Darcy sniffled again. Her plump lower lip quivered, and she pulled at it. Her fingernail polish, electric pink, was chipped, and her nails looked gnawed on.
The two of them, Rita mused, were a study in contrasts, their appearances and personalities so opposite that the two left people scratching their heads when they were introduced as sisters. Where Rita was willowy and firm, with coils of muscle, Darcy was compact and voluptuous; where Rita’s features were hard, Darcy’s were soft: all blurred lines and hazy borders, as if Darcy’s face was a picture, and she’d been moving when it was taken. Pudgy cheeks. Wide-set, wide-open eyes that made her appear perpetually surprised, or, when listening to someone speak, like she was hanging on their every word.
Dad’s eyes.
Dad.
It was because of him that she was named Darcy. Not because her father had come up with the name. He’d had nothing to do with it. Their parents hadn’t settled on a name before she was born; and then everything had happened so fast with Mom that she and Dad had never had a chance to confer on it.
Afterward, when her baby sister, pink and healthy, was lying in a crib in the newborn nursery, and Mom was laid out on a steel slab in the hospital morgue, their father, in a fit of grief, had delegated the naming task to thirteen-year-old Rita, for reasons he never made clear.
Once she had gotten over her surprise, Rita had approached it quite seriously. Even before her mom’s death, Rita had been an intense kid. Born old, her parents and teachers would say; reading grown-up books during lunch in middle school rather than gossiping with friends. During those miserable days, she’d welcomed the distraction of coming up with a name. It filled some of the void. Meanwhile, Dad had numbly attended to the funeral arrangements, and Gram fussed over the baby; and the two, preoccupied with their own grief, ignored Rita.
Darcy.
As in Mr. Darcy.
Since reading Pride and Prejudice (the first time) when she was twelve, Rita had been a rabid Jane Austen fan. The name had slipped into her mind one morning when sitting and staring out the window, trying not to be sad. She’d at first favored Emma, but then rejected it, along with a bunch of other choices. Her opinion at the time was that the world was already too full of Emmas, Elizabeths, and Janes.
Darcy, on the other hand, had flair. Panache. Some uniqueness. And when, on the morning of her mother’s funeral, she’d told her father what she’d decided on, and why, he’d hugged her and told her that Darcy was perfect.
And what about her middle name? he’d asked.
Middle name?
She’d forgotten about a middle name. His instructions hadn’t been that specific.
Your sister needs a middle name, lovely Rita.
The gears of her mind had spun, and she’d blurted out:
Rose.
Mom’s middle name.
Dad hadn’t said anything but had nodded solemnly, his big eyes (Darcy’s eyes) moist, and had hugged her again, long and hard.
So Darcy Rose Wu it was.
Over the years, as she’d pondered where she’d failed Darcy, Rita sometimes worried that naming her after Mom had been a huge mistake. Had she unintentionally saddled Darcy with a reminder of how her entry into this world had shoved their mother out of it?
“Are you okay, Ree?”
“Yes. I’m fine.” Rita propped herself up on the pillow.
“Bullshit. You’re lying.” Darcy was a much better liar than she.
“Darcy—”
“No, Ree. How can you even say that to me?” Locks of black hair streaked with strands of pink fell into her eyes. She pushed them away. Darcy’s previous hairstyle had been a half-shaven head. Literally: the hair on one side scraped raw down to the follicles, the other side untouched, the two in perfect symmetry. Rita had wondered if she’d used a tape measure, or maybe a protractor, to cut her hair, so perfectly was her scalp divided: bald versus not bald.
That had been over a year ago, when Darcy had dropped out of college and hadn’t cared about hats, or sunscreen; and Rita remembered Darcy’s gleaming half cranium (right? or left? she couldn’t recall)—offset on the opposite side by voluptuous, crow-black hair worn in a tight braid that hung to her shoulder—turning first pink, then red in the California sun. It had looked painful, especially after it had blistered and peeled. But Darcy had never complained. Always stubborn that way.
“God, Ree.” Darcy blinked her big eyes and shook her head. “You really look like shit. Are you sick? Oh, God. Do you have cancer, or something? Oh my God!” She placed her heels on the seat of her chair and hugged her knees. “Do you have a brain tumor? Oh my God. You have a brain tumor.”
“Darcy—”
“You have a brain tumor, don’t you?”
“I don’t—”
“If you have a brain tumor, just tell me now.”
“I don’t have a brain tumor.”
“What happened to you today?”
Where to begin?
“I—”
“If it’s not a brain tumor, what is it? What are they going to do with you now? What’s going to happen to you?” And the unspoken question: What’s going to happen to me?