Free The Cape Ann by Faith Sullivan

sat there eating the last crumbs of his cake, mashing them with the back of his spoon and sucking them off, happily enthralled. “Lark, get the picture from the sideboard,” Mama said.
    I went to fetch the studio picture Mama had had taken of me in my white dress, wings, and halo. In order to show the wings, the photographer had taken a side shot. I was kneeling, hands folded in prayer, looking very Catholic and uncharacteristic.
    “Doesn’t she look pretty?” Mama said, handing it to Hilly. “Those wings were hell to make. But you haven’t heard the best. A week before Lark and Sally were going to wear the angel dresses, Sister Mary Clair sent home a note with Lark. ‘Dear Mrs. Erhardt,’ it said, ‘Lark and Sally’s dresses should be long enough to cover the kneecap. Sister Mary Frances and I feel that Lark normally wears her dresses shorter than angels do. Thank you. Sister Mary Clair.’ Tell me, what angel flew down to tell Sister Mary Clair the style they’re wearing in heaven this year?” Mama rose and refilled the cups.
    “Lark likes her dresses short and starched, like Shirley Temple. In my opinion, that’s a lot cuter than below the kneecap, which makes you look like a refugee from a poor Catholic country.”
    Eventually we cleared the table. Mama washed, Hilly dried, and I put away. Hilly was careful and very slow. Mama was finished long before Hilly, so she cut a big hunk of cake and wrapped it in paper napkins for Hilly to take home.
    “You and your mama can have this before you go to bed,” she told Hilly.
    We drove him home in the pickup. Hilly wanted to ride in the back. “Wind,” he said, brushing his hands back over his face and hair.
    Main Street was lighted up and full of the noisy self-importance of a small town Saturday night: cars driving up and down, peoplehollering across the broad street to each other. All the farmers and half the townspeople were on the streets and in the stores, seeing to Saturday night duties and pleasures.
    When Mama stopped in front of Rabel’s Meat Market, Hilly jumped off the back of the truck and came around to say goodbye. I handed him the cake.
    “Good … bye,” he said. “Thank … you.”
    We waited for him to climb the stairs and open the screen door, then we drove off. “Is Hilly getting his sanity back?” I asked Mama.
    “I don’t know. Sometimes it seems that way.” She didn’t sound as excited as I thought she should. I wanted to ask her why, but I kept quiet. When it came to pressing for answers, I was often shy, as if it were not yet the time for me to know.
    Instead of going right home, Mama drove around town with the windows rolled down. The evening was warm, and there was a Saturday night edge to it, as though something exciting ought to happen. We passed Bernice and Bill McGivern’s. Mama gave the horn a tap. Mama couldn’t carry a tune in a bushel basket, but we sang “Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet.” If they hadn’t known us, people would have thought we were coming home from The Nite Time Saloon.
    Mama pulled the big, galvanized tub out from under the crib when we got home. “Bath time,” she announced, dragging it to the kitchen. While I got undressed and into my pink chenille robe, Mama put kettles of water on the stove to heat. I sat down on the davenport to look at the new
Life
magazine.
    After my bath, Mama dried me, sprinkled me with Sweet Memory talcum powder, and helped me into a clean nightie. We carried the tub out to the tracks and dumped the water. “It’s almost time for the last freight,” she said. “We’d better use the toilet now.”
    Quietly we crossed the dimly lit waiting room to the restroom. The lights in the office were burning, but we didn’t stop to see if Papa or Art Bigelow was working. Sometimes they both stuck around in the evening until after the second freight.
    As quietly as we had come, we left, scurrying back to our house before the train pulled in and surprised me out and about in my