The Cape Ann (9 page)

When Papa had checked every car, we walked back again to the depot, our shoes crunching and munching the cinders and gravel. I followed him into the office and waited while he typed up some forms. I sat in Art Bigelow’s chair, swiveling around and around until Papa told me for God’s sake to stop. From one of the
tall, green, ribbed-metal wastebaskets I retrieved a sheet of paper, and pulling the cover from Art’s typewriter, I inserted the paper, clean side out, and began to type.

“Be careful of Art’s typewriter,” Papa warned.

“I will. I’ll just type one key at a time.” I’d gotten into trouble when I was little, trying to play the typewriter like a piano.

“Dear Phillip,” I typed. “How are you. I am fine. I wish you were here. I am going to get a window seet. Love, Lark Ann Browning Erhardt.” Pulling the paper out of the roller, I folded it several times and put it in my pocket.

Papa fitted the dust cover over his typewriter, switched off the gooseneck lamp, and inquired, “If you were getting an ice cream cone, what flavor would you order?”

“I always order chocolate.”

Leaving the light burning on Art’s desk as was depot practice, we left, locking the outside door behind us. We took the new Oldsmobile, and Papa drove slowly all the way down Main Street to the end, U-turning and driving back to park in front of Anderson’s Candy and Ice Cream, next to the Majestic Theater where Bette Davis was playing in
Jezebel
. Anderson’s stayed open until seven-thirty to accommodate moviegoers.

“We’ll have a chocolate cone here,” Papa told Mr. Anderson, pointing to me, “and I’ll have a strawberry.” While Mr. Anderson scooped the ice cream, Papa studied the candy case. “Want some gumdrops?” he asked.

I clapped my hands.

“Give us a dime’s worth of gumdrops, too, while you’re at it.” A dime’s worth was a lot, much more than I usually got.

Headed home again, Papa asked, “Do you think your ma is really going to look for work?”

“Yes.”

“Why would she do that?”

“To make money for the new house.”

“I don’t like to see women going out to work unless the man passes away. Or loses his job.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t look womanly. My ma never thought of foolishness like that. She had plenty of work at home. Your ma has some fast ideas. I don’t know where she gets ’em. When you’re grown up,
don’t try to make a fool of your husband by going out to work,” he advised, chucking my chin. “Be pretty and womanly.”

I didn’t point out that Mama wouldn’t feel compelled to work if Papa hadn’t lost two hundred dollars at poker. Nor did I bring up my plans to find work as a tap dancer. The Fourth Commandment admonished, “Honor thy Father and thy Mother.” Sister Mary Clair had said that we honored our father and mother by loving and
obeying
them. When it came time to make my first confession, what could I say about the Fourth Commandment?

While my mind examined these distressing concerns, like a curious tongue traveling back and forth among half a dozen rotten teeth, it entered my head that Mama, too, was committing a mortal sin by disobeying Papa. If he did not want her to work, and her marriage vows said she must love, honor, and
obey
him, Mama’s soul would turn black as the piece of coal Sister Mary Clair had brought to catechism to illustrate the condition of a sinful soul. She had explained that a sinful soul dropped into the fire of hell burned like coal, but never turned to ash. It burned forever.

It was difficult to imagine that there were thousands of people in the world without the blackness of mortal sin on their souls. There were only three people in my family, and we were all headed for hell as things stood. Sometimes I thought that if I were born again, I’d like to be a Methodist, like Katherine Albers.

When we pulled up beside the depot, Papa said, “You’d better hide those gumdrops or your ma’ll throw a fit.”

I pushed them into my pocket with the letter to Phillip and wondered whether it was a sin of omission not to tell Mama about the candy. Later, sitting cross-legged in the crib with my confession notebook, printing by the light escaping from the living room, I entered: “lied to Mama—gumdrops” and “disobeyed Papa—tap dancing.”

The WCCO ten o’clock news came on the radio in the next room. Papa always came to bed right after the news. I closed the notebook, climbed out of the crib, and stashed the record in the bottom drawer of the doll chest.

“Are you awake in there?” Papa called.

Climbing back into the crib, I lay turned to the wall, guilt compressing my chest until I could barely breathe.

I studied the picture in the clock, easing myself into the garden
where everyone was in a state of grace. The bluebird that was perpetually on the wing flew down, lighting at my feet, and began pick-pick-picking up the birdseed I had scattered for him.

LEAVING SCHOOL AT TWO
thirty-five as usual, Sally and I found the afternoon sharply bright after the cool dimness of the main hall. We drifted out to Main Street, past the park where we skated in winter and the band shell where we watched penny movies on summer Saturday nights. Old, grainy, and harsh-sounding, the movies were an intense treat. I had seen
Broadway Melody
, with Bessie Love, at the penny movies, as well as
Applause
, with Helen Morgan.

We paused in front of the Majestic Theater to study the pictures of Bette Davis in
Jezebel
before poking along to the window of Eggers’s Drug Store, where we argued desultorily over our first purchase should we fall heir to a fortune.

Sally opened the screen door and held it for me. Brushing the backs of the stools with our fingertips, we passed the mahogany-and-marble soda fountain. Ignoring Mr. Eggers at the prescription counter, we lingered among the perfume and makeup displays. Down aisles of foot pads and tooth powders, heating pads and pipe tobacco we dallied.

“The Eggerses own all this,” Sally murmured, eyeing shelves of Kreml shampoo, Pebeco and Dr. Lyons tooth powders, Eversharp pens, Whitmans Chocolates, and Dr. Graybow’s Pre-Smoked Pipes. “They must be rich.”

The great paddle blades of the overhead fan stirred together essences of pine tar soap and Coca-Cola syrup and bath salts and oiled wooden floors. It was a rich, thick soup of smell.

What did you do with a truss? we wondered. Or with sanitary napkins, which were wrapped in brown paper? I knew what you did with an enema bag. With trills of giggles and explosions of whispers, I explained to Sally while she made disgusted faces and stamped her foot. “No, no,” she cried in a tiny voice, not moving her ear from my mouth.

Before Mr. Eggers suggested that our mothers might be pacing the floor with worry, we dragged ourselves from the drugstore, slouching out to the dusty street.

On such a golden, spring afternoon it was hard to think of going home, so we sat down on the curb at the corner and took turns saying hello to everyone who came by, those in cars and those on foot, testing our memories of people’s names.

“Hello, Mrs. Soule.”

“Hello, Mrs. Mosely.”

“Hello, Mr. Monke.”

If you missed a name, you picked up a little pebble from the gutter and held it in your hand. If the other person missed a name and
you
remembered, you discarded one of the pebbles in your hand. Whoever had the fewest pebbles won. A blue Oldsmobile bore down on us.

“Get in girls.” It was Mama. “Do you know what time it is? It’s a quarter to four.”

Sally and I looked at each other in disbelief as Mama continued, “I’ve just come from a meeting at church, and I’ve got picnic tickets for you to sell, Lark. And I’m sure Sally’s mama has tickets for her, too. You should have been home an hour ago,” she said in her patient-Catholic-mother tone.

“What picnic?”

“The Knights of Columbus Memorial Day Picnic.”

“Why don’t the Knights of Columbus sell the tickets?” I asked.

“Because they’ve got better things to do,” Mama explained, pulling up in front of the Wheelers’ house. “Good-bye, Sally. Can you get the door?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Sally,” I called. And off we shot.

At home I told Mama, “I don’t like to sell tickets.”

“Nonsense,” she scoffed, handing me an envelope full of them. “Everyone says you’re wonderful.”

“I still don’t like to.” I did not believe that everyone said I was wonderful.

“Well, you don’t have a choice.”

“Couldn’t you sell them?”

“I’d have them sold in half an hour,” she said, “but you know it’s the children who sell the picnic tickets. People would say, ‘Arlene, where’s your little girl? Is she sick?’ And then what would I say?”

“Say I don’t like to sell tickets.”

“Don’t be sassy, young lady.”

Away I plodded, Mama’s voice in my ears. “They’re twenty-five cents apiece. A bargain. There’ll be games and prizes. If they don’t have change, you’ll come back later. Everyone will be there. It’s for a good cause. Be polite no matter what, and don’t forget to smile and say thank you.”

I was not new to selling tickets. I’d started when I was four, twice a year, spring and fall, the Memorial Day picnic and the October bazaar. It never got any easier. I was embarrassed to ask people for money and fearful they might turn me down. If twenty people bought tickets and one turned me down, the one who turned me down hung around in my mind, haunting me. Had I forgotten to mention the games and prizes? Would they have said yes if I’d had blond curls, if I’d worn my pink dress with the tulip on the pocket, if I’d smiled more?

Now here I was again, trudging down the street with an envelope full of tickets and a heart full of misgivings. Start with a sure sale, Mama said. Mr. Navarin at the Sinclair station was a sure sale.

I waited until he had serviced the Model A at the pump and it had snorted and pranced away, as Model A’s seemed to do. For a minute Mr. Navarin stood with one arm outstretched, leaning against the pump, watching the car disappear down the street. Then he removed his cap, which said Sinclair, and mopped his forehead and neck with a blue handkerchief from the hip pocket of his uniform. Beneath the cap his sand-colored hair had grown quite thin, so that he appeared ten years older with the cap off. I wished him to put it right back on and leave it on. I didn’t like the idea of him changing.

He turned and caught sight of me. Slipping the cap back on his head, he smiled. He was one of the men at the poker party at Herbie Wendel’s on Friday night. Though I doubted that he had lost two hundred dollars, or even twenty. Mr. Navarin was shrewd and contented. He was not a man to gamble what he didn’t want to lose.

“Mr. Navarin, I’m selling tickets for the Knights of Columbus Memorial Day Picnic at Sioux Woman Lake. They’re twenty-five cents apiece. There’ll be prizes and games. And food. Mama’s baking pies and cakes.” I thought that last one would interest Mr. Navarin.

“Come in the office,” he said, leading the way. “Memorial Day?”

“Yes.”

He opened the cash register and took out a dollar bill. “I guess I’ll need four,” he said. “For me and the missus and Danny and his wife.” Danny was Mr. Navarin’s son, who drove a Sinclair truck.

Four, right off the bat. Mama was right about starting with a sure sale. I pulled four tickets out of the envelope and handed them to Mr. Navarin, then carefully slipped the dollar bill in beside the unsold tickets.

Mr. Navarin closed the cash register and motioned for me to follow him into the garage, where he and Sonny Steen worked on cars. Axel Nelson’s Studebaker was on the hoist, where Sonny was doing something serious to its underside with a wrench while Mr. Nelson leaned on a workbench chatting with Barney Finney, the bootlegger. Axel Nelson and his wife, Minerva, owned the Harvester Arms Hotel. He, too, had been one of the men sitting around the poker table at Herbie Wendel’s house.

“Well, boys,” Mr. Navarin called to them, “the little Erhardt girl is selling tickets to the Knights of Columbus picnic. I told her you’d be happy to take some off her hands.” He hadn’t told me any such thing, but I didn’t mind his pretending.

Axel Nelson looked askance at Mr. Navarin, grinned, then winked at Barney Finney. “I guess I could use a few of those, little lady,” he said, reaching for his billfold. “Let’s see: one for me, one for Min, and maybe six to pass out to guests stuck in town over the holiday. How much does that come to?”

I had no idea. It was eight tickets, but how much money I wouldn’t be able to figure until second grade, when we had real arithmetic. Mr. Nelson studied me through narrowed lids, a smirk twitching the muscles around his lips. He didn’t like children, I could see, but he didn’t know it.

“It’s eight quarters, Mr. Nelson.”

“Heh, that’s pretty good.” Sonny Steen laughed.

Mr. Nelson put a hand in his pocket and brought out his pocket change. He looked it over. “I’m really sorry,” he said, “but I don’t have eight quarters on me.”

In my head I was counting my fingers. From the envelope, I removed four tickets. Mr. Navarin had given me a dollar for four tickets. Handing four tickets to Mr. Nelson, I said, “That costs a dollar.”
I reached for another four and gave those to him. “And that costs a dollar.” Two dollars. I doubted I would have any more customers buying eight tickets, but if I did, I was going to remember.

Mr. Nelson opened his billfold. “Well, for crying out loud, I’ve only got a five-dollar bill. Can you make change?”

“I’ve just got one dollar.”

“Gee, that’s too bad,” he said, lifting his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness and innocence.

“That’s okay, Mr. Nelson. I’ll go get the money from Mrs. Nelson.”

All the men laughed. “Give the kid the money, Axel,” Mr. Navarin said, and Mr. Nelson pulled two one-dollar bills from the wallet. He held them close and made me reach for them. Under the grin and the teasing, there was something unpleasant between me and Mr. Nelson. I was relieved when the two dollars were in the envelope. I didn’t like the feel of them.

Barney Finney had a half dollar out. “I’ll take a couple,” he said, “and that good-looker under the Studebaker’ll have a couple.” Sonny put down the wrench, wiped his hands on a rag, and pulled two quarters out of his trousers pocket.