As Bright as Heaven(59)

Jamie should be here today to say good-bye to Charlie and it makes me angry that the war has him a world away. I will say good-bye for him and I will let him know that I did this. That way I will have fulfilled my promise.

I lean over Charlie’s body. “Good-bye,” I whisper into his ear. “Jamie sends all his love to you. You were a good brother and a good friend.”

I step away from the table and use my sleeve to wipe away the tears that have started to fall. I want to collapse or scream or pound my fist into the wall. Papa has also moved to the center of the room, but he has done so to survey the three tables. We are finished. All that can be done for these people we loved has been done.

“Run across the street and fetch Mr. Sutcliff,” Papa says to me. “Tell him I’m ready for him. Tell him Dora should come over in a little while, too, after we’ve changed and washed up. I’ll get the caskets ready.” He moves past me to do this next thing he must do. I pull off my mask and apron and hang them as I follow him out of the embalming room.

On my way to the mudroom I pass the casket room, which contains just a few hastily made caskets and a dozen of yesterday’s dead. I can smell the bodies through the seam in the closed door. The odor reminds me of rotten apples and kerosene. A welcome blast of cold air meets me as I step out onto the back stoop. There are automobiles out today and delivery carts and people walking about in masks and heavy coats. But no one seems to notice me as I cross the boulevard, without a coat, without a mask. Everyone is intent on their own reason for being out on the street in the middle of a plague.

The accounting office is closed, so I take the stairs to the Sutcliffs’ apartment, realizing afresh that I will never again see Charlie coming down them or waving to me from the window. Jamie will come back from the war to a home without Charlie in it.

Roland Sutcliff answers my knock. I have never seen him look so careworn.

“Papa is ready for you now. And he says Mrs. Sutcliff should come over in a little while, too.”

“All right,” he says heavily, as if those two words weigh a hundred pounds each.

An idea pops into my head. A way for Jamie to be here today, to pay his respects. “Could I have the baseball Jamie and Charlie used to play catch with? I’ve seen it on Charlie’s bureau. I think Jamie would be happy if Charlie was laid to rest with it.”

Roland Sutcliff blinks and then stares at me for a moment. It seems to take a second or two for him to understand what I am asking for and why. Then the faintest of smiles tugs at his mouth. “Yes. Yes, I think Jamie would like that.”

He leaves me at the door to go get the baseball. From where I stand, I can see the closed door to their bedroom. Dora Sutcliff is no doubt on the other side, curled up in grief. Mr. Sutcliff returns a moment later with the ball. It is more dirt-colored than white, and the red laces have faded to a rosy pink. It has been thrown and caught and hit and chased many times. His eyes fill with tears as he hands it to me.

“Tell your father I’ll be right over.” He casts a glance over his shoulder to the bedrooms. “And Dora will be along shortly.”

A few minutes after I return to the house, Mr. Sutcliff comes over and he and Papa move Mama, Charlie, and Uncle Fred into the viewing room one at a time. We are out of nice caskets again. We only have pine boxes made by the cabinetmaker down the street, but they are smooth and warm and they smell like Christmas. I like them better than the coffins that smell like varnish anyway. Papa has lined them with quilts to cover up the shavings meant to pad the inside. Charlie’s hands are getting stiffer by the minute, but I am able to place the baseball in his grasp. Roland Sutcliff puts a hand on my shoulder for a moment as we stand at Charlie’s casket and then he returns home to change his clothes and get his wife.

Papa and I head to our rooms to take off our working clothes and put on church clothes. Evie plaits my hair and then gets Willa ready. Alex doesn’t have any dark clothes to wear, so I just dress him in a yellow romper because yellow is Mama’s favorite color.

At noon, we open the front door to the boulevard and let whoever has gotten word come in to see our beloved dead, if they want to. There are a lot of people who have learned of our losses. People from church come, from the APL, from up and down the street. Nobody asks where Mama’s family is because they all figure her people live too far away and we can’t wait. They don’t know Papa hasn’t called Grandma and Grandpa Adler yet. Only Mr. Sutcliff asks why he hasn’t and Papa just says, “I can’t talk to them right now.”

For a couple hours the people come. Some bring flowers. Some bring food for us to eat later. Some sit in the chairs for a long time, as if waiting for something to start. Some folks I know, but many I don’t. It is like each one of them has lost someone in the last few days and they haven’t been able to do what we are doing now, so they are lingering in honor of their own dead. Charlie and Mama and Uncle Fred are suddenly not just their own persons anymore: they are a young man, a woman at midlife, and an old man. They are everyone’s beloved dead.

Willa hangs on Evie, never letting her out of sight, and Alex—afraid of all the strangers—clings to me, and his need for my arms takes my mind off the deep ache inside my heart. Papa is the one who greets those who come. He is the one who must respond time and time again to people who say, “We’re so sorry for your loss.” I grow tired of hearing it. It is like listening to the words She’s dead over and over and over. Dora sits in a chair the whole time, crying into a handkerchief, but she manages to thank everyone, through her tears, for coming.