimes when I’m singing, a hush falls over the room, and it’s as if I’m not a girl pretending she’s Sweet Polly Adler, and all the people aren’t stuck underground drinking illegal liquor, and above us isn’t some broken, tired old city run by mobsters. It’s as if I am just me and they are just them and the world is still a lovely place. That’s the way it was tonight when I sang “Look for the Silver Lining.” When I sang the line that somewhere the sun is shining, it was like everyone in the smoke-filled room wanted to believe it.
The moment ended, of course. When my show was done, the band came on to join Albert, who always plays for me, and the people started to dance, and it got noisy again.
Still, I have three new silver dollars in my coat pocket, and for a second there, everything seemed right.
Foster lets me out on the corner so that I can make my way quietly and slip unnoticed into the house. I go to the back stoop like usual and I fish the key out of my handbag, and all the while I am wondering how I can somehow trap this lovely lingering feeling inside me. When I step up on the stoop, I nearly trip over a body in the dark.
How dare someone drop off a corpse in the middle of the night? I’m thinking, but then the body moves and my breath catches in my throat.
“Who’s there?” I sound braver than I feel. The last thing I want to do is fight my way past a drunkard or a hobo sleeping on our stoop. Or worse, have to yell for help and wake up the house.
“Willa? Is that you?”
I do not recognize this man’s voice. He raises himself to his knees and then stands. As he does, the sallow light cast by a gas streetlamp a few yards away falls across the top half of his body. The man’s face is vaguely familiar, but I cannot place him.
“Who are you?” I demand.
The man takes a step toward me and is now fully visible. “Willa. It’s me. Jamie Sutcliff.”
For a couple seconds, I just stand there in wordless shock. The last time I saw Jamie Sutcliff, I was eight years old. He had just come home from the war. His brother, Charlie, had died of the flu a few months back and then Jamie had crept off in the half-light of dawn with a duffel over his back without telling anyone—not even his parents—where he was going. He looks the same now, but different. His hair is longer, he seems a mite taller, and he looks more like a man who’s been places. I suppose that’s exactly what he is.
“Willa, what are you doing out here?” he says, worry splashed all over his face.
“What am I doing out here?” I answer. “What are you doing out here?”
“I hitched a ride into town,” he says. “It’s late. My parents’ place is dark, and I didn’t want to wake them by pounding on the door. They don’t know I’m coming. I thought I’d just sleep here on your back stoop until daylight.”
If I hitched my way home after being gone six years, I’d pound on the door of my house—that’s for sure. “You really think your parents would be upset if you woke them up to let you in?” I ask.
He shakes his head slightly. “I don’t want to come home that way. Pounding on the door in the middle of the night.”
“So you’re coming home?”
“Maybe.”
“Why’d you leave in the first place?” I know it’s none of my business, but the question just tosses itself out of my mouth. I suppose it’s because I’ve always wondered. I’d bet lots of people have.
He doesn’t need time to think up an answer. “I had to take care of some things.”
“What things?”
“Things inside me. Broken things.”
We stand there looking at each other for a moment. Jamie must have taken care of whatever was broken inside him, because there he was, on my stoop and only a few steps away from the life he left. I’m one second away from asking him how he did it when he asks me what I’m doing outside at one o’clock in the morning.
“Sometimes I can’t sleep,” I say, the lie coming out fast and smooth, but he just nods like he understands perfectly. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention to my father or sisters that I was out for a walk just now,” I add.
“These are not safe times to be on the street in the middle of the night,” he says.
“I didn’t go far.” Not a lie. I had been inside a nice automobile with squeaky leather seats that had just let me out across the street. “And I came back. So I’d appreciate it just the same if you didn’t say anything. I can tell everyone I was getting a drink from the kitchen and heard a noise outside on the back stoop and found you. Please don’t say anything.”
He thinks on it for a second before saying, “All right.”
“Come on in,” I tell him. “Papa wouldn’t want you outside like this when I know you’re here. You can sleep on the sofa in the sitting room.”
It’s cold and damp, and he doesn’t argue.
I unlock the door, and Jamie Sutcliff follows me in. As we step into the mudroom, I ask him if I haven’t changed all that much and that’s how he recognized me so quickly.
“Your eyes are the same,” he says.
I guess our eyes don’t change much from when we were young. Perhaps it’s just how we see things that changes.
CHAPTER 56
Maggie
I know I’ve overslept when I hear a voice downstairs that is deep like Papa’s but does not belong to him. I look at the clock on my night table and am chagrined that it’s after seven, and yet I wonder who has called on us so early in the morning. The two hours that I’d lain awake in the wee hours of the morning—my thoughts in a tumble—had no doubt caused me to sleep past my normal waking time. In the hours before dawn, and while the rest of the house had slept, my brain kept reminding me I had said yes to Palmer.
It had been a week since he asked me to marry him, and I’d finally concluded that being loved by him was surely the most marvelous thing to have happened to me in a very long time. Not only that, but he wanted Alex with us. And while it would be hard to take Alex away from Papa and my sisters, he would at last have the benefits of a typical family with Palmer and me: a father, a mother, and one day, siblings. I would even allow Alex to start calling me Mama if he still wanted to.
So, last night I had told Palmer yes, I would marry him and he could speak to Papa. We’d been alone in the sitting room, as Alex and Evie were already in bed and Willa had gone up to her room early, too. Happy to finally have the answer he wanted from me, Palmer hadn’t wanted to wait a minute. He’d happily kissed me, and then he’d taken my hand to accompany him to the office where my father often retired in the evening to smoke one of Grandad’s cigars and read.
Papa had the reaction I thought he would when Palmer told him he wanted my hand in marriage. He was happy that I had won the love of such a fine, accomplished man as Palmer, and relieved that I would always be well taken care of.
“New York’s not so far,” Papa had said, when he heard the extent of Palmer’s plans, and he stroked his chin in that way he does when he’s contemplating something.
Then he said he didn’t know much about how to pull off a proper wedding, and I assured him that Palmer and I didn’t need a lavish ceremony that would take months to plan. Something simple would be just fine.
“I suppose Dora Sutcliff might be able to help us with the preparations,” he’d said, his mind obviously still whirling with how the bride’s father was supposed to handle the details of a wedding when he was a widower. “Or your grandmother.”
&nb
sp; Papa had mended his relationship with my mother’s parents to a point. He still hadn’t fully moved past the notion that Mama would quite likely be alive if they had just let her and us girls come back to Quakertown when she’d asked. Anything having to do with Grandma Adler was always a pondered thought.
“I’m sure if we need any extra help with anything, Dora will be happy to lend a hand,” I’d assured him.
Papa then visibly relaxed. It would have been kind to let him enjoy that moment a little bit longer, but I had to tell him the rest.
“Palmer and I would like to take Alex with us,” I said, startling myself with how sharp those words sounded out loud.
Papa didn’t say anything for a second. “You want to take Alex?” he said a moment later, echoing my words as though he hadn’t quite heard right.
“It would be our privilege to raise him alongside any children we may have of our own, Mr. Bright,” Palmer said.
“He’d have a home like all the other children in school,” I went on. “A home with two parents and brothers and sisters closer to his own age. And he and I could come down on the train on Saturdays and we could spend the whole day here with you and Evie and Willa. I can’t imagine leaving him, Papa. Nor can I envision him here without me. I’m already like a mother to him. . . .” My voice trailed away as my throat tightened.
Papa had started to stroke his chin again, deep in thought. “Yes . . . ,” he said, but I wasn’t sure what he was saying yes to. Perhaps it was to this unspoken thought that no child should have to say good-bye to his mother.
“Papa?” I needed to know what he was thinking. Alex was not my father’s adopted son. Alex was a member of this family as a ward of the state. He had our last name because no one knew what his last name was. Even I didn’t know what it was. We had been told that at some point the court would declare Alex adoptable. Surely after six years of no one coming forward to inquire about Alex, Palmer and I could now petition to adopt him and be accepted. If my father would consent to it.
Papa took another moment to ponder and then he nodded as he sat back in his chair, the move of someone who has just decided something. “Every child deserves a home like that,” he said, a quiet sigh escaping at the same time.
“We’ll give him everything a child needs,” I said.
“I know you will. You have from the very beginning, Mags.”
The moment grew so tender that Palmer excused himself. He said he needed to telephone his parents in Delaware and that we’d go shopping for a ring the next day and that I could pick out whatever kind of gem I wanted. I walked him to the front door. His kiss good-bye was long and deep.
I locked the door, turned off the lights, and saw as I neared the staircase that Papa’s office door was still open and light spilled out of the room. He was sitting where I’d left him, but now he had opened a bottle of cognac that he’d retrieved from some hidden place and he’d poured two glasses.
He looked up and offered one of the glasses to me. I’d never had cognac or any other kind of liquor before. I moved forward to take it and I sat in the chair next to his.
“It’s the last of it,” he said. Then he’d lifted the little glass toward me. “To your happiness, Maggie. To yours and Alex’s and Palmer’s.”
The cognac felt like a cleansing fire as it slid down my throat and into my body. We didn’t say anything else as we sat there and sipped.
“I want to pick the right time to tell Alex that we’re taking him,” I said when the drink was gone. I felt warm and loose and sleepy. “I don’t want to tell him until I can tell him everything. Like when the wedding is. When we’re leaving. All that.”
Papa took the glass from me and set it down by his own. “News of an engagement doesn’t stay quiet for long. Especially when plans are being made. And the bride-to-be is wearing a ring.”
“I know. I won’t wait too long.”
Papa smiled at me. “I’m happy for you, Maggie. Happy and sad. Your mother would have loved to be a part of all this.”
We were both quiet for a moment, each lost in our memories of Mama.
“Might you marry again, Papa?” I had been wondering this for a long time.
He didn’t stroke his chin in contemplation. He answered me straightaway like he’d known the answer to this all his life. “Your mama is the only woman I could ever love, the only woman I was ever meant to love.”
I carried those words up the stairs with me.
They plucked at my dreams as I slept, and they tugged me awake at two thirty in the morning and kept me sleepless until sometime after four. I didn’t think I would get back to sleep at all, but I guess I did.
I hear another voice downstairs now, and this time I recognize it. Alex is down there, too. Perhaps a person Papa knows well died during the night, and now someone from the family is at our door to let him know they need him as soon as he can come. He will need breakfast.
I rise and dress as quickly as I can, working my long hair into a loose braid. When I step out onto the landing, I see that Evie’s door is ajar, and I catch the aroma of coffee and toast. She is up, too. I descend the stairs, all the while trying to place the voice that I hear. Papa is asking the visitor if he would like to use his washroom to shave and the man says no, thank you. I reach the bottom of the stairs and turn toward the sitting room, where the voices are coming from. Papa is kneeling on the hearth and feeding the fire. Alex is standing at the sofa in front of our visitor. I don’t see the man’s face until I am at the doorway.
And then I see him. Jamie Sutcliff, sitting on the sofa next to a bed pillow and a rumpled blanket. He turns toward me as I enter, and I see a softening in his eyes and face that I can only describe as hinting of regret. Or gratitude. Maybe both.
“Jamie.” I say his name and it feels like I had last said it out loud only yesterday.
He stands. “Hello, Maggie.” His hair is long and a bit mussed; his trousers and faded flannel shirt are wrinkled from travel and sleep. The wool socks he wears are threadbare. At his feet is a tattered rucksack, half-open. But underneath all these evidences of a roving life, I see in his gaze tiny traces of the man I met when I was young, before he went to war, before the flu killed people we loved, before he returned from the trenches a hollowed-out soul.
There is so much I want to ask him, and it seems by the way he is looking at me that there is so much he wants to tell me. But I can’t think of what I want to say, so what comes out of my mouth next is laughable.
“You’re here.”
He cracks a smile. “I am.”
“Willa found him sleeping on the back stoop last night,” Alex offers.
“Willa?” I murmur, but not to Alex. To Jamie.
Papa stands and turns from the fireplace. “She’d gotten up to get a drink from the kitchen and heard a noise. Found our old friend here trying to take shelter for the night and wisely asked him to come in and sleep on the sofa.”
Willa comes into the room. “Hello, sleepyhead,” she says as she walks past me. She holds a coffee cup on a saucer that she hands to Jamie. He thanks her for it and takes a sip.
“Didn’t think Papa would be too pleased with me if I just left him there,” Willa says. “And he didn’t want to wake his parents up to let him in.”
“He’s come from California,” Alex adds. “He’s seen a whale.”
“You were sleeping on our stoop?” I am still trying to grasp that Jamie is standing a few feet away from me. He had slept in this room. While I lay awake last night pondering the abrupt turn my life is about to take, he was just below me, sleeping on the sofa.
“I got into the city late. I didn’t want to wake my parents in the middle of the night.” He breaks into another smile. “I’ve actually slept on a stoop before, many times actually, so I was perfectly fine with the idea of sleeping on yours. Daylight would have come soon enough.”
Evie now enters the room with a plate of toast cut into triangles and offers it to Jamie. He doesn’t reach out to take it.
“That’s so very kind of you, but I should probably get going.”
“It’s just some toast, Jamie. You should eat something,” Evie says, in a half-motherly, half-doctorlike way.
She sets the plate down on the sofa table in front of him, and a second later he places his coffee cup next to it. “It’s not that I’m not grateful, because I am. I just know my mother will be wanting to feed me, too. And it’s been a while since I ate a great deal of food all at once.” He turns to Willa. “If I could have my coat, I’ll be on my way and out of yours.”
“You’re not in our way, son,” Papa says.
“I know where his coat is!” Alex scampers past me and out of the room.
Jamie moves forward to follow him, but he stops as he’s right next to me in the doorway. “It’s good to see you again, Maggie.”
His eyes are telling me something. I don’t know what it is and I am unable to say anything in return. A second later he is at the front door putting on his coat and then slipping his feet into worn boots that had been left in the foyer.
Papa, Willa, and Evie have followed Jamie. He thanks us again for our hospitality and Papa tells him as he lifts the latch and opens the front door that we’re all glad that he’s come home.
I am watching him about to step out of the house when I see out of the corner of my eye his rucksack where he left it.
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