The train swayed around a curve as I left the rest room, and the heavy door slammed metallically behind me. I stood in the narrow passage between the two rest rooms, savoring the taste of black jelly bean that lingered on my tongue. Far up the aisle Mrs. Erhardt and Mrs. Weller, each beside a window, faced one another, staring intently out at nothing.
I made my way toward them. “Mrs. Erhardt. Mrs. Weller. I don’t know anyone else on this train. Are you going a long ways?”
Mrs. Erhardt stirred and stared at me, as if trying to place me. “Mrs….?”
“Brown.”
“Oh, yes, Mrs. Brown. It’s been a long time. Yes, we’re going all the way across the country, to California.”
“That’s where I’m going. And so is my little girl, Myrna Loy.”
“Mr. Brown? He didn’t come?”
“No.”
“How is Myrna Loy?”
“Sad. She misses her papa. He thought the world of her. He always said she was the holiest child he’d ever met.”
“And pretty, too, if I remember.”
“Her papa said it was lucky we named her Myrna Loy, since she looked like a movie star.”
“What grade is Myrna Loy in now?”
“She’ll be in the fifth grade next fall.”
“Oh, my, is she that old already?”
“She’s reading Nancy Drew mysteries. Sometimes she reads Happy Stories for Bedtime, because it reminds her of her childhood.”
“It seems like only last year that she was in kindergarten. I’m sure she’s going to like her school in California.”
“I don’t think so. She doesn’t have any friends there. And her best friend at home died.”
“Oh, dear.”
“He was a great war hero. Also a prince.”
“A prince?”
“He was in … what do you call it when you can’t live in your own country?”
“Exile?”
“He was in exile. But they followed him. They caught him once and took off his clothes and tortured him.”
“Oh, dear God.”
“It’s true. Every word. I heard it from an eyewitness. A Mrs. Wheeler.”
Mrs. Erhardt regarded me sharply. “That’s terrible.”
“Yes. A war hero and a prince, and he wasn’t even safe in exile. He blew his brains out on his front doorstep.”
Mrs. Erhardt was a sympathetic listener. Her eyes were moist, and she groped in her purse for a hanky.
“Don’t cry, Mrs. Erhardt. He’s happy now.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“He is happy,” I said. “He’s in heaven. Jesus sent angels to carry him to heaven. And angels to play harps and … ocarinas along the way.” I opened my purse. “Would you like a jelly bean or gumdrop, Mrs. Erhardt?” She took an orange gumdrop.
“God was going to send the Prince to hell because he committed suicide. But Jesus got mad. He said, ‘I want this man with Me.’ Then God got mad and roared around heaven, scaring everybody. Fathers are sometimes too strict—God is like that—but we have to love them anyway. Jesus said, ‘If the Prince can’t come to heaven, I’m leaving. People with good hearts should be with Me, even if they’re babies who haven’t been baptized or war heroes who blow their brains out.’”
Mrs. Erhardt wondered, “How do you know all this, Mrs. Brown?”
I had to think. How did I know it? “I have amazing hearing. I can hear the Germans marching, all the way across the ocean. At night I hear them before I fall asleep. I think that’s because it’s daytime where they are.”
“And you heard Jesus talking to God?”
“I think I heard Him in my sleep. I know it happened the way I told you. I’m not a liar, Mrs. Erhardt.”
“I know that,” she assured me, reaching for a second gumdrop. “Not many people can hear God talking,” she observed and popped the gumdrop into her mouth. “Have you told anyone else what happened between God and Jesus?”
“Heavens, no.”
“There are some things that people simply won’t understand.”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes I let people think the worst of me because I can’t explain the truth.”
“I do that sometimes, too.” I was amazed to hear this about Mrs. Erhardt. “What don’t people understand about you?” I pressed.
“Well,” she said, wiping sugary fingers on her hanky, “people don’t understand how I could drag my little girl, Lark, off to California.”
“Yes. I’m sure people don’t understand that.”
“But being married was like having a hippopotamus sitting on my face, Mrs. Brown. No matter how hard I pushed or which way I turned, I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t even breathe.”
I had felt like that after Baby Marjorie died.
“Hippopotamuses aren’t all bad. They are what they are. But I wasn’t meant to have one sitting on my face.”
I nodded. All I understood of this was her sincerity, which was like an open wound—painful to look at but impossible to ignore.
“I love my little girl, Lark, the way you love your daughter, Myrna Loy. And I know that she is very partial to hippopotamuses. You can see what a problem we have.”
I wanted to tell Mrs. Erhardt that for Myrna Loy’s sake I would live with a hippopotamus on my face forever. However, it was easy to imagine doing painful things. Before music class, when I was a child, I always imagined that I would volunteer to sing a solo. When the time for solos came, like Mrs. Erhardt, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move at all.
“I don’t know how to solve the problem, Mrs. Brown.”
I told her, “It’s a long way to California, Mrs. Erhardt. Maybe we’ll think of something.”
A Reader’s Group Guide
Faith Sullivan is a devoted fan of book groups. Over the years she has—by rough estimation—sat in with 1,500 groups who’ve read one of her novels and wished to discuss it with her. Following are some of the points that have been raised about The Cape Ann, along with some that Ms. Sullivan herself raises:
Why would a woman like Arlene marry a man like Willy? By the same token, why would a man like Willy marry a woman like Arlene? Were either of them typical of their era?
Psychology professors have used this story to illustrate certain characteristics of dysfuunctional families. If Willie and Arlene were in marriage counseling, what would be some of their issues?
In what ways does the author illustrate the severity of the Great Depression? How do economic factors affect the story?
What purposes do the Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Erhardt conversations serve?
More than once, The Cape Ann has been quoted from the pulpit. How might it figure in religious discussions? What is the effect of religion on Lark?
What do you think of Uncle Stanley? Is his weakness villainous? On what evidence do you base your feelings?
How would you characterize the relationship between Arlene and Aunt Betty?
The stork brings babies. What are the arguments for and against a parent telling a child such an outright lie?
What traits of Lark’s would you want or not want your child to have? Is her precociousness believable?
Has Lark’s relationship with her mother changed by the end of the book?
Because Ms. Sullivan believes many of the best discussions about novels arise from the personal experiences of group members and the ways they relate to the story, she feels that no group needs more than ten strong questions to launch their discussion. She continues to visit book groups when she can work them into her schedule. You can contact her at her website, www.faithsullivan.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1988, 2010 by Faith Sullivan
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers P
ress, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1988.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sullivan, Faith.
The Cape Ann/Faith Sullivan.
eISBN: 978-0-307-71696-5
I. Title.
[PS3569.U3469C3 1989]
813′.54—dc19 88–34862
v3.0
The Cape Ann Page 41
