CHAPTER 34
Maggie
It’s the fourth day since Mama came down with the flu. Today she will start to feel better. This is the day when Willa woke up with cool skin and clear eyes. Today will be different. I already feel like it will be.
I’ve been sleeping in the sitting room with Baby Alex to avoid the stairs and the second floor. Mama’s bedroom is right above me and I heard her coughing all through the hours of the night.
But last night was still only the third full day. Today is the fourth day and today will be different.
Uncle Fred heard Mama last night, too.
I heard him go up to her room twice while we were all trying to sleep. The second time he said aloud to the whole house as he climbed the stairs that we girls and Mama should have been allowed to go to Quakertown when she asked. Then early this morning, when the sun was just barely up, I heard him on the telephone to Fort Meade. He said they must let Papa come home. It’s an emergency.
It doesn’t feel like an emergency. It just feels like the fourth day. And it’s quiet now. Mama is asleep. Evie, too, I hope.
Baby Alex slept through it all, and now he’s sucking on a bottle and staring up at me.
Willa started calling him Alex, short for Alexander. Alexander suits him. I think Mama will like that name. She and Papa had given it to Henry for a middle name, so she must’ve liked it enough for that. Alex needed a name. We couldn’t just keep calling him “the baby,” as though he were a thing like the house or the war or the flu. So that’s what it will be.
I’d written Jamie yesterday and told him about the baby, but we hadn’t settled on Alex yet. I told him the same story I told everyone else. Writing it down made it seem more like the truth than how I’d really found Alex. As I wrote down the words that the baby was alone in the house except for his dead mother, I felt as though my story of how it happened was really how it happened. He was alone. I couldn’t find the house a second time. And no one has called the police about him. I also wrote that Willa had the flu but was much better, and that Mama had it now but would certainly start feeling better very soon. I didn’t tell him Charlie was sick with it now. I figured that was something Mrs. Sutcliff was supposed to tell him. Or not tell him.
I’m so very sorry Charlie is ill, but I’m not sorry Dora Sutcliff couldn’t take Alex when Mama came down with the sickness. Alex doesn’t know her. She’s a stranger to him. It’s us who feel like family to him now.
Uncle Fred seems to have forgotten that three days ago he said that Alex had to go. Or maybe when he found out Charlie Sutcliff had the flu he realized our house is as safe as anywhere at the moment. I don’t care what his reason is for not demanding to know why Alex is still here. If Evie tries again to send Alex away, I’m going to take him and board the first train to Quakertown. He and I can wait out the flu in the curing barn among the leafy tobacco dresses. I dare anyone to send us back here if it comes to that.
Alex has just made a little cooing sound, and now he’s smiling at me, breaking the seal he has on the nipple of the bottle. A bit of milk dribbles down his chin. It’s like he knows I am thinking of him.
“You’re mine,” I whisper to him, and he smiles wider as I kiss his forehead. I let my mind pretend that I am eighteen, not thirteen, and I’m married to someone kind and brave like Jamie Sutcliff and Alex is our child. We live in a big house in the country with lots of apple trees. And there is no war and no flu.
Willa’s voice above slices into my imaginings. She is calling out for Evie to come to take her to the toilet. I can do that for Evie. Alex is fed and has a clean diaper, and Evie’s been up all night with Mama. I don’t think Willa is in danger of giving the flu to anyone anymore, but she still can’t walk more than a few paces without help.
I make a cozy place for Alex on a blanket by the hearth, surrounding him with toys and the fronts of picture books that I set up against the side of the bureau drawer I’ve been using for his crib. He likes all the pictures on the book covers. He kicks his legs and tries to punch the pictures with his little fists. He thinks they are real and that if he just tries hard enough he can pluck them off.
At the second-floor landing, I see that Evie has just emerged from Mama’s room. The door is partially open and her hand is still on the knob. Evie pulls down her mask. She looks terrible.
“What are you doing up here?” she says.
“I can help Willa to the toilet. I’m sure it’s fine now if I go in. You can go back to bed if you want.”
Evie opens her mouth to answer me, and I bet she’s going to send me back downstairs, but it’s Mama’s voice that fills the little stretch of silence between my words and Evie’s.
“Maggie.” I know it’s Mama’s voice, but it sounds so strange. Like an old woman’s. Like a scary witch’s.
Evie turns toward the sound, and her eyes fill with tears.
I don’t know that voice and I take a step away from the door. Evie lays her hand on my arm as if to stop me from running away.
“Maggie,” Mama says again, in a whispery growl.
I look up at Evie.
“Just stay by the entrance,” she says.
And then Evie crosses the hall to Willa’s room.
I take a step toward Mama’s door and then another one. I push it open, and as my eyes adjust to the dimness, I see that Mama is propped up with pillows. Her hair is slick with sweat, and she’s as pale as Alex’s dead mother. Her skin is splotched with dark spots that look like berry stains. I cannot take another step.
She turns her head toward me and raises a hand. “Don’t come any closer, Maggie.” Mama’s voice floats across the room to me like fireplace smoke. I don’t think she realizes I am frozen where I stand by the sight of her. Something heavy is swelling inside me, ballooning like bread dough. It feels like fear, and yet it’s bigger than fear.
