Eastland Page 9

  hooligans had turned that house upside down.” She shook her

  head and wailed, swiping at her runny eyes and nose with both

  sleeves now. “What has this world come to when we rob the

  dead?” She sank onto the sofa with a heavy plop.

  Mama got up from her Singer and sat beside her. “There,

  there, now, Mattie. We must stay strong.” I caught Mama’s eye. “May I?” I mouthed, nodding toward the door.

  Mama shooed me away.

  I slipped outside to see for myself what was going on. Three doors down, neighbors had gathered in front of the

  VandeKipp home. Officer Kennelly emerged from within the

  house at the very moment a paddy wagon pulled up to the curb.

  The assembly erupted in questions and jeers. Kennelly held up

  his arms.

  “Easy now. We’ve got the situation under control.” “Control?” argued Mr. Czarnek, who lived across the street.

  “You call this control?”

  “Their landlady is checking now,” said Kennelly. “She’ll let us

  know if any valuables were taken.”

  “And then what?” countered Mrs. Ivanko. “They’re all dead.

  Even if you find the thieves, who you gonna return the belongings to?”

  “Right!” Mr. Czarnek retorted. “Who?”

  “Who?” the crowd echoed.

  Their “who’s” soon turned into an angry chant. Kennelly

  signaled to the driver of the paddy wagon. Six more policemen

  piled out the back door, every one of them brandishing a billy

  club. The cops encircled my neighbors, smacking their clubs

  against their opened palms. My neighbors pressed outward

  toward the cops, still chanting.

  I was inching back toward my front door, when a whistle

  blew.

  “Stop! Please!” Kennelly held his whistle to his lips as the

  chants fell away. “We’re all on the same side here. And we’re all

  justifiably angry at people who could take advantage at a time

  like this. We’re grieving for the VandeKipps. Even the police.”

  Kennelly looked at his fellow cops. They nodded and lowered

  their clubs. “This neighborhood, why, the entire city of Chicago,

  has been devastated. We don’t want to add to that heartbreak,

  do we?” Heads shook. “Good. Then let us finish our investigation. You good people go home. Be with your loved ones.” People muttered and shook their heads as one by one

  they drifted away. The six cops quietly disappeared into the

  VandeKipp home. Kennelly stood alone on the porch for a moment, watching, and then turned and went back inside. I wandered along the deserted sidewalk wondering what had

  happened. Neighbors I’d known my whole life had gone berserk.

  Friendly coppers had threatened violence. Burglars had stolen

  from the dead. And what about the Miller Brothers, those two

  pickpockets from the armory? So much evil.

  Then I remembered Lars Nielsen and how he’d risked sliding into the river in order to save me from myself. What about

  Karel? If not for him, I would have drowned in the capsizing,

  along with those two teenagers and that baby he’d pulled from

  the river only minutes later.

  There was Mrs. Mulligan. Many a day she and her children

  went hungry. Yet somehow, she’d managed to scrounge together

  enough pennies to buy a crepe of ribbons and flowers for the

  VandeKipps’ front door.

  At the end of the block, I’d turned back toward home, relieved to know that good still existed, when something flickered.

  I looked at the corner house. Through the parlor window, a

  candle glowed, a notice for the neighborhood that someone in

  that home had died. I stared up and down the street. Candles blazed from dozens of windows. Not in every home,

  but in every other, maybe every third or fourth. Crepes hung on

  the doors of those candle-lit homes, a further sign of the torment

  within. I thought of the joy of last Saturday morning. How could things have gone so terribly wrong in such a short

  time?

  Yet one look around, and I knew I was not alone in my despair. Everyone had to live a new life. Forget BC and AD. Time

  had taken on a new meaning. Now there was only BE and AE. Before and after the Eastland.

  15

  My eyes cracked open. What was that noise? I raised my heavy head from the dining room table and a sharp pain shot down my neck. At some point during the night, I must have fallen asleep while taking down the cuff on Eamon Mulligan’s only pair of decent trousers. I rubbed at the prickles assaulting my still-asleep arms and listened to the cascading boom of thunder outside. It was another stormy day. I shook off my disgust and looked about the lamp-lit room for Eamon’s pants.

  The mountain of mending near Mama’s Singer had disappeared. Some of the clothes were now ironed and folded and arranged all about me on the dining table. Others, like Mrs. Ivanko’s new, black mourning dress, hung on hangers over the back of Mama’s bedroom door.

  While I’d slept, someone had been very busy.

  I got up, smoothed out my dress, and scuffed into the kitchen. The room was stifling.

  “Bonjour, chérie!”

  Mama stood at her ironing board, which was actually a solid

  oak plank suspended between two kitchen chairs. The board was wrapped in a red woolen blanket and topped with an old sheet. The chairs had been moved near the range so that Mama could keep her three Sad irons hot on the cook plates. She traded the cool iron in her hand for a fresh, hot one on the stove as she creased a seam on yet another black dress.

  “Morning, Mama. Did you get any sleep at all last night?” She shook her head and set the hot iron back on the cook plate. “Good? Non?” She held up the new floor-length cotton dress she’d been pressing.

  I studied the tight bodice, the high collar, the long, narrowcut sleeves. “Perfect mourning outfit. Who’s it for?”

  Mama held it up against me.

  “Me? No!” For a few peaceful, sleepy moments, I had forgotten about Mae and her wake tonight. But now my forgotten pain came surging back with a vengeance. “Please, Mama. It’s a lovely dress.” If a mourning dress could ever be considered lovely. “And I appreciate the time it must have taken you to make it, but can’t I wear my burgundy suit? The one with the velvet cuffs? Mae always said I looked so smart in it.”

  “Paaa! Now, take the dress to Mrs. Ivanko. If she has money, she can pay. If not, then she will owe us.” Mama opened the icebox and peered inside. “We will eat when you come back.”

  I retrieved my umbrella and Mrs. Ivanko’s dress from the back of Mama’s bedroom door and walked outside in the same clothes I had on yesterday. Unlike me, the rest of the world had not slept late.

  Delivery trucks and wagons lined the curbs, dropping off their funeral wares. The undertaker, Mr. Drojewska, and his three eldest sons dodged the rain as they darted from one crepe-draped house to another. There had to be hundreds of last-minute details to attend to before visitations began. I crossed to Mrs. Ivanko’s house and climbed the wooden steps to the front porch. I set my wet umbrella aside and stepped toward the bay window.

  Would it be polite to peek? Did I even want to see what was waiting inside that parlor?

  I had no choice. I peered through the sheer lace curtains.

  A simple pine coffin had been arranged for viewing in front of the stone hearth. The casket rested on a wooden bier cabinet that housed a tin-lined compartment and a boulder of ice. This ice-filled bier worked much like our icebox at home, keeping the corpse cool and slowing decomposition. Bouquets of roses and wildflowers encircled the casket, the fragrance of the blossoms working to hide the ammonia smell of the em
balming fluids. The whole idea of dead bodies in the parlor gave me the creeps. I shuddered and leaned in closer to the glass.

  The long coffin cover had been removed; an angled corner visible from behind the bier. Mr. Ivanko had been dressed from head to toe in his Sunday-best. I recognized the slightly shabby brown suit and Oxford shoes from Mass each week. A man in a more formal black dinner jacket seemed to be directing the activity in the parlor. The formal man signed a bill of goods for the flowers. I waited until the florist and his assistant left and then rang the bell, entering through the open front door.

  The foyer was sweltering, yet I continued to shudder as I waited for the formal man to appear.

  “Ah, my sister’s dress.” He strode toward me. “You must be Mrs. Pageau’s daughter?”

  I nodded and handed Mrs. Ivanko’s brother the mourning gown.

  “Elena is still in her room. I’ll see she gets this. Thank you.” He pulled a billfold from his trouser pocket. “How much does my sister owe?”

  “Three dollars. But if she needs time to pay, we can wait.”

  “No need.” He counted out three one-dollar bills and handed them to me. “We pay our bills. No charity. We may not have much, but we have our dignity.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you. My sympathies on your loss.” I cleared my throat. “I’d understand if you don’t want to say, but do you know what exactly happened to Mr. Ivanko? Where he was on the ship? Mrs. Ivanko was hysterical with worry.” I found myself reflexively touching my scalp.

  “When I learned about the disaster, I caught the first train from Milwaukee. By Saturday night Elena still had no word, so I went to the Armory to try and find the body.” He paused, staring beyond me as he ran a hand over the dress draped over his arm.

  I knew what he was thinking. I, too, could still see the horror of the morgue, and it left me speechless as well. His head snapped up. He stared at me as though I’d just arrived.

  “Ah, yes. The Armory. Number 426. His body had been brought up by bell divers late in the day. They told me he’d been at the bar.”

  On the Main Deck. Lowest passenger level of the ship. I thought of all those flushed-face patrons and prayed that Mr. Ivanko had been pleasantly numb when the end had come.

  “Nine years with Western Electric, and this is how it ends. I know Elena will receive some insurance money, but it’s small consolation.”

  “We’ll look after her,” I said, echoing Mama’s words. “Again, sir, my deepest sympathies. Will you convey our condolences to your sister?”

  “You have my word, Miss Pageau.” Mrs. Ivanko’s brother escorted me to the front door. “And you be sure to thank your mother for all her hard work.”

  I tramped down the steps, my heart heavy with dread. So this was how it would be tonight? Visitation from one house to another? Standing in front of coffin after coffin, widow after widower, lost friend after lost friend?

  Did I have the strength? I didn’t know, but I was sure to find out.

  I was lowering my head to open my umbrella, when someone bumped into me from behind.

  “Sorry.” The voice was female. “I was looking for something. Didn’t see.”

  I turned around.

  Dolly O’Brien stood with one hand in her purse. She closed her bag with a snap, looked up, and then flung her arms around me.

  “Dee! Oh, I’ve done nothing but think about you for two days. How are you?” She squeezed me hard and then stepped back. “I’d better give you room to breathe.”

  Dolly was right. I needed to catch my breath. Seeing her again had brought back all the torment of that life-altering moment in the morgue. My legs gave way. Dolly wrapped her arms around my waist, supporting me.

  “Think you can make it to your porch?”

  Dolly helped me across the street and down onto my front porch steps. She sat beside me and grasped my hand, but I couldn’t look her in the face. She was too much of a painful reminder. Raw grief washed over me like a torrent, and I broke down.

  “Sorry, Dolly. It’s just that you remind—”

  “Don’t concern yourself one bit.” She tucked a sweaty strand of my hair behind my ear. “You’ve been through so much. Surviving the capsizing and that ghastly morgue.”

  “But you made it off the Eastland as well. I mean you’re here. I saw you early Saturday morning on the way to the docks. Didn’t you make the boat?”

  She shook her red head, her sparkling emerald eyes now puffy and dull. Dolly was clearly suffering along with the rest of us.

  “My hem came down. I turned back home to fix it. I got on the Teddy Roosevelt instead. Saw the whole thing …” Her voice drifted off for a moment. “I knew that Western Electric would need me, so I rushed to the plant. Worked eighteen straight hours from Saturday ’til almost dawn on Sunday. I was on my way home after that shift, when I heard about Johnny. I went straight to the Armory.”

  Now it was Dolly’s turn to cry. I kept hold of her hand and put my free arm across her shoulders.

  “To think that you went to work after what you’d witnessed?”

  I thought of the twenty-five-hundred passengers. There had to be countless families left at home frantic with worry and desperate for information. I remembered how distraught Mrs. Koznecki had been without any word. Of course the switchboard operators had had to work that morning.

  “You’re amazing, Dolly.”

  “We do what we have to.” She blew out a puff of air. “I’m off to work now. Or at least I should be, but sitting here with you is comforting. Lord knows, we can all use some reassurance right now. The world’s gone mad. The gates at work have been under siege. People are desperate to get those jobs.”

  “Dead employees replaced already? We haven’t even had the funerals.”

  “Western Electric figures it lost nearly five hundred workers. Can you imagine?”

  But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to think of my coiling department without Mae. Without countless other women. All my friends.

  “But don’t you bother about any of that.” Dolly jumped up and then extended her arms down to me. We clasped hands again as she pulled me to my feet. “All that telephone wire will still be there when you’re ready to return.” We hugged for the longest time. “You take care of yourself, Dee Pageau. You have enough to manage in the next few days.”

  She strode away, wiggling her fingers at me over her shoulder. I watched her go, while I organized my List of Things to Deal with This Week.

  Tonight, Mae’s wake. Find courage to face her dead body again.

  Tomorrow morning, funeral Mass at St. Mary’s.

  Tomorrow afternoon, burial at Bohemian National Cemetery.

  Live every day of my life without Mae.

  I sagged back down onto the step and wept.

  16

  “The wakes, chérie,” Mama called from the parlor on Tuesday evening. “It is time to go.” I dragged myself out of my bedroom and down the creaky hallway, struggling to pin my watch to my new mourning dress with hands that would not stop quaking. Mama nodded her approval.

  “Fits well. Non?”

  “No. I mean yes. I don’t know what I mean.” I tugged at the cinched waist, the high collar that threatened to choke me. “To tell the truth, Mama. It’s a little tight.”

  “I took it in here and there. So now it fits your figure.”

  “What figure?”

  Mama waggled a finger at me and headed into the dining room. I trailed after her, confused, yet curious. She stopped and pointed. “Look.”

  I stared into the gilded mirror that covered one entire wall. A black-clothed image stared back.

  The reflection looked like me, but different somehow. The girl in the mirror had a bosom that seemed to stretch the limits of her seams. Her hips were round and fleshed out wider than her waist. The woman gawking back at me had what men called ‘an hourglass shape.’

  “When did this happen?”

  “You have become a young lady. I only wish Papa could see you
now.” Mama pulled me to her. “We must hold tight to each other.”

  As if I would ever let go. I wanted to stay wrapped in her arms for the rest of my life.

  “It is time.” She released me. “To say au revoir.”

  “But what if I can’t say good-bye?” I ran a finger around the inside of my collar, trying to breathe.

  Mama touched my cheek. “What would Mae want?”

  I leaned my face into her warm, work-hardened palm. I knew the answer without evening thinking, but I lingered there a little longer than necessary, gathering strength from her touch. I lifted my head and threw back my shoulders.

  “Mae would want me to be brave.”

  Mama opened the front door. “I will be there with you, ma petite.”

  I gave her a weak nod and an even feebler smile, snatched up our umbrellas, and headed onto the front porch. Mama shut the door behind her and then turned and gasped.

  A swell of people flooded the sidewalks on both sides of the street. Hundreds upon hundreds of mourners had turned out for the visitations this evening. So many wake-goers, in fact, that we couldn’t open our umbrellas. It didn’t matter because today I

  Eastland

  welcomed the rain. I needed those pelting, wet slaps on the skin to keep me going. On our block-and-a-half walk to Mae’s, we stopped at five different homes where we waited in long lines to pay our respects. Some of the homes had lost two or three family members. The parlors were filled with coffins arranged head to toe in front of the window. The six VandeKipps were not to be waked in their empty home. Mr. Drojewska had offered to keep the bodies at his funeral parlor and bring their coffins to St. Mary’s tomorrow.

  But the hardest part of this whole ordeal was seeing a deceased neighbor with bruises. I knew these black-and-blue corpses had not had a peaceful death. They’d been tossed or dragged or perhaps something or someone had slammed into them. Mr. Ivanko had not been injured, at least not in a place visible to me.

  What about Mae?

  I’d only seen her body on the morgue floor for a split second before I’d fainted. Would she be battered and discolored? Had she endured a horrifying death? Had she suffered before she’d died? The questions made my temples throb. By the time we neared the peacock-blue Victorian, I had a full-blown headache.