Fall on Your Knees (54 page)

He speaks to her. He tells her he is sorry. He feels her hand, cool on the side of his face. He knows she is healing him, but he also realizes that with this she is preparing to send him away from her, “No!” He feels she is condemning him back to a hell he can’t quite recall, “No!” He opens his eyes.

Then shut them against the sun. And resumed his journey to the car.

Try as I like to find the way
I never can get back by day
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.

“If Daddy is dead, it will be up to me to look after this family.”

It was dusk of the day after the shooting. Frances was in the clear thanks to the nurse who’d seen worse, but James was still missing. Mercedes was allowing the possibility of her father’s death to surface in her mind. She was sitting on the veranda, watching the street and peeling a pomegranate — an extravagant impulse, purchased from an old West Indian woman at the corner of Seventh Street.

“If Daddy is dead, I’ll have to start teaching. I’ll sell his tools.”

Mercedes was reassured by her logical train of thought, though a little startled by the caboose: “If Daddy is dead, we’ll be better off.”

She bit into the sweet wine cluster. “If he isn’t dead” — for Mercedes had to face this possibility too — “my job will simply be more demanding.”

By the time she discerned the outline of the Buick behind the headlights, Mercedes’ plans were firm enough to withstand the recognition. She observed the car creep along in second gear, genuflecting at every pot-hole in the street, and her first thought was “I’ll have to learn to drive.”

She folded her arms and watched as the car pulled into the driveway and jerked to a halt. As its lights died, she saw James’s head loll back and his mouth fall open. A moment later she heard him fumbling for many seconds with the door handle. It opened and he got out. In the falling dark, she saw him descend slowly to his knees. He walked like that up the stone path to the veranda.

The one thing Mercedes hadn’t counted on was that her father might return a penitent. Such a thing might interfere with her plans. She had no energy left to be the daughter of a good man. She had only energy enough to be the head of this family.

By the time he reached the steps and began to drag himself up them on all fours, she was near enough to hear the effort in his breath and realize that he was not penitential but merely sick. She had assumed he didn’t see her so she jolted in her skin when he spoke, “Hello my dear.”

He was by now in a heap against the front door. Her reflexive mortification was replaced by the cool sense that it was just as well to have everything in the open between them. Yes, I watched you fall and did not stir to help.

James raised his eyes and looked at her. His eyes had turned younger, bluer. Or maybe that was only an illusion created by his face having got older. Mercedes couldn’t see that yet, all she saw was that his eyes looked young and half his face was in shadow. It wasn’t until she saw him under electric light later that night that she realized it wasn’t a shadow at all, at least not in the usual sense.

She rose from her spare wooden chair and got her father into the dark house.

“Daddy!” Lily swung wildly down the stairs, barefoot in her nightgown, and wrapped herself around him, “Daddy, my daddy.”

Such a baby still — Mercedes tried to think it fondly.

James patted Lily’s head more awkwardly than usual.

“You hurt your hands,” Lily cried, holding them in hers and feeling: his left one curled defenceless with its serrated knuckles, his right one strong but scabbed over at the palm.

“I’ll make some tea,” said Mercedes, gaining an inch in height en route from the front hall to the kitchen stove, shivering slightly at the unaccustomed breeze passing through the new spaces in her spine.

James swayed a little with just Lily to hold him, it was time for him to fall again but she didn’t let him.

“Watch out now!” Afraid he’d injure her.

“It’s all right, Daddy, put your hand on my shoulder.”

He resisted, preferring to teeter towards the wall, but she caught him round the middle and held him fast, guiding him to the living-room, trusting her strong right leg.

He found himself laid out for the second time in two days. Lily lifted his legs onto the couch and turned on the reading lamp. She saw at once the blow to him and her tears welled. She sat by his side and placed her cool hand on his injured face. He closed his eyes, too exhausted not to allow himself the relief of tears. They formed between his long blond lashes and rolled through the new hollows of his face.

“I love you, Daddy.”

Mercedes arrived in the archway of the front room with the tea tray and stopped in the pool of light cast by the reading lamp. She fell through a crack in time without spilling a drop. When she returned, the tea was still piping hot and Lily was exhaling the same warm breath across James’s chest where her head lay sleeping. James was stretched out on his back, asleep or comatose, and Lily had laid herself like a cool leaf alongside him, her right hand closed beneath his chin like a night-time flower.

James slept for most of the following week. When awake, he would eat a little of whatever Lily brought him, then listen while she read aloud. Fairy-tales and Freud, until he was well enough to realize that he had lost interest in his old favourites and preferred to have her read the
Halifax Chronicle
cover to cover. Things were getting interesting in Europe again.

By the time Frances got home from hospital, James was sitting up and whittling himself a cane.

Lily and Mercedes had their hands full with two convalescents but they thrived on it. And the patients themselves were angels — uncomplaining, appreciative, recovering. Mercedes could not remember a happier time, for even when Mumma was alive there had been a cloud, a constant threat of turbulence. But now all is calm. All is bright.

The only distressing thing about these halcyon days was James’s tendency to talk about Materia. It’s normal to speak affectionately of the dead. But because it had been delayed for fourteen years, Mercedes experienced it as something of a painful intrusion. She was grateful that he hadn’t yet mentioned Kathleen.

James carved the top of his cane into a dog’s head and went for a slow walk with Lily. He started a new project out in his work-shed. He picked up his shoemaker’s tools again for the first time in many years. The work goes slowly, he’s having to retrain himself around his bad left hand. And he won’t say what he’s making. The shed is off limits to everyone but Trixie. It’s to be a surprise.

All this and heaven too — until the day that Frances rises in the tub and Mercedes can no longer deny that her sister is still pregnant.

Sisters of Mercy

“The sisters will be ready when the time comes, Mercedes.”

“Thank you, Sister Saint Monica.”

Mercedes has conferred with Sister Saint Monica in the geography classroom at Holy Angels, beneath the colour print that still has pride of place over the blackboard. Saint Monica: patron of mothers. Scourge of African concubines.

“Have you discussed it with Frances?”

“Not yet, sister. I’m concerned she may refuse to part with the child.”

“In that case, it’s probably best not to discuss it with her.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“There are other ways.”

“Kinder ways.”

“Quite right.”

Wheels have been set in motion. Five months from now, Frances will lie in at the convent infirmary at Mabou. Then the infant will be relayed to an appropriate orphanage.

“That’s a lovely print, sister.”

“Thank you, Mercedes.”

It’s time Mercedes had a talk with Lily. Lily is thirteen. Mercedes had been going to delay the talk until the onset of menstruation but it looks as though Lily is going to be late starting — perhaps it’s another sign. Perhaps she’ll never bleed at all. That certainly would be an indication of God’s favour. In any case, what with Frances’s condition soon to be all too apparent, it’s high time.

“Lily. Do you know where babies come from?”

“They come from God.”

They’re in the kitchen making tea biscuits, arms powdered white to the elbows like ladies’ opera gloves.

Mercedes reddens. “That’s right. But God works through our flesh to create new life.” That’s rather good. Mercedes relaxes. This may not be so bad after all.

“I know that, Mercedes,” says Lily, looking decently down at the dough beneath her fists.

“How do you know?” snaps Mercedes.

“Frances told me.”

This is going to be difficult after all.

“What did she tell you, Lily?”

Lily blushes a little, very prettily too, and continues to knead the dough.

“Well?” Mercedes is waiting.

“It’s a private thing, isn’t it?” says Lily, and she glances sideways, biting her lip.

“Yes. It’s very private. It’s between two people and God.”

Lily says nothing.

“Lily, I’m not — I don’t — I’m not trying to make you feel ashamed or embarrassed, I just want to prepare you for certain … wonderful — things that will occur as you mature.” Lily’s hands have kept working but Mercedes has stopped and gone to the pump to hide her embarrassment.

Lily answers with natural delicacy, “It’s all right, Mercedes. I got my period for the first time last March and Frances told me what to do.”

So. What else is it not given me to know around here, wonders Mercedes, pumping vigorously. Lily steals a look at her older sister. Suddenly she is aware of having hurt Mercedes’ feelings. It hadn’t occurred to her that Mercedes might feel left out of such a thing. It had only occurred to her that Mercedes might prefer to be left out. Lily would apologize but feels that would only intensify her sister’s humiliation.

“Mercedes, is Frances really going to have a baby?”

“So she’s told you.”

“Yes, but I wasn’t certain it was true.”

“It’s true.” Mercedes rinses away all traces of flour and dough, then reaches for a cake of lye and asks, “Did Frances tell you how she came to be with child?”

“Yes.”

Lily is quite flushed by now, not with guilty knowledge but with the delicate mortification of one whom it pains to trespass on the privacy of another.

Mercedes scrapes a bristle brush over the moistened lye and scrubs her way from fingernails to elbows.

“Well? What did she tell you, Lily?”

Lily works the dough reverently, shaping it with care.

“She told me that she became pregnant after the night she passed with Mr Taylor in the mine —”

Mercedes’ hands are sterile.

Lily continues with dignity, “But that she miscarried as a result of the shooting.”

Mercedes turns off the pump with her wrist and holds her hands up, allowing them to drip-dry towards the elbows. She asks, “Then how does Frances explain her present condition?”

Lily answers, “The bullet.” And goes on moulding the dough.

Mercedes contaminates her hands with a clean tea towel, drying, drying, drying them. “She told you that in order to avoid telling you the truth, Lily.”

“No. She believes it.”

Mercedes pauses. Folds the towel. “Well that’s not how women get pregnant.”

“I know, Mercedes.”

Mercedes has lost patience. “Well will you tell me then what in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross it is you altogether do know of the factual acts of life!”

Facts, Lily thinks but doesn’t say. Instead, she removes her apron and leaves the kitchen saying, “Excuse me.”

Mercedes is flummoxed. That girl is a cipher. Saint or no saint, why can’t anyone in this house ever just have a straightforward conversation?

Then she sees the sculpture:

Modest penis and vagina in coital embrace, already beginning to sag owing to the dough being overworked.

“Frances, why did you tell Lily that story about the bullet?”

“Because it’s true.”

This is the last thing Mercedes expected to hear. She was ready for an obscene joke or another lie, not this. What Frances is this? The same strange one who rose from the tub the other day.

“Do you really believe that, Frances?”

Frances is bundled supine on a camp cot on the front porch watching the afternoon street go by. Trixie is chasing moths in the yard. Frances does another un-Frances thing. She reaches out and takes Mercedes’ hand. Frances’s hand is warm. She smiles.

“I’m happy, Mercedes. I’m happy.”

Frances’s smile is true. It contains the memory of all her other smiles, the false grins of a lifetime, nothing has been banished from her face — but something immeasurable has been added.

“Everything’s going to be all right, Mercedes.”

Mercedes squeezes Frances’s hand and tucks the blanket up around her.

“Don’t worry, Mercedes, I’m not crazy.”

“I’m not worried.” Frances will always need me.

“Don’t be sad, Mercedes.”

“I’m happy, dear.” And Mercedes smiles through tears as she smooths back the curls from her sister’s brow.

“Mercedes.”

“Yes, dear?”

“Don’t be upset about Lily. She was too shy to say the words so she made a sculpture.”

“You’re right,” says Mercedes, serene, rising to leave, “Lily’s a complete innocent.”

“Either that or she’s possessed by the Devil.”

Mercedes turns sharply.

“Just kidding, Mercedes.”

And the white stripe appears across Frances’s nose, momentarily ruffling Mercedes’ best-laid plans.

“When can you start, Mercedes?”

“I can start today, Sister Saint Eustace.”

Mercedes savours the wood-polish smell of the principal’s office at Mount Carmel High School. The well-worn books ranged upon the shelves, Jesus on His varnished cross, broad oak desk with immaculate inkwell and pen, crisp memos scrolled into pigeon-holes. This is the type of office Mercedes would like some day. Someday I will cut off all my hair and enter the convent. I will teach. Or perhaps I will join a contemplative order.