As Bright as Heaven(60)

By two o’clock, the crowd thins. Willa and Alex are both asleep—Willa in Evie’s lap and Alex in my arms. Papa tells us it is time for Mama and Charlie and Uncle Fred to be buried. What comes next we don’t need to be a part of, he says. Papa arranged by telephone for Reverend Pope to come pray over the quickly dug graves and commit Mama and Charlie and Uncle Fred to the ground. Uncle had purchased a lot for himself some time ago at a big cemetery across the Schuylkill River, and the lot is large enough for him and Mama, and Papa one day, too. Mr. Sutcliff is taking Charlie to the cemetery that belongs to the church they attend.

As much as I want this terrible day to be over, I know this moment is the last time I will see Mama. After today she will exist only in the memories I have of her. Memories tend to fade, even the ones that mean the most to you, and this thought scares me. I touch one of her curls with my free hand, cementing the image of my doing so in my head and heart. Brokenhearted Dora Sutcliff has already been escorted home, so I say good-bye to Charlie, too, and I reposition the baseball in his hands. It had scooted out of his grasp a bit.

Evie scoops up Willa and leaves the room in tears. I start to follow her, but I stop at Uncle Fred’s box. We are the only family he had in Philadelphia. He had made Papa the heir of everything he had: the business, the house, the cars, everything. This big house is now all ours and the funeral business is all Papa’s. Surely the army won’t insist on Papa’s going back now that we girls have no mother and no uncle. Papa will surely have to stay home now.

“Good-bye, Uncle Fred,” I murmur to him. He looks younger somehow in death. I hadn’t realized just how much he’d physically changed since the flu arrived. He’d begun to look so haggard and old, older than his seventy-two years. It is not until this moment that I see how very much at peace he looks now. Happy, even.

And then I leave the viewing parlor to join Evie in the kitchen. I close the door that leads to the funeral rooms, but I still hear the nails being driven into the tops of the boxes. She hears it, too. My sister and I run into the sitting room to get away from the sound, but we still hear the faint tapping. We lay the sleeping children down on the sofa and cover our ears.

When at last the hammering stops, Evie drapes a shawl over Willa, who still has not stirred. “I suppose I should see to all that food,” she says, wiping away the tears from her face with her sleeve. Nearly everyone who visited brought some kind of food with them—roasts and bread and desserts. I have no appetite for any of it. What I hunger for is the way our life was before.

I transfer Alex to his bureau drawer by the hearth and stoke up the fire. When it is burning nicely again, I go into Uncle Fred’s office, to his desk, and I sit down at it. His APL papers and issues of The Spy Glass are all in a pile off to the side, like he suddenly decided he couldn’t be bothered anymore with slackers and unpatriotic people and Hun sympathizers. I have never seen his desk so uncluttered.

I pull out a piece of stationery from inside the drawer. Uncle Fred has a nice selection of fountain pens. I choose one, smooth out the paper, and date it to be sent two days from now.

Dear Jamie,

I trust you have received word from your parents about Charlie. They probably told you that my dear mama and uncle Fred also passed.

I just want you to know that I helped take care of Charlie when your father brought him over. My papa dressed him in his nicest clothes and I combed his hair and saw to it that he looked as though he had only just closed his eyes in sleep.

I put the baseball you and Charlie played with in his hands. And even though we’re not supposed to, we had a visitation here. So many people came. Today was a terrible day, but this one good thing happened—people came and kept coming to let us know Mama and Charlie and Uncle Fred had mattered.

I know you would’ve liked to be here. When the war is over and you come back, I will tell you anything about this day that you would like to know.

I don’t know what it will be like to not have my mother with me anymore. I only know that right now I feel like she wasn’t supposed to go. I thought Mama was stronger. I thought she would beat the flu like Willa did. I thought Uncle Fred had been wrong last night when he told me I needed to say my farewells. But it’s me that had it wrong. I had to say good-bye to Mama after she was already gone, while I combed the tangles out of her hair. She was so cold and stiff, like a statue. I don’t know if she heard me. But perhaps she saw me. Perhaps she was allowed a glimpse of me caring for her as she sailed up to heaven.

I’m so glad we have Alex—that’s what we named the baby I wrote you about. He is the opposite of the war and the flu. He is sweet and beautiful and alive. Alex is the war and the flu and death all turned upside down. When you come home, I will introduce you to him.

I pray for you every day, Jamie. I pray that you stay safe and that the Germans will be beat and that you can come home.

Yours very truly,

Maggie Bright

When I cap the pen, I hear the faint sound of the funeral car being started outside.

Papa and Roland Sutcliff are taking Mama and Charlie and Uncle Fred away.





CHAPTER 39



Evelyn


When Henry died, losing him was all any of us had to think about. The all-consuming, singular focus seemed needful and appropriate. The rest of the world had to wait for us to catch up with it because we had been in mourning. In mourning. It was a thing we went inside, and we didn’t have to come out until we wanted to.