Mrs. Arnold’s driver pulls up in front of Bright Funeral Home as the sun is setting. She tells me she’ll be by in the morning after breakfast and that this time she wants to talk to Mama about our being able to take care of the child until other family members can be found.
She drops me off and I go inside. Mrs. Sutcliff is sitting in our kitchen with a cotton mask over her nose and mouth and the baby in her arms. I quickly learn she stopped by to see if I’d heard anything new from Jamie in the last few days and was told about our finding the child. Mrs. Sutcliff then offered to run to the store for Evie to get the things we needed to care for him. New baby bottles are now boiling on the stove, and Evie is minding them with a pair of metal tongs.
“Did you find the place?” Evie asks, but I’m sure she already knows we didn’t.
I shake my head.
“Then it’s a miracle you were there at just the right time, Maggie,” Mrs. Sutcliff says. “Just think what could have happened if you hadn’t come across him. What a sweet little boy he is. Such a darling, sweet little boy.” Tears make her eyelids turn silver.
“Mrs. Arnold wants to try again tomorrow,” I say. “She also wants to talk to Mama about us keeping him.”
“Keeping him?” Evie says. “You mean for now.”
“Maybe for always. She says there are already too many orphans.”
“I heard that, too,” Dora Sutcliff says. “The city is begging people to take them. They can’t find enough families.”
Evie withdraws one of the bottles and sets it down on a dish towel laid out on the countertop next to the stove. “But this baby might not be an orphan. He might have other family.”
“But what if he doesn’t?” I reply.
“Or what if it’s just that no one can find them?” Evie looks up from the towel.
“Then for heaven’s sake you should take him in,” Mrs. Sutcliff says.“I would if I didn’t have Charlie to look after.” She stands and hands the baby to me. “I need to go home and get supper going. And Charlie will be wondering what is taking me so long.”
“We miss having Charlie over,” I say as I position the baby comfortably in my arms. I do miss Charlie. Seeing his mother reminds me how much. Charlie was always in a good mood, always listened to anything I had to say, was forever willing to try my ideas for how to teach him things. And he would talk about Jamie without me having to ask about him. He would begin sentences with “One time, Jamie... ,” and then he’d finish with telling me how Jamie once caught a fish as big as a railroad tie or how Jamie once got a black eye playing stickball or about the time Jamie took Charlie to the circus and they sat so close to the front of the ring that they could nearly reach out and touch the elephants.
“Yes, he misses coming here. But he’s not as careful as he should be, you know. And he seems to get sick more often than most children. I just can’t take the chance with what’s beyond that kitchen door. Listen, if you girls need anything else for the baby, you come tell me. And if your mother needs anything for Willa...”
She doesn’t finish her sentence.
“We’ll be fine, but thank you,” Evie says. “And thank you for going up to the store for me.”
“Of course.” Dora Sutcliff caresses the baby’s cheek with a finger like he’s her own child. “So, you’ll let me know if you hear from Jamie, then?” she says to me, her brow wrinkled a bit.
Jamie told me in one of his letters this past summer that sometimes it’s hard for him to find a suitable place to write. And sometimes there isn’t anything to say. He can’t tell me where he’s fighting or where his unit is headed or what they must do when they get there. I have been left to imagine what he’s doing and seeing. And what it’s like to be chased by the enemy and running from mortar shells and yellow gas that can kill you if you breathe too much of it.
It occurs to me that finding the baby is already filling an emptyspot inside where my concern for Jamie’s safety and my need to hear from him had been widening like a great hole in the ground.
“Seems like such a long time since either of us has received a letter,” Mrs. Sutcliff continues, more to herself than me.
“If I get one, I’ll bring it over,” I say.
Mrs. Sutcliff bids us good-bye and sees herself out. The baby coos in my arms.
Evie turns to the remaining bottles, which are knocking together in the furiously boiling water. She removes them one by one as I stand there holding the child in the failing light of day.
