The Cape Ann (51 page)

Several blocks away, the train was tooting and bearing down on the station, overtaking us. Papa put his hands on Mama’s shoulders. Her face was a clay mask, lacking all expression.

‘Arlene, say something. This is what you wanted. I told Dick Mellin we were interested, and he should let me know right away if anybody came asking about it. You remember the yard? It’s two lots—a hundred and fifty feet wide by a hundred and fifty deep. Lots of lilac bushes, he says, and roses and peonies. Beautiful trees. Elms all the way around, and remember the willow you were always pointing out? Now it can be
your
willow.”

“Mama, let’s go home. I want to live there. Please.” If we lived in the Linden house, we’d all be our best selves, I knew it. It was that kind of house. A big, open porch wrapped around it where you could sit on warm evenings, reading the newspaper until the sun went down. And out in the middle of the side yard, on a tall pole, like a flagpole, perched an enormous white birdhouse made to look just like the Linden house.

There was a little widow’s walk on the third floor, which
must
mean there was an attic. I could have a playroom up there. I was resigned to never having perfect pitch, but with a playroom under the eaves, I would be as confident as Katherine Albers, and if my pitch wasn’t perfect, I would at least have the courage to sing.

“Mama, please.”

The train was slowing, puffing, laboring, screeching, demanding we pay attention. “Please, let’s live there.”

One time, when I had ventured across town selling bazaar tickets, old Grandma Linden had invited me inside because it was cold, and she didn’t want the door standing open. “Stand there, on the rug,” she’d said to me, leaving to fetch her purse.

I had stood in the front hall, peering around. There was a big, open stairway on the right, a stained-glass window at the foot of it. To the left were open double doors leading to the living room, and beyond that, the dining room. A real dining room, not just an ell.

Except for the ticking of a clock, the house was still and serene
and self-possessed, without being arrogant. It was not a mansion, yet it was a house that proclaimed from every clapboard and ginger-breaded eave, “I am what I am, and that is enough.” If we lived there, we would one day be able to say that.

I had hold of Mama’s arm, imploring her to consider Papa’s offer. Our grips with tags on them were carried off to the baggage car and handed up. Freight was off-loaded onto a freight wagon.

“Mama, there are hollyhocks by the garage, I remember. And you could have two tables of bridge in the dining room alone. Three or four in the living room, it’s that big.”

“Lark, get your grip,” Mama ordered.

Papa grabbed me. “You can’t take her, Arlene.”

Papa and I would live in the Linden house.

“Betty, give the conductor our grips,” Mama said, without looking away from Papa. The conductor tossed the three bags up into the car and waited for us to board. Shifting her purse onto her arm, Mama took my hand. “She’s going with me, Willie.” Now they both had hold of me. “I don’t wish you any bad, Willie. You can visit Lark in California, and she can visit back here, but we’re leaving.”

“You don’t love me at all,” Papa said, as if believing it for the first time. He looked at Mama, waiting for her to respond, but she said nothing. The train tooted impatiently, anxious to be on its way. It was needed. People waited for it in other places, on down the line.

Papa pulled me into his arms, hugging me and crying. “I love you, Lark. Forget the bad times. Just remember the good ones. Remember the time we went hunting night crawlers in the rain? Didn’t we have a good time?” He squeezed the breath out of me.

Mama pulled me firmly away. Grandpa Browning, who had been standing to one side, picked me up and told me, “Be good to your mama. And don’t worry, d’ya hear? I bet you’ll be back here before next Christmas.” But his voice lacked conviction. He was trying to steal the edge from my fear. “You let us know what you want for Christmas so we can be all ready.” He held me with his left arm now. “Reach in my right pocket of my jacket,” he told me.

There was a little paper bag. I pulled it out.

“I know how you like gumdrops,” he said, and the rims of his eyes grew red.

“We’ve got to board,” the conductor told us.

Grandpa set me down, and Mama and Aunt Betty gave him hugs and promises to write.

“You can call collect when you get there,” Grandpa offered. “It’s all right.”

Papa was crying, and he gave me another painful hug before Mama shoved me toward the conductor, who handed me up to Aunt Betty. In the end, I was going with Mama. “I don’t see how you can leave like this,” I heard Papa say as Mama mounted the steps. The conductor waved to the engineer, then tossed the portable step onto the landing and climbed up into the car.

Aunt Betty led the way, choosing a seat where she could wave to Grandpa, who stood apart from Papa, frowning to keep from weeping. The train gave a jerk and the couplings clanged and the great iron wheels cried sorrowfully.

I sat opposite Aunt Betty, waving to Papa and Grandpa, and feeling my heart being pulled out of my chest. Mama stood between Aunt Betty and me, frowning like Grandpa. Papa ran alongside the train, on the shoveled platform, calling, “Come back. I’m going to buy the house. Come back!”

Gradually the movement of the train smoothed as we picked up momentum and began rolling purposefully forward. Papa lost ground. Still running, he receded until he was a lone, dark figure against the snow, waving from the last margin of the platform.

HAVING USED THE TOILET
and washed my hands in the brushed metal bowl, I dried them and searched beneath the candy and gum in my purse for a comb. There was half of one, and I extracted it.

Removing the barrette from my hair, I combed all that I could see, front and sides. The back would have to wait. My hair needed … something. Maybe a henna, like Mrs. Erhardt’s. Maybe a more sophisticated style, like Mrs. Weller’s.
Something
. I sighed. It was a 1930s style in 1942.

Returning the comb to my purse, I dug into the bag of jelly
beans and came up with two reds, a green, a yellow, and a black. I dropped the yellow and one red back into the bag, and sat down on the toilet lid to enjoy the remaining three, eating the red first and saving the black for last. Black was my favorite. The most sophisticated flavor in jelly beans, someone once told me.

The train swayed around a curve as I left the rest room, and the heavy door slammed metallically behind me. I stood in the narrow passage between the two rest rooms, savoring the taste of black jelly bean that lingered on my tongue. Far up the aisle Mrs. Erhardt and Mrs. Weller, each beside a window, faced one another, staring intently out at nothing.

I made my way toward them. “Mrs. Erhardt. Mrs. Weller. I don’t know anyone else on this train. Are you going a long ways?”

Mrs. Erhardt stirred and stared at me, as if trying to place me. “Mrs….?”

“Brown.”

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Brown. It’s been a long time. Yes, we’re going all the way across the country, to California.”

“That’s where I’m going. And so is my little girl, Myrna Loy.”

“Mr. Brown? He didn’t come?”

“No.”

“How is Myrna Loy?”

“Sad. She misses her papa. He thought the world of her. He always said she was the holiest child he’d ever met.”

“And pretty, too, if I remember.”

“Her papa said it was lucky we named her Myrna Loy, since she looked like a movie star.”

“What grade is Myrna Loy in now?”

“She’ll be in the fifth grade next fall.”

“Oh, my, is she that old already?”

“She’s reading Nancy Drew mysteries. Sometimes she reads
Happy Stories for Bedtime
, because it reminds her of her childhood.”

“It seems like only last year that she was in kindergarten. I’m sure she’s going to like her school in California.”

“I don’t think so. She doesn’t have any friends there. And her best friend at home died.”

“Oh, dear.”

“He was a great war hero. Also a prince.”

“A prince?”

“He was in … what do you call it when you can’t live in your own country?”

“Exile?”

“He was in exile. But they followed him. They caught him once and took off his clothes and tortured him.”

“Oh, dear God.”

“It’s true. Every word. I heard it from an eyewitness. A Mrs. Wheeler.”

Mrs. Erhardt regarded me sharply. “That’s terrible.”

“Yes. A war hero and a prince, and he wasn’t even safe in exile. He blew his brains out on his front doorstep.”

Mrs. Erhardt was a sympathetic listener. Her eyes were moist, and she groped in her purse for a hanky.

“Don’t cry, Mrs. Erhardt. He’s happy now.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“He is happy,” I said. “He’s in heaven. Jesus sent angels to carry him to heaven. And angels to play harps and … ocarinas along the way.” I opened my purse. “Would you like a jelly bean or gumdrop, Mrs. Erhardt?” She took an orange gumdrop.

“God was going to send the Prince to hell because he committed suicide. But Jesus got mad. He said, ‘I want this man with Me.’ Then God got mad and roared around heaven, scaring everybody. Fathers are sometimes too strict—God is like that—but we have to love them anyway. Jesus said, ‘If the Prince can’t come to heaven, I’m leaving. People with good hearts should be with Me, even if they’re babies who haven’t been baptized or war heroes who blow their brains out.’”

Mrs. Erhardt wondered, “How do you know all this, Mrs. Brown?”

I had to think. How
did
I know it? “I have amazing hearing. I can hear the Germans marching, all the way across the ocean. At night I hear them before I fall asleep. I think that’s because it’s daytime where they are.”

“And you heard Jesus talking to God?”

“I think I heard Him in my sleep. I know it happened the way I told you. I’m not a liar, Mrs. Erhardt.”

“I know that,” she assured me, reaching for a second gumdrop. “Not many people can hear God talking,” she observed and popped the gumdrop into her mouth. “Have you told anyone else what happened between God and Jesus?”

“Heavens, no.”

“There are some things that people simply won’t understand.”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes I let people think the worst of me because I can’t explain the truth.”

“I do that sometimes, too.” I was amazed to hear this about Mrs. Erhardt. “What don’t people understand about you?” I pressed.

“Well,” she said, wiping sugary fingers on her hanky, “people don’t understand how I could drag my little girl, Lark, off to California.”

“Yes. I’m sure people don’t understand that.”

“But being married was like having a hippopotamus sitting on my face, Mrs. Brown. No matter how hard I pushed or which way I turned, I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t even breathe.”

I had felt like that after Baby Marjorie died.

“Hippopotamuses aren’t all bad. They are what they are. But I wasn’t meant to have one sitting on my face.”

I nodded. All I understood of this was her sincerity, which was like an open wound—painful to look at but impossible to ignore.

“I love my little girl, Lark, the way you love your daughter, Myrna Loy. And I know that she is very partial to hippopotamuses. You can see what a problem we have.”

I wanted to tell Mrs. Erhardt that for Myrna Loy’s sake
I
would live with a hippopotamus on my face forever. However, it was easy to
imagine
doing painful things. Before music class, when I was a child, I always imagined that I would volunteer to sing a solo. When the time for solos came, like Mrs. Erhardt, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move at all.

“I don’t know how to solve the problem, Mrs. Brown.”

I told her, “It’s a long way to California, Mrs. Erhardt. Maybe we’ll think of something.”