The Cape Ann

by Faith Sullivan

  “And you will have the downstairs bedroom,” Mama told her.

  “That’s your sewing room,” Aunt Betty reminded her.

  “I’ve decided to put the sewing room in the basement by the washing machine. It’s more convenient for mending.”

  This was the first I’d heard of it.

  “Next year everybody’s presents to each other will be things for the house,” Aunt Betty speculated. “What are you going to have in your room, Lark? Besides a bed and bureau?”

  “Well, I’ve got my red leatherette rocker. Even if I’m too big for it then, I’ll keep that because it’s my favorite Christmas present. And I’ve got my doll chest of drawers that was Mama’s when she was little. And Mama is going to make me a dressing table from orange crates. She said she’ll make a real frilly skirt for it, like the movie stars have.”

  “What colors did you have in mind for your room?” Mama wanted to know.

  I loved to talk like this. The house came near, so near I could smell its new-house smell under the aroma of the Christmas tree. And Mama and Aunt Betty were conversing with me as if I were an equal whose thoughts interested them. I felt seventeen years old and pretty and popular, like Bonnie Bostwick, who sometimes babysat me.

  “I can’t decide, Mama, whether to have pink and green, like Peggy Traherne’s bedroom, or red, white, and blue for victory. What do you think?”

  “Who’s Peggy Traherne?” Aunt Betty wanted to know.

  “She’s a character in one of Lark’s storybooks,” Mama explained.

  “‘Peggy Among the Pansies.’”

  Aunt Betty searched for the dead bulb, which was causing one string of lights not to work. “I like the patriotic idea,” she said. “You could get a little flag and hang it over your bed. On the other hand, pink and pale green are very feminine.”

  “Either one is nice,” Mama agreed.

  “I can’t believe we’re at war,” Aunt Betty sighed, stepping back to regard the placement of the lights. “In our lifetime, Arlene.”

  “The last one was in our lifetime,” Mama said.

  “Yes, but I was just a child, and you were hardly more than a baby. You don’t remember the last one, do you?”

  “No.”

  “I hardly remember it myself. I was about Lark’s age.”

  “Did you think the German soldiers were going to march over here?” I asked. I was still hearing the marching at night.

  She stopped to recall. “No. I don’t think it ever occurred to me. Europe seemed like it was on the moon.”

  It didn’t seem that way to me. It seemed like Europe was just beyond New Frankfurt, where Grandpa and Grandma Erhardt lived.

  “I think it’s getting chilly in here,” Mama said. “I’m going to get the other scuttle of coal.” She returned in a moment, weighted down with the heavy scuttle. “My God, it’s cold out there. But beautiful. The stars are like Christmas tree lights. There’s red ones and green ones and blue.” She carried the coal to the stove. “Open the door, Betty.”

  Mama dumped part of the coal into the stove, then poked at it and arranged it with a little shovel. “There. That should do us,” she said, slamming the stove door. “Now we’ll be cozy.” She looked at her hands. “I’m all filthy,” she complained and went to the kitchen to wash. “Shall we sit down and have popcorn before we put the ornaments on?”

  Aunt Betty sat beside me on the couch. “I worry about Stanley,” she said, staring at the colored lights.

  “Why on earth would you worry about him?” Mama asked. “Worry about the little children in the Philippine Islands. They say the Japs are going to take the Philippines.” Mama sat in the armchair near the stove.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t say it, but Stanley has always needed a strong hand. Now that he’s not living with Cousin Lloyd and Marlis, I’m afraid he might enlist.”

  “Could be the best thing that ever happened to him,” Mama observed.

  “It’s easy for you to say that. He’s not your husband.”

  “Betty, can’t you get it through your head, he’s not yours either?”

  “We’re not divorced,” Aunt Betty retorted.

  “As good as.”

  “No. There’s still hope. If he asked me to come back.”

  “You mean you’d go?” Mama couldn’t believe her ears.

  “I might.”

  Mama shook her head.

  “I married him for better or for worse,” Aunt Betty said. “I had the worse. Now I want the better.”

  “Then you should find a better man. That’s what I’d do.”

  They were turning over old ground, but Aunt Betty never tired of speculating about Uncle Stanley. It made her feel more married.

  I helped hang the ornaments. Mama and Aunt Betty decorated the high branches; I did the low. I loved the delicate glass ornaments, especially those with special shapes—teardrops and diamonds and round pillows.

  “These real pretty ones come from Germany,” Mama pointed out. “We won’t be getting any more for a while. Handle them with kid gloves.”

  It was eleven by the time we finished. Mama piled the empty boxes by the door to be carried back to the freight room in the morning.

  “We need a highball, Betty,” Mama said, reaching down a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard. “There’s a bottle of Coca-Cola in the refrigerator. Do you want your whiskey in Coca-Cola?”

  “How are you having yours?”

  “I have mine in plain water with ice cubes.”

  “Oh, I can’t drink mine in plain water. I don’t like the taste. Put it in Coca-Cola, and give me some ice cubes, too.”

  “Lark, get your nightie on, and I’ll give you a little Coca-Cola,” Mama told me.

  “In a highball glass with ice.”

  When we were settled in the living room with our drinks, Mama turned off all the lights except those on the tree. We sat in the glowing shadows, staring at the tree as if it were a flaming hearth or a crystal ball.

  “To the three witches,” Mama toasted, raising her glass and smiling at Aunt Betty and me. Aunt Betty and I raised our glasses. “To victory,” Aunt Betty said.

  55

  I WOKE IN THE middle of the night. The light was on in the kitchen. The banjo clock said ten past three.

  “I know he’s in a ditch somewhere,” Mama said. “The roads are terrible.”

  “Should we take the car and go look for him?” Aunt Betty asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think we should go look.”

  “Let me wake Lark and tell her,” Mama said.

  “I’m awake.”

  “Aunt Betty and I’re going to look for your papa. He might have gone off the road. But he’ll be all right. Don’t worry.”

  “Can I come?”

  “No. We need you here to answer the phone. If we don’t find him on the road, I’ll check the hospital in St. Bridget and call you from there to see if you’ve heard anything.” Mama looked at her watch. “We won’t be back much before five,” she said, “so don’t worry about us. Why don’t you go to bed on the couch now so you’ll hear the phone.”

  Mama and Aunt Betty dressed as if they were going to trek across the Yukon. “Look at the frost on the window,” Mama pointed out. “It must be twenty-five below.” She poked up the fire in the stove and added a little coal. “If it gets real low, put in the rest of this,” she advised me. “But make sure it gets going good and doesn’t smoke.”

  It took a long time to start the Ford, but at length I heard them drive off. I got up and plugged in the Christmas tree lights and found the rest of the buttered popcorn. Stuffing my face with popcorn and mesmerizing myself with the colored lights, I considered Papa and where he might be. The more I worried, the more I ate, until I was as bloated as a dead fish.

  If he was in the ditch, he might freeze to death. If he stayed in the truck and the heater was working, he would probably be all right. In an hour there would be creamery trucks coming by, and he could
catch a ride. If Mama didn’t find him. But if he were hurt… I prayed to God to look out for him.

  At a quarter past four, the phone rang. “Lark, it’s Mama. Is Papa home?”

  “No.”

  “Did he call?”

  “No.”

  She said something to Aunt Betty.

  “Wait a minute, Mama. I heard the truck, I think.”

  “Look out the window,” she said.

  Through the delicate tracery of frost, I saw the headlights pull up beside the depot and wink off. Then the truck door slammed, and in a moment, Papa opened the storm door, then the inner door, in a tentative manner, as if the kitchen might be booby-trapped.

  “Mama, Papa just came in.”

  “Put him on the line,” Mama said in an angry voice.

  “Papa, Mama wants to talk to you on the phone.”

  “Where’s she?” He learned against the doorway.

  “In St. Bridget at the hospital.”

  “Wha’s she doin’ there?”

  “Looking for you.”

  He pulled off a glove with his teeth and threw it down. Making his way overcarefully across the room, he said, “’Lo,” into the phone.

  Mama’s voice crackled at the other end.

  “Boys had a li’l party afterwards.”

  He hung up the receiver while Mama was still talking. “Can’ even have a li’l fun.”

  I added the remainder of the coal to the fire, then found the old flatiron and set it on top of the stove. While it heated, I fetched a brown paper sack and a towel. When the iron was hot, I wrapped it in the bag and then in the towel, and tucked it under the quilt at the foot of the crib. Papa was sitting on the couch, still in his brown jacket, wearing one leather glove. Pulling the plug on the tree lights, I climbed into my crib, put my feet against the warmth of the iron, and fell asleep.

  I didn’t hear Mama and Aunt Betty return. Nor did I hear Mama later, after the sun came up, when she rose, dressed, and let herself out of the house. When I woke, Aunt Betty was asleep in Mama’s bed. Papa had slept on the couch.

  Now his unshaved face was puffy and gray as he sat at the kitchen table cradling a cup of reheated coffee, not drinking it, only holding it and staring at the wall.

  I poured a bowl of cereal and carried it into the living room. Someone had refilled the coal scuttle. The morning paper lay on the sideboard, unopened. I got it down and, spreading it on the floor, knelt on all fours to read the funny papers.

  In the kitchen, Papa scraped his chair back, got up, and dumped the coffee down the sink. Setting the cup on the drain board, he stood, palms on the rim of the sink, leaning heavily against it as if he hadn’t the spunk to stand by himself.

  “Where’s your ma?” he asked after several minutes.

  I didn’t understand him because his voice was strained and thin, as if he had something caught in his throat. “What did you say?”

  “Where’s your ma?”

  “I don’t know. Are you sick?”

  “Never mind.” He turned and walked to the door, opening it and pushing the storm door open.

  “You going next door?”

  “Huh?”

  “Are you going next door?”

  “Why? What difference?”

  “You don’t have a coat or cap. It’s real cold. Look at the windows.” In fact, a blast of air swept in through the open door, armed with a thousand needles of arctic ice.

  He turned away and left, as if he hadn’t heard, and closed both doors behind him. I ran to the living room window. Maybe he was going across to Mr. Navarin’s Sinclair station. Or maybe he’d drive downtown for coffee at the Loon Cafe. Sometimes he did that on Saturday morning. But he was walking along the tracks, just walking, not going anywhere. There was nowhere much to go in the direction he was headed. Not even the hobo jungle.

  Aunt Betty padded out of the bedroom, clutching herself. “It’s cold in here.”

  “Papa just went out,” I explained.

  “Where to?”

  “Nowhere. Just walking. And he didn’t even take a coat or cap.”

  “Must be going somewhere,” she said.

  “Just down the tracks.”

  “Going to check something on a siding.”

  “Not in that direction. Nothing on the siding down there.”

  “Your mama make coffee?”

  “No.”

  Aunt Betty dumped out the little that remained in the pot of yesterday’s coffee and began preparing a fresh pot. “Is there a fire in the coal stove?” she asked. “It feels like it’s gone out.”

  “It’s going. It’s the kitchen that’s cold. Turn on the oven.”

  I folded the paper and carried the cereal bowl to the kitchen. “Papa’s going to freeze.”

  “Maybe you better get dressed and go look for him. Where’s your mama?”

  I lifted my shoulders. “Out someplace. She got up early, I guess.”

  “Is the car here?” Aunt Betty asked.

  I nodded.

  “Then she hasn’t gone far. Maybe to Truska’s for milk or something.”

  It was a strange morning, I thought, pulling a dress over my head. It felt as though I had wandered into somebody else’s life. Normally Mama was up making breakfast on Saturday morning. She liked preparing breakfast on the weekends, when she didn’t have to hurry off to her typewriter. Usually Papa stayed in bed, head under the pillow, until Mama called him to the table. After breakfast he had another cup of coffee and a Lucky Strike while he read the sports section of the Minneapolis paper. The smell of bacon and coffee and Lucky Strikes spoke of ritual Saturday morning indolence.

  Not this morning. Papa was out wandering in twenty-below weather. Mama was God-knew-where, not even leaving a note on the table. I had a tight, expectant pain in my stomach. I wanted to climb into the crib, and scramble up into the banjo clock. But it was my place to go after Papa.

  When I had pulled on my boots and coat and mittens and cap, and Aunt Betty had tied the cap under my chin and wound the long scarf around my face below my eyes, I tramped out into the virgin air. It was so clear and calm that I felt like a monster laying waste to its purity. Shlump, clump, shlump, clump, down the rail bed. People could hear me down the line in Hazelton, I thought.

  When I came abreast of the last of the grain elevators, I saw Papa standing in the sharp, blue morning shadows, between the last elevator and its nearest companion. He was leaning against the great, high wall, looking at his feet.

  “Papa, come home.”

  He paid no attention. I shlumped across the rows of tracks. “Papa, it’s freezing. Come home. Aunt Betty wants you to come home.” At length he looked up. He glanced at me as if I were Beverly or Sally, someone else’s kid. “I’m not supposed to come home without you,” I told him, “so if you don’t come, I have to stand here till I freeze.” I reached for his hand and pulled. “Come on. It’s cold.”

  He followed docilely. What was the matter with him? I was worried. Was he sick? Crazy? Where were his brains? I led the way into the house and closed the doors. Aunt Betty poured Papa a fresh cup of coffee and helped me out of my heavy things. “What’s going on, Willie?” she asked.

  He shook his head and wouldn’t look at her. We remained in place, as if waiting for an actor whose entrance was late. The door opened, and Mama dragged into the kitchen. She passed us, saying nothing, and went into the bedroom to take off her coat. She had forgotten to remove her boots. I was shocked. What terrible thing did this portend? What else could happen? We were already at war. And Hilly had died.

  “Mama, what is it?”

  I don’t think she realized that I had spoken. She was sitting on the bed. She pulled her arms out of her coat and let it drop behind her.

  “Mama, take off your boots!” I cried.

  Papa came into the bedroom. “How did you find out? Who told you?”

  Mama stared at him.

  “I was going to tell you as soon as you came home.”

 
Still she was silent, with a wondering look on her face.

  “We were drinking boilermakers. I shouldn’t’ve. I shoulda stayed with beer. But you know what them bastards are like. ‘God hates a coward, Willie.’ That’s what they say, ‘God hates a coward.’ So I drank boilermakers with ’em.

  “I never meant to lose the money, Arlene. I wasn’t even going to play, but you know how they are. They think you’re not one of them if you don’t play.”

  Papa knelt on the bedroom floor and grasped Mama about the waist. “I’m so sorry, Arlene,” he sobbed, and tears gushed from his eyes and washed his cheeks.

  Horrified, I climbed into the crib. This was the day the world ended, I thought.

  “I know how bad you wanted that house. We’ll build it, you’ll see. Only we can’t build it right now. I’m going to need that money. How much is there, Arlene? Is there five hundred dollars? There’s nowhere else I can turn.” Through his sobs, he pleaded, “Don’t turn your back on me. I’m at the end of my rope.”

  Except for Papa’s crying and the twittering of a family of snow buntings on the roof, the town was quiet. No engine growled, no mother called, no foot fell overhead in the Bigelow’s apartment.

  At last Mama said, “You didn’t have to lose the money after all, Willie—Mr. Rayzeen says by spring there won’t be any home building. The government needs the materials, he says.”

  “You think I lost it on purpose?” Papa cried.

  Mama didn’t answer. She stood up, pulling away, and drifted into the kitchen, leaving Papa weeping beside the bed.

  “Lark and I’re leaving for California in January, Betty. You want to come along? I’ll pay for your ticket.”

  “I can’t go to Los Angeles.”

  “Then we won’t go there. We’ll go someplace else. There’s lots of towns in California.”

  “For a vacation?”

  “For good.”

  Now the world had ended.

  56

  “WHERE’LL YOU GET THE money?” Aunt Betty asked Mama.

  “I’ll sell the car. Willie can get tickets for Lark and me.” Being family of a railroad man, Mama and I rode on passes. “If we put your fifty dollars together with what I get for the car, I think we can make it.”