Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [122]
When Alice opened the door, a burst of cold wind shot through her. She shook open the paper and saw his picture there, right on the front page: Mary’s Henry, a formal shot from his college days.
Alice began to read the story’s first paragraph, and her chest locked up: Henry Winslow, son of Charles Winslow III, died of smoke inhalation, the story began. Mr. Winslow, who lived through a 1931 bus crash that killed two of his fellow Harvard students and a driver, was an executive with Winslow Shipping Enterprises. A diamond ring was found in his shirt pocket after he collapsed at Boston City Hospital. His sister, Betty Winslow, says that he was planning to propose to his girlfriend, Mary Brennan, the very next day. Documents indicate that Miss Brennan perished in the fire as well, and so she will remain, evermore, Maiden Mary.
At that moment, grief filled Alice completely. She thought she might not be able to go on living. She still attended the early Mass each day. But the sermons and prayers that had always roused her, soothed her, helped her understand the world, now seemed like only hollow words. She felt nothing and always left the church thinking the same thought: she wasn’t worthy to receive God’s love now; she had committed a sin worse than any other.
Alice had failed her sister. She prayed, not for forgiveness, but for a sign, a signal from God as to how she could repent. She vowed to stop wishing for something better than she deserved. She would behave from now on, and expect nothing in return.
When, on the morning of the wake, her aunt Emily said, “Now, Alice, it’s time for you to grow up. You will care for your parents and bring them some joy, I hope,” Alice realized fully that her dreams were done for, and only answered, “I will.” She wondered what this would mean, how she could best serve them. She pictured a lifetime of being alone, but not in the way she had wanted. She’d be working her days away at the law office, spending her nights in front of the radio while her father got drunk and angry, and her mother ignored it all. She would spend her life fixing them dinner and caring for them in their dotage, all the things that Mary would have done.
That same morning, a letter arrived, addressed to Mary and Alice. It was a cheerful note from their brother Jack, written on Thanksgiving, two days before the fire.
Greetings from the Tin Can! Happy Turkey Day! There’s a festive mood on board today, despite the fact that we are all so far from home and missing our families. The dinner menu is fit for a king, or at least it seems that way from the way they dress up the names of everything: Hot Parker Rolls du Lyautey, Baked Spiced Spam à la Capitaine de Vaisseau, and for dessert—apple pie, strawberry ice cream, cigars, and cigarettes! The captain told us we’ve survived so many attacks “due not alone to skill or to good luck, but unquestionably to the intervention of divine providence.” So don’t you worry about me, my lovelies. I’ve got God on my side.
Your Jack
At the wake, Alice walked to the ladies’ lounge every half hour or so and drank a long sip of vodka from a flask her aunt Rose had brought.
They had been forced to use a closed casket, and Alice was happy for that. Still, it felt torturous, standing beside that cold wooden box, calmly shaking the hands of so many neighbors and cousins and friends.
“I’m here for you,” they’d say, or “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Alice wanted to tear their hair out. She wanted to tell them that they could never understand this. She wondered how many of them were there merely to be a part of the tragedy—I knew a girl once, from Sunday school, who died at the Cocoanut Grove, they might say years later. I was at her wake. She was so disfigured they couldn’t even have a proper viewing.
She stood by the casket with her family. Her brothers were still as stone in their dark suits, rarely speaking a word. Her mother