As Bright as Heaven(57)

Mama is supposed to be here. Mothers aren’t supposed to leave their children. Doesn’t she know that?

Papa was sitting next to me. In front of us was an empty candy dish on a table. I grabbed it and threw it as hard as I could and it broke into a thousand pieces. I wanted Papa or Evie to yell at me for doing that because that’s what grown-ups are supposed to do. They were both right there and neither one did. And that scared me a little. I had my eye on the china ballet dancer on the end table next to me and I was about to grab it and hurl it, too, when Papa put his hand over mine. He didn’t slap it like I wanted him to; he just covered it.

“Breaking things won’t bring her back,” Papa said.

“What will?” I said.

He pulled me into his arms but didn’t answer me.

Evie sat down on the sofa next to us and put her head in her hands.

“I don’t want her to be in heaven with Henry. I want her here,” I said.

Papa held me tighter and still said nothing.

I heard creaking on the stairs and for just a second I thought Papa and Evie were wrong about everything. I thought Mama was coming down the stairs and she was going to come into the room and say she’d only been fooling.

But it was Maggie with Baby Alex. She had his blanket and a diaper and some toys in her arms, too. And a bottle, half-empty. Maggie’s hair was pulled back tight away from her face, and the mask she wears when she goes outside was tied loose around her neck.

Evie looked up when they came into the room. She didn’t say anything. She just held out her arms and Maggie walked over and put Alex on Evie’s lap. Then Maggie set down all the baby things on the rug by the hearth.

Papa leaned away from me but kept one arm around my shoulders. “We need your help for a little while this morning, Willa. Maggie is going to be with me in the funeral parlor. Can you help Evie look after Baby Alex for a few minutes? Would you do that?”

I looked over at Alex. He has the name I’d wanted him to have. He grinned at me. I turned from him to face Papa again because everything else about this day was starting out wrong, wrong, wrong.

“Why does Maggie get to go in the funeral rooms with you?” I said. “Maggie isn’t supposed to be in there now. Only Uncle Fred.”

“I need her help.”

“Uncle Fred won’t let her go in there.”

Papa looked down at the floor and then up at me again. “Uncle Fred went to heaven last night, too, Willa. And Charlie across the street.”

None of this was making any sense. Why was this happening? I had the flu. I didn’t go to heaven. Why was everybody else?

Maybe I would, though. Maybe later today I would or the next day. Or maybe I’d wake up tomorrow and the whole house would be empty because Papa and Evie and Maggie and Alex would have all left for heaven without me.

“I don’t want to be here alone!”

Papa pulled me into his arms again. “You’re not alone. Evie will be right here. Maggie and I will just be in the other room.”

“Don’t go without me!”

“I’m not going anywhere without you. I just need to take care of Mama and Uncle Fred and Charlie. And Maggie is going to help me. Evie and Baby Alex will be right here with you.”

I knew what he meant then. He was taking Mama into the Elm Bonning Room.

“Is Mama a dead body?” I could barely say those words. But I had to know.

“No,” Maggie answered before Papa could say anything. “You can come and see her when we’re done, and I’ll show you that she’s not.”

Evie looked up at Papa like she wasn’t sure Maggie had given me the right answer.

“That’s right,” Papa said, so I guess she had. “When we’re done, we’ll show you.”

“Uncle Fred and Charlie, too?”

“If that’s what you want.”

Evie laid Alex on the blanket by the hearth, and Papa stoked the fire that had gone out. I lay back down on the sofa, tired already. Then Papa and Maggie left. Evie went out of the room for a minute, too, but it was just to get a broom and a dustpan. When she came back, she swept up all the pieces of the candy dish.

You can’t even tell that I threw it unless you notice the empty spot on the table, and that it looks like something that belonged there is gone.





CHAPTER 38



Maggie


Papa and Roland Sutcliff move the other bodies that were already in the embalming room into the casket closet, and they lay out Mama, Charlie, and Uncle Fred, side by side by side on three tables. While they are doing this, I fetch Uncle Fred’s church clothes out of his wardrobe and Mama’s prettiest dress—the white lace one with yellow ribbons. Before Roland Sutcliff returns home, he leaves Charlie’s best suit with us. Papa tells him that Mama, Uncle Fred, and Charlie are going to be honored the way the deceased used to be, before the flu.

The city has said there can be no more public funerals, no more viewings, no more careful readying for satin-lined caskets.

Remove the dead as quickly as possible from your homes and get them into the ground. That’s what the city leaflets said.

But that’s not what we’re going to do for Mama, Charlie, and Uncle Fred.

“When we’re all done here, we’ll take them into the parlor,” Papa says. “And we’ll honor them.”