As Bright as Heaven(67)

We adjust to it. Somehow we figure out a way. We straighten what we can or learn how to like something a little crooked. That’s how it is. Something breaks, you fix it as best you can. There’s always a way to make something better, even if it means sweeping up the broken pieces and starting all over. That’s how we keep moving, keep breathing, keep opening our eyes every morning, even when the only thing we know for sure is that we’re still alive.

All these thoughts are tumbling around in my head as I hold Jamie’s letter. I’m a second away from writing him back this very moment when I realize these thoughts have shaken loose something I haven’t wanted to think about since the day I found Alex. I suddenly know what I must do before I can write those words to Jamie and know beyond all doubt they are true.

I look at the grandfather clock ticking away the minutes. Alex is asleep for his nap. It’s a Saturday and Willa is at Flossie’s house. Evie is making bread even though it’s her birthday today. She’s sixteen now, and Dora Sutcliff is having us all over for cake later. Papa is at a meeting with other businessmen. I poke my head into the kitchen where Evie is, kneading a mound of dough. She looks up at me.

“Can you listen for Alex? I need to run over to Ruby’s for a little bit,” I say. “It’s for school. I won’t be long.”

“I suppose,” she says, and goes right back to her task.

I turn from her and then feel in my coat pocket for streetcar fare. I have enough. I go back outside. I pull my scarf tight around my neck and lower face and hurry to the streetcar stop down the block. Some minutes later I am on South Street, standing by the barbershop with the green awning. Even though it is icy cold and snow threatens, the streets and alleys are bustling with people. Old men, teenage boys, mothers, children in tattered wool coats. People are shopping and talking and yelling and selling. The scene is very different from how it had been on that day in October when Mama and I walked all the way down here. I turn up the street where I had seen the cat, and to the tumbledown row house that Mama left me outside of to wait for her. I know which alley to turn down after that. I know which building to stop in front of. Which window to look in.

I stand in front of Alex’s old home, silently challenging anyone inside that front room window to see me, talk to me, ask me what I am doing there.

But no one does. The broken window has been replaced. New curtains are pushed to the sides. A tall woman with jet-black curls caught up in a ribbon is just on the other side of the new glass. She is standing over a little boy about seven and cutting his hair with long scissors. A man sits in a chair behind them, looking at a newspaper.

The woman looks up at me, and our eyes meet for just a second. Then she looks back down at the child. She doesn’t care who I am.

This woman and the man and the boy are new to the building.

The busted window has been fixed.

New curtains have been hung.

A new family now calls the little apartment home because its previous occupants are gone, victims of the killing flu.

Life has remade itself here.

You see? I’m right. We find a way to move forward, even if it means starting all over.

That’s how it is.

That’s what we do.

I make my way back to the streetcar stop. When I’d arrived on South Street just minutes earlier, I’d felt like I’d been carrying heavy rocks in my pockets that had been weighing me down for weeks. But now they are gone.

Everything is setting itself to rights again, as best it can. Jamie might not believe me if I tell him all this in a letter, though. Maybe he will need to see it for himself, like I just did.

I can tell him the truth. I can tell him the whole truth about what happened the day I found Alex. I can bring Jamie here when he’s home at last and show him that life begins new again every time we think all is lost, because that’s what life does.

I will trust him with my secret.

Until then, I will keep writing to him. I will tell him every good and lovely thing that happens, even if it’s just that I saw a chickadee or that Alex got a new tooth or that his mother made a fudge cake.

And then when he gets home in the spring—spring!—I will prove to him there is always a way to make right again what has been skewed wrong.





CHAPTER 45



? May 1919 ?





Evelyn


Jamie Sutcliff is finally home. He arrived today with the remainder of the 315th on the USS Santa Rosa. Dora and Roland asked us to stand with them at the Snyder Avenue Dock to greet the ship and welcome him.

Two weeks before, the 28th Division had arrived to a parade and cheers and speeches. City officials had offered to do the same for Jamie’s regiment, but he and the other soldiers aboard the Santa Rosa had opted to forgo the fanfare. They said they just wanted to go home.

It had been a year since we’d seen Jamie, but it seemed like more time than that when we saw him. He had changed so much. He strode slowly toward his parents, dazzling in his uniform, yet as one hindered by a ball and chain around his leg. His countenance seemed to have been thinned by his experience somehow, like taffy stretched too far. His eyes looked vacant to me, as though some of the color in his irises had been squeezed out. He held on to his mother for a long time. Or maybe it was Dora who could not let go.

Maggie waited patiently for the Sutcliffs to break from their embraces and for Jamie to turn to us. When he finally did, Jamie seemed both glad and glum that we were there. His expression was a strange mix of both. He shook Papa’s hand and said hello to Alex, who was hoisted in the crook of Papa’s left arm. He kissed me on the cheek first—his lips were as light as a moth—and then Maggie. He then bent down to say hello to Willa.