Fall on Your Knees (9 page)

Kathleen threw herself into her work and cultivated an insouciant nonconformity — her sash low-slung and tied in front, hat pushed back, hands jammed into the pockets that she ordered her mother to sew into her uniforms, her long hair waving loose. The nuns made allowances. She had a gift.

In the fall of 1911 they sailed to the mainland — James, Kathleen and her singing teacher, Sister Saint Cecilia — to a recital at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Halifax. An invited audience of professionals.

“Look me in the eyes.”

She did. He invoked the spirits,

“What did Stendhal say of Elisabetta Gafforini?”

“‘Whether you see, or only hear her, your peril is the same.’”

“That’s the stuff.” His usual affectionate bonk on the head. “Now go out there and show ’em who’s boss.”

Kathleen sang Cherubino’s love poem to Susanna from
Le Nozze di Figaro
. Teachers from New York City gave James their cards, they were looking for the next Emma Albani. Told him what he already knew.

Henriette Sontag debuted at six, Maria Malibran at five; Adelina Patti was younger every year, her legend already way ahead of her mortality; but James was so serious about Kathleen’s career that he could wait for it to begin. Patience is the mark of the true player. Her voice would last, not burn out in a blaze of adolescent glory. He would send her to Halifax for a year to get her sea-legs. Then on to Milano at eighteen.

Kathleen turned twelve.

“When Malibran’s father told her she must go on for Giuditta Pasta, as Desdemona to his Otello, he looked her in the eye and swore that if she did not sing perfectly, when it came to the scene where Otello murders Desdemona, he really would kill her.”

Kathleen laughed and said, “You’re a melodramatic old feller, aren’t you.”

Materia marvelled. The girl was saucy, she deserved a good slap talking to her father like that, but never got one, got a chuckle and a wink instead.

Kathleen had a way of swaggering a little even standing still, and especially when leaning against a piano. She didn’t yet know how beautiful she was, but she’d begun to suspect. She’d begun to care about how she walked, to gauge her effect on others. She practised world-weary expressions in front of the mirror. She looked up the word “languid”. She adopted a tone of amused scorn and loved to kid her father about his romantic obsession with
la Voce
, ordering him to fetch her grapes and peel them too. “If I’m going to be a diva, you’d better start treating me like one.”

He loved her way: acting casual, working like a Trojan, singing like an angel. Not “angelically”. The voice of an angel. Winged, lethal, close to the sun.

When Malibran died too young too fast —

“Sure, sure, her voice went into her husband’s violin. And pigs fly.”

She had the world by the tail. A modern girl. James had read about the “New Woman”. That’s what my daughter’s going to be.

One Friday afternoon in March 1912, while Materia is in the kitchen cooking a magnificent silent supper and James is half-entombed in the old piano, Kathleen appears in the archway of the front room.

She’s wearing her Holy Angels uniform. She’s grown tall. Leaning in the doorway, her weight on one hip, feeling her teens though they’re a year off. A smile plays about her mouth at the sight of her old dad toiling over the strings of that decrepit war-horse. She glances down, bites her lip, then steals over to the piano and strikes a chord.

James springs up and around, though the hammers barely winged him, belts her with an open hand then a closed fist before he realizes who it is and what he’s done, and how he’d never, not even Materia, though God knows —

His daughter is crying. She’s shocked. He’s hurt her, how? With my own hands. Dear God.

He reaches out, grazes a shoulder, an elbow, finds the small of her back, crushes her to him, he has never, would never do anything to hurt you, rather die, cut off my arms. He feels so acutely what she feels, clasping her, “Don’t cry,” a perishing empathy, “Hush now,” his throat scorched and taut, “Shshshsh,” he must protect her from — he must shield her from — what? … From all of it. From it all.

A life and a warmth enter his body that he hasn’t felt since — that he has rarely felt. She will be safe with him, I’ll keep you safe, my darling, oh how he loves this girl. He holds her close, no harm, never any harm. Her hair smells like the raw edge of spring, her skin is the silk of a thousand spinning-wheels, her breath so soft and fragrant,
milk and honey are beneath your tongue
…. Then he shocks himself. He lets her go and draws back abruptly so she will not notice what has happened to him. Sick. I must be sick. He leaves the room and bolts through the back door, across the yard, over the creek to the garden, where he calms down enough to vomit.

Materia gets her balance in the archway where she stumbled just now, when James knocked her aside on his retreat. She came when she heard the commotion, and stopped in the doorway and watched. She’s still watching. She goes to her daughter.

One of Kathleen’s teeth is loose. She’s young, it’ll mend. There’s a silly amount of blood on the carpet. Looks worse than it is. Materia takes Kathleen by the hand to the kitchen, where she washes her at the pump. She puts her to bed and brings her soft food. Sings until the green eyes close. Takes a pillow and places it gently over the sleeping face.

But removes it the next instant. If Materia’s heart were full, she’d know what to do. Who to save, how. Loving the girl now seems like an easy task compared with protecting her. It’s because I failed the first test that I am confronted with the second.

Materia tries to think what to do. But thinking never helped in such a situation. She gets a whiff of salt air, a chill laps her cheek, she feels movement beneath her feet, the bed pitches and she is on a liner bound for New York City, the girl with the heart-of-flame hair at her side clinging to the rail. But the moment flees before Materia can get hold of it, a message telegraphed weakly over a sagging distance of time and space, every second word missing.

Materia knows now who sent Kathleen, and why. It’s her own fault God is forced to work in this way. Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.

Kathleen knew that her father had hit her by mistake, that he was terribly sorry. She knew he’d been working too hard and all for her sake. No harm done, the tooth settled back into the gum. She made him a card to tell him she loved him. She wrote a funny poem about “the lost chord”. They put it behind them.

The First Solution

The next night, Materia conceived Mercedes.

To her own surprise, Materia began to look forward to this child, not even caring if it was a boy. She was
Hebleh
again and she liked it this time. It made her feel close to her own mother, expanding body, avalanche breasts, slow thighs. Her troubles went into remission.

James still didn’t take her places, but he came alive again at night — she’s my wife, after all. Her dark body and soft mind allowed him to enjoy her in an uncomplicated way. Why did he ever look to her for conversation or mental stimulation? It was unfair of him. A man looks elsewhere for those things. James finally felt normal.

He put on a little weight; she fed him, ran his nightly bath, washed his back, licked his ear and reached into the water. He let her. He was soothed. He had outrun the demon that had leapt up in him the day he hurt Kathleen.

Materia tried to conceive in sorrow, telling herself that it was only to prevent a greater sin on her husband’s part that she acted the harlot with him, enticing him even when she was already pregnant. Lust in marriage is the same as adultery. Adultery’s a mortal sin. That’s in the Commandments. Materia prayed that God might overlook the impurity in her heart. For after all, her actions were correct.

Mercedes is born late in 1912. Materia loves her. She doesn’t have to try, she just does, it’s a Joyful Mystery. Thank you Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the saints. And God too.

Materia doesn’t begrudge Mrs Luvovitz a third son, Ralph, two months younger than Mercedes; maybe they’ll grow up to marry each other.

James doesn’t object or even comment when Materia gets Mercedes baptized by the priest at the Catholic church in nearby Lingan. She starts going to mass again, not just Sunday but every day. Holy water in the desert, she hadn’t known how thirsty she’d been. Materia lights candles and kneels to pray with Mercedes in her arms at the base of the beautiful eight-foot Mary. But Materia doesn’t look up. She looks straight into the ruby eyes of the grinning serpent dying under the Virgin’s foot.

Materia offers it a sacrifice. She will play only at church, and only from the hymnal. Her one concession is Mrs Luvovitz’s Yiddish songbook, which is the least she can do for a friend who has given so much. It’s the same God, after all.

Eleven months later, Mrs Luvovitz is on the spot again when Materia gives birth to Frances. Lucky thing, because Frances is set to walk out feet first. Mrs Luvovitz reaches in and turns her around. Not so much difference between a calf and a child. Frances is born with the caul. An especially good omen for an island child, being a charm against drowning.

Frances looks a little starveling and she’s bald as a post. Materia figures it’s because she conceived too soon after Mercedes, the goodness in her womb hadn’t yet been replenished. And her milk isn’t as bountiful. All the more reason to love this one too.

Frances is baptized at the Empire Theatre on Plummer Avenue. The temporary digs of the new Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church.

Mercedes is a good baby, following everything closely with her brown eyes, sleeping when she ought, wanting to hold the cup and not spill a drop. Frances laughs at seven weeks.

Along with Frances, the town is officially born in 1913. The boom town has a name now: New Waterford.

James feels the normal pride of a man with a growing family. He works double shifts but that’s a small price to pay. Those two babies are the proof. His demon is so far behind him now, he can reflect upon it: he was overworked. He hit his daughter by mistake and got terribly upset. In the ensuing panic there was a physical accident. Meaningless. Hanged men get hard-ons, for heaven’s sake.

Materia’s pregnant again.

James is glad to see that his wife has recovered her senses. No more roaming the shore, babbling. No more unnerving sights like that of his wife in the attic with her head in the hope chest, sound asleep or entranced. Never now does he hear her tormenting the piano as he comes up the walk from work. Crazy for religion, yes, but women are. And she’ll get her shape back after the baby.

The two little ones seem fine, Mercedes breastfeeding a dolly and cooing to Frances. Frances has hair now. Curly golden locks, hazel eyes with glints of laughing green, first word: “Boo!”

It rains all winter. Plummer Avenue is aptly named and runs with mud but the Pipers have plenty of coal to burn off the damp. The fire is lit and the radiators clank to life the moment Kathleen gets home from school.

Materia watches Kathleen mount the stairs to her room, then returns to the kitchen and mixes flour and water for doughboys while James washes up at the kitchen pump. She watches him head to the front room, already absorbed in his
HALIFAX HERALD
: News from merry old England: the Union Jack has unfolded itself over two acres of new territory every time the clock has ticked since 1880….

Five minutes later Materia wipes her hands on her apron and spot-checks James from the shadows of the front hall. Yes, he’s safely settled in the wingback chair beneath the reading lamp —
Sozodont: Good for Bad Teeth, Not Bad for Good Teeth….

Materia returns to the kitchen, where supper simmers and Mercedes rocks Frances in the cradle. She sets the table. Twelve minutes later, she climbs the stairs to peer through the inch of doorway Kathleen has left open — the girl has a bad habit of lounging about in her underthings, draping herself over the side of her bed reading, wearing toe-marks into the flocked wallpaper while brushing her hair, practising different accents — yes, she’s alone. Materia silently pulls the door to, turns and descends all the way to the cellar to stoke the furnace. The house can never be hot enough for the orchid on the second floor.

Once back in the kitchen, Materia fixes a honey lemon toddy and crosses again to the front hall — James now dozing in his chair, the paper slipped to the floor,
Disgruntled Serbia …
— continues upstairs, opens Kathleen’s door — “Mother! Can’t you knock?” — hands the young lady her preprandial tonic and watches her sip from the steaming cup. A green vein shimmers beneath the surface of Kathleen’s lily-white neck, summoned by the heat. Another glides from the crease at her armpit, to disappear behind the genuine silk camisole. A flush spreads from her cheeks down her throat, splashing her chest.

Materia lumbers back down to the kitchen, stirs the pot and hollers, “Supper!”

James shakes off his nap and arrives at the table rubbing his hands — “Something sure smells good.”

Materia yells again for Kathleen, who saunters in loosely wrapped in a kimono — “Must you bellow? I’m right here” — slouches into a chair; “What are we having?”

Materia replies, “Boiled dinner.”

“Oh boy,” says James.

Kathleen groans, he laughs. “It’s good for ya, old buddy, put hair on your chest.”

Kathleen winces, he’s so corny.

Real Cape Breton cuisine. Potatoes, turnips, cabbage, carrots and, if you’re prosperous, plenty of pork hocks. If you’ve ever had it cooked right, your mouth waters at the thought. Materia continues to surpass herself in the kitchen, everything she touches turns to juices. She hauls the pot to the table and ladles out big portions. Kathleen is English for the moment. “No cabbage for me, thank you, Mother
dear, je refuse.”

James is amused. He watches Kathleen rearrange the food on her plate and, after a token interval, gets up and makes her a toasted cheese.