The Cape Ann

by Faith Sullivan

  When Mama turned out the bedroom light, the great stone weight of confession settled down on my chest.

  39

  I WAS AWAKE, REHEARSING confession in my mind, when Papa came home from playing cards at Mr. Navarin’s house. Mama was asleep. After the ten o’clock news on WCCO, she had gone to bed, leaving a small light burning in the living room.

  Papa came into the bedroom, smelling of beer and cigarette smoke. I liked the smell. It reminded me of Boomer’s Tavern and other happy places. I lay perfectly still, feigning deep sleep.

  Papa stood for several seconds beside the crib, hands resting on the rail. At length he whispered, “Good luck, kid,” and tiptoed out to the living room, where he sat down on the couch and read the morning paper.

  I resumed rehearsing confession. There was so much to remember. Sister said that if you forgot one little sin, it would be all right, if you really tried hard to remember and make a good confession. But, she’d added, you couldn’t leave something out, pretending to yourself that you’d forgotten. If you did that, your soul would be blacker than before, and you wouldn’t be able to take communion. And if you took communion anyway, you were in the worst trouble of your life.

  But how could you be sure that you’d sincerely forgotten the omitted sins? How could you be sure you weren’t doing such a good job of kidding yourself that you’d made yourself believe you’d forgotten when you hadn’t? I tossed restlessly and began again, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  During catechism class we practiced confession. Sister sat in the priest’s cubbyhole. The class lined up in the pew outside, and one by one, quailing and scratching and pulling our knuckles, we slipped into the cubbyhole on the opposite side of the partition. It was dim inside. In the wall between Sister and me was a little hole maybe a foot square or less. Sister slid aside the door covering the hole. On the other side, she was indistinct, a hulking shadow. I thought, what if that isn’t Sister? What if it’s the Devil?

  “Well?” she said impatiently. “Well?”

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession. I have committed these sins.” I hesitated. I wasn’t supposed to tell Sister my sins, was I? This was only a rehearsal.

  At long last and somewhat irritably she whispered in a voice audible halfway to Main Street, “Say fifteen Our Fathers and fifteen Hail Marys for penance. Now say an Act of Contrition.”

  I broke at once into an impassioned Act of Contrition. No one was ever so contrite as I, pledging, “Oh, my God! I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.”

  “When you say it for Father, don’t say it so loud,” Sister told me.

  Wasn’t she a good one to talk, I thought, pushing aside the curtain of the confessional and heading toward a pew near the altar. Genuflecting, I slid in and knelt down. Fifteen Our Fathers and fifteen Hail Marys. Sister must think I’d been pretty wicked to give me that much penance.

  Halfway through the Hail Marys, I realized that I hadn’t actually confessed. I had it all to do over, and this time with my unending and heinous list of crimes included. Quickly I rattled off the remaining Hail Marys and left, as Sister had said we might when we had completed our penance.

  Passing up the aisle, I noted that Sally had left. She hadn’t spoken to me or looked at me this morning. Beverly, paste white around the gills, was waiting to enter the confessional. Her eyes were glazed, and she did not see me.

  Following lunch, of which I ate almost none, I dug my sin notebook out of the bottom of the wardrobe where it was hidden under Mama’s shoes.

  Papa was in the kitchen eating blueberry pie. He might remain there for some time; it was never busy in the ticket office on weekends. I tucked the notebook inside the bodice of my dress and crossed my arms over it.

  “Where are you off to?” Mama asked when she saw me heading to the door.

  “Outside.”

  “How come you’re walking so funny?”

  “Stomachache.”

  “Maybe you should lie down for a while.”

  “I think I should walk.”

  “Suit yourself. Just remember, you have to be back at church at three.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  “Wait a minute,” Papa said.

  I pushed the screen door open with my elbow.

  “I said wait a minute.” He thrust his chair back and turned to me. “I thought maybe you’d like to sit on my lap and help me finish this pie and ice cream.”

  “No, thank you, Papa.”

  “‘No, thank you, Papa’? Since when do you turn down pie and ice cream?”

  “Let her go, Willie. She said she had a stomachache.”

  “You stay out of this. This kid got mad at me the other night, and she’s been holding a grudge ever since. I don’t like people who hold grudges and neither does God. I just want to make sure she tells Father Delias that she’s been holding a grudge against her pa. Don’t forget to confess that when you’re tellin’ him the other two thousand sins,” he told me.

  “Shut up, Willie.”

  “I told you to stay out of this.”

  “I’m not staying out. She’s my kid as much as yours. Go on out and play, Lark.”

  “You stay right where you are, if you know what’s good for you,” Papa warned.

  Mama was greasing an iron skillet before putting it away in the cupboard. She stopped running her fingers over it and held it in front of her, never taking her eyes off Papa. “Go on, Lark.”

  Papa stood, throwing back his chair. “What the hell is this?” he screamed. “It’s always you two against me. If people in this town knew what I put up with, you wouldn’t walk down the street like a goddamned duchess.”

  He stood looking at Mama, the skillet in her hands. Then he swept his plate and coffee cup off the table. They flew across the narrow kitchen, the coffee taking off, out of the cup, landing on Mama’s skirt and running down her legs.

  Absently, Mama reached down and brushed the dripping coffee from her leg, her eyes still fixed on Papa.

  “I work damned hard and you know it!” he went on. “But does anybody around here ever thank me for it? Hell, no. I’m just the damned fool who brings home the bacon for you to squander on presents for an idiot and … and a lot of fancy clothes I can’t afford.” Papa started to cry. “One of these days I’ll kill you. But first I’m gonna tell people what you’re like so they won’t blame me.”

  In a voice I could barely hear, but whose intensity seared the air, Mama told him, “You get out of here, you sonofabitch, before I kill you.” She slowly raised the iron skillet.

  Through his tears, Papa cried, “That’s right. Turn the kid against me and run me out of my own house.”

  Mama made a menacing gesture with the skillet, and Papa twisted away, pushing me aside and rushing blindly out the door. The sin notebook fell onto the floor at my feet.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession.”

  From the pocket of my dress, I pulled the folded sheet of paper on which I had earlier compiled my list of sins, according to commandment. After Papa had hurled out of the house, I had hiked a mile into the country on the railroad tracks, and sat down in quiet and privacy to prepare the list from which I now began reading, twisting sideways to catch the meager light that filtered in around the confessional curtains.

  “I don’t think I broke the First Commandment, Father. I think I broke the Second Commandment about twelve times.” It was hard to say precisely. I knew I’d whispered the Lord’s name in vain a number of times when I was angry. Usually I said it into a pillow.

  “I broke the Third Commandment twice.” I could remember distinctly two occasions when I’d feigned a headache to stay home from church.<
br />
  The Fourth Commandment was a real snake pit. “Honor thy father and thy mother.” I had labored long over my list, pulling together as much as I could recall of Papa’s criticisms, as well as my own recollections.

  “I broke the Fourth Commandment about a hundred times, Father.”

  Father Delias cleared his throat. “Could you tell me one or two examples?”

  “I bit my fingernails when Papa had told me not to.”

  “And did your papa punish you for that?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what way?”

  “With the brush.”

  “Were you sorry to have upset him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I understand. Go on.”

  “Sometimes I can’t stop being mad at Papa.”

  “When has that happened most recently?”

  I told him about the sin notebook, and about Papa reading it.

  “When your papa read the notebook, you felt like you’d let him down?”

  “Oh, yes, Father.”

  “I understand. Go on to the next commandment, child.”

  I hesitated.

  “It’s the Fifth Commandment,” he prompted. “‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Have you been angry and fought with family or friends?”

  “Yes, Father. About two hundred times.”

  “Go on to the next commandment.”

  “Father, I haven’t finished the Fifth Commandment.” I hurried on before I lost my nerve, blurting out, “I killed a baby.”

  There was silence on the other side, except for Father’s breathing.

  “Did you hear me, Father?”

  “Yes. I’m wondering what makes you think you killed a baby.”

  The story came pouring out in a tumbling torrent of words and tears: how I had set myself to watch for the stork and catch the baby when it fell, as the baby in my dream had fallen; how I had lollygagged around that field behind Aunt Betty’s house, failing to watch all the sky; and how the stork then had dropped the baby.

  When at last I came to the end of the story, Father said, “There is such a bird as the stork, but the stork does not deliver babies. You recall that there was no mention in the Bible of a stork flying into Bethlehem with the baby Jesus.”

  “Then who does bring babies?”

  “Before they come into the world, babies grow in the safest, warmest place that God could find for them, a place that makes them feel loved even before they are born.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Inside the mother. That’s where Jesus grew, and that’s where Baby Marjorie grew—inside your aunt’s body.”

  That was why Aunt Betty’s belly was so fat. Why hadn’t anybody told me? “How do they get out?”

  “There’s a small passageway. One of these days your mama will tell you about all of this. In the meantime, you mustn’t worry. God has designed it all, and you must trust Him.”

  “Why did Baby Marjorie die?”

  “I don’t know. God knows. He has the plan, and we must have faith in His wisdom. Let’s proceed now to the Sixth Commandment.”

  The remainder of the confession was over in a wink. When I thrust aside the curtain and left, my feet were as weightless as I imagined Fred Astaire’s to be. I floated down the aisle in a gauzy haze of light and lightness. In my life I had never felt such disencumbrance. If I lifted my arms, I would float up to the dark beams and along the ceiling, and my new innocence would hold me aloft. This was how angels felt.

  40

  WARM, SCENTED, TEN O’CLOCK air hummed with the sound of bees in the lilac bushes beyond the church windows. One of the bees had got inside the church and was buzzing around the lilac branches massed in vases at the feet of Mary and Joseph, on either side of the altar.

  The morning was unusually warm, and since the paper fans for summer had not yet been furnished, some worshipers were fanning themselves with missals or with the list of first communicants that had been passed out by the ushers in the vestibule. Men had dragged out their large white handkerchiefs to mop their brows and bulging pink necks, while ladies held dainty, scented hankies to their temples and blotted their noses and throats.

  I knew neither heat nor discomfort as I waited in the front pew with the other first-time communicants, all of us starched and pressed, curled and combed, scrubbed and talcumed, more clearly and intimately connected to God in our impeccable innocence than we would ever again be in this world.

  I thought that maybe I was beginning to understand God a little. Surely the most important thing about God was forgiveness. Yesterday he had forgiven me my sins, and I had become a brand-new girl. I had felt my brand-newness inside and out. Outside I was light and feathery; inside, blindingly white. If you looked inside me now, it would be like looking directly into the head of a flashlight.

  The white, lacy dresses we girls wore, and the boys’ white shirts, were not so white as the blaze of light inside us. If I opened my mouth wide, you could see the light shining up.

  Sisters Mary Clair and Mary Frances stood. It was time for the class to stand and march to the communion rail. Hands clasped, white veil stirring in the current of air moving invisibly, like God, among us, I followed Lavonne Swenson to the altar.

  Father Delias spoke but I didn’t hear. Assisted by an altar boy, he moved along the rail, raising the communion wafer, blessing us, placing the wafer on our tongues. Thin as mica, magic wafer.

  Very dry and utterly without flavor, it absorbed the saliva in my mouth and cleaved to my tongue. We must not chew it or allow it to get into our teeth, as some minute part of it might then be lost, brushed away by the next brushing of our teeth, some tiny bit of Jesus’s body would go down the drain or, in my case, into the slop pail.

  When we were back in the pew, kneeling and praying, I began swallowing, carefully working the wafer back to my throat. It wasn’t easy. When it got as far as the soft palate, it wanted to stay there. But I summoned all the spit I could muster and gave it one final shove, sending it down to my soul, to feed the fire of love.

  Before yesterday I had not understood how you could love God. Respect Him, yes. And obey Him. But love? But His forgiving me had engendered love. I trembled with the intimacy of God.

  Soon we were standing in the sun outside the church, having our picture taken, the whole class together, the Sisters standing at either side, like dark bookends.

  Then our parents claimed us and fussed over us and laughed, releasing their nervousness. We had made it. We were one of them. More than confirmation, First Communion brought us into Christ’s circle of light, a circle our parents had known for so long, I wondered if they hadn’t grown used to it.

  Mama threw her arms around me, laughing and nearly losing her pretty, little navy blue straw hat with the pink roses growing on it. “You looked so beautiful, Lark. Like an angel. Didn’t she, Willie? Didn’t she look like an angel?”

  Papa was ill at ease in the midst of my celebration. He thought Mama was talking too loud. He turned away to remark on something to Harry Mosely. From out of the crush, Father Delias appeared, and he was laughing and shaking hands and telling funny little stories about the bees and the communion wine, or something like that. He gave me a hug and held Mama’s hand, and exclaimed over my catechism scholarship.

  “She’ll make a fine bright woman, she will,” he declared, swinging around to include Papa. “You hear what I’m saying, William. You’ve got a fine girl.” Papa smiled obligingly and said thank you.

  I loved Father Delias. It was he, as God’s surrogate, who had forgiven me, who had made me light, so light I could probably tap dance if I were at home. I looked down at the full-skirted organdy dress and the new, white patent leather shoes which had been sitting beside the crib when I woke this morning. Yes, if I were at home, I could tap dance, skirt billowing out from my legs, veil lifting and whirling around my head.

  I grabbed Father Delias’s hand and kissed the back of it.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Papa dem
anded.

  “She’s kissing my hand, William,” Father Delias explained, and he bent and kissed mine.

  41

  THE SUMMER OF 1940 was like a movie starring Joan Blondell (as Mama) and Shirley Temple (as me). The first week in June, before the Majestic Movie Theater closed for the hot summer months, we went to see Goodbye, Mr. Chips, with Robert Donat and Greer Garson. Nearly everybody in the country had already seen it. We were always late getting anything that wasn’t produced by Republic Pictures, Mama commented to Bernice McGivern when we met in front of the theater.

  Mama and I were feeling unaccountably festive when we left the depot that night to walk downtown. Mama said we couldn’t afford popcorn or candy, only our tickets, so we dressed with particular care. Mama wore a pair of homemade white sharkskin pants, which made her feel like Marlene Dietrich (and which Papa said only a chippy would wear on the street), and a silky-looking white top, trimmed with kelly green. I had chosen my navy-blue-and-white sailor dress with the big collar and red tie, and I was carrying my old red patent leather purse, from which the shininess was peeling. I had a Myrna Loy feeling as we stepped along, Mama humming, luridly off-key, “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby.”

  Before we left home, Mama had stuffed a hanky into my purse. “Just in case,” she said. Mrs. Chips’s death took me by surprise, and I completely wet that handkerchief and started on the hem of my dress. When the curtains closed and the lights came up, I was caught with my skirt to my face. The owner of the Majestic, Mr. Belling, short and pale and with an unnaturally smooth and un-creased look, as if he’d been made by a taxidermist, glided quickly down the aisle and onto the forestage. Mama admonished me to put my dress down.