As Bright as Heaven(69)

When I open my eyes, I don’t know at first that it was only a dream. I get out of bed and look for Mama on the stairs, in the kitchen, in the sitting room.

She isn’t in the house, though, and I feel so empty inside.

But then I see Gretchen’s father through the sitting room’s big front window. He is walking that little white dog even though the sun is barely up. After the flu, I walked up the street several times to stare at the apartment above the bakery where Gretchen had lived. I hoped each time that I’d see that little dog in the window barking down at me, or on the street as Gretchen’s mama or papa took him outside to pee. But I never did see him. And now there he is.

I run to the front door, unlock it, and walk outside. Gretchen’s father is walking fast. He is already stepping onto the next corner. I want to chase after him so I can pat that dog. I want to so very badly. But I don’t have any shoes on and I can’t think of Gretchen’s last name, so I can’t call out for her papa to wait, and I’m mad that he can’t tell I am behind him on my top step wishing he would stop and turn around.

He just keeps walking.

I stand there in my nightgown, watching them. I suddenly remember his name is Mr. Weiss, but it’s too late. He’s too far away. I’m sad now and I wish I was back in my bed again dreaming of Mama.

Then I hear a door opening across the boulevard from me.

Jamie Sutcliff is coming out of his house. He carries a fat duffel bag and he’s wearing his cap. He looks like he is going on a long trip. He closes the door quietly and then turns around. Jamie is surprised to see me standing there across from him, and he startles like he’s been caught doing something he’s not supposed to be doing.

We look at each other for a second, and then he just tips his hat to me and starts to walk away without saying anything.

“Where are you going?” I yell.

He turns toward me. “Go on back inside, Willa. It’s too early to be out.”

“But where are you going?”

I can tell he is off for somewhere. No one carries a duffel like that unless they are going on a trip. Jamie just got home after being at the war all that time. And now he’s leaving?

He stares at me for a moment. Then he looks back at his house and then up at the bedroom windows of my house. He crosses the boulevard easy and quick because it’s too early for streetcars and automobiles and carriages. Only the milkman and Mr. Weiss are out and about.

When he gets close he hikes up his duffel onto his shoulder and looks up at me. I’m taller than him because I’m on the top step and he’s on the bottom one.

“I have to go away.” He looks sad.

“But you just got here.”

Jamie looks down the boulevard for a second. Gretchen’s dad is so far away now. The dog is just a little white dot.

“I can’t stay here,” he says.

I know for a fact that Jamie still has his old bedroom and his father still has a desk for him in the bookkeeping office. “Why not?”

He shakes his head. “I just can’t.”

“But your mama has waited all this time for you to come home.”

For a couple seconds, he doesn’t say anything. “I’m not the person she has been missing. I’m not him.”

I don’t know what he means by that, so I ask him again where he is going.

“Good-bye, Willa,” he says, not answering my question at all. His eyes are shining into mine. “Be good.”

And then he turns and walks away.

I watch him go in the opposite direction of Gretchen’s dad and her dog. Pretty soon he is a speck, too. And then he is gone.

What a rotten morning this is turning out to be.

I sit down on the top step, hoping Gretchen’s dad will be coming back this way so I can pat the dog on their way home. I wait and wait, but they don’t come. Autos and people and streetcars start to go by. A lady walking past our house sees me sitting on the stoop and she stops and frowns at me.

“Child, does your mother know you’re sitting out here in your nightdress?” she calls out.

I don’t know. I don’t know if Mama can see me here.

So I stand up and go back inside the house. I’m hungry now. I go into the kitchen, and I’m glad Maggie is up with Alex, because she’ll make me something to eat. Her eggs aren’t as good as Evie’s, but they are better than nothing.

She frowns at me, too, when I step inside.

“Was that the front door?” she asks. “Were you outside just now?”

I nod. “Can we have breakfast? I’m hungry.”

Maggie sets Alex into his high chair. He picks up a wooden spoon that he likes to play with and bangs it on the tray. He is one year old now. We gave him Maggie’s birthday—May 15—because he needed to have one and she wanted him to have hers. I wanted him to share mine with me—I’m eight now—but my birthday was in February and it wouldn’t have worked for him to be one back then. His birthday had to be in May or June, Maggie and Evie said. Even Papa said it.

“What on earth were you doing outside in your nightgown?” Maggie says.

It occurs to me right then that Maggie might want to know Jamie has left. She is friends with him. I saw all the letters she posted to him when he was in the war.

“Jamie’s gone,” I say.