The Cape Ann

by Faith Sullivan

  How quickly the days escaped. I was very busy. When I got home from school in the afternoon, there was a note on the table from Mama with a list of chores: set the table, empty the slop pails, turn the oven on at four-thirty, scrub three potatoes, etcetera. I felt important being assistant to the president of the company, as Mama had titled me. And Mama paid me well for my help. Fifteen cents a week. That was a nickel more than Katherine Albers got.

  One evening after supper, along toward Thanksgiving of 1940, Mama phoned her best friend, Bernice McGivern. Papa had gone back to the depot office, and I was sitting at the kitchen table, pasting pictures in the scrapbook.

  “I had a letter from Blue Lake today,” Mama told Bernice. “It’s got me upset.” I heard her unfold Grandma’s letter. “The first part’s about the weather and Papa putting up the storm windows and Cousin Carrie from Marshalltown coming to visit. But then she says”—here Mama lowered her voice—“‘I’m worried about Betty. It seems pretty clear to all of us that Stan isn’t going to send for her. There’s been one excuse after another: He needed a new car. He needed a new place to live. He wrecked the new car.

  “‘It’s been nearly a year and a half since he left. We’ve told Betty to get on a bus and go out there. She’s got the money saved, but I tell you, Arlene, the spirit’s gone out of that girl. I think she’s afraid of getting out to California and seeing the truth with her own eyes. She doesn’t care about anything anymore. She won’t even go to the pictures with the other girls from the dime store.

  “‘I shouldn’t say it, Arlene, and I want you to burn this letter right away, but I’m afraid Betty’s going to get herself into something she shouldn’t with that Mr. Miller that owns the dime store. He’s married, with two young ones. It worries me half to death, but she won’t talk so I’m helpless. What can we do?’”

  Mama was silent. Bernice was talking.

  “She ought to get a divorce is what she ought to do,” Mama said.

  Next to death, divorce was the most final and frightening word I knew. I listened sharply.

  “I know you don’t believe in divorce,” Mama told Bernice, “but I don’t believe in lying down and dying at age thirty-two.”

  Silence.

  “Well, Betty’s a convert, Bernice.”

  Silence.

  “It’d damned near kill Mama and Papa, but they’d just have to get used to it.”

  Silence.

  “What do you mean, do I feel guilty about sending Stan to California? Of course not. He couldn’t make a living here. My sister was starving. It’s not my fault if he turned out to be a four-flusher.”

  They went on talking for a long time, but I had heard the shocking theme of it. Closing the scrapbook, I put it away in the top drawer of the buffet, and went to bed. It was a long time since I’d stepped into the cottage garden on the banjo clock. Tonight I was glad to have a cozy place to go.

  I strolled through the cottage with its low, beamed ceiling and wing chairs drawn up beside the hearth. Out the front door, I continued, down the stone path and across the lawn to the cottage next door where I heard a baby goo-gooing.

  Angela Roosevelt had married Earl Samson, and they had settled down in the cottage with their new baby, named after me. They were the happiest couple I’d ever seen.

  43

  IN THIRD GRADE WE learned Palmer Method penmanship. I spent hours each week scratching hundreds of m’s and thousands of o’s in lines across the paper, like worms and eggs crawling and rolling from one side to the other. By the end of the year, I was grounded in the basics required to function in the adult world of business and family (reading, writing, arithmetic, and diplomacy), and I wondered if the other nine years of school might not be superfluous.

  In kindergarten I’d learned to negotiate for what I wanted, and to listen while other people said things I wasn’t interested in hearing. In first grade I’d learned to read. Learning to read and First Confession had been the two most important events in my life so far.

  Second grade had been more prosaic than first. I’d learned to add and subtract. In a purely objective way, I was happy to have the skill because I would need it, but numbers were not as thrilling as words.

  Now, in third grade, I’d learned to write longhand. I wasn’t as adept as I had hoped. As was the case with tap dancing, mere desire did not make you graceful.

  A remarkably parallel situation was occurring in Hilly’s life. Mrs. Stillman was reeducating Hilly in writing. When Mama heard this, she said, “Lark, I want you to write Hilly a note.”

  “What should I say?”

  “Tell him that you’re reading Heidi. And I’m sure he’d like to hear about the tap dancing lessons at Martha Beverton’s Tap and Toe.”

  There wasn’t anything to say about the tap dancing lessons at Martha Beverton’s except that I was the worst pupil in the class, worse even than the little kindergarten dancers, so I told him that. Mama said that people enjoy hearing about other people’s failures. It gives them hope.

  But most of the letter was about Heidi, which I’d read through twice and enshrined in a hallowed niche in life, like Happy Stories for Bedtime.

  Mama fixed a stamp to the envelope, and I mailed Hilly’s letter on my way to school on a crackling cold morning in February. “It should come to him through the mail,” Mama explained, “because it’s exciting to receive real mail. It makes you feel important. You are someone if you get mail with your name on it.”

  A few days later, when I stopped at the post office on the way home from school, I found, in addition to the envelopes addressed to Erhardt Typing Service, one for Lark Ann Erhardt. Mama was right. I felt like someone.

  I didn’t rip it open then and there but tucked it away, along with Mama’s mail, not showing it to Beverly, who was walking home from school with me.

  When we reached the depot, Beverly hung on and on, talking about school and her mama’s new job as cook at the Loon Cafe. I thought Beverly didn’t want to go home because it was too cold there to take off your coat unless you got into bed, so I asked her to come in and study with me.

  “I have to do my chores first,” I told her, hiding the letter among the pages of Happy Stories for Bedtime, and piling Mama’s mail on her typing table.

  “Did you know Sally’s pa’s working in town now?” Beverly asked while we set the table.

  “How come?”

  “Guess he got tired of traveling.”

  “I bet Sally’s glad.”

  “Godsakes, yes. Wouldn’t you be if you had a ma like hers?”

  “She’s got a nice mama.”

  “She’s got a spooky ma, if you ask me. You ever see her anymore? What’s she do all the time?”

  “She worries a lot, I think.”

  Beverly stayed for supper and Mama drove her home in the coupe, which Beverly thought was grand and in which she liked to be seen riding. It was one of her few airs and graces.

  The moment they were gone, I climbed into the crib and tore open the letter. My hands shook, and I lay the piece of lined notebook paper on the quilt.

  Dear Lark Ann Erhardt,

  I was very happy when I received your letter.

  Sometimes I am happy. I was happy when you told me about Heidi. In the mountains I think I would be happy.

  I am sad sometimes. There is war in the Life magazine. I don’t want to see that.

  I read many books now. Mrs. Stillman my mother has bad eyes so I read to her. Do you remember that you read to me? I remember Peggy and the pansies.

  Please write.

  Your friend,

  Hillyard E. Stillman

  Hilly’s Palmer Method was messy because he had the same problems with the pen that I had. But the letters were fat and round, like plump babies playing on the floor. Except for the signature, which was cramped and tiny.

  Hilly and I began corresponding once a week. But when Mama and I called on the Stillmans, Hilly never mentioned our letters. He remained the shy, silent person he�
��d become when sanity began overtaking him. Yet, in his letters, he thanked me for visiting and sometimes spoke of the story I’d read or the picture I’d drawn for him.

  I always composed my letters on Sunday, reviewing for him the previous week’s events. Mama, seeing me at work on the letter, would say, “Don’t forget to tell him about ice skating on Sioux Woman Lake,” or when I’d been home in bed a week with tonsillitis, “Don’t forget to mention how the doctor painted your throat.”

  In her travels around the county, Mama kept an eye open for anything that might amuse Hilly. “He’s so cooped up,” she’d say, but he wouldn’t come out for a ride anymore. A circus that set up tent on the outskirts of St. Bridget was the source of a big poster, red and yellow and blue, with lions roaring and elephants rearing. The Methodist rummage sale in Dusseldorf yielded a copy of Robinson Crusoe.

  Mama’s business was growing. “I’ve created a monster!” she’d sigh, not displeased. She wasn’t getting rich, but she was paying expenses, putting a little in her account each week, and “learning how the world works.”

  But Mama was worried about Aunt Betty. There were long letters back and forth. She burned the ones from Aunt Betty after reading them, and told me not to tell Papa.

  In August of 1941, Mama took a week’s vacation from Erhardt Typing Service. She gave all her customers fair warning that she would be away, then packed our bags, piled me into the coupe, and raced for Blue Lake as if the road in that direction might be closed the next day. She had her reasons, but she did not share them with me. When I asked, she said, “It’s grown-up problems. Nothing for you to worry about.”

  I let it go. I would keep my eyes and ears open, and someday I would understand. I simply had to be patient and remember the details. Detective Erhardt of the FBI.

  One thing I understood: Papa had had about all he could stomach of Mama’s success. It was suffocating him. I saw it on his face as Mama talked business to us breakfast, lunch, and supper.

  “Mr. Bracken, the manager of Barnstable’s over in St. Bridget, said I should hire a bookkeeper to handle accounts for small businesses. I might do that after the first of the year,” she’d say.

  Or else, “That brochure I put together for the Harvester Businessmen’s Association?… Mr. Loken told me it was ‘top-notch.’ That’s the word he used—‘top-notch.’”

  “After the first of the year I’m going to invest in a portable typewriter. There are times when I need to throw the typewriter in the car and go, like that,” she explained once, snapping her fingers, “and I can barely lift that thing I’ve got, much less throw it.

  “Also, I’m going to get an instruction book and teach myself shorthand. I can take dictation plenty fast with my own system, but I’d do a lot better if I knew real shorthand. What do you think? D’ya think it’s a waste of time?”

  Papa sat in stony, unheeded silence. It galled him that his name, Erhardt, was on the business—Erhardt Typing Service—soon, perhaps, to become Erhardt Typing and Bookkeeping Service.

  While Mama and I were in Blue Lake, maybe Papa would cool down. If he had a good time with Mr. Navarin and Sonny Steen and Herbie Wendel, he might be jolly and indulgent when we returned. He needed to go fishing and to hear not a word about Erhardt Typing Service the entire week.

  Papa bid us a sullen good-bye as Mama and I drove off in the coupe at ten o’clock Saturday morning, August 16, 1941, the day after the celebration of the Assumption of Mary into heaven. Papa did not wave, though I turned and knelt on the seat, and waved to him through the rear window. He may not have seen me waving. It wasn’t a very big window. He stood unsmiling, arms folded across his chest, eyes narrowed as if he were deep in speculation. Did he suspect a secret about our going, something afoot to which he was not privy?

  Mama hit the blacktop running and took off for Blue Lake “flying low,” as Papa described her driving. At high, hot noon on a dog day that was as still as a stagnant pond, we coasted into Blue Lake.

  Grandma had laid the table with sliced watermelon, potato salad, deviled eggs, sliced tomatoes, and sliced cucumbers in cream and vinegar. We each had a tall, sweating glass of iced tea beside our plate. The electric fan on the sideboard swept back and forth over the table and over Grandma, Grandpa, Mama, and me. Aunt Betty was at work downtown at the Ben Franklin Five and Dime.

  I was the only one eating much. Grandma and Grandpa asked about Mama’s business. How many hours a day was she working? Was she home when I came home from school? What was she doing with me during the summer when school was out? They turned to me. What did I think of Mama running around St. Bridget County like a crazy secretary who’d escaped from the state hospital?

  I liked it, I told them. “I’m learning to cook and keep house, and if I’m good, next year Mama’s going to teach me to type.” More than almost anything, I wanted to know how to type with all ten fingers.

  “Arlene, are you sure this child is having a proper childhood?” Grandma questioned.

  “For God’s sake, Mama …”

  “I don’t like that kind of talk,” Grandma interrupted.

  “You worked when I was a kid,” Mama reminded her.

  Grandma and Grandpa had once been farmers. After the World War, when crop prices went bust, they lost the farm and moved to town. While Grandpa was getting established in the tinsmithing and repair business, Grandma sold baked goods from her kitchen.

  “That was different,” Grandma pointed out. “I wasn’t away from home.”

  “Mama’s working so we can have a house,” I told Grandma. “Would you like to see a picture of it?” I started to get down from my chair.

  “Later, child.”

  “Lark’s right,” Mama told them. “We’ve got a plan picked out, and I’ve talked to Mr. Rayzeen at the lumberyard. I’m adding to the nest egg from Bank Nite, and next spring the carpenters’ll start building our house. Next spring!”

  This was the sort of talk Grandma and Grandpa understood, although they didn’t see why Mama couldn’t buy a house that was already built.

  “I bet you’ve got enough for a down payment on an older house,” Grandpa speculated.

  “I want my house, Papa. I want it the way Lark and I have planned it. With a breakfast nook, and a downstairs powder room.”

  “Powder room!” Grandpa laughed. “That’s a new one on me. What in hell’s a powder room?”

  “Don’t talk that way, Jim,” Grandma admonished. “It’s a toilet and sink.” She turned to me. “Do you want some ice cream, child? There’s vanilla and chocolate. Get yourself a dish and take it outside.”

  This was my cue to leave them alone to discuss what was really on their minds. Probably Aunt Betty. I let the kitchen screen door slam so they’d know I was out of range. Sitting down on the back step, I inclined an ear toward the dining room. Grown-ups forgot how acute a child’s hearing was.

  “You’ve got to do something, Arlene,” Grandma blurted tearfully. “I’m useless. Betty won’t talk to me. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Do you know anything, Arlene?” Grandpa asked.

  “Anything about what?” Mama sidestepped.

  “About Betty and this Miller,” Grandma huffed, suspicious of Mama’s loyalties.

  “No, Mama.”

  “If you do, you’ve got to tell us. I can’t hold up my head downtown anymore. This will kill me.”

  “It won’t kill you,” Grandpa told Grandma.

  “It will, I tell you. Our own flesh shaming us, right here in Blue Lake.”

  “How do you know she’s shaming you?” Mama asked.

  “It’s all over her face. She can’t look me in the eye anymore.” Grandma broke down again. “I’m too ashamed to go shopping. I order groceries over the telephone so no one will see me.”

  “Well, that’s just plain silly,” Mama told her with a touch of impatience.

  “That’s what I keep telling her,” Grandpa agreed.

  Ignoring them, Grandma continued, “You r
aise a child up and you think you’ve put the right ideas in their head. You think your work is done and you’ve earned your rest. And then, something like this happens, and you don’t know where you’re at. I pray for the Lord to take me now, Arlene. I’m too old for this.”

  “Oh, Mama, stop that,” Mama sighed. “You want me to start playing ‘Nearer My God to Thee’?”

  Grandma put her head down on her arms and cried. “Fouling her own nest, that’s what she’s doing.”

  Fouling her own nest? What did that mean?

  44

  WHEN I WAS LITTLE and had an accident in my sleep, Grandma used to talk about fouling the sheets. But, no, that didn’t apply to Aunt Betty. No. But what could be the problem then, that Grandma was so ashamed she couldn’t go downtown to buy groceries?

  It was a quiet, humid, buzzing afternoon, cicadas whining away like tiny machines among the vegetation. There was a new municipal swimming pool. I asked Mama to take me.

  “Not during dog days,” Grandma said. “You’ll pick up infantile paralysis, like the Yates boy did last year. He’s paralyzed from the waist down. They say he’ll never be able to farm.”

  So I put on my bathing suit and ran through the hose, which was not at all the same. But it was cooling. Afterward, when I was dry, I lay down on a narrow bed on the sleeping porch for a nap.

  I loved Grandma’s porch. Wrapped around the front and one side of the house, the screened porch held a couple of twin beds, one double bed, a wardrobe, a pair of rocking chairs, and a tall wooden cupboard full of Grandma’s home remedies.

  All three beds were covered with heavy, white cotton bedspreads. I thought the three beds looked like a little hospital ward I’d seen in A Farewell to Arms last summer at the penny movie. They showed old movies outdoors once a week during the summer when the Majestic was closed, and A Farewell to Arms, with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes, was one of last summer’s offerings. Gary Cooper was very handsome, though not so much to my taste as William Powell.