As Bright as Heaven

by Susan Meissner

  When we’re done with the flesh-colored paste, Papa tells me I can do Mama’s hair while he takes care of Uncle Fred’s beard and hair.

  Mama’s hair is a tangled mess from her sweating and shivering and writhing. I have never seen her with her hair in such a state. I wet the hairbrush with lavender water and gently smooth out all the snarls, trying not to tug too hard. I use the curling rods and I style Mama like she is going to a party. I find myself talking to her, just like she talked to the deceased people she worked on. I let her know her hair is back to the way it is supposed to be, and that the rouge I put on her cheeks is just the right shade, and that I was very careful with the lipstick and brow pencil so as not to make wiggly mistakes. This is my way of saying good-bye, I think to myself. A much better way than how I was supposed to have said it last night when she seemed to be drowning right there on her bed.

  Papa glances over at me now and then. Perhaps my talking to Mama like this is comforting to him. I hope it is.

  Every minute I am with her, she looks more and more like Mama again. When I’m done with her hair and cosmetics, she looks like she could open her eyes, hop off the table, and ask me to set the table for dinner. But then I touch her hands that are crossed over her waist and they are now like marble, cold and hard. The finger she had raised the night before is clamped down against the rest of her hand, and when I try to move it, I can’t. This is when I know in my soul Mama is truly gone from me and the body that looks like her isn’t her at all.

  When I had helped Mama before in this room, I had only ever handed her things. She was the one who touched the bodies. I had not known how much like stone the dead became.

  “The stiffness will pass,” Papa says gently. He has turned around from Charlie’s body to stand next to me. He saw me try to move Mama’s hand. “But not before it gets worse.”

  “Why? Why is she like that?” I say, not looking up from Mama’s statuelike hands.

  “I don’t know why this happens. I only know that it does.”

  I look up at him and I see a tear sliding down his cheek. He is staring at Mama. He touches one of the curls I made. Her hair at least is still feather soft, like always.

  “You did well, Mags. She looks beautiful.”

  “She looks like Mama,” I say. But I know this body is not Mama. She is not inside it anymore.

  I turn to fix Charlie’s hair and to allow Papa some moments with Mama. Though Papa covered the stains of illness, Charlie is still so pale. I put a little rouge on his cheeks and just a tiny bit of color on his lips. Then I comb and slick his hair into place. Soon he looks like Charlie again. And because he does, I am struck anew that he, too, is gone. He was my first friend here in Philadelphia, and Jamie’s only brother. Jamie had asked me to look out for Charlie while he was away and now he must be told that Charlie is dead. A new sorrow is expanding inside me. I didn’t think there was room for more sadness today, but there is.

  Jamie should be here today to say good-bye to Charlie and it makes me angry that the war has him a world away. I will say good-bye for him and I will let him know that I did this. That way I will have fulfilled my promise.

  I lean over Charlie’s body. “Good-bye,” I whisper into his ear. “Jamie sends all his love to you. You were a good brother and a good friend.”

  I step away from the table and use my sleeve to wipe away the tears that have started to fall. I want to collapse or scream or pound my fist into the wall. Papa has also moved to the center of the room, but he has done so to survey the three tables. We are finished. All that can be done for these people we loved has been done.

  “Run across the street and fetch Mr. Sutcliff,” Papa says to me. “Tell him I’m ready for him. Tell him Dora should come over in a little while, too, after we’ve changed and washed up. I’ll get the caskets ready.” He moves past me to do this next thing he must do. I pull off my mask and apron and hang them as I follow him out of the embalming room.

  On my way to the mudroom I pass the casket room, which contains just a few hastily made caskets and a dozen of yesterday’s dead. I can smell the bodies through the seam in the closed door. The odor reminds me of rotten apples and kerosene. A welcome blast of cold air meets me as I step out onto the back stoop. There are automobiles out today and delivery carts and people walking about in masks and heavy coats. But no one seems to notice me as I cross the boulevard, without a coat, without a mask. Everyone is intent on their own reason for being out on the street in the middle of a plague.

  The accounting office is closed, so I take the stairs to the Sutcliffs’ apartment, realizing afresh that I will never again see Charlie coming down them or waving to me from the window. Jamie will come back from the war to a home without Charlie in it.

  Roland Sutcliff answers my knock. I have never seen him look so careworn.

  “Papa is ready for you now. And he says Mrs. Sutcliff should come over in a little while, too.”

  “All right,” he says heavily, as if those two words weigh a hundred pounds each.

  An idea pops into my head. A way for Jamie to be here today, to pay his respects. “Could I have the baseball Jamie and Charlie used to play catch with? I’ve seen it on Charlie’s bureau. I think Jamie would be happy if Charlie was laid to rest with it.”

  Roland Sutcliff blinks and then stares at me for a moment. It seems to take a second or two for him to understand what I am asking for and why. Then the faintest of smiles tugs at his mouth. “Yes. Yes, I think Jamie would like that.”

  He leaves me at the door to go get the baseball. From where I stand, I can see the closed door to their bedroom. Dora Sutcliff is no doubt on the other side, curled up in grief. Mr. Sutcliff returns a moment later with the ball. It is more dirt-colored than white, and the red laces have faded to a rosy pink. It has been thrown and caught and hit and chased many times. His eyes fill with tears as he hands it to me.

  “Tell your father I’ll be right over.” He casts a glance over his shoulder to the bedrooms. “And Dora will be along shortly.”

  A few minutes after I return to the house, Mr. Sutcliff comes over and he and Papa move Mama, Charlie, and Uncle Fred into the viewing room one at a time. We are out of nice caskets again. We only have pine boxes made by the cabinetmaker down the street, but they are smooth and warm and they smell like Christmas. I like them better than the coffins that smell like varnish anyway. Papa has lined them with quilts to cover up the shavings meant to pad the inside. Charlie’s hands are getting stiffer by the minute, but I am able to place the baseball in his grasp. Roland Sutcliff puts a hand on my shoulder for a moment as we stand at Charlie’s casket and then he returns home to change his clothes and get his wife.

  Papa and I head to our rooms to take off our working clothes and put on church clothes. Evie plaits my hair and then gets Willa ready. Alex doesn’t have any dark clothes to wear, so I just dress him in a yellow romper because yellow is Mama’s favorite color.

  At noon, we open the front door to the boulevard and let whoever has gotten word come in to see our beloved dead, if they want to. There are a lot of people who have learned of our losses. People from church come, from the APL, from up and down the street. Nobody asks where Mama’s family is because they all figure her people live too far away and we can’t wait. They don’t know Papa hasn’t called Grandma and Grandpa Adler yet. Only Mr. Sutcliff asks why he hasn’t and Papa just says, “I can’t talk to them right now.”

  For a couple hours the people come. Some bring flowers. Some bring food for us to eat later. Some sit in the chairs for a long time, as if waiting for something to start. Some folks I know, but many I don’t. It is like each one of them has lost someone in the last few days and they haven’t been able to do what we are doing now, so they are lingering in honor of their own dead. Charlie and Mama and Uncle Fred are suddenly not just their own persons anymore: they are a young man, a woman at midlife, and an old man. They ar
e everyone’s beloved dead.

  Willa hangs on Evie, never letting her out of sight, and Alex—afraid of all the strangers—clings to me, and his need for my arms takes my mind off the deep ache inside my heart. Papa is the one who greets those who come. He is the one who must respond time and time again to people who say, “We’re so sorry for your loss.” I grow tired of hearing it. It is like listening to the words She’s dead over and over and over. Dora sits in a chair the whole time, crying into a handkerchief, but she manages to thank everyone, through her tears, for coming.

  By two o’clock, the crowd thins. Willa and Alex are both asleep—Willa in Evie’s lap and Alex in my arms. Papa tells us it is time for Mama and Charlie and Uncle Fred to be buried. What comes next we don’t need to be a part of, he says. Papa arranged by telephone for Reverend Pope to come pray over the quickly dug graves and commit Mama and Charlie and Uncle Fred to the ground. Uncle had purchased a lot for himself some time ago at a big cemetery across the Schuylkill River, and the lot is large enough for him and Mama, and Papa one day, too. Mr. Sutcliff is taking Charlie to the cemetery that belongs to the church they attend.

  As much as I want this terrible day to be over, I know this moment is the last time I will see Mama. After today she will exist only in the memories I have of her. Memories tend to fade, even the ones that mean the most to you, and this thought scares me. I touch one of her curls with my free hand, cementing the image of my doing so in my head and heart. Brokenhearted Dora Sutcliff has already been escorted home, so I say good-bye to Charlie, too, and I reposition the baseball in his hands. It had scooted out of his grasp a bit.

  Evie scoops up Willa and leaves the room in tears. I start to follow her, but I stop at Uncle Fred’s box. We are the only family he had in Philadelphia. He had made Papa the heir of everything he had: the business, the house, the cars, everything. This big house is now all ours and the funeral business is all Papa’s. Surely the army won’t insist on Papa’s going back now that we girls have no mother and no uncle. Papa will surely have to stay home now.

  “Good-bye, Uncle Fred,” I murmur to him. He looks younger somehow in death. I hadn’t realized just how much he’d physically changed since the flu arrived. He’d begun to look so haggard and old, older than his seventy-two years. It is not until this moment that I see how very much at peace he looks now. Happy, even.

  And then I leave the viewing parlor to join Evie in the kitchen. I close the door that leads to the funeral rooms, but I still hear the nails being driven into the tops of the boxes. She hears it, too. My sister and I run into the sitting room to get away from the sound, but we still hear the faint tapping. We lay the sleeping children down on the sofa and cover our ears.

  When at last the hammering stops, Evie drapes a shawl over Willa, who still has not stirred. “I suppose I should see to all that food,” she says, wiping away the tears from her face with her sleeve. Nearly everyone who visited brought some kind of food with them—roasts and bread and desserts. I have no appetite for any of it. What I hunger for is the way our life was before.

  I transfer Alex to his bureau drawer by the hearth and stoke up the fire. When it is burning nicely again, I go into Uncle Fred’s office, to his desk, and I sit down at it. His APL papers and issues of The Spy Glass are all in a pile off to the side, like he suddenly decided he couldn’t be bothered anymore with slackers and unpatriotic people and Hun sympathizers. I have never seen his desk so uncluttered.

  I pull out a piece of stationery from inside the drawer. Uncle Fred has a nice selection of fountain pens. I choose one, smooth out the paper, and date it to be sent two days from now.

  Dear Jamie,

  I trust you have received word from your parents about Charlie. They probably told you that my dear mama and uncle Fred also passed.

  I just want you to know that I helped take care of Charlie when your father brought him over. My papa dressed him in his nicest clothes and I combed his hair and saw to it that he looked as though he had only just closed his eyes in sleep.

  I put the baseball you and Charlie played with in his hands. And even though we’re not supposed to, we had a visitation here. So many people came. Today was a terrible day, but this one good thing happened—people came and kept coming to let us know Mama and Charlie and Uncle Fred had mattered.

  I know you would’ve liked to be here. When the war is over and you come back, I will tell you anything about this day that you would like to know.

  I don’t know what it will be like to not have my mother with me anymore. I only know that right now I feel like she wasn’t supposed to go. I thought Mama was stronger. I thought she would beat the flu like Willa did. I thought Uncle Fred had been wrong last night when he told me I needed to say my farewells. But it’s me that had it wrong. I had to say good-bye to Mama after she was already gone, while I combed the tangles out of her hair. She was so cold and stiff, like a statue. I don’t know if she heard me. But perhaps she saw me. Perhaps she was allowed a glimpse of me caring for her as she sailed up to heaven.

  I’m so glad we have Alex—that’s what we named the baby I wrote you about. He is the opposite of the war and the flu. He is sweet and beautiful and alive. Alex is the war and the flu and death all turned upside down. When you come home, I will introduce you to him.

  I pray for you every day, Jamie. I pray that you stay safe and that the Germans will be beat and that you can come home.

  Yours very truly,

  Maggie Bright

  When I cap the pen, I hear the faint sound of the funeral car being started outside.

  Papa and Roland Sutcliff are taking Mama and Charlie and Uncle Fred away.

  CHAPTER 39

  Evelyn

  When Henry died, losing him was all any of us had to think about. The all-consuming, singular focus seemed needful and appropriate. The rest of the world had to wait for us to catch up with it because we had been in mourning. In mourning. It was a thing we went inside, and we didn’t have to come out until we wanted to.

  But with Mama and Uncle Fred and Charlie, the world doesn’t stop. It just keeps spinning, with all its troubles, yanking us into its wild revolutions. There is no stepping into mourning, all secluded with nothing but much-warranted sorrow for company. Instead it’s as if the train we’re all on switched tracks at full speed and now we are racing forward in a completely new direction with no time to think about the destination we’d been headed toward before and now will never see.

  Papa now must be what Uncle Fred was, the undertaker.

  I must be what Mama was, the keeper of the house.

  Maggie must be what I had been, the older sister to the little ones.

  The influenza is still rampant, the war still rages, and there is a business to run and a house to manage and there are young children to take care of. The train is still charging ahead, and whoever is conducting it expects us to fall into our new duties without so much as a backward glance.

  And so we do.

  I think Papa is glad there will be no quiet reprieve to grieve Mama’s death. He begins to attend to Uncle Fred’s grisly tasks the moment he returns from seeing those three pine boxes safely into the ground. While he was at the graveyards, the bell on the back stoop was rung four times. I did not have the heart to turn the people away. Each time, I answered it, and I instructed those who had brought their dead to bring them into the embalming room. At least the number of dead this day is fewer than it has been, even counting our own losses.

  When Papa returns from the cemeteries, he records the new deliveries. Maggie and I push the chairs back against the wall of the viewing parlor and take the flowers our neighbors brought into the main part of the house. Papa needs the viewing room again to become a staging area in which none of us girls is allowed.

  When he finally comes into the sitting room hours later, he is exhausted, and still wearing his church clothes from the funeral. He ha
d come in through the back door when he came home from the burials, and in the back he’d stayed.

  “Has it really been like this the whole time?” he says to me as he washes up at the kitchen sink. I am warming up some baked chicken brought to us by the Kellers, who live up the boulevard.

  “Yes.” I don’t say it has been worse.

  “What did Fred do when he ran out of caskets?”

  “He . . . he waited for more.”

  “With the bodies just lying there?” A look of disgusted worry crosses Papa’s face.

  “The morgue hasn’t had room. The city opened a storage facility on Twentieth, but it’s been full, too.”

  Papa turns and points toward the door that leads to the funeral parlor rooms. “You girls are forbidden to go anywhere near that door.”

  He says it like it’s a new edict, never before uttered.

  “We know, Papa.”

  None of us is very hungry when I call everyone to the table. I put away most of what I had laid out for supper. And when we are done Papa goes back to work. Maggie feeds Alex, bathes him, and then takes him and his bureau drawer upstairs to her room.

  It isn’t until I’m putting Willa to bed that I realize the only other beds in the house are Mama’s and Uncle Fred’s, and Papa can’t sleep in either one until the bedclothes have been boiled and the mattresses aired. Willa begs me not to leave her, but I tell her I’m just going to take care of a few things after she falls asleep and that I’ll be back to spend the night in her room. This comforts her greatly.

  “Sing me ‘Daisy Bell,’” Willa says. “Sing it like Mama does.”

  I don’t have Mama’s singing voice, but it doesn’t matter. Willa holds my hand and fights to stay awake as I sing to her, but slumber overtakes her in only a few minutes.

  I leave her room and make up my bed with fresh linens and then put on my mask and a pair of gloves and take the bedclothes off Mama’s and Uncle Fred’s beds. I’m downstairs with the big bundle in my arms and am about to take it to the washroom when Papa comes into the kitchen. He looks at what I hold.