As Bright as Heaven(6)
We step over the front door’s threshold into a foyer with a high ceiling, electric lights, a slightly faded wool carpet, and woodwork free of dust but in need of polish. A staircase carpeted in a deep scarlet leads to the second story. Double-door entrances to larger rooms beckon on either side. The foyer is warm despite the chill of the day.
“The rooms here on the right side are private, just for us,” Fred said. “And all the rooms upstairs are yours.”
He motions us to a sitting room on the right with upholstered sofas and armchairs in celery green, sturdy oak bookshelves that Evelyn takes immediate interest in, a fireplace framed in marble and wood, lamps with cut-glass shades and etched metal pedestals, and a game table with a jigsaw puzzle of an African plain half-done in the corner by the window. A phonograph with an enormous fluted horn sits in the back on a carved table next to an upright piano. The room is clean but void of any decoration, save for a ballet figurine made of porcelain that sits on an end table. I wonder if Fred hired someone thirty-two years ago to purchase all the furniture and accessories and to place the pieces in the room and then he just left them that way. He had no doubt done the same when the house was wired for electricity. Someone else chose the lamps, arranged them in the house, and he’d simply paid for them.
On the other side of the staircase is a little hallway that leads to Fred’s office and bedroom and a little privy, all of which he says we’ve no need to trouble ourselves with, not even the privy, as there is a very nicely appointed bathroom upstairs. His housekeeper, Mrs. Landry, takes care of these rooms as well as the rest of the house, he says.
We make our way into the dining room next, which is dusted and free of cobwebs, but boxes and books and stacks of newspapers clutter the corners and chair seats and even the dining table. There is no place to sit and eat a meal.
“Does Mrs. Landry also take care of this room?” I ask, and Thomas shoots me a look. I don’t care. If we are to live here, we need a table at which to dine. Any family of six would.
Fred views the room for perhaps the first time in a long while. “Oh. I’ve been having League meetings in here. But I can move all that to my office.”
“League meetings?” I say.
“I serve in the APL. My chapter meets here sometimes.” Uncle Fred starts for the doorway to the kitchen.
“What’s the APL?” Evelyn asks, ever the inquisitive one.
Fred turns to us countryfolk with a raised eyebrow. “The American Protective League, of course. We keep an eye out for German sympathizers, slackers, shows of antipatriotism. That sort of thing. It’s important work.” He starts to turn back around as though that is all the answer anyone should ever need about his volunteer work with the League.
Maggie tugs on Thomas’s sleeve. “A German what?” she asks softly.
“Sympathizer. It’s someone who sides with Germany about the war,” Thomas says, but Fred apparently doesn’t think that is enough of an answer.
“It’s someone who is in league with the enemy!” Fred announces, with a triumphant nod.
I wonder if Fred is aware my grandparents emigrated from Germany. Would he send us back to Quakertown if he knew? I can still hear in my memory my grandmother singing “Der Mond ist aufgegangen” to me on the nights I couldn’t sleep.
Fred leads us into the kitchen. It is a colorless albeit functional room with hot and cold taps above a white ceramic sink and an icebox twice the size of what I had in Quakertown. A narrow pine table with four ladder-back chairs with woven seats sits in the center of the room on a tiled floor of black and white squares. Against the far wall is a shining Universal cookstove all piped for gas. All one has to do is light a match and turn a knob. Quite a change from the woodstove I’d always cooked on before.
“The stove is new,” Fred says. “Mrs. Landry has put a pot of soup on for our dinner.” He nods toward the appliance, where something bubbles on one of the burners.
I’d failed to consider that Uncle Fred would have a housekeeper. I haven’t even met Mrs. Landry yet, and I already want her gone. I will never be comfortable with another woman doing for me and my family what I am perfectly capable of doing myself. But I promised Thomas that I wouldn’t right away ask Fred to change anything about the way he lives.
“He’s been alone for a long time,” Thomas had said. “He’s going to be set in his ways.”
But who of us isn’t set in his ways? I am also set in my ways. Everyone is. I bite my tongue so I won’t speak when next Fred shows us the pantry, a mishmash of cans and jars and sacks and containers. A spider scuttles across the pantry floor, and Fred brings his booted foot down gently on top of it.
“Now, then,” Fred says, and he sweeps his gaze over the girls. “Past the kitchen here and down that hallway is the business. That’s just for me and your papa. You won’t be needing to go into that part of the house.”
I open my mouth to protest, and Thomas touches my arm. “Pauline and I would like the girls to see how the rooms are laid out so they know what they’re like. They’ll be curious otherwise. And if there’s ever a fire and they can’t get to the front door, I want them to know how to get to the side door.”
Fred needs to contemplate this for a moment. And then it seems to suddenly occur to him that his favorite nephew is right. “Well. That makes sense. And now that I think on it, it’s all right if they are in the viewing room when it’s not being used. But it’s not a playroom. None of these rooms are.”