Then Frances turns back to the first page and begins:
8 pm, February 29, 1918, New York City
Dear Diary,
No, I will not use that form of address. That is a relic of childhood. This book will serve as a record of my progress as a singer. I will record only relevant facts which will prove useful as my training progresses. No gush….
Wax drips from the guttering candle-stub by the time Frances arrives once more at the last page. She closes the diary. “Goodnight, Kathleen.”
She turns her attention to what remains in the tissue-paper package.
Then she opens the hope chest.
The next day, James joins Frances on the veranda.
“Are you warm enough?”
“Yes thanks, Daddy.”
But he has brought an old tartan blanket and spreads it over her and Trixie anyway. “There.” He sits to the right of her on a kitchen chair next to her camp cot. He looks off at nothing in particular and starts talking, “I went down to New York because I got a letter.”
Frances doesn’t interject. She doesn’t look at him. She knows he will fly away if she does that, so she relaxes and listens to his story.
“It was the day of the Armistice. I got off at Grand Central Station and I walked all the way to where she was staying because I couldn’t get a cab. There were crowds. I didn’t know the war had ended….”
He trails off. They sit still and silent for a long comfortable time until he says to the middle distance, “Well it’s time I did a tap of work.” He picks up his cane and shuffles off to the shed. Trixie follows.
It takes six days. Mercedes leaves them each morning on the veranda and every afternoon she sees them when she returns up the street. It’s as though they hadn’t moved — although Lily assures her that they have been duly fed and watered. They look so peaceful sitting side by side, with their eyes settled on separate pieces of sky. Like old friends. Daddy and Frances.
Mercedes would like to sit and chat with an old friend, but she doesn’t have one. She had Helen Frye. And most of, all she had Frances. Where is Frances now?
Mercedes can see James’s lips moving as she approaches. What is he telling Frances? Day after day? He has always fallen silent by the time Mercedes is within earshot.
Walking home from school up Water Street on the chill seventeenth of November, Mercedes can see his breath. He is talking and talking, but by the time she reaches the veranda his words have given up their steamy ghosts. She greets them as usual on her way into the house, and finally hears something.
“How did the babies get in the creek, Daddy?”
Mercedes freezes on the threshold. Then walks briskly into the hall and, without removing her coat, runs up the stairs to her room. She leans against her door, slips a hand inside her blouse and feels for her opal rosary.
James reaches out his curled left hand without looking. He finds Frances’s head and bonks it, saying kindly by way of answer, “That’s all over and done with.”
“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.