The Cape Ann

by Faith Sullivan

  It was Grandpa Browning’s idea that Stan and Betty give up their little house. Aunt Betty, who was in delicate health, would stay with Grandpa and Grandma in Blue Lake while Stan, with a little money scraped together here and there, would head out in the Model A for California.

  “No,” Aunt Betty cried when she heard the last. “Stan isn’t going anyplace without me!” She grabbed hold of Stan’s sleeve as if he were going to be plucked away then and there.

  “There isn’t any work here,” Grandpa told her patiently. “What’s Stan gonna do? Now, hear it to the end. As soon as Stan has work, he’ll send for you. If we write to Cousin Lloyd, I know Stan can stay with him and Marlis till he finds something. Fact is, Lloyd might be able to get him on right there where he works for the movies.”

  Mama was stalwart and resourceful as they sat planning and discussing, businesslike, but positive and encouraging, too. She thought of people they could touch for a little money—a dollar or two here and there—to stake Stanley in his new life, his new adventure, as she put it.

  “And we’ll keep a record of everyone’s name and the amount,” she said. “And when you’re on your feet, you’ll pay them back, one by one, plus interest.” They all liked that idea because it wasn’t charity.

  When the meeting in the dining room broke up, Alf and Delia climbed into their Model A, subdued and exhausted, saddened but convinced—at least Alf was—that what Stanley was doing was right and necessary.

  Mama went as far as the front porch to see them off, while Aunt Betty and Uncle Stan accompanied them to the car. Grandpa Browning stood just outside the screen door, waving. Grandma had not tried to get up from the couch. Her leg was swollen and throbbing. It wasn’t that long ago that the cast had come off her ankle.

  Released from her in-laws, Aunt Betty climbed the porch steps. “You damned bitch,” she spat at Mama.

  “What’re you—” Grandpa started to interrupt indignantly.

  “You damned bitch,” Aunt Betty repeated. “I don’t want to look at you again as long as I live.”

  “Help me up from here, Lark,” Grandma demanded.

  “You stop that,” I screamed at Aunt Betty and sprang out the door, knocking Grandpa out of the way. “Don’t talk to my mama that way.”

  “Jim!” Grandma called, furious to be so helpless. “Help me up here!”

  Ignoring Grandma’s cries, Grandpa took a step toward Aunt Betty, grabbing her upper arm. “Girl…”

  She wrenched away. “Who do you think you are,” she hissed at Mama, “packing Stan off like he was a kid? You’re so good at bossing people. You sure you’re not a man?” she taunted, bending close to Mama, pulling on the bodice of Mama’s dress.

  Mama’s hands flew to Aunt Betty’s hair. “I don’t care if you did lose your baby, you can’t talk to me that way!”

  At last Grandpa and Uncle Stan fell upon the sisters. Grandma, having struggled to her feet, stood horrified and helpless at the door. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” she kept repeating.

  29

  I PEERED THROUGH THE darkly streaked glass, into the dead café. Dust lay thick along the chipped and rotting windowsill where I leaned, and dust filmed the little counter and the few tables and chairs inside. The cardboard sign tacked on the wall showing a small blond girl eating Butter Nut bread was faded to sepia.

  Nothing was ever going to happen again in the café. It was like limbo. Nothing good would happen and nothing bad. Everything was set in place as it would remain forever. Baby Marjorie was someplace like this.

  “It’s a good day for ice cream,” McPhee remarked, startling me. He had approached from the depot, where he’d been checking the freight, finding none had arrived.

  “What do you think it’s like in limbo?” I asked McPhee when we were perched on the high stools at Boomer’s Tavern.

  He looked askance, considered for a moment, then replied, “Like Morgan Lake, I think.” After a minute he asked, “What made you think of limbo?”

  “Aunt Betty’s baby. There wasn’t a priest when Marjorie died, so she’s gone to limbo.”

  “Maria Zelena tell you that?”

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t you suppose Maria baptized Marjorie?”

  “She’s not a priest.”

  “Anybody can baptize a baby if it’s an emergency. That I know.” He turned to Boomer. “Ain’t it so, Boomer? Anybody can baptize if it’s an emergency?”

  “That’s my understanding,” Boomer told us.

  It wouldn’t alter my responsibility for the baby’s death, but it would make me feel some better to know that she was in heaven.

  “Grandpa and Grandma Browning went home today.”

  “That so?”

  “Monday I’m going on the train to stay with them.”

  “That so?”

  “Mama’s going to help Aunt Betty have a sale and get packed up.”

  As we emerged from Boomer’s Tavern, a little before ten-thirty, I fell in step beside McPhee, hands clasped behind my back.

  “Do you think Maria Zelena has the coffee on?” he asked.

  As she opened the screen door and stood back to let us pass, McPhee told her, “We’ve come to find out if you baptized the Weller baby.”

  I followed him to the kitchen, girding myself for Maria’s answer. How slowly she moved. How very many steps there suddenly were to serving coffee. Reaching down cups and saucers, arranging them at three separate places. Opening a drawer and withdrawing three spoons, laying each beside a cup and saucer, and so on.

  When she had lowered herself onto her usual chair in the most unhurried way and tucked an errant strand of hair into the braided crown from which it had escaped, Maria picked up her spoon and held it poised above her cup.

  “You want to know if I baptized your aunt’s baby?”

  I nodded.

  “Is it so important?”

  I cleared my throat. “Yes.”

  “Why should you worry about this?” she asked.

  I couldn’t tell her that I was the one who was supposed to catch the baby if the stork let it fall. I wanted Maria to think well of me.

  “I want Marjorie to be happy and see God,” I said, sounding very false.

  Maria looked hard at me. “You think the baby won’t see God if she’s not baptized?”

  “That’s what Sister said,” I explained.

  “You mustn’t believe everything you hear, little Lark.”

  “But the catechism says…”

  “What kind of god would keep innocent babies out of heaven?” she asked. “A crazy god!”

  “Don’t say that!” The catechism had to be right. Without its rules there was no shape to life, no ground under my feet.

  “Not everything in church is truth,” Maria went on. “And not all truth turns up in church.”

  My chair knocked hard against the stove as I fled from the kitchen. Out the front door I galloped.

  I hated Maria. We had become friends, and now she turned out to be a heretic.

  30

  AFTER DINNER MAMA SAT at the dining room table, compiling a list of people who might be willing to lend Uncle Stan a dollar or two for the “adventure.” When the list was complete, she began writing letters to prospective donors.

  “What do you think of this?” she asked, turning in her chair to read Aunt Betty her first effort.

  Aunt Betty sat in the arm chair, obscured by thick twilight. The wan yellow from the dining room barely brushed her features, and she did not turn toward it as Mama read.

  “Dear Cousin Geneva,

  I am writing to let you know that my sister Betty’s baby girl was born dead Saturday, June 24. Betty was very near death herself. It is a miracle that we have her with us. The baby, which was the image of Betty, was full term though very small. Betty named her Marjorie Ann, after our grandmother, Marjorie Ann Browning.

  Times have been hard for Betty and Stan, but they are courageous and determined to get ahead. Stan is driving to C
alifornia to find work, and Betty will stay with Mama and Papa until he sends for her.

  I’m helping my sister get ready for a sale so she and Stan can clear up their debts and start fresh. What an adventure!

  Many relations on both sides are contributing to the ‘California Adventure.’ One said, ‘I’ll pay for gas for the Model A.’ Another told me, ‘I’m buying Stan a night in a travel court.’ It’s thrilling, Geneva, the way people are jumping on the bandwagon.

  I personally am making a record of everybody who contributes, so that we can let them know about Stan’s progress and repay their generosity when he’s on his feet again. I told Stan and Betty I was sure we could count on you to help them put tragedy behind them.

  Well, Geneva, I must sign off now as Lark is calling.

  Love to all,

  Arlene”

  “I’m not calling,” I told Mama.

  “Never mind,” she hushed me. “What do you think, Betty?”

  “I think Marjorie is just a free drinking glass in a box of soap flakes to you—something to sell your product.”

  “Which is?” Mama wanted to know.

  “Stanley and me. You’re selling us like soap flakes, Arlene. It’s disgusting. You never heard from any cousins. This whole thing is cheap and trashy.”

  Wounded, Mama tried to hide her disappointment. “You’ve got to get people excited, Betty.”

  Stan, sitting at the kitchen table smoking a Lucky Strike, called,

  “I like the part about ‘courageous and determined to get ahead.’”

  Aunt Betty went on, “Going to California and getting a job is what you’d like to do, Arlene.” She left her chair, making her way to the table where Mama sat writing. “I’d like to stay here and just get by.”

  Mama looked at her in amazement. “‘Just get by’? You weren’t just getting by. You were starving. Your baby died because you were starving. I’m sorry if that’s something you don’t want to hear, but don’t tell me you were getting by.”

  Aunt Betty stared daggers at Mama. “That’s not true, Stanley,” she assured him, crossing to the kitchen door, her voice tearful. “I wasn’t starving, honey.”

  But Uncle Stanley was not in the kitchen. He had vanished, maybe to the alley to finish his Lucky Strike in peace.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Aunt Betty cried, turning to Mama. “Driven Stanley out of his own house. When am I going to be rid of you?”

  “In the morning, you silly bitch.” Springing to her feet, Mama threw the letter on the table and hurtled past Aunt Betty, through the kitchen to the little back bedroom.

  Slumping against the doorjamb, Aunt Betty rubbed her brow with her fingertips, working her lips savagely. At length her hand dropped to her side. She surveyed the tiny rooms with a tormented, devouring gaze.

  In the living room I lay on the couch, pretending to be asleep although I still wore my sunsuit and shoes. Through quivering, slitted eyelids, I watched Aunt Betty. She was like a sad old woman, dry and cold and full of pains. Last Christmas at Grandma Browning’s, she’d been pretty and gay.

  But that was Christmas. Uncle Stan was still a bookkeeper then. It was after January inventory that they had put him on the road. At Christmas he was making fifty dollars a month and they were only scraping by, but it was fifty sure dollars and they weren’t starving.

  Clasping her arms across her belly, Aunt Betty drifted, ghostlike, across the dining room, through the living room, out the complaining screen door, and down the steps.

  I sat up, peeking out the lace curtains to watch her glide along the narrow walk to Uncle Stan’s dusty Model A parked on the street. Up into the dark behemoth she climbed and laid her head against the seat. In the deepening twilight of nine-thirty, it was only just possible to see her white hands caress the black steering wheel.

  Much later, maybe an hour, the screen door squawked like a parrot, and I turned onto my side, jabbing myself with the corner of Happy Stories for Bedtime.

  Aunt Betty slipped into the house and stood hugging herself as if she were cold.

  Mama appeared at the kitchen door. “You were out there so long,” she said, “I thought you’d fallen asleep.”

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “I poured myself a glass of iced tea. Would you like one?”

  As Aunt Betty moved across the dining room, she and Mama both said, “I’ve been thinking,” at exactly the same time. They burst out laughing and fell into each other’s arms.

  “Let me talk first,” Mama said.

  “No, let me talk first,” Aunt Betty insisted.

  Mama led Aunt Betty to the little table by the window, then fetched a second glass from the cupboard. I sat up, repositioning myself so that I could see them.

  Mama opened the icebox and removed the pitcher of iced tea.

  “You’re only trying to help Stanley and me,” Aunt Betty conceded. “I see that. It’s just that when you try to think for me, you think up things I never would, like going to California.”

  “But don’t you see—”

  “Let me finish. I know I should want to go, but I’m not done with this place. I haven’t finished the thinking and crying that needs to be done here before I can root myself up. It’s been less than a week since the baby was born. I’m still walking funny.”

  Mama filled Betty’s glass and sat down opposite her at the table. “I understand, I do. I wish there was time for you to say good-bye properly. But every week that you stay, is a week deeper in debt.”

  “You don’t know how hard it is to leave the baby.”

  “Has Stan tried WPA?” Mama asked. Maybe there was yet a way for Uncle Stanley and Aunt Betty to stay here.

  “Relief?” Aunt Betty replied, shocked that her sister could ask.

  “From all accounts, it’s better than starving.”

  “No, it’s not. This isn’t pride talking, Arlene. WPAers are treated worse than crooks around here. We could never hold our heads up.”

  Mama went to Aunt Betty and knelt beside her chair, stroking her sister’s pale, curly hair, which she had always envied. “Then there’s just one answer, isn’t there?” she said, brushing the hair back from Aunt Betty’s hollow, feverish face. “And when you get to California, you’re going to have another baby. I predict it.”

  “I don’t think God wants me to have a baby.”

  “God doesn’t know what He wants. He’s always giving with one hand and taking with the other.”

  “I needed this baby.” Aunt Betty spoke softly and looked directly into Mama’s eyes. “It was going to be my reward for being good and doing without.”

  No one was ever going to forget that I let that baby fall.

  31

  THE FOLLOWING MONDAY MORNING, before he went out on the road, Uncle Stanley drove Mama and me to the depot in his Model A. I was leaving for Grandma Browning’s.

  Coming out the door at Aunt Betty’s at nine-thirty into the already heavy and somnolent day, Mama observed to me, “You probably won’t be back here. Take a good look around.”

  The thought hadn’t occurred to me. For the first time, I was pierced by the little panic and tristesse occasioned by small things passing irrevocably from view.

  Clambering into the backseat, I waved to Aunt Betty and looked around at the street, the houses, the trees, and even the old yellow dog lifting his leg on an elm in front of the Witch’s house.

  Glancing again toward the porch, I waved once more, but Aunt Betty was gone. We hadn’t pulled away yet, and she was done with me. You shouldn’t do that. When someone was leaving, you shouldn’t go in the house until they’d disappeared, with you waving them out of sight. But I was the one who let the baby fall.

  Belching and kicking up dust, Uncle Stanley’s car bounced down Main Street, past the Skelly station and Boomer’s Tavern, Esterly’s Groceries and General Merchandise, and the dead café. At the depot Uncle Stanley went in with Mama to get my ticket. We had nearly half an hour until train time, so I
wandered down to the dead café for one last look, a farewell to Baby Marjorie.

  Its unaltered condition fascinated me and provoked a sort of disbelief. I studied the room intently, trying to catch it in some small modification. But each chair was precisely as it had been, each dead fly on the interior window sill lay moldering in the very spot it had yesterday. Wasn’t there something? Not that I could find. I was strangely comforted by that, and I turned away before Mama had to call me to come.

  McPhee, wearing his same striped overalls, was pulling the freight wagon out of the freight room. “So you’re leaving us,” he said.

  I nodded. After running out of Maria’s kitchen on Thursday, I was embarrassed to see him. I would do the same again, but it was still a skunk lying in the road between us.

  “We’ll miss you.”

  People said things like that without meaning them, but I appreciated the kindness. I would miss McPhee. “Do you think you might come to Harvester some time?” I asked.

  He leaned on the freight wagon. “Well, I might,” he said.

  “If you do, knock on the depot door that’s near the parking lot. That’s where I live.”

  “I’ll do that.” He gazed off across the tracks in the direction of the cemetery. “Maria Zelena was sorry that you had to leave all of a sudden that way,” he told me. “She took a shine to you.”

  I said nothing. My face was growing warm. I wished he hadn’t brought up Maria Zelena.

  “Maria’s got an idea that you worry too much,” he observed, eyeing me sideways while pretending to study the distance.

  Why was he embarrassing me when I was leaving? Now was the time to make idle talk and send me away with a smile. Instead, McPhee was stirring everything inside me that I wanted left sleeping. He didn’t know that I had killed the baby. I stood there, dumb as a doorknob.

  McPhee looked me up and down. “I said to Maria, ‘The girl’s a deep thinker. She’s not so much a worrier as a deep thinker.’ You’re not worrying yourself about that baby being in limbo, are you?”