The Cape Ann (20 page)

Mama crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. The springs squeaked shrilly, and the thin mattress collapsed perilously on that side. Mama paid it no mind, but studied Aunt Betty, gently brushing loose strands of golden red hair back from Betty’s face.

“Feeling pretty bad?” Mama asked.

“I’ll live,” Aunt Betty told her quietly. A weak smile flickered in her eyes, then went out.

“Well, you mustn’t worry about anything now. Lark and I are here to look after you and take care of business.”

“My business is a mess,” Aunt Betty observed dryly, stirring herself a little to glance about the dim room. The living room had merely been dusty and unsure looking, the way rooms were when men were housekeeping. The bedroom was awash in disorder. There were dirty dishes on the table, books and magazines lying everywhere, nighties and underwear discarded in odd places.

“I was going to pick up,” Aunt Betty said, “but when I bent over, I started to faint, so I laid on the floor awhile until I could get up again. I asked Stan to pick up in here yesterday, but he was called away in the afternoon.” Breathless, she rested a moment. “George Stamp cut off two fingers in a machine, and Stan had to drive him to Mankato.”

Aunt Betty laid her fingertips on her lips and closed her eyes. She was feeling nauseated. Mama looked around for a bowl.

“Run to the kitchen, Lark, and get a bowl or pan.”

Aunt Betty shook her head slightly and pointed under the bed. Mama pulled up the covers and found an old, chipped, blue mixing
bowl. Pulling it out, she told Aunt Betty, “You can’t lift this heavy thing. We’ll find something lighter and keep it on a chair where it’s handy. Why do you have it under the bed?”

“Stan can’t look at it anymore. He’s been through eight and a half months of vomit.”

“Maybe he’ll volunteer to have the next baby while you go out on the road.”

“At my age, I doubt there’ll be a next baby.”

“Don’t be too sure. This one may turn out to be the first olive out of the bottle.”

“I couldn’t go through this again.”

“Most cases, it’s only the first that makes you so sick,” Mama said authoritatively.

Suddenly Aunt Betty clutched the heavy blue bowl and her whole body heaved in a great spasm of retching. Mama stood beside the bed and held her sister’s forehead. “Go wring out a washcloth and bring it, Lark.”

I ran to the bathroom off the kitchen, grabbed the cleanest-looking cloth, and wet it under the cold water tap. I tried not to notice the scummy gray sink and tub, the sour-smelling heap of towels and cloths behind the door, the stained linoleum around the toilet.

Hurrying back to the bedroom, I handed Mama the cloth. Aunt Betty’s head lay back against soiled-looking pillows. Her eyes were closed, and she held herself so still, she seemed to be dead. Mama took the cloth and wiped Aunt Betty’s face and hands.

“Christ,” Mama said, under her breath, “this cloth doesn’t smell clean.” She turned her head. “Was this the best you could do?”

I nodded.

“Find another bowl or pan,” Mama told me.

Off I flew to the kitchen. All Aunt Betty’s pans and bowls were dirty. I found a blue spattered-enamel bowl that was somewhat less encrusted than the rest, and scrubbed it out with a tea towel, since the dishcloth had gone sour.

Above the sink a blue spattered-enamel cup hung on a hook. This I scrubbed as well, filling it with cool water from the tap.

“Here, Mama. Here’s a bowl and a cup of water so Aunt Betty can rinse her mouth.”

Mama handed me the other bowl and told me to empty it in the toilet. It was a good thing I’d had experience carrying vomit
bowls last summer in Corpus Christi, or I’d be queasy now. When I’d emptied this one, I looked around the kitchen and tried to think what Mama would do. Filling the tea kettle and a big, battered soup kettle with water, I set them on the stove. I knew how to light our bottled gas stove at home, though Mama never let me. Now I removed a wooden match from the tin container and struck it on the burner, turning the handle for the burner under the tea kettle. The flame jumped up obediently, and I lit the second one.

While the water heated, I pulled the little table that stood by the window, across the room and stacked all of the dirty dishes on it. A big enamel dish pan hung on the wall. Climbing on a chair, I reached it down and put it in the sink. There were no clean dishcloths or tea towels to be found. Well, I would scrub the dishes with a dirty tea towel I’d used before.

Aunt Betty’s broom and dustpan were in the cellarway. When I’d swept the linoleum and dumped the sweepings into the waste-basket, the water in the kettles was steaming. Grasping the handle of the tea kettle with a towel, as I’d seen Mama do, I carried it to the sink and half-filled the dishpan, adding cold water from the tap. There was only a little soap left in the Ivory flakes box under the sink. We would have to buy more.

Dish washing was one task at which I felt reasonably expert, and I set to it, singing “The Old Gray Mare,” as Mama and I often did at home. I saw myself as a six-year-old good angel, come to put Aunt Betty’s life to rights and to save her baby, dropped from the sky by a careless stork.

As I labored in Aunt Betty’s kitchen, filling the cupboard with clean dishes, scrubbing the countertop, and scraping off the stove, I grew light and happy and, possibly, pretty.

“Lark,” Mama called. I dried my hands. “Lark.” Wouldn’t she be happy when she saw what I’d done? She’d tell me I was a good angel. She was at the kitchen door, the blue bowl in her hands. Her face was closed off with worry.

“Lark, I want you to go next door and ask if we can borrow a change of linen for the bed. Just until I can wash Betty’s. Two sheets for a double bed, and two pillow slips.” She called after me, “Tell them who you are.”

Immediately to the south of Aunt Betty’s house was a vacant lot, so I assumed that Mama meant me to go to the house on the north. The yard there looked as though it had come out of a
bandbox. Even the dirt around the foundation plantings was clean. The grass was clean. All the edges were neat, and the bushes stood at attention.

The two wooden steps leading to the screened porch were scrubbed, as was the sidewalk before them. The very clapboards on the house appeared to have felt a brush recently.

I glanced down at my dress, in which I’d been cleaning Aunt Betty’s kitchen. The best I could do was smooth it with my hands and keep my arms crossed in front of the worst.

My shoes were dusty. I pulled up my socks, patted my disordered hair, and knocked on the frame of the screen door. I could see that the inner door was open. “Hello, Mrs….?”

As though she’d been shot from a slingshot, the woman of the house appeared at the inner door and, in an instant, at the screen door. She was at least as tidy as her front yard. Her starched housedress whispered as she strided toward me, wearing tie-up black shoes with two-inch heels and a mirror shine. Her figure was tall and well-proportioned, and her dress, which she must have sewn since it was too nicely fitted to have come from the catalog, was contoured to a robust body, firm as new apples. Above the white collar, her neck was ruddy, as was her even-featured but plain face, innocent of makeup. In the ruddiness of their surroundings, her eyes were a jarringly clear and intense blue, like two blue “purey” marbles. Around her head, her hair was pulled tightly into a single, unbroken roll, built over a rat.

Even if I’d been clever at judging such matters, I couldn’t have said how old this woman was. She left no clues.

“Yah?” she inquired, the single word German accented. Without giving any indication that I should step in, she opened the screen door.

“Aunt Betty lives next door,” I explained, nodding vaguely in that direction. “She’s sick. Mama and I have come to help her. Mama said to ask if we could borrow two sheets for a double bed and two pillow slips.” I hastened to add, “Just until Mama gets Aunt Betty’s washed.” The only thing that held me on that doorstep was the certain knowledge that Mama would skin me alive if I returned empty-handed.

“Vell,” the woman exclaimed sharply, as if my request were outrageous, but no more than she might have expected. “Vell,” she
repeated, still more sharply. At length, pointing with her finger to the spot where I stood, she ordered, “You shtay
here,”
and turning precisely on her heel, she disappeared into the shadows of the house.

I hugged myself and wished that I were scrubbing the bathtub at Aunt Betty’s, even though it had looked disgusting: full of gray soap scum all the way up to the overflow hole, and those little curly hairs that were always turning up in bathtubs even when nobody in the family had short curly hair. Another of life’s unsolved mysteries.

While I waited for the German Woman, I studied her screened porch. The painted, gray floor shone, cool and unscarred. A dark home-braided rug covered the area between the screen door and the inner door. It looked thick and cozy. Two rockers, one at either end of the little porch, faced the street. Beside one was a basket of knitting; beside the other a smoking stand, nary an ash sullying the ashtray. The room was otherwise bare. Not a book or magazine, coffee cup or bobby pin softened its perfection.

As I gaped through the screen, hands cupped around my eyes, the German Woman materialized, startling and shaming me. It was not polite to pay too close attention to other people’s possessions. I took the liberty of opening the screen, since the woman’s hands were full.

“Shtay here,” she commanded.

Instantly I let go of the door and it slammed in her face. Would she decide to withhold her bed linens? I would then have to repeat all this at another neighbor’s.

“I didn’t mean to slam the door.”

“Ffor heffen’s sake, don’t chust shtand dere. Open za door.”

I opened it and took the sheets and pillow slips. “Thank you very much.”

“You are not to
keep
zem,” she called as I hurried away as fast as my legs would carry me without actually breaking into a run.

Mama, standing on the porch step at Aunt Betty’s, huffed, “I vouldn’t dream of keeping zem.” In return for the linens, she handed me a shopping list and her coin purse, stuffed with small bills.

“Give the list to the people at the store and let them make up the order. Be sure to get a receipt so I can check their arithmetic.”

I didn’t need to ask which store. There was only one that sold groceries.

The Main Street of Morgan Lake was bright and quiet. A number of its little frame buildings were boarded up. Two cars stood at the curb, both held together with baling wire and rags, one in front of the tavern, and one in front of the creamery.

I passed the Skelly station. Across the street, in front of the implement dealer, a breeze gathered a dust devil unto itself. Further along, on that same side, was the creamery. There were vacant spaces between several of the buildings. No one maintained them, so they were filled with mustard and dandelion and foxtail and cast-off lard pails and broken furniture. Mama said it was a disgrace. No one would come to live in a place where Main Street was allowed to go to seed. They’d take one look and stay right on the train. Mama saw every village as a potentially thriving city, if only people would pull up their socks and get to work.

I was of two minds about that. It would be pleasant if someone mowed the vacant lots, put out petunias, and installed a bench or two. But on the other hand, there was minor adventure and even mystery to be found in the untamed spaces.

In such a scraggly space as these, beside the hotel in New Frankfurt, where Grandpa and Grandma Erhardt lived, I’d found a pocket watch which didn’t keep time and a pair of silk panties with deep lace trim on the legs. Mama had washed the panties and kept them for herself, but she’d let me keep the watch after we’d made inquiries at the hotel and I’d gone house to house in the village to inquire if it belonged to anyone.

Inside the case was engraved, “To Bub, From Mama. 1923.” Like my darling Earl Samson, Bub became a long-lost friend with whom I would one day be joyfully reunited. Mama kept the watch for me, in the drawer with the letter from Earl Samson. I didn’t yet trust myself not to lose them if they were in my care. And they were my most important possessions.

The letters on the window said Boomer’s Tavern. As I passed, I looked in. The man behind the bar was probably Mr. Boomer. By a table a woman stood, one hand on her hip, the other holding a rag. Mrs. Boomer. Another man and woman sat at the table, drinking glasses of beer or, at any rate, sitting in front of them, passing time.

I loved taverns. I loved hotels, too, but I loved taverns more. When I told her that, Mama laughed and said I should keep it to myself. One of the best things about a little place like Morgan Lake
or New Frankfurt was that, there being no restaurant or candy store, the saloon usually served sandwiches and sold ice cream and candy. And for this reason, children were allowed, by custom if not by law, to go inside—if their parents didn’t forbid it.

Mama was not keen to have me spending all my time in the tavern, which I might have done, but stopping for an ice cream cone now and then or accompanying Grandpa Erhardt while he visited over a beer was all right. Movies were a rare and considerable treat, but not so considerable as sitting in a tavern.

For one thing, everybody made a fuss over a little girl in a tavern, admiring her dress and her hair bow and the color of her eyes, and remarking how much she resembled some distant and beautiful cousin they remembered who used to live hereabouts.

For another, the smell of beer was more delicious than the smell of pumpkin pie or Mama’s perfume. In my mind it was inextricably tied up with people laughing together and sharing stories, each of which began, “D’ya remember the time …?” “D’ya remember the time that Mick O’Neill surprised the skunk in the outhouse?” Or “D’ya remember the time that Harriet Good ran back into the burning house to get her teeth? Damned near perished of vanity.”

On Saturday night the town was richly populated with colorful citizens who came back in story. The past and present were woven together as men and women, many of them long ago passed on, showed up to drive their new roadster into the chicken coop or to lose their bloomers on the dance floor over at the hotel.