As Bright as Heaven

by Susan Meissner

  “Do you want this back?” he said to Maggie.

  She put a hand to her mouth and started crying. It’s hard to talk when you’re crying, but she pulled her hand away a second later and managed to tell him that if he wanted to keep it awhile, he could.

  “I don’t know what I should do,” Alex said numbly.

  “I don’t, either,” Maggie said.

  “If you want to take it, take it,” I said. “They don’t get to decide everything.”

  He held the photograph for a second, looking into the eyes of the mother who’d carried him home the day Maggie found him. My mother. He put the photograph back atop his bureau. Then he reached for something behind the lamp, next to the photograph.

  “What about this?” He held up the rocking horse rattle that we told him he’d been found with when we made up the story of how he came to us. “Was this mine?”

  “Of course it was yours,” I said before Maggie could say something stupid like it had been Henry’s.

  He looked at it for a second and placed it carefully on top of his socks and folded pajamas.

  When the room was all packed up, Alex looked empty of all sensation, like his own soul was now in one of the boxes.

  We heard the doorbell chime, and we all knew Alex’s grandparents had arrived. Evie came up to get us.

  Maggie said she needed to say her good-byes right there in Alex’s room. We’d been advised there would be no visits for a while so that Alex could get used to being Leo Dabney. We didn’t know how long a while was going to be. No one knew. As long as it took, we’d been told. Maggie hugged him close and tight. As mad as I was at her, my anger melted a little as I witnessed Maggie’s heartache. She loved Alex like a mother loved a child. Mama had made us promise to care for Alex like he was our own, and we had done so, and yet none of us love him like Maggie does. All the love she’d had for Henry and Mama had been funneled into her devotion to Alex, the little boy she’d saved.

  Maggie pulled away, told him to be good, to mind his manners, and to come visit as soon and as often as his grandparents would allow. Alex nodded wide-eyed at Maggie’s parting words. I could see he had no way to appreciate what was happening. He’d never had to say a good-bye like this one.

  Papa had asked Jamie to come help take down the boxes, and they were at the doorway. They’d probably seen and heard Maggie’s farewell, as Jamie’s eyes were glistening. Maggie took one look at Jamie and then she bent and kissed Alex’s head and fled to her room.

  We each took a box down the stairs, Papa and Jamie taking the bigger ones.

  Rita and Maury Dabney were standing in the foyer looking like they didn’t know what to do with themselves. They are probably a bit older than Papa, with faces that are wrinkled from time and trouble, it seemed to me—not from smiling for too many years. Papa introduced Evie and me to them. Evie said, “How do you do?” I said nothing.

  “And the one who found Leo?” Rita Dabney asked.

  “His name is Alex,” I muttered. Only Evie seemed to hear me. She shot me a hush-up look.

  “I’m afraid Maggie is taking this hard,” Papa said. “Perhaps you could meet her another time?”

  Rita seemed relieved and put out that the girl who had both rescued and abducted her grandson wasn’t coming downstairs to meet her. It was like she wanted to thank Maggie and wring her neck.

  The boxes were loaded into a truck the Dabneys had parked at the curb. It was an older truck, green and rusty.

  Rita Dabney said, “Well, we’ll let you say your good-byes, then.”

  Evie knelt to Alex’s level and wrapped her arms around him. “We’ll see you often—I just know it. And soon you’ll get to meet your sister, Ursula. She’s so looking forward to seeing you again. You’ll like her, Alex. And she loves you so much.”

  “All right,” Alex mumbled. He didn’t even know what he was saying all right to. Nothing was all right. That was obvious to all of us. Except to the Dabneys, I suppose.

  I had no intention of saying good-bye to Alex. I wasn’t going to call him Leo. And I wasn’t going to move Mama’s photo off his bureau. I bent down and hugged him. “I’ll be seeing you,” I said, knowing I would do whatever I must to see Alex after this. If I was of a notion to go see him, I’d just go do it. I knew how to take a train to New Jersey. I knew how to sneak around.

  I let him go and stood up, feeling very proud of myself for how I was handling the situation.

  Alex, who had been quietly composed all this time, turned to Papa now and burst into tears. I couldn’t watch as Papa embraced our boy and fought back his own emotions so that Alex might find the courage to go with two people he’d only met yesterday.

  I looked away as the Dabneys peeled Alex out of Papa’s arms and put him in their truck while he cried and yelled, “I don’t want to go! I don’t want to go!”

  Evie, wise Evie, kept her smarts about her. “We’ll see you soon! Before you know it, my darling!” she said, her voice sounding a bit shrill as she forced a happy tone into it.

  I heard the truck door slam shut against Alex’s sobs and then the puttering of the engine as the truck eased off into traffic. And all the while Evie shouted, “It’ll be all right! It’ll be all right!” while Papa just stood there and said nothing at all.

  I opened my eyes and stared at Evie, hating her for becoming a doctor and working at an asylum and for figuring out why one Ursula Novak wanted to kill herself.

  If only she had become a teacher or a chemist or a librarian.

  Why, of all the lunatics at that hospital, did Evie have to get paired up with Alex’s real sister? Dora had said earlier that surely it was fate, the heavens trying to make right what had gone wrong seven years ago.

  Don’t talk to me about fate, I wanted to say to Dora. Fate is just another word for saying we’re all powerless. Me. Mama. Papa. Maggie. All of us.

  Love something long enough and true enough and fate will tear it right out of your hands if it chooses, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  CHAPTER 63

  Evelyn

  Ursula took the news that not only was her little brother alive, but he’d been living for the last seven years in my house, surprisingly well. I was prepared for every response, from full-blown hysteria to catatonic stupor, but when the full truth was laid before her, the tears that fell were accompanied by no additional physical response other than that she laid a hand across her heart, perhaps to feel beneath her skin her splintered soul becoming whole again.

  After Maggie had escorted the police to the row house where she’d found Alex, and Rita Dabney had confirmed that was where Ines Novak Dabney had lived with Ursula and Baby Leo, there remained no doubt who Alex was. The heart-shaped birthmark was proof enough to me, but the authorities were convinced only after Maggie took them to the building and Rita Dabney independently identified it as the home she’d visited when Leo was first born. How to share this news with Ursula kept me awake for two nights.

  It wasn’t exactly my news to share. The police, or the child welfare people, or even her step-grandparents probably had the right to tell Ursula that Leo was alive more than I did. But Dr. Bellfield believed if I was up to the task, Ursula might better receive the news if she heard it from me. The police, the child welfare authorities, her step-grandparents, they had all spent the last seven years fully persuaded Ursula was responsible for Baby Leo’s death. I had not spent the same amount of time thinking she had killed her brother. I was not in that mix of people who’d believed she had drowned Leo in the Delaware River. Not only that, but I had refused to let her waste away in the asylum. I had been doggedly pursuing a way to help her. It was decided by Dr. Bellfield and the other senior staff that I could be the one to tell Ursula the remarkable news that Leo was alive but that Dr. Bellfield would be present in case Ursula became distraught, especially at my family’s part in what had happened.
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br />   For two days I did nothing else, thought of nothing else, except for how to tell her. Dr. Bellfield graciously gave me time off to prepare and also deal with the turmoil happening in my own family. Losing Alex was like losing Henry all over again. And yet I’d lain in my bed pondering the turn of events, and Dora Sutcliff’s observation that fate had brought Ursula to my hospital, fate had caused my heart to be stirred for her, and fate had pressed Dr. Bellfield into assigning me to her case.

  I couldn’t get past the notion that I was meant to be Ursula’s doctor. It had been my destiny that her life and mine would meet at this precise moment in time, just like it had been Maggie’s destiny to find Alex, like it had been Mama’s destiny to die from the flu but Willa’s to survive it. Just like it was my destiny to love Conrad even though he can never be mine. These truths seem wholly inevitable to me now. Unavoidable. They’d been woven into the fabric of our existence long before we were even aware of the fibers.

  When I arrived at the hospital on the morning I was to tell Ursula, the same day Alex was taken from us, I wanted to find Conrad first. I wanted to see his face and hear his voice and catch his scent. I wanted the truth of his inescapable presence in my life to uphold me as I walked into Ursula’s room to tell her things that would forever alter her world. I didn’t see him, though. He was not in the solarium where Sybil sat listening to—without hearing—a retired church pianist play hymns.

  I was shaking as Dr. Bellfield and I entered Ursula’s room. Just outside the door, a nurse waited with a hypodermic in case Ursula needed to be sedated after I told her. But perhaps the truth feels so right when we at last hear it that it is its own calming agent. Ursula did not fall apart or lunge at me or faint dead away.

  When I told her everything, when all the pieces at last made sense, especially Maggie’s white lace mask and her brown coat, Ursula looked at me with tears shining in her eyes and her trembling hand over her heart and said, “Thank you.”

  Words failed me then. I could not find my voice to say anything else. When she asked when she could see Alex, I could not answer. Dr. Bellfield told her a meeting would no doubt happen very soon. “We need to think of his emotional state as well,” Dr. Bellfield had said. “He’s been well cared for by Miss Bright’s family and it’s the only home he knows.”

  “Oh. Of course,” Ursula had replied, casting a glance at me and seeing the single tear sliding traitorously down my cheek.

  Rita and Maury were now only too happy to reassume their guardianship over their step-granddaughter and called that same afternoon to arrange for Ursula’s release. Dr. Bellfield was able to convince them to let the news settle first, and then to allow Ursula to be reunited with her brother within the safe confines of the hospital. They agreed somewhat reluctantly to arrange for Ursula’s discharge after she and Alex had a chance to meet. Alex had been told only that his sister had recently been ill but was much better and that she was very much looking forward to seeing him again. It was agreed that two days after Alex had been returned to the Dabneys, they would bring Alex in to see her. Only they called him Leo, of course. They had also asked that I not be present for that meeting.

  And I was told by Dr. Bellfield that I needed to honor that request.

  I did not go into the hospital the first day we woke to a morning where Alex was not a part of it. I might have stayed home today, too, but I know the Dabneys are bringing Alex in to see Ursula this afternoon. Perhaps the Dabneys will suddenly change their mind about my being there for that reunion. I don’t want to be twenty minutes away if that should happen. I want to be just down the hall or in the next room. What if Alex asks for me? What if he cries for me? I must be there.

  • • •

  I arrive at the asylum at the usual time and attend to my routine duties, but my thoughts are scattered. The other residents, the nurses, the orderlies, everyone who works at the hospital knows what has happened. They glance at me with questioning eyes, some clearly astounded and moved by my situation, others seemingly skeptical that I hadn’t known Ursula Novak existed before this and that I somehow arranged her stay here.

  Dr. Bellfield looks for me fifteen minutes before the Dabneys are to arrive and tells me I am to avoid the entrance to the hospital, his office, and the main corridor.

  “It’s important that you stay out of sight,” he said.

  “You will keep an eye on Alex, too, won’t you?” I ask him, flinching a little at the sting of his words. “This has been very hard for him.”

  “I know how much you care for this child. If I see anything amiss, I won’t ignore it. But, Miss Bright, this situation is going to be hard. For everyone. Surely you know that. An extended time of adjustment for everyone involved is to be expected.”

  “He’s just a little boy,” I say, reining in my emotions.

  “Yes, I know. But the law says he’s their little boy. That’s why it’s best you honor their request to stay away. I’m agreeing to this for him. Not for Ursula. Not for the Dabneys. And not for you.”

  I had wanted to find a way to view the reunion from some hidden vantage point. But now that I know the meeting will take place in Dr. Bellfield’s office, I see that will be impossible. And while it hurts, I see Dr. Bellfield’s point. Even if Alex were to ask for me, it won’t help him to see me. It will only make it harder for him today than it was when the Dabneys came to the house for him. Perhaps I could find a way to listen in, though.

  When Dr. Bellfield leaves me for the meeting, I hover at the door to the wards until I see through the glass that Ursula has been escorted to Dr. Bellfield’s office to wait for Alex to arrive. I make my way through the main lobby and then the corridor to the administrative wing, letting myself into a broom closet close to Dr. Bellfield’s office that I know is vented. I close the door quietly and get myself as close to the vent as I can, overturning a metal bucket so that I can stand on it and hopefully hear better. But when I finally hear the telltale sounds of multiple voices in Dr. Bellfield’s office, I can’t distinguish them. The venting garbles the words and the intonation. All I can hear is a deep voice, followed by a soft, feminine one, followed by one belonging to a young child. Dr. Bellfield. Ursula. Alex. But I can’t make out what they are saying. I hear slight laughter, happy tears, more voices, more laughter, more happy tears.

  But I can’t hear the words. This moment is not mine. I don’t belong to it.

  I don’t want to be in the closet anymore, struggling to make myself a part of what is happening in Dr. Bellfield’s office. I climb off the bucket, aware of fresh tears that threaten to fall, and open the door slightly to make sure no one will see me leave. I make my escape and look for a corner of the hospital where I don’t have to think about the fact that Alex is here and I can’t see him and everyone is telling him his name is Leo, but where is such a place? There is no place I can escape to where I will stop thinking about what is happening.

  As I near the main entrance, I see Conrad at the reception desk, leaning over it and signing something. I am overcome with the desire to run to him and throw my arms around his neck and relive the memory of his kisses. I want him to soothe the burn of losing Alex, of being responsible for Ursula’s years of suffering and now Alex’s misery, of missing Mama, and of facing my existence alone. My feet are moving toward him and I don’t know what I will say; I only know I can’t walk past him and say nothing, not after what happened in the shed and what is happening right now.

  He makes it easy for me by looking up as I approach. He smiles slightly, but it is a troubled, conflicted smile.

  When I reach the desk, I look down at the document he is signing. Discharge papers. He’s taking Sybil out of the asylum. He pushes the document toward the nurse behind the desk.

  “What are you doing?” I murmur.

  “I’m taking Mrs. Reese home, Miss Bright,” he says cordially, for the nurse’s sake.

  “But . . . but Sybil needs constant
care. She will not get better.” My voice sounds strained. Childlike. The nurse looks up at me.

  “Yes, I understand that. I’m going to be arranging for a live-in nurse,” Conrad says, and then he turns to the nurse. “If you could collect my wife and her things now, that would be most appreciated.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Reese.” The nurse turns toward an orderly to give him instructions.

  Conrad touches my arm and leads me away, around the back side of a nearby marble pillar that affords a modicum of privacy; at least it is out of the line of sight of the reception desk. “I can’t keep Sybil here,” he says. His eyes are pleading with me to understand. But I don’t want to.

  “Please don’t take her,” I whisper. “Please?” I feel like my world is crumbling beneath my feet. I lean against the pillar to steady myself. If he removes Sybil from the hospital, I will likely never see him again.

  “I have to. I can’t . . . What happened the other day . . .” His voice drops away.

  I can’t let him disappear from my life. I can’t. “It doesn’t have to happen again. I promise. Please don’t take her, Conrad.”

  “But don’t you see? I want it to happen again! I want it to. And I can’t. . . . Sybil is my wife! I know there isn’t much of her left, but I can’t abandon her, Evelyn. I can’t. That’s not the kind of person I am. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t know who I am anymore. I know who I am. I can’t abandon her. And I can’t come here every other day and see you and not wish things could be different. I have to take her and go.”

  I hear everything he is saying and I understand it, but I can’t accept it. The world is tipping off its axis. What is happening is not supposed to be happening.

  “Stop,” I say. It is the only thing I can say.

  He reaches up with one hand to touch my cheek. “It’s best this way. To stay would be too difficult. You deserve to be happy, Evelyn. Good-bye.”