The Cape Ann (33 page)

“Do the sisters know how you smart-talk your pa?”

This scene took place one night in September while Mama was at bridge club. I didn’t tell her. If I did, Papa might tell the sisters
that I was sassy. The sisters already mistrusted my piety, due to Mama’s being a convert.

Two weeks earlier Sister Mary Frances, presenting me a picture of St. Veronica with her veil, pointed out, “Knowing our catechism and reciting it is not a game. If learning about God and His church is only a game, we will never see heaven. We study catechism in order to please God, not to win prizes.” I had wondered at the time, did that mean she wanted me to answer incorrectly now and then? Would that prove that I was sincere?

I rejected the idea for two reasons: It would be a lie, and more important, I was proud of knowing all the answers. I didn’t want to humble myself. I had little enough purchase in this class where the parents of the other children (except for Sally) were all born Catholics. I wouldn’t pretend to be stupid.

Every second Friday now, when Mama left for bridge club, Papa babysat me, and together we reviewed my catechism. Mama was pleased that Papa so willingly stayed at home with me. She didn’t question him about his reasons, but imagined, perhaps, that he was making amends for the loss of our Oldsmobile. And Papa told me that the lessons would be “our little secret,” a surprise for Mama. I began studying catechism each night before bed so that I would know the entire book.

Friday afternoons after school were traditionally the time when Sally and I studied catechism. Now we included Beverly in the ritual. Every second Friday I had a double dose: catechism with my friends and catechism with Papa.

I knew exactly what to expect with my friends: cookies and milk and giggling and getting off the subject (“Doesn’t it make you sick the way Leroy Mosely picks his nose and puts it in his mouth?”) and Mama nudging us back (“When you girls are ready, I’ll hear your
Confiteors”)
.

I never knew what to expect with Papa, except that we would sit at the kitchen table and he would bring out a little half-pint bottle of bourbon whiskey he had stashed away somewhere, setting it on the table and reminding me conspiratorially that this, too, was “our little secret.” Since Mama had a highball at bridge club, she didn’t notice the smell of bourbon when she returned. And if she had noticed, it’s not likely she would have complained. She was grateful that Papa wasn’t out God-knew-where, playing poker.

Mama made us a big bowl of popcorn before she left for bridge. “You two have a good time,” she’d say, slipping into her wine-colored bouclé coat and easing on black kid gloves, massaging the leather fingers over her own.

She kissed me good-bye, leaving a soupçon of fruity tasting lipstick on my mouth and a hint of her spicy perfume on my cheek. Mama was a party dessert on bridge nights.

“Are you ready?” Papa would ask, rubbing his hands and pouring himself a drink when we had heard Mama drive off in the pickup. It was as if we were going to put on boxing gloves and step into the ring.

Sometimes Papa was in a jolly mood and only asked me to recite the prayers in the first pages of the
Baltimore Catechism:
the Lord’s Prayer, the Angelical Salutation (which most people called “Hail, Mary”), the Apostles’ Creed, the
Confiteor
, the Acts of Faith, Hope, Love, and Contrition, the Blessing Before Meals, and the Grace After Meals.

I knew the prayers letter-perfect. Sometimes, when I had reeled off the Apostles’ Creed or maybe the
Confiteor
, Papa would say, “Now do it with some feeling.” I closed my eyes then and tried to speak like a God-fearing child. One night I asked Papa why God wanted me to fear Him.

“So you’ll be good,” he said, drinking the last of his bourbon and water.

“Wouldn’t I be better if I loved Him?”

“You’re supposed to love Him
and
fear Him.”

“That’s hard,” I said.

“If you loved God, but weren’t scared of Him,” Papa said, “you’d go around doing all kinds of bad things and not worrying about Him getting mad.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“I’m telling you, you would. I’ve lived a lot longer than you, and I know people need the fear of God put in ’em.”

Papa was suddenly angry. “God is our heavenly Father,” he said.

I nodded, extremely sorry I had brought the subject up.

“Just like I’m your earthly father.”

He looked hard at me across the oilcloth-covered table, his stomach pressed against the table’s edge. I looked into his eyes and
tried not to blink. I must appear as sincere, attentive, and God-fearing as I was able.

“You love
me
, don’t you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And you’re afraid of me, too, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“That’s right. Now,
when
are you afraid of me?”

“When?”

“You’re afraid of me when you’re bad,” he explained. “If you weren’t afraid of me, you’d be lying and stealing all the time.”

I felt as though Papa had shoved me right off my chair. “No, I wouldn’t!” I cried.

“Of course you would. Why can’t you see that?” he pursued. “Tell me why you aren’t bad all the time, just tell me that.”

“Because I love Mama!” I screamed, running into the bedroom and climbing into the crib. I pulled the quilt over my head, blubbering into my pillow. People were good because they loved somebody.

Papa poured another drink and carried it into the living room. His shoes made no sound on the linoleum as he paused at the bedroom door, stood for a minute, then moved on, cracking across the living room linoleum, padding across the big, shag throw rug in the middle of the room, then cracking again on the cold linoleum as he settled himself in the armchair by the stove. After a while the newspaper rattled and sighed as he turned the pages.

Much later, when I was sleeping soundly, Papa came and stood at the bedroom door. “Do you still love me?” he asked, and I seemed to hear him in a dream. “Do you still love me?” he repeated. He was weeping.

MAMA WAS SEWING
A
pair of pajamas and a robe for Hilly. In the past we hadn’t given him a Christmas present. “But this year,” Mama said, “Hilly needs bucking up.”

When Mama’s friend Bernice McGivern went to Minneapolis
right after Thanksgiving, Mama instructed her to buy several yards of blanket fabric, so Hilly’s robe would be warm and soft. Bernice returned with a piece of red-and-blue plaid that was perfect. Hilly would be cozy all winter, and the red of the plaid would bring out his dark eyes. Mama then sent away to Monkey Wards for dark blue cotton flannel for the pajamas.

The robe was finished, down to the last bit of topstitching, and looked just as though we’d bought it at Dayton’s in Minneapolis. The pajama bottoms were complete as well, ironed and folded into the tissue-paper-lined box in which they would be given. Now Mama was embroidering with red floss in satin stitch a fancy letter H on the pocket of the pajama top. How elegant Hilly was going to look. Like William Powell.

“Nobody wants to get
just
clothes for Christmas,” Mama told me, “so we’ll have to think of a toy for Hilly.”

“A toy?”

“Something just for fun, like the ocarina that we gave him last spring.” The early freight train was pulling in, and Mama waited until she could be heard above the roar to add, “I’ll leave that to you. Think of something to help Hilly pass the time.”

I’d been spending a good deal of time with the Monkey Wards Christmas catalog, making out a Santa Claus list, so I began now to pore over that with Hilly in mind. The gift couldn’t be expensive. We were already over our Christmas budget, Mama said, on account of the pajamas and robe. “A dollar is the limit,” she told me.

For several evenings in early December, I scoured the children’s pages of the catalog. Each time, the little red leatherette rocking chair jumped off the page at me. I had written it at the top of the Santa list, although Mama said the price tag of $7.49 was a lot to ask of Santa in hard times. I didn’t understand why Santa, who lived at the North Pole, was affected by hard times in Minnesota. But Mama said it was hard times everywhere except Hollywood, where Uncle Stan had gotten a job as a carpenter’s helper at a movie studio and was getting back on his feet.

Uncle Stan hadn’t sent for Aunt Betty yet, but Mama was hopeful he’d surprise her with a bus ticket at Christmas. We were spending Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa Browning’s this year so Mama could cheer Betty up if “Fortune’s Stepchild doesn’t come through with the fare to California.”

After the third session with the catalog, I spied the perfect toy
for Hilly. “Mama, look at this.” She was pressing Hilly’s pajama top. The red
H
was beautiful, smooth and full and slippery under the fingers, like satin. Mama said a little old Chinese lady couldn’t have done better, and she was right. “Here’s what we should get Hilly. Another book by Minerva Baldwin Arbuthnot. See?”

“Minerva who?”

“The lady who wrote
Happy Stories for Bedtime
. This one’s called
Stories for Rainy Afternoons
. Isn’t that perfect? And it’s ninety-eight cents.”

Mama sent away for it immediately, and it was at the post office Friday, December 15, when she dropped by to collect the mail. It put her in a fit of Christmas, she said, when she saw what a pretty book it was, and she came right home and stirred up a big batch of her famous divinity candy.

The next morning while I was at catechism class, she cooked her equally famous fudge, and after lunch the two of us baked cookies: chocolate cookies with walnuts inside and rich chocolate frosting on top, and sugar cookies in the shapes of stars and bells, red-and-green-colored sugar sprinkled lightly over them.

While Mama washed up cookie pans and bowls, I wrapped
Stories for Rainy Afternoons
. I was very slow and when I was finished, it was not to my satisfaction, the paper having wrinkled and torn, but Mama said it was all right and Hilly would not mind. I made him a Christmas card with stars and angels, and three camels that looked like rat terriers.

After supper that evening, Mama and I set out in the truck for the Stillmans’. Piled on my lap were the big box containing Hilly’s robe and pajamas,
Stories for Rainy Afternoons
, and a box of homemade candy and cookies.

“I know it’s still nine days till Christmas,” Mama said, “but I couldn’t wait to deliver these, could you?”

“We don’t have anything for Mrs. Stillman,” I told Mama.

“I have a little present in my purse,” she said.

“What is it?”

“My brooch.”

I couldn’t believe it. “The one with all different colored stones? You’re not giving that away, are you?”

Mrs. Stillman didn’t answer the door at once. I knocked again.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, pushing the storm door open. “I was in Hillyard’s room, and I didn’t hear you.” She ushered us in. “Those
aren’t for us!” she exclaimed over the boxes we carried. “You shouldn’t.” She set Hilly’s presents on a chair.

“The red box has cookies and candy in it,” Mama told her.

“I’ll make tea and we’ll sample them,” Mrs. Stillman said, taking our coats while we pulled off our boots and set them on the newspaper by the door. “Hillyard has been in bed with a cold that’s settled in his chest,” she went on, “but maybe he’ll come out to say hello and have some tea and Christmas treats.”

She carried our coats to her bedroom. “Hillyard and I went for a walk one night,” she said, returning. “He rarely wants to go out anymore. But he did that night. There was new snow and he was very excited. We walked a good many blocks.

“A most unusual thing happened.” She stood behind the green wicker chair, running her hands over the back of it. “He said, quite clearly, ‘I built a snow house that year, Mama. Do you remember?’”

“A snow house, he said?” Mama asked.

“When the snow was deep, he liked to make a cave in it. A house, he called it. That was when he was eight or ten and we lived in the Appledorn house, by the Lutheran Church.”

“That’s remarkable,” Mama said, “that he remembered like that.”

“That he remembered and that he expressed himself so clearly. Yes. But I’m afraid he took a chill that night.” Reaching for the box of candy and cookies, she left us to start tea.

Mama dug in her purse for the little box containing the brooch and set it beside the Christmas tree, on the table by the davenport. The small tree had no lights, but was wrapped around and around with paper chains and popcorn strings. Pictures had been cut from magazines and tied to branches with thread, happy pictures of people driving cars and children riding bicycles. Near the top of the tree was a picture of a smiling Mrs. Roosevelt and another of Joe DiMaggio, kissing his bride, Dorothy Arnold. It was a strange and wonderful tree.

“Hillyard decorated the tree,” Mrs. Stillman told us, appearing in the kitchen doorway, tying an apron around her waist. “I’ll see if he feels up to joining us.”

Emerging from the hall, Mrs. Stillman said, “Hillyard will be out in a few minutes. He’s combing his hair. He can part it himself now.” She disappeared once more into the kitchen, and shortly returned, bearing a tea tray.

“Hillyard?” she called.

And there was Hilly, with his hair combed and neatly parted, looking deliberative and reasoning. He was wearing a pair of gray woolen trousers, much too big for him, slack and cinched in at the waist with a leather belt; a white shirt, open at the neck; and a gray jacket-sweater, mended at the elbows. On his feet were the same brown house slippers as before.

Mama said Hilly was about forty years old, but he had always looked young. Now a dusting of gray had stolen into his thick brown hair, turning him middle-aged.

His mother said, “Hillyard, dear, sit here in the green chair so Lark and Mrs. Erhardt don’t catch your cold.”

He sat, not looking directly at us but at his feet and hands, and at his mother who was pouring tea. It was as if we were strangers, and he was ill at ease. There was no sign of the guffawing, jigging friend who welcomed me with open-mouthed smiles and garbled greetings. There was only this old man I didn’t know who never laughed or said strange things. The saner he got, the sadder Hilly seemed to become.