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THE

CAPE
ANN
aA NOVEL

FA I T H
S U L L I VA N
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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 Press, 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.
ISBN 0 1401.1979 5
I. Title.
[PS3569.U3469C3 1989]
813'.54—dc19 88–34862
ISBN 978-0-307-71695-8
Printed in the United States of America
Design by Philip Mazzone
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Three Rivers Press Edition

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The Cape Ann 
 

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“N E X T Y E A R AT T H I S time, I want carpenters working on our


house,” Mama said.
Papa said nothing. He was reading the paper while Mama
made supper. We were having fried pork chops, mashed potatoes
with gravy, and Monarch brand canned peas. Mama had baked a
couple of apple pies that morning. She never made fewer than two.
Papa could eat almost a whole pie at a sitting.
Mama liked to bake pies, and everyone said she was the best pie
baker in Harvester, Minnesota. “That’s because the crust is thin
and crisp,” she had explained to me, “and the filling isn’t runny.”
She’d added quickly, “But I never use tapioca or cornstarch to
thicken up the fruit pies.” Her tone implied that moral turpitude
was responsible for pies with tapioca or cornstarch.
Mama’s hair was in pin curls because she was going to her
bridge club after supper. Bridge club met every other week on Fri-
day. Tonight Bernice McGivern was hostess.
Mama carried the platter of chops and the bowl of peas to the
table, then returned to the stove for the potatoes and gravy. Seating
herself, she filled my plate, mashed potatoes first. I scooped out a
well in the center for the gravy, and she took care to pour it into the
depression. Mindfully laying my chop to one side of the potatoes,
she spooned peas onto the other.
Papa folded the paper and put it on the floor under his chair.
Taking up his fork, he reached across and dragged the tines through

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2 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

my potatoes, laying waste to the dam. Then he laughed as though


it were a great joke, which only Mama and I would fail to see.
“Why did you do that, Willie? You know she likes to save the
potatoes for last.”
“For Christ’s sake, Arlene. You gonna pick a fight over mashed
potatoes?” he asked, continuing to laugh. Papa laughed a good
deal, and everyone said he was a good-natured fellow. A real sport,
they said. Mama set her jaw and passed him the chops.
With my fingers and my spoon, I shored up the ravaged well.
“Don’t use your fingers, Lark,” Mama admonished.
Mama had chosen the name Lark. Lark Browning Erhardt.
Browning was Mama’s maiden name. Papa had wanted to call
me Beverly Mary; Mary after the Blessed Virgin. Mama said she
wouldn’t hang a name like Beverly Mary on a pet skunk. Where she
got the idea for Lark, I don’t know, although one time when I
asked, she said that larks flew high and had a happy song.
When Mama told Father Delias that I was going to be named
Lark Browning, he said it wouldn’t do; I had to have a saint’s name.
Mama, who was a convert, didn’t understand that but she went
along. On my baptismal certificate I was Lark Ann Browning
Erhardt.
Mama hated her own name, Arlene. “Arlene, Marlene, Dar-
lene, they’re all hayseed names,” she deplored. Even more than
Arlene, she hated “Lena,” which she’d been called in school, grow-
ing up. Once when Papa called her Lena, just to get her goat, she
threw a mustard jar at him.
Rising, Mama came around to my side of the table, took my
knife and fork, and helped me to cut my chop. “Next year at this
time, I want carpenters working on our house,” she repeated. It
was the same thing she’d said earlier, the same thing she’d said a
hundred times. Returning to her chair, she warned, “I won’t go on
living in this place. If we don’t have carpenters building our house
next year, I’m setting a match to this dump.” She rose to fetch the
coffee pot. “There are plenty of people in this town who own their
own homes, and they don’t make as much money as you do,” she
told Papa, pouring coffee into his cup, then into her own.
“What do I care what plenty of people do?” he asked, stirring
cream into his coffee.
Mama set the pot on the stove with a bang. “I’m serious, Willie.
I want a house.”

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THE CAPE ANN a 3

I didn’t understand Papa’s not wanting a house. It wasn’t the


way he was raised, Mama would say. Grandpa and Grandma
Erhardt lived in a nice house with a pair of walnut trees in the front
yard. Not a fancy or big house, but nice. We lived in the train depot,
a few feet from the tracks.
Papa worked for the railroad. He was the clerk in the depot. He
and the depot agent handled the coming and going of trains. They
sold tickets and figured out routes and schedules for the passengers
who were going far across the country. They accepted outgoing
freight, weighing it and toting up the charges, and they unloaded
incoming freight, and delivered it, too, if the party couldn’t come
down to pick it up. They dealt with mail, and sent and received
telegrams. They saw to it that tracks were cleared or switched for
trains requiring a siding. It was a busy job. There was a passenger
train heading east in the morning, one going west in the afternoon.
At least two freight trains came through each day, though these
usually came through after supper in the evening.
The trains were big and noisy and dirty, and they smelled of coal,
but Mama and Papa and I all loved them, each for our own reasons. I
really couldn’t imagine not living beside the trains, but I wanted a
room of my own, so I supported Mama’s campaign for a house.
Upstairs above the depot, in an apartment reserved for the
depot agent, lived Mr. Art Bigelow and his wife, May, a taciturn,
childless couple much devoted to stamp collecting and knitting,
respectively.
When Papa came to Harvester, there were no living quarters
provided for the clerk and his family. There was, however, a large,
empty room at the east end of the ground floor. Its only door
opened directly onto the station platform. Mama, who was deter-
mined to save money for a house, saw in this room our rent-
free living quarters for the next few years. I was a baby then, but she
told the story so often that I seemed to remember how it looked.
A space twenty feet by twenty feet, with a fifteen-foot ceiling, it
possessed three very tall, stern-looking windows, grimed with the
smoke and steam of thousands of trains. The walls were of a nar-
row, vertical board, painted railway gray, and the floors were dusty,
unvarnished oak. In one wall was a cold-water faucet, but no sink
or drain. It was difficult to imagine for what purpose the room had
been designed, unless the railroad had at some point envisioned it
as lay-over quarters for train crews or section gangs. Mama got in

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4 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

touch with the railroad company at once, negotiating a rent-free


agreement for us to occupy this daunting, minimal housing.
Papa was daunted, not Mama. “There must be rooms over a
store that we could move into,” Papa suggested.
“If we live here,” Mama pointed out, “we can save the rent
money for a house of our own.”
“There’s no heat. What’ll we do in the winter?”
“We’ll have a coal stove put in. The railroad has lots of coal.”
“And a bathroom? What about that?”
“We’ll use the toilet off the waiting room. For baths we’ll buy a
big galvanized tub, and I’ll heat water.”
“There’s no drain in this room. What’ll we do with the water
we run?”
“We’ll carry it over beyond the tracks and dump it.”
Mama had an argument for all of Papa’s misgivings. He was
stunned and displeased by her willingness to live “like hoboes.”
Mama, who had graduated from high school, whose parents had
graduated from high school! (Papa had quit school after the tenth
grade.) Mama who had grown up in a comfortable house in a town
with paved streets and three railroads. How could such a woman
insist that they live in this cold, empty room? And with a baby? In a
few months, when the snow came flying, wouldn’t she feel foolish
coming to him to complain that she couldn’t keep the place warm
and that she was catching pneumonia hauling slop water across the
tracks? Then he would have a good laugh.
But Mama didn’t complain, not in the first years. We were going
to save for a new house. In the meantime, she made the depot
house as comfortable and attractive as her considerable ingenuity
could manage. Linoleum in a tan and cream pattern covered the
floor. The walls were painted ivory. A carpenter came with lumber
and panels called compoboard, or a name very much like that.
With the four-by-eight-foot sheets of compoboard, he built
partitions, and created a bedroom, kitchen, and living room. There
were no doors, just doorways, and since the sheets were only four
by eight, there was a two-foot gap between the floor and the bot-
tom of the partition, and a five-foot gap between the top of the
partition and the ceiling. Mama said the gaps allowed heat from
the stove in the living room to circulate. Still, a lot of heat got lost
up near that fifteen-foot ceiling, and once the place got cold, it took
forever to heat it up again.

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THE CAPE ANN a 5

In the kitchen, which was the room with the faucet and the
door to the outside, Mama had a sink installed, with a drain that
went into a pail underneath. She sewed a pretty fabric skirt to hide
the pail. As I grew into a child, emptying the pail—pails, actually, as
there were three of them—became my responsibility, though
Mama helped in the coldest weather. The bedroom held Mama
and Papa’s bed, a bureau, a wardrobe, and my crib. You had to
walk sideways to move around the furniture.
But, despite its shortcomings, once he’d gotten over the
embarrassment of living as we did, Papa grew accustomed to our
cramped quarters, and he could see no reason to go to the expense
and disruption of building a new house. Mama, on the other hand,
grew increasingly dissatisfied.
Clearing away dishes, she told Papa, “I went by the lumber-
yard this afternoon and got some more house plans I want you to
look at.”
Papa reached for the newspaper under his chair.
“Willie, I want you to look at them. We’ve got to get out of
here. Lark can’t go on sleeping in a crib. She’s six years old. She
needs a room of her own and a real bed. I’ve made as much of this
place as I can, but I can’t make it bigger.”
Papa lowered the paper. “Where are you off to?” he asked, tak-
ing note of Mama’s pin curls.
“Where am I off to! It’s Friday. I’m off to bridge club. How
many years have I been going to bridge club? You still have to ask.”
She poured boiling water from the tea kettle into the dishpan and
added cold water from the faucet. “Lark, if you’ve finished your
pie, would you give me a hand here? I’m going to have to shake a
leg if I don’t want to be late.”
“Who’s staying with the kid?” Papa asked.
“You,” Mama told him impatiently, scrubbing an empty pie plate.
“No, I’m not.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, turning without removing
her hands from the dishwater.
“I’ve got a poker game.”
Mama stared, disbelieving.
“Now don’t start in,” Papa told her.
“Don’t tell me not to start in. How could you do this? And on a
bridge night at that?”
“I forgot.”

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6 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

“You didn’t forget. Since Lark was a baby, bridge club has been
every other Friday.”
“I forgot that this Friday was the ‘other.’ ”
“You are a liar, Willie. You enjoy spoiling my good times.”
“Well, get on the phone and get a high school kid to stay with
her,” Papa said.
“I will not. This is your fault. You get on the phone.”
“I don’t know their names. You’re the one who knows them.”
He threw down the paper. “You damned well better get someone
before you leave here.”
“The hell I will,” Mama retorted, shoving the clean skillet at me.
“Then take her with you.”
“No. The girls all agreed we wouldn’t bring our kids. If every-
one brought one, it would be a madhouse. You knew you were
supposed to stay with her tonight. You did this on purpose.”
“For Christ’s sake, Arlene, why would I forget on purpose?”
“Because you don’t like the bridge club.” She turned to face
him, the dishcloth in her hand. “You never liked it.”
“A bunch of cackling hens.” A smile began to pull at one side of
Papa’s mouth, and he raised his empty coffee cup to hide it.
Mama burst into tears and hurled the wet dishcloth at him,
striking the coffee cup and knocking it to the floor, where it shat-
tered at his feet.
“It’s just like our house that doesn’t get built,” she cried. “You sit
there eating pie and smirking. Everything is a joke. All my plans,”
she choked, “are funny, aren’t they?”
Papa was already out the door and heading down the platform
to the depot office. Mama fell upon the dishcloth and flung it
against the wall above the sink. “Goddamn him,” she cried, “I’ll
show him.”

2
A LITTLE BEFORE EIGHT, Mama emerged from the bedroom,
skittery and bright eyed, nerved up for the competition. Stored away
for the evening were her anger and tears. Mama loved bridge club:

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THE CAPE ANN a 7

the sociability, the drink or two, the exotic dessert. But especially the
competition, the possibility of carrying home first prize. Not that
she cared much for the prize itself, a box of fancy face soap or a
china ashtray. It was the winning of it. Mama was a competitive
apple-pie baker and a competitive bridge player.
Did the bridge club ladies notice this? They were a jolly circle,
women who laughed until tears came to their eyes. Their running
jokes carried over from meeting to meeting, embroidered and ap-
pliquéd with fresh fabric and threads at each gathering until a
complex tapestry of humor joined them in a tight sisterhood of
group memory.
Papa’s “cackling hens” epithet was not without basis. One or
two of the women cackled, a couple of them tittered, some
honked or snorted or squealed. But it was a satisfying racket.
When Mama entertained bridge club in our living room, I would
lie in the crib and wrap myself in the female voices, feeling safe in
their company, and wondering if I would ever be part of such a
group and have so much to laugh about.
Mama was nourished by the cabala and the kinship, but she
was exhilarated by the competition. She had learned the self-
deprecating ways of the woman who does not want to be thought
hard and grasping, but her artifices could not always cover the
nakedness of her need to excel.
Now Mama’s Tabu perfume preceded her into the living room,
where I sat folded up on the couch with the spring/summer
Monkey Wards catalog.
“You look beautiful,” I told her, thrilled by her bridge night
glamour. She wore a simple black dress of an elegant, crinkly fab-
ric. It was one she had made. On one shoulder was pinned a large,
round brooch encrusted with different colored stones. It looked
old and expensive although she’d bought it for less than a dollar on
sale at the Golden Rule department store in St. Paul.
Adjusting an earring, Mama turned her back. “Are my seams
straight?”
I said yes, and she came to me and bent to kiss me. I made her
kiss me on the mouth so that I would get some of her lipstick on
my mouth. She always did that on bridge night. I had to be very
careful not to smudge her makeup. We touched lips gingerly,
quickly, and immediately I folded my lips inward to savor the thick,
fruity taste of the lipstick.

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8 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

She looked at her watch. “You can stay up till nine, but I want
you in your nightgown right away.”
I grabbed her hand, which smelled of Jergens lotion. “If any-
body talks about Hilly Stillman, remember what they say so you
can tell me.”
She laughed and hurried out through the kitchen to the door.
“Have a good time,” I called, closing my eyes until I could no
longer smell the Tabu, then returning to the brassieres in the Mon-
key Wards catalog.
Hilly Stillman stories abounded at Mama’s bridge club, and
as I turned the brassiere and corset pages, I wondered if Hilly
ever looked at such things. Did he think about people’s naked
bodies?
Hilly, a veteran of the World War, was about forty, though he
seemed much younger to me. His mother, who was not much
more than sixty-five, seemed remarkably ancient.
Bill McGivern, husband of Mama’s friend Bernice, was a World
War veteran, too. He remembered Hilly from before. Hilly’s father
died when Hilly was a baby. Mrs. Stillman taught third grade at the
public school to provide for herself and little Hillyard. A cousin, a
young farm girl, had come to live with them in town for a few
years to help out with Hilly, but she got into trouble and had no
husband, and she disappeared, evaporated into thin air.
When Mama heard this story, she said, “I hope she lit out for
California. I hope it was a married man, and he gave her money to
get to California. Maybe she’s in the movies now.”
Mama said this at a sodality meeting and word of it got back to
Papa who said that if Mama felt that way, she was no better than
that pregnant whore. Mama hit him with a rolled up Liberty maga-
zine and Papa slapped her across the face so hard that she had a
bruise and couldn’t go to bridge club or sewing club for a month.
After that Mama cooled toward sodality.
I often thought of Hilly Stillman’s cousin and her baby in Cali-
fornia. Did they have an orange farm or was the cousin in the
movies, as Mama had suggested? I hoped they had an orange farm.
It would be pleasant for the baby, playing among the trees and hav-
ing all the oranges she wanted. Oranges were a luxury in Min-
nesota in the thirties. Grandpa Browning complained that fellows
on relief got oranges but folks who had to work for a living couldn’t
afford them. It didn’t occur to me that Hilly’s cousin would be in

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THE CAPE ANN a 9

her middle years now, the baby in its thirties. I imagined them in
the warm shade of orange trees, a young mother and her toddler.
Mrs. Stillman nearly lost her job after the cousin took off, preg-
nant. Although this all happened around the turn of the century,
people continued to speak of it in 1934 when Mama and Papa
came to Harvester.
A committee made up of several German Lutherans, a number
of Baptists, and a Methodist approached the school board and de-
manded that Mrs. Stillman be dismissed. After all, they pointed
out, the offending cousin had been living under the Stillman roof
when she got pregnant. Where was Mrs. Stillman when this was
going on?
It was a narrow decision. Mrs. Stillman’s job was saved by one
vote. The town was divided by the issue, and the German Luther-
ans decided to build their own elementary school.
Bill McGivern said that when Hilly was growing up, he took a
lot of razzing about all of it, and about being a mama’s boy as well.
He was always waiting around school for her instead of slipping
off and doing daring, forbidden things that would get him into the
proper kind of trouble.
When President Wilson declared war on the Central Powers,
Hilly was the first boy from the county to volunteer. A big fuss was
made over him. His picture appeared in all the weekly and bi-
weekly papers in St. Bridget County. Girls promised to write him,
and everyone was proud to have known him, to have been his
friend.
Hilly was sent to France, where he brought glory upon himself
with his daring in battle and his courage in the rescue of fallen
comrades. At home Mrs. Stillman was invited everywhere. When
he was decorated by both the French and the American govern-
ments, Hilly’s picture again appeared in all the papers. Three dif-
ferent Harvester girls were circulating the story of their imminent
engagement to Hilly.
Word that Hilly had been wounded and news of the end of the
war arrived at nearly the same time. A great armistice celebration
was held in the school gymnasium, and Mrs. Stillman was installed
on a throne bedecked with bunting and flags.
When Hilly’s wounds had healed as well as they ever would,
he was shipped back to Harvester, where news of his return
had preceded him. Lurching down the steps of the railway car,

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10 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

accompanied by another soldier, sent to see him home, Hilly was


nearly blown sideways by the spirited strains of “It’s a Long, Long
Way to Tipperary.” Assembled before him at the station were the
high school band and a throng of a thousand flag-waving citizens.
Right down in front, clutching a gilded, three-foot wooden key,
was the mayor, with Mrs. Stillman shy and weeping beside him.
The boy with Hilly held tight to his charge and glanced anx-
iously around. That, at least, is the way Bill McGivern, who was
already mustered out, remembers it.
But Hilly broke into an open-mouthed smile and began flailing
his arms in time to the music as if he were conducting the band.
The young man beside him spoke some words to him, and Mrs.
Stillman ran to fling her arms around her son, but Hilly ignored
them. The arm flailing seemed to lift him to a higher level of ex-
citement, and Hilly commenced to jig precariously. Neither his
mother nor the attendant soldier could restrain him.
Grinning and flailing and jigging, Hilly careened back and forth
across the station platform. Helpless, Mrs. Stillman watched,
clutching her coat around her.
Suddenly Hilly stopped. His smile slid away, and he cast his eyes
down to the front of his trousers. The widening stain of urine
there seemed to amaze him.
The band concluded “Tipperary.” Hilly raised his eyes and took
in the gathered crowd, bewilderment crimping his features. Staring
again at the stain, he spread his hands to conceal it and crumpled to
the platform on his knees.
The crowd began to crumble and disperse. Finally there were
only the three of them on the platform: Hilly on his knees, Mrs.
Stillman crouched beside him, and the attendant soldier standing
guard.
Hilly’s purely physical wounds—shrapnel in the neck and chest,
and trench foot severe enough to necessitate amputation of several
toes on his right foot—healed, though he would always walk with
a rolling limp. But Hilly’s mind had carried him back to early child-
hood. About age five, people speculated. Doctors held out hope
that he would recover his sanity spontaneously, but it was only a
hope, not a prognosis.
Hilly and his mother lived in a small apartment over Rabel’s
Meat Market on Main Street, across from the post office. When
Mrs. Stillman was home from school, where she still taught third

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THE CAPE ANN a 11

grade, Hilly sat at the window in his room watching people come
and go on the street below, particularly the steady flow in and out
of the post office. There was no mail delivery in Harvester, so
everyone picked up their own. Hilly liked to see people coming out
with packages and imagine what was in them.
After Mrs. Stillman left for school in the morning and Hilly had
eaten the breakfast laid out on the kitchen table, he dressed him-
self and descended the outside stairs, drifting out onto Main Street.
So proud was he of being able to dress himself that one spring
morning, a couple of months after his return, Hilly hobbled naked
down the stairs, carrying the garments Mrs. Stillman had left on
the chair beside his bed. Hitching his way into Rabel’s Meat Mar-
ket, he threw down the clothes and grinned widely at Mr. Rabel,
Mr. Rabel’s apprentice, and three ladies come to do marketing, ex-
horting, “Watch.” Then one at a time, Hilly picked up the articles
of clothing, held them up to show his audience, and painstakingly
pulled them on, taking great care to match buttons to buttonholes.
Two of the three ladies ran out of the store without their pur-
chases. The third, Bernice McGivern’s sister, Maxine, who was
Dr. White’s nurse, remained, and when Hilly was done dressing
himself, she clapped and told him he was a clever boy.
That was the first of the Hilly Stillman stories. Although his
mother persuaded Hilly never again to appear in public without
clothing, short of taping his mouth and tying him to a chair, she
could not prevent his going out and talking to people on the side-
walk. Most people turned away when they saw him. They crossed
the street to avoid him. Boys taunted him, and if no one were
around to stop them, they pelted him with stones, chasing him
home and up the wooden stairs outside the butcher shop.
Women were frightened by Hilly. He lacked decorum. He
would be on you, talking six to the dozen, before you could extri-
cate yourself, and most of what he said made no sense.
Some women feared, or said they did, that Hilly could be
dangerous. Violent or . . . the other. After all, everyone knew he’d
appeared naked in Rabel’s Meat Market in front of three women.
Didn’t that prove something? And he still wet himself when he was
frightened. That was no picnic to be around.
Men weren’t afraid of Hilly but they didn’t want him hanging
around their stores scaring off customers. He was a public nuisance
and embarrassment. And they didn’t have time to waste, listening

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12 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

to his nonsense. It was too bad the kid had gone through whatever
he’d gone through, but it wasn’t their lookout. They had a living
to make.
After being shooed out of every business on Main Street two or
three times, Hilly had claimed the bench in front of the post office.
Townspeople were willing to cede him that.
There were a few in Harvester, among them Bernice McGivern,
her sister, and Mama, who stood still for Hilly’s disjointed greet-
ings and observations. Descending the post office steps, Mama
would call, “I hear you’ve eaten every strawberry in Harvester,
Hilly.” (Hilly had once told her, “Strawberries I eat better in my
cream than coffee.”)
Hilly would smile, showing all his teeth, his tongue, and part
of his throat. “Nah.” He would shake his head vigorously, like a
five-year-old. “Some more of strawberries for you will find.” Mama
would laugh and Hilly would laugh. Then she would hand him
the letters or package she held. Hilly liked to carry people’s mail.
If you didn’t have a car, he would carry it all the way home for
you. Sometimes Mama bought him an ice cream cone or a
soda pop.
The hardest part of being nice to Hilly was his gratitude. He
turned himself inside out for anyone who nodded. Sticking out of
his back pocket, summer or winter, was an old rag. If you allowed
him to carry your mail, he polished your car. And if you were in a
hurry, that could be a nuisance. Mama said sometimes you
damned near had to run over Hilly to get away.
Occasionally when Mama went to pick up our mail, she drove
an old black pickup that Papa used for delivering railroad freight.
Hilly was crazy about the pickup and was always begging to ride in
the back. If Mama wasn’t busy, she’d give him a little ride around
town.
One time she brought him to the depot and asked him if he
thought he could wash the windows of our living quarters. There
were only three, but they were very tall and ladders made Mama
dizzy. Hilly became nearly sick with delight at being asked.
It took him an entire day to wash the three windows inside and
out. That was because he was so particular. And he kept polishing
them long after they were spotless. When it looked as though he
would polish his way right through the glass, Mama would tell him
it was time to start the next.

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THE CAPE ANN a 13

At noon Mama carried lunch out to Hilly on a pie tin—roast


beef sandwiches, chocolate cake, and coffee with cream—and she
told him he could sit in the back of the pickup to eat it. Later, when
she went to collect the empty pie tin, Hilly was on his hands and
knees with a rag and bucket, scrubbing out the truck.
At close to five, Mama said, “Hilly, the windows are beautiful.
It’s time for me to take you home.” She gave him a dollar, explaining,
“You can buy ice cream cones with that.” He seemed very pleased
by the idea, and folding the bill carefully several times, he slipped it
into his shirt pocket. Mama drove him downtown, dropping him in
front of Rabel’s Meat Market.
She was home again, paring potatoes to fry, when someone
knocked at the door. Setting the potato aside and wiping her hands
on her apron, she answered it. On the platform stood Hilly, a col-
lapsed cone in each hand, melted ice cream running down his arms
and onto his trousers and shoes.
Though he smiled his wide-open-mouth smile, he was anxious.
“Ice cream can’t walk so far,” he told her, nodding his head up
and down, willing her to grasp the demonstrable truth of this and
pardon it.

Hilly and the ice cream cones was a story for bridge club. At nearly
every meeting, someone had a Hilly tale. Like Mama, many of the
bridge clubbers were respectful of Hilly, but two or three of them
reflected the general feeling in town. “It’s wrong to treat him like
anybody. It gives him false hopes. The next thing you know, he’ll
expect to get married . . . or something,” I once heard Bessie
Anderson say. And Cynthia Eggers added, “He’s a grown man
who’s been in the war. He could be dangerous. Charlie says I’m not
to speak to him.”
But Bernice McGivern said, “It isn’t Christian to ignore him.
Think of what he’s been through. Also, if he ever gets his brains
back, I don’t want him looking at me and remembering that I
crossed the street to avoid him.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice,” Mama mused. “Wouldn’t it just be swell
if one day Hilly woke up and he was sane.”

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3
A F T E R M A M A L E F T F O R bridge, I got into my nightgown and
found the Hershey bar in the cupboard. Mama always left a treat
when she was out at night. And I always ate it right away, then was
sorry I hadn’t had any willpower. It would be smart, I told myself,
to break the bar into its many little squares. I could eat some now,
some at bedtime, and save two or three for tomorrow. That was
the sort of wise thing Katherine Albers, who sat behind me in the
first grade, would do. It was one of the reasons it was difficult to
like her. Another was her blond, Shirley Temple curls.
Chocolate bar in hand, I climbed into my crib and gazed out
the bedroom window. Across the tracks, the grain elevators
loomed pale silver against the deepening lilac sky. On this side, half
a block away, dim, yellow lights seemed miles distant in the ecru
rooms of the Harvester Arms Hotel.
Climbing out again, I fetched the house plan booklets Mama
had brought home from Rayzeen’s Lumberyard that afternoon,
turned on the light beside Mama and Papa’s bed, and hoisted my-
self once more over the side of the crib. Devouring my chocolate
two and even three squares at a bite, I turned the pages of floor
plans and exterior sketches, marveling at how prettily the trees and
shrubs were arranged around the houses and how deftly they were
trimmed to resemble balls and cones and half-spheres. No one in
Harvester had trees and shrubs like those.
I liked houses with shutters. And brick chimneys. I hoped we
would have a house with shutters and a brick chimney. Maybe even
a brick sidewalk, if it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Houses with
shutters and brick chimneys looked as if Katherine Albers lived in
them. If I lived in a house like that, I would develop willpower and
be a better person.
Mama had shown me how to make sense of floor plans; which
little lines were doors, which windows or fireplaces. Fireplaces
were grand. The few movies I’d seen had had fireplaces in them.

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THE CAPE ANN a 15

But fireplaces were expensive, Mama said, so we probably would


not have one, not at first.
Now, here was a cottage (a cottage was what we were going to
build) that had two bathrooms, one up and one down. The luxury
of that made me shiver. I ate the last of the chocolate and closed
my eyes to imagine being the little girl of the house in a house
with two bathrooms.
This particular cottage (#127—The Cape Ann) had a front en-
tryway with a coat closet so people didn’t need to step into the liv-
ing room with snow on their boots. It also boasted a small den,
which Mama was set on having for a sewing/guest room. Before I
fell asleep, I would put the booklet on Mama and Papa’s bed, open
to the Cape Ann.
While I sat studying house plans, the early freight pulled in. No
cars needed to be switched to a siding, so the train was soon shriek-
ing and grinding its way toward St. Bridget. As it drew away from
the station, its great exertion caused the partition next to my crib
to tremble, and the towering window in the room to vibrate. I
reached my hand out between the bars of the crib and pressed it to
the pulsing compoboard.
There were messages for me in the hissings and groanings of
the trains as they stood before the depot; and in the deep succus-
sion sent through the earth as they departed. “Hello. Missed you.
Throw a kiss,” they jangled and snorted, rolling up to my door.
Then, beneath the loading and unloading and the cries of train-
men, they whispered praise for my report cards and news of
friends far away, like William Powell. Leaving me slowly, reluc-
tantly, they called shrilly, “Sweet dreams. Don’t cry. I’ll be back.”
Soon Papa locked up the office and waiting room and came
home. It was nearly nine. In the kitchen he washed his hands and
face, then appeared at the bedroom doorway, wiping them on a
towel.
“We’re going out,” he said, casting a sly, confidential smile at me.
“Where?”
“Herbie Wendel’s.”
“Why?”
“To play poker.”
“I don’t know how to play poker.”
“Not you, dummy.” He laughed. “I’m going to play poker.”

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16 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

“Why am I going?”
“Because we don’t have a girl to stay with you.”
“But I’ve got on my nightie.”
“That’s okay. You can lie down at Herbie’s.”
“I don’t think Mama would want me to go in my nightie. I bet-
ter put on some clothes.”
“There isn’t time. Come on, now. Get up. You don’t want me to
miss this poker party, do you?”
“Can I put on my shoes?”
“Okay, but hurry up. I’m already late.”
“Mama said you should call a girl to stay with me.”
“It’s too late. By the time she got here, Herbie would think I
wasn’t coming. You’ll have a good time, don’t worry.”
“You could call Herbie.”
“Look, don’t you want to go? I thought you’d be tickled. You’re
always wanting to go places with me. Get your shoes on.” Lifting
me out of the crib, he set me down on the big bed and handed me
my shoes and socks.
“Mama’s going to get mad,” I told him.
“I’ll handle her,” he said, buckling my black shoes that had tiny
round air holes across their tops in the pattern of a bow.
From the end of the crib, I took down the pink chenille robe
that was like Mama’s Sunday robe, and was struggling into it as
Papa hurriedly steered me out into the night.
“Should we leave Mama a note?”
“I’ll call later from Herbie’s,” Papa explained and swung me up
onto the high truck seat.
Even wearing a nightie and robe, I shivered when my legs
touched the cold seat. It was May and, while the days were warm
and yellow, the nights were chilly.
The engine didn’t turn over right away, but complained in low
moans, no happier than I to be going across town late on a Friday
night. Papa gave it plenty of choke, and it trembled unwillingly to
life, shaking just as I shook. We sat waiting for the engine to warm
up, Papa rubbing the cold steering wheel, I hugging myself and let-
ting my teeth click like castanets.
Well, maybe Herbie Wendel’s boy, Donald, would still be up.
Donald, a silly boy with a rooster’s comb of hair at the back of his
head and a relentless giggle, was in first grade with me. Maybe

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THE CAPE ANN a 17

Donald and I could color in his coloring books or cut pictures out
of magazines. Maybe I could learn to play poker.
We rattled through silent streets, disturbing the dignified cold.
There were several cars lined up in front of the Wendel house.
Papa parked opposite. I was embarrassed to be walking around the
streets in my nightclothes, but I hastened along behind Papa, anx-
ious to get inside where it was warm. Papa didn’t knock, but just
opened the door and walked into the living room. Mrs. Wendel
wasn’t home or he wouldn’t do that.
“Had to bring my kid,” he told the four men at the dining room
table. “Sorry. The old lady’s at bridge.”
Standing in the archway between living room and dining
room, I asked Herbie Wendel, “Is Donald home?”
“No, honey. He’s gone for the weekend with his ma to her folks
over at St. Bridget.” Mr. Wendel got up from the poker table and
disappeared into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a big
red bubble gum jawbreaker. “Donald likes these,” he said, handing
it to me.
I thanked him and slipped it into my mouth, but when it was in
my cheek, it stretched the skin so taut it hurt; and when it was be-
tween my teeth, it forced my jaws so far apart they ached. Donald
Wendel was just the sort to be fond of a ridiculous treat like this.
Hadn’t anyone told him about Hershey bars?
I hung at the edge of the dining room, shifting the jawbreaker
in my mouth and observing the men peeking at their cards, tap-
ping them with their fingertips and grunting, “Hit me,” and “See
you,” and “I’m in.” It was a confusing game. Just when I was get-
ting the hang of it, the rules changed.
I had begun making dents in the jawbreaker, when Papa or-
dered, “Stop that crunching. You’re making me nervous.”
“Leave her alone, Willie. She’s not hurting anybody,” Lloyd
Grubb told him.
“I can’t think with that noise,” Papa said. Then to me, “Go on
in the living room.”
“Can’t I watch? I’m trying to learn.”
“Poker’s no game for a kid,” he said. “Get in the living room.”
I sidled a couple of steps away and stopped crunching the
jawbreaker. The only excitement in that house was at the dining
room table. But when Papa started to get up out of his chair,

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18 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

I backed away. I didn’t want him getting mad in front of the


other men.
There was one magazine in the living room, something from
the Knights of Columbus. I read as much as I could, which was
most of it, but found not one interesting item. And there were no
colored pictures. It had very few pictures of any kind.
In the dining room, the men pounded their fists on the table
and swore at one another, and laughed loud enough to be heard
across the street. Mr. Wendel dropped out for one hand and went
to the kitchen to pour fresh drinks. I heard him call to Papa, “You
drinking bourbon, Willie?”
“Yeah, that’ll do,” Papa answered, “if you haven’t got some-
thing better.” Then he laughed the way people do at phrases that
are some key part of an old, shared joke.
I closed my eyes and fell asleep, dreaming that Papa left with-
out me, that he forgot I was sleeping on the couch. I was panic-
stricken. The four men at the poker table didn’t know who I was or
where I lived. I knew who I was and where I lived but not how to
get there. When I explained that I lived in the depot, they laughed
and said I was mistaken, nobody lived in a depot.
“Go back to sleep,” they told me. “When you wake up, maybe
you’ll know where you live.”
Well, I thought, I’m not going to stay here all night. Mama will
give me a good licking if she makes breakfast and I’m not there.
And what about the nuns? They’ll be waiting for me at eight
o’clock for first communion instruction and I won’t be there. And
hadn’t they said the first day, “You’d better be pretty sick if you’re
going to miss instruction. Jesus is going to be upset if you don’t at
least have pneumonia.”
Then I dreamed that I sneaked out the front door. It was black
and cold outside. Pulling my robe around me, I turned right and
headed south. Mama had taught me directions and told me that
the depot was on the south side of town. If I kept walking down this
street, headed south, I would come to the railroad tracks and then
I would know where I was.
After several blocks I began to wonder, shouldn’t I see the
tracks soon? I thought I knew what the streets in Harvester looked
like, but these streets looked like streets in some other town.
Then, behind me but not far behind, I heard a sound which
turned my heart to a cold little stone. A black dog, as big as a

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THE CAPE ANN a 19

pony, skulked at my heels, whipping the backs of my legs with his


snarling and sending me flying headlong down the street. When
I came to a corner, I didn’t stop to look both ways but hurtled
ahead.
Now the sidewalk disappeared and I was stumbling down a
rutted path between deserted, crumbling houses. And what was
this—snow? Drifts of it were in my path. The giant black dog would
tear me to pieces and eat me. And I would go to hell because I
hadn’t made my first confession yet.
The dog was at my shoulder. “Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry
for having offended thee,” I prayed. “And I detest all my sins . . .”
But it was only a hand at my shoulder, shaking me. “Lark,
Lark.” It was Herbie Wendel. “We’re having homemade turtle
soup. Would you like some?”
I was filled with such relief, I had to go to the bathroom. When
I emerged, Mr. Wendel handed me Donald’s cereal bowl filled with
steaming turtle soup. Little rabbits danced around the outside of
the bowl. I was glad to have it in my hands because I was shivering.
The house had grown cold while I slept.
Papa wasn’t at the poker table. “Where’s my papa?”
“He’ll be right back. He had to go out for a few minutes. Sit
down here on the couch and have your soup. I’ll bring you some
crackers.”
So Papa had left. It was almost like my dream. Where had he
gone? It must be very late. Where would you go at this time of
night? Mr. Wendel returned with a plate of soda crackers, which he
set on the couch beside me.
“Do you like the soup?” he inquired.
I nodded.
“I made it myself.”
“Really?” I’d never heard of a man cooking. None of them in
our family did.
“Caught this big old snapper out in Sioux Woman Lake. Fishing
for bullheads and landed this instead. Donald’s ma doesn’t like to
clean turtle, so I’m in the habit of making the soup.”
“It’s good,” I assured him. “When do you think my papa’ll be
back?”
“Any minute.” He patted my knee and returned to the dining
room.
A few minutes later, Papa came through the door carrying a

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20 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

brown paper bag. “Damned old fool charged an arm and a leg,”
he told the others. Then, noticing me eating soup, “What’re you
doing up?”
“Mr. Wendel gave me some turtle soup he made himself.
Where did you go?”
“Out. You haven’t been pestering Herbie, have you?”
“No. What time is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does your watch say?”
“None of your business, Miss Nosy.”
“Did you call Mama?”
He didn’t answer, but headed toward the kitchen with the bag.
I finished my soup, which was as good as Campbell’s. Setting the
empty bowl and the cracker plate on the floor, I lay down again
and once more fell asleep, this time slumbering deeply and not
waking till Papa carried me out to the truck. The sky was light.
The first gold peeped through the trees and between the houses on
our left. The cab smelled of whiskey.
When we were close to the depot, Papa turned off the engine
and we coasted into the little parking lot. Before we climbed out of
the pickup, Papa whispered, “We’ve got to be real quiet. We don’t
want to wake your ma. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I whispered, noticing that Papa’s face was red, and his
eyes, too. Did they hurt? Suddenly I remembered something.
“Who took care of the late freight train?” I asked, worried that he’d
forgotten.
“Art took care of it,” he rasped impatiently. “Now keep quiet.
I’ll come around and open the door. Just wait.”
He lifted me down to the gravel, and we tiptoed toward the
platform, stones crunching softly beneath our feet. As we rounded
the corner of the depot, a pair of grackles, loud and angry, flew
down, lit on the semaphore, and starting yawking at us.
“Goddamn,” Papa whispered under his breath, turning the door
knob slowly, stealthily, and pushing the door open just enough for
us to slip through.
At the kitchen table, Mama sat waiting.

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4
“G O T O B E D , L A R K ,” Mama directed in a too-calm voice, never
taking her eyes from Papa, who was at the stove checking the cof-
fee pot, feigning innocence, stalling.
When Mama was preparing to fight, she sent me to the crib.
There was no way, without solid walls and real doors, that she
could prevent me from hearing every word, but whatever small dis-
tance the crib could provide, I was to enjoy.
“Wait a minute,” Mama said, grabbing my arm as I passed.
“What’s in your hair?”
“My hair?” Sure enough there was an awful messy feeling lump
in my hair. The jawbreaker bubble gum Mr. Wendel had given me.
“For God’s sake, Willie,” Mama spat.
“It’s not my fault,” Papa told her, foraging in the refrigerator.
Mama shoved me along toward the bedroom.
Removing my chenille robe and hanging it over the end of the
crib, I climbed in. The house plans were still scattered on the Three
Pigs quilt. Piling them at the foot of the crib with #127—The Cape
Ann on top, I lay down, pulling the quilt tightly around me.
In the kitchen, Mama exploded. “Where in hell have you been,
Willie?”
“You know where.”
“Until five-thirty in the morning?”
Papa didn’t answer.
“What kind of man keeps a child out all night while he gets
drunk and loses his money?”
“I’m not drunk.”
“You’re not sober.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Arlene, the kid was fine. She had a good
time.”
“You’re the biggest liar in St. Bridget County, Willie.”
“Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“I’m talking to somebody who takes a six-year-old that’s got to
be at first communion instruction at eight o’clock this morning

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22 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

out to a stranger’s house, keeps her there till five-thirty a.m., and
then says she had a good time.”
“Herbie Wendel’s not a stranger.”
“Where was Vera Wendel while this was going on?”
“At her folks.”
“Why didn’t you leave a note so I’d at least know where you
were? I could have come and got Lark after bridge club.”
“That’s why I didn’t. You’d have flounced in there and made a
scene. I wanted to have a good time for a change.”
“I don’t notice you denying yourself. And you’re damned right
I’d have flounced in and had a word with a husband who’s too
damned stubborn to call a high school girl to stay with his daugh-
ter, but drags her off to poker like she was the same trash he is.”
A chair fell over, and Mama screamed, “Keep your hands off
me, Willie.” Then there was the cruel “thung” of a fist landing. I
climbed out of the crib and ran to the kitchen. Mama was bent
over the table and Papa was standing over her, his fist raised to hit
her again. Mama grabbed the Heinz ketchup bottle from the table
and swung around, catching Papa in the ribs. He fell back against
the stove, and Mama grabbed a butcher knife from the drain board.
She was a formidable fighter.
“Come near me and I’ll kill you, Willie.”
Papa moaned, “You broke my ribs.”
“Good,” Mama whispered, breathing heavily. “Get out of here.”
Holding his ribs, Papa shuffled to the door. When he had left,
Mama stood for a long minute with the ketchup bottle in one hand
and the butcher knife in the other.
I hurried back to the crib. It was because of me that Mama and
Papa had fought. If Papa had wanted me to tell her I had a won-
derful time at Herbie Wendel’s, he should have explained on the
way home. Was I supposed to know without him telling me?
Would most first graders? How did other children keep their
mama and papa from fighting?
It was harder to be six than to be five or four. Before four noth-
ing was hard except not wetting your pants and not spilling things.

Before I could fall into dreams, Mama was waking me up. Time to
get ready for catechism class. I wasn’t going to have my first com-

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THE CAPE ANN a 23

munion for a year. I didn’t see why we had to start so far ahead. It
was one more thing that made six harder than five.
Most of the children in my instruction class couldn’t even read
the Baltimore Catechism book that prepared us for the sacraments.
We were only first graders. But the nuns said our mamas could
teach us the words we didn’t know. It was their responsibility as
Catholic mothers. Mama didn’t mind teaching me the words. Not
only was she a Catholic mother, but she was also the mother of a
future college student; she was concerned that I know every kind
of word so that there wouldn’t be a lot of surprises when I started
reading college books.
Mama had washed her face and changed into a cotton dress,
but I didn’t think she’d been to bed. She was slow moving and
short tempered. Her hair wasn’t combed, and she wore no lipstick.
Normally the first thing she did after washing her face was put on
lipstick and comb her hair.
Turning my back and pulling on clean underpants, I asked,
“Are you afraid Papa won’t come back?”
“No,” she said. “He’ll come back. You’re not afraid, are you?”
“No,” I lied. One more lie to add to the inventory of sins I was
keeping on a pad I had hidden away. If I didn’t keep track, I’d never
remember them all when I got in the confessional next year.
The nuns had suggested that if we were afraid we’d forget
something when we knelt in that dim little closet, we should take
with us a list of our sins. We were not to write anything on the
paper but sins. The rest of the ritual must be memorized. And no
forgetting!
That very night, asking Mama for a tablet for catechism class,
I’d begun my sorry record, which I hid in the bottom drawer of a
doll chest that had been Mama’s when she was a child.
“Have you got your lesson memorized?” Mama inquired, head-
ing me toward the kitchen. There was water heating in the tea ket-
tle, and she poured some into an enamel basin in the sink, then
added a little cold from the single faucet.
“I think so.”
Soaping a cloth, Mama scrubbed my ears, and after that my
face and neck, rubbing me half raw. “A bath tonight,” she said, slip-
ping a favorite dress over my head. She always let me wear one of
my favorites to instruction. “For luck,” she said. This was a red one

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24 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

with little white polka dots and a white collar. Mama had starched
it within an inch of its life. I liked the skirt to stand out stiff. It made
me feel like I might be able to tap dance. Mama tied the sash in a
perfect bow at my back, then fetched my shoes and socks and
handed them to me.
“Come in the living room.” She carried in a chair from the
kitchen and, when I had pulled on my shoes and socks, she mo-
tioned me to sit on it. Slipping a comb with big teeth from her
pocket, she grabbed my Baltimore Catechism from the sideboard
and handed it to me.
“Look at that while I get the gum out of your hair.” From her
glum, resigned tone, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
I’d gotten gum in my hair before but never such a wad. I only
hoped she wouldn’t have to cut all the hair off that side of my
head. She worked for several minutes with the big-toothed comb,
then, grunting in disgust, went to the bedroom for the brush and
scissors.
I was in tears from the pain and from the anticipated disgrace
of arriving at instruction with half a head of hair. It was impossible
to concentrate on the catechism book while Mama yanked my
head around as though she were pulling weeds.
At length she said, “Look at that,” and held out her hand to
show a great, nasty straw pile of hair and gum.
I put my hand to the side of my head. There was some hair still
there. Mama finished brushing what was left, then fastened it back
with bobby pins and little red bows. I fled to the bedroom for a
look in the mirror. Thank God for a clever mama.
While I downed a bowl of puffed wheat, a dish towel tied
around my neck to protect my dress, Mama sat down at the
kitchen table. “How many men were at Herbie Wendel’s?” she
asked coolly, as if she didn’t really care.
“Counting Papa, five.”
“Who were they?” In front of whose wives would she have to
hold up her head, pretending that Papa’s losses were unimportant?
“Mr. Wendel, Mr. Grubb, Mr. Navarin, and Mr. Nelson.”
“Axel Nelson?” she said with some distaste.
“Yes.”
“Did you watch them play poker?”
“Not very long. Papa told me to go in the living room. He said
poker wasn’t a game for kids.”

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THE CAPE ANN a 25

With her index finger, Mama traced the flower design in the
oilcloth. “So you don’t know if your papa lost money?”
I shook my head.

The way to St. Boniface Catholic Church was straight and simple.
You went out to First Avenue, which ran past the depot, turned
right, and kept going. It was also easy to find Main Street, which
ran perpendicular to First. You just walked two blocks toward the
Catholic church, and there it was.
Outside, on First Avenue, the morning was sunny and warm
and intimately buzzing. Inside St. Boniface, it was dark and chilly
and echoing. A few stragglers from daily Mass, mostly old ladies in
battered black hats and cotton lisle hose, were leaving the pews.
They remained after Mass, saying rosaries and lighting candles.
Now and then there was one making her way through the Stations
of the Cross. Long after instruction class had assembled and begun
lessons, the old woman would be tiptoeing from station to station,
denying herself the smell of May blowing in off the prairie and the
pleasant sensation of a toasty sidewalk beneath the soles of her
chunky black shoes. Could I ever hope to be as devout and self-
denying as that?
Seven of the nine would-be communicants were already gath-
ered in the back pew, squirming and poking one another, when I
genuflected and pushed Delmore Preuss over. He gave me a kick in
the calf and resumed picking his nose. Sally Wheeler, my best friend
in first grade, was seated toward the middle of the pew. Sally had
thick, black hair which her mother braided into two long plaits that
fell over her shoulders in front. Next to having short, blond curls like
Katherine Albers, having long, black braids was best. Sally dropped
the braid on which she had been chewing and waved to me.
Mrs. Wheeler, like Mama, was a convert. This had created a
special bond between Sally and me. Sister Mary Clair and Sister
Mary Frances saved the most difficult catechism questions for us.
They also reprimanded us more often than the other children, al-
though, really, no one got off lightly. Putting our heads together,
Sally and I concluded that because our mothers were converts, the
sisters had doubts about our ability to be A-plus Catholics. Our
only hope, as they likely saw it, was indoctrination of the sternest,
most rigorous kind.

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26 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

At our mamas’ urging, Sally and I studied catechism together


on Friday afternoons after Miss Hagen dismissed first grade. One
week at Sally’s house, the next at mine.
Mrs. Wheeler, Sally’s mama, was a pretty, fragile-looking
woman who spoke softly and regarded everything with great in-
tensity, as if the true meaning and value of things were eluding her
or somehow being kept from her, and she must discover it. Some-
times she waylaid Sally and me for half an hour in the kitchen as
she set out milk and cookies, inquiring persistently into the charac-
ter and respective merits of Fig Newtons and Mallomars.
At four-thirty she walked me to Main Street, explaining that I
must stay on it until Truska’s Grocery and then turn right onto
First. I could easily have found my own way, but Mrs. Wheeler
needed to do this. She needed to carry everything out thoroughly
and properly, no matter how cumbersome or ritualistic it became.
It was her burden and duty to dot all the world’s undotted i’s.
Now and then, when a regular member was sick or out of
town and a substitute was required at Mama’s bridge club, Mrs.
Wheeler was called. The next morning Mama would say to me,
“Look how gray I turned waiting for Stella Wheeler to bid one
heart,” and she would bend over and point to her imaginary gray
hair. Mama was a headlong person with instincts as sharp as darts.
She couldn’t conceive of uncertainty like Mrs. Wheeler’s.
Sally and I never asked her mama to help us with catechism, al-
though she invariably volunteered. Instead we went up to Sally’s
room, closed the door, and played paper dolls until four, then opened
the Baltimore Catechism and ripped through the week’s lesson.
In June, when school let out, class would meet six mornings a
week for a month. I didn’t look forward to that.
Most Saturday mornings Mama reviewed the lesson with me
before I left home. This morning there had been no time. Now I
sat, cramped between Delmore Preuss and the end of the pew,
eyes closed, reeling off answers in my head. I was like someone
preparing for citizenship in another country—terrified I would be
found unworthy.
The nuns rose from the front pew, where they had been pray-
ing since Mass, and strode briskly back to where their charges
waited—picking scabs, elbowing neighbors, kicking the pew in
front, and biting hangnails—torn by our great reluctance to be
there and our equally great terror of hell.

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THE CAPE ANN a 27

Sister Mary Frances stood in the center aisle just outside our
pew, while Sister Mary Clair took a seat in the pew directly oppo-
site to observe. They taught us as a team, one spelling the other, as
by turns they flagged under the burden of our ignorance.
“Sally,” Sister Mary Frances began when we had completed an
Our Father and a Hail Mary, “can you tell us what happens to ba-
bies who die without being baptized?”
What I had begun to ponder as I sat twitching beneath Sister
Mary Frances’s gaze, so close to her that I could hear her soft, im-
patient breathing, was the moral ramifications of gambling. While
it was presumptuous to question the state of Papa’s soul, I knew
that Mama was upset by his poker playing. Was poker a mortal sin?
If I could find out, maybe I could put Mama’s mind at ease.
While our catechism responses droned or faltered, and we ac-
quitted or disgraced ourselves, I formulated queries for the nuns. Is
poker a sin? Is it only a sin if you lose?
“Lark.” Sister Mary Frances frowned down her long, perpetu-
ally sunburned nose at me. It was not a frown of anger, not yet at
any rate, but a frown of speculation. What response has this child
failed to memorize? For what was the point of asking questions to
which the answer was known?
Taking the heavy cross hanging around her neck into her two
hands, which were always red and wounded-looking, as if in her
world it was eternally winter and she were forever without mit-
tens, Sister demanded, “Without looking anywhere but at this
crucifix, name the fourteen Stations of the Cross.”
Pushing myself up from the seat, my heart beating in the per-
versely pleasant way it did when I was called on to answer a diffi-
cult question, I lay my furled Baltimore Catechism on the pew
behind me. I stared fixedly at the silver and onyx cross and at Sis-
ter’s knuckles, in whose creases were tiny pinpoints of dried blood.
“Pontius Pilate condemns Jesus,” I began, turning under the
thumb of my right hand. Did Sister use lye soap to wash clothes?
Grandma Browning made her own lye soap, and it was strong
and harsh. It could make your hands look like that if you weren’t
careful.
“Jesus takes up the cross.” I turned under the index finger of
my right hand. Maybe Sister washed her linens on a washboard.
“Jesus falls to the ground for the first time.” Had she been
working in the vegetable garden behind the nuns’ house?

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28 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

“Jesus meets his mother, Mary.” Did Sister have Jergens lotion,
like Mama had, to soothe her hands?
“Simon helps Jesus carry the cross.” Maybe nuns couldn’t af-
ford Jergens lotion.
“Veronica wipes Jesus’ face.” Mama had said that nuns were
poor, that they promised to be poor when they married Jesus.
“Jesus falls down again.” Wasn’t it funny how Jesus had so
many brides?
“Jesus meets women of Jerusalem.” Did Sister mind that Jesus
had so many other brides?
“Jesus falls down a third time.” Maybe Sister refused lotion.
Maybe she offered up her pain.
“The soldiers tear Jesus’ clothing off of him.” She had told us
we could offer up our suffering if we ever had any.
“They nail Jesus on the cross.” If you offered up your suffering,
you got out of purgatory sooner.
“Jesus dies.” Mama had added up for me (based on estimates
Sister had provided us) the number of years I would suffer in pur-
gatory for various weaknesses of the body and spirit. According to
my calculations, I would spend nearly forever in purgatory unless I
was lucky enough to die a martyr’s death. Then, if I understood
correctly, I would go directly to heaven.
“They take Jesus down from the cross.” But surely Sister didn’t
have to worry about spending millions of years in purgatory, so
why refuse Jergens lotion?
“They put Jesus in the tomb.” I had turned all my fingers under
once, and four of them had gone down twice. Fourteen stations in
order, none left out.
Without the smallest congratulatory notice, Sister Mary Frances
began again at the opposite end of the pew. “Beverly, the Act of
Contrition, please.” Sister never congratulated us. Why would one
make a fuss over a child learning that which was needed in order to
be spared the tortures of hell, torments so heinous they could only
be devised by a God of infinite ingenuity and love?
The morning crawled forward on the bloodied knees of mar-
tyred saints. Sister Mary Clair took over, and Sister Mary Frances
opened the lower portion of the windows. These stained-glass pan-
els bore the names of departed members of the parish, departed
members whose families could afford a window in their memory.

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THE CAPE ANN a 29

“In Memory of Our Beloved Mother, Edna Ripath,” or “Our Beloved


Baby Daughter, Evelyn Shelton.”
If I were cut down in my childhood, I hoped that Mama and
Papa would buy a pretty stained-glass panel for me. “In Memory of
Our Beautiful Lark,” it would read. Every time someone opened
my window, I would smile and blow the perfume of peonies and
wet earth through the opening. The nuns had assured us that in
heaven we would have no interest in Earth’s pleasures, so paltry
were they beside the delights of God’s home, but I was sure that I’d
be interested.
At ten o’clock we were herded out the door to sit on the broad
front steps for ten minutes, and we fell apart into twos and threes.
Although we were admonished to study, the nuns usually disap-
peared for a few minutes, leaving the boys to argue and shove and
sometimes roll on the ground, getting grass stains on their clothes.
Bleeding noses and scraped elbows, full of grit, were also not un-
common. We girls sat on the wide, cement balustrades—country
girls on one side, town girls on the other—watching with horrified
satisfaction.
This morning a grudging quiet hung over the nine of us. I
needed to study. Arvin Winetsky, like me, was poring over his
Baltimore Catechism, a holy and absorbed expression on his face.
Beverly Ridza hastily flicked pages as if searching for pretty pic-
tures, of which there were none. Sister Mary Frances had said that
one or two of us might not be ready for Communion next year and
might have to take the lessons over. She had stared along her sun-
burned nose at Arvin, who was slow-witted, and at Beverly, who
repeatedly missed the Saturday morning classes and when she ap-
peared, wearing her brother’s clothes, was half-asleep.
Leroy Mosley and Ronald Oster were looking at a Big Little
Book. With three of the four boys bent over books, the break was
peaceful.
My thoughts returned to Mama and poker. I would like to be
able to go home at noon and assure her that Sister had said gam-
bling wasn’t a sin.
The two nuns emerged before ten minutes had elapsed.
Pleased to find things peaceful, they showed their pleasure by
engaging in bits of conversation with us, an almost unheard of
occurrence.

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30 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

“Do you ever help your mother bake cookies?” Sister Mary
Clair inquired of Beverly.
Beverly’s mother didn’t have a stove. What the Ridzas cooked,
they cooked on an old hot plate.
“Sometimes,” Beverly lied casually, to save Sister embar-
rassment.
When the nuns leapt the wall of their own reserve, the ex-
changes were uncomfortable. They knew so little about us. And
how would they? They lived in an austere, white cottage across the
street from the church, and seldom went out on Main Street or
elsewhere in town. Their groceries were delivered by Truska’s and
their meat by Rabel’s.
The exterior of the nuns’ house was painfully barefaced. Every-
thing was white—clapboard, window frames and sills, gutters and
downspouts—everything. There was not a shutter or a scrap of
trellis to adorn it. Nor was the front yard more showy than the
house: green grass, a pair of self-effacing arborvitae on either side
of the door. A three-foot, gray statue of the Virgin with clasped
hands floated, lonely and cut-off, on the deep green sea, twenty
feet from the door.
However, it was said that in the yard behind the cottage, they
raised the finest vegetables and the showiest flowers in Harvester.
Mama’s friend Bernice McGivern had seen the garden. “Rows
as neat as knitting,” she had said. “And not a weed anywhere. Car-
rots and radishes and lettuce and tomatoes and whatever else you
could think of. And corn. Beautiful corn. And all around the
edge, flowers. Zinnias and marigolds and bachelor’s buttons and
gladiolas and delphiniums and larkspur and roses as big as dinner
plates.”
Old Father Delias seemed remote from the nuns, perpetually
surprised to see them around the church. His life was very different
from theirs. He was invited to dinner everywhere that a Catholic
priest was welcome. And he went fishing with men from the
parish. He liked to laugh and drink beer and tell funny stories
about priests he knew and seminarians he had known. As loved by
children as the nuns were feared, he was like the jolly father in a
family where discipline is left to the mother.
On May Day, when the young children whose parents could af-
ford it delivered May baskets, Father Delias’s front porch and steps
were littered with colorful baskets, like spring flowers, filled with

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THE CAPE ANN a 31

candy and home-baked treats. Father chased each child who rang
the doorbell and, catching him, gave him a hug and a penny.
It didn’t occur to anyone to leave a basket at the nuns’ house.
As Sister Mary Clair stood on the topmost step wanting to
know about cookie baking in the kitchen of the Ridzas, who lived
in a shack on the south edge of town where there was no street,
only a hard-bitten path among the weeds, Beverly scratched her
thigh and looked at her scuffed oxfords, which were her brother’s.
She was running out of ready lies.
I shoved myself forward, toward Sister Mary Clair. “Sister,” I
began, but my voice started to fade, like a radio station slipping out
of reach.
“What did you say?” Sister asked, bending toward me. “Speak up.”
“I just wondered . . . I just wondered—is gambling a sin?”
“Gambling?” Sister asked in a neutral tone of voice, her eyes re-
treating from me. Later it occurred to me that she was perhaps
thinking of the Wheel of Fortune and other innocent forms of
gambling at the annual church bazaar. Was there Protestant criti-
cism out there in the town? she likely wondered, feeling suddenly
more estranged. “What kind of gambling?”
“Poker?”
“Well, that would depend,” Sister said. Had Father Delias and his
fishing cronies been criticized? Did Father Delias play poker when
he went fishing? It was probable. “Gambling isn’t necessarily a sin.”
“When would it be a sin?” I asked. I had to know, was Papa
going to hell?
Leading the conversation away from anything that might have
reference to Father Delias, Sister explained, “If a man gambled and
lost all his money, and his wife and children suffered, that would be
sinful.”
“Would he go to hell?”
“Not if he were truly sorry and went to confession and asked
God to forgive him.” She fished a pocket watch out of the folds of
her garment, glanced at it, and announced that it was time to go
back in.
As I reached my fingers out to the holy water font, Sister asked
in a voice so low I barely heard, “What made you ask?”
“Nothing.”

• • •

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32 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N

“You asked Sister what?” Mama demanded, bent imminently over


me, hands on her hips.
“If gambling was a sin,” I repeated, though Mama had heard
every word I’d said. “I thought you’d want to know. Sister said it
wasn’t a sin unless a man lost all his money, and his wife and chil-
dren suffered. Even if Papa loses all our money, he’ll still go to
heaven if he confesses and is truly sorry and asks God to forgive
him. Aren’t you happy, Mama?”
“Did you tell her your papa gambled?”
“No.”
“Well, she’s going to figure it out.”
“No, Mama. I told her I was just wondering.”
Mama laughed an unhappy laugh.
“Really, Mama. Sister didn’t think I was talking about Papa.”
“She’s not a fool, Lark.” Mama sat down across from me at the
kitchen table. She had baked a spice cake while I was at catechism
class. It was on the table waiting to be frosted. Mama was dressed
in a cotton housedress, and she looked tired. “Everyone in town is
going to know that your papa lost last night. If his pals don’t tell
them, the nuns will.” Mama was always a little suspicious and skep-
tical about the nuns.
“How much?” I asked.
“Two hundred dollars.”
It was such a large sum, for a second I thought Mama was jok-
ing. But she got up and went in the bedroom, pulling a handker-
chief from the pocket of her dress. Two hundred dollars was more
than Papa made in a month. Some people in town didn’t make half
that much. Mama had said that Miss Hagen, my teacher, made
eighty dollars a month. Two hundred dollars was so much, I was
frightened by the number itself, as if its size gave it great power
over me.
Big numbers carried awesome potential. Mama said our house
would cost four thousand dollars. That was even bigger than two
hundred. But it stood for something happy. It was worth the fear it
conjured. But two hundred dollars lost? I was crushed by the num-
ber. I felt that I was carrying it around on my back, just as Mama
and Papa were.

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