The Cape Ann (48 page)

Mama was not joyful exactly. There was too much worry and tension for that. But she was keyed up, expectant, breathless. She rushed around, winding up the affairs of Erhardt Typing Service and packing our things, hers and mine, into cardboard boxes, most of them to be sent on to us when we found a place. Each time Mama tried to explain these matters to Papa, he would fling himself out of the house, slamming the door.

Christmas was a desolate little occasion, over which the glittering tall tree, the best we’d ever had, stood ironic and aloof. Mama sent back some of the things she’d ordered from Monkey Wards (I wouldn’t need ice skates and a new snowsuit), exchanging them for things I’d need in California: a new raincoat and galoshes. “It rains a lot in winter, they say.”

We didn’t have many presents under the tree. “It’s just more to pack,” Mama explained. “We’ll have Christmas in February when everybody else’s having Valentine’s Day!” It sounded half-baked and forlorn to me.

Besides the raincoat and galoshes, I got some coloring books and new Crayolas (“For the long train trip”), a deck of playing cards with a basket of puppies on them, and a Nancy Drew mystery.

Every time I thought about moving to California, I cried until Mama got mad. “Don’t I have enough to worry about?” What did I care that she had enough to worry about? That was her choice.

One afternoon during Christmas vacation, I dragged myself downtown to Beverly’s apartment above the Loon Cafe and told her my troubles. “Godsakes, what’re you crying about?” she asked. “I don’t have no pa and you don’t see
me
crying.
I’d
sure like to go to California on the train. You stay here and be Beverly, and I’ll go to California and be Lark.” To Delores and Charlie, who were hanging around, she explained, “It’s warm all the time in California, and they got orange trees all over. Alls you have to do is go outside and pick yourself an orange when you feel like it.”

“But we’re not going to build our new house,” I cried, breaking down. Delores was thoroughly mystified by my tears, and Charlie disappeared in a dudgeon of disgust.

“Even if you stayed here, you wouldn’t build your new house. That’s what Mr. Rayzeen told your ma.”

“But maybe we’d
buy
a nice house, one like Katherine Albers’.”

“Thhhhhhhlllleeeeech,” Beverly pronounced with distaste at mention of perfect Katherine Albers, with her perfect teeth and perfect pitch. “Who wants to live in a house like
hers?”

“You don’t understand, Beverly.”

“You tell your ma I’ll go to California with her.”

There was no sympathy to be had from Beverly. “Let’s go see Mrs. Stillman,” she suggested. “Maybe she’ll give us tea and arrowroot cookies.” And sympathy. There was always sympathy at Mrs. Stillman’s.

“I’m so pleased that you girls came by this afternoon,” Mrs. Stillman told us. “I was sitting here by my lonesome, thinking wouldn’t it be nice if someone stopped for a cup of tea.”

When I explained to Mrs. Stillman that Mama and I were moving to California, she said, “I’ll surely miss you and your mama. You have been my closest friends. And what would Hillyard have done without you?” She stirred half a teaspoon of sugar into her tea. “But you’ll have a fine adventure there, Lark.”

She spoke soberly. These were not cheap words with which she dismissed a child’s fretting. “We have to be ready for the adventures life throws down in our path. Everything difficult or painful that we can do with a merry heart, gives us…” She searched for the word. Squaring her shoulders a little, she pronounced, “style.” An uncharacteristic word, I thought. “And character. Yes, style and character. Mr. Roosevelt has style and character, don’t you know. And Mrs. Roosevelt, too.”

She went on, “I have a third cousin on my papa’s side who lives in California. She and her little family are the last of my relations. They live in a small place on the coast. Oxnard. It’s nearly forty years since I’ve seen her, but she writes every Christmas. I have a letter arrived the other day.” Mrs. Stillman rose from the green wicker chair and went to the table in the corner, where Hilly’s photograph was displayed. An envelope lay beside it. Picking it up and removing the enclosed sheets of lined paper, Mrs. Stillman scanned its words, searching for a particular line or paragraph. “Here it is,” she said, turning to us, as though she’d already agreed to reveal part of the letter’s contents.

“‘We were sorry to hear of Hillyard’s passing, but now you are free to travel,’” she read. “‘Mary Ann is grown up and with her own family, and I am alone again. I would welcome a visit from
you when you feel up to it. Who knows? Maybe you’ll decide to stay. There’s plenty of room, and we would be company for each other.’”

She folded the letter, returning it to the envelope. Slipping it into her pocket, she said, “I couldn’t leave Hillyard so soon. But in another year I might go.” She poured more tea into our cups.

“For good?” I asked, not believing that she would abandon Hilly.

She shrugged. “I’d have to see how my cousin and I got along. If we fit together like a pair of old shoes, I might leave here for good.”

I was dumbfounded. How unsentimental old people were. If Hilly were my son, I could never pull up stakes and leave him behind.

“Hillyard is gone, Lark,” she said, answering my thoughts. “What is left of him on this earth is in my heart and in yours.”

No. No. No. He wasn’t gone. He was in that grave. I was not so certain about heaven anymore. I had not come to any conclusions about that since leaving the Church. Maybe heaven and hell were both a lie.

“Will you write to me when you’re settled?” Mrs. Stillman asked, moving effortlessly forward into my future in a way that I could not.

I nodded.

“I sure like these cookies,” Beverly said somewhat obviously.

“Please have some more,” Mrs. Stillman offered. “I hope that you’ll come visit me when Lark has left us. We will miss her, won’t we? Maybe you can keep me company now and then, and we’ll read Lark’s letters telling us all about California and the Pacific Ocean and the movies. Maybe she’ll see William Powell and Myrna Loy there. I think they’re her favorites.”

How it hurt me to hear Mrs. Stillman talk about me as if I were gone.

“Can I look at Hilly’s books, Mrs. Stillman?”

“Maybe you’d like to take some with you.”

I was embarrassed. I hadn’t been hinting. It wasn’t Hilly’s books that called me, but his room. “No. It’s all right. I just wanted to look.” I fled to the bedroom, closing the door. It was plain, warm, ordered, and unchanging. I should stay here, in this room, and Mrs. Stillman should go to California.

Withdrawing
Stories for a Rainy Afternoon
from the bookcase, I sat down on the bed, reaching out for Hilly, in the grave or in the sky, or wherever he’d gone.

“HER COUSIN?” MAMA SAID
, drawing the two words out in a wondering, remembering way. “Why, that must be the cousin who got pregnant while she was working for Mrs. Stillman and had to leave town. No one knew where she went. California. Isn’t that a coincidence? A lot of people seem to end up in California, don’t they?”

“Most of ’em running away,” Papa said.

Mama was at her typing table, preparing the last of the bills to be sent out by Erhardt Typing, for services rendered. At the kitchen table Aunt Betty was writing a long letter to Grandma and Grandpa Browning, outlining our California plans.

Papa, in the chair by the stove, had been reading from the newspaper the account of the fall of Manila. “MacArthur’s withdrawn his forces to the Bataan peninsula and declared Manila an open city.”

Mama shuddered. “Where’s it all going to end?”

“It could end with the Japs invading California,” Papa asserted. “You go there and you could be living under the Emperor of Japan in a few months.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Mama told him.

During that brief period—a month it was, only—between Papa’s losing the five hundred dollars and the middle of January, it seemed to me that we all spent a great deal of our time looking sideways at each other, sizing up one another’s true intentions. Wouldn’t you think, after all those years together, that we would know each other better than that? We were dumbfounded to learn what strangers we were.

Would Mama leave? Papa wondered. No. Despite her big talk, when it came down to it, it was too big a step into the dark. At the last moment, she would find a graceful way of backing out.

Mama studied Papa. What would Willie do? Lock her up? Kill her?

Aunt Betty contemplated both of them, changing her mind daily about the chances of moving to California. Was Arlene all brave talk? Would she cave in to Willie? What if Willie went berserk and killed them all?

Like Papa, I chose to believe that life would return to normal. It must. Someplace out west lay the edge of the world that I recognized and understood. When the train reached that divide, I would fall into the chasm of Beyond Here.

A week after New Year’s, Papa presented Mama with the three tickets to Los Angeles. She was at the stove, browning a pot roast.

“I’m putting them here on the table,” he said.

Mama turned to see what he was talking about.

“Your tickets,” he said. “They’re here on the table.”

He smiled. Once her bluff was called, she would begin backing down. He was not an old poker player for nothing. He would try hard to be forbearing and tolerant. Wasn’t that the manly thing to do?

“Thank you, Willie. I’ll put them away so they don’t get lost.” She covered the roast with a lid, wiped her hands on her apron, and carried the tickets to the bedroom. Returning, she said, “I’ll get the five hundred out of the bank tomorrow.”

When we sat down to dinner, Mama told Aunt Betty and me, “We’re leaving on the sixteenth, that’s a Monday.”

Papa did not comment on that, but mentioned the story in the news about the navy pilot who dropped a depth charge on a Japanese submarine and then radioed the succinct message: “Sighted sub, sank same.” “A man of few words,” Papa said.

Mama looked askance at Papa. Was there a hidden message in his words? After Papa returned to the depot office to wait for the westbound freight, Mama advised, “We’ll pack our suitcases and keep them under the bed, ready to go.”

There were two farewell parties for Mama during the next week, one at bridge club, the other at sewing club. Everyone was shocked at her leaving and many disapproved. But it was exciting, nevertheless, and what were they to do, ignore her going? No, they would fete her on her way. Who knew what life held for any of them, with the war tossing everything topsy-turvy?

My last day of school was Friday, the thirteenth. Wasn’t that a
sad omen? Mrs. Borgen organized a party with cupcakes and Kool-Aid and word games. Katherine Albers presented me with going-away presents—a diary and an autograph book which everyone had signed. Then the bell rang, and they all filed out except Beverly and Sally and Mrs. Borgen.

I cleaned out my desk, packing into a brown bag all that was mine to take: notes and Smith Brothers cough drops, papers, an empty pencil box, and my workbooks and an ink-stained hanky and two hair ribbons.

I didn’t want to leave. I liked the fourth grade room, which was on the second floor, looking down on the main entrance and off toward Main Street.

At last I said good-bye to Mrs. Borgen. “Write to us when you get settled, Lark. Tell us about California and your trip.”

I still thought there was a good chance I’d be back in class on Monday. That would be embarrassing, but I could live with a little embarrassment.

From the Ridzas’ apartment, I called Mama on their new phone to tell her that Beverly had invited Sally and me for day-old pastries from the Loon Cafe. “It’s a going-away party, Mama.”

We sat at the kitchen table drinking reheated coffee and eating glazed doughnuts. At any rate, I ate doughnuts. Beverly ate chocolate cake, and Sally, lemon meringue pie.

“D’ya think you’ll ever come back?” Beverly asked.

I shook my head. “I might run away, though. I might run away to my Grandma Browning’s.”

“All the way from California?” Sally asked.

“Sure. I could get a map and figure out the way.”

“I’d like to live in California,” Beverly said, as she had before. Wiping away chocolate frosting from around her mouth, she said, “Maybe you’ll get to be in a movie with William Powell and Myrna Loy.”

“Oh, Beverly, that’s stupid. How would I get to be in a movie? We’re not going to live around Hollywood. That’s where Uncle Stan is, and Aunt Betty doesn’t want to run into him.”

“Well, if you get to be a movie star, will you send me a ticket to come visit you? And one for Sally, too?”

“If I get to be a movie star,” I said, humoring Beverly, “I’ll send tickets, and you can both come live with me and be in the movies with me.”

“And you’ll have a party and invite Mickey Rooney?”

“Yes. Whoever you want.”

“Do you promise?” Sally said, and it surprised me that she was so serious about it.

In her excitement, Beverly nearly climbed on top of the table. She was sprawled half across it, waving her hand in Sally’s face. “And we’ll ride in taxicabs. Everywhere. Even just to the grocery store.”

Sally’s face was suffused with a soft light, like an angel’s, as she listened. Sally, too, wanted to go to California. Why? She lived in a nice house. And she was pretty, prettier even than Katherine Albers. She was much nicer than Katherine Albers. Sally could be the most popular girl in Harvester someday. Why would she want to give all that up and go to Hollywood?

“We’ll each have a hundred dresses,” Beverly decided, “and a hundred pairs of shoes. I’m going to live in a mansion with a hundred rooms. I’ll do everything by the hundreds.”

Once, when I was wishing for Christmas to come, Grandma Browning warned, “Don’t wish your life away.” Beverly and Sally were wishing my life away—wishing me to California, wishing me into the movies. I wanted them to stop. I wanted them to tell me that they would miss me and that I should hurry back.

On Sunday afternoon Papa asked me to go for a drive in the truck with him. “A farewell tour,” he explained. Apprehensive, I didn’t want a farewell tour. I wanted to believe that if we left tomorrow as planned, I would be back again so soon, a farewell tour was uncalled-for.