No Worst, There Is None. Eve McBride
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Darce. C’mon, I’ll help you.” Reluctantly, Darcy pulls herself out of bed. She is a wistful child. Where Lizbett is impulsive, spontaneous, Darcy is pensive, hesitant, as if she regrets, not her short existence, but any disruption that may occur in the future. This has nothing to do with premonition and everything to do with her view of life, which is essentially sad. She was only three when their beloved Great Dane, Misty, died, but the sorrow that pervaded the house affected her deeply: seeing her mother, father, and sister weep openly. She clearly remembers the dog’s enormous bodily absence and the wonder of that. Now she fears separation of any kind, sensing it may be permanent. But she knows her parents, her mother especially, disapprove of any fuss, so she has developed a brave face. Getting up in the morning means she is going to have to put it on.
Lizbett leads her into the bathroom where she fills the sink with hot water, wets a washcloth, and washes Darcy’s face. Then she puts toothpaste on her toothbrush, says, “Open,” and brushes Darcy’s teeth.
Back in the bedroom, she pulls clean clothes out of the drawers, some panties, brown shorts, and a white T-shirt and helps Darcy put them on. By now, Darcy is awake and she bends over and buckles up her sandals.
“Let’s make the bed,” says Lizbett and together, one on each side of the bed, the sisters pull up the sheet and blue coverlet.
“Careful not to disturb Mr. Mushu and Geoffrey!” Mr. Mushu is their Siamese cat and Geoffrey is a stray tabby who arrived last winter during a snowstorm. The two beloved animals are curled up at the bottom of the bed cleaning each other.
“Darcy, honey, what are we going to do with you?” Meredith says when the girls arrive in the kitchen. “Stephen and his mommy are going to be here soon to pick you up. You barely have time to eat.”
“I can take some toast in the car. I’m an owl, like Daddy.” It’s true the two of them have trouble getting to sleep at night. Thompson reads in bed. Meredith has taken to allowing Darcy to do the same. Better to have her absorbed than tossing and turning. Books are her life, in any case. She often has two on the go. Meredith has tried to help her develop other activities, but Darcy has resisted. Apart from the piano lessons, which she also takes with her grandmother, she is not interested in anything else except the cats. And, unlike Lizbett, who has a group of close friends, Darcy only has Stephen, who has been her friend from nursery school. Meredith thinks this is far too passive a life for a child to lead. Her contribution to family life is being complaisant.
Maybe she is a late developer. She certainly was a late talker. While Lizbett had said words at ten months and full sentences by eighteen months, Darcy spoke few words, even at two years. Meredith keeps watching for an artistic bent to surface. Her artwork from school has shown promise. She is hoping that the art camp she is attending at the City Art Gallery will inspire her.
As Lizbett is leaving to walk to the Courtice Museum for her mask camp, Thompson hands over her lunch. “Thanks, Daddy,” she says. “Hope it’s good like yesterday.”
“Should be. It’s the same as yesterday.”
Meredith says, “Daddy and I are starting a new shoot, a big Christmas one for an important magazine. We’re going to be really, really busy for a while, at least the whole of this week.”
“Christmas in the summer?” Darcy asks.
“Crazy, isn’t it?” Meredith answers. “Just like Australia. But that’s how long it takes a magazine to prepare an article like this. Come straight home from mask camp, Lizbett. Brygida will be here and will get you dinner if we’re not home yet.”
Brygida Breischke is their Polish housekeeper who has been with them since Meredith went back to work and she is their lifeline. She keeps them corralled the way a border collie herds sheep, with an indomitable, tireless energy. As it is, she is inefficient and hurried, the kind of woman who runs through her work whacking the vacuum against baseboards and furniture and missing dirt and dust everywhere. She breaks a lot of dishes. In a day she can clean the house, do laundry, and iron shirts and pillowcases and still have time to make perogies or a veal-and-pepper stew. When the girls were little, she was doting, but firm, and took them to the park every morning. In the afternoons, they curled up on a sofa with her and watched soap operas. She thought they improved her English.
Her daughter Aniela often came to the Warnes’ with her mother during school holidays and Lizbett and Darcy love her. Meredith thinks of Aniela almost as a niece. When Aniela graduated from art school, the Warnes helped her to get a job at a gallery. Both Brygida and Aniela have spent nights at the Warnes’ to get away from Tadeusz, the husband and father, when he knocked them around.
Now Brygida only comes in the afternoons and stays to get Lizbett and Darcy’s dinner if Thompson and Meredith are late. But they don’t like her cooking. They find it greasy and mushy.
“I don’t have to eat here tonight,” Darcy says. I’m having supper at Stephen’s.”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”
“And Mom. I wanted to go to the library to look at mask books. I told you.”
“There’s going to be a big storm, Lizbett. I think you should come right home.”
“Mom! The teacher told us to. I have to. Storms don’t matter. I always go to the library by myself.”
Lizbett is keen to please her teacher. She has engaged with Mr. Searle … Melvyn (he has told them they can call him Melvyn) … with Melvyn in a compelling way. She thinks about him a lot; finds him cute. His suggestions for her work flatter her. He is not like other teachers. He doesn’t have that grown-up distance. It’s not that he jokes or even fools around. He is simply kid-like, maybe because he is closer to their size, maybe because he has a young face. Maybe because he is right in there with them and seems to like them so much. She even thinks she might be his favourite and she likes that.
Thompson says, “Let her, Mer, if it’s so important to her. She’s a big girl. And the storm may not happen, anyway.”
Meredith acquiesces. The library is three subway stops north from the museum and Lizbett has made the trip many times. Maybe Thompson’s right. Maybe the rain will hold off. In any case, she’ll be mostly underground.
“All right, lovey, go. Now, off you go, lambies, or you’ll be late. Don’t dawdle. And Lizbett, take your umbrella.”
“I already have it,” she says, going out the door where Stephen and his mother are waiting for Darcy.
3
A Monday Afternoon in July 1986
Thompson and Meredith
Later, when Meredith thinks about the superficiality of her day — that she was moving pieces of food by centimetres — while her daughter was being violated, she will feel sick with disgust. Her life on her daughter’s last day on earth was meaningless.
And after today, July and Christmas will never again be the same for Meredith, but for now she is the only one of the crew on the shoot for RARITY who feels Christmasy. It is muggy and dark outside. The air is heavy from the threatening storm. But the heat reminds her of Christmases in Australia when she was growing up. Steamy, debilitating heat. Yuletide heat. On Christmas Eve, her father’s parishioners would bring blankets and sit outside in the sultry summer air on the lawn of the church and everyone would light candles and sing traditional carols.
On Christmas morning in the close heat of the white clapboard church, her father, every year, talked of the importance of the birth of hope and grace and how that was what they were celebrating, not the secular festivities. Jesus was our Saviour, he said, because as the Son of God, in giving us his life, he gave us enlightened purpose. His arrival this day was a Supreme gift, the gift of a Saviour.
Rubbish and bunk, Meredith thought. The same, year after year. The words fused into a big, boring lecture. They were about duty, not Christian duty, to which she felt petulantly antagonistic, but duty to her father, to appear to listen and understand and believe. When she was young, all she