Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

Mercedes feels calmer by the time she arrives in the living-room. Daddy will be home soon and she musn’t show that anything’s wrong. She sits down at the piano. No doubt Lily knocked over the figurine by accident, she is a child after all — jab jab jab at that sticky C sharp, Daddy keeps saying he’s going to fix it but never does — Mercedes is under the impression that she has forgiven Lily for the family-tree incident and now she is preparing herself to forgive Frances for mutilating the Old-Fashioned Girl. She turns to page thirty-two in Everybody’s Favorite Songs . Oddly, Mercedes has always found it much easier to forgive Frances than to forgive Lily, even though Frances is satanically inspired and Lily is unarguably innocent. Mercedes needs to forgive Frances the same way Frances needs to comfort Lily.

Mercedes goes to touch down lightly on the keys but stops and reaches into her pocket, where she has forgotten Kathleen. She takes the photo out and props it on the music ledge next to the song book. Kathleen in her Holy Angels uniform, hands on her knees, laughing. She was beautiful. A slight blur around her hair because she wouldn’t keep still long enough for the camera. There, says Mercedes to Kathleen with her mind, you can listen and watch and I’ll play you a song.

Mercedes starts to play. And to sing sincerely:

“‘Darling I am growing old. Silver threads among the gold, shine upon my brow today, life is fading fast away. But, my darling you will be, will be, always young and fair to me. Yes! My darling you will be, always young and fair to me.’”

Trixie, Frances, then Lily quietly file in. Lily’s face is black with coal except for a wide oval around her mouth. Mercedes sees them but keeps singing. Frances looks at Mercedes and figures, I guess she hasn’t been up to her room yet.

Frances, Lily and Trixie sit on the sofa and listen.

“‘With the roses of the May, I will kiss your lips and say, Oh! My darling mine alone, You have never older grown.’”

Daddy is in the doorway. The song ends.

“That was lovely, Mercedes.”

“Thank you, Daddy.”

“Play something else my dear,” he says, crossing the room to sit in the wingback chair.

“Play ‘Oh My Darlin’ Clementine’,” Lily requests.

“What in the name of time have you done to your face?”

“We did a minstrel show in the cellar, Daddy,” says Lily.

James looks at Frances. Frances just looks back. Daddy smiles at Lily,

“Come here ya wee scallywag.”

Lily jumps into Daddy’s lap.

“Go on and play, Mercedes.”

Mercedes plays and Daddy and Lily sing, cuddled together in the wingback chair. Frances watches them as though transfixed. Lily belts out her favourite part, “‘herring boxes without topses, shoes they were for Clementine.’” Lily always wonders what happened to Clementine, the miner forty-niner’s daughter, “lost and gone for ever,” where?

The song comes to an end; Daddy gently shifts Lily off his knee and rises.

“Tell you what, Mercedes, I’m going to fix that C sharp right this minute.”

“Oh thank goodness, Daddy, it’s so annoying.” Mercedes is a lady. She is able to chat with Daddy like that. Frances marvels. James opens the piano lid and looks in. “Give it a tap, Mercedes.”

She does.

“Nothin’ to it,” says James, “I’ll get my tools.” Then he sees the photograph. The laughing leaning-forward girl with the halo of hurry, “Daddy!” The house is behind her and you can just see Materia in the kitchen window waving. Something bright in her hand. Flashed against the lens. James can hear Kathleen laughing at him, totally unafraid, nothing to be afraid of. Not like now in this room. Now is the dim past. Then was the shining present. He hears her laugh. He hears the water trickling in the creek and flash goes Materia’s waving hand, although her face is barely visible. Kathleen is fourteen. You think you’re safe. Until you see a picture like that. And then you know you’ll always be a slave to the present because the present is more powerful than the past, no matter how long ago the present happened.

If only he hadn’t let her go so far from home. If only he had gone with her to New York. None of it would have happened. She never would have got pregnant. Not that I regret Lily, Lily is my consolation, but my first girl…. She’d be with me now. Oh my darlin’ . The breath assaults James’s lungs and he comes out of the black and white picture back into the room of living colour.

And looks around. My good daughter. My bad daughter. And my dear daughter’s daughter — in blackface. That isn’t even worth getting riled about, although riled is what Frances tries to get me with something like that.

“What’s this doing here?” he asks Mercedes, softly. There are no pictures of Kathleen anywhere. Not a spinning wheel in the kingdom, so to speak, and then you prick your finger.

Mercedes answers, “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

Frances stares at James. “I did it.”

Mercedes swivels on the piano stool. She wants to say to Frances, no, it will go much harder with you, you don’t have to atone for the ruin of my silly possessions by taking the blame for this. But Frances deliberately digs her own grave. “Kathleen was my sister and I’d like to see her now and then.”

James is getting whiter. The blue part of his eyes is heating up.

Frances stokes him. “Why can’t we, anyhow? Was there something wrong with her? Was she a lunatic or something?” Casual insolent tone.

Mercedes can’t find her voice. It’s autumn in her mouth and all her tongue can do is rustle. Lily doesn’t like it when Daddy looks at Frances like that. It’s not Daddy any more. Not her daddy.

“Was she a slut?” Frances, in a helpful tone of voice. Ahhh, that’s just right. Look at him, all lit up like an Easter candle.

James says quietly to Frances, “Come with me.”

Frances shrugs and gets up, nonchalant, grinning at Mercedes. Mercedes covers her face with her hands. James says to Mercedes, “Take your sister out for a while.”

“Come on, Lily.”

Lily’s forehead has the bump in it but she obeys.

Frances saunters across the room towards James, who finally snaps at the sight of her slouching towards him, grabs the back of her neck and flings her through the doorway. Mercedes hustles Lily out the front door.

“Where are we going, Mercedes?”

“Out.”

“I broke your beautiful thing.”

“I don’t care, Lily, just walk please” — down the porch steps.

“Frances glued it but I broke it and I tore up your book too, I didn’t mean to.”

“They’re just things, Lily, they don’t matter.”

Lily is having a hard time keeping up but she has no choice, Mercedes has her by the wrist.

“I’m sorry, Mercedes.”

No answer.

“Mercedes —”

“That’s enough, Lily.”

They walk-drag through town until they come to the cliff above the shore. Mercedes stands staring out at the grey sea. Lily sits with her legs dangling over the edge.

“How come I never saw that picture?”

“You know perfectly well, because Daddy doesn’t like to dwell on Kathleen. It grieves him.”

“Did you hide it?”

“Yes. In the book you destroyed. That’s how it came to be out in the open.”

“That’s the book Frances likes to read. That’s how come I accidentally wrecked it. Because Frances accidentally made me.”

“Well, then. She has you to thank for whatever Daddy gives her.”

“How come you put the picture on the piano, Mercedes?”

Mercedes freezes. How come indeed? Surely not on purpose. Mercedes turns her head slowly and looks at Lily. She sees her falling over the cliff to the rocks below. The only thing that would not break would be her withered leg in its steel brace.