CHAPTER 44
•January 1919•
Maggie
Finally, finally, I’ve a new letter from Jamie. It’s been so long since the last one, so very long. I’d hoped Jamie might write home right after the armistice or after he got the notice about Charlie, but it wasn’t until nearly Christmas that he finally wrote to his parents. Dora Sutcliff showed me that letter. It was short. Jamie had gotten word that Charlie had died and he was so very sorry and he wished he could have been there when his brother was laid to rest.
He didn’t say much of anything else in that letter. Not how he was. Not where he had been when the Germans surrendered. Not why he hadn’t written anybody in weeks and weeks. Not even when he was coming home. He didn’t seem like he was himself. It was like someone else had written that letter. And he didn’t write one to me.
“You’re still writing to him, aren’t you?” Mrs. Sutcliff had said, when she took the letter from me after I’d finished reading it. I told her I was.
I had in fact gone back home and written him that very day. I had already written him about what Philadelphia was like when the war ended—the parades, the noise, the celebrations. And that I missed mymother but that I had a good friend in Ruby now. That time, though, I decided to write that I’m doing the hair in the embalming room now that the flu is gone, just like Mama had done. I didn’t know if he would find that bizarre. I was hoping he wouldn’t. Ruby thinks it’s bizarre. I also told him how much Alex likes being over at Jamie’s house when we’re all in school and that his mama, “Auntie Dora,” as she calls herself, spoils him. I wrote that Alex is going to be our permanent foster child when all the papers come through and after the city people make sure sufficient time has gone by for any of Alex’s extended family to inquire about him.
I’d sent it off the next afternoon, and I’d written him twice more since.
But today is the first time I’ve received a letter in return since just before the Liberty Loan Parade back in September.
I come inside from having spent the afternoon at Ruby’s and there it is on the table inside the front door with the rest of the day’s mail. I can’t get my mittens off fast enough. I tear the envelope open and I stand there reading the letter in the foyer with my boots dripping melted snow all over the rug.
Jamie’s letter to me fits on just one side of the thin piece of paper:
Dear Maggie:
I am very grateful for what you have done for my family even in the midst of your own loss. Mother has written to me about how much she loves caring for your orphan child during the day. Thank you, too, for the special attention you gave Charlie, before he died and afterward. I still can’t believe he is gone. I fear I’ll be coming home in the spring to a different world. I wonder if it will even seem like home.
I wish the war had never come, but I am grateful for all your letters.
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Jamie Sutcliff
When I finish reading, my eyes travel back to the line “I wonder if it will even seem like home.”
I’m glad he is grateful for all my letters, but that line pokes at me. And the one before it, too. The one about coming home to a different world, which somehow makes it sound like it’s not a good thing. Different doesn’t have to mean things can’t be made good again, does it?
Besides. Home isn’t a place where everything stays the same; it’s a place where you are safe and loved despite nothing staying the same. Change always happens. Always. Surely Jamie knows that.
We adjust to it. Somehow we figure out a way. We straighten what we can or learn how to like something a little crooked. That’s how it is. Something breaks, you fix it as best you can. There’s always a way to make something better, even if it means sweeping up the broken pieces and starting all over. That’s how we keep moving, keep breathing, keep opening our eyes every morning, even when the only thing we know for sure is that we’re still alive.
All these thoughts are tumbling around in my head as I hold Jamie’s letter. I’m a second away from writing him back this very moment when I realize these thoughts have shaken loose something I haven’t wanted to think about since the day I found Alex. I suddenly know what I must do before I can write those words to Jamie and know beyond all doubt they are true.
I look at the grandfather clock ticking away the minutes. Alex is asleep for his nap. It’s a Saturday and Willa is at Flossie’s house. Evie is making bread even though it’s her birthday today. She’s sixteen now, and Dora Sutcliff is having us all over for cake later. Papa is at a meeting with other businessmen. I poke my head into the kitchen where Evie is, kneading a mound of dough. She looks up at me.
“Can you listen for Alex? I need to run over to Ruby’s for a little bit,” I say. “It’s for school. I won’t be long.”
“I suppose,” she says, and goes right back to her task.
I turn from her and then feel in my coat pocket for streetcar fare. I have enough. I go back outside. I pull my scarf tight around my neckand lower face and hurry to the streetcar stop down the block. Some minutes later I am on South Street, standing by the barbershop with the green awning. Even though it is icy cold and snow threatens, the streets and alleys are bustling with people. Old men, teenage boys, mothers, children in tattered wool coats. People are shopping and talking and yelling and selling. The scene is very different from how it had been on that day in October when Mama and I walked all the way down here. I turn up the street where I had seen the cat, and to the tumbledown row house that Mama left me outside of to wait for her. I know which alley to turn down after that. I know which building to stop in front of. Which window to look in.
I stand in front of Alex’s old home, silently challenging anyone inside that front room window to see me, talk to me, ask me what I am doing there.
But no one does. The broken window has been replaced. New curtains are pushed to the sides. A tall woman with jet-black curls caught up in a ribbon is just on the other side of the new glass. She is standing over a little boy about seven and cutting his hair with long scissors. A man sits in a chair behind them, looking at a newspaper.
The woman looks up at me, and our eyes meet for just a second. Then she looks back down at the child. She doesn’t care who I am.
This woman and the man and the boy are new to the building.
