Free The Cape Ann by Faith Sullivan Page A

nightie.
    “Do you want a bedtime read?” Mama asked, helping me into the crib.
    I remembered the house plans. They were lying on Mama’sbed. “There’s a pretty house I want to show you.” I pointed to the booklets, and Mama handed them to me. Riffling through the pages until I found #127—The Cape Ann, I held it up. “This one.”
    Mama sat down on the edge of the big bed to study the floor plans and the exterior sketch. “Mmmmm,” she murmured, not at once dismissing it.
    “It has two bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs for your sewing room. And it has shutters. And a big living room, I think, and two dormer windows.” I opened
Happy Stories for Bedtime
. There was the boy, still sitting in the window. “Look at this, Mama. They made a window seat in the dormer. Can we do that?”
    “This Cape Ann has possibilities,” Mama said, looking up from the plans. “A window seat. Yes. You could keep your toys in there.”
    I hadn’t thought of that. “Oh, yes,” I squealed, bouncing up and down. Did the boy waiting by the sea for his father have toys in his window seat? I bet he did.
    “I like this plan,” Mama said, “because it has a breakfast nook at the end of the kitchen, and the back door’s right here by the cellar-way.” She showed me where the back door was. “We could plant flowers along here,” she added, indicating an area beyond the breakfast nook windows. “Nasturtiums and zinnias and marigolds and poppies. I like flowers that have a lot of color.” So did Sisters Mary Clair and Mary Frances.
    “And hollyhocks?” I begged. “I like hollyhocks.”
    “We’ll grow hollyhocks along the fence.” Mama ran to the kitchen for a pair of shears. “I’m going to cut this out and tack it up on the wall,” she explained, “so we can look at it every day.”
    “Put it up here by the clock.” I stood up to show her where it should go.
    “Yes, that’s good.”
    “Mama, how can we get some money for the house?”
    She finished cutting the two pages from the booklet, then set the scissors aside. “I don’t know,” she said, “but I’ll think of something.”

7
    SOMETIME IN THE NIGHT , Papa came home and slept in the big bed. But in the morning, and for weeks afterward, Mama was only civil to him and nothing more.
    After church Mama and Papa read the Sunday paper. Papa pored over the sports section, keeping track of the Chicago Cubs, his favorite team and winner of the 1938 World Series. Mama studied the classified ads for money-making schemes. Armed with a grease pencil, she circled anything not requiring the applicant to relocate.
    There were opportunities for refined women to sell Lady Sylvia corsets and undergarments in the privacy of their homes. There were openings for ambitious salespeople to call on friends and neighbors, introducing them to the comfort, durability, and beauty of Ayler’s A-One shoes (“Hard-to-fit Sizes Our Specialty”). And there were once-in-a-lifetime chances for folks with get-up-and-go to make big money as dealers for Bismark brushes (“Brushes for Farm and Home”).
    None of these held much appeal or promise. No work was to be had locally, either, except for sewing or house cleaning or selling magazine subscriptions. But a glut of seamstresses and cleaning ladies and subscription salespeople existed already, so the employment picture was bleak. Bleak was not the same as hopeless, however. “I’ll think of something,” Mama had told me.
    But would she? If there were jobs to be had, the young men down in the hobo jungle would be working. They were always out looking, knocking on doors, scouting the filling stations and junkyards, anyplace there might be something temporary that could lead to something permanent. They would mow your lawn, burn your trash, and wash your windows for a meal and half a dollar. Where, then, would Mama find work?
    Late in the afternoon, Papa fell asleep stretched out on the davenport, the funny papers lying across his chest.