Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

James reaches Frances, puts out his arm for her, and she takes it. Together they walk to the house. Frances is wearing a sky-blue dress to go with the darker blue bundle she cradles with her free arm. When they reach the foot of the veranda, Lily sees that it is not a bundle at all, but Frances’s breasts. Huge and leaking. Staining her pale dress a royal blue.

By evening Frances is still asleep upstairs on her bed, her face crushing heavy scent from the lily of the valley. In the lower reaches, the decorations are down. They have eaten no supper. Mercedes consents to a cup of tea.

“The birth went smoothly.” Mercedes lifts her cup but her hand shakes so badly that she sets it down again on the kitchen table. “Frances was very brave. The sisters said it was as though she felt no pain.”

Lily and James wait for her to continue.

“It was a boy. He was, of course, quite dark. And very healthy.”

“You saw him,” says James.

Mercedes nods and the tears come. “He was beautiful. A beautiful baby with a lusty cry.” She smiles a little at the recollection.

“Did you hold him?” Lily asks.

Mercedes nods yes.

“Did Frances?”

“He took to the breast right away, there was no problem.”

Mercedes catches James’s eye and he looks down, shaking his head.

“What happened to him?” Lily is confused. She seems to be the only one who doesn’t understand. Mercedes turns to her and explains tenderly, “He just died, Lily. Sometimes it happens, a baby just dies in its sleep, they don’t know why.”

James nods, his mouth tightening. He says in a would-be matter-of-fact voice, “Crib death. That’s what happened to the first Lily.”

“Other Lily?”

“That’s right,” says James, rising to leave. “Was he baptized?”

Mercedes nods, starting to cry again. As James shuffles past he bonks each of them affectionately on the head with his bad hand and says without looking, “Night-night, girls.”

“Good-night, Daddy.”

He shambles from the room. They hear him clear his throat once or twice when he reaches the hall.

Mercedes puts forth a hand and strokes Lily’s hair, “Sometimes, if a child is very special, God might choose to spare it the pain and temptations of this world, and take it straight to Him.”

“What was wrong with him?” Lily is suspicious.

“Why, nothing, Lily. He was perfect.”

“You said he was ‘special’.”

“Yes, specially beloved of God.”

“That means there was something wrong with him, he was crippled.”

“He wasn’t crippled.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Lily. Look at me.” Mercedes continues gently, “I have some nice news too.”

Lily waits, not trusting. Mercedes takes Lily’s hand and leans forward. “While I was at Mabou I saw the bishop. He’d like to have a talk with you.”

Lily looks up. “What for?”

“He wants to hear about your visions.”

“You mean Ambrose?”

“Yes. And other things.”

“What other things?”

Lily’s hand cools and moistens in response to Mercedes’ gathering warmth.

“Your special way with the sick and the lost.”

“Who?”

“The veterans, for example. And Frances. And Daddy —” Mercedes’ eyes have begun to shine, giving Lily the old creepy feeling of being a front for some figure situated immediately behind her, a figure she knows will disappear no matter how suddenly she turns — “And your special knowledge of God’s plan.”

The soft fur at the nape of Lily’s neck stirs. She can no longer resist, she turns around in her chair but there is no one behind her — nothing to see but the oven, standing where it has always stood.

“What are you looking at, Lily?”

“Nothing. I thought I heard something.”

Mercedes’ gaze follows Lily’s to the oven. And now the filaments at the back of Mercedes’ neck likewise bristle to life.

“What does he want?” asks Lily, turning round again.

“Who?”

“The bishop.”

“He wants to interview you. To find out if God has a special plan for you.”

“How’s he going to find that out?”

“By listening to you tell your story. And — Lily, this is the most wonderful part — you know how I’ve been saving so that we could go to Lourdes for your fourteenth birthday?”

Lily waits.

“Well, God has provided. There’s more than enough money for us to go together and to stay as long as it takes to petition Our Lady for a cure.”

“I’m not sick.”

Mercedes flushes slightly and her eyes return to this world.

“Lily. Don’t you want to have two good legs?”

“No.”

Mercedes had not counted on this.

“But Lily. If you are blessed with a cure, it will be proof that God really does have a special plan for you.”

“I don’t need proof.”

Mercedes is vexed, for Lily is, of course, right. She requires no proof because she has faith. But the bishop requires proof. Rome requires proof. And Mercedes requires that Lily’s goodness — the essential goodness of this family — be revealed for all to see.

“Lily….” Mercedes lifts a lock of Lily’s hair and slowly starts to wind and weave, “Do you know how pretty you are?”

Lily begins her habit of sucking in her lips one at a time, passing them back and forth over her teeth.

“I know you’re afraid, Lily.” Lily’s hair is so smooth, her honey cheeks tinted rose, her lips flushed and full. “Change is frightening even when it’s for the good. But Lily, I also know that you love your family and that, in the end, you’ll do what’s best for everyone.” Mercedes strokes the long gleaming braid and lets it fall.

Lily remains still as Mercedes rises and takes her tea from the room. After a moment, Lily hears the piano and Mercedes’ slender voice floating above it, “‘A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-ve Mari-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ia…. ’”

Like “Londonderry Air” — or, as Frances always called it, “London Derrière” — many people find it impossible to hear this hymn and not swell with sweet guilt at how they ought to have been nicer to their parents while they still had the chance. But for some reason it only makes Lily angry. Perhaps because she has always been so nice.

Lily rises and leaves the kitchen, past the front room — “‘gra-a-a-a-a-a-zi-ia-a ple-ena-a-a-a-a-a’” — where she can just see the top of Daddy’s dry flaxen head above his parapet of books. She proceeds up the stairs, past the room where Frances has not stirred among moist sheets and up to the attic to do the one thing she can for Frances.

Lily is set to break the lock on the hope chest with her bare hands — she intends to remove the baptismal gown and dispose of it for good so that Frances need never come across it. But the hope chest isn’t locked. The lid is down but not quite flush to the frame of the box itself. Lily lifts the lid. The cedar smell wafts up cloaking a second smell — in all likelihood another mouse entombed and decomposing. What light there is reflects feebly from the yellowed satin of the old baptismal gown. Lily remembers the garment spread lightly over Frances’s beloved dolls, not wrapped about them, but she must be mistaken because, when she slips her hands beneath and lifts, the gown feels full and heavy. Too heavy for dolls. Cool fur. Trixie. Swaddled and entwined.

“Trixie.” She must have leapt in for a nap and the lid shut. Oh Trixie. Oh no. She must have panicked and tangled herself up, winding and twisting until she finally came to rest. “Poor Trixie.” Lily strokes the yellow eyes shut, but there is nothing to be done about the gaping jaw.

A truly terrible smell now, the body having been disturbed. Lily takes the shallowest of breaths to avoid her gag reflex as she carries Trixie down the attic steps. On her way past Frances’s room, she sees Mercedes by the dancing light of a candle, seated on the edge of Frances’s bed with an empty tray in her lap. Lily continues down the front hall stairs.