The Cape Ann by Faith Sullivan Read Free Book Online Page A

announced that it was time to go back in.
    As I reached my fingers out to the holy water font, Sister asked in a voice so low I barely heard, “What made you ask?”
    “Nothing.”
    •  •  •
    “You asked Sister
what?”
Mama demanded, bent imminently over me, hands on her hips.
    “If gambling was a sin,” I repeated, though Mama had heard every word I’d said. “I thought you’d want to know. Sister said it wasn’t a sin unless a man lost all his money, and his wife and children suffered. Even if Papa loses all our money, he’ll still go to heaven if he confesses and is truly sorry and asks God to forgive him. Aren’t you happy, Mama?”
    “Did you tell her
your
papa gambled?”
    “No.”
    “Well, she’s going to figure it out.”
    “No, Mama. I told her I was just wondering.”
    Mama laughed an unhappy laugh.
    “Really, Mama. Sister didn’t think I was talking about Papa.”
    “She’s not a fool, Lark.” Mama sat down across from me at the kitchen table. She had baked a spice cake while I was at catechism class. It was on the table waiting to be frosted. Mama was dressed in a cotton housedress, and she looked tired. “Everyone in town is going to know that your papa lost last night. If his pals don’t tell them, the nuns will.” Mama was always a little suspicious and skeptical about the nuns.
    “How much?” I asked.
    “Two hundred dollars.”
    It was such a large sum, for a second I thought Mama was joking. But she got up and went in the bedroom, pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of her dress. Two hundred dollars was more than Papa made in a month. Some people in town didn’t make half that much. Mama had said that Miss Hagen, my teacher, made eighty dollars a month. Two hundred dollars was so much, I was frightened by the number itself, as if its size gave it great power over me.
    Big numbers carried awesome potential. Mama said our house would cost four thousand dollars. That was even bigger than two hundred. But it stood for something happy. It was worth the fear it conjured. But two hundred dollars
lost?
I was crushed by the number. I felt that I was carrying it around on my back, just as Mama and Papa were.

5
    ONION AND BOLOGNA SANDWICHES were my favorite, but I didn’t feel like eating the one Mama had waiting for me when I came home from catechism class. I sat staring at it, considering the big numbers in our lives. Mama said we needed a down payment to begin the house building. A thousand dollars was what she hoped to save. I didn’t know what part of a thousand dollars two hundred was, but it must be quite a bit.
    In the bedroom, Mama had fallen asleep, a cotton handkerchief splashed with red roses gripped in her hand. I couldn’t get the buttons at the back of my dress undone, so I pulled off my shoes and climbed into the crib, still in my clothes.
    There at the foot of the bed was the pile of house plans, with #127—The Cape Ann on top. The sketch of the house showed two dormer windows, one in each of the upstairs rooms. Sally Wheeler had a dormer window in her bedroom, with a vanity table built into it. It was very nice, but in my book
Happy Stories for Bedtime
, there was an illustration showing a dormer with a window seat built into it. A pensive looking boy in short pants sat on the seat, an elbow on the sill, staring out at the sea. In the illustration we couldn’t see the water, but in the story we were told that the boy’s father had crossed the sea to fight the Hun. The boy sat gazing across the gray waves, waiting for the soldier-father’s return.
    I was fond of that boy. He had more serious matters on his mind than a dog named Spot and a cat called Puff. And his body had a grace and casual elegance which seemed foreign and which I admired. What would that boy be when he grew up? I wondered. A professor, maybe.
    In my dormer window in our new house, I wanted a seat like the boy’s. When Mama woke up, I was going to show her the Cape Ann and also the