Other Voices Magazine

The Monthlies

Winner September 2008

“People liked it. If you forget everything else, remember that.” – Francis Brown, Artist books and rough drafts, February 11, 1977.

Darling Girl
by Meg McCready

The heavy curtains drawn across the window block most of the afternoon light. In the dim lit room, the two sisters listen in silence to the faint sounds of conversation downstairs.

“They liked it. They did really,” Martha says finally.

Silky, sitting on the edge of the bed, continues to stare glumly at the threadbare carpet between her feet.
“They hated it. You’re only being nice,” she grumbles.
“I’m not.”
“Are.”

Martha walks towards the door.

“I’ll save you some dessert,” she says before leaving to join the rest of the family downstairs.

***

The conversation stalls as Martha enters the room. The members of the MacArthur family seated around the long dining table turn towards her expectantly. At the head of the table sits granddad, a shrunken old man with rheumy eyes in a cardigan several sizes too big for him. Grandma presides at the other end, a spoonful of dessert poised halfway to her open mouth. Beside her sits Martha’s dad looking concerned.

“Is she OK?” he asks.
“She’ll survive,” Martha replies taking her place opposite him.

She starts eating calmly, but inside she is fuming. Silky has managed yet again to make herself the centre of the family’s attention. It is something she’s been doing successfully since she was a toddler.

“Maybe I should go up?” Martha’s mum, Jean, says to no-one in particular.
“She’s a grown woman, for god’s sake,” blurts Simon. “Or supposed to be.”
“We have to make allowances,” granddad says, reaching to pat Jean’s hand. “She’s always been a bit nervy.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” responds Simon.

Martha, head down, keeps eating. She wishes her husband would shut up. His innuendos that Silky is a spoilt, twenty-two year old brat aren’t helping.

“She’s on a prescription,” Jean says defensively unable to hear any hint of criticism about her youngest daughter without bristling.
Martha’s dad nods sagely in agreement.
“She suffers from …”
“Retarded emotional development,” interrupts Simon.
“Simon!” Martha calls warningly.
“Would anyone like some coffee?” asks grandma, anxious to escape the growing tension.
“I’ll help you,” says Jean trembling with emotion.

***

“I’m sorry, Martha. I couldn’t help myself,” Simon says to his wife as they pick their way through the long grass in the grandparents’ garden. “I can’t stand how they pander to her.”
“She’s their darling girl. The maddening thing is I’m as bad as they are. Upstairs I did my best to convince her they loved it.”

When she was a child, Martha used to play croquet with her cousins on this lawn. In those days, grandma had a gardener two days a week and a daily woman for the house. Then, overnight it seemed, granddad and grandma were poor. Martha remembers whispered conversations that stopped when she came into the room.

Once she found her grandma crying in her mother’s arms. She’d never seen a grown up cry before, and it shocked her to discover they could. Then granddad went away for ages and grandma came to live with them.
“I can’t believe she could be so insensitive,” Martha continues.
“Maybe she didn’t realize?”
“What, that granddad had been involved in one of them?”
“It’s possible. She was only a child when it all happened.”

Martha doesn’t reply. It seems unlikely that her sister hadn’t put the pieces of the puzzle together and come to the same conclusion she had. This is the problem she thinks—not for the first time—of being part of a family that never talk about anything real.

“Yes, maybe you’re right,” Martha replies thoughtfully, appalled by the alternative: Silky knew exactly what she was doing when she gave their grandparents the large, glossy book entitled “Famous Frauds of the 20th Century.”\

***

In the kitchen, the women are clearing up.
“I think I’ll take her some pudding,” says Jean as she loads the dishwasher.
“Do that,” agrees her husband leaning against the counter. “Get her to come down.”
The offending gift, propped on the mantelpiece, dominates the room like a judge looking down on the accused.
“And tell her we love it,” adds granddad, his eyes watering. “Tell her it’s a lovely gift.”

Meg McCready recently moved to Edmonton to study professional writing at
Grant MacEwan. She was born and educated in England but spent the last
thirty years in Australia. She enjoys witnessing the changing seasons of the
northern hemisphere again, but “still calls Australia home.”

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