As Bright as Heaven Page 3

  Maggie tugs on Thomas’s sleeve. “A German what?” she asks softly.

  “Sympathizer. It’s someone who sides with Germany about the war,” Thomas says, but Fred apparently doesn’t think that is enough of an answer.

  “It’s someone who is in league with the enemy!” Fred announces, with a triumphant nod.

  I wonder if Fred is aware my grandparents emigrated from Germany. Would he send us back to Quakertown if he knew? I can still hear in my memory my grandmother singing “Der Mond ist aufgegangen” to me on the nights I couldn’t sleep.

  Fred leads us into the kitchen. It is a colorless albeit functional room with hot and cold taps above a white ceramic sink and an icebox twice the size of what I had in Quakertown. A narrow pine table with four ladder-back chairs with woven seats sits in the center of the room on a tiled floor of black and white squares. Against the far wall is a shining Universal cookstove all piped for gas. All one has to do is light a match and turn a knob. Quite a change from the woodstove I’d always cooked on before.

  “The stove is new,” Fred says. “Mrs. Landry has put a pot of soup on for our dinner.” He nods toward the appliance, where something bubbles on one of the burners.

  I’d failed to consider that Uncle Fred would have a housekeeper. I haven’t even met Mrs. Landry yet, and I already want her gone. I will never be comfortable with another woman doing for me and my family what I am perfectly capable of doing myself. But I promised Thomas that I wouldn’t right away ask Fred to change anything about the way he lives.

  “He’s been alone for a long time,” Thomas had said. “He’s going to be set in his ways.”

  But who of us isn’t set in his ways? I am also set in my ways. Everyone is. I bite my tongue so I won’t speak when next Fred shows us the pantry, a mishmash of cans and jars and sacks and containers. A spider scuttles across the pantry floor, and Fred brings his booted foot down gently on top of it.

  “Now, then,” Fred says, and he sweeps his gaze over the girls. “Past the kitchen here and down that hallway is the business. That’s just for me and your papa. You won’t be needing to go into that part of the house.”

  I open my mouth to protest, and Thomas touches my arm. “Pauline and I would like the girls to see how the rooms are laid out so they know what they’re like. They’ll be curious otherwise. And if there’s ever a fire and they can’t get to the front door, I want them to know how to get to the side door.”

  Fred needs to contemplate this for a moment. And then it seems to suddenly occur to him that his favorite nephew is right. “Well. That makes sense. And now that I think on it, it’s all right if they are in the viewing room when it’s not being used. But it’s not a playroom. None of these rooms are.”

  Maggie looks up at me and rolls her eyes. I put a finger to my lips.

  Fred takes us down a hallway that leads from the kitchen to the rest of the left side of the house—formerly the cook’s and maids’ quarters from the days of the banker and his family. The first door on the left opens to a viewing parlor. It’s carpeted and wallpapered in hushed shades of wine and evergreen. Cushioned chairs line the walls, but I can easily picture them in rows facing the front window, where a treatment of lace and heavy brocade softens the light that spills on an open space just the right size for a coffin.

  “I meet with the families in here,” Fred says. “And if folks can’t have the funeral or viewing in their home, they have it here. You older girls might be able to help with flowers and chairs and such on those days,” he says to Evie and Maggie. “But the little one will need to stay in the other part of the house when there are people in here.”

  Fred looks to Willa with grandfatherly concern when he says this. I assure him she will cause him no trouble. Willa tosses me a look that tells me she’s not “the little one.” Again I put a finger to my lips.

  The next door on the same side of the hallway opens to a room of caskets of different sizes and woods. The sight of them—the first visible evidence of what is done inside this house—makes me shudder a bit.

  “Families do the choosing in there,” Fred says, stopping just at the doorway.

  “Are those for sleeping?” Willa asks.

  “They aren’t beds, Willa,” Maggie answers, though the question was directed to Fred.

  “Now, you don’t want to go climbing in those, little one. You could get hurt,” Fred replies solemnly. “Those are caskets and the lids are very heavy.”

  “I’ll explain it to her later,” Thomas says.

  Fred nods and we move on. Just before the mudroom and the side entrance is the third door in the hallway, this one on the right side. It’s closed nearly all the way, but not quite. Through the crack, I can see a body lies on a table of some kind. I can see the stocking-covered ball of a woman’s heel and the piped edge of a skirt. A peculiar odor is seeping out from the opening between door and frame.

  “Now, this room is off-limits except to your papa and me. And Mrs. Brewster. This is the embalming room, and there are chemicals and such that aren’t safe for you girls to be around.” Fred says this in what I’m sure he imagines is a tone of paternal caution, but I can tell he is serious. I am frustrated by that seriousness, for this is the room that interests me most. It’s not like the others.

  I know only in part what Thomas will be doing inside it. We talked about the embalming room in the days before we came here. Thomas told me he’d visited his uncle a few times when he was younger, long before we married, and that he’d been rather fascinated by Fred’s work with the dead, as perhaps only a boy could be. He hadn’t had to explain in detail what he meant. I’d noticed this about my nephews as I watched them grow up. The carcass of a possum or raccoon in the road, for example, was a magnet for their attention as it decayed or was picked apart by birds. Their sisters and my girls, by comparison, would walk past with their eyes scrunched shut, noses covered. But I’d gathered from watching the nephews—not just with animals killed in the road but with a deer in someone’s side yard being butchered, or a hooked fish on a line gasping for one last breath—that most boys aren’t afraid to look at what death does.

  I hadn’t had time to ponder if my sweet Henry would have been a boy like this, heartily curious about what happens to the body when life ends. But I’d thought about it then, when I asked Thomas how he would feel about working on cadavers that had been grotesquely mangled in some way. He’d answered that he’d learn to bear it because it was a small price to pay to give us the kind of life that would now be ours. I’d wondered then if Henry would have wanted to poke at the dead raccoons and possums and peek at the little organs laid bare by tractor tires. Would he have tried to scare his sisters with them, as his boy cousins liked to do? Would he have kept coming back to the carcass as it swelled and then withered into an unrecognizable lump in the road? It surprised me to realize in that moment that I didn’t mind if Henry would have been a boy like most boys. Or that he would have been Thomas’s assistant when he grew up and then heir to the funeral home just like his father had been. Someone must be able to gaze on the breadth of what makes us mortal, yes? Someone has to.

  Thomas had taken my silence at his answer as worry that the girls and I might somehow be exposed to those terrible cases that he would learn to bear. “You and the girls won’t ever have to know what I’ve seen or had to do. I won’t bring any part of the work into the rest of the house. I promise you that, Polly.”

  “All right,” I’d said absently, still ruminating on thoughts of Henry and the man he might have been.

  “Good,” Thomas had said. “I don’t want you or the girls to be afraid of anything in the house where we will be living. Especially the girls. I’ll find a way to make sure they feel comfortable with what I’ll be doing.”

  And then our conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door and another farewell that needed to be received and given.

  Fred
is about to say something else about the embalming room when the door suddenly opens all the way, startling us. An older woman emerges from the room, holding a basket of shears and combs and curling rods. Her expression at seeing us is as surprised as ours surely are. Behind her is the dead woman on the table, now fully visible in a midnight blue gown, as if dressed for a formal engagement. The deceased’s face, the half that we can see, looks serene but slack. Her brown-gray hair has been brushed and styled and the locks gathered with hairpins. Her hands are folded across her bosom, one hand over the other. Her left hand is raised a bit like she wants to alert Mrs. Brewster to a forgotten detail. The wrist looks stiff and unyielding.

  I take all this in even before I hear Maggie and Evie suck in their breath in surprise. Willa asks me what that other lady is doing in there.

  “Mrs. Brewster!” Fred exclaims. “You were to come this afternoon.”

  “I didn’t know you were back already,” the woman explains, clearly flustered. “I decided to come now, as I’ve company coming for supper tonight.”

  Fred pushes past Mrs. Brewster to close the door behind her, but Thomas stops him with a gentle hand.

  “I don’t mind if the girls see,” Thomas says. “Just here from the threshold. Just this once. I want them to know they don’t need to be afraid of what’s in this room.”

  “They can’t be allowed in there!”

  “Of course. I just want them to see what’s inside.”

  Uncle Fred blinks at Thomas, apparently wondering how that is a good idea. Mrs. Brewster has the same dumbfounded look on her face. Thomas uses those seconds of stunned silence to open the door fully.

  “You see?” Thomas says to the girls. “Nothing in here to be afraid of. It’s just like I told you.”

  We peer into the room as Uncle Fred pulls Mrs. Brewster aside and mutters that he specifically told her not to come until after three and that he’s tired of her deciding at the last minute to come at a time he isn’t expecting her.

  My girls saw Henry’s body after he died, but, when everyone came to pay their respects, he’d been wrapped up cozy in the blanket I’d made for him. He’d looked as though he were only sleeping. This woman is utterly different. She lies like a mannequin on a strange kind of table. Around her are metal cabinets and carts bearing odd items. On the walls are fixtures and devices on hooks and poles. None of it is familiar, nor can I imagine what any of it is for. The woman doesn’t look scary, but she doesn’t look right, either. I’m not put off by her. My spectral companion for the last six months hovers near me, quiet and accommodating. I want to go inside that room, and I’m annoyed that Fred doesn’t want the girls or me anywhere near it. And I wished I’d told Thomas, when we were talking about what he’d be doing in this room, that he didn’t have to worry about me being afraid in the least. I wasn’t. I’m not.

  My daughters say nothing as we stand there, each silently contemplating in her own way the idea that the woman on the table is no longer living.

  Mrs. Brewster did a fair job with the hair and cosmetics, but even from a bit of a distance, I can see that I could have done better on both. As Thomas closes the door with a gentle admonition that the girls obey Uncle Fred’s rule regarding this room, it occurs to me that if I were the one doing the hair and cosmetics on the bodies, Uncle Fred wouldn’t have to pay the errant Mrs. Brewster to do it. That task would get me into that room.

  We head back into the main part of the house, to the staircase and our bedrooms. Upstairs, we find new, sturdy four-poster beds and bureaus and wardrobes of polished but plain cherrywood awaiting us. It is obvious that Fred values quality; he’d deemed it necessary that we have new bedroom furniture, and clearly he was willing to spend the money. But the furniture is unadorned, functional rather than decorative. I get the distinct impression that Fred isn’t a miser with his money, but he’s not a spendthrift, either.

  If I can do for free what troublesome Mrs. Brewster is doing for a fee, and do it better than her, Uncle Fred will win on both counts. All I need to do is tell Thomas that I want to do the hairstyling and cosmetics. I’d be good at it, I’d like to do it, and it would save him and Fred the expense of hiring someone to perform those tasks. And I’ll do the work when it is supposed to be done rather than when the timing suits me. Fred surely already trusts Thomas’s judgment. It’s the reason we are here. When Thomas makes this recommendation, it will seem like a fine idea from his favorite nephew and newly appointed heir.

  Mrs. Landry, the housekeeper, I will suffer to keep a little while longer if I must, but there again I know I have frugality on my side. One way or another, both Mrs. Brewster and Mrs. Landry will be thanked and paid and sent on their way.

  This is my home now. And there are things I need to do.

  CHAPTER 6

  Maggie

  I am standing in my new room, looking at the new furniture, when I hear the heavy footfalls of boots on the stairs and the clunky sound of something big being carried up them. We’ve been inside the house since we arrived, and I still feel like I’m dreaming, that this is someone else’s home, and I am watching someone else’s life play out upon a stage. I turn from the unfamiliar bedstead that glistens with fresh varnish to face the open doorway. I see my trunk is being hauled up the narrow stairs. Uncle Fred said the boy from the bookkeeper’s across the street was coming at noon to take up our belongings, but instead of a boy, I see a young man. He is Evie’s age, or perhaps a little older.

  “This one yours?” he says, half out of breath. He is blond, gray-eyed, and a bit chubby, and beads of sweat sparkle on his brow. He has a nice smile.

  I nod toward the trunk he’s got with him. I had my choice of rooming with Willa or with Evie, but I asked if I could have my own place on the third floor. Uncle Fred apparently had thought that was an odd idea, but Mama had come to my rescue and said if she were me, she’d want to have her own little space, too. She told me I could take an attic room if Fred could be persuaded to agree, which he did. Mine is a wide, long room with a pitched ceiling and two dormer windows. Opposite my room and on either side of the little landing at the top of the attic stairs are two long, skinny spaces with little doors that look like they were built for elves. One of the spaces is filled with box after box of funeral records. The other is crammed with crates and steamer trunks and extra dining room chairs. But the rest of the attic floor is all mine.

  The man-boy struggles on the landing with the trunk despite his size and strength. I help him finagle the trunk through the narrow doorway.

  “Thanks,” he says as we maneuver the trunk inside and by the bed. “You want to empty it now? I was told to bring it back down to the carriage house when you’re done with it. Your mother and sisters are unpacking theirs.”

  “I guess.” I reach down to unlatch the closures.

  “I’m Charlie,” he says. “Charlie Sutcliff. I live across the street. But I work for Fred Bright.”

  There is something odd about the way he tells me who he is. His words and voice and even his expression make him seem like he’s Willa’s age, but his body is one that’s much older.

  “My name’s Maggie,” I reply.

  “I know. I remembered. Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa. And Mrs. Bright and Mr. Bright. But you call Evelyn Evie.”

  I give him a sideways glance as I open the trunk and start to pull out my things. I toss my clothes and quilt and a doll that was my mother’s onto the bed. Then I grab the books and shoes and my hatboxes of ribbons and half-finished needlepoint projects and place them on the floor. Charlie helps me with some of these. Lastly, I pull out the painting of a sailing ship on a green-blue sea that was Grandad’s and that he gave me when we were getting ready to move because he knew I’d always liked it. The ship is pointed toward a faraway horizon, and little waves are curling up its sides like bits of lace.

  “I like that ship!” Charlie says, as if he were my eight-year-old c
ousin Liam back home in Quakertown.

  “I do, too.”

  “Have you been to Hog Island? It’s full of ships being built, not hogs. Navy ships. Big ones. They’re for the war. They’re huge. Have you been there? To Hog Island?”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about. “We just got here today.”

  “You should go. Jamie takes me there sometimes. To see the ships. Jamie likes trains better than ships, but he takes me there sometimes because I like ships.”

  “Who’s Jamie?”

  “He’s my brother. He likes trains. But they don’t have trains for war. Only ships. He’s not going to the navy. He doesn’t like ships. He’s going to the army. But not until April. In April, he’ll go.”

  “Jamie is older than you?”

  Charlie nods. “I’m sixteen. Jamie had a birthday. He’s twenty-one now. He counts with my father in the office. But in April, he’ll go to the army.”

  “He counts?”

  “You know. One. Two. Three. They count.”

  “He’s a bookkeeper like your dad?”

  “Sure.”

  The entire time Charlie is talking to me, he’s picking up each one of my books and studying their spines. It’s like he’s not reading the spines, but rather just admiring the gold and silver and ebony lettering. I don’t have near the books that Evie has, but I have some. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and the Just So Stories, and The Wind in the Willows, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and a few others.

  “You like to read?” I ask.

  Charlie puts down the book he’s looking at. It’s Five Children and It by E. Nesbit. It’s one of my favorites. It’s about these children who find a sand fairy who grants them a wish a day. You’d think that would be wonderful, right? But when those children get what they truly want every day, trouble starts to pop up all over the place.

  “You can borrow that one if you want,” I tell him. “It’s a good book.”

  Charlie shakes his head. “I’m not good at reading. I don’t do the counting good, either. I work for Fred.”