As Bright as Heaven

by Susan Meissner

  I have been numbly agreeing to everything, including Imogene’s offer to take me shopping for a dress. When Palmer asks me which invitation I like best, I say, “How can I choose? They are all beautiful.”

  I feel like I am planning someone else’s wedding, not mine. Palmer thinks I am a nervous bride, that’s all. Perfectly understandable. But it’s not nervousness I feel; it’s the sense that I’m being torn in two. Half of me wants to marry Palmer, take Alex to New York, and build a life, the three of us, far away from old heartaches. The other half wants to believe Jamie was leaning forward to kiss me when his father opened the door to the accounting office, wants to believe it wouldn’t have been any ordinary kiss. Wants to believe it would have been the sealing of a truth I have long known and that Jamie had finally realized and come home for, that we were destined to love each other.

  Just thinking of that almost kiss now makes me blush.

  “Mother and I will take care of it,” Palmer says, kissing my forehead. He scoops up the papers and slides them back inside the leather portfolio in which he brought them. “All right, then. I think that’s all we need to attend to for now.” He stands, almost triumphantly. He’s heading up to Manhattan in the morning, a day before he starts his new job, to scout out an apartment for us. I stand, too. “Hopefully the next few weeks will fly by and I can come home with good news about where we will be living,” he says as I walk him to the door.

  “I hope so,” I say absently.

  In the sitting room just a few yards from us, Willa, who has just gotten home from school, begins to pound out a tune on the piano, loud enough to wake the cadavers down the hall. Palmer nods toward the sound.

  “She still angry with us for taking Alex?” he asks.

  I haven’t given the situation with Willa much thought even though she was rather upset to learn that Alex is coming to New York with Palmer and me. Willa’s ire is understandable this time, but I have had more pressing matters to ponder than how to ease her displeasure. “I suppose she is,” I answer.

  “Well, try not to let it bother you too much, hmm?” He kisses me and then opens the door, letting in a chilly blast of cold air. Evie is just coming up the stoop from her workday at the asylum. It’s early, though. Not yet even four o’clock. Her cheeks are crimson from the cold.

  “Good afternoon, Evelyn,” Palmer says genially, tipping his hat.

  “Yes. Good afternoon, Palmer,” she says quickly, walking past him and coming straight for me. “I need to talk to you, Maggie.”

  “She’s all yours,” Palmer says cheerfully. “I’m off.”

  I wave good-bye, watch Palmer walk away, and then close the door. In the foyer, Evie has taken off her coat and is now unwrapping her muffler. Her hands are shaking.

  “Is it that cold outside?” I ask.

  She turns to me. Her eyes are alight with what I can only describe as fear. “I need to talk to you alone.”

  “Evie, what is it?”

  “Where’s Alex?”

  “He and Papa went to the hardware store. Why?”

  She pulls a small wooden box out of her handbag and then grabs my arm. We pass Willa, whose fingers are attacking the keyboard like hammer strokes, and head for the stairs. Seconds later we are in Evie’s room on the second floor and she has closed the door, bracing her back against it.

  “Evie! What in God’s name has happened?”

  My sister closes her eyes for a moment, as if she can’t find the words to tell me her terrible news. I feel my heart thrumming in my chest. I’m afraid and I don’t know why.

  “Evie?” I murmur as I sit on her bed, afraid that I may topple.

  She opens her eyes and they are rimmed in silver. “I know who Alex belongs to.”

  Heat immediately fills my head, and a roaring starts in my ears. “What?”

  “I know your secret. I know why you pretended not to know in which house you found him. Because there wasn’t just a dead mother inside it. There was a girl inside, too. A sick girl. His sister.”

  I am at once nauseated and hot and cold and flattened. I must be dreaming. Must be. This nightmare where what I did is exposed is one I’ve had before, many times, but it has been a number of years since the last occasion.

  I am dreaming, so I close my eyes that I might wake.

  Evie is suddenly kneeling before me, her hands tight on my arms, her nails biting into my flesh. “That girl thinks she killed him! His sister thinks she threw her baby brother in the river because everyone told her she did. She’s lived the last seven years thinking she killed Alex! She tried to kill herself because of the horror of it. And now she sits in my hospital after trying to hang herself. For the love of God, Maggie, tell me the truth! What did you do?”

  And then the other me, the one who has been agreeing to all the wedding plans, tells Evie what I did. How I saw the dying girl on the sofa and how I’d assured her I’d take care of her brother, how I had run back to Mama with the baby, how Mama and I retraced my steps, and how I had seen through the broken window that the girl on the sofa was gone. And how I only had a second to decide what to do.

  “When I found Alex, I thought that girl was dying, and then when Mama and I walked back, I saw she was gone. I told myself she must have crawled into their mother’s bedroom to tell her the baby had been rescued and had died there on the floor where I couldn’t see her. But I didn’t want to look inside and find out if I was wrong. I pretended I couldn’t remember which building it was. I didn’t want to go back with Mrs. Arnold the next day and find out there were other family members. So I lied to her, too. I wanted the baby for us because we had lost Henry and that baby needed us. And we needed him. I thought that girl had died. And no one came for Alex. No one went to the police station asking about him. We waited and waited and no one ever asked.”

  “Because everyone thought Ursula had thrown him in the river,” Evie says, her voice husky and her face wet with tears. She is looking down at my hands, limp in my lap.

  “Ursula?” I say.

  “That’s her name.”

  “Why? Why did everyone think she did that?”

  Evie then tells me how this girl named Ursula had been so feverish everyone believed her to have been delirious when she said an angel in white lace—me—had taken her baby brother away in a little brown boat—my coat. Ursula had seen the heart-shaped birthmark on his tummy as he wriggled—alive—in my arms. This is how Evie knew Ursula’s baby brother was Alex. Ursula had tried to follow me and couldn’t, and she’d been found wandering down by the river, mumbling that she was looking for the angel who had taken away her baby brother in a little brown boat.

  “She thinks she killed Leo,” Evie says as she wipes her face with the back of her hand.

  “Leo?”

  “That’s Alex’s name, Maggie. His name is Leo. And he has a sister named Ursula. And a father named Cal. And grandparents named Rita and Maury.”

  For a moment I can only sit on Evie’s bed and try to allow these names to have a place in my head. But I can’t. Alex is ours. He has sisters named Maggie and Evie and Willa. And a father named Thomas Bright. Alex is ours. Alex is ours. Alex—

  “Maggie, we have to tell Papa.”

  I snap my head up to look at her. “No,” I say plainly.

  “We must!”

  “No.”

  “He’s not ours!”

  “Yes, he is.”

  Her hands are on my shoulders again. “Maggie, listen to me. You did what you thought was best. No one will fault you for that. You thought Ursula was dying. And then when no one was looking for Alex, you thought she had died. You were young and it was a terrible time for everyone. You did what you thought was best for him. And now we need to do what is best for him again.”

  I free myself from her grip. “How is telling him all this going to be best for him? He doesn’t know any of
those people! They are strangers to him. We’re the people he loves! We’re his family. How can you even think of letting complete strangers come and take him!”

  “Can you tell me you can go on pretending you don’t know who he really is?” Evie says, her voice splintering. “That you can live knowing he has a sister who spends every moment of her miserable life thinking she killed him?”

  I want Evie to stop talking. Just stop. Stop.

  “He’s not ours, Maggie,” she says.

  My mind conjures a horrible image of Alex’s face when I tell him. Of Papa’s. And then I see the shattering image of Alex screaming as people he doesn’t know drag him out of this house. The contents of my stomach rise like a fountain, and I dash off the bed, throw open the door, and run to the bathroom. I heave into the commode, and it seems like my very heart and soul are being expelled out of me.

  Evie is at my side, stroking my back and crying softly. A moment later Willa is at the doorway, too, having heard my retching in between the measures of her music.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I hear Willa asking. And then, “Evie, why are you crying?”

  “Are Papa and Alex home yet?” Evie asks, ignoring both questions.

  “Only just,” I hear Willa say. “They’re in the mudroom, I think, taking off their coats.”

  “We need you to take Alex for a little bit so that Maggie and I can talk to Papa alone. Will you do that, Willa? Can you take Alex to the sitting room and play one of your piano games?”

  “Why? What has happened? What’s wrong with Maggie?”

  “Please, Willa. You will know soon enough. Just tell Papa that Maggie and I need to talk to him. Tell him to wait for us in the viewing parlor. Then take Alex to the sitting room and close the doors. Please?”

  There is a pause. I can’t raise my head to look at Willa. She will hate me after this.

  “All right,” Willa says.

  A moment later she is gone. Evie moistens a washcloth and then helps me to my feet. She wipes away the vomit and perspiration from my face.

  “I need to get something from my room,” she says.

  I put a drinking glass under the tap and then force myself to swallow some water. When Evie returns a minute later, she has in her hand the little box that she’d taken out of her coat pocket when she got home.

  “What is that?” I say, loathing it even though I don’t know what it holds. It’s somehow related to Alex being a boy named Leo—I’m sure of that at least—and I hate it.

  “It’s Ursula’s. There is a picture of their mother inside. Alex deserves to see it.”

  We hear the pocket doors to the sitting room close, our cue that Willa has taken Alex inside. He won’t see our ashen, tearstained faces as we come down the stairs.

  “Come,” Evie says to me, taking my hand.

  “I can’t,” I whisper.

  “Yes, you can.”

  I look at the box in her hand. “Can I see it? The picture of their mother?”

  Evie opens the box and withdraws a sepia-toned photograph of a dark-haired woman with long curls and kind eyes. She is sitting on a chair with her hands in her lap. A little girl with ringlets stands next to her with her hand on the mother’s left shoulder. The mother’s torso is angled toward the girl, as if perhaps she’d wanted to have her arm around the girl’s waist but the photographer told her to leave her hands folded in her lap. The woman is pretty and young and her slight smile is serene.

  This was the woman I saw dead on her bed the day I found Alex. This woman.

  His mother.

  I hold the photograph to my breast as Evie and I descend the stairs and make our way to where Papa waits for us.

  CHAPTER 62

  Willa

  I found out at breakfast that Papa was going to let those people come for Alex while I was at school.

  While I was conjugating French verbs or solving algebraic problems or reciting Longfellow, Alex was going to be taken from us to become a boy named Leo who lives in New Jersey, as though this was just any old ordinary day for the Brights. I’d smashed several cups and plates before Papa had relented and said I didn’t have to go to classes today. I could stay home and watch Alex’s real family come and take him.

  “If that’s what you really want,” Papa said. He was crying, too, though not like me. His tears had been falling slow and silent.

  “So we’re talking about what I really want?” I’d yelled, and I think I swept another dish off the dining room table. It’s hazy now, at what point I’d run out of dishes. I think Evie may have removed some before I got to them all. She kept saying, “Willa, please! Don’t make this harder than it already is.” Maggie sat in her chair like a statue. Like a gargoyle. Alex, thank God, was across the street at the Sutcliffs’. Dora had wanted to say good-bye and make him banana pancakes for breakfast. His favorite. Alex had spent a lot of time with Dora when he was little and we girls were in school.

  Yesterday, when word had gotten out that Alex’s real family had been found, Dora and Jamie and Roland had come over to our house pale-faced and distressed, like there’d been a death in the family.

  “How did all this come about?” Dora had said as she cried and twisted a handkerchief in her hands.

  Evie had to tell the Sutcliffs all the terrible details because I was too mad to explain anything and Maggie was holed up in her room like a coward. Papa and Alex were at the county offices or the police station—I didn’t know which and I didn’t care—because the authorities needed to talk to him and Alex, and Alex’s real father and grandparents were coming to meet him and to discuss when to turn him over. Like Alex was a lost dog we’d found.

  Evie told them about her patient Ursula Novak and how she figured out Alex is Ursula’s brother. Then Evie told them what Maggie had done all those years ago during the flu when she found Alex. “Maggie honestly thought Ursula was dying,” Evie had said. “And when no one reported Alex missing, she was sure that’s what happened.”

  “Oh yes, I do remember that,” Dora had replied, wiping her eyes. “I remember how we kept waiting for the police to say Alex had family looking for him.”

  Then Jamie had asked how Maggie was doing, as if she’s the only one whose heart is breaking. Evie said the police aren’t going to charge her with any crime because she was only thirteen when it happened, and Papa wasn’t going to be charged, either, because we’d duly reported that we had found the baby and were caring for him. It should have been the authorities who connected the dots, not us. We did mostly everything right. Mostly. Maggie’s not being truthful about where she found Alex was the wrong thing to do. The police didn’t know if the family would bring civil charges, but everyone is hoping—the authorities included—they won’t.

  Jamie had then asked if he could see Maggie, and Evie said maybe another time. Imogene Towlerton wanted to see Maggie yesterday, too, and Maggie had said she didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. Palmer called her from New York, and she wouldn’t even talk to him on the telephone.

  “Oh dear,” Dora Sutcliff had moaned. “What a sad time this is. Except for that other family, I suppose. They are probably thinking this is the happiest news ever.”

  And Evie said, yes, it has definitely changed one life for the better in an immeasurable way. Ursula Novak no longer wants to die.

  “She’ll be getting out of the asylum, then?” Roland had asked.

  And Evie said Ursula’s discharge would likely take place soon, provided the upheaval from Alex returning didn’t send her spiraling into a different kind of mental trauma.

  “The mind is a delicate thing,” Evie had said.

  An hour later Papa and Alex had come home. Alex looked like he was walking around in someone else’s dream. He didn’t appear to be sad or happy. He just clutched his mother’s photograph like it was a train ticket he’d been told not to lose or he’d be scolde
d.

  He wanted to go upstairs and see Maggie when he got home, and Evie didn’t tell him not to bother her. Alex was the one person Maggie still wanted to see.

  When he was out of the room, Evie asked Papa how it went. She had met Alex’s grandmother before, but not the grandfather or Alex’s dad, and she wanted to know what they were like.

  We were in the sitting room. Papa had eased himself down onto the sofa. He looked twenty years older.

  “They seem like good people,” Papa said. “I don’t know. Alex’s father is . . . He seems to be still in a state of shock. He’s not taking Alex to his house, because his new wife just had a baby, so Alex will be living at the hotel with his grandparents. As will Ursula, when she’s released.”

  This made my blood boil. “His father doesn’t want him?” I said.

  Papa ran his hand across his face. “I think it’s complicated for him.”

  “Complicated for him?” I yelled. The china dancer on the end table looked ripe for hurling, and I had to sit on my hands so that I wouldn’t reach for it.

  “Keep your voice down!” Evie had said, shushing me like a mother might.

  “How can you even let them take Alex?” I continued. “Do they have any idea how complicated this is for us? For Alex?”

  “Willa—” Evie began, but I’d just moved on to my next objection.

  “How dare they think living in a hotel with grandparents he doesn’t even know is better for Alex than living here with us?”

  Papa had taken his hand away from his face. “He’s their flesh and blood, Willa. What would you have me do? The law is on their side.”

  Evie had asked when they wanted him. And Papa had said, “Tomorrow.”

  Which is today.

  Alex’s grandparents came for him at two o’clock this afternoon. Maggie and I helped him pack his things, although I said nothing to my sister the whole time. He was putting things from his bureau in a box when he picked up the picture of Mama that he’d had for the last couple years.