The Cape Ann (18 page)

Beside the agent a woman waited, a small piece of handsome
luggage at her feet. Like the alighting woman, she was about Mama’s age, perhaps a little older. But age was surely the only thing about her that was like the weary passenger in the faded housedress.

The woman on the platform wore a lightweight bisque-colored skirt and an ivory shirt of soft, supple fabric, a cameo at her throat. Over her arm was draped a jacket to match the skirt, and on her feet were pale kid pumps.

Her face, classically oval and with that straightforward plainness that is beauty, was lightly made up. Her dark blond hair, collar length, was straight, but turned under at the last minute (like Jean Arthur’s in
You Can’t Take It With You
, Mama later said). The woman was not attempting to impress anyone, but she succeeded in impressing everyone.

The tired woman in the percale housedress was handed down by the conductor onto the portable step placed on the platform. Blinded by midday brilliance, she raised an arm and held it across her brow, shielding her eyes and acknowledging a dull pain.

The other woman waited for the first to get her bearings, to emerge into the atmosphere of Weed Lake. At length the unwilling one gazed about, and seeing no one there who was hers, headed in the direction of the general store-post office.

The women weren’t acquainted. The boarding passenger put her hand in the conductor’s and placed a slender foot on the portable step. The agent passed her small bag to the conductor and studied the woman’s retreating figure.

Along the dusty street, down which the first woman had disappeared toward the town’s meager life, came a hurrying figure, a leggy collection of acute angles and bony corners, wearing a white apron over regular clothes and carrying a carton held out before him—the lunch man.

Back along our route the conductor had taken orders. These were telegraphed ahead to the Weed Lake agent, who carried them downtown to the Depot Diner, where twin tapes of flypaper hung inside the screen door and swayed gently in the breeze. There the agent sat at the counter to enjoy a cup of coffee and doughnut, tiding himself over until after the eastbound and westbound trains met and were sent on their ways. The meeting of the two trains down at the depot was the centerpiece of the town’s day, dividing it into halves: before and after.

The conductor was back on the train, distributing box lunches and punching the new passenger’s ticket.

“Chicago,” he observed, slipping a stub into the clip above her seat. “Live there?”

“Yes.” Her voice was soft without being wispy. An Evening in Paris voice.

The conductor had lost his easy palaver. “A big place,” he offered.

She said nothing, but laid her suit jacket across the seat facing her.

“Like me to put your bag on the rack?” he asked.

“Please,” she answered, again in that peaches-and-cream voice.

The conductor was not at ease, a circumstance I had never witnessed in my hundreds of rides on the train. He couldn’t bear to part himself from this beautiful woman. “From around here … originally?”

“A farm west of town, originally.” There was something odd and disconcerting in her answer. I thought maybe her papa had lost his farm. Where were her papa and mama now? On the county poor farm? The phrase sent waves of cold dread through me. More than once when Papa had gambled, Mama had cried, “You’ll put us on the poor farm, Willie.” The poor farm was much worse than dismemberment or even death.

Maybe the conductor, too, sensed that he’d struck an unhappy nerve. He changed the subject. “You didn’t want a box lunch?”

“No.”

“If you need anything, let me know.” He moved along the aisle, his hand now and then brushing the top of a seat for balance as the train began stopping and starting in screeching fits, transferring us to a siding to wait for the westbound.

I was absorbed by the woman in the suit. She was sitting kitty-corner across the aisle, facing me. For several minutes she stared out the window. A cluster of scruffy-looking town children, reverential in the presence of the train, on which they had never ridden, had gathered on the platform. The agent shooed them back against the depot lest they fall onto the tracks and get him in trouble with the railroad.

After several minutes of being yanked backward and forward, we were on the siding, up against a grain elevator. If I reached my arm out the window, I thought I could touch the hot, sunbaked
wood, but Mama warned, “Keep your arms and head inside if you don’t want to lose them.”

Leaning toward her confidentially, I whispered, “Mama, there’s a beautiful lady sitting over there.” I nodded in the direction of the newcomer. “Really, truly beautiful,” I emphasized.

Mama didn’t trust my assessments of beauty, as I was particularly susceptible to women who wore dramatic makeup in substantial amounts, had their hair dyed unusual hues, and adorned themselves with quantities of large, bright jewelry.

“She lives in Chicago,” I went on, “but she used to live here, on a farm west of town. I think her papa lost the farm.” I leaned closer. “Do you think she could be the one Earl Samson wanted to marry? I wish I could ask her.”

“Well, don’t,” Mama warned, rising and taking up her purse.

“Where are you going?”

“To comb my hair and freshen my lipstick. I always feel mussed when I’ve fallen asleep.”

“Can I come?”

“No. You can open our lunch. Do you want me to bring you a cup of water?”

“No. I have to go to the bathroom.”

She looked at her watch. “We’ll only be here a few more minutes.”

Mama smoothed the skirt of her dress and took some pains checking in her purse before starting up the aisle toward the rest room. She caught a glimpse of the new passenger out of the corner of her eye as she went through this small ceremony of preparation.

Mama smiled at the woman as she headed toward the rest room. I knew this although her back was to me. Mama’s head dipped slightly as she passed the woman’s seat, and when Mama had passed, the woman’s face was softened and opened up a little.

Mama was not long in the rest room, but she was freshened up and full of life when she came out again. On her return she paused at the woman’s seat, laughing a bit and saying something which I didn’t catch. The woman smiled and shook her head. Her teeth were small and perfect, like Katherine Albers’s.

Teeth were all Katherine and the woman in the pale suit had in common, however. The set of the woman’s shoulders, straight and uncompromising, and the almost imperceptible cast of her head,
as though she were tuned to an engrossing radio program, spoke more of St. Catherine of Alexandria than Katherine Albers of Harvester.

For knowing all the answers at catechism class one Saturday, Sister Mary Frances had given me a little picture of the martyr, St. Catherine. It was a pretty, colored picture with a gilded deckle edge, and on the back, a list of indulgences I might gain if I prayed to or otherwise observed St. Catherine. I did pray to her a couple of times because I liked her looks as she stood, pleasant and determined, beside the windows in the tower her father had had built for her while he was away. Returning from his trip, he had been furious to discover that Catherine had ordered three windows constructed in the tower, in honor of the Trinity, rather than the two her father had specified. My own feeling was that St. Catherine had ordered three windows because, if you were going to be kept in a tower (as she knew she
was)
, the third window’s view would be a godsend you would never regret having. I didn’t think this interpretation took anything away from Catherine’s later martyrdom. I had a special affinity for St. Catherine because of the wheel on which she was to have been broken, and which shattered at her touch, causing her to be the patron saint of wheelwrights and mechanics and, in my opinion, railroads.

“You
talked
to her?” I exclaimed sotto voce when Mama sat down. How did Mama have the courage to go up to a perfect stranger and, just like that, start talking to them? No wonder Mama didn’t understand why I hated to sell Knights of Columbus picnic tickets. She wasn’t afraid of anything. Maybe Mama should have been a man. Men weren’t afraid of anything, either. Except Hilly. Hilly had been afraid the day Mrs. Wheeler saw him running down the cemetery road. But Hilly was a boy, really.

“Of course I talked to her,” Mama said quietly, opening our lunch box, which lay on the seat beside her. “I asked if she’d like some of our lunch since we’ve got so much. It’s not hard talking to people if you’re thinking about
them
. If you’re thinking they might be hungry, you’re not worrying about how embarrassing it is talking to them. You ought to remember that.”

I would try. What Mama said was Common Sense. Mama placed great value on Common Sense, and I could see for myself that it made life easier.

“Is she going to have some of our lunch?” I asked. What did a
woman like that eat? Maybe she would think meat loaf sandwiches were low-class. Would I be afraid to carry her a meat loaf sandwich? If I told myself that she was hungry, and I was doing her a favor …?

“No,” Mama answered, “she said she wasn’t hungry.” The other train pulled into the station. Pretty soon I’d be able to go to the bathroom.

Mama went on, “I suggested maybe she’d like a cup of coffee from the Thermos later. She said that would be nice.”

Besides the few words I’d heard her speak to the conductor, what did a beautiful, high-class woman talk about? Did she talk about big houses with fancy furniture? Parties where you wore long dresses? If she talked about things like that, what could Mama say? Would Mama tell her about our house in the depot with slop pails under the sink and no toilet? Would she tell her that I still slept in a crib?

Our train was moving again. We’d switched back to the main track and were picking up speed on our way out of Weed Lake. The engine hooted and I stood up.

“I’m going to the bathroom.”

Passing the woman’s seat, I kept my eyes on the floor. The heavy rest room door slammed behind me as the train slewed around a curve. I turned the lock. Carefully smoothing out little folded pieces of toilet paper from the dispenser and meticulously laying them all around the toilet seat—and picking up one or two that fell on the floor—I sat down, greatly relieved, on the noisy toilet.

The soap powder in the dispenser was strong enough to melt diamonds, Mama said. I put some in my wet palm and rubbed it on my hands. It remained gritty and didn’t lather, and in a few seconds my hands felt hot and itchy. Quickly I rinsed them and dried them on the linen roller towel.

Because I was short, I could only see my face in the mirror, and I could only see that by standing on tiptoes. My hair was a mess from sleep. I climbed on the toilet seat. I looked like something the cat had dragged in. My dress was wrinkled and limp. That was the problem with liking a lot of starch in your dresses: when they got mussed, they were pitiful looking. The woman in the pretty suit probably thought I was an Okie.

I wanted to ask the woman about Earl Samson. I had to know
if she was the one, and if she’d heard from him. But she was like a queen, and I was just an almost-low-class child.

I smiled at myself in the mirror, straightened my dress, and smoothed my hair with my hands. How ugly I was when I smiled, all gaping gum where baby teeth had been. I smiled with my mouth closed, and looked like a simpering nincompoop. I didn’t have the stuff in me ever to look like that high-class woman.

How on Earth had she gotten to be high-class if her papa had lost his farm to debts? What a mystery. Maybe in Chicago she had helped a poor old tramp in the street, who turned out to be a rich millionaire. Father Delias said that every time you helped a stranger, you were entertaining Jesus. Well, maybe Jesus had recognized her goodness and given her a lot of money. Did Jesus ever do that? Did you come home one day and there was a big box of money on the kitchen table? If I watched for the stork and saved Aunt Betty’s baby, would Jesus give me money for #127—The Cape Ann?

Mama handed me a meat loaf sandwich and a napkin. “Try not to get that all over.”

It was difficult to prevent my eyes from wandering toward the woman across the aisle. Everything about her, from her pale kid pumps and delicate silk stockings to her lips, which looked sculpted, drew my interest and admiration.

Her fingernails were perfectly shaped ovals, the moons left bare, the remainder wearing a nearly clear polish with a slight pinkish cast. The tips of the nails had been whitened underneath with white pencil. The overall effect was elegant understatement.

I wanted to hide my own ragged, torn, unhealthy-looking fingers. I studied them, holding tightly to the white bread.

“Mama, if I don’t bite my nails at Aunt Betty’s, will you put white pencil under the tips?”

“Sure. And pink polish on top.”

“And will you leave the moons white?”

She nodded, pouring coffee from the Thermos, then leaning around the edge of the seat and holding up the cup. The woman smiled without opening her lips. The smile raised the corners of her mouth and the corners of her eyes but, in between, there was a cloud of old sadness which had become a feature of her face, like her nose or cheeks. Was it sadness for Earl Samson?

“Move over, Lark. Next to the window, so the lady can sit down.”

She was going to sit next to me. That possibility had not occurred to me. Shyness clamped down on me, sealing my mouth and almost stopping my breath. I edged as far toward the window as possible, pulling my skirt tight around my legs and staring out, unseeing, at the green fields swimming alongside the train.

I CROSSED MY ARMS
over my chest, hiding my hands in my armpits.

“Why are you sitting like that?” Mama asked, pouring a second cup of coffee.

“Because.”

Mama shrugged and held the cup for the woman, who was making her way across the aisle. Out of the corner of my eye and without turning away from the window, I could see her form approach.

“Sit there, beside Lark,” Mama told her.