The Cape Ann

by Faith Sullivan

  Uncle Stan had the straight, pinched nose, the well-shaped but thin lips, the high forehead and fine cheek bones of an Irish aesthete. But, as so often happens, he had the puckish brows and roguish blue eyes of a barkeep. His brown curls he kept close cropped, in order to resemble an altar boy somewhat less. His skin was palely freckled so that you had to get close to notice. It was easy to understand how Aunt Betty had found Uncle Stan irresistible.

  But there appeared to be a streak of Irish hard luck in Stan. It wasn’t just his job—he was lucky to have one at all—but his bad luck at cards and horseshoes and almost anything where chance played a part. Most men with Stan’s ill fortune would have turned dour, but he had learned to laugh when the crucial horseshoe fell wide or his three aces were bettered by four kings.

  “Oh, my God,” he would say with a laugh, “do you believe it? What am I? Fortune’s stepchild?”

  People loved Uncle Stan for laughing at his hardship, and none loved him for it more than Aunt Betty. “Laughing at bad luck is noble,” she had made the mistake of commenting to Mama. “It’s easy to see, Stan’s descended from kings.”

  “And we all know how well the Irish kings have fared,” Mama could not resist responding.

  But underneath Uncle Stan’s laughter was a perplexed sadness, which made me feel protective toward him. And if I felt protective, what must Aunt Betty feel? Little wonder she was ready to die rather than expose their poverty.

  “Get Uncle Stan a glass of iced tea,” Mama told me in order to get me out of the room for a minute.

  “I don’t suppose there’s beer?” he asked.

  “You know there isn’t,” Mama said, not without patience.

  “Iced tea, then,” he conceded.

  Mama lowered her voice to a near whisper as I departed, but I knew almost everything she was going to tell Stan: Aunt Betty was near death. The doctor had been called. He had advised not taking Aunt Betty to the hospital in Mankato since there was no money. Would Mama tell Stan about Maria and her magic?

  “And Esterlys wouldn’t give us credit,” Mama was recounting as I entered the room, carrying a glass of iced tea and a piece of crumb cake for Uncle Stan.

  Surely he had already known about the credit. Why had Mama brought that up when the rest of her report was enough to sink a battleship? Because Mama believed in “getting all the cards on the table.” “If you know the worst,” she’d say, “everything else is less than the worst.” But Uncle Stan looked as though he’d been shot. The color was drained from his face, and though from habit he reached for a smile, he came up empty. His face crumpled and he put his head in his hands. His shoulders shook with soundless sobs.

  Mama took the tea and cake from me and headed toward the kitchen. “Help me get supper on, Lark,” she said, leaving Uncle Stan to pull himself together in private.

  Mama made scalloped potatoes with slices of ring bologna, like coins, folded in among the creamy potatoes. With this we had canned peas and, for dessert, crumb cake. I was the only one who ate substantially. Uncle Stan remained at the table only long enough to be polite. Then he left us for Aunt Betty. She was sleeping deeply, but her cheeks were the color of dusky roses, not a good sign in a redhead.

  When the dishes were dried, I went out back and took up my watch on the step. Pulling the string to extinguish the kitchen light, Mama followed, bringing me a glass of iced tea and milk.

  “If Aunt Betty gets well,” Mama told me, “I’m not going to let her stay here and starve.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I’ll make her go home.”

  “Can you do that?”

  Mama didn’t answer. Finally she said, “I’ll tell Mama and Papa, and they’ll come get her.”

  “She won’t go,” I warned, recalling the conversation I’d heard between Mama and Aunt Betty. “And she’ll hate you.”

  “Oh, God,” Mama despaired, throwing her arms tightly around me, “what am I going to do?” Her body tensed with anger. “He can’t do anything! It’s up to me.”

  Who couldn’t do anything, God or Uncle Stan?

  23

  UNCLE STAN SAT FOR three hours with Aunt Betty, but she didn’t wake. Sometimes he’d get up from the big chair, walk wearily to the window, and stand with his back to the room, weeping.

  Periodically Mama looked in, felt Aunt Betty’s forehead, and shook her head. At nine-thirty Mama announced to Uncle Stan, “I’m going to have to put cold cloths on her, or she’ll go into convulsions.” She fetched a big bowl of water and added ice chips hacked from the disappearing block in the icebox. When she began stripping Aunt Betty’s gown, Uncle Stan backed toward the door as if guilt constrained him from viewing his wife’s body in its present unhappy condition.

  “Help me with Aunt Betty’s nightie, Lark.” Mama’s voice had a sharp edge that was meant for Uncle Stan, as if she were at the end of her patience with him.

  “I’m going for a walk,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

  We heard the screen door close softly. “He’ll walk as far as the tavern,” Mama sniped. “Someone will feel sorry for him and buy him a beer.” This was said as though she were disgusted by those who would pity him.

  “Don’t you feel sorry for him?” I ventured.

  Mama sighed, not sure of the answer herself.

  We worked together for an hour. At one point I was so drowsy, I nodded off in the middle of wringing out a cloth. Aunt Betty rose to the surface of consciousness a couple of times, complained of the cold, then, with eyes rolling upward, she fell back into stuporlike sleep.

  At length Mama patted Aunt Betty all over with a towel and pulled the sheet up to her chin, not bothering to dress her again in the nightie. Dropping into the arm chair, she told me, “Get into your nightie and come give me a kiss when you’re ready for bed.”

  But when I was ready for bed, Mama was sound asleep in the chair, and I didn’t wake her. Now that I was curled up on the couch, I was no longer sleepy. I remembered the letter I had meant to write Hilly. I would write it tomorrow night. By then the stork might have come.

  I would tell Hilly about Maria and her magic tea that was going to make Aunt Betty well. I still had faith in Maria’s magic, notwithstanding that Aunt Betty was near convulsions. And I would also tell Hilly about the Witch who lived next door to Aunt Betty.

  Glancing across the narrow strip of yard, I saw the light burning in the Witch’s back bedroom. Was she hooking her rug? No. I’d be able to hear the hook. The bedsprings whined. Was she going to get up and go to the bathroom?

  A figure passed before the window shade, moving from left (where a door led to the hall and bathroom) to right (where the head of the bed was pressed against the outside wall, near the window). It was not the figure of Witch Kraus. It was taller and moved like a man.

  “Gott im Himmel,” the Witch cried, and the light was immediately extinguished.

  Then, while the bedsprings were responding to the arrival of this second person, the Witch whispered angrily, words I couldn’t distinguish. For several minutes, only the muted yielding of springs floated across the dark sea to my window. The Witch and her friend were getting comfortable. I had hoped they would talk out loud so I could listen.

  I recommenced thinking of Hilly. How long would it be until #127—The Cape Ann was built, and Hilly could work in the garden with me? Mama would buy me a big galvanized steel watering can like Aunt Betty’s, and Hilly and I would take turns filling it and carrying it up and down the rows of flowers and vegetables … A new sound reached me from the Witch’s bedroom. It was a sort of sighing and murmuring at the same time. Then there was whispering—I couldn’t tell whose—not urgent or angry, but muffled, mixed sometimes with giggles which were obviously the Witch’s.

  I couldn’t imagine what the Witch and her friend were up to, although the sounds reminded me of some I’d heard once or twice at home, when I’d wakened in the middle of the night, needing to use the potty.

  “Put it in your mou
th,” said the man.

  “For Gott’s sakes, be qviet,” the Witch hissed. “You want effrybotty to hear?”

  What did the man want her to put in her mouth? Were they eating in the dark in bed? Why not turn on the light so you wouldn’t get crumbs in bed?

  “Yes, yes,” he was groaning happily.

  “More, more,” he said, but she said, “No, it’s time,” and they began bouncing up and down on the bed like children. If I bounced on the bed that hard. Mama would come and make me stop. Any minute I expected to hear the bed fall down with a crash. That had happened when I and two of my cousins jumped up and down on the bed at Grandma Browning’s.

  Before long, the man cried out, as if the Witch had stabbed him, then he whimpered like a balloon losing air and fell silent. My heart stopped. Had she killed him? Moments later, in a different room, light appeared at the window. Water ran from a faucet. The toilet flushed. The lighted window went black, and presently someone—it could only be the Witch—was whispering behind the drawn bedroom shade.

  Her whispers were at first calm, almost indifferent, but as she persisted speaking over the dead body, the Witch gathered passion, and the final phrases of her incantation were frenzied, even hysterical.

  From the bed, the mumbling of someone returning from the dead answered the Witch’s conjury. She had brought him back to life. And I had heard the whole thing. Too weak to hold my head up, I slumped in a boneless heap on the couch.

  How long I lay in that trancelike condition I don’t know, but I was shot from it by screams exploding from Aunt Betty’s room. I threw my arms over my head. Never had I heard such screams, not even on “Suspense.” Clapping hands over my ears, I turned my back to the sound and stared out the window into the purple-gray antedawn, where trees switched in nervous anticipation of the light.

  The porch screen opened at the Witch’s house. With hurried stealth, a white-shirted, dark-trousered figure emerged onto the sidewalk. Making his way across the grass, he seemed buffeted by the screams from our house, as though a storm lashed him, driving him backward. Putting his head down and leaning into the squall, he pushed on, up the step, across the porch, and into the living room. I kept my back turned, although I doubt he noticed me as he rushed headlong through the green drape.

  When Aunt Betty’s cries momentarily subsided, Mama asked Uncle Stan coldly, “Where have you been?”

  “Sleeping in the car,” he lied. “Is the baby coming?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Dressing quickly, I padded to the kitchen, through the back hall, and out the back door, huddling on the step to wait and watch. How long would it be before I’d see the stork? How had Mama found out that he was on his way?

  At a quarter to five, I went in and buttered a piece of bread. Mama was sending Uncle Stan to fetch Maria Zelena and then to call the doctor in Mankato.

  “Do the Zelenas have a phone I can use?” he asked.

  “How should I know? I called from next door,” she told him. “Don’t go there. That woman is a witch. Use the Zelenas, if they have one. Wait.” From the sideboard in the dining room, Mama carried her handbag to the living room and rummaged in the coin purse while Stan, his face the color of unbleached muslin, waited, shifting feet and looking helpless and distraught. “Here. This is what it costs. Call person-to-person. Doctor Neumann. I don’t have the number.”

  When Uncle Stan had gone, Mama filled the coffee pot and put it on the stove. “How long have you been up?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Since you told Uncle Stan the baby was coming. I’ve been out back, watching for the stork.”

  Mama turned from the stove and gave me a sharp, inquiring look, then she burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  She put a hand over her mouth, but her eyes were still laughing.

  “What’s so funny, Mama?”

  “Nothing. I’m just tired. Sometimes people laugh at nothing when they’re tired.” Her face in the watery kitchen light was blue around the edges and under the eyes. Her lips looked bloodless. “Are you hungry?”

  “I’ve got a piece of bread.”

  Mama took half a ring of bologna from the icebox and set it on the table. “Let’s make you a sandwich,” she said, fishing a butcher knife out of the drawer. When she’d cut several slices and laid them on my bread, she asked, “Onion?”

  “Yes, please.”

  It was as though everything was all right. Then Aunt Betty screamed again. It was not the kind of sound you expected to hear from a human being, and I sat down on a kitchen chair as if someone had shoved me there.

  Mama ran into the bedroom as a second wail broke over us. I heard her speaking calm, businesslike words, as if she were reading a set of instructions off the back of a box. I slipped from the chair and backed out of the house.

  Outside, I lay down on the cellar door, which was wet, and put my hands over my ears. I couldn’t exactly hear Aunt Betty, but every so often a pressure bore down on me, like someone laying a heavy featherbed over me, and I knew that she was screaming.

  After a while I began to think about my sandwich, lying on the kitchen table, waiting for ketchup. I had had nothing to eat since last night’s dinner, and not much then. My stomach was gurgling. I could smell coffee. Had Mama turned off the stove?

  Without removing my hands from my ears, I got up and peered in the open kitchen window. The stove was off. Sunshine, slanting in the dining room windows, spilled through the kitchen doorway, throwing a warm path of gold across the linoleum, right up to the table where the sandwich lay.

  Lifting the fingers from one ear, I listened, cautiously prepared to clamp them back on. Quiet. I skittered into the house, poured ketchup on the bologna and turned to escape, sandwich to my mouth. Voices, moving from Aunt Betty’s room to the living room—Mama, Maria, and Uncle Stan.

  “There are old towels, clean ones, to use?” Maria was asking.

  “I’ll get them,” Mama told her.

  “The baby will be here before the doctor,” Maria explained.

  “Oh, Christ,” Uncle Stan groaned.

  There was no time to be lost. I ran outside, letting the door slam, and dashed across the alleyway to the pasture.

  Climbing over the fence, I waited, catching my breath, studying the sky, nibbling bread crust. The cows were gathered beneath a stand of cottonwoods, on the far side of the enclosure.

  When I’d swallowed the last crumb of sandwich and licked the last trace of ketchup from my fingers, the sky was still empty of storks, so I set out walking beside the fence, around the perimeter of the pasture. I would walk as far as where the cows were grazing, and back.

  As time drew close, I was increasingly nervous. I tested my legs by sprinting halfway to the south end of the field. I mustn’t practice too much, however, or I’d get tired.

  I hadn’t spent much time in the company of cows. Once or twice I’d helped herd them from pasture to barn at the end of the day. My few experiences with herding cows into a barn, and watching while they were milked, did nothing to convince me of their intelligence. I never saw a farmer try to teach a cow tricks.

  While I did not imagine them clever enough to conspire, I kept an eye on them, albeit an oblique one, since I must watch at the same time the endless, cloudless expanse of sky. From a distance, the cows were as benign as those in the picture over the dining room buffet at Grandma Browning’s house.

  The cows in Grandma’s dining room lolled around a mud hole at the edge of a slowly meandering stream. These lazed about beneath trees, some grazing idly; others, overcome by torpor, reposing like pampered odalisques.

  On closer observation, however, did these not seem to be slyly noting me, taking my measure? The one with her back to me, grazing, who turned her head all the way around to heed my approach—what was she thinking?

  I edged closer to the fence. Another corner was coming up. I had told myself I would turn back at this point. Instead I decided to circle the meadow, passing th
e farmhouse and outbuildings on my way back to Aunt Betty’s. Maria seemed to have been wrong about the baby’s arrival. Maybe it wouldn’t come until tomorrow.

  Tomorrow was Sunday. Sunday was a good day to be born. I was born on Sunday, although I didn’t remember it. Sometimes, when Mama talked about it, I thought I could remember being afraid, high in the air, rocking in a little flannel blanket, clutched in a stork’s beak.

  What would Aunt Betty’s baby remember? If only babies could talk, they could tell us what God was like, before they forgot. If I asked Aunt Betty’s baby easy questions about God, questions you could answer yes or no, maybe she could give me a sign. Maybe God sent babies into the world without words, precisely so they wouldn’t reveal Him while they still remembered.

  I was tramping down Aunt Betty’s alley now, and still there was no sign of the stork. Could the stork come from more than one direction? Was there perhaps more than one stork? What direction was heaven?

  Maybe the stork had come from the west, and I’d missed him. Maybe the baby had arrived. I began to sprint. Now was the time to ask the baby the questions. Just one or two: Would I like God if I knew Him? Could people recognize each other in heaven without their bodies? Tomorrow when the baby was rested, I would ask her one or two more. How many days would I have before she forgot?

  “Mama, is the baby here?” I called, hurling myself into the back hall.

  Mama was sitting alone at the table, hands folded, head tipped to one side as though she were asking a question. When I came running in with my own questions, she continued to stare for a moment, then turned slowly, looking at me as though she’d never seen me before. At length she said, “The baby is dead, Lark.”

  “Dead? You mean it hasn’t been born yet, the stork hasn’t come?”