She is the principal and therefore Frances’s arch-enemy. Not because she has threatened to expel Frances, but because she refuses to. And how else is Frances going to get out of school? Frances has done many bad things to this end. None of them, however, seems to have been quite bad enough for Sister Saint Eustace, a woman whose faith — judging by her belief in Frances — could move mountains.
“You have God-given ability, Frances. When are you going to apply yourself?”
Silence. Smell of beeswax. Frances fidgets.
Sister persists. “There are scholarships available for bright students, but you’ll have to buckle down and start achieving consistently.”
“Yes, Sister Saint Useless, thank you.”
Frances thinks Sister Saint Eustace does not notice.
Or: “Why do you do these things, Frances?” This could refer to anything from theft or defacement of other people’s property, to reducing a fellow pupil to tears by telling her that her parents have just been killed in an automobile accident, “Your mother’s head came right off.”
“Why, Frances? When we know that deep down you’re a good girl.”
“I’m sorry, sister. I’ll try to behave in a way that’s worthy of all the special efforts you make on my behalf.”
“What about what’s worthy of you, Frances?”
Silence. Frances glances up at poor disappointed Jesus on the cross. She glances down at her nicotine fingers.
“What do you want to be when you grow up, Frances?”
“A cabaret parasite.”
Sister’s expression does not change. Frances grows beet-red under the beady blue gaze. Finally: “You know, Frances, sometimes it’s the wildest girls who end up with the strongest vocations.”
No way, no way I’m being a nun.
“But you don’t have to become a nun to get a good education and pursue a satisfying career. Women can do anything nowadays. You’re an intelligent girl, Frances. The world is your oyster.”
Yeah, slimy and smelly.
Frances wonders, what will it take to get free? Because all Sister Saint Eustace does is poke at an old and tender bruise that reminds Frances what a bad apple she really is.
Frances has been going stir-crazy waiting for her life to begin. She has cut the sleeves off most of her dresses and shortened them herself — uneven is all the rage. She has decided she has a perfect figure, which is none. She removes the ribbons from her braids and ties them around her forehead and she has experimented with the bejewelled-brow look, courtesy of Mercedes’ opal rosary. In the toe of an odd stocking in her drawer she keeps a tube of Rose of Araby lipstick she swiped from MacIsaac’s. She has scorched her hair in an effort to straighten it, and always before her mind’s eye is Louise Brooks, with her jet-black shingle and fringe.
Louise Brooks has usurped Lillian Gish in Frances’s heart and on her wall. Lillian survives now only in an honorary capacity, alone on her virginal ice-floe. Louise smoulders from beneath a black widow’s veil, smirks in a tuxedo, flirts over the rim of a champagne glass, simpers on Jack the Ripper’s knee, and sprawls in a wicked heap, naked but for a handful of feathers. She is the best and the worst girl in the world. She is also the most modern. Frances longs to be sold into a “life of sin,” forced onto the stage and into “houses of ill fame” where life is tragic but so much fun.
In the meantime, she plays hookey down by the shore or at the picture-house. Lately she has taken to walking and trotting the Shore Road all nine miles into Sydney, where she heads for the docks of the Esplanade and hangs around the ships. She’s thinking about stowing away. She chats with merchant sailors from all over the world and entertains them with her own skinnamalink stepdance-Charleston for pennies. Lets the odd nasty one touch her chest for a quarter before taking to her heels.
The only thing that keeps Frances from running away is Lily. She has to make sure that Lily is okay before she can let her life begin. What “okay” means is not clear. Frances will know it when she sees it. For now, she contents herself with a fresh diversion: on November 12, she follows James to his secret place in the woods:
It was difficult because she didn’t have a car to follow him in and, besides, he would notice that. So she went on the floor of the back seat of his Hupmobile, under a blanket.
When the car stops, she hears him get out. Then she hears another automobile drive up. Sounds like a truck. She hears James’s voice and another man’s, soft and deep. She waits until their footsteps scuff away, then she carefully rises and peeps out the window. There’s a shack with smoke coming out the top of a tin chimney — I was right!
Her elation is such that she reflexively ducks back down, as though she had made a noise. She peeps out again in time to see James come out of the shack and stand with his back to her. Nearby is a truck, its trailer covered with a tarpaulin stretched up and over a frame of wooden ribs like a covered wagon. The other man comes out of the shack carrying a big barrel on his shoulder.
He is familiar to Frances but she cannot place him. He is a substantial man, though not unusually tall, with wide shoulders and chest; obviously strong, but there are no sharp edges to him. His body is a pile of cushions, his face is an open invitation to come in and relax. Honest round forehead, large eyes — there is an overall quality that Frances racks her brains to identify. Then it comes to her. He looks kind. Something about him reminds Frances of Lily. Maybe that’s why he seems familiar. The man rolls the barrel off his shoulder and into the back of his truck, where Frances sees a name stencilled, “Leo Taylor Transport”. This too is familiar, but just out of reach.
Frances watches as the man carries barrel after barrel and case after clinking case while James waits. When the man has finished, he ties the canvas flaps of the tarp together. James takes a roll of bills out of his pocket and peels off a few. The man says, “Thanks, Mr Piper.”
And James says, “All right, Leo. Drive safe.”
Let Me Call You Sweetheart
“You know why you have a boot-leg, Lily?”
“’Cause I got infantile paralysis when I was a wee tiny baby but God wanted me to live.”
It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon. Frances and Lily have been playing Covered Wagon on Mercedes’ bed. Mercedes is off volunteering at the hospital and Daddy is out Frances-knows-where. The chenille spread is the wagon cover and behind them are their children: Diphtheria Rose, Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley, Spanish Influenza, Maurice and the rest. They are a pioneer family bound for the frontier, shortly to be scalped. Lily has finally got the reins.
“You caught it in the creek.”
The horses stop. Lily waits.
“You caught it in the creek because Mumma tried to drown you as soon as you were born.”