Fall on Your Knees (40 page)

“Oh you know Mister, he’s grand, dear, just grand.”

Mercedes chuckles and nods.

Mrs Luvovitz asks, “How are your sisters?”

“Lily is grand, thank you, and Frances seems — well, I worry a little about Frances, she’s … still finding herself, you know….”

“We all worry, dear, but she’s a — deep down, you know, she’s fine.”

“Thank you, yes.”

Mrs Luvovitz reaches for a tin of Ovaltine and hands it to Mercedes. “Have you ever tried this? This we get from England.”

“Oh, really? No, I never have.”

“Here, try it, you’ll like it.”

“Oh” — Mercedes reddens and reaches for her purse, unsure as to — but Mrs Luvovitz places a hand on hers and, in the familiar scolding voice that puts Mercedes back at ease, “Ay-yay-yay, what do you think you’re doing, put your money away now.”

Mercedes says, “Thank you very much, Mrs Luvovitz, that’s awfully nice of you,” and feels foolish, aware she must be thanking Mrs Luvovitz rather too profusely because Mrs Luv’s smile has turned a bit pink. In fact Mercedes has never before seen such a sustained smile on the dear lady’s face. Mercedes smiles back, longing to ask, “Have you heard from Ralph?” Instead she thanks Mrs Luvovitz once again and turns to leave, but Mrs Luvovitz pipes up, “Have you heard from Ralph?”

Mercedes turns back. Now she is truly worried. “No I haven’t, oh dear —”

“He’s fine, he’s fine, our friends write he’s fine, he’s perfect, it’s just —”

“Oh, well, that is good news —”

“We haven’t had a letter from him and I wondered —”

“Oh dear.” They look at one another a moment, then Mercedes shakes her head. “I’m afraid I haven’t had one in quite some time either.”

Mercedes is both bewildered and embarrassed by what follows. Mrs Luvovitz squeezes Mercedes’ hands between her own and says, with her chin wrinkled in a smile against tears, “You’re a good girl, Mercedes, a wonderful girl.”

“Thank you, Mrs Luvovitz.” Mercedes drops the Ovaltine into her net bag and almost forgets the salt, adding, “I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve heard from Ralph.”

But Mrs Luvovitz has turned back to the shelves and is carefully straightening a box of steel wool.

Three weeks later, the longed-for letter arrives. Mercedes carries it up to her room, taking the stairs an unaccustomed two at a time. She flings herself onto her bed, kissing the envelope before her head hits the pillow, and spends a moment lying on her side just caressing the seal. Dear Ralph. His features have smoothed and his voice has deepened in her mind over these past many months. She sighs, catches sight of her red cheeks in her dresser mirror and commands, “Don’t be such a silly chit, Mrs Ralph Luvovitz” — which makes her giggle and she hugs her pillow and buries her face in it at the same time. Finally she composes herself enough to open the letter. “Dear Mercedes” — dear Ralph — “I feel conceited even writing this to you because you are such a swell girl and could have any fellow in the world instead of settling for me anyhow, but I feel I had better say it because maybe you’ll think I’m a coward if I don’t. Here goes. I am terribly sorry if I ever led you to expect….”

When Mercedes can get up, she crosses to her dresser and removes Ralph’s picture from the frame to reveal the poem with which she replaced Valentino’s picture almost five years ago. She returns to her bed and sits perfectly still, willing all her leaping blood back to low tide until, even if she tried, she could not so much as make a fist. Little by little her temperature drops as she stares at the words of wisdom in the frame, erasing Ralph.

By evening she is perfectly calm. Lucid, in fact, for the first time since she conceived her little crush on the grocer’s son. A Hebrew. Heavens. Meanwhile there are those who need me whom I have neglected.

Mercedes walks downstairs with her head perfectly balanced on her neck, one hand lightly gracing the balustrade. Tonight Frances will get a bath, no two ways about it. Mercedes enters the kitchen, goes directly to the Lourdes tin and counts the money. Hmm. We’ll have to do better than that, now won’t we? She lights a burner on the stove and dispatches the crumpled photograph of the boy with sticking-out ears. She cooks a large supper for Daddy. It pains her to realize how she has neglected her culinary duties of late. And Daddy is so kind about it, saying only, “I’ll pick up some cold cuts on the way home, Mercedes, don’t you go to any trouble.” Mercedes plans to keep the table groaning from now on. Poor Daddy.

Mercedes has told no one of the letter, so when Mr and Mrs Luvovitz drive into Sydney for the joyous reunion with their son early in June they are unprepared to meet his wife. Marie-Josée is petite and plump in just the right way. Dark and pretty. Catholic and pregnant. This dire accident in no way obscures the fact that she and Ralph are very much in love.

Don’t Whine

Today I saw a lovely girl with golden hair,
envied her and wished I were so fair.
When she rose to go, she hobbled down the aisle.
She had one leg, wore a crutch and a smile.
Oh God forgive me when I whine
I have two legs, the world is mine
.

Then I stopped to buy some sweets.
The lad who sold them had such charm.
I talked with him — my being late was no harm.
As I left he said to me, “You’ve been so kind.
You see,” he said, “I am blind.”
Oh God forgive me when I whine
I have two eyes, the world is mine
.

Later, I saw a child with eyes of blue.
Watching others play, not knowing what to do.
“Why don’t you join the others, dear.”
He stared ahead, he could not hear.
Oh God forgive me when I whine…
.

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

Dark Ladies

Frances is changing into her Guide uniform in the freezing back room of the speak one March night in 1932. Although she feels the cold more than many people, she welcomes it because it makes her outfits seem so fresh. Tonight she gets a bit of a start: a flaccid female voice plops against her like a jellyfish, “You’re no good.”

Frances looks up. The darker patch of gloom is unmistakeably Camille.

“Oh hi, Aunt Camille.”

“You’re trash.”

Frances pulls on her ripe woollen stockings. “We’re all sisters under the mink, honey.”

“Why don’t you kill yourself.”

Frances bursts out laughing and leaves.

At first glance, in her guide uniform, it’s hard to believe Frances is eighteen and not a child of twelve. At second glance, it’s hard to believe Frances was ever a child. Camille watches her go and wonders, what did my sister ever do to deserve that? But then, what did I ever do to deserve my life?

When Mahmoud’s eldest daughter Materia ran off with the
enklese
bastard, Mahmoud gave his second eldest daughter to Tommy Jameel, thinking that his being Lebanese was enough. It was not enough. Mahmoud knows that now; Jameel is no son-in-law of his.

Luckily there were three daughters left so he was able to make up for the first two. They’re all happy. Two married nice Lebanese Canadian boys from Sydney and the youngest married a doctor —
enklese
, but a good one. And his sons all married well: three got wives from the Old Country, which is ideal. Three married Canadian girls: one Lebanese, two Acadian. One son is a priest, God is great. That makes forty grandchildren so far, twenty-four of whom are Mahmouds, and fifteen of those are male.
Mneshkor allah
.

Camille could have had her pick of husbands. She really was the most beautiful in that many-sons sort of way. She could have been Camille MacNeil, Camille Shebib or Camille Stubinski. Instead she is Camille Jameel. She doesn’t blame Pa — Pa she reveres. And how could she blame Materia, whom she idolized? So she hates Frances, the slut who lives only to dishonour the memory of poor Materia.

Camille is a simple woman who wanted a simple life. Instead she got a complicated one. She giggled and batted her eyelashes and where did it get her? Jameel’s gin joint. Pa gave Jameel a big dowry, God only knows where that money went. Camille is not talented. She would have been good at the things she was raised to be good at. The world should not be organized to require heroines, and when one is required but fails to appear we should not judge. We should just say, poor Camille, she turned into a bitch the way most people would have — and stay out of her way.

In her heart, though, there is still expectation. A clearing in the woods. Not when she looks at her five sons, who were absorbed by their father as soon as they were big enough to carry a crate or run with a message. Not when she looks at her husband, who never even bothered to shave on their wedding night — he examined himself and the bedsheet right after to make sure he hadn’t been cheated. No. The clearing in her heart is where Camille pauses like a deer, and waits for Pa to see her.

The following night, the inky spectre waits once again in the back room. Frances actually gets a bit nervous — Camille is the type of woman who sits like a lump, then picks up an axe one day.

“Hi, Aunt Camille, what can I do for ya?”

“You’re shit.”

“My, that’s a lovely ensemble you’re wearing.”

“You’re a disgrace to my father.”

“How’s he doing, I keep meaning to drop by.”

“You’re not fit to set foot in my father’s house.”

Frances snaps shut her bulging Guide pouch and leaves. Camille has just given her an idea.

The address is in the phone book. Frances finds her way to a house on the hill. She flits from hedge to tree. From shrub to side wall — the coal chute is just big enough for a child. Once she is inside her grandfather’s house, there are quite a number of secret vantage-points. And plenty to steal, one hardly knows where to begin.

There’s a grate on the inside wall of the opulent front room. Frances’s face can often be seen there through wrought-iron vines, but no one ever thinks to look. The closet beneath the stairs is full of soft dark things. When its door stands open a crack it is possible to discern a thin white stripe interrupting the sliver of gloom. That’s Frances peeking out. Hands seeking furs and shawls have brushed right past her curls, hardly pausing to register them as just so much more mouton. And if, one night, the occupant of the master bedroom upstairs awoke and looked under the bed for no reason, he might see her lying there with her arms folded across her chest, staring up at the spot where his heart sleeps. That is, if she is not peering at him through the brass bars at the foot of the bed.

Frances drinks in her grandfather’s long lean frame, his skin the tone and supple texture of aged deer-hide. She can’t see Mumma anywhere but in the colour of him, in the liquid ebony of the eyes — though his are sharp — and the waviness of the steel-grey hair. She is pierced with a sudden longing for her grandmother and wonders how it is possible to miss what you never had. She is surprised to locate one family resemblance, however: there is something of Mercedes in the angles of Mahmoud’s body, his carriage and immutable spine. Frances concludes, not for the first time, that she herself is a changeling.

She always brings back a present for Lily. A sterling silver tail-comb with tortoiseshell teeth. A moonstone ring. A braid.

Lily strokes the dry black braid as though it were a creature prone to sudden death by fright.

“It was Mumma’s,” says Frances.

“Can I keep it?”

“It’s yours.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I found a trapdoor like in
Arabian Nights
. It leads to an underground garden. There’s everything you can think of down there just growing on the trees. Jewels, hair…. And babies that haven’t been born yet.”

Lily assumes this is Frances’s way of talking about the old French mine. She doesn’t like to think of Frances there alone, looking for treasure. Robbing the dead. Lily begs to accompany her but Frances says the Arabian garden is a “solo mission”. When Frances brings Lily back a single pearl, however, Lily starts to worry because it means that Frances has been diving. She is afraid Frances might decide to drown in the pool at the old French mine. Lily knows how tempting it can be to breathe water so she asks Ambrose to watch over Frances. Please, dear brother, deliver our dearest Frances from drowning as you delivered me.

The first time Frances stayed out all night, Mercedes was frantic. She changed in and out of her nightgown, wrung her hands and several times was halfway out the front door — but with no idea where to search she soon returned to her vigil at the kitchen table. Besides, what if Frances should telephone while she was out?

Mercedes did her fretting silently so as not to worry Daddy, who was in a much-needed and uncharacteristically deep sleep in the wingback chair. In the morning, Lily came down to find Mercedes peeling onions at the kitchen table.

“What are you cooking, Mercedes?”