Fall on Your Knees (56 page)

Mercedes takes Frances’s arm and sets a rapid pace down Plummer Avenue past shop windows with nothing for sale but empty space, “for lease, for lease, for lease” — at least there are no prying eyes behind those counters.

Frances wants to pop into Luvovitz’s to buy raisins for mincemeat.

“I’ll get the raisins, Frances, you go on home. It’s cold.”

“No, I’d like to say hi.”

Mercedes has the exact change ready in her hand, but Mrs Luvovitz sets out a stool for Frances saying, “When it’s your time,
taier
, you call me,” and offers her expert opinion as to the sex of the infant, “You’re carrying high so probably it’s a girl, or else maybe just an extra-smart boy.” Mrs Luvovitz winks. Frances smiles and asks, “How’s Ralph?”

Mercedes picks up a tin of Magic Baking Powder to avoid Mrs Luvovitz’s mortifyingly considerate glance in her direction. Mrs Luvovitz hesitates, then produces a photograph of the world’s most perfect grandson. Jean-Marie Luvovitz.

Frances hoots, “He’s got the sticking-out ears!”

“What’re you saying, ‘sticking-out ears’, I’ll ‘sticking-out ears’ you!”

But Frances laughs and so does Mrs Luvovitz. Mercedes holds her head up and comes to the counter. She glances at the photo, then looks straight at Mrs Luvovitz and says politely, “Congratulations.”

Finally outside, Mercedes says, “It’s probably best that you not leave the house these days, Frances. It’s too cold for you to be out traipsing, you’ll catch your death.”

Frances doesn’t answer. She turns up Ninth Street.

“Frances.” Where on earth —? Oh good Lord.

Frances knocks on Helen Frye’s door. Mercedes watches from the darkness of the street as the door opens and Helen appears in the square of light. Frances turns sideways, setting off her shameless silhouette, and looks back towards Mercedes as though waiting for her. Mercedes sees Helen slowly raise her hand in greeting. But Mercedes makes no move in reply. After a moment, Helen’s hand drops once more to her side. Mercedes hears Frances say, “Merry Christmas, Helen.”

Frances rejoins Mercedes in the street and they turn homeward again. Frances slips an arm through Mercedes’. Mercedes shivers.

At home, Daddy and Lily have begun decorating the tree. “This time next year, there’ll be a wee holy terror crawling under the tree,” says James, painstakingly threading a kernel of popcorn. Frances starts baking. In the front room, Mercedes catches sight of a cheque on the piano; made out by James in his wavery handwriting, to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Relief Fund — three zeroes. She crumples it up and tosses it into the fire. Bootleg money or no, this family cannot survive on a female junior teacher’s salary. Daddy may wish to ease his conscience by giving away his ill-gotten gains, but Mercedes puts the welfare of her family first. Someone’s got to.

Immediately after supper that evening, Mercedes pleads homework and a headache, and retires upstairs. A small lie. It’s not her head that hurts. Once in her room, she switches off the light and lies fully clothed on her bed. She can hear Christmas carols from downstairs — Frances at the piano, singing along with Daddy and Lily, “‘God rest you merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay…. ’” Tears fill Mercedes’ eyes. It is not fair that Frances should bask in Daddy’s affection and the approval of sundry shopkeepers for something that ought to have her hiding her face in shame. It is not fair that Sister Saint Eustace managed to make Mercedes feel like the bad one — when everyone knows that she’s the good one. It is not fair that Frances will have a baby, while Mercedes was denied a husband. None of it is fair, but that is not why Mercedes is weeping freely against her pillow. She does not begrudge Frances the new affection she has inspired on all sides — Mercedes was the first to love Frances, after all. She knows she could even find the strength to bear the mortification of raising the child. But she cannot bear to lose Frances. And that’s what hurt this evening on their walk home. The new Frances is no longer a wayward child. Or even a scarlet woman. The new Frances is at home everywhere — especially in her own growing body — and does not lack for friends. Everyone seems to think that motherhood is the best thing that could possibly happen to her. Everyone but Mercedes. For she knows that once Frances has a child, Frances will no longer need a mother.

Mercedes covers her face with her arm and allows her heart to open up along its oldest wound. Where will my baby Frances go? She will disappear. She will die and I’ll have no one to love and look after. Little Frances will become a forlorn ghost child, crying on the stairs at night, cold and transparent, with her fuzzy golden braids and her brave stare,
“It doesn’t hurt.”
And I won’t be able to comfort her.

Mercedes cries until she is dry and empty once more. Then she rises and sits on the edge of her bed. Downstairs they’re singing “O Holy Night”. She reaches into the drawer of her night-table, finds a fresh hanky and blows her nose. She rebraids her hair in the dark. There. Don’t whine. Fix it.

January gales freeze the ocean waves mid-crest, pine trees tinkle in their glass dresses, and it’s warm inside.

“‘Hitler Appointed Chancellor.’”

Lily is scanning the headlines for James.

“There’s going to be another war,” he says. And adds another book to his wall.

Frances bellies up to the piano and plays “My Wild Irish Rose”.

“Sing, Lily,” says James, dropping into the wingback chair.

Upstairs, Mercedes studies by correspondence with Saint Francis Xavier University. Upgrading her earning power.

February will never end, but never mind.

Lily holds the newspaper at the proper distance from James’s new glasses so he can make out the photograph: Chancellor Hitler and His Holiness Pope Pius XI. Shaking hands.

“Yup,” says James. “You watch.”

And he drops off suddenly to sleep the way he does now.

March comes in like a lion.

“‘Franklin D. Roosevelt Elected President.’ Do you want to see the picture, Daddy?” Together they look at the photograph of the tall bespectacled man standing on a hustings swagged in the Stars and Stripes, waving. “‘Pledges to Put America Back on Its Feet.’”

April Fool’s Day. The morning sun floods through the attic window.

“Diphtheria Rose,” says Frances.

Lily hands her the tattered, still pretty doll. Frances holds Dippy Rose over the open hope chest, and recites: “‘Golden lads and girls all must, / As chimney sweepers, come to dust.’”

Frances lays her next to Spanish Influenza, Typhoid and TB Ahoy, Small Pox, Scarlet Fever and Maurice. Trixie and Lily look on reverently. On the floor next to the open hope chest, the baptismal gown is laid out.

“Music please, Lily.”

Lily winds up The Old-Fashioned Girl and sets her down to turn on the floor, her head balanced prettily on her hand. She tinkles, “‘Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in lo-o-ve wi-ith you-ou…. ’” Trixie follows the figurine with her eyes, ready to pounce should it stray from its circumference.

Frances picks up the baptismal gown and lays it gently over her dolls. “Next time I open this box, it will be to dress my baby in this gown.”

“And to get your dolls again.”

“No.”

Frances moves to lower the lid but Lily stops her halfway.

“You forgot this, Frances.”

“That’s yours, Lily.”

The photograph of Kathleen. The one that Mercedes kept in
Jane Eyre
until Lily tore the book apart, it seems so long ago. Lily contemplates it for a moment. Mumma is in the background, in the window.

“What’s that in Mumma’s hand?” Lily asks.

“Scissors.”

“She’s waving.”

“Yes.”

Her eyes still on the photograph, Lily sucks in her upper and lower lips by slow turns, releasing them gently through her teeth.

“This picture belongs to Mercedes,” she says, finally.

“No it doesn’t.”

“I don’t want it.” Lily looks away.

“She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

Lily doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t look up.

“She’s your mother, Lily.”

The Old-Fashioned Girl has stopped turning but Trixie keeps watch just in case. Frances continues gently, “She died. It wasn’t your fault.”

Lily sits very still and listens, veiled by her hair which she has been wearing loose of late, it sweeps to the floor around her like a curtain of fire.

“She went to New York,” says Frances. “She was an opera singer. Something happened there. Daddy brought her home. She lay in this room and never said a word. Ambrose drowned in the creek. It was an accident. You didn’t drown, you got polio instead. I was there.”

The more Frances tells, the more she remembers. As though it were all parked, waiting behind the flimsiest of stage scenery — a scrim perhaps — and suddenly exposed by a trick of light; the countryside dissolving to reveal the battlefield, present all along.

“The night you were born. I don’t know why I brought you to the creek. I loved you. It wasn’t because I didn’t love you. I carried you into the water. I held you and I prayed.” Frances strokes her belly, feeling for a kick inside, but it’s all quiet.

“Did you baptize Ambrose too?”

“Yes.”

They sit for a long moment together, not talking, breathing in the soft cedar cloud.

Frances puts The Old-Fashioned Girl back in the hope chest, then turns and looks at Lily, who is growing up.

“Lily. If you want to ask me something, I’ll tell you the truth.”

Lily has dropped the photograph of the laughing girl. She looks up.

“Ambrose loves you, Frances.”

Frances takes Lily’s hand and places it against her belly. “Here. You can feel him. He’s awake now.”

Lily feels the ripple. She presses her ear against the site.

“What do you hear, Lily?”

“The ocean.”

The car horn blasts outside; Mercedes has learned to drive. Frances and Lily go to the window and wave down. Daddy is standing by the car, leaning on his cane, he smiles up. Lily turns away from the window, intending to close the hope chest before going downstairs, but she sees that Frances has already done so. She pauses at the top of the stairs and says, “Are you coming Frances?” Frances turns and goes directly to join her sister at the top of the stairs. No need to close the hope chest, for she sees that Lily has done so already.

It’s a lovely day for the drive to Mabou. Frances would rather have had her baby here at home with Mrs Luvovitz, but she relented because it seemed to mean so much to Mercedes — “They’re equipped for emergencies, Frances, it’s safer even than going into hospital, please dear, if only for my sake.”

James stands holding the passenger door open. Mercedes pulls on a pair of kid gloves as Frances climbs in beside her.

“Frances, I have to tell you a secret.”

“What?”

“I’m pregnant too.”

Mercedes’ smile trembles for a moment, then she bursts out in a high-pitched giggle, “April Fool!”

The car lunges in reverse down the driveway. Frances watches her sister’s laughing profile and reflects that Mercedes has been under a strain.

Blue Dress

Daddy and Lily are very happy together at home alone. It’s so peaceful. Three and a half weeks pass. Lily doesn’t realize the extent of James’s latest limitations until he starts to smell a bit rank. She helps him into the bath once a week. She lays out fresh underwear daily and bleaches the rest. Fresh and clean. She checks on him if he’s too long in the toilet. He sometimes falls asleep there. She tidies him, then wakes him up. He still spends an hour a day working in the shed but he misses Trixie’s company. They haven’t seen her since Frances left. Lily expects Trixie to show up at the foot of Frances’s bed in Mabou. Meantime, Lily has had to put mousetraps in the cellar and kitchen.

On April 25 the telegram arrives:
it’s a boy stop coming home wed stop
. Lily and Daddy toast the new arrival with milk. They consider a battery of names — Isador, Ignatius, Malcolm, Rupert, Bingo, George, Sebastian, Christopher, Pius, Lief, Horace, Romulus, Patrick, Pierre, Cornelius, Michael, Alec, Eustochium, Felix, Augustus, David — and decide on all of them. Until Lily comes up with Aloysius, which seems to say it all.

“Aloysius,” says James. “… Aloysius. Yes.”

“Aloysius,” replies Lily.

The first of May, month of Immaculate Mary. Lily is still in her white dress and headgear from the noon procession up Plummer Avenue to the church. It seems an appropriate outfit in which to greet her sisters and her new nephew. She has strewn the stone path to the house with Queen Anne’s lace and daisies. “Welcome Home” in Gothic script hangs from the veranda eaves. In the kitchen, bread sculptures cool on the table — Madonna and the Infant of Prague, and a
pietà
. She has prepared a feast: a roast cooked to the size of a wallet with raw turnip slices, cranberry sauce, baked potatoes — the two that failed to detonate in the oven — tea biscuits and molasses. Date squares, pits in. Upstairs, lily of the valley exhale on Frances’s pillow. All is in readiness. Last but not least, a big blue cake with white writing, “Happy Birthday Allowishes”.

The morning rain has turned to evaporating diamonds in the afternoon heat. Lily has had her eyes peeled on the street for the past three hours.

“Here they come!”

James joins her on the veranda. As soon as the car gets within range, Lily waves and runs back into the house to get the new camera. She gets a shot of the car as it turns into the driveway. Mercedes is waving now too but in the background Frances is, of course, more concerned with the bright blue bundle at her breast. Click. The car pulls to a stop. Mercedes’ hand goes up to her window. Click. The driver’s side opens. Click. Mercedes steps out, still waving, click. She runs up the path to Lily, click, click, click. And grabs the camera, jerking Lily’s head forward at the same time because the new camera comes with a strap. She hisses at Lily, “Not a word, do you hear me? Not a word.”

Mercedes glances up to include James in this proviso but he’s on his way down the steps with his cane, walking to meet Frances, who has stopped halfway up the flowered path. Mercedes moves to overtake him but “No Mercedes,” says Lily.