Free Fall on Your Knees by Ann-marie MacDonald Page B

Trojan, singing like an angel. Not “angelically”. The voice of an angel. Winged, lethal, close to the sun.
    When Malibran died too young too fast —
    “Sure, sure, her voice went into her husband’s violin. And pigs fly.”
    She had the world by the tail. A modern girl. James had read about the “New Woman”. That’s what my daughter’s going to be.
    One Friday afternoon in March 1912, while Materia is in the kitchen cooking a magnificent silent supper and James is half-entombed in the old piano, Kathleen appears in the archway of the front room.
    She’s wearing her Holy Angels uniform. She’s grown tall. Leaning in the doorway, her weight on one hip, feeling her teens though they’re a year off. A smile plays about her mouth at the sight of her old dad toiling over the strings of that decrepit war-horse. She glances down, bites her lip, then steals over to the piano and strikes a chord.
    James springs up and around, though the hammers barely winged him, belts her with an open hand then a closed fist before he realizes who it is and what he’s done, and how he’d never, not even Materia, though God knows —
    His daughter is crying. She’s shocked. He’s hurt her, how? With my own hands. Dear God.
    He reaches out, grazes a shoulder, an elbow, finds the small of her back, crushes her to him, he has never, would never do anything to hurt you, rather die, cut off my arms. He feels so acutely what she feels, clasping her, “Don’t cry,” a perishing empathy, “Hush now,” his throat scorched and taut, “Shshshsh,” he must protect her from — he must shield her from — what? … From all of it. From it all.
    A life and a warmth enter his body that he hasn’t felt since — that he has rarely felt. She will be safe with him, I’ll keep you safe, my darling, oh how he loves this girl. He holds her close, no harm, never any harm. Her hair smells like the raw edge of spring, her skin is the silk of a thousand spinning-wheels, her breath so soft and fragrant, milk and honey are beneath your tongue …. Then he shocks himself. He lets her go and draws back abruptly so she will not notice what has happened to him. Sick. I must be sick. He leaves the room and bolts through the back door, across the yard, over the creek to the garden, where he calms down enough to vomit.
    Materia gets her balance in the archway where she stumbled just now, when James knocked her aside on his retreat. She came when she heard the commotion, and stopped in the doorway and watched. She’s still watching. She goes to her daughter.
    One of Kathleen’s teeth is loose. She’s young, it’ll mend. There’s a silly amount of blood on the carpet. Looks worse than it is. Materia takes Kathleen by the hand to the kitchen, where she washes her at the pump. She puts her to bed and brings her soft food. Sings until the green eyes close. Takes a pillow and places it gently over the sleeping face.
    But removes it the next instant. If Materia’s heart were full, she’d know what to do. Who to save, how. Loving the girl now seems like an easy task compared with protecting her. It’s because I failed the first test that I am confronted with the second.
    Materia tries to think what to do. But thinking never helped in such a situation. She gets a whiff of salt air, a chill laps her cheek, she feels movement beneath her feet, the bed pitches and she is on a liner bound for New York City, the girl with the heart-of-flame hair at her side clinging to the rail. But the moment flees before Materia can get hold of it, a message telegraphed weakly over a sagging distance of time and space, every second word missing.
    Materia knows now who sent Kathleen, and why. It’s her own fault God is forced to work in this way. Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.
    Kathleen knew that her father had hit her by mistake, that he was terribly sorry. She knew he’d been working too hard and all for her sake. No harm done, the tooth