As Bright as Heaven(63)

Some schoolchildren got the flu like I did. Some got it like Mama did. Some didn’t get it at all. I was sad to hear that the German girl Gretchen Weiss got it and she died. I spent the whole day wondering who’s looking after her little white dog. When we walked home I asked Maggie if she thought we could ask that German family if they need someone to take that dog. If we are taking Alex, why can’t we take a dog, too? She acted like she hadn’t heard me. Or maybe she really didn’t. The girl who was her friend wasn’t in school today, only the other girl she likes, Ruby. The other one is Sally. She got the flu and died.

When we got home, Maggie ran over to the Sutcliffs’ to get Alex and she stayed there for a while. Evie was already home and she was sad. Her favorite teacher, Mr. Galway, is dead. And a boy she liked named Gilbert. She didn’t say she liked him, but I can just tell she did.

That was what it was like going back to school. You found out who is still alive after the flu and who isn’t.





CHAPTER 41



? November 1918 ?





Maggie


Yesterday started out mostly wonderful and ended mostly terrible.

We thought the war was over.

Somehow all the newspapers got word that Germany surrendered and everyone took to the streets to celebrate. And I mean everyone. The last time I saw so many people all at once was that Liberty Loan Parade that brought us the flu and nearly killed all of Philadelphia. And that was only two hundred thousand people. This time it was probably a million. There were whistles and bells and cannon fire and every scrap of white paper that could be found was torn into paper snowflakes and thrown into the air.

“It’s over! It’s over!” everyone was shouting. Mr. and Mrs. Sutcliff came outside to stand with us on the street and I know Dora Sutcliff was thinking what I was thinking—that the fighting was over and Jamie had been spared.

I’d been spending part of every afternoon with her since school started up again. She watches Alex for me and I go fetch him every day when classes are over. She’d been showing me Jamie’s photographs from when he was a child, the sketches of trains he drew, and telling me all the things he did when he was little. One time we’d gone into Charlie’s room and she did the same thing, but I think it hurt her too much to talk about Charlie the way she likes to talk with me about Jamie. It hurt me, too. So I know just how marvelous it was for Dora Sutcliff to hear that Germany had surrendered.

That was what made the day mostly wonderful. The war was over and Jamie had survived it. Something good had finally happened.

But then we heard that it wasn’t over. Not really and not yet. It was a news service that had reported the Germans signed an agreement, not the government. The news service was wrong. And that was what made the day end up terrible.

I’ve been reading the newspapers each night after putting Alex to bed—Papa had bought him a proper crib—looking for news of Jamie’s regiment, the 315th Infantry, and I know the Americans have been marching closer and closer to Germany and that the Huns can’t stop them. The Americans are near Verdun. I looked at the map in Evie’s atlas. Verdun is a city in France that is nearly all the way to Germany. That’s how close the Americans are getting. And while the paper made it seem like that was good news, Papa said just before a war ends, the fighting is at its most awful. The Germans are putting bombs in churches along the way so that when the Allied soldiers step inside to thank God for getting them so far, they’ll be blown to bits.

When I thought the war was over, I was so happy to imagine that Jamie would not have to step inside any church on the road to Germany. He could just turn around now and head back the way he’d come. Naturally when we heard that the news was not true, I couldn’t stop myself from picturing him kneeling in prayer after a long day’s march and being ripped apart as the church he was in exploded.

So now we are back to waiting and hoping.

It’s been three weeks since Mama and Uncle Fred died. I ache for Mama’s voice and her touch and just the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. Alex and I have moved into the room where she died. It’s a bigger room for us and Papa wants to sleep in Uncle Fred’s old room. When Alex is a little bigger he can share Willa’s room with her—she can’t wait—and then when he’s older still, he can have my old attic room on the third floor if he wants it.

Mama’s room will be my room now. I like having it. The bed is new and all the linens, but her things are still in her wardrobe and dressing table. And they will stay there. I miss her so very much, even though now that she is gone, I realize she was a different person after we moved here. It was like she had been keeping an enormous secret from all of us. Not a terrible secret, but not a wonderful one, either. I’m sure that secret was the reason she wanted to be in the embalming room. Papa had said Mama liked to do the hair and cosmetics on the deceased to get her mind off things, but I don’t think that was what it was. I think she was putting her mind on something. She was there to think about her secret, not escape from thinking. Even now I can’t explain what I mean. All I know for sure is, Mama was drawn to that room. And I find myself likewise drawn. I’m not sure I will ever know why she was, but it’s enough for me now that she was. We had that in common, and she alone understood why I wanted to be in there. In time, if the flu hadn’t taken her, Mama might have told me her secret. I have imagined that some future day she would have, and it’s made me a little sad because I know I could never have told her mine.