The Cape Ann (2 page)

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 fabric. 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.

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 anybody 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 Monkey 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
magazine 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 California. 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 having all the oranges she wanted. Oranges were a luxury in Minnesota 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
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, pregnant. 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 demanded 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 Lutherans 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 biweekly 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 governments, Hilly’s picture again appeared in all the papers. Three different 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,
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 anxiously 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 excitement, 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 childhood. 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
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 himself 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 Market, he threw down the clothes and grinned widely at Mr. Rabel, Mr. Rabel’s apprentice, and three ladies come to do marketing, exhorting, “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 purchases. 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 sidewalk. 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 extricate 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
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 greetings 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.

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 collapsed 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.