As Bright as Heaven

by Susan Meissner

  The door swings open. It is on my tongue to announce in a firm voice that we can take no more dead when I see it is Fred. Instead of a handkerchief, a surgical mask he must have gotten from the coroner half covers his face. He pulls it down to speak to me.

  “Only me,” he says as he comes through. A welcome gust of fresh air swirls in with him, settling on the bodies closest to the entrance. The sickly scent of decay and loss rises and settles. He closes the door but doesn’t bolt it.

  He turns to me with the day’s mail in his hand. “Three thousand are dead now in the city. Tens of thousands more are sick with it.” He pulls off his coat and hangs it on a hook in the mudroom. “Too many of our doctors are away on the front. They’ve got first-year medical students and old washouts like me doctoring the sick!” He holds up the mail. “Thomas wants you to take the girls and go home to your parents’ in Quakertown. I agree. It’s not safe here.”

  Fred extends an envelope in my direction, and as I reach for it, I see the depth of his concern for our welfare. Thomas’s absence has given me eyes to see that Fred would have been a good husband, a caring father. He has quietly looked out for the girls and me in the three weeks Thomas has been gone, asking every other day if we need anything, making sure I have enough money for groceries, double-checking the doors and window locks at night like a conscientious father would. He still has his rough edges, of course, but they are few compared to the range of his generosity toward us this past year and especially since Thomas has been gone. Making my husband his assistant and heir has reshaped all of our lives for the good. Because of Fred our girls will never want for anything.

  The letter, addressed to both Fred and me, is void of any pretense of normalcy. The influenza is bad at Fort Meade, Thomas says. Nearly two thousand soldiers lie sick. They’ve closed the base theater, the YMCA, the Hostess House. No visitors are allowed in and no soldiers are allowed out on leave. Even so, the flu is out among the public outside the Fort, just like it is here. Civilian workers took it home from the army base with them.

  “Take the girls and go home to your parents’ until the plague passes,” Thomas wrote in a hurried hand. “If I were home I’d take you there myself. You need to get out of the city.”

  I look up from the note.

  “How will you manage without us?” I ask Fred, even though I know with all my being that Thomas is right. I need to get the girls home to Quakertown.

  “I’ll manage.”

  I am suddenly worried for Fred. The physical toll on him has already been immense since the flu descended on the city. Someone mentioned to him early on that he stood to make a great profit from this sickness, and Fred told that person that this was a horrific way to make a living. Some undertakers in the city have been raising their rates the last few days, charging twice as much as they usually did for their work. But not Fred.

  “Do you suppose Mrs. Landry could return to do housekeeping for you?” I ask.

  “No . . . no,” he says, a strange tenor to his voice, as though he is afraid Mrs. Landry sports a grudge from having been let go and won’t welcome an invitation to come back.

  “I am sure she bears us no ill will, Fred,” I say. “She understood that I wanted to run the house myself. I don’t mind ringing her.”

  He shakes his head. “No. That’s not it. She’s . . . Mrs. Landry died three days after the parade. She was one of the first victims I attended. I didn’t say anything for fear of distressing you.”

  Picturing Mrs. Landry’s slate gray body—all the cadavers of the flu victims are as pale as ghosts—lying inert on the embalming table silences me for a moment.

  “Just three days after?” I finally say.

  “She went quick. Many of them do. It’s a mercy when they do.”

  “I’m so sorry, Fred.”

  He shrugs. “I’ve not had time to give it much thought. It’s better for me not to give any of this much thought.”

  I had not considered that they aren’t all strangers who have been carried through the funeral home doors. Some have surely been Fred’s friends, business acquaintances, people he greeted regularly at church.

  “Is there another housekeeper I can call for you?” I say, wishing there were better words.

  Uncle Fred shakes his head. “I will manage. This scourge can’t last forever.”

  It is the first time since the parade that anyone has dared to suggest the flu will spend itself and then be gone. That perhaps its very viciousness is what will kill it.

  “Go on back into the house and make your arrangements,” Fred says as he pulls the mask up over his nose and mouth. He moves past me to the embalming room, where the rest of the day’s work lies waiting for him. I wish I could help him, but I know he won’t let me. The bodies are riddled with a disease that no doubt clings to them like soot from a fire. And no one is expecting my usual cosmetic touches anyway.

  I return to the main part of the house. Maggie and Willa are working on a puzzle in the sitting room, and Evie has moved a chair to the foyer, where she can keep an eye on the front door while she reads. I insisted the girls continue with their lessons in the morning, but it is midafternoon now, nearly the time they would be coming home from school if classes had not been canceled.

  They look up at me as I enter the room, their expressions a mix of boredom and uneasiness. It occurs to me that maybe the girls and I should remain in Quakertown not just until the flu passes but until after the war is over and Thomas returns. What is keeping us in the city, really? I am no closer to putting Death back in its proper place than I was when we first arrived ten months ago, even with all my ministrations to the dead, and the arrival of a merciless killing flu. My easy familiarity with it remains.

  I look at my children—my flesh and blood—and my arms ache for Henry, gone from me for nearly a year now. What will my companion do if I take my girls and speed back to where my baby boy lies? Will it notice I have left when there is so much else to occupy itself with here?

  What will it do if I stay?

  There is a terrible moral rending when so many people start dying all at once and bodies begin to accumulate like plowed snow on the curbs. My girls are surely feeling this injury to humanity even though they perhaps cannot name it outright. I should have taken them the first day the schools were closed.

  “I’m thinking we should go to Quakertown to sit out the flu,” I say, and my voice trembles a little.

  “What do you mean?” Maggie asks, her brow puckered.

  “I mean, your papa and I think it’s wise to go to Grandma and Grandpa’s until the flu has passed. Just until the flu is gone. Unless . . . unless we want to stay longer.”

  “Why would we stay longer?” Evelyn studies my face, looking for unspoken clues as to why I suddenly want us to flee. She won’t want to leave her school and the downtown library; Willa won’t want to abandon her friend Flossie; and even Maggie, who has had the most trouble making new friends, won’t want to leave the city, the Sutcliffs, and her attic room.

  “Well, then, until the flu has passed,” I say.

  “Will we have to go to school there?” Willa asks, and I tell her not to worry about that right now.

  Maggie and Evie wear twin looks of uneasiness at the thought of returning to the country life they left nearly a year ago, and for who knows how long.

  “Uncle Fred said this can’t last forever,” I announce, wanting them to hear those words like I heard them. It can’t last forever.

  I send them to their rooms to pack, and I head to the kitchen to take inventory of our stores. If need be, I’ll go to the market before we leave to make sure the shelves are well stocked for Fred. The restaurant will be busy until sundown. I’ll wait to place the call to my parents until then.

  I open the pantry and step into its shadows to count the jars and packages. Alone, but not alone.

  I do not fear D
eath for myself, but I will not allow its cold fingers to touch my girls. Not even in a slow caress.

  They are mine, I whisper.

  CHAPTER 20

  Willa

  Flossie’s brother has the flu. I went to her apartment yesterday, and she told me she’s not allowed to let anyone in. She’s not allowed at my house because her mother is afraid of all Uncle Fred’s dead bodies. We played for a little while on her stoop with her Humpty Dumpty Circus Set. It has twenty pieces, with a giraffe and a polar bear and an alligator I was afraid to touch. But it wasn’t much fun, and she’s supposed to stay near her house in case her mother needs her, so we ran out of things to do.

  When I came home and told Mama about Flossie’s brother, she said I can’t go back over there until Flossie’s brother is better, even though I didn’t even go inside.

  So there’s no school, but I’m not allowed to play at Flossie’s place and she’s not allowed to play at mine.

  Gretchen, the German girl I don’t play with, has the flu, too.

  There’s nothing to do here at the house, and everything is closed, like there’s a snowstorm. Evie just reads her books, so she doesn’t care. Maggie will sometimes play with me, but she’s cross because she’s not allowed past the kitchen door into the business anymore. There are dead people inside the viewing parlor now, and Uncle Fred ran out of caskets again. The place where he usually gets them hasn’t had any for days. The cabinetmaker down the street is working to make some, but he says he only has two hands. The bodies in the parlor are just wrapped up in sheets and blankets. Two days ago when the kitchen door was left open a bit, I saw men bringing one in. There was black blood where the nose is. I didn’t like seeing it. That night I had a nightmare that everyone had black blood coming out of their noses and nobody could stop it. I woke up before I found out if it was coming out of my nose, too.

  Yesterday Mama told us we were going to go to Grandma and Grandpa Adler’s to stay with them until the flu is gone. But then today Mama said she’d changed her mind. She said she’d thought about it and decided Uncle Fred would be too lonely here by himself and he doesn’t have his housekeeper anymore, so he wouldn’t have anyone to cook for him and do his laundry. She cried when she told us, though.

  “That’s because that isn’t the real reason we’re not going,” Maggie told me later.

  The three of us were in the sitting room working on sums. Mama said just because there isn’t school doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be learning.

  “Grandma Adler said we can’t come because of Aunt Jane’s baby,” Maggie went on. “We might bring the flu to Quakertown and give it to Baby Curtis.”

  “But we don’t have the flu,” I said.

  And Maggie said, “The first couple days after people catch it, they don’t know they have it.”

  Evie told her to please be quiet. Maggie said she didn’t have to be quiet—it was the truth.

  “But Willa doesn’t need to be hearing all that,” Evie said. “And you shouldn’t have listened in on Mama’s telephone call to Grandma. You don’t know that she said we couldn’t come because we might bring the flu.”

  “Yes, I do,” Maggie insisted. “I could tell that’s what Grandma said by what Mama said.”

  I know I wouldn’t give that baby the flu. I don’t have it. I don’t feel sick. I think Maggie is wrong. I think if you catch something, you know it.

  Mama is sad today that we’re not going to Quakertown, and I’m a little sad, too. I think Uncle Fred should fix his own dinners and wash his own socks.

  “It’s not that hard,” I told Mama. It’s not. I’m only seven and I know how to make a sandwich.

  “He’s so busy because of the flu,” Mama said, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “He barely has time to sleep. We should stay and help him.”

  So we’re not going.

  Mama had some ladies from the church visit her this afternoon. They had gone to a big meeting on Walnut Street. A lot of people aren’t happy with the mayor because he let the flu come, and they want to do something about it. I was listening to them talking to her. She invited them in for tea, and they sat in the sitting room. I sat on the stairs to listen because I had nothing else to do. The ladies said that at that meeting they’d all decided they needed to find a way to help.

  “The school and church cafeterias have been turned into soup kitchens, and volunteers are making food for people who are too sick to cook their own meals,” one of the ladies said.

  And Mama said that was a good idea.

  “Mrs. Bright,” another lady said, “might you be willing to take some of this food down to a few people on the south side who have no one to take care of them? We have a list of names and addresses. There are so many poor souls down there who are suffering alone. Could you spare a few hours from your day to do this work of mercy? We’ll provide the soup and a surgical mask.”

  I thought Mama would say no. She is always telling me and my sisters to be careful and not to be around any coughing people right now and to stay away, stay away, stay away from Uncle Fred’s dead bodies. But she said she would go.

  And the church lady said someone would be by in the morning with jars of soup. All Mama had to do was take the food to the people on the list and then bring the jars back to the church in the afternoon, and the next day it would happen all over again. They told her she might need to take a cab, though, because the streetcars might not be running. Mama said she’d find a way to get there.

  “It’s so nice to have you and your family at the church, Mrs. Bright,” the lady said. She said Mama was such a kind person and what beautiful girls she had and how proud her own mama must be of her that she would put the needs of others first, just like Jesus.

  Mama just said, “Thank you” and “Would you care for a second cup?”

  They didn’t have time for a second cup. They had other ladies to visit, because they had lots of names and lots of lists.

  When they left, Evie came out from the kitchen, where she’d been boiling water in case there was to be a second pot of tea.

  “You’re going to do it, Mama?” Evie asked. “Isn’t it a bit dangerous?”

  “I may as well be of use if I am to stay here,” Mama said. “It’s only dangerous if you aren’t careful. Besides, can you imagine what it must be like to be ill and have no family to look out for you? To feel as though you’ve been abandoned?”

  Evie didn’t say anything, so I guess she can’t imagine it.

  That means tomorrow will be an even longer, more boring day. Mama will be gone and there’s no school and Flossie can’t come over and I can’t even play with Gretchen.

  I miss Papa. He should be here.

  I miss Henry.

  I wish they were both here.

  I wish the flu would just go back to where it came from.

  CHAPTER 21

  Maggie

  Mama isn’t going to let me go with her.

  I can see it in her eyes before she says a word. We are standing together in the kitchen, and she is gathering a basket of items to take along with the soup that the church men brought.

  “I want to go with you,” I say.

  She turns from the pantry shelves with that look mothers have that just says no. I’m already deciding how I’m going to get her to change her mind; the words are right there on my tongue. I’m not a little child anymore. I’m thirteen. I want to help all those people, too. I know how to be careful. I will wear my mask. I can carry the basket.

  All this is true, but the real reason is I can’t spend another day at this house, pretending I don’t see all the bodies piling up on the stoop and in the parlor and even in the carriage house, where Uncle Fred used to keep the extra caskets, back when there were extra caskets. I am tired of Evie telling me what to do and Willa’s whining and Uncle Fred’s stomping about, complaining that he can’t take any more b
odies. I want to be where something good and right is happening, even if it’s just me and Mama taking soup to a sick person lying in a bed.

  I open my mouth to list all the reasons I should be allowed to go with her. But then that “you’re not coming” look falls away from her face, and another one takes its place. I haven’t seen her look at me that way since Henry died. Her eyes are saying things that her mouth isn’t quite ready to say. Like she maybe wishes she could shield my sisters and me from what is happening and how hard it is to be a mother and yet so powerless.

  “I’ll be careful,” I say. “I won’t let anyone cough on me.”

  Mama doesn’t answer right away, but her eyes are locked on mine. I reach out to touch her arm. She looks down at my hand on her sleeve and it’s like she is measuring the length of my fingers and my ability to be of any help. She stares at me for a moment and it’s as if she heard my thoughts, knows I need a glimpse of something good today.

  “If I say yes, you must promise me something,” she finally says.

  “All right.”

  “You do exactly what I say. You understand me, Margaret?”

  I’m not Maggie to her in that moment. I am Margaret. It’s as if she is reminding me who I am. Margaret Louise Bright. Second-born daughter. Alive.

  “Yes,” I answer.

  “If I say you can’t come inside a house, you will wait outside. No arguments.”

  “I promise.”

  She hands me the basket, and I see what else she has put inside to do battle with the flu. Clean washcloths. Lavender soap. Rolls of cotton. Bayer aspirin. A little brown bottle of antiseptic. A flask of water.