The Cape Ann (13 page)

“Come sit here on the davenport by Lark,” his mother told him. She tucked a napkin into the vee of his robe and handed him a sauce dish and spoon. “Mrs. Erhardt brought a whole quart of ice cream. Think of it,” she exclaimed.

We ate in silence, the only sounds the clicking of utensils against crockery and Hilly’s sucking of his spoon. Hilly finished first. Mrs. Stillman carried his bowl and napkin to the kitchen and returned with a cloth for him to wipe his hands and face.

Hilly was quiet. He sat there, playing with the sash of his robe and staring across the room. Mrs. Erhardt carried my empty bowl and her own to the kitchen. I could hear her talking with Mrs. Stillman about “this and that,” as she would say. Mrs. Stillman spoke of someone in Germany named Hitler. She had been reading about him, and she was worried.

“If there’s a war, I thank God that Hillyard is too old to go,” she said, as though the army would take him if he were younger.

Hilly picked up
Happy Stories for Bedtime
.

“Would you like me to read to you, Hilly?”

He nodded. Never had I seen Hilly so woebegone. His eyes were kept downcast, his hands folded between his thighs. He would rather be alone in his room, I thought. He had joined us only for courtesy’s sake.

In the kitchen Mama said, “Willie’s got a stiff leg from falling out of a tree when he was a boy, and the leg’s not being set properly. It’s not much, but the Army probably wouldn’t want him.”

I riffled the pages of my book. I’d read every story at least twenty times, but they were all new to Hilly. Finally, I chose “Peggy Among the Pansies,” about a little girl who took over caring for her mother’s flower garden while her mother was ill. The main illustration, in color, showed Peggy on her knees among the many colorful flowers, digging with a trowel. But, not only could Peggy garden, she could also cook and mend and look after her mother.

Mrs. Stillman’s delicate voice, which reminded me of little twigs snapping, piped, “Italy going into Albania, that doesn’t sound good. I never thought the Italians were like that.”

“In the town of Pemberly,” I read, “on a quaint, winding street called Rose Lane, lived a girl named Peggy who was, as we shall see, both wise and clever.” Besides becoming pretty, I wanted to become wise and clever like Peggy. Mama said that being wise was knowing what to do with being clever. I had written that down because I wasn’t certain I understood.

How glad I was, reading to Hilly, that Mama had made flash cards for the words in my books I didn’t know. Now, instead of inserting any old thing where the hard words were, I could
read
them, barely stumbling at all over “Pemberly” and “quaint.” I felt grown-up and powerful entertaining Hilly.

With his index finger, Hilly traced the tall hollyhocks in the beautiful illustration, then abruptly withdrew his hand, sliding it back between his knees.

“We’ll get to that part of the story in just a minute,” I told him, as Miss Lamb, the kindergarten teacher, had several times patiently explained to me.

As I concluded “Peggy Among the Pansies,” Hilly nodded slowly, thoughtfully, pleased by the outcome. Mama and Mrs. Stillman were standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Mama had waited for me to finish before announcing that it was time to go home.

“I’ll come back and read to you again, Hilly.”

“He loves to be read to,” Mrs. Stillman said. “I used to read to him for hours, but my eyes tire so quickly now.”

Mrs. Stillman followed us to the door, thanking us for coming and for bringing ice cream. In the car I asked Mama, “Did Mrs. Stillman say anything about what happened to Hilly?”

“No. Maybe Hilly didn’t tell her. Or maybe she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

Here was another mystery. Sometimes life was thick and dark with mysteries. Patches of mystery, like patches of fog, obscured what I ought to know if I were to be ready for seven years old.

“LET ME SEE THOSE
hands,” Papa demanded Monday evening when we sat down to supper.

“No,” Mama said. “Not till after we eat. Leave her alone now.”

My nails were no longer than they had been the previous Monday. I didn’t know why I couldn’t stop biting them, especially when I’d promised. We were having meat loaf and fried potatoes, two of my favorite foods, but I wasn’t hungry. All I could think of was the upcoming trip to the cemetery.

Mama and Papa finished eating. “Get going on that food,” Papa told me.

“I’m not hungry.”

“I don’t care if you’re not hungry. In this family everyone cleans their plate. What did you do, eat cookies before supper?”

“No.” I started to cry. I didn’t want to, but I was filled with so much self-pity, it spilled out of my eyes and rolled down my face. “I don’t want to go to the cemetery.”

“You should have thought of that when you were biting your nails.”

“Please don’t make me, Papa.”

“Eat your supper. I’ve got all night. We’ll sit here until you’ve finished. If you waste enough time, it’ll be dark when we get to the cemetery.”

I began stuffing food into my mouth—sobbing and swallowing, wiping my nose with my napkin, and shoveling in more. When I was nearly finished, Mama grabbed the plate away.

“You’ll spoil her until she’s worthless,” Papa told her.

Mama said nothing, but went on clearing away while Papa put my hands on the table, palms down. “They’re worse than they were last week,” he said.

I pulled my hands away and shoved them between my thighs. They were
my
hands, weren’t they?

“I’d hide my hands, too, if they were as ugly as those,” he told me.

“I’m not hiding them because they’re ugly,” I explained. “I’m hiding them because they’re
mine.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“If you sass me, you’ll
stay
at the cemetery.”

“Willie,” Mama said, “skip this week. Forgive her this time.”

“You stay out of this. This is between Lark and me. I don’t want to punish her, but she has to learn to mind.” He got up from the table and fetched the brush from the bedroom. Heading toward the outside door, he turned. “Come on.”

“No, Papa, please.” I ran into the bedroom and crawled under the bed. The linoleum was cool and smooth.

“Come out of there,” Papa yelled, dropping to his knees and looking under the bed. “You come out of there or we’ll drive to the cemetery every night this week, do you hear me?” He reached under the bed, but I scooted away.

“If you know what’s good for you, you won’t make me mad.”

I huddled against the wall under the head end of the bed, not making a sound. Mama kept a couple of boxes under the bed with our galoshes and winter things in them. I hid myself behind them.

“Arlene, get in here,” Papa called.

Mama came in and knelt beside the bed. “Go in the other room,” she told Papa. “Lark, I’ll go with you to the cemetery.” She reached her hand under the bed. “Take hold of my hand.”

I touched the end of her fingers, but didn’t grasp them.

“Lark, please don’t make him madder,” she whispered. She wiggled her fingers, and I took hold of them. “That’s a good girl. Come out now.”

I crawled out. I was still crying. Mama took the embroidered hanky from her pocket and handed it to me. With her hand she brushed the hair back from my face. “You’ll make yourself sick,” she said.

“I don’t care. I want to die.”

“Don’t ever say that. Things will get better.”

“No, they won’t. I try not to bite my nails, but I can’t stop. How
can I go to first confession if I can’t stop biting my nails?” I started to cry again. “I’ll go to hell, Mama.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Papa said.” I explained, “Biting my nails is a sin of disobedience.”

Papa’s impatient voice came to us through the thin partition. “Are you two coming?”

Mama took my hand, and we walked out of the bedroom. All I remember of the trip to the cemetery is how lavender the sky was growing, how fiery the clouds were above the disappearing sun, how still and quiet the air, not a leaf disturbed, and then, how I spoiled it with my crying.

Everything was the same as on the first trip except that I threw up my meat loaf and potatoes at the edge of the lane. When we were home again, Mama put me to bed. I hated Papa and didn’t ever want to see him again. That he was going to be sleeping in the same room made me sick with revulsion. After a while I thought how sinful my feelings were. I felt like two people, one angry and loathing, the other guilty and loving.

At breakfast Papa was jolly, admonishing me to eat my Wheaties if I wanted to be like Jack Armstrong, the all-American Boy.

“I don’t want to be like Jack Armstrong.”

“Well, like what’s-her-name, Betty.”

“I don’t want to be like Betty, either.”

“It makes me sad when you’re sullen,” he told me. “Because I know that God hates sullen people.”

“How do you know that?”

“Everybody knows that. Ask Father Delias.”

Did everyone know it? Was I the only one who didn’t know all these things? When did they learn them?

It was my good fortune that the following Monday was the day before Memorial Day, and Mama and I worked without coming home, all afternoon and evening, at Sioux Woman Lake, setting up booths for the Knights of Columbus Memorial Day Picnic. Actually, Mama worked and I tried to keep out of the way. It was the first day of summer vacation, and many of the women had brought their children.

The public park lay on the east side of the lake, and that was where the picnic was held. There were normally picnic tables dotting the park. These were supplemented now by big tables hauled
from the church basement and the American Legion hall, in the back of a Mosely’s Dray truck. The KC men who loaded and unloaded the tables were cheerful and self-congratulatory. Because this was work they did only once a year (except for Harry Mosely), they laughed a good deal and shouted excessive instructions (“Watch that end there, Bob” or “Careful lettin’ ’er down now, Pete”), like boys playing at being draymen.

Papa didn’t belong to the Knights of Columbus. He thought it was for people who liked to put on airs. But I thought he was missing some fun, at least at times like these.

Eight or ten members of the KCs who were handy with tools built the booths from which food, handiwork, and rummage and white elephant objects would be sold, and where games of chance or skill would be played. Somewhat apart, at the edge of the park, a bingo tent was raised.

Next to the parking lot, an outfit from Iowa was setting up a merry-go-round and tilt-a-whirl. Tomorrow the park would ring with the drunken clangor and wheeze of carnival music.

“Don’t get in the men’s way,” Mama warned as I trailed off with Sally Wheeler and several others, to watch the merry-go-round taking form. We sat on the grass, shielding our eyes from the sun and marveling as, magically, the parts fit together into a toy overwhelmingly grand. Its prancing horses and bounding lions, were mythic; its flashing mirrors and portraits of Arthurian beauties, crushingly splendid. I was deliciously oppressed as the foreshadowing limits of time and money clashed with my inexhaustible desire to ride, to be a part of the machine.

Simply witnessing its assembly, I was overcome. The merry-go-round was part of the land beyond the larkspur and hollyhocks, in the banjo clock. But it was a part capable of passing from that Elysian field to this world of heat and dust. And while I rode, it carried me with it into the valley of dreams.

With the idea of splashing in the water around the dock, Sally and I trotted off to the bathhouse after lunch to change into our bathing suits. The lake was still very cold, so we played in the shallows, collecting pretty stones and trying to catch minnows in our hands. Two or three times we found tiny leeches clinging to our feet, and we ran to Mama, who sprinkled them with salt and brushed them off.

Mama had spread an old blanket on the grass for Sally and me,
and when we tired of playing in the water, we collapsed on the blanket to watch the grown-ups work. How satisfying to be a grown-up, allowed to work morning till night at
real
work instead of pretending. Of course, Mama let me do simple chores like dusting and carrying the slop pails, but I still couldn’t bake a pie or sew a dress. Or decorate a baked goods booth with crêpe-paper flowers, as Mama was doing. How powerful a person who could do that sort of job must feel.

Mama, Bernice McGivern, Stella Wheeler, and Maxine, Bernice’s sister, were going to run the baked goods booth. Stella Wheeler had asked to be on the baked goods committee, although she was “the worst baker in town,” according to Mama. “The woman can’t boil water without burning it,” she said. Still, Mama was not disposed to say no. “Stella Wheeler
needs
to work in the baked goods booth,” Mama explained, “for her nerves.”

“Nerves” must be what caused Mrs. Wheeler to cry so often, and to sometimes talk too much and other times not talk at all. What
were
nerves? Mama said they were not catching. On the telephone to Bernice McGivern, Mama said of Stella Wheeler, “She’s not more than thirty-five, but I think she’s having her change already.” Mama had been in a hurry when I asked her what Mrs. Wheeler’s change was. “Oh, honey,” she’d said, “it’s when ladies stop having babies.”

I wrote it down in the notebook. Did a lady decide one day that she wouldn’t have any more babies, or did the stork decide not to deliver them, or did God decide not to send them? And why would that give a lady nerves unless, maybe, she grew sad thinking of the cute little babies who would go to live at someone else’s house. If Mama had already had her change, would I have gone to live with someone else? With Cynthia Eggers? And when Mama saw me, would she have recognized me or known that I could have been her little girl if she hadn’t changed? I saw how it was possible that such a change could make a lady nervous.

I hoped that Mrs. Wheeler didn’t run across a baby at the picnic who looked too familiar. That would start her crying.

I was fond of Sally’s mama, and I thought she was pretty, although she never wore makeup. She’d look like a movie star if she wore some. I didn’t think it was a practice to which she was morally opposed. It was something that didn’t occur to her. Just as
paying a lot of attention to clothes didn’t occur to her. She had other things on her mind. Many things, painful things, it seemed.