The Cape Ann (41 page)

“Look at me, Grandma. The bodice of my dress is all wet from sweat,” I said.

“Men
sweat,” she told me.
“Ladies
perspire. But you’re right, you’re dripping wet. Better get out of that fancy dress. Do you have something cool?”

“Put on your seersucker sundress,” Mama instructed.

The green-and-white-striped seersucker sundress was my favorite that summer. Mama had made it, and she’d appliquéd bright orange carrots on the bodice and at the pocket. It was the gayest sundress I had seen.

“Would anybody like to go for a ride out in the country?” Mama asked when I was dressed.

“Me,” I told her.

Mama turned to Grandma. “You like to ride in the country.”

“Not today.”

“Oh, come on, Mama.”

“No, Arlene. I would rather stay home.”

“Well, don’t ever say you weren’t invited. Betty?”

Aunt Betty was removing her hat at the sideboard mirror and regarding herself strangely in the mirror. “I’ll go,” she said languidly. “Let me change first.”

“I think I’ll ask Papa if we can use his car. It’s too crowded in
the coupe on a hot day,” Mama explained. “This is like the old days, when we were girls, Betty, only
you
drove the old car and I rode along.”

“It’s nothing like the old days,” Grandma said to herself, but loud enough for us to hear. “In my worst nightmares, I would not have dreamed any of this in the old days.”

So we drove into the country, Mama at the wheel, Aunt Betty beside her, and me in the backseat. Although it was immaculate, the inside of Grandpa’s car smelled like the seats on the train, dusty and ancient. It was a smell as reassuring as the odor of talcum or fried onions.

Before leaving town, Mama pulled in at the all-night café and jumped out. “I’ll be right back.” Minutes later, she returned with three strawberry ice cream cones. “Hold mine till we’re on the road,” she said, handing two of them to Aunt Betty and one to me. “Lark, try not to get it on your dress.” She slid in behind the wheel. “Roll down all the windows, ladies, we’re heading for the country!”

Merrily the car jounced over the countryside, past heat-sleepy farm yards, where windmills stood silent and farm dogs lazed in the shade, too warm to chase the car. Dust from the gravel rose up behind us and hung in thick suspension, even as we disappeared over a far hill.

For half an hour we drove across the rolling prairie, then Mama pulled off and parked beneath the shade of a stand of cottonwoods, beside a dried-up creek bed. We piled out of the car and sat on the dusty grass. Except for the whining of cicadas and a lone meadowlark, there was absolute quiet, as if we were a thousand miles from anywhere. Occasionally the cottonwoods shook their shining leaves, not from the encouragement of any breeze but from a kind of impatience with the heat.

“Take off your dress, Lark, and lay your head down on it,” Mama said. She could see that the day and the ice cream had made me drowsy. And I had not slept well last night, trying to stay awake until Mama came home.

Aunt Betty got to her feet and began to pace slowly up and down. “What time will we leave in the morning?” she asked Mama.

This was the first I knew of their going anywhere.

“Quarter to six.”

“That early?”

“It’s four hours to Minneapolis, or nearly, and we have to leave time to find the address.”

“What are you going to do, Mama?” I asked.

“We’re going shopping.”

“Can I come?”

“Not this time.”

“Why?”

“We’re driving up and back in one day. There won’t be time to worry about an extra passenger.”

“You won’t have to worry about me.”

“Not this time, Lark,” Mama silenced me peremptorily. “Do you have enough money … for shopping?” Mama asked Aunt Betty.

She nodded and turned her back, as if looking far off down the creek bed.

“Have you changed your mind?” Mama asked her.

“No,” she said without turning around. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”

My eyes would not stay open. The day was humming me to sleep. But I was sure that Aunt Betty was crying. And then I thought I heard her say that she was afraid. Why would a grownup be afraid to go shopping?

“I DON’T SEE WHY
you have to go shopping today—and in
Minneapolis,”
Grandma complained. “Taking off work! I never heard of such a thing.” Grandma was standing in the kitchen doorway, still in her nightgown.

Mama was dressed and at the sink, finishing a cup of coffee. Aunt Betty, wan and silent, sat on a kitchen chair, her white summer purse on her lap. “I want to look for a winter coat,” Mama said. “I won’t have time once I’m back at work.”

“But why does Betty have to go?”

“She needs a day off.”

“She had one yesterday.”

“Oh, Mama,” Mama sighed with filial impatience. “Lark, give Mama a kiss. I’ll see you tonight. Mind Grandma and I’ll bring you something from Minneapolis.”

Out they hurried, me behind them in my underpants, standing on the back stoop, waving as Mama backed out of the drive. She tooted the horn lightly and swung down the alley and into the street.

There were a few fading, decrepit toys in a box in the front hall, among them a rubber baby doll, her body grown hard as steel and dusky, as if she were changing her race. In the backyard, beside the tall lilac bushes, I spread an old cotton blanket and played house all morning with the mulatto doll.

Grandpa came home for lunch when the town whistle blew at noon. His blue work shirt was wet down the back and under the arms. “Over a hundred again today,” he said, washing his hands and face at the kitchen sink before sitting down. Drying himself on the heavy, linen roller towel, he revealed, “Grandpa Whaley passed on, of the heat, they say. Collapsed in the garden pulling weeds.”

“What was he doing in the garden with the heat over a hundred? That daughter of his must be simple, letting him do that. Why, it’s criminal.”

“They say she was cleaning the attic.”

“Can you beat that?”

“Where’s Arlene?” he asked, sitting down at the dining room table. He had left the house at five.

“Gone to Minneapolis and Betty with her, to look for a winter coat, she said! The hottest day of the year, and she runs off, dragging her sister, to try on winter coats. Sometimes I don’t think either of them has good sense.”

Grandpa shook his head. “I expect they’d clean the attic while I pulled weeds if the day were over a hundred and five.” He chuckled, shaking his head some more.

After Grandpa had left again and the few dishes were washed and put away, Grandma said, “I’m going to take a lie-down now. I want you to do the same.” She suffered vague, exhausting worries.

“I’m not tired.”

“Then read your book, but do it in bed.” She led the way to the sleeping porch.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I pulled off my sandals. The
smooth, gray painted floor was cool beneath my bare feet. I ran them lightly back and forth across the boards.

“Stop stalling and get into bed now. You can sleep on top of the spread.”

I lay down with
Happy Stories for Bedtime
, and before long I drifted into a breathless, sticky sleep of fragmentary dreams. In a dim attic I tried on heavy, winter coats.

Grandma was in the kitchen pouring a glass of iced tea when I found her. “Is Mama back yet?” I inquired, picking sleep from my eyes.

“It’s only half past three. They won’t be back till after supper.”

“I forgot to write to Hilly yesterday. Do you have paper I can use?”

“There’s a tablet in the middle drawer of the desk.”

Sitting down at the dining room table, I wrote, telling Hilly of our trip and the heat wave and Grandpa Whaley (who was a stranger to me) dying of the heat while pulling weeds, and his daughter cleaning the attic. I asked if it was hot in Harvester. The Stillmans’ apartment was very close on warm summer days, as I recalled. I cautioned Hilly to drink plenty of water.

Grandma handed me a prestamped envelope and I addressed it: Hillyard Stillman, Harvester, Minnesota. I knew how to spell those words without help. On the back flap I drew a little heart. If Grandpa drove me to the depot after supper to mail the letter, Hilly would receive it tomorrow.

Grandpa seemed happy to get into the car after supper and drive us across town. The depot agent said that he’d see the letter went out that very night. Instead of heading immediately for home, Grandpa drove around the perimeter of town and out past the fairgrounds where men were setting up tents for the county fair, which opened on Wednesday. I knew because Grandma had remarked pensively that she wasn’t entering anything this year, not even her strawberry-rhubarb preserves.

Before turning the car toward Cottonwood Street, Grandpa pulled in at the all-night café and bought me an ice cream cone. I didn’t think there were many children around who had had two ice cream cones in as many days.

“Have you heard anything from the girls?” Grandpa inquired as we strolled into the house.

“I don’t expect them before eight-thirty,” Grandma replied, glancing up from her crocheting.

“What’re you making, Grandma?”

“Edging for pillowcases.” She yanked more thread from the ball. “In the past two years I’ve edged everything in the house except your grandpa’s drawers,” she said with a sardonic little smile. “It calms my nerves.”

Grandpa, gazing past Grandma out the window, said, “I believe that was Arlene’s Ford that went by.” He turned toward the back door. I was at his heels, and Grandma, thrusting herself out of the chair so abruptly that the crochet thread went flying, pushed past both of us to reach the screen door first.

The white coupe pulled up beyond the gravel drive, up close to the back door onto the grass, before Mama braked and turned off the engine.

Aunt Betty’s head leaned against the seat, and her face was whiter than the moon that hung over the garage. Grandma was at the car door, pulling it open.

“My, God, Betty, what is this!” she exclaimed, staring down at Aunt Betty’s skirt, which was soaked with blood. “Fetch the blanket beside the lilacs,” Grandma told me. I ran to get the thick cotton blanket on which I’d been playing house.

Somehow they got my aunt out of the car and wrapped the blanket around her hips. Grandpa carried her into the house and out to the sleeping porch.

“Fetch the rubber sheet from the closet in the bathroom, Lark.” Grandma gave me a shove toward the stairs.

“What
is
this?” Grandma was demanding of Mama when I returned with the rubber sheet, which she spread out on the bed.

As if she were a sleeping baby, Grandpa lowered Aunt Betty tenderly onto the sheet, and Grandma began undressing her. “What happened today?” Grandma interrogated as she and Mama pulled off Aunt Betty’s dress.

“She started hemorrhaging all of a sudden. She’s anemic, I think. She got her period and it just gushed. She’s got on three pads.”

“Lark, find your aunt’s nightgown upstairs and bring the box of pads from the bathroom.” As I sped away, Grandma said to Mama, “You’re lying to me.”

I was frightened of the blood. There was so much of it. I didn’t see how any one could lose that much blood and live. Aunt Betty
looked dead. She wasn’t. Now and then she moaned, and each time I was relieved to hear it. I wished that she would make more noise so that I could be sure that she would go on living.

Grandma and Mama were busy with my aunt. They didn’t notice me in the twilit corners of the room. Mama was in a state as close to panic as I had ever seen her. She thrust herself here and there, now sitting on the edge of the bed, then bethinking herself and jumping immediately up again; now standing at the foot, regarding Aunt Betty with frightening intensity as if she could will her well, then swooping around the bed to brush Aunt Betty’s hair back from her damp forehead. Mama behaved as if she were responsible for Aunt Betty’s being sick.

“Stay with her,” Grandma told Mama. “I’m going to make tea.”

“Now?”

“Not for
us,”
Grandma said. “For her. If she starts to hemorrhage bad again, come get me.”

Mama nodded. She held her sister’s hand, though Aunt Betty seemed unaware that Mama was there.

Grandma disappeared around the corner, into the dim shadows of the other arm of the sleeping porch where the cupboard of strange smells stood. She hurried to it, extracting three small Mason jars, which she carried into the house to the kitchen.

At the stove she measured a teaspoon of whatever was in each jar into a saucepan of water and began heating it, stirring it with a spoon. As the water started to simmer, it gave off a peculiar and pleasant odor. I thought there was some mint in it, but I couldn’t identify the rest, and when I sidled past Grandma to have a look at the jar labels, she suddenly took note of me.

“What are you doing up?” she asked. “Get to bed. Up in your aunt’s room tonight. She’s in your bed,” she told me as if I were not aware of this.

I didn’t want to upset her further, so I slipped back out to the sleeping porch and climbed onto Mama’s bed. There were no lights on except in the kitchen and dining room. Some small illumination filtered through to the porch, but mostly we saw by the faint light of the lavender late evening sky.

“Why don’t we call the doctor?” I asked Mama.

“Because there’s nothing he can do but make trouble,” Mama said. She sat on a chair now, beside Aunt Betty’s bed, holding the other woman’s cold white hand.

Grandma emerged from the deeper shadows at the opposite end of the porch, a big cup held in both her hands, its rich potpourri preceding her, dispelling the doomsday odor of blood in the air.

“I think it’s cool enough to give her,” Grandma said. “Get the pillows from my bed and put them under her head.”

Not moving, and barely breathing, I watched as Grandma spooned tea into Aunt Betty. From the backyard came the smell of a cigar. Grandpa was sitting there, out of the way.

The individual hours became lost in the dark. Certain moments flickered like fireflies. Mama said, “We’re out of pads.” Grandma said, “There’s a length of cotton flannel in the sideboard.” Later, I think, Aunt Betty sighed, “Stanley, is that you?” Mama whispered, “Sweet Jesus.” Grandma did not reprimand her for using the Lord’s name.