Fall on Your Knees by Ann-marie MacDonald Page A

again.
    James is glad to see that his wife has recovered her senses. No more roaming the shore, babbling. No more unnerving sights like that of his wife in the attic with her head in the hope chest, sound asleep or entranced. Never now does he hear her tormenting the piano as he comes up the walk from work. Crazy for religion, yes, but women are. And she’ll get her shape back after the baby.
    The two little ones seem fine, Mercedes breastfeeding a dolly and cooing to Frances. Frances has hair now. Curly golden locks, hazel eyes with glints of laughing green, first word: “Boo!”
    It rains all winter. Plummer Avenue is aptly named and runs with mud but the Pipers have plenty of coal to burn off the damp. The fire is lit and the radiators clank to life the moment Kathleen gets home from school.
    Materia watches Kathleen mount the stairs to her room, then returns to the kitchen and mixes flour and water for doughboys while James washes up at the kitchen pump. She watches him head to the front room, already absorbed in his HALIFAX HERALD : News from merry old England: the Union Jack has unfolded itself over two acres of new territory every time the clock has ticked since 1880….
    Five minutes later Materia wipes her hands on her apron and spot-checks James from the shadows of the front hall. Yes, he’s safely settled in the wingback chair beneath the reading lamp — Sozodont: Good for Bad Teeth, Not Bad for Good Teeth….
    Materia returns to the kitchen, where supper simmers and Mercedes rocks Frances in the cradle. She sets the table. Twelve minutes later, she climbs the stairs to peer through the inch of doorway Kathleen has left open — the girl has a bad habit of lounging about in her underthings, draping herself over the side of her bed reading, wearing toe-marks into the flocked wallpaper while brushing her hair, practising different accents — yes, she’s alone. Materia silently pulls the door to, turns and descends all the way to the cellar to stoke the furnace. The house can never be hot enough for the orchid on the second floor.
    Once back in the kitchen, Materia fixes a honey lemon toddy and crosses again to the front hall — James now dozing in his chair, the paper slipped to the floor, Disgruntled Serbia … — continues upstairs, opens Kathleen’s door — “Mother! Can’t you knock?” — hands the young lady her preprandial tonic and watches her sip from the steaming cup. A green vein shimmers beneath the surface of Kathleen’s lily-white neck, summoned by the heat. Another glides from the crease at her armpit, to disappear behind the genuine silk camisole. A flush spreads from her cheeks down her throat, splashing her chest.
    Materia lumbers back down to the kitchen, stirs the pot and hollers, “Supper!”
    James shakes off his nap and arrives at the table rubbing his hands — “Something sure smells good.”
    Materia yells again for Kathleen, who saunters in loosely wrapped in a kimono — “Must you bellow? I’m right here” — slouches into a chair; “What are we having?”
    Materia replies, “Boiled dinner.”
    “Oh boy,” says James.
    Kathleen groans, he laughs. “It’s good for ya, old buddy, put hair on your chest.”
    Kathleen winces, he’s so corny.
    Real Cape Breton cuisine. Potatoes, turnips, cabbage, carrots and, if you’re prosperous, plenty of pork hocks. If you’ve ever had it cooked right, your mouth waters at the thought. Materia continues to surpass herself in the kitchen, everything she touches turns to juices. She hauls the pot to the table and ladles out big portions. Kathleen is English for the moment. “No cabbage for me, thank you, Mother dear, je refuse.”
    James is amused. He watches Kathleen rearrange the food on her plate and, after a token interval, gets up and makes her a toasted cheese.
    Materia eats her own supper, then she eats Kathleen’s, sopping up the broth with bread. James avoids looking at her — stooped over her plate, masticating slowly