The Cape Ann

by Faith Sullivan

  Past Grandma’s bed was the tall cupboard containing remedies—powders and dried herbs in brown glass jars, and little brown paper bags with penciled identifications: “tansy,” “camomile,” “mint,” and “catnip,” and so forth.

  When the door was opened, the mixed scents rolled out in an aromatic wave. It was a heady experience. There was an element of mystery about the cupboard which intimidated me, even as Maria Zelena’s remedies had. And Grandma had warned me not to poke around in there, especially not among the jars on the top shelf. When I was small, I imagined a little brown gnome living behind the jars, who would bite my fingers if I got too nosy. Even now, if I sneaked a smell of the cupboard, I did so down low where he couldn’t reach me.

  When I woke from my nap, it was nearly time for Grandpa to come home. Grandma’s big, silver-colored alarm clock sat ticking loudly, not far away, on the straight-backed chair beside the double bed. Five-fifteen, it said.

  Wandering into the kitchen, I asked Grandma, “What time does Aunt Betty get off work?”

  “Not till after nine on Saturday.”

  “Where’s Mama?”

  “She went downtown to have supper with your aunt at the Kitchen Kafe.”

  “Are we going downtown in the car tonight?” We always went downtown in the car on summer Saturday nights when I was staying at Grandma’s. Grandpa went to the hardware store and the pool hall, while Grandma visited Ames Dry Goods and the dime store. After that we bought bags of popcorn and sat in the car, talking to friends strolling by, until the stores closed.

  “This is little Lark?” people would ask, leaning on the car, foot resting on the running board, “Arlene’s little girl? My, isn’t she getting big, though. It doesn’t seem possible.”

  Putting their heads into the car and addressing me in the backseat, where I sat eating popcorn, they’d ask, “Remember the time you and your mama was visiting, and you come to the birthday party for Hazel Willett?” Then, “Well, of course you don’t remember,” they’d remind themselves. “You were only a baby. You were the best baby. Not a peep out of you.”

  “We’re not going downtown tonight,” Grandma told me.

  “Why not?”

  “There’s nothing we need at the stores.”

  “Can’t we just sit and eat popcorn and talk to people?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s enough talk,” she said with finality, slicing thin slices from a cold ham and laying them on a small platter. “Set the table now. Grandpa will be home before we know it.”

  Grandma was enduring me. She did not want to deal with my questions or with the meal she was gathering for the table. She worked absently and without enthusiasm.

  Supper was an almost wordless meal. Grandpa announced that he was going down to the pool hall to shoot the breeze for a while later on.

  “I don’t know how you can go downtown,” Grandma told him.

  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” he said.

  “Well, if you’re going downtown, bring home some chocolate ice cream,” Grandma said with a weary, almost indifferent tone. “We’re nearly out.”

  When the table was cleared, the dishes done, and Grandpa had driven off, I asked, “Do you want to play rummy, Grandma?”

  “No, child.”

  I sat at the table and paged through seed catalogs. Grandma sat in a rocker with her eyes closed, hands folded across her middle. When I had looked at all the seed catalogs, with an eye to what would be pretty in the garden of the Cape Ann, I found a deck of cards in the drawer of the sideboard and played solitaire for half an hour or so.

  “Isn’t Mama coming home?” I asked.

  “She’ll probably stay downtown till your aunt gets off work.”

  I didn’t beat the deck once, so finally I gave up, returned the cards to the drawer, and felt my way into the darkened living room, pulling the chain on the floor lamp by the piano.

  There was new sheet music on the piano, pieces Aunt Betty had bought at the dime store where she worked. “I’ll Never Smile Again,” “All or Nothing at All,” and “It Never Entered My Mind.” I couldn’t read music, so I looked at the pages as if I could, and hit any old keys on the piano. After a few minutes of this, Grandma said, “Why don’t you turn on the radio and see if there’s any music?”

  Grandma had the dial of the big console radio set to an Omaha station that broadcast her daytime stories. I flicked the button on. An orchestra was playing “I Concentrate on You.”

  “That’s nice,” Grandma said, so I left it.

  When Grandpa came home smelling of cigars, he and I each had a dish of chocolate ice cream. I had soda crackers with mine because I liked the sweet and salty together. Then Grandma said, “I’m going to bed. Lark, are you sleeping in your underpants?”

  “I guess. Mama didn’t unpack our suitcase.”

  “Well, come along then. You’ll sleep on the porch.”

  “Where’s Mama going to sleep?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When’s she coming home? Aren’t the stores closed now?”

  “She’ll be along now soon, I’m sure. Come to bed.”

  After Grandpa read the Minneapolis paper, he came to bed, first extinguishing all the lights except the one on the back porch and the tiny night-light on Grandma’s electric stove. Undressing in the dark, he climbed noisily into bed, turning several times like an old dog before finding a comfortable position. Grandma sighed intolerantly and gave her pillow a punch.

  I liked to sleep on the porch because there were so many windows, it was like sleeping outdoors. I hoped that Mama was planning to sleep in the other narrow bed while we were visiting Grandma, so we could whisper before we fell asleep at night.

  I had had such a long nap that afternoon and so little activity, I was not sleepy. I lay listening to crickets cricking and cars purring along in the dark, coming and going from interesting doings. Several times a car drove by on Cottonwood Street. Each time, I thought it was Mama in the coupe, but it wasn’t.

  Grandpa fell asleep quickly and snored softly. Grandma lay awake for a long while, sighing and punching her pillow. Once she reached for the clock and peered at its luminous dial. From where I lay I could not see the face of the clock, but I thought it must be midnight. I wished that Mama would come home before I fell asleep.

  “Married women, both of you!” was the first thing I heard the next morning. Grandma, speaking low and intense, was standing beside the other narrow bed, giving Mama a piece of her mind.

  “Oh, Mama, we just drove out to the ballroom to listen to the music. Even married women can listen to music.”

  “You can come home and listen to the radio,” Grandma told her.

  “Mama, you’re not my boss anymore. I’m twenty-seven years old.”

  “While you’re in this house, I’m your boss. I have to hold my head up in this town.”

  “Well, we didn’t do anything scandalous,” Mama said, and turned over as if to go back to sleep.

  But Grandma wasn’t through. “Keep your voice down. We don’t need to wash our dirty laundry in public.”

  “If you’d let me sleep, we wouldn’t be washing it at all.”

  “Did you dance?”

  “What?”

  “At the ballroom. Did you dance? Did Betty?”

  Grandpa was already up and sitting at the dining room table, reading the Sunday paper. The bell at St. Matthews tolled people to seven o’clock Mass. Would Mama and I go to nine o’clock, or barmaid’s, Mass?

  “I danced, Mama. Betty danced.”

  Grandma collapsed into a rocking chair. “Have you lost your minds?”

  Mama gave up. She pulled herself up so that her back rested against the iron bedstead. “We didn’t run off to Rio de Janeiro, Mama. We only danced.”

  “Married women, without their husbands. What must decent people think? That you’re a pair of loose chippies.”

  “Now don’t start on your �
�loose chippies’ sermon, or I’m packing up and leaving for Harvester this morning. There’s not a thing wrong with dancing.”

  “There is if you’re a married woman without her husband,” Grandma averred.

  “Betty has been a married woman without a husband for two years,” Mama pointed out. “Even married women have to have some fun.”

  “They didn’t when I was a girl. Anyway, there’s nothing to prevent your sister from going to California and joining her husband.”

  “Except that he hasn’t asked her.”

  “Since when does a married woman wait for an engraved invitation to join her husband?”

  “Oh, Mama.” Mama’s voice softened suddenly. “You know what I mean. If Stan wanted her out there, he’d say so. He’d send her a ticket.”

  Grandma started to cry. “I don’t know what’s wrong with that man. What’s to become of her?”

  “I told her to see a lawyer.”

  “What for?” Grandma asked anxiously.

  “A divorce.”

  “Oh, my God, you didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  “How could you?”

  “She’s been deserted.”

  “No, she hasn’t. He writes and he says he loves her. It was her losing the baby the way she did. He can’t face her.”

  “He’s too weak to take hold.”

  “He just needs to grow up.”

  “Grow up, Mama? Stan is thirty-three years old.”

  “I won’t have a divorce in this family. There’s never been a divorce in this family.” Grandma pulled her hanky from the neck of her dress and cried into it. Then, through her tears, she inquired, “Was Miller at the dance?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You’ve got eyes, I suppose.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “You didn’t meet him when you picked your sister up from work?”

  “Oh, him.”

  Grandma waited.

  “He was only at the dance for a few minutes, just to see who was playing,” Mama told her. “Then he left.”

  “Was Mrs. Miller with him?”

  “I didn’t see her.”

  Grandma made a little grunting sound of disgust. She did not believe Mama’s innocent answers, or at any rate, she suspected that there was more to be known which she was not likely to learn.

  “I’m a prisoner in this house, Arlene. I don’t even go to Circle.” Circle was Methodist Ladies Aide.

  “Mama, that’s just plain foolish. You brought us up right and sent us to church and to Sunday school, and taught us what was what. You can’t blame yourself and neither can anybody else. If you’re in prison, you put yourself there. Nobody else did it.”

  “That may be,” Grandma said, “but what’s the difference if I can’t get out?” She pulled herself up from the rocker. “I’m going to get breakfast on. Your papa’s hungry.”

  Mama sat, playing with the hem of the sheet and looking thoughtful. No, more than thoughtful. Troubled.

  The temperature rose near a hundred and five that day. Grandma did not go to church. She said it was on account of the heat, but I never knew her to stay away from church in the past. When Mama and Aunt Betty and I came home from barmaid’s Mass, we were dripping sweat.

  “Look at me, Grandma. The bodice of my dress is all wet from sweat,” I said.

  “Men sweat,” she told me. “Ladies perspire. But you’re right, you’re dripping wet. Better get out of that fancy dress. Do you have something cool?”

  “Put on your seersucker sundress,” Mama instructed.

  The green-and-white-striped seersucker sundress was my favorite that summer. Mama had made it, and she’d appliquéd bright orange carrots on the bodice and at the pocket. It was the gayest sundress I had seen.

  “Would anybody like to go for a ride out in the country?” Mama asked when I was dressed.

  “Me,” I told her.

  Mama turned to Grandma. “You like to ride in the country.”

  “Not today.”

  “Oh, come on, Mama.”

  “No, Arlene. I would rather stay home.”

  “Well, don’t ever say you weren’t invited. Betty?”

  Aunt Betty was removing her hat at the sideboard mirror and regarding herself strangely in the mirror. “I’ll go,” she said languidly. “Let me change first.”

  “I think I’ll ask Papa if we can use his car. It’s too crowded in the coupe on a hot day,” Mama explained. “This is like the old days, when we were girls, Betty, only you drove the old car and I rode along.”

  “It’s nothing like the old days,” Grandma said to herself, but loud enough for us to hear. “In my worst nightmares, I would not have dreamed any of this in the old days.”

  So we drove into the country, Mama at the wheel, Aunt Betty beside her, and me in the backseat. Although it was immaculate, the inside of Grandpa’s car smelled like the seats on the train, dusty and ancient. It was a smell as reassuring as the odor of talcum or fried onions.

  Before leaving town, Mama pulled in at the all-night café and jumped out. “I’ll be right back.” Minutes later, she returned with three strawberry ice cream cones. “Hold mine till we’re on the road,” she said, handing two of them to Aunt Betty and one to me. “Lark, try not to get it on your dress.” She slid in behind the wheel. “Roll down all the windows, ladies, we’re heading for the country!”

  Merrily the car jounced over the countryside, past heat-sleepy farm yards, where windmills stood silent and farm dogs lazed in the shade, too warm to chase the car. Dust from the gravel rose up behind us and hung in thick suspension, even as we disappeared over a far hill.

  For half an hour we drove across the rolling prairie, then Mama pulled off and parked beneath the shade of a stand of cottonwoods, beside a dried-up creek bed. We piled out of the car and sat on the dusty grass. Except for the whining of cicadas and a lone meadowlark, there was absolute quiet, as if we were a thousand miles from anywhere. Occasionally the cottonwoods shook their shining leaves, not from the encouragement of any breeze but from a kind of impatience with the heat.

  “Take off your dress, Lark, and lay your head down on it,” Mama said. She could see that the day and the ice cream had made me drowsy. And I had not slept well last night, trying to stay awake until Mama came home.

  Aunt Betty got to her feet and began to pace slowly up and down. “What time will we leave in the morning?” she asked Mama.

  This was the first I knew of their going anywhere.

  “Quarter to six.”

  “That early?”

  “It’s four hours to Minneapolis, or nearly, and we have to leave time to find the address.”

  “What are you going to do, Mama?” I asked.

  “We’re going shopping.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re driving up and back in one day. There won’t be time to worry about an extra passenger.”

  “You won’t have to worry about me.”

  “Not this time, Lark,” Mama silenced me peremptorily. “Do you have enough money … for shopping?” Mama asked Aunt Betty.

  She nodded and turned her back, as if looking far off down the creek bed.

  “Have you changed your mind?” Mama asked her.

  “No,” she said without turning around. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  My eyes would not stay open. The day was humming me to sleep. But I was sure that Aunt Betty was crying. And then I thought I heard her say that she was afraid. Why would a grownup be afraid to go shopping?

  45

  “I DON’T SEE WHY you have to go shopping today—and in Minneapolis,” Grandma complained. “Taking off work! I never heard of such a thing.” Grandma was standing in the kitchen doorway, still in her nightgown.

  Mama was dressed and at the sink, finishing a cup of coffee. Aunt Betty, wan and silent, sat on a kitchen chair, her white summer purse on her lap. “I want to
look for a winter coat,” Mama said. “I won’t have time once I’m back at work.”

  “But why does Betty have to go?”

  “She needs a day off.”

  “She had one yesterday.”

  “Oh, Mama,” Mama sighed with filial impatience. “Lark, give Mama a kiss. I’ll see you tonight. Mind Grandma and I’ll bring you something from Minneapolis.”

  Out they hurried, me behind them in my underpants, standing on the back stoop, waving as Mama backed out of the drive. She tooted the horn lightly and swung down the alley and into the street.

  There were a few fading, decrepit toys in a box in the front hall, among them a rubber baby doll, her body grown hard as steel and dusky, as if she were changing her race. In the backyard, beside the tall lilac bushes, I spread an old cotton blanket and played house all morning with the mulatto doll.

  Grandpa came home for lunch when the town whistle blew at noon. His blue work shirt was wet down the back and under the arms. “Over a hundred again today,” he said, washing his hands and face at the kitchen sink before sitting down. Drying himself on the heavy, linen roller towel, he revealed, “Grandpa Whaley passed on, of the heat, they say. Collapsed in the garden pulling weeds.”

  “What was he doing in the garden with the heat over a hundred? That daughter of his must be simple, letting him do that. Why, it’s criminal.”

  “They say she was cleaning the attic.”

  “Can you beat that?”

  “Where’s Arlene?” he asked, sitting down at the dining room table. He had left the house at five.

  “Gone to Minneapolis and Betty with her, to look for a winter coat, she said! The hottest day of the year, and she runs off, dragging her sister, to try on winter coats. Sometimes I don’t think either of them has good sense.”

  Grandpa shook his head. “I expect they’d clean the attic while I pulled weeds if the day were over a hundred and five.” He chuckled, shaking his head some more.

  After Grandpa had left again and the few dishes were washed and put away, Grandma said, “I’m going to take a lie-down now. I want you to do the same.” She suffered vague, exhausting worries.

  “I’m not tired.”