As she made for the chapel before her domestics lesson, a thought occurred to her.
“I need the infirmary,” she announced to Matron Smith at the dining hall door, massaging her forehead.“I have a dreadful headache.”
The matron waved her away with a lazy hand.“Go.Then straight on to your duties when you’re finished, Radcliffe.No mucking about.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Emily went up to the second floor and pulled up short in the corridor outside the infirmary.There was already a queue of four other women lined up along the wall outside.There never used to be queues.They turned at Emily’s approach, and she took in the pained expressions on their faces.Two of them were standing with their feet wide apart, a most unladylike stance that would earn them at best a verbal lashing from a matron, or a shot to the back of the leg with a stick.
Emily took her place at the end of the line and waited, considering.The girl in front of her kept shifting her feet, and looked close to tears.She was a little younger than Emily, heavy-set with dark hair pulled up into a bun.Emily thought her name might be Jessica.
“I think we might be here for the same reason,” Emily ventured quietly, then introduced herself.“Is yours burning?”
The girl’s face reddened, but she looked relieved.“And itching!”she hissed.“The bumps…” She trailed off, aghast.“And I don’t even know how I got it!The lice was better than this!”
“Me too,” Emily said, not bothering to keep her voice down.“What about you?”She directed the question at the other two women in line, who both nodded.
“Do you think Stone’ll just douse our fannies in gasoline, too?”the woman at the front joked.
Emily glanced at the closed infirmary door.“Did this start for all of you after you saw Dr.Stone last time?Did she, uh…” She swallowed.“Did she inject you with anything?Use a needle down there?”
They all nodded, and Emily’s sense of foreboding increased, but it was laced with anger, and curiosity, and a sense that this story was about to go deeper than she’d imagined.These girls—and who knew how many more—had all been deliberately infected by a doctor who was supposed to be healing them.
Why?
CHAPTER 23
RACHEL
Summer, 1985
As was often the case in the summer, Mary was back, and without much explanation beyond “I felt like a visit.”
She had a new boyfriend, some guy named Roger who owned his own contracting business in Kitchener, where she was now living in a brand-new townhouse with trendy white-tile countertops in the kitchen, black appliances and even a microwave.
“None of this old wood,” she’d told Dora and Rachel with a dismissive wave around their beloved kitchen.
Dora had asked how she afforded the rent on a place like that, working an hourly wage at Tim Hortons, but, fast as a whip, Mary had already moved on to talking aboutBack to the Future, which she and Rachel had just gone to see at the Starlite Drive-In.She also seemed able to continue to pay the rent on that house even though she was taking the summer off work to be in Bayfield.That hadn’t even occurred to Rachel until she overheard her grandmother pressing her mother about it later.
Since Rachel’s graduation from high school, she’d spent most of her time slinging ice cream at Two Scoops on Main Street, as she always did, and—uncharacteristically—spending time with her mother.Mary hadn’t been to visit in a year and a half, not since the two months she’d spent wintering on the couch and in her childhood bed, depressed and unhinged.There was, Rachel had to admit, a marked improvement in her since then.She had more weight on her frame, and the dark circles that had entrenched themselves beneath her eyes had faded in the toasty tan she spent her days accruing, lounging on the chaise in the backyard with a cigarette in one hand and a lukewarm Coke in the other.But mentally she seemed better, too.She was less scattered and erratic, didn’t drive as though she had a death wish for herself and everyone else on the road.She slept a normal number of hours, and at night instead of in the day.Dora thought she might be on, as she put it, “proper medication,” and Rachel wondered what might be possible in their relationship if only she would fucking stay on it.
Rachel was going to study science at the University of Windsor in the fall.She’d done well in science in school, liking the cut-and-dry nature of science and math: that something was right or it was wrong.It was or it wasn’t.She couldn’t stand her mandatory English and History classes, where she had to argue for something on one side or another.It was exhausting.Rachel wanted facts, not opinions.There was always an answer to something, you just had to dig deep enough until you found it.
“The first person in the family to go to university,” Dora had said, beaming, when Rachel ran into the kitchen back in February, dancing on the spot holding the acceptance letter aloft.“I’m so proud of you.This is a tremendous accomplishment, my not-so-little one.”
When Mary had heard the news upon her sudden reappearance in June, she’d given Rachel a look that Rachel still couldn’t quite decipher—some mix of anger and pleasure, perhaps a latent sense of motherly pride attempting to scratch its way to the surface of her bitterness.But she hadn’t congratulated her daughter.“You’ll like Windsor,” was all she said, reaching into the fridge for another Coke.“Good party town, if you know where to go.I can tell you the best places.”
It was a Tuesday afternoon now, and Dora was out at her weekly quilting circle.It was a group of twelve women who had met at the community centre with their needles and thread and gossip every Tuesday since 1971.It was one of the few routine things Dora did solely for herself.
Mary and Rachel had just returned from Grand Bend, where Mary liked to go to the beach.It was only a twenty-minute drive south, butmore populated than the Bayfield beaches, and Mary said she liked the mood better, didn’t have to run into as many people she knew from high school.Rachel could relate to that.She didn’t want to run into anyonesheknew from high school, either, when she was with Mary.There was still just too much to explain, and she had few answers, no defence for her mother’s choices.
Rachel took some chicken out of the freezer in preparation for dinner that night while her mother pulled two glasses out of the dishwasher, leaving the rest in there without unloading it.Rachel glanced at her.It felt strange to admonish her own mother, tell her to contribute, but she was always cutting corners and avoiding doing her share of the housework.It was starting to irritate Rachel, who had been taught to clean up after herself from the time she could manage a dustpan and reach the knobs on the washing machine.Dora had been on Mary about getting a local job, but she hadn’t yet.
Mary stepped in behind Rachel and opened the freezer again, releasing another cloud of fog that cooled Rachel’s legs rather pleasantly.Her mother twisted the ice cube tray with a satisfying crack and plucked a few out, dropping them into the glasses and filling them to the brim with pop.
“Backyard?”her mother asked, handing her one.
“Sure.”
