Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

“Will you sleep with me tonight?”

“Frances, remember the time you dressed Trixie up in the baptismal gown?”

“Don’t make me laugh!”

A cool cloth, Frances your eyes are so pretty — always so pretty — feel better in the morning, Habibti…. “Te’berini .”

“Mercedes, remember that song?”

Forgive me, Frances.

“Sing it, Mercedes?”

“‘Oh playmate, come out and play with me, And bring your dollies three, climb up my apple tree. Shout down my rain barrel, Slide down my cellar door, And we’ll be jolly friends, for ever more…. ’”

In and out of sleep — that’s right, you rest now.

“It’s all right, Mercedes.”

Forgive me, Frances .

Frances is so thin it’s no problem for Mercedes to stretch out next to her on the couch, so light in her arms like a child, so hot like coals. The terrible wheezing starts and goes on for a long time, how can such a small body make such sounds — don’t be afraid. All things are passing, love never changes. Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this day be at my side …. The last of Frances leaks out her mouth warm and thick. Mercedes has never been sick a day in her life, is unafraid of disease as her father was of bullets, holds Frances all through the dawn though her chest has stopped heaving. Stroking her damp forehead, cool now like the grass; kissing her temple no longer throbbing. A child asleep, my sister.

Mercedes puts the picture of Anthony on the piano, closes the piano bench over the record album, kneels down and folds her hands upon the lid. She asks the Blessed Virgin Mary what she must do.

May Jesus have mercy on the Soul of

Frances Euphrasia Piper

Died April 25, 1953

Age 40

“We have loved her in life. Let us not abandon her, until we have conducted her by our prayers into the house of the Lord.” ST. AMBROSE

Solace Art. Co. - 202 E. 44th St. N.Y.

Sister Saint Eustace attends. Mr MacIsaac attends. Mrs Luvovitz attends, she is a widow now. Ralph and an altar boy carry the coffin. Teresa meant to keep a low profile but it’s difficult amid so few people. Mercedes pointedly ignores her — don’t come to me asking for forgiveness. Among Frances’s absent former cohorts there is surprise — not that she up and died, but that “I thought she died years ago.”

At the cemetery, Mrs Luvovitz bends and places fresh flowers on Materia’s grave, as is her habit. Benny is buried at the far end in a little patch blessed by a rabbi from away. Mrs Luvovitz comes and chats to Benny every day when she’s not in Montreal.

Ralph helps his mother back to her feet. Mercedes finds the sight of him indescribably sad. He is almost bald. He has a paunch and a foolish smile. Ralph is happy. He is an obstetrician. He loves his family and he survived the war. The second one. When it broke out, he joined up as a medical officer. He promised his mother he would not fight and he didn’t — although by 1936 it was clear to Mrs Luvovitz that, although she had always considered herself a German, Germany no longer considered her so. Nonetheless, she armed Ralph with a slew of addresses of relatives in Germany and Poland. Ralph spent the aftermath of the war treating people in DP camps and it was there that he came to realize that the addresses his mother had given him were of no use.

Now Mrs Luvovitz squeezes her son’s arm and remembers birthing the woman who is being buried today. Born with the caul. Mrs Luvovitz looks at the sea and thinks, when did this become my home? When I buried Benny here? When the second war came? She cannot discern the moment. She just knows that every time she returns to Cape Breton, she feels in her bones, this is my home. That is why she has declined to move permanently to Montreal. She spends half the year there. She loves her daughter-in-law, would you believe? And her five grandchildren who are only each perfect. They speak French at home, English at school and Yiddish with every second shopkeeper. Real Canadians.

Mrs Luvovitz watches the casket being lowered into the ground and says a prayer for the wild girl. She was smart. Maybe the smartest. What happened? I should have done something. Gone over there. He didn’t deserve to have daughters, there was something wrong there…. Mrs Luvovitz looks east at the horizon and reminds herself of what she has learned: that nothing in life is not mixed. That it is something to know where your dead are buried. That they are buried. Little Frances. Aleiha Ha’ Shalom .

Dirt hits the casket. Mercedes listens. She watches the ocean. She will go on teaching, of course. Pray for the souls of her loved ones, for their speedy release from purgatory into heaven. But who will be left to pray for her? To speed her reunion with her sister? No one, thinks Mercedes. Hopeless.

Hope is a gift. You can’t choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain. Mercedes watches the ocean. Chill green today, and rough. Purple farther out. She wonders when it was that she began to despair. All these years she mistook it for pious resignation. Now she sees the difference. Such a fine line between a state of grace and a state of mortal sin. What is the good of believing fervently in God if you wind up hating Him? How long have I hated God, Mercedes wonders. When did I first believe it was all up to me?

Which are the sins against hope?

The sins against hope are presumption and despair .

What is despair?

Despair is the loss of hope in God’s mercy .

Mercedes says to herself, “I am damned.”

Her face has eroded to shale, her brown eyes are dry with sorrow. The ocean sorely tempts her like a lover — she longs to shave her body and walk stinging into salt, naked and anonymous, battered and embraced by rage, nothing personal. Drown. The word is melodious. Beckoning.

Standing back from the grave-site, Teresa looks at Mercedes looking at the ocean and starts to pray for her. For the sake of the girl in the ground. Teresa stays and prays until everyone but she and Mercedes have left the grave and night has begun to fall. Finally Mercedes hesitates … then turns away, and walks home instead of into the ocean.

That night, the Virgin Mary tells her what to do.

Rose is sixty-five. Ancient for a jazzman. Rock ’n’ roll reigns and there are fewer gigs now. She has attained that thankless high status, to wit: Doc Rose is the jazz pianist most often cited by famous jazz pianists as their favourite jazz pianist. Knowledge of Doc Rose is a litmus test of connoisseurship. The records are hard to come by now and cherished by those in the know. The rarefied fan club knows everything about Doc Rose except that he and his manager live hand to mouth on 135th Street.

Lily cleans churches, including the one on the second floor. Rose plays chess and checkers on the corner with the other old men. Lily has never cut her hair. It hangs down to her knees, streaked with grey. There are lightweight aluminum braces available nowadays, but she never thought to buy one when they had the money. Her face is fallen but still sweet, her eyes the same. She is forty-five.

It’s just after eight on Sunday night. They’re watching “The Ed Sullivan Show” on television when the knock comes at the door. Lily opens it and Anthony smiles, embarrassed.