Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

“I was there,” says Frances. “Wasn’t I?”

James rises. “Think I’ll do a tap of work.” And makes his slow way to the shed. His story is done.

Frances stays looking at the sky in fifteen shades of grey.

Benny Luvovitz takes James and Lily out in a sleigh and helps James cut down just the right tree.

On her way home from school, Mercedes opens MacIsaac’s jingle-bell door to find Frances sucking on a cinnamon stick chatting and chortling with the old man, who’s nursing a ginger beer. He looks up, “Merry Christmas, Mercedes.” His shelves are not as full as they were in better days, but he reaches down a dusty box of peanut brittle.

“Thank you, Mr MacIsaac.”

“It won’t be long now, eh?”

“What’s that?” asks Mercedes.

“The great event.” Mr MacIsaac looks at Frances and beams. Mercedes stuffs the candy into her school-bag, saying, “Come Frances, time to go home.” She forgets to buy the headache powders that she went in for.

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.