The Cape Ann (42 page)

When Grandma went to the kitchen to reheat the tea, Mama whispered to Aunt Betty, “Don’t die. You did the right thing.” Then Grandma was there beside the bed administering tea.

I was reminded of Maria Zelena and her magic. I had wronged Maria Zelena. She had tried to tell me about the baby’s death, and I wouldn’t listen. My knowledge of the universe was so small. How would I ever learn enough to survive? Aunt Betty was thirty-two, and she did not seem to have learned enough.

IN THE MORNING GRANDMA
was asleep in one of the rockers, Mama in the other. I was in Mama’s bed, fully clothed, the bedspread pulled over me. Grandpa, also in his clothes, was lying on top of the spread on the double bed, snoring and giving off vile fumes of cigar mouth.

Aunt Betty lay in my bed, with her arms straight at her sides. But she was breathing. Though it was nearly imperceptible, the white, ripple-weave spread
did
lift and settle, lift and settle. Was she going to live?

“She’s not out of the woods yet,” Grandma said later. The
bleeding had abated, but Betty was running a slight fever. That meant there was a trace of infection, Grandma explained.

Mama called the dime store and told Mr. Miller that Aunt Betty was home with German measles. “I don’t like telling lies, Lark,” Mama said, “but this one time it’s necessary. You mustn’t tell anyone anything about this, not about the bleeding or … anything.”

Our sweltering vigil continued. Aunt Betty was hotter than any of us. Grandma removed the covers from her and bathed her body with cool water, and sometimes with alcohol.

“I thought you were supposed to keep a person warm when they had a fever,” Mama observed.

“I don’t believe in that,” Grandma responded tartly.

When they weren’t bathing Aunt Betty, they were forcing liquid into her. “Keep her kidneys going,” Grandma told us. “The kidneys carry off the poisons.” That was what Maria Zelena had said.

It wasn’t easy work. Aunt Betty was suffering awful pains in her belly. Even when she was half out of it, she’d pull her legs up and clutch herself and groan. The sweat poured off her till the sheet beneath her was soaked. The electric fan was brought out from the dining room, and Grandma filled a couple of hot water bottles with ice, applying them to Aunt Betty’s arms.

At four o’clock Grandma said, “Arlene, you’d better call your papa home from work.” The way she said it made me shudder. Still, Grandma would not let up on the liquids. Now it was ice water.

When Grandpa arrived, he sat on the bed, holding Aunt Betty in his arms while Grandma dribbled ice water into her mouth.

“Can’t you leave her alone now?” Grandpa wept.

“No.”

At six, the phone in the dining room rang. “See who that is, Lark, and remember what I told you about the measles.”

“Hello.”

“Hello. Who is this?” a man inquired.

“This is Lark Ann Erhardt.”

“Is your mother there?” he asked.

“She’s busy.”

“Well, this is Mr. Miller. I was wondering how Mrs. Weller was feeling. Everyone missed her at work today.”

“She’s still sick with the measles, Mr. Miller. I don’t think she’ll
be in tomorrow. She has more measles than anyone’s ever seen before.”

“Tell her we all said to take care of herself.”

Mama snorted when she heard. “Sonofabitch.”

Mama felt the ice packs. They were getting warm. Grandpa took the glass of water and the spoon. “Look how her mouth is getting sore, here at the corner, from the edge of the spoon,” he pointed out.

“Better that than convulsions,” Mama said, and she took the hot water bottles to the kitchen to fill with fresh ice.

Aunt Betty was retching. I held the pan and wiped her nose and mouth. “No more water,” she moaned.

“Don’t stop,” Grandma commanded.

As twilight lengthened, we were shadows moving among shadows. Late in the evening Mama began to cry. She didn’t sob, but I saw her brush tears away, and heard her sniffle and blow her nose.

“One more day of this and she’ll be gone,” she said to no one.

I lay down on Grandma’s bed, not meaning to fall asleep, but it was as though someone closed a door on me. Hours later, I heard Mama say to Grandma, “Wake up! Betty asked what day this was. She’s cooler, I think.”

Grandma was on her feet and at Aunt Betty’s side, running her hands along my aunt’s arms and legs, then her face. She pulled the sheet up around Aunt Betty.

Weak as water and puffing as if words were a great exertion, Aunt Betty whispered, “If this is heaven, I bet there’s ice cream.”

Grandpa was awake now. He began to laugh. We all laughed. The birds woke up and set to chattering and singing and flying from tree to tree. I thought they were laughing, too, to see a porch full of crazy people laughing and eating ice cream at dawn.

AUNT BETTY GAVE UP
her job at the dime store. “If I went back, I’d be in the state hospital by Christmas.”

“Come stay with us,” Mama told her.

“No. Willie’d have a fit.”

“What do I care? You’re my only sister. You can help me with the business. Till you know where you’re at.”

Grandma packed a lunch for us, and we left after church on Sunday, Aunt Betty still weak and ashen, but anxious to get out of Blue Lake. “To think that I used to be somebody with a place of my own,” Aunt Betty said to Mama.

“Do you see, Betty,” Grandma told her as we were leaving, “this is God’s way of telling you to go to California?”

“I’ll never be able to have a baby now,” Aunt Betty told Mama on the ride from Blue Lake to Harvester.

“Don’t be silly,” Mama said.

“It’s true. I know it.”

“You’re no doctor,” Mama reminded her.

“I know what I know.”

Papa didn’t throw a fit in front of Aunt Betty. He was as cordial as you could hope. But when he got Mama alone, down at the freight room, he wanted to know, “What the hell is this all about?”

“You can see she’s in poor health, Willie. She needed to get away.”

“Well, I don’t want her staying, do you understand? A week, that’s it, you’ll have to tell her.”

Aunt Betty slept on the davenport and lived out of her suitcase, except for two or three dresses on hangers which hung from a peg beside my crib. She stayed through the fall. It was close quarters, but Mama said that was all to the good. Maybe Papa would realize how much we needed the new house. “We can’t go on living here, with Willie and Lark and me all sharing the same bedroom.”

With Aunt Betty to help, Mama didn’t need to hire another girl for the business. And Aunt Betty came up with an idea for adding to their income: letters from Santa. Aunt Betty was Santa. A discreet ad ran in the county papers, and as the holidays drew near, requests poured in for the letters. Aunt Betty cleared fifty dollars. It wasn’t a fortune, but it pleased her.

After Mass on the first Sunday following Thanksgiving, Aunt Betty sat down at the kitchen table to write Santa letters. Papa was reading the paper in the living room.

“Betty, for heaven’s sake, you can take a day off from that,” Mama admonished.

“I’ll get behind if I do.”

Mama poured her a cup of coffee.

“Santa letters have to be written by hand, you know,” Aunt Betty told Mama. “Santa wouldn’t use a typewriter.”

Mama sat down at the table. She was bursting to say something. Finally she confided in a low voice so Papa wouldn’t hear, “I’ve got enough for the down payment on the house.”

“Oh, my God, that’s wonderful,” Aunt Betty exclaimed.

“I’m going to talk to Mr. Rayzeen at the lumberyard this week, and then I’ll go to the bank.”

“What about the lot?” Aunt Betty wanted to know.

“Ben Albers is selling me a lot, a block east of the Catholic church. It’s beautiful. Nice trees. A hundred wide by a hundred and fifty deep.”

“Can I tell Beverly and Sally?” I asked.

“Wait a couple of weeks. Then you can tell
everybody
. When I own the lot, you can put it in the paper, for all of me.”

I started dancing around the kitchen. Mama put a finger to her lips and nodded toward the living room.

Wednesday afternoon Mama came in from the road early and stopped at Rayzeen’s to get the figures to take to the bank. At supper Papa said, “Saw you going into Rayzeen’s when I was delivering freight.”

“I’m thinking of putting up shelves in the living room,” Mama said, passing him the platter of meat loaf. Papa looked at her closely, but she set the ketchup bottle in front of him and seemed not to notice.

I couldn’t wait to tell Hilly. Mama said that since he went nowhere and spoke to no one, it would be all right, providing I swore him to secrecy. Saturday night I sat down at the table and wrote:

I had meant to tell Hilly that God does answer our prayers, the new house was proof. I thought Hilly needed to know that, but I forgot. I would remember in my next letter.

In the morning, on the way to Mass, Mama swung by the post office, and I ran in and mailed the letter. When I came out, I waved in the direction of Hilly’s bedroom window, which faced on Main Street. If he was there, looking down, he’d know I had mailed his letter.

Father Delias’s sermon was about Advent being “The Giving and Forgiving Season.” As the year drew to a close, he said, we remembered Christ not only with our gifts to Mother Church and our fellow man, but with loving hearts that wiped clean the slates of grievance and misunderstanding. We must celebrate the Christ child’s birth with hearts cleansed of reproof and filled with love for all men, without reservation.

After church I rode home with Papa in the truck. “How about a movie this afternoon?” Papa asked.

“You and me?” Papa almost never went to the movies. Generally speaking, they were too feminine.

“You and me and
Sergeant York.”

“Is that about war?”

“About the World War. Sergeant York was a big hero. I remember hearing about him.”

“You weren’t in the World War.”

“I was only nine when we went to war.”

“That was lucky, Papa.”

“I guess.”

“Do you wish you’d been old enough?”

“Everybody wants a chance to be a hero.”

We stopped at the Loon Cafe for coffee and doughnuts. Mama and Aunt Betty had already arrived in the Ford and were sitting at one of the booths by the window. This was a rare treat, rarer even than Papa going to a movie. Father Delias’s sermon had put us all in a Christmas mood.

An hour later, when we piled out of the café, Mama and Aunt Betty were laughing about Sheila Grubb’s fur piece. “Did you ever see so many heads and tails and little feet hanging on somebody’s neck?” Mama squealed.

Then the town whistle blew. Aunt Betty looked at her watch. “It’s a little after one,” she said. “That’s strange. It must be a fire.” But it didn’t sound like a fire whistle. It was very long blasts. None short. And it continued.

The grown-ups exchanged uneasy glances. Papa and I climbed into the truck and headed for home. We all arrived at the same time, no one laughing or talking now, as the whistle continued blowing.

“The phone’s ringing.”

Mama ran into the house and straight to the living room. “Hello?”

Papa and Aunt Betty and I pulled off our coats and threw them on the bed. “Don’t throw your hat on the bed, Willie. It’s bad luck,” Aunt Betty told him.

“Jesus Christ,” Mama swore, motioning us to be quiet. “You sure it’s not a mistake, Bernice? Yes, we’ll turn on the radio right now. Willie, turn on the radio. It’s awful.” Her face had gone white around the lips. Somebody must have died. No, it couldn’t be that. If somebody in Harvester died, it wouldn’t be on the radio. “What does this mean, Bernice? It can’t be. I’ve got to hang up, Bernice. I can’t think. I just can’t think.” Mama sat down on the couch, still in her hat and coat, purse clutched under her left arm.

“What is it?” Aunt Betty asked.

“Shhhhh.” Papa, tuning the radio, shushed us.

“… about seven this morning, Honolulu time,” a quiet, disbelieving masculine voice on the radio was saying. “I repeat, planes of the Japanese air force have bombed Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands early this morning. We have few details at this time, although it is known that the United States has suffered heavy losses of ships and airplanes. Please stay tuned for further details and developments.”

Mama switched off the radio. “What’s it mean?”

“It means we’re in the war,” Papa said.

“How far is Hawaii from California?” Aunt Betty wanted to know.

“Oh, Betty,” Mama sighed. “It’s a long way.”

“What’s going to happen now?” Aunt Betty asked.

“They’ll start drafting men to fight,” Papa told her, “and they’ll have to build a lot of airplanes and ships, from the sound of it.”

“What about Stan?” Aunt Betty pursued. “Will they take him?”

“I don’t know,” Papa said. “I think they take the younger men first. By the time they get to us old guys, the war’ll be over, don’t you worry, Betty.”