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The Cape Ann by Faith Sullivan - Excerpt
The Cape Ann by Faith Sullivan - Excerpt
THE
CAPE
ANN
aA NOVEL
FA I T H
S U L L I VA N
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2 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N
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4 a F A I T H S U L L I VA N
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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 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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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
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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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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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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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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
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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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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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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
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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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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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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
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