As Bright as Heaven

by Susan Meissner

  “I made up my bed for you. I can sleep on the floor in Willa’s room,” I say. “I’ll boil these tomorrow and then air out the mattresses.”

  Papa holds out his hands. “I’m burning those. Give them to me.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but Papa repeats his command. I give him the bundle.

  “Stay away from the mattresses. I’ll haul them away. We’ll get new ones.”

  He turns from me to head back into the funeral rooms. When he comes back, his arms empty, he heads into Uncle Fred’s office—his office now—and closes the door. I hear him pick up the receiver of the telephone and ask to place a call. It is urgent, he says. He has a death notification to relay.

  Papa tells the operator he needs to place a call to Quakertown. I linger near the door because I know who he is calling. Not Grandad. Papa called him earlier in the day to tell him the sad news that his brother had died. He’s calling Grandma and Grandpa Adler.

  “I buried your daughter today,” he says when the call is put through.

  A few seconds of silence follow. I can imagine what is happening on the other end. I must close my eyes to stop imagining it.

  “She died of the flu, Eunice!” Papa says, his voice raised.

  More seconds of silence.

  “No, you killed her. You did. She’d still be alive if you had let her and the girls come. . . . You should have thought of that before. . . . How do you think they are? They’ve just lost their mother. Of course they know she had wanted to come home to you. . . . No . . . No, Eunice! This is what it’s like to want to be somewhere and be told you’re not welcome.”

  The phone’s receiver hits the cradle and I take to the stairs to fly up them as quickly as I can.

  I tiptoe into Willa’s bedroom, fully clothed, not wanting to meet Papa on the stairs and intrude on what might be the only solitary moments of grief he will have this day. I can’t think about my grandparents. I don’t want to think of them the way Papa is right now. Who can really say if we’d have brought the flu to Quakertown like Grandma Adler had feared? Was it already hiding inside Willa when Mama asked if we could come and they’d said no? No one really knows. I push away thoughts of my grandparents from the folds of my mind. I will contemplate how I feel about their decision on another day. Not this day. Not now.

  I lay out a down comforter on the rug near Willa’s bed and stretch out upon it. Her bedsheets haven’t been laundered since she recovered and remnants of the flu might be clinging to them and I’ve now a house to run. I can’t run any risk of catching this sickness. Despite the ample feathers sewn inside the comforter, the floor beneath me feels hard as stone.

  • • •

  Today, the first full day without Mama, it was announced that a Philadelphia doctor named Paul Lewis has created a vaccine for the flu. From the moment the killing influenza descended, doctors and scientists everywhere have been looking for a way to immunize people against it. In New York, another doctor has come up with a vaccine, too. And so has a doctor in Boston and a team of doctors at an army hospital in Washington, D.C. The newspaper doesn’t say if the Philadelphia vaccine works, only that a limited number of doses is available. The board of health sent ten thousand doses of Lewis’s vaccine to our local physicians. Papa took us to get vaccinated—me, Maggie, Willa, and Alex—making the case that we live in a funeral home and are daily exposed to the menace. Even though Willa already had the flu, Papa wanted her to get the injection as well in case she isn’t fully immunized. Some flu victims are having relapses.

  As we wait now in the doctor’s office, I hear one patient whisper to another that he’d heard this new vaccine won’t stop the flu; it just makes people think that it will.

  “What good is that?” says the other patient, clearly displeased.

  “It will make you think you are strong, so you will act strong,” the first patient replies. “People who are weak fall faster than people who aren’t.”

  I look over at Papa. He heard the two people talking, too. I can tell he did when our eyes meet.

  It does seem too much to hope for that an effective vaccine could be ready so quickly when Louis Pasteur, for example, spent nearly a year working on the rabies vaccine. But who of us in that waiting room wants to look hope in the eye and challenge it to prove itself worthy of trust? I can see that Papa does not wish to challenge it. He wants to embrace it, frail and untested as it might be. His gaze tells me he wants me to embrace it as well.

  The nurse calls our names.

  Papa stands first and then we all follow.

  CHAPTER 40

  Willa

  Today is the twenty-seventh day of October, and the flu is finally leaving.

  It must be, because yesterday all the churches were open again, and today so were all the schools.

  It had been a long time since Papa was at church, because he was at the army camp. People kept coming up to us to talk to Papa and give us hugs and sad looks. They asked if there was anything they could do and he said, “No, thank you,” and then they all made silly faces at Alex and asked if we were going to keep him.

  “We’re looking into what we need to do to let him stay with us,” Papa said, and they said what a wonderful thing that was to do. I don’t know what Papa meant exactly. Alex is an orphan. He doesn’t have any family but us. What’s so hard about keeping him?

  Some of the church ladies wanted to know if Papa can stay home now or if the army is going to make him go back. Papa said he asked for extended leave. I don’t know what that is or why he needs it to stay home. He only had one more week of training anyway. Plus, Maggie told me the newspaper says Germany will surrender. I do know what that means. No more war, and Papa can stay home.

  After church yesterday we came home and Evie made us dinner and Maggie helped and it was me and Papa who watched over Alex while they got it ready. It was strange watching Papa hold Alex and play with him. It was like Henry had never left. Everything Papa would have done for Henry he was doing now for Alex. And Alex liked it. It was strange but it was not strange. I wanted to tell Mama this and it made my throat hurt that I couldn’t. She’s been dead nine days. I looked at that china dancer. It would have felt really good to smash it against the wall.

  At first Papa said I didn’t have to go back to school right away if I didn’t feel well enough yet. Mrs. Sutcliff already said she’ll watch Alex while we girls are at school, so she could mind me, too. But I didn’t want to stay home another minute. I was tired of it. Three weeks of no school when it’s not summer is too long. I missed Flossie. I missed art class and reading time and lunch with my friends. Mrs. Sutcliff is nice, but she’s not Mama and she’s not Evie.

  So I went today. Maggie had to walk slow with me because I get tired fast. I was so glad to see Flossie. She got the flu, too, but not as bad as me. She got it from her brother. And I probably got it from her. I guess that means Mama got it from me. But I don’t want to think about that.

  Some schoolchildren got the flu like I did. Some got it like Mama did. Some didn’t get it at all. I was sad to hear that the German girl Gretchen Weiss got it and she died. I spent the whole day wondering who’s looking after her little white dog. When we walked home I asked Maggie if she thought we could ask that German family if they need someone to take that dog. If we are taking Alex, why can’t we take a dog, too? She acted like she hadn’t heard me. Or maybe she really didn’t. The girl who was her friend wasn’t in school today, only the other girl she likes, Ruby. The other one is Sally. She got the flu and died.

  When we got home, Maggie ran over to the Sutcliffs’ to get Alex and she stayed there for a while. Evie was already home and she was sad. Her favorite teacher, Mr. Galway, is dead. And a boy she liked named Gilbert. She didn’t say she liked him, but I can just tell she did.

  That was what it was like going back to school. You found out who is still alive after the flu and who isn’t. />
  CHAPTER 41

  • November 1918 •

  Maggie

  Yesterday started out mostly wonderful and ended mostly terrible.

  We thought the war was over.

  Somehow all the newspapers got word that Germany surrendered and everyone took to the streets to celebrate. And I mean everyone. The last time I saw so many people all at once was that Liberty Loan Parade that brought us the flu and nearly killed all of Philadelphia. And that was only two hundred thousand people. This time it was probably a million. There were whistles and bells and cannon fire and every scrap of white paper that could be found was torn into paper snowflakes and thrown into the air.

  “It’s over! It’s over!” everyone was shouting. Mr. and Mrs. Sutcliff came outside to stand with us on the street and I know Dora Sutcliff was thinking what I was thinking—that the fighting was over and Jamie had been spared.

  I’d been spending part of every afternoon with her since school started up again. She watches Alex for me and I go fetch him every day when classes are over. She’d been showing me Jamie’s photographs from when he was a child, the sketches of trains he drew, and telling me all the things he did when he was little. One time we’d gone into Charlie’s room and she did the same thing, but I think it hurt her too much to talk about Charlie the way she likes to talk with me about Jamie. It hurt me, too. So I know just how marvelous it was for Dora Sutcliff to hear that Germany had surrendered.

  That was what made the day mostly wonderful. The war was over and Jamie had survived it. Something good had finally happened.

  But then we heard that it wasn’t over. Not really and not yet. It was a news service that had reported the Germans signed an agreement, not the government. The news service was wrong. And that was what made the day end up terrible.

  I’ve been reading the newspapers each night after putting Alex to bed—Papa had bought him a proper crib—looking for news of Jamie’s regiment, the 315th Infantry, and I know the Americans have been marching closer and closer to Germany and that the Huns can’t stop them. The Americans are near Verdun. I looked at the map in Evie’s atlas. Verdun is a city in France that is nearly all the way to Germany. That’s how close the Americans are getting. And while the paper made it seem like that was good news, Papa said just before a war ends, the fighting is at its most awful. The Germans are putting bombs in churches along the way so that when the Allied soldiers step inside to thank God for getting them so far, they’ll be blown to bits.

  When I thought the war was over, I was so happy to imagine that Jamie would not have to step inside any church on the road to Germany. He could just turn around now and head back the way he’d come. Naturally when we heard that the news was not true, I couldn’t stop myself from picturing him kneeling in prayer after a long day’s march and being ripped apart as the church he was in exploded.

  So now we are back to waiting and hoping.

  It’s been three weeks since Mama and Uncle Fred died. I ache for Mama’s voice and her touch and just the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. Alex and I have moved into the room where she died. It’s a bigger room for us and Papa wants to sleep in Uncle Fred’s old room. When Alex is a little bigger he can share Willa’s room with her—she can’t wait—and then when he’s older still, he can have my old attic room on the third floor if he wants it.

  Mama’s room will be my room now. I like having it. The bed is new and all the linens, but her things are still in her wardrobe and dressing table. And they will stay there. I miss her so very much, even though now that she is gone, I realize she was a different person after we moved here. It was like she had been keeping an enormous secret from all of us. Not a terrible secret, but not a wonderful one, either. I’m sure that secret was the reason she wanted to be in the embalming room. Papa had said Mama liked to do the hair and cosmetics on the deceased to get her mind off things, but I don’t think that was what it was. I think she was putting her mind on something. She was there to think about her secret, not escape from thinking. Even now I can’t explain what I mean. All I know for sure is, Mama was drawn to that room. And I find myself likewise drawn. I’m not sure I will ever know why she was, but it’s enough for me now that she was. We had that in common, and she alone understood why I wanted to be in there. In time, if the flu hadn’t taken her, Mama might have told me her secret. I have imagined that some future day she would have, and it’s made me a little sad because I know I could never have told her mine.

  I don’t know if the vaccine worked or if the flu just ran out of gas, but the funeral parlor isn’t something out of a nightmare anymore. Papa still gets bodies brought to him—and still too many for one person to take care of properly—but it’s not like it was. He has caskets again. They aren’t fancy, but they are here. And he doesn’t have to worry that they will be stolen off the back stoop. The streetcars are running again, the cinema is open, the wreaths are coming off doors.

  Evie says it’s like we are getting back our humanity.

  That’s not how I would describe it. You don’t get back what a thief stole from you unless he gives it back. Mama, Uncle Fred, Charlie, Mrs. Arnold, Sally, and so many others—they are all still gone. And they will stay gone. And who knows now when the war will be over and if Jamie will come home? I’d rather have the people taken from me returned than our humanity.

  Evie says I am wrong about that. She says the flu wanted to make barbarians of us, to have us think life is not precious and the dead are not worthy of our kindest care. Our humanity is what made what happened to us so terrible. Without it, nothing matters. Nothing is awful. But nothing is amazing, either.

  The one lovely thing about our days is Alex. He is happy and chubby and is turning over now, all on his own. Everyone loves to hold him and play with him and feed him, even Papa. The day after we buried Mama I told Papa that it was her wish that we keep Alex and make him part of our family. No one had claimed him, I’d reminded him, and I knew no one would. He said he knew that had been Mama’s wish and he was going to go to the authorities to make it official but that he wanted me to remember Alex isn’t Henry.

  “Of course he’s not,” I’d said. I didn’t need to be reminded of that.

  Tomorrow I am going to ask Ruby if she wants to come over to the Sutcliffs’ after school with me to get Alex. Ruby seems kind of lost without Sally. They had been playmates since they were three years old. Ruby sits next to me in class now and eats her lunch by me and is never more than an arm’s reach away. I’m not happy that Sally died, but I must confess it is nice to have a close friend again.

  I might tell Ruby that I write letters to Jamie Sutcliff and that I think about him all the time. That’s the kind of thing you can tell a good friend. She won’t say, “He’s too old for you.” She will look at his picture—Dora Sutcliff gave me one—and say how very handsome he is. Or she might not say anything at all, which would be all right, too.

  Grandma Adler wrote us girls a letter, begging us to forgive her and telling us she misses us so much and that she wants us all to come for Christmas.

  I know for a fact that Papa won’t take us there. Not this year anyway. I don’t think the return of your humanity means you forget what broke your heart.

  CHAPTER 42

  Evelyn

  This time it’s true. The war has ended, three days after that first report threw us all into a whirl. At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of this eleventh month, the armistice was signed. The cessation of hostilities was declared. The Allied Forces are victorious, and Germany has been defeated.

  The bells began to peal before dawn. The cover of night still blanketed the city when the news came, official this time. The clanging was joined by factory whistles and the sharp crack of small arms and the banging of pots and pans and any other noisemaker a person could fashion. In our pajamas and nightshirts we all took to confetti-strewn streets to witness the heralding of the end of blood
shed and the beginning of peace over all the earth.

  The Great War is finished.

  When the day finally broke a few hours later, throngs of people began to march toward Independence Hall in commemoration. School was canceled; work was canceled. Everything but the celebration of life itself was canceled.

  Papa asked if we girls wanted to join the marchers. He had three bodies waiting to be cared for—only three now—but he would take us if we wanted.

  Willa didn’t want to. Having been woken like the rest of Philadelphia at three a.m., she was tired and wanted to stay home—that is, unless Flossie came over and said she was going. Then she’d go. Maggie wanted to take Alex over to the Sutcliffs’ and celebrate the day there. I knew Papa would rather stay home and mark the day quietly with work. He had come home in uniform poised to join the fight in this war that had just ended, and instead he’d been made a widower. He was not in the mood to revel and so I told him I was fine with staying home and watching the people stroll by from the window.

  I had no burning desire to go with the crowd. I was still getting used to the changes we’d all had to make and how different things were at school. Gilbert is gone. He died the same day Willa started to get better. One of the other boys at school, who was his closest friend, told me this. I’ve had to push away my sorrow at losing him. I don’t know what he was to me. Just a friend? Was that all he was? I feel like in time he could have been more to me, but I’m not sure, and now I will never know. I only know my heart aches for him in a wholly different way than it does for Mama, or even Uncle Fred or Charlie Sutcliff. The part of me that knew and liked Gilbert feels scraped raw.