Fall on Your Knees (33 page)

Mercedes is a good girl. A wonderful girl. I helped bring her into this world. I loved her mother like a daughter. But.

The problem is, if Mr and Mrs Luvovitz are to have grandchildren — Jewish grandchildren — well, it can’t be a
shayna
Catholic
maidela
, now can it?

“Relax,” Benny has told her.

“How can I relax? You want a Catholic grandchild?”

“A grandchild would be nice.”

Mrs Luvovitz gets choked up and can’t continue the argument. Benny says, “Come here, come here.”

She does. He says, “You want he should go away to school, and you want he should stay home.” She nods. He says, “You want he should be a doctor, and you want he should be a grocer.” She nods again, smiling now through tears. “And,” says Benny, “he should marry a nice Jewish girl and move into a house down the street.” She nods, stuffing a hanky in between his shoulder and her nose.

“You know,
liebkeit
, we’re the ones who came here. If we’d stayed in the Old Country there’d be plenty of nice Jewish girls. It’s not Ralph’s fault we made him be born here.” He pauses. “And it’s not his fault that….”

But he doesn’t have to continue. They both know. If Abe and Rudy had not been killed in the war, Mrs Luvovitz would not have such a problem letting Ralph marry Mercedes.

Over the tins of Dutch cleanser, Mrs Luvovitz watches Mercedes count out the money for Ralph and she watches him meticulously place it in the cash register. She sees him slip a chocolate rosebud into Mercedes’ hand before she leaves.

Mercedes exits Luvovitz’s Kosher Canadian feeling light-headed. Maintaining the pink glow on her cheeks for several blocks is the thought of what her and Ralph’s children would look like. Mercedes Luvovitz. Mrs Ralph Luvovitz. Their children would be Catholic, of course.

Mercedes indulges herself until King Street, then reins in her thoughts and remembers to open her umbrella. I wonder if Frances and Lily went on their picnic. I hope not, in this weather.

She turns onto Water Street and sees that Daddy is not yet home. Just as well. I feel like a little lie-down before starting supper.

Mercedes mounts the stairs to her room. The house is quiet. Lily and Frances must have gone on their picnic after all. It’s sweet of Frances to play with Lily so much — it means Lily’s not constantly on my hands — but I could wish Frances had a friend her own age. A nice one.

Mercedes lies down on her perfectly made bed, and allows her eyes to travel contentedly about her room. She has only fine things. Books. On her bedside table she has framed the old photograph of Mumma and Daddy in the archway. And safely hidden is the one surviving photograph of Kathleen — hmm, what’s it doing on the floor, it’s always tucked inside
Jane Eyre
where Daddy won’t have to come across it. Mercedes reaches down, picks up the photo and puts it on her bedside table. She’ll tuck it back into the book after she has a little zizz.

Mercedes’ eyes come drowsily to rest on the wall above her dresser where she has hung the portrait of Our Lady appearing to Bernadette in the grotto at Lourdes. Yellow roses sprout between the toes of Our Lady, and arranged in a halo about her head are the words she said to Bernadette, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” A stream runs between them. The stream that became the healing waters of Lourdes and now provides three-times-nine thousand gallons every day. Our Lady appeared to Bernadette three-times-six times. She told Bernadette three times to drink from the stream, which Bernadette did after throwing away the first three handfuls of water. Our Lady told her three secrets that Bernadette carried to the grave. Bernadette escaped all the publicity by becoming a nun. In the convent she helped out in the hospital and the chapel and struggled to control her lifelong bad temper. When asked what she was doing, Bernadette replied, “Getting on with my work: being ill.” Three days after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception she became bedridden. At three-times-twelve years old she died of asthma, tuberculosis and a tumour on the knee. She received extreme unction three times. Three nuns knelt by her at her death and now three million faithful a year flock to three basilicas at Lourdes, where the waters occasionally effect a miraculous cure.

Mercedes has become very sleepy thinking about Bernadette. As her eyes drift down from the picture they naturally fall upon the figurine of the dear Old-Fashioned Girl. Mercedes’ eyes lurch open. Diabolical.

The Old-Fashioned Girl has a parasol for a head and a head for a parasol. She is daintily holding up her own head of ringlets to the sun while the insensate yellow parasol is implanted in the empty neck like a flag.
Frances
.

Mercedes blinks back tears. It’s always like this — the minute I have something good, something clean. She goes to the dresser, tidying her tears with a thin trembling wrist.

She examines the body. The pieces have been glued like that, there’s no fixing this. At least not now. What to do with it, where to put it in the meantime where it won’t be like an obscene smell, invisible yet oppressive. The hope chest. It’s been kept locked ever since Frances dressed Trixie in the baptismal gown. Mercedes has the key.

She picks up the disfigurine without looking at it. It tinkles briefly. On the way, she picks up the photo of Kathleen, intending to replace it between the leaves of
Jane Eyre
, but Jane has flown. She is not on the shelf near the window. She is nowhere to be seen. Frances must have borrowed her. Again.

First things first. Mercedes will hunt for the book later. She puts Kathleen in her pocket and walks to the foot of the attic stairs. Listens. Silence. She mounts the stairs.

The attic is so empty. Nothing but the hope chest. Even the attic’s one other distinguishing feature is an absence: a criss-cross halfway up the wall where a crucifix used to be. Mercedes remembers when this was Kathleen’s bedroom. Before she died here, peacefully in her sleep.

The hope chest is a good place to store things like the ruined Old-Fashioned Girl because the attic is so separate from the rest of the house. In a state of perpetual quarantine. It’s really an abandoned room. That’s why the sad feeling here, Mercedes supposes. Sad like a deconsecrated church. Maybe I’ll put a crucifix back up here if I think of it next time. Or no, because then you couldn’t store anything up here like the ruined Old-Fashioned Girl. Mercedes sees the practical benefit of having a non-room in the house.

She opens the hope chest. The cedar smell clouds up soft and alive, resurrecting an old grief. Mercedes has no wish to linger here or to rummage in the past. She takes what is to hand — the baptismal gown is at the top of the pile from the Trixie incident — and wraps the Old-Fashioned Girl in it. After what the garment has been through this can hardly be considered a desecration. She closes the lid and locks it. She stands for a moment in the emptiest of rooms. Then leaves, quietly closing the door behind her.

Mercedes feels calmer by the time she arrives in the living-room. Daddy will be home soon and she musn’t show that anything’s wrong. She sits down at the piano. No doubt Lily knocked over the figurine by accident, she is a child after all —
jab jab jab
at that sticky C sharp, Daddy keeps saying he’s going to fix it but never does — Mercedes is under the impression that she has forgiven Lily for the family-tree incident and now she is preparing herself to forgive Frances for mutilating the Old-Fashioned Girl. She turns to page thirty-two in
Everybody’s Favorite Songs
. Oddly, Mercedes has always found it much easier to forgive Frances than to forgive Lily, even though Frances is satanically inspired and Lily is unarguably innocent. Mercedes needs to forgive Frances the same way Frances needs to comfort Lily.

Mercedes goes to touch down lightly on the keys but stops and reaches into her pocket, where she has forgotten Kathleen. She takes the photo out and props it on the music ledge next to the song book. Kathleen in her Holy Angels uniform, hands on her knees, laughing. She was beautiful. A slight blur around her hair because she wouldn’t keep still long enough for the camera. There, says Mercedes to Kathleen with her mind, you can listen and watch and I’ll play you a song.

Mercedes starts to play. And to sing sincerely:

“‘Darling I am growing old. Silver threads among the gold, shine upon my brow today, life is fading fast away. But, my darling you will be, will be, always young and fair to me. Yes! My darling you will be, always young and fair to me.’”

Trixie, Frances, then Lily quietly file in. Lily’s face is black with coal except for a wide oval around her mouth. Mercedes sees them but keeps singing. Frances looks at Mercedes and figures, I guess she hasn’t been up to her room yet.

Frances, Lily and Trixie sit on the sofa and listen.

“‘With the roses of the May, I will kiss your lips and say, Oh! My darling mine alone, You have never older grown.’”

Daddy is in the doorway. The song ends.

“That was lovely, Mercedes.”

“Thank you, Daddy.”

“Play something else my dear,” he says, crossing the room to sit in the wingback chair.

“Play ‘Oh My Darlin’ Clementine’,” Lily requests.

“What in the name of time have you done to your face?”

“We did a minstrel show in the cellar, Daddy,” says Lily.

James looks at Frances. Frances just looks back. Daddy smiles at Lily,

“Come here ya wee scallywag.”

Lily jumps into Daddy’s lap.

“Go on and play, Mercedes.”

Mercedes plays and Daddy and Lily sing, cuddled together in the wingback chair. Frances watches them as though transfixed. Lily belts out her favourite part, “‘herring boxes without topses, shoes they were for Clementine.’” Lily always wonders what happened to Clementine, the miner forty-niner’s daughter, “lost and gone for ever,” where?

The song comes to an end; Daddy gently shifts Lily off his knee and rises.

“Tell you what, Mercedes, I’m going to fix that C sharp right this minute.”

“Oh thank goodness, Daddy, it’s so annoying.” Mercedes is a lady. She is able to chat with Daddy like that. Frances marvels. James opens the piano lid and looks in. “Give it a tap, Mercedes.”

She does.

“Nothin’ to it,” says James, “I’ll get my tools.” Then he sees the photograph. The laughing leaning-forward girl with the halo of hurry, “Daddy!” The house is behind her and you can just see Materia in the kitchen window waving. Something bright in her hand. Flashed against the lens. James can hear Kathleen laughing at him, totally unafraid, nothing to be afraid of. Not like now in this room. Now is the dim past. Then was the shining present. He hears her laugh. He hears the water trickling in the creek and flash goes Materia’s waving hand, although her face is barely visible. Kathleen is fourteen. You think you’re safe. Until you see a picture like that. And then you know you’ll always be a slave to the present because the present is more powerful than the past, no matter how long ago the present happened.

If only he hadn’t let her go so far from home. If only he had gone with her to New York. None of it would have happened. She never would have got pregnant. Not that I regret Lily, Lily is my consolation, but my first girl…. She’d be with me now.
Oh my darlin’
. The breath assaults James’s lungs and he comes out of the black and white picture back into the room of living colour.

And looks around. My good daughter. My bad daughter. And my dear daughter’s daughter — in blackface. That isn’t even worth getting riled about, although riled is what Frances tries to get me with something like that.

“What’s this doing here?” he asks Mercedes, softly. There are no pictures of Kathleen anywhere. Not a spinning wheel in the kingdom, so to speak, and then you prick your finger.

Mercedes answers, “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

Frances stares at James. “I did it.”

Mercedes swivels on the piano stool. She wants to say to Frances, no, it will go much harder with you, you don’t have to atone for the ruin of my silly possessions by taking the blame for this. But Frances deliberately digs her own grave. “Kathleen was my sister and I’d like to see her now and then.”

James is getting whiter. The blue part of his eyes is heating up.

Frances stokes him. “Why can’t we, anyhow? Was there something wrong with her? Was she a lunatic or something?” Casual insolent tone.

Mercedes can’t find her voice. It’s autumn in her mouth and all her tongue can do is rustle. Lily doesn’t like it when Daddy looks at Frances like that. It’s not Daddy any more. Not her daddy.

“Was she a slut?” Frances, in a helpful tone of voice. Ahhh, that’s just right. Look at him, all lit up like an Easter candle.

James says quietly to Frances, “Come with me.”

Frances shrugs and gets up, nonchalant, grinning at Mercedes. Mercedes covers her face with her hands. James says to Mercedes, “Take your sister out for a while.”

“Come on, Lily.”

Lily’s forehead has the bump in it but she obeys.

Frances saunters across the room towards James, who finally snaps at the sight of her slouching towards him, grabs the back of her neck and flings her through the doorway. Mercedes hustles Lily out the front door.

“Where are we going, Mercedes?”

“Out.”

“I broke your beautiful thing.”

“I don’t care, Lily, just walk please” — down the porch steps.

“Frances glued it but I broke it and I tore up your book too, I didn’t mean to.”

“They’re just things, Lily, they don’t matter.”

Lily is having a hard time keeping up but she has no choice, Mercedes has her by the wrist.

“I’m sorry, Mercedes.”

No answer.

“Mercedes —”

“That’s enough, Lily.”

They walk-drag through town until they come to the cliff above the shore. Mercedes stands staring out at the grey sea. Lily sits with her legs dangling over the edge.

“How come I never saw that picture?”

“You know perfectly well, because Daddy doesn’t like to dwell on Kathleen. It grieves him.”

“Did you hide it?”

“Yes. In the book you destroyed. That’s how it came to be out in the open.”