“No, Earl’s from back East. He and his sister, Elda, lived on a farm when he was a boy. Then the family had to sell the farm. Elda is married to Bill, and Bill just got a job. He was out of work a long time, and they couldn’t be together. Earl hasn’t seen Elda for six years. He’s out of work, too.”
“That’s a pity.”
“Earl’s smart and good looking, like William Powell, so I think he’ll find something soon. There’s a girl near New Ulm he might marry if he gets work. Her name is Angela.”
“I think it’s all going to turn out hunky-dory.”
“I would like Earl and Angela to live near Mr. Brown and me. Earl could build a house like ours.”
Mrs. Erhardt poured herself a cup of tea from a pot on the stove. For me she poured a second cup, half-full, filling it the rest of the way with milk. “What kind of house do you have?” she inquired.
“You’d like my house. It’s white with blue shutters and a brick sidewalk. It has a white picket fence and hollyhocks. Upstairs in Myrna Loy’s room, there’s a window seat. Across the street there’s a house just like ours, and a boy named Phillip lives there. Phillip’s father is away at the war a lot, so Phillip’s mother, Helen, comes over and visits almost every day. I think Myrna Loy will grow up and get married to Phillip.” I sipped my tepid tea. “I forgot to tell you, Phillip’s mother is a tap dancer. She’s won hundreds of prizes for tap dancing. She says one day when she was about six or seven, she woke up and put on her black patent leather shoes and a dress that had a lot of starch in it, and just like that, she started to dance, without any lessons.” I blotted my imaginary lipstick with a paper napkin. “They moved here from England. Helen’s sister, Cynthia, moved here, too, but she’s living at the Harvester Arms because she and her husband can’t afford a house.”
“That’s a shame,” Mrs. Erhardt said, carrying her cup to the sink.
“Cynthia’s husband plays poker,” I told her confidentially.
“I see.”
“He lost a thousand dollars.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Cynthia says she doesn’t want to live at the Harvester Arms all her life because she has to go down the hall to the bathroom, and her little girl, Sonja, doesn’t have her own room. Cynthia’s going to get a job.”
“Jobs are hard to find.”
“Not for Cynthia. She can do anything.”
It was nearly time for Mrs. Erhardt to put supper on the table for her husband and her little girl, Lark, so I said, “I’ve got to get home now. Myrna Loy and her papa will be hungry.”
“Next time you come, bring Myrna Loy with you. I’d like to meet her.”
“Thank you for the tea and penuche. I’ll save the candy and share it with Myrna Loy.”
Mrs. Erhardt let me out, and I strolled twice around the depot and once past the Harvester Arms. Returning, I pulled off the cloche, stuffed the red purse inside it, inched open the screen door, and sneaked past Mama who was looking into the refrigerator.
A few minutes later she called Papa and me to dinner. Mama had made milk gravy in the chicken pan. No one has ever tasted better gravy than Mama’s milk gravy. I quickly made a big well in my potatoes and watched as she poured the creamy, freckled liquid, so dear to my stomach, into the depression.
“Papa, don’t wreck my well,” I implored.
He laughed heartily and reached for a drumstick. “Who? Me?” he asked and, as he spoke, the drumstick fell from his hand into the potato well, spilling the gravy over the plate. Papa laughed until he nearly choked on his green beans.
After Mama and I had washed and dried the dishes, Papa asked me, “Want to tag along while I check the boxcars?”
“Take the pails with you,” Mama said, so Papa and I each carried a slop pail out to the tracks and dumped it. Then, leaving the pails on the platform, we walked across the tracks to the furthermost one, alongside the grain elevators. Papa carried a clipboard and papers, and he checked the information on these against information on the boxcars. He slid open the doors of the empty cars to see that no one was sleeping in them. He never made a fuss about men riding in the empty cars, but he wouldn’t let them sleep there. Papa told me that in some places, men were hired to beat up tramps found coming into town on the train. Papa didn’t approve of that. He’d gone to school with fellows who’d had to take to the rails. A man who voted a straight Democratic ticket wouldn’t beat up on tramps, he’d told me. “I hope you’ll always vote a straight Democratic ticket,” he’d added. I promised him I would.
When Papa had checked every car, we walked back again to the depot, our shoes crunching and munching the cinders and gravel. I followed him into the office and waited while he typed up some forms. I sat in Art Bigelow’s chair, swiveling around and around until Papa told me for God’s sake to stop. From one of the tall, green, ribbed-metal wastebaskets I retrieved a sheet of paper, and pulling the cover from Art’s typewriter, I inserted the paper, clean side out, and began to type.
“Be careful of Art’s typewriter,” Papa warned.
“I will. I’ll just type one key at a time.” I’d gotten into trouble when I was little, trying to play the typewriter like a piano.
“Dear Phillip,” I typed. “How are you. I am fine. I wish you were here. I am going to get a window seet. Love, Lark Ann Browning Erhardt.” Pulling the paper out of the roller, I folded it several times and put it in my pocket.
Papa fitted the dust cover over his typewriter, switched off the gooseneck lamp, and inquired, “If you were getting an ice cream cone, what flavor would you order?”
“I always order chocolate.”
Leaving the light burning on Art’s desk as was depot practice, we left, locking the outside door behind us. We took the new Oldsmobile, and Papa drove slowly all the way down Main Street to the end, U-turning and driving back to park in front of Anderson’s Candy and Ice Cream, next to the Majestic Theater where Bette Davis was playing in Jezebel. Anderson’s stayed open until seven-thirty to accommodate moviegoers.
“We’ll have a chocolate cone here,” Papa told Mr. Anderson, pointing to me, “and I’ll have a strawberry.” While Mr. Anderson scooped the ice cream, Papa studied the candy case. “Want some gumdrops?” he asked.
I clapped my hands.
“Give us a dime’s worth of gumdrops, too, while you’re at it.” A dime’s worth was a lot, much more than I usually got.
Headed home again, Papa asked, “Do you think your ma is really going to look for work?”
“Yes.”
“Why would she do that?”
“To make money for the new house.”
“I don’t like to see women going out to work unless the man passes away. Or loses his job.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t look womanly. My ma never thought of foolishness like that. She had plenty of work at home. Your ma has some fast ideas. I don’t know where she gets ’em. When you’re grown up, don’t try to make a fool of your husband by going out to work,” he advised, chucking my chin. “Be pretty and womanly.”
I didn’t point out that Mama wouldn’t feel compelled to work if Papa hadn’t lost two hundred dollars at poker. Nor did I bring up my plans to find work as a tap dancer. The Fourth Commandment admonished, “Honor thy Father and thy Mother.” Sister Mary Clair had said that we honored our father and mother by loving and obeying them. When it came time to make my first confession, what could I say about the Fourth Commandment?
While my mind examined these distressing concerns, like a curious tongue traveling back and forth among half a dozen rotten teeth, it entered my head that Mama, too, was committing a mortal sin by disobeying Papa. If he did not want her to work, and her marriage vows said she must love, honor, and obey him, Mama’s soul would turn black as the piece of coal Sister Mary Clair had brought to catechism to illustrate the condition of a sinful soul. She had explained that a sinful soul dropped into the fire of hell burned like coal, but never turned to ash. It burned forever.
/> It was difficult to imagine that there were thousands of people in the world without the blackness of mortal sin on their souls. There were only three people in my family, and we were all headed for hell as things stood. Sometimes I thought that if I were born again, I’d like to be a Methodist, like Katherine Albers.
When we pulled up beside the depot, Papa said, “You’d better hide those gumdrops or your ma’ll throw a fit.”
I pushed them into my pocket with the letter to Phillip and wondered whether it was a sin of omission not to tell Mama about the candy. Later, sitting cross-legged in the crib with my confession notebook, printing by the light escaping from the living room, I entered: “lied to Mama—gumdrops” and “disobeyed Papa—tap dancing.”
The WCCO ten o’clock news came on the radio in the next room. Papa always came to bed right after the news. I closed the notebook, climbed out of the crib, and stashed the record in the bottom drawer of the doll chest.
“Are you awake in there?” Papa called.
Climbing back into the crib, I lay turned to the wall, guilt compressing my chest until I could barely breathe.
I studied the picture in the clock, easing myself into the garden where everyone was in a state of grace. The bluebird that was perpetually on the wing flew down, lighting at my feet, and began pick-pick-picking up the birdseed I had scattered for him.
8
LEAVING SCHOOL AT TWO thirty-five as usual, Sally and I found the afternoon sharply bright after the cool dimness of the main hall. We drifted out to Main Street, past the park where we skated in winter and the band shell where we watched penny movies on summer Saturday nights. Old, grainy, and harsh-sounding, the movies were an intense treat. I had seen Broadway Melody, with Bessie Love, at the penny movies, as well as Applause, with Helen Morgan.
We paused in front of the Majestic Theater to study the pictures of Bette Davis in Jezebel before poking along to the window of Eggers’s Drug Store, where we argued desultorily over our first purchase should we fall heir to a fortune.
Sally opened the screen door and held it for me. Brushing the backs of the stools with our fingertips, we passed the mahogany-and-marble soda fountain. Ignoring Mr. Eggers at the prescription counter, we lingered among the perfume and makeup displays. Down aisles of foot pads and tooth powders, heating pads and pipe tobacco we dallied.
“The Eggerses own all this,” Sally murmured, eyeing shelves of Kreml shampoo, Pebeco and Dr. Lyons tooth powders, Eversharp pens, Whitmans Chocolates, and Dr. Graybow’s Pre-Smoked Pipes. “They must be rich.”
The great paddle blades of the overhead fan stirred together essences of pine tar soap and Coca-Cola syrup and bath salts and oiled wooden floors. It was a rich, thick soup of smell.
What did you do with a truss? we wondered. Or with sanitary napkins, which were wrapped in brown paper? I knew what you did with an enema bag. With trills of giggles and explosions of whispers, I explained to Sally while she made disgusted faces and stamped her foot. “No, no,” she cried in a tiny voice, not moving her ear from my mouth.
Before Mr. Eggers suggested that our mothers might be pacing the floor with worry, we dragged ourselves from the drugstore, slouching out to the dusty street.
On such a golden, spring afternoon it was hard to think of going home, so we sat down on the curb at the corner and took turns saying hello to everyone who came by, those in cars and those on foot, testing our memories of people’s names.
“Hello, Mrs. Soule.”
“Hello, Mrs. Mosely.”
“Hello, Mr. Monke.”
If you missed a name, you picked up a little pebble from the gutter and held it in your hand. If the other person missed a name and you remembered, you discarded one of the pebbles in your hand. Whoever had the fewest pebbles won. A blue Oldsmobile bore down on us.
“Get in girls.” It was Mama. “Do you know what time it is? It’s a quarter to four.”
Sally and I looked at each other in disbelief as Mama continued, “I’ve just come from a meeting at church, and I’ve got picnic tickets for you to sell, Lark. And I’m sure Sally’s mama has tickets for her, too. You should have been home an hour ago,” she said in her patient-Catholic-mother tone.
“What picnic?”
“The Knights of Columbus Memorial Day Picnic.”
“Why don’t the Knights of Columbus sell the tickets?” I asked.
“Because they’ve got better things to do,” Mama explained, pulling up in front of the Wheelers’ house. “Good-bye, Sally. Can you get the door?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Sally,” I called. And off we shot.
At home I told Mama, “I don’t like to sell tickets.”
“Nonsense,” she scoffed, handing me an envelope full of them. “Everyone says you’re wonderful.”
“I still don’t like to.” I did not believe that everyone said I was wonderful.
“Well, you don’t have a choice.”
“Couldn’t you sell them?”
“I’d have them sold in half an hour,” she said, “but you know it’s the children who sell the picnic tickets. People would say, ‘Arlene, where’s your little girl? Is she sick?’ And then what would I say?”
“Say I don’t like to sell tickets.”
“Don’t be sassy, young lady.”
Away I plodded, Mama’s voice in my ears. “They’re twenty-five cents apiece. A bargain. There’ll be games and prizes. If they don’t have change, you’ll come back later. Everyone will be there. It’s for a good cause. Be polite no matter what, and don’t forget to smile and say thank you.”
I was not new to selling tickets. I’d started when I was four, twice a year, spring and fall, the Memorial Day picnic and the October bazaar. It never got any easier. I was embarrassed to ask people for money and fearful they might turn me down. If twenty people bought tickets and one turned me down, the one who turned me down hung around in my mind, haunting me. Had I forgotten to mention the games and prizes? Would they have said yes if I’d had blond curls, if I’d worn my pink dress with the tulip on the pocket, if I’d smiled more?
Now here I was again, trudging down the street with an envelope full of tickets and a heart full of misgivings. Start with a sure sale, Mama said. Mr. Navarin at the Sinclair station was a sure sale.
I waited until he had serviced the Model A at the pump and it had snorted and pranced away, as Model A’s seemed to do. For a minute Mr. Navarin stood with one arm outstretched, leaning against the pump, watching the car disappear down the street. Then he removed his cap, which said Sinclair, and mopped his forehead and neck with a blue handkerchief from the hip pocket of his uniform. Beneath the cap his sand-colored hair had grown quite thin, so that he appeared ten years older with the cap off. I wished him to put it right back on and leave it on. I didn’t like the idea of him changing.
He turned and caught sight of me. Slipping the cap back on his head, he smiled. He was one of the men at the poker party at Herbie Wendel’s on Friday night. Though I doubted that he had lost two hundred dollars, or even twenty. Mr. Navarin was shrewd and contented. He was not a man to gamble what he didn’t want to lose.
“Mr. Navarin, I’m selling tickets for the Knights of Columbus Memorial Day Picnic at Sioux Woman Lake. They’re twenty-five cents apiece. There’ll be prizes and games. And food. Mama’s baking pies and cakes.” I thought that last one would interest Mr. Navarin.
“Come in the office,” he said, leading the way. “Memorial Day?”
“Yes.”
He opened the cash register and took out a dollar bill. “I guess I’ll need four,” he said. “For me and the missus and Danny and his wife.” Danny was Mr. Navarin’s son, who drove a Sinclair truck.
Four, right off the bat. Mama was right about starting with a sure sale. I pulled four tickets out of the envelope and handed them to Mr. Navarin, then carefully slipped the dollar bill in beside the unsold tickets.
Mr. Navarin closed the cash register and motioned for me to follow him into
the garage, where he and Sonny Steen worked on cars. Axel Nelson’s Studebaker was on the hoist, where Sonny was doing something serious to its underside with a wrench while Mr. Nelson leaned on a workbench chatting with Barney Finney, the bootlegger. Axel Nelson and his wife, Minerva, owned the Harvester Arms Hotel. He, too, had been one of the men sitting around the poker table at Herbie Wendel’s house.
“Well, boys,” Mr. Navarin called to them, “the little Erhardt girl is selling tickets to the Knights of Columbus picnic. I told her you’d be happy to take some off her hands.” He hadn’t told me any such thing, but I didn’t mind his pretending.
Axel Nelson looked askance at Mr. Navarin, grinned, then winked at Barney Finney. “I guess I could use a few of those, little lady,” he said, reaching for his billfold. “Let’s see: one for me, one for Min, and maybe six to pass out to guests stuck in town over the holiday. How much does that come to?”
I had no idea. It was eight tickets, but how much money I wouldn’t be able to figure until second grade, when we had real arithmetic. Mr. Nelson studied me through narrowed lids, a smirk twitching the muscles around his lips. He didn’t like children, I could see, but he didn’t know it.
“It’s eight quarters, Mr. Nelson.”
“Heh, that’s pretty good.” Sonny Steen laughed.
Mr. Nelson put a hand in his pocket and brought out his pocket change. He looked it over. “I’m really sorry,” he said, “but I don’t have eight quarters on me.”
In my head I was counting my fingers. From the envelope, I removed four tickets. Mr. Navarin had given me a dollar for four tickets. Handing four tickets to Mr. Nelson, I said, “That costs a dollar.” I reached for another four and gave those to him. “And that costs a dollar.” Two dollars. I doubted I would have any more customers buying eight tickets, but if I did, I was going to remember.
Mr. Nelson opened his billfold. “Well, for crying out loud, I’ve only got a five-dollar bill. Can you make change?”
The Cape Ann Page 7