As Bright as Heaven

by Susan Meissner

  The kitchen is on the other side on the first floor. Mama has been painting it because it needed brightening up. Now it’s yellow. Before, it was no color. The floor in the kitchen is black and white squares like a checkerboard. I like stepping on the white ones. There is a dining room that Uncle Fred has piled up with books and boxes and I don’t know what else. Mama wants to clean that up next. There is also a sitting room with a big fireplace and a sofa and chairs and a phonograph. And a piano. Mama says when I’m older I can have lessons. And electric lights everywhere! Uncle Fred has a bedroom and an office next to the sitting room. I am not allowed in those rooms, either. Mama told me Uncle Fred never had a wife or a family, so I need to give him some time to get used to there being children in the house.

  There’s a girl who lives three buildings up the street from the gray door. She’s seven like me and in my class in my new school. Her name is Florence, but everyone calls her Flossie. She lives above a bookstore. It’s not hers; that’s just where she lives. She has dark hair and freckles and three brothers who tease her all the time. They are older than her, so they’re not like Henry. I think she will be my best friend.

  There is another little girl who lives close to us, too. Her name is Gretchen Weiss. I see her at school, too. But Flossie said that girl is a Hun and her parents are Huns, and we can’t be friends with her because of the war.

  I had to ask Papa what a Hun is, and when I did, he asked where I’d heard that word. I just said at school. He was probably going to tell me what a Hun is, but Uncle Fred heard me ask and he turned to me and said Huns are those damn German savages responsible for all the misery in the world.

  Papa gave Uncle Fred a look that said he can’t say that one word. Damn.

  But Gretchen doesn’t look much like a savage to me. I’ve seen pictures of savages in Evie’s History of the World book. Gretchen has pigtails and a little white dog and a baby doll carriage. Her parents own a bakery. They aren’t savages with wooden clubs and no clothes on.

  So I don’t think Uncle Fred knows what a Hun is. But I don’t want Flossie not to like me, so I will stay away from Gretchen.

  Today I went with Jamie and Charlie and Maggie to see the warships being built. It was supposed to be an island, but we got there in a streetcar full of shipyard workers and didn’t go over a bridge or anything, so what kind of island is that? Jamie knows someone who builds the ships, so that man went with us and took us past the fences. Maggie didn’t want me to come with them. Jamie had asked me if I wanted to go along, and before I could answer, Maggie said I wouldn’t like to see the ships and that I would get too tired and that it was too cold for me. I told Jamie I did want to see the ships and that I wouldn’t get tired and that it wasn’t too cold for me. So I asked Mama if I could go, and she said I had to mind Jamie the whole time, and that if I promised to do that, I had her permission. She didn’t say any of the things stupid Maggie did.

  I did get bored after a while. The ships weren’t ships. They were just big hunks that looked like funny-shaped buildings being built upside down. And I was so cold, my fingers stung inside my gloves. There was mud everywhere. Jamie said the whole island used to be mud and marshes and swarms of mosquitoes, but then the war came and we needed to build ships. There are no hogs, though, even though it’s called Hog Island. Not one. There wasn’t one pretty thing to look at. But I wasn’t about to say a word out loud about that and have Maggie scold me for coming when she said I shouldn’t have.

  I’ll tell you why she didn’t want me to come. It’s because she wants Charlie and Jamie for herself. They are always doing puzzles and games with her. Well, it’s mostly Charlie who comes over to play games and do puzzles, but then Jamie comes over to fetch him and he stays. And sometimes she goes over to their apartment and visits with Mrs. Sutcliff. She likes Maggie because she has no girls. Only Jamie and Charlie. Charlie is nice, but he’s not very smart. He’s older than Evie and can hardly read. I read better than he can. Maggie is trying to teach him, but it’s like he forgets everything she says two seconds after she says it. Mama told me his brain won’t let him remember all that he’s taught. She said no one knows why, but some children are born with not everything working quite right.

  “Like Henry and his heart,” I said.

  And she nodded, kissed me, and went to the kitchen to fetch me a snack.

  Sometimes I miss my old room even though I had to share it with Evie and Maggie and they never wanted me touching their things. My new room is all my own, but it doesn’t feel like mine. The bed came from a furniture store, and it smells like tractor oil, it’s so new. I have an electric lamp. I just turn it on with a switch. I like my new friend Flossie, and I like Jamie and Charlie, but I miss my old friends. I miss the way our Quakertown house squeaked when you walked up the stairs.

  There weren’t as many rules in my old house. I could go into any room I wanted. There were no caskets or crying people or an Elm Bonning Room that I had to keep away from. We only had one front door.

  When I asked Mama if we had to stay here forever, she just smiled and said, “No place is forever, sweetheart.”

  CHAPTER 10

  • March 1918 •

  Maggie

  I used to be good at mathematics.

  I’m not as smart as Evie—no one is as smart as Evie—but I used to be able to do all my equations without needing help from anyone. Algebra is harder here in the city. Evie says that’s impossible, but I know it’s not.

  Today won’t be the first day I walk across the street to ask Jamie or Mr. Sutcliff to help me with my math. Mama says I shouldn’t be going over to the Sutcliffs’ when I’m stuck on a problem when I can just have Evie show me, but asking my sister for help is like asking to be stung by bees. Somehow she makes me feel stupid. I don’t think she means to, but she does.

  Jamie is better at helping me than his father is. Mr. Sutcliff is probably a good bookkeeper, but he’s not a very good math teacher. He can get the right answers, but he can’t tell me how he got them. Evie can tell me, but she makes me feel like a dummy. Jamie gets the right answers and can show me how he got them, and I never feel stupid. I don’t think Jamie even knows how to make someone feel bad.

  As I grab my coat and algebra book to go across the street, Mama shouts not to stay too long from the kitchen, where she’s stuffing a chicken. She’s cooking all the food now. Mrs. Landry has been let go, saints be praised. I tell her I’ll be back soon.

  She pokes her head around the entry to the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. “I mean it, Maggie. You’ve been over there twice already this week. They have a business to run.”

  I don’t know why she needs to tell me this. I can count how many days I’ve gone across the street. And I know the Sutcliffs have a business to run. “I said I won’t stay too long.”

  I step out onto the stoop before she can say anything else.

  Late March in the city is different. In the country, there might be the faintest hints that spring is here, like a shoot of green grass or an early robin or the smell of the earth as it starts to wake up from a winter sleep. But that’s not how it is in the city. Snowflakes are swirling down on me like it’s November as I cross the boulevard. I know there are probably flurries in Quakertown at this moment, too, but there still could be that lone blade of new grass or the smell of field dirt despite the snow. In the city, you can’t tell anything’s just right around the corner.

  When I open the door to Sutcliff Accounting, I can see through the windows of their little offices that Roland Sutcliff is busy with a client and that Jamie is not. Beatrice, their secretary, sits up front and answers their telephone and welcomes people when they come inside. She’s probably my grandmother’s age but with huge bosoms that practically rest on the top of her desk. She always wears toilet water that smells like a mix of mashed potatoes and roses, but she’s nice to me and never says, “You again?” when I come over with my
algebra book. Behind her are Mr. Sutcliff’s and Jamie’s offices. A big stretch of windows separates her desk from the two offices, held up by wooden walls that come up to my waist, and the rest is glass. The doors to their offices are half wood and half window, too. Both Jamie and his father can see the front door from where they sit. You can hear their adding machines from beyond the glass if they are working them when you step inside.

  Beatrice says hello to me, and both men look up to see who it is that has come in. Mr. Sutcliff just glances up and then returns his attention to the client he is talking to. Mr. Sutcliff is a bit shorter than Jamie, and thick, like Charlie. His smile and voice are like Charlie’s, too. The top of his head is shiny and bare, like new skin after a sunburn, and the hair he has left rims the sides of his head like a wreath. Sometimes he will come over to the funeral parlor to go over Uncle Fred’s ledgers, and he’ll stay and they’ll both have one of Grandad’s cigars and maybe a glass of brandy.

  Jamie smiles the tiniest bit when he looks up from his adding machine to see who has entered the business.

  Beatrice casts a glance back at Jamie and then waves me through. She sees my algebra book.

  “Again?” Jamie says, sounding like he’s annoyed, but I can tell he doesn’t really mind my being here. He might even like my little interruption. What he’s doing looks incredibly boring. I take a chair next to his.

  “It’s not my fault. Algebra is hard.”

  He closes a ledger and moves it to make room on his desk for my book. He bumps a linked trio of little model train cars painted blue, and they start to topple over. He reaches out to gently steady them. “What are you going to do about algebra when I’m gone?” he says with a warm smile.

  I’ve been able to put off thinking about Jamie’s leaving for the army camp only until someone else brings it up. Usually it’s Dora Sutcliff, who nearly always starts to cry when she does, or Charlie, who I don’t think fully understands what it will be like for him when Jamie goes away. If Charlie isn’t over at our place or moving things around for Uncle Fred, he’s waiting for Jamie to be done with work so he can be with him.

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” I say as sourly as I can, opening my book to the page I need help with.

  “Hey, I’m the one who’s going to have to put up with terrible food, a cold cot, and getting up at dawn to march for miles on end.”

  “Then don’t go.” I smooth out the page.

  He finds this funny. He thinks I’m joking. I’m not. I don’t know much about this war, but I know it has nothing to do with me or Jamie or Philadelphia or even Pennsylvania. I’ve seen all the battleships that are being built on Hog Island. I’ve seen Uncle Fred’s magazines and files and his APL badge. I’ve seen the Pershing’s Crusaders posters all around the city. I’ve glanced at the newspaper headlines telling us how terrible the Kaiser is and how wonderful our brave soldiers are. I know there’s a war far away across the ocean. But it doesn’t mean anything to me.

  Jamie stops laughing when he sees that I’m serious. “Don’t be glum, now. I’ll be back to help you with your math problems before you know it.”

  My throat feels hot and thick with frustration, so I can’t ask him how he knows that.

  He helps me with the first two problems, but he does all the talking, and I just sullenly nod as he explains things. I do the third problem on my own, solving it quickly.

  “I think you’re getting it, Magpie,” he says.

  A boy in Quakertown called me that once and I wanted to box his ears. But the nickname sounds sweet and precious when Jamie says it. I can’t help cracking a smile.

  “So you’re not angry with me, then,” he says, smiling back at me.

  I shake my head. I’ll have to leave now. I can do the other two problems on my own, no doubt.

  “I wish you didn’t want to go away to the war,” I finally say as I close the book.

  He doesn’t say anything for a second. “It’s not that I want to. Sometimes duty calls us to it. Most of my friends are already on the front or getting ready to go. It’s the right thing to do.”

  I don’t see how it can be. “How do you know?”

  “Because my country asks it of me. If people don’t do their part to stop the spread of evil when they’re asked to, it just gets stronger and then no one can stop it.”

  I don’t know what he’s talking about. And I already know I can’t change anything by asking him to explain this to me.

  “Will you do something for me while I’m away?” he asks when I say nothing.

  “I guess.”

  “Look out for Charlie, will you? You’re the first friend he’s had in a long time. A very long time. And I’m very glad he has a friend right now. I’m not sure how much he understands about where I’m going.”

  I don’t understand much about where you’re going, I’m thinking.

  “I know he’s not making much progress on what you’re trying to teach him, but that’s not how he sees it. He loves going over to your house. Charlie being happy makes my mother happy. It might be hard for her, too, when I go.”

  I pull the book into my lap.

  “So it would mean a lot to me if you just kept up with what you’re doing for Charlie. Don’t stop. Please?” he says.

  Jamie is looking intently at me, and my face feels warm. His gaze is confusing me, making my heart pound. “I’m not doing anything special for Charlie. I’m just being me.”

  His face relaxes into an easy smile. “Then don’t change while I’m gone. All right, Magpie? You just stay you.”

  I can’t think of a thing to say. Someone who needs to speak with Jamie comes into the accounting office at that moment. Beatrice brings the man through. Jamie stands and says, “Good day, Miss Bright,” like I am one of his business patrons. Beatrice, Jamie, and even the client smile wide as I make my way out. They think I’m just a twelve-year-old girl who doesn’t know anything.

  I’m nearly thirteen.

  CHAPTER 11

  Evelyn

  We were moving the rest of Uncle Fred’s boxes and piles from the dining room into a smaller parlor that he uses for his office—it had been a smoking room during the banker’s day—when Mrs. Sutcliff from across the street called on us. We’d had to wait to do this until Uncle Fred moved all his APL documents, which were so secret, he’d said, we oughtn’t even glance at them. That finally done, we could move all the other things, including Uncle Fred’s stacks of old newspapers and back issues of The Sunnyside—a periodical for undertakers—all of which we’d promised to keep in order by date. All four of us were engaged in the task—Mama, me, Maggie, and Willa—when the door chimes rang.

  Mama invited Mrs. Sutcliff inside even though we were dirty and bedraggled from pushing about items that hadn’t been disturbed in ages because Mrs. Landry had been told not to touch them.

  So there we were, trying to make sense of a dining room that had been treated like a storage closet for three decades, when Dora Sutcliff showed up. She had been over to the house a few times before. I had met her the day we moved in, when Charlie Sutcliff came over to haul our belongings up the stairs. She’d come over with him and brought a loaf of warm bread that we’d enjoyed at dinnertime with Mrs. Landry’s flavorless split pea soup. She’s been over a couple times since, to bring us a pie or homemade jam, and she’s had Mama over for afternoon coffee a time or two. Dora is dark-haired and slender, with doelike eyes. She has a soft voice, like Jamie’s, but she talks far more than he does. She is nearly always worried about something, whether it’s a forecast of bad weather or a threat to her family’s health or that we might have to start rationing sugar. She likes to start sentences with “My stars! Have you heard?” And then she’ll tell us some deeply troubling fact that we have heard but that had seemed inconsequential to us.

  After Mama apologized for the state the four of us were in—cobwebs in
our hair and dust on our sleeves—she politely asked Mrs. Sutcliff if she’d like to come into the sitting room for some coffee. Mrs. Sutcliff said she couldn’t stay. They’d just found out Jamie’s report date to Fort Meade had been bumped from three weeks to tomorrow. The send-off party she’d been planning and hadn’t yet told us about would have to be tonight. She wanted us all to come to it.

  “This will be the last time we’re all together before he is shipped off to France,” Mrs. Sutcliff said, her eyes filling with tears the second she said France. These days saying France is the same as saying the word war. It was obvious Mrs. Sutcliff didn’t want Jamie to go and that perhaps she wasn’t very happy that he’d volunteered when he wasn’t yet required to register.

  Mama thanked her and said she’d be happy to accept for all of us. She touched Mrs. Sutcliff’s arm when she added we’d be honored to come. Mrs. Sutcliff flicked away a tear as she looked at all of us.

  “You are so lucky to have three such lovely daughters, Pauline,” Mrs. Sutcliff said. She was no doubt also thinking how even luckier my mother was that girls don’t have to sail away to foreign lands to shoot and be shot at.

  “We always hoped to have a girl,” Mrs. Sutcliff continued with a teary smile. “I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. We only had the two boys.”

  “We had a boy named Henry,” Willa said. “But he died.”

  Mrs. Sutcliff turned her head to look at Mama, her mouth a perfect O shape. “Yes,” she replied a second later. “I mean, oh. How very, very sad. I’m so sorry.”

  I could tell Mrs. Sutcliff knew this about us already. Maggie had no doubt told her about Henry during one of her many visits to the Sutcliff apartment. But Mama didn’t know that Dora Sutcliff knew. It was clear to me Mama hadn’t brought it up in conversation yet with Mrs. Sutcliff, and therefore our neighbor didn’t know how to pretend she didn’t already know about Henry. She had likely already shared the tragic news with a close friend or two. Inside my head, I could hear how the conversation must have begun. “My stars! Have you heard? That sweet little family at the funeral home lost their baby boy last autumn!”