As Bright as Heaven(56)

I feel for the back of a kitchen chair and close my eyes against the assault of those words. It is too much. Too much.

When I open my eyes, I see that Papa has brought the morning paper in and set it on the table. A skinny column of type on the bottom of the front page announces the influenza is abating. The number of cases being reported is at last decreasing, and not just in Philadelphia, but elsewhere, too. But like the monster it is, the flu is madly grabbing for its last victims as it pulls away like a tidal wave headed back out to sea.

“Is Uncle Fred up?” Papa says tonelessly.

“I don’t think so.”

Papa takes a drink from his cup, grimaces as he swallows, and then sets it down. “He and I need to get started.” He looks up at me.

I know what he is saying. Mama needs to be brought down and made ready for her burial.

I shudder for a moment at the thought of this, but then I remember Maggie will fix Mama’s hair and cover the awful splotching on her skin and apply rouge to her cheeks and color to her gray lips, such that when I see my mother for the last time, she will look like herself and not the phantom I saw last night.

“I’ll go see if he’s awake,” I reply.

He nods. “I can tell him about Charlie. You don’t have to.”

“All right.”

I make my way to Uncle Fred’s bedroom, feeling numb. I hear no sounds from the other side of his door. I knock lightly.

“Uncle Fred? It’s Evie. Are you awake?”

I receive no response.

I knock again, a bit louder. “Uncle Fred?”

Nothing.

I open the door a crack. “Uncle Fred. It’s Evie.”

I peek around the door. Uncle Fred is still in his bed, eyes closed, his skin a dull gray.

“Uncle Fred?” I hear a tremor of fear in my voice. He is not moving. There is no rise and fall of his chest. He is as still as stone.

For a second I can only stand there in disbelief.

And then my feet carry me to his bedside and my hand, seemingly of its own will, reaches out to touch his face.

It is cold to my touch.

I run back to the kitchen and Papa turns from the sink where he is rinsing out his cup.

“What is it?” he says.

I can barely squeak out the words. “Uncle Fred is . . . He’s gone.”

Papa doesn’t understand. He thinks Fred has left the house. “Gone where?”

“He’s dead, Papa!”

My father brushes past me and I follow him to Uncle Fred’s bedroom.

Papa calls Fred’s name, feels for his pulse, bends down to listen for the sound of a beating heart.

But there is no pulse, and Uncle Fred’s heart is not beating.

“What happened? Was it the flu?” I ask, remembering how he coughed last night on his way to his bedroom.

“Maybe. I don’t know,” Papa says in a shallow voice I’ve never heard from him before. “I don’t know. He was old. He was exhausted. Perhaps it was all those things. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

I lean into my papa and put my arm around him, much like he might have done for me. He looks so empty and weak as he stands there staring at Uncle Fred, and it’s as though if I don’t hang on to him, he might disappear like a vapor. My father loved my mother. Deeply. They were modest and quiet about their love for each other in front of other people, but I could see the depth of their affection for each other in so many little ways, even in the way they held hands when grace was said at suppertime. And Uncle Fred had been as kind to Papa as Grandad—his own father—perhaps even more so. And now both of these people had been taken from him.

And from me. My father seems to realize this at the same moment, and his arm comes around my middle like mine is around his. It’s like we are each holding the other up.

We stand silent that way for a moment. I can see in Papa’s dazed expression that it has not yet occurred to him that the funeral business, the house, everything that Uncle Fred owned, is now his. Or maybe the dazed expression is there because this thought has occurred to him, and that now Mama won’t be here to share in the joy and responsibility of that ownership.

“I’ll go get Roland to help me,” Papa finally says. “Close the door.”

Papa leaves me to fetch our neighbor.

After my father is gone, I stand over Uncle Fred’s body, serenely posed in the guise of sleep. “I’m sorry I was short with you last night,” I whisper to him. “I should’ve said so when I had the chance. Please forgive me.”

I begin to cry for him, for Mama, for Charlie, and for every single future moment they should have all been granted.

Death doesn’t ever look at shoulds, though, does it? Death looks at nothing. It just does what it’s meant to do.





CHAPTER 37



Willa


When I woke up this morning, I found out Mama had gone to be with Henry.

I got very angry when Papa told me this. I was already not in a good mood because I’d woken up on the sitting room sofa and nobody was around, and when I tried to get up, I fell. Evie and Papa heard me and came into the room. That was when Papa sat me on the sofa and told me Mama isn’t with us anymore. She is in heaven with the angels. And Henry.

I don’t like it one bit that Mama is with the angels. I know about heaven. I know if you go to heaven you don’t ever come back to earth. Ever.