Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

“Rudy probably has a horrible plugged-nose voice and a lisp,” says Frances, mercilessly. “He’s probably a midget in real life.” How did Frances guess her secret, anyway? Mercedes has been so careful not to betray her heart, but Frances is uncanny; tying a tea towel around her face as a veil, batting her eyelashes and swooning in an all-purpose exotic accent: “‘Someday you weel beat me with those str-r-rong hands. I should like to know what it fee-eels like.’”

Mercedes has told only Helen Frye, who is in love too, with Douglas Fairbanks. Mercedes indulges Helen’s schoolgirl crush but can’t sympathize; Fairbanks is somehow smug and self-sufficient. Valentino is haplessly fierce and hopelessly needy. Helen once said he was coarse — there almost went the friendship. But they made up the next day and took turns describing their future married life with their respective paramours.

Whenever Mercedes has had a particularly lovely time with Helen, she feels a bit guilty. It pains her that Frances doesn’t seem to have any friends. Unless you can call those dirty sniggering boys at school “friends”. Frances skulks off with them behind the boonies at recess sometimes. Mercedes knows they probably smoke and spit and swear. It’s dreadful. And then, who knows what Frances does when she disappears from school altogether? Mercedes does her best, but it’s difficult keeping Frances out of trouble. For example, Frances always seems to have the latest issue of that lurid rag Weird Tales , by H.P. Lovecraft. Daddy does not permit trash in the house and Mercedes is constantly hiding Frances’s contraband under her pillow, or simply doing her the favour of tossing it into the furnace.

When Mercedes feels the prick of sisterly conscience, she invites Frances to tag along with her and Helen. Helen always purses her lips at the sight of Frances and Mercedes can’t blame her. The last time they made a threesome, it was to see Douglas Fairbanks again, in The Thief of Baghdad , at the Bijou. Frances was terribly provoking, speaking aloud all the lines in the script the second before they came on the screen, but worst of all, she scandalized Helen with “Okay watch, here comes the part where he gets flogged ’n he escapes from the palace and you can see his pecker right through his pants.”

Frances is a moving-picture fan too but she has different idols. Lillian Gish. Lillian Gish. Lillian Gish. Her hair is perfect, her eyes are perfect, her little mouth is perfect. She is so small and so brave. She can be bent, but never broken. Men are brutes, and if they are not, they are big galoots or else chivalrous princes who arrive too late. When Frances plays hookey, she can be found down at the shore, maybe chatting with the lobstermen — or, if she has the price of admission, slouched with her legs dangling over the seat in front of her in the ecstatic darkness of the Empire or the Bijou, taking in the matinée.

Having no funds of her own, Frances frequently manages to talk Mercedes out of a dime from the housekeeping money, then pilfers half as much again when Mercedes isn’t looking. If Frances takes Lily along of a Saturday, then Lily pays out of her allowance. Otherwise Frances just helps herself from Lily’s stash that she leaves right out in the open on top of the dresser they share. Frances only takes what she needs — “a mere bagatelle” — and she knows Lillian Gish would do the same. They have so much in common: forced to live in poverty; to stoop to shameful stratagems and desperate measures just in order to survive. And they both know what it’s like to live “way down east”.

For her part, Lily has been slain by Mary Pickford. She cries through Pollyanna every time. Frances tries to broaden Lily’s horizons: “Look Lily, don’t you see that once she turned into a cripple she got boring and sucky?”

“No.”

“That’s ’cause you’re a suck.”

“I am not!”

They’ll be walking home down Plummer Avenue sharing a fizzy Havelock Iron Brew that Lily has kindly sprung for.

“Just like in What Katy Did , she’s a holy terror till she breaks her back, then she’s a sooky baby just like you.”

“I am not a sooky baby, Frances.”

“Oh yeah? Prove it.”

Then Lily may take a poke at Frances, who laughs, holds Lily’s head just beyond arm’s length and watches her swing. And when Lily is exhausted, “Lily. Say bastard.”

Lily hesitates. Frances taunts, “See, I told you — baby.”

“Bastard!”

Frances looks around, “Jeez, Lily, not so loud.”

And Lily whispers, “Bastard.”

“Say horse’s arse.”

“Horse’s arse.”

“Say Lily Piper is a horse’s arse.”

“Frances Piper is a stupid bum-ass.”

“Lily.” Frances stops in her tracks. “You have really hurt my feelings this time.”

Lily’s eyes fill up. “I’m sorry, Frances.”

Then Frances smirks and says, “Suck.”

While Frances can tolerate Lily’s idiotic crush on America’s Sweetheart, she has no patience with The Sheik because ever since Mercedes fell in love with Valentino she’s been no fun. She won’t play any more, just patrols the house and makes the meals and acts like she’s lost a cucumber sideways up a woman’s most precious possession. Or works on her other obsession: the family tree. A dry diagram covered mostly with names of dead Scottish people. Frances knows that Mercedes has started her period. Maybe that explains it. Mrs Luvovitz came over one afternoon in January and locked herself in the bathroom with Mercedes for over an hour. Then Mercedes emerged with a kindly yet superior smile on her face, because Mrs Luvovitz had told her the wonderful news that she was a woman now. “And soon, Frances,” Mercedes simpered, “the same miraculous thing will happen to you.”

In the good old days, however, all three sisters used to play together. Lily was their doll, they could do anything with her. Until she started to scream. Then they’d let her be an active participant. She was great to play with because she would get so caught up.

“Let’s play ‘Little Women’, okay?”

“Okay, Mercedes.”

“Lily, you be Beth, okay? And we all tell you how much we love you and you forgive us for ever teasing you and then you die, okay?”

“Okay, Frances.”

Mercedes would be motherly Meg, and Frances would be tomboy Jo who cuts off her hair but gets married in the end, and Lily would be delicate Beth who was so nice and then she died.

Even though the Little Women in the book were Protestant, “Let’s say they’re really Catholic, okay?” and Frances and Mercedes would do extreme unction on Beth in her death-bed and apply a holy relic to her burning forehead, let’s say it’s a piece of the Shroud of Turin, okay? No, let’s say it’s Saint Anthony’s tongue.

“Goodbye, dear sisters, I’ll pray for you. Thank you for always being such dear sisters and for making cinnamon toast, and Jo for letting me play with your Spanish doll, and Meg for always being such a good cook. Good … bye.” Lily’s eyelids would flutter convincingly, then she would lie perfectly still not breathing. It was great. Mercedes would cry every time. In the early days so would Frances, but later on she would wreck it all by saying, “Now let’s go and steal her pennies and divide up her clothes.”

A year or so before Mercedes stopped playing, the game deepened. It darkened, time distended and they entered another world. They played “Little Women Doing the Stations of the Cross”. Lily got to be Beth being Veronica wiping the face of Jesus with a cloth and the picture of his face goes perfectly onto her cloth as a gift for her kindness. Mercedes got to be Meg being Simon of Cyrene who helps Jesus carry the Cross, and Frances wanted to be Jo being Jesus but Mercedes said that would be blasphemous so Frances got to be the Good Thief hanging next to Jesus. That is, she got to be Jo being the Good Thief.