I looked at Sally, who sat with her hands clasped on the table before her, her eyes cast down, as if she were praying. I think she was praying for her mother to stop crying. She was ashamed to have her mother cry in front of me.
A minute or two passed. Then, in her phlegmy, tear-filled voice, Mrs. Wheeler continued, “I got him into the car. He was frightened to get into the car. He cried all the way into town….”
“Mrs. Wheeler?”
Sally’s mother still stood with her back to us. Groping in the pocket of her dress, she found a handkerchief and began blowing her nose. At length she turned around, her face red but dry. She smiled guiltily. Hilly couldn’t have looked any sadder than Mrs. Wheeler just then. “I’m sorry, children,” she said. “I shouldn’t have cried, and I shouldn’t have told you about Hilly. I’ve upset you. Try to forget.”
“Mrs. Wheeler? One time Mama came home from downtown, and she was crying because some sixth grade boys were throwing snowballs at Hilly. She said he gave his sanity for his country.” I hadn’t understood what that meant, and Mama had explained.
But Mrs. Wheeler, having regained her grip, was too embarrassed and upset by her own behavior to hear anyone’s support of her. She looked panicked, as if she’d just woke up in a strange place and didn’t know how she got there. Without a word, she flitted out of the room.
I began wolfing the gritty Fig Newtons as though what we had just witnessed were the most ordinary thing I’d ever seen. “Do you know where babies come from?” I asked Sally.
Sally wasn’t in the mood to talk about where babies come from, nor was she in the mood to study catechism. In her room with the dormer window, we picked halfheartedly through the next day’s lesson, and then she said she was too tired to do anything. Taking off her shoes, she got into bed and said good-bye.
Mrs. Wheeler was nowhere to be seen, so I let myself out and, for once, hurried home. I wanted to watch Mama practice the typewriter. And there she was, hunched in a knot of concentration at the kitchen table, her fingers spread out across the keyboard of the old office-model Royal, leaning slightly forward and peering intently at the diagram on the wall. Click. Pause. Clack. Pause. Click. Pause. It wasn’t going very fast yet. Now and then Mama glanced down at the keyboard.
“Hello,” she said, not looking up.
“You aren’t supposed to look at the keys.”
“I know,” she told me impatiently.
The clock over the stove said five. “Are you going to make supper pretty soon?” Usually she had something in the oven or in the skillet by now.
“Papa went fishing with Joe Navarin. They just left. I’ll make us bologna sandwiches.”
“Did they take my worms?”
“I’m not sure.” Click. Pause. Clack. Pause. “Now let me practice for half an hour more.”
“I’ll make the sandwiches.”
“Fine.” Click. Pause. Clack. Pause.
I cleaned out my lunch pail and set it to dry on the drain board. Then I checked the slop pails and found that one of them was nearly full, so I carried that across the tracks and emptied it. While I was there, I picked some mustard flowers and brought them back to put in a ketchup-bottle vase on the table. I was Mrs. Brown. Soon I would make bologna sandwiches for my little girl, Myrna Loy, and for Mrs. Erhardt, who was practicing the typewriter at our house.
After I put the slop pail back under the sink, I washed my hands and found an apron. By five-thirty the bologna sandwiches were ready, except for the sliced onion. I peeled an onion and took a sharp knife from the drawer.
“Mrs. Erhardt, would you please slice this onion while I set the table?”
Mrs. Erhardt looked at the clock, gathered up her typing manual and heavy typewriter, and carried them into the living room. While she sliced the onion, I set the table.
“Mrs. Erhardt, Mrs. Wheeler told me a sad story today about Hilly Stillman. You know Hilly Stillman?”
“Yes,” she said, sitting down at the table without yet having been asked. “What did she tell you?”
I recited to Mrs. Erhardt everything Mrs. Wheeler had said, and I told her, “The poor lady was crying. Her little girl says she cries a lot.”
“Mrs. Wheeler isn’t strong,” my guest observed. Then she said, “Mrs. Wheeler didn’t know the man in the backseat of the car?”
“She said she wasn’t sure, but I think she knew.”
“Did she see the license number of the car?”
“I don’t think so. She didn’t say.”
“She should have gotten the license number,” Mrs. Erhardt fretted. “She definitely didn’t know the young men in the front seat?”
“She said maybe they were from St. Bridget or Red Berry, or maybe they were staying at the hotel.”
Mrs. Erhardt chewed her bologna sandwich, two lines appearing between her brows.
11
“ARE YOU GOING TO practice the typewriter tonight?” I asked when we had washed and dried our few dishes.
“No. I’d like to call on Mrs. Stillman. Would you like to come along, Mrs. Brown?”
We washed our faces, and Mrs. Erhardt put on fresh lipstick and changed her dress. “Maybe you’d like to bring along a book, Mrs. Brown.”
I fetched Happy Stories for Bedtime, my red patent leather purse, and the old blue cloche. Heading downtown in the Oldsmobile, we stopped at Anderson’s Candy and Ice Cream to pick up a quart of chocolate ice cream before calling on Mrs. Stillman.
Rabel’s Meat Market was at the corner of Main Street and Second Avenue, and the stairs to the Stillman apartment above were outside on Second Avenue. The steps were wooden. They creaked pleasantly as we mounted, Mrs. Erhardt first, with the ice cream, me following with Happy Stories for Bedtime tucked under my arm. Mrs. Erhardt knocked at the screen door.
“Yes?” Mrs. Stillman inquired, pushing the door open.
“I only stopped to say hello and see how you’re getting on, Mrs. Stillman.”
“Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Erhardt. Come in. And you’ve got Lark with you. Isn’t that nice.” She held the door for us.
“I brought some ice cream,” Mrs. Erhardt explained, holding out the quart carton. “I hope you and Hilly like chocolate.”
“Isn’t that nice. We’ll all have some. I’ll call Hillyard. He’s so fond of ice cream. We don’t have an electric Frigidaire, just the icebox, so we’ll eat to our hearts’ content.” She allowed herself a dainty, old-fashioned giggle. Mrs. Stillman’s life was so sparing of need, she took utmost delight in what was proffered.
“Why don’t you sit down on the davenport with your book?” Mrs. Erhardt suggested. I climbed on the davenport, taking care not to put my feet on it. Mrs. Stillman had covered it with a flowered throw, and on top of this were lace antimacassars. The room had a strange, not unpleasant odor of old things and Murphy’s oil soap and meat market. On the table beside the davenport was a studio photograph of Hilly in his uniform. He was darkly handsome, with an unsullied sweetness to his features, like Mama’s face in her high school yearbook, looking happily off, far into the distance. Hilly must have been looking far off to France.
“Wasn’t Hilly handsome?” I commented to Mrs. Erhardt as she sank down in a green wicker armchair at the other side of the table.
“He still is,” she replied, and I realized that this was true.
Mrs. Stillman came in from the kitchen with a tray of ice-cream-heaped sauce dishes. “Hillyard,” she called, “come have ice cream.” She added, “Put on your robe.”
When Hilly appeared in house slippers and an old, plaid flannel robe, his eyelids were puffy, the rims red, just like Mrs. Wheeler’s.
“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 f
irst. 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.
12
“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.
The Cape Ann Page 10
