Let Them Not Weep

by lovecatcadillac

Vera thinks this is what they've wanted all along, for her to get her comeuppance for something she never asked for but had the gall to actually enjoy.

Warnings: Since Vera is suicidal at this point in the series, the appropriate trigger warnings apply. Do not read this story if you are likely to be triggered by talk of suicide. I'm warning for injuries and blood as well, to be on the safe side, although I don't go into gloating detail or anything. Please let me know if I should include any more.

Notes: While I am nowhere near done writing about Betty, Kate and Gladys, I did think it was a crying shame that there aren't many fics about Vera yet, so I wrote this little character study/backstory. Set a week or so prior to Armistice. The title comes from Gloomy Sunday by Billie Holiday.

Disclaimer: All characters and environments belong to Michael MacLennan and Adrienne Mitchell/Shaw Media/Global TV.

The street where Vera grew up was home to a dozen working-class families, each with three or four or five kids apiece, and a witch named Miss Hagerty. Kids got a licking if they called her that within earshot of any grown-ups, but everyone knew that was what she was. How could she be anything else, with her hunchback and that awful birthmark on her face? The grown-ups could say she was a perfectly ordinary lady until they were blue in the face, but it was all too clear that they believed it too, from the way they avoided her, the way they hustled their kids along if they saw Miss Hagerty out in her front garden, or even sitting at her window.

x x x

Vera keeps having dreams where she's whole. Vera dreams she's doing everyday things like shopping or cutting out a pattern for a new dress. She dreams she's in the beds of men she used to know, or that she's sipping punch at Sandy Shores, or being told off by a teacher in high school. Sometimes things get muddled – the teacher will look like Mrs Corbett, or the dress pattern will be the one for her Easter dress the year she was thirteen. She doesn't mind it being muddled, so long as the dream doesn't turn into a nightmare, with blaring sirens and blood and the panicked cries of the other Blue Shift girls as they try in vain to get her down.

The smell of disinfectant creeps up her nostrils, and the lights prick her eyes. Vera remembers she's in the hospital, that she was in a terrible accident at work that tore off half her scalp. Some mornings, remembering it feels so wretched that she lies in bed trying to make herself stop breathing. The only way that Vera can make herself get out of bed, make herself smile at the doctors and chat to the nurses – make herself be normal, so no-one will suspect what she's planning – is by telling herself that it will all be over soon.

At noon, Sheila brings in Vera's lunch, hanging around for a few minutes to chat. "I'm afraid it's beets again, but I made sure you got the peach cobbler for dessert," she says, setting the tray down. "It was that or rice pudding."

Sheila Corbett is a sweet girl, a smart girl, beautifully brought up, any right-thinking mother's pride and joy. No boyfriend, though – her mom doesn't encourage it, she explains with an embarrassed grin, when Vera asks Sheila if her fella minds all these long hours she works.

"Mom says no dating until I've got my qualification," Sheila says lightly. "My last date was in high school. Warren Peterson took me to a dance. The only way you knew it was a date was because he paid for both the tickets."

"Did he kiss you, at least?"

"Not on my mom's watch! She was a chaperone. She sat all night with the other mothers at the side of the dance floor."

Vera makes a sympathetic noise. "Mothers!"

"Well, Mom was married at eighteen," Sheila says with a shrug. "She wants me to have my own career. You can't always rely on a man to provide for you. When Mom married my dad, she thought she'd never have to work again, and look how that panned out."

It's very strange that someone just five years younger than Vera has been brought up so differently, kept wrapped in cotton wool so that she can make something of herself. Vera doesn't quite know whether to feel sorry for Sheila, or envious of her.

She tries her best. "I'll bet you'll be head nurse here, someday. Then everyone will be answering to you."

Sheila giggles at the very idea of wanting everyone to answer to her. Her knee-length blue uniform makes her look less like a head nurse and more like a schoolgirl, but she's unmistakably a girl with a future. Vera watches her go. It seems that's all Vera ever does, nowadays: watch people come and go, and plan what will happen when she makes it to forty pills.

x x x

One blustery autumn afternoon, Vera was out skipping. She was alone, which was unusual, but her best friend Peggy Gillis was in bed with an earache, so Vera had to stay out and amuse herself. Mom didn't take kindly to children hanging around the house and complaining of boredom.

The afternoon seemed to be looking up when Vera saw a gorgeous smoky cat sunning himself on the pavement, gleaming like a silver coin in the sunshine. Vera's parents wouldn't have a cat, not even to keep down mice, so she was forever getting herself scratched up trying to cuddle any cat she found.

This cat, however, seemed amenable to being adored by small girls. He submitted to being rubbed behind the ears as Vera told him how handsome he was. "Hello there, beautiful boy," Vera sing-songed, dropping her skipping rope so that she could stroke him with both hands. "You're a nice pussycat."

"He's a good little man, isn't he?" came a hopeful voice. Vera looked up to see the witch herself, limping down the path towards her. In Vera's memory, Miss Hagerty has been transformed into a comic cut-out crone. The years have emphasised her oldness, her oddness, her eccentricity, until just the thought of her is enough to make Vera shudder. Yet, at that moment, Miss Hagerty's voice sounded quite normal, not at all the inhuman screech kids used to put on when they imitated her.

Somehow, Vera doubts very much that Miss Hagerty would spoken to her six years later, when the neighbourhood had stopped exclaiming over what a bonny little thing she was and began whispering that the Burrs' youngest was set to turn into a right little tramp. But at the age of six, Vera looked like a baby angel (even if she didn't feel like one), so she knows why Miss Hagerty took a chance and tried to talk to her. She's so little, and playing all by herself, Miss Hagerty probably thought. Maybe she's lonely, like me. She'll be different to the others. She won't throw stones or call me names...

Vera wasn't different. She didn't hurl a rock at Miss Hagerty, but she didn't see past her terrifying exterior, either. When the witch tried to talk to her, Vera ran for her life. She didn't eat a scrap of her supper. She spent a sleepless night with her head under the covers of the bed she shared with Hilda and Frank, convinced that Miss Hagerty was pressing her horrible face up against the window.

x x x

Vera has never really been one for putting her thoughts down in writing, but a goodbye letter to her family is starting to look inevitable. She is not relishing the idea. She hasn't a clue how to start it, for one thing. To Everyone? Dear All? To the Burrs? More than that, what is she meant to say? For people she lived with day in and day out for eighteen years, Vera has very little idea of what she wants to say to them, or what they would want to hear.

When she pictures them standing around her bed, they don't exactly make a warm, loving circle. Her doting daddy, who wouldn't let her kiss him any more, once she turned eleven and started to get a figure. Her dear old mom, who shook Vera and called her a little hussy when she caught her trying on lipstick, leaving bruises in the shape of fingerprints on her upper arms. Her brother Frank, who didn't say a word in Vera's defence when boys spread dirty rumours about her. Her sister Hilda, who used to say loudly that she didn't understand why everyone made such a fuss of Vera, it was just because she was pretty, and who cared anyway, because Vera's good looks would fade someday and then she'd be left with nothing.

Vera ends up telling them a pack of lies. She tells them she's sorry (she isn't), that she loves them (she most certainly doesn't) and that she hopes they can forgive her for what she's about to do (Vera thinks this is what they've wanted all along, for her to get her comeuppance for something she never asked for but had the gall to actually enjoy).

Her lies to her family end up covering less than a page. Vera idly considers including a drawing at the bottom, the way she used to on letters when she was a kid, but senses that wouldn't be quite the ticket for a suicide note. It's a shame, since she's not at all bad at drawing, but it might seem a wee bit disingenuous to include a witty illustration of herself strolling towards the pearly gates, oblivious to the trapdoor marked Hell that St Peter is preparing to spring...

She does a big, curly signature instead, before she folds the letter up small and hides it in the lining of her handbag. That boisterous signature feels disrespectful for reasons she can't quite articulate. Vera ought to write her name in the tiniest, meekest letters she can manage, to show them that they were right after all. But, she thinks, why the heck should I have to kiss up to them now? She hasn't spoken to them since the day she strode out the front door, suitcase in hand, yelling about how they'd all be sorry when she married a millionaire and didn't send them a dime. Let that day, and this sprawling autograph of hers, be the last things they ever have to remember her by. Vera might have lost everything that made her special or useful, but she's not entirely without pride.

Vera's not leaving a letter for the women at Vic Mu. As soon as she realised the extent of her injuries, she made a point of refusing her workmates' visits and leaving their letters and get-well cards unanswered. She's not quite strong enough to spend her last weeks of life entirely alone and unmothered, so she hasn't turned Edith or Lorna away. Marco Moretti comes too, but she couldn't very well refuse him. He's smart and handsome, has his whole life ahead of him. Vera hopes that accepting his visits will help him realise that ending it all isn't her way of trying to – to punish him, or make him feel guilty, for that split second when he distracted her and everything went so disastrously wrong. If she lets Marco do everything he can, it'll help him realise that it wasn't personal, wasn't anything to do with him.

They're the only ones, though. Vera hasn't spoken to Betty McRae since the day of the accident, and Betty used to be her second-best friend at Vic Mu, after Edith. The way Edith tells it, Betty spends all her time now with Kate Andrews and Gladys Witham. Edith says that Betty is always laughing with them, that she even goes out dancing of an evening now. Vera's glad that Betty is finally happy.

(Maybe it was Vera's accident that did it, in a way. Maybe God finally came to see that there was nothing special about her, and decided to move her out of the way, so that other people could be happy.)

Everyone will keep on going without her. Edith, Archie, Betty, Lorna, Marco, everybody. The accident made everything clear to Vera, made it devastatingly clear just how easily everyone could manage without her. All she ever did was pretty up the scenery a bit, and that's not something a girl needs to be all that clever or special to do. Some other pert little thing will turn up at the factory, and make people laugh with cute sayings and brassy remarks, and turn the men's heads. It will be easier for people to forget about Vera, to concentrate on somebody new, than it will for them to mourn her.

Girls like me are a dime a dozen, Vera thinks, and it's frightening how easily her mother's words come to her mind, now that she has nothing more to look forward to. That makes them the truth, then. People always come to the truth about themselves, in their last days.

x x x

Vera didn't give Miss Hagerty another thought for months, right up until New Year's Day. She spent a rare happy afternoon with her brother and sister, sledding in the park. They were trudging home with pink cheeks and frozen limbs when they saw a small crowd gathered outside Miss Hagerty's house. An ambulance was parked outside, and men in uniforms were coming out the open front door, carrying a stretcher covered with a sheet. They were moving very, very slowly.

"They say the body's been in the house for a week," someone said. "She'll have died Christmas Day, then."

Vera wasn't much for tears as a child. People used to say, "Don't cry, you'll mess up your pretty face" whenever her lower lip started to tremble. That would shut her up in two seconds flat, because ever since she can remember, messing up her face has been the last thing Vera ever wanted. It was also terribly easy to get a reputation as a cry-baby if you were the youngest in your family. Whenever Vera got smacked around the legs or scolded, she would make a point of sniffing stoically and wiping her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her cardigan.

But as she watched the men from the hospital taking Miss Hagerty away, Vera stood and wailed, her mouth open, fat tears sliding down her cheeks. Hilda and Frank stared at Vera like they were frightened of her.

"There's no need to feel sorry for Miss Hagerty," mumbled Frank, patting Vera's back awkwardly.

"She's gone to a better place," Hilda said, utterly matter-of-fact. "When she gets to Heaven, God will take away her hump and her birthmark."

Somehow, God waiting until Miss Hagerty was dead to make her like other people was the only thing that could possibly top the indignity of how she died – or, rather, the date that she died. Vera couldn't conceive of anything worse than dying on Christmas, except perhaps dying on your birthday. Yet somehow, she wasn't crying because this terrible thing, the most terrible thing imaginable, had happened to Miss Hagerty. She wasn't thinking of Miss Hagerty. She was only thinking of herself.

x x x

In the evening, Edith comes for a visit, bringing a care package and gossip from the factory. "Buster and the boys are still teasing Betty about that darn newsreel. She'd clock anyone who suggested as much, but I think she's really sensitive about it. You know, being twenty-eight and still not married."

Vera rolls her eyes. "It's a worry, yeah, but not that much of one. Betty's plenty pretty enough to get any guy she chooses. They hardly picked her for the newsreel because she's got a burning ambition to be a star."

"Speaking of stars, that reminds me. You've got your Photoplay, your Muse and your Lamplight, courtesy of Gladys," Edith says, taking out a stack of glossy magazines.

"Gee, Gladys must keep these magazines in business single-handed. I don't think I ever met anyone with so many subscriptions." Vera only ever met Gladys once, but she seems to have become a fixture in Edith's little group. "Wouldn't it be cheaper to just fly the movie stars in and ask them questions yourself?"

"The Withams keep a lot of people employed single-handed," Edith says, laughing. "And don't play innocent; I know you just want Gary Cooper to come visit your sickbed."

"Ah, you caught me out," Vera says. "Well, maybe Miss Moneybags can work on that for next week. Drop some brazen hints for me, would you?"

"I don't know if I'll be able to come visit next week," Edith says regretfully. "The factory's closed for Armistice Day, so we're all on extra shifts."

Vera can't stop her face from falling. She didn't think they'd have to say goodbye this soon.

Edith sees her expression. "Well, maybe I can still swing it," she says hastily. "I could come after normal visiting hours, if Sheila can pull some strings. I'll ask Lor about it-"

"Don't put yourself out." Vera waves an airy hand. "I'm all right. I'm hardly alone. Marco brings me those funny Italian donuts his mom makes, and there's Archie down the hall to play cards with."

Edith smiles at her. "So many admirers."

Vera wishes everyone would stop acting as though they just knew she would bounce back from this. She has not bounced back. She never will. Vera will never get married or have any kids. She cringes to think of the kind of men who are her only option now. They wouldn't have to treat her well.

"You know," says Vera, trying to sound as casual as possible, "my accident made me think about how I'm not going to be around forever."

Edith looks at her. "For Pete's sake, you're only twenty-three. I don't think we have to start grappling with mortality just yet."

"Still," Vera goes on, "it made me think about, you know, who I would want to have my things. I thought your Daphne might like to have this doll of mine. It was my favourite when I was a kid. The doll is sitting on my dresser in my room at home-"

Edith looks sharply at her, and Vera realises she's said too much. If she were going to live to a ripe old age, it would be highly unlikely the doll would still be perched on her dresser fifty years from now.

"Her hair probably won't stand up to another brushing, and she's only got the one set of clothes, but nice dolls are hard to come by nowadays," says Vera smoothly, her heart in her throat. "Daphne should have a present to remember her Aunty Vera by."

What in heaven am I babbling about? I'm hardly an honorary aunt to Edith's kids. I only ever met 'em a couple of times. She remembers the one time she came over for dinner with the McAllums, watching as Edith gathered Daphne - a quiet little girl with a lisp, shy and retiring compared to her outgoing brother Skip - into her lap and kissed her cornsilk hair. It was the opposite of Vera's own experience in almost every way. She was never remotely shy (Mom was always hissing at her to stop showing off) and she wasn't hugged or kissed all that often.

Vera felt jealous, watching little Daphne being cuddled by her mommy. She can admit that to herself now, when she's so close to the end. She was jealous of a six-year-old child for having a lovely mother.

Edith clears her throat. "That's real sweet of you, to think of Daph, but your doll is for your daughter."

Vera resigns herself to the simple fact that dropping hints is altogether too risky. She'll have to write out a will. It won't be that hard. She's reasonably familiar with how it's meant to start – I, Vera Burr, being of sound mind and sound body (from the chin down), hereby declare this my last will and testament – and she learnt enough official jargon in her high school typing and stenography classes to be able to wing the rest. Those were just about the only classes she ever paid attention in. She took such satisfaction from leaving all those girls who called her names plodding through Exercise 3 while she flew through Exercise 28 without a single mistake. She used to practice sitting as prettily as she could, pretending she was a secretary at a big Hollywood studio, on the verge of being discovered by a director.

Anyway, it's not like she'll need much in the way of fancy language to specify that she's leaving her few possessions and the meagre contents of her savings account to Edith McAllum. Vera's savings won't set Edith up for life or anything, but they'll help out with groceries and such for a few months.

It ought to feel pathetic, that she has no-one to leave her things to other than a coworker she's known less than a year. But it feels right. Edith was one of the first people in Toronto – in Vera's whole life – who didn't seem to think that Vera was the Whore of Babylon for enjoying male attention.

Right now, Vera knows she will have to lie, to assuage the mounting fear she can see in Edith's eyes. It's not a bad realisation, in a way. Lying comes to her so easily, now.

"Knowing my luck, Edie, I'll have a giant passel of boys, hollering and climbing the furniture like Red Indians. I've gotta make sure my old dolly goes to a nice, gentle girl, like your Daphne. I thought I'd tell you now, since I've got a brain like a sieve. Goodness knows what childbirth will do to me!"

It's the first time in ages that Vera has made some reference to the future. It makes Vera want to cry, how relieved Edith looks. She would be horrified if she knew what Vera was planning. But she doesn't understand. Nobody does.

"How are you doing, anyhow?" Vera asks, anxious to get back to the present.

Edith sighs. "Not well. Everything sets me off nowadays. Daphne and her little friend Sylvia made a mess of her room playing weddings, and it made me think about how Doug's not going to be there for hers. He won't be there for anything Skip and Daphne do, ever again."

Looking at Edith, Vera knows that if it were a choice between bringing Doug back and undoing the accident that showed her she's worthless without her pretty face, she would bring Doug back without a thought. Maybe this is what being selfless feels like. Although right now, it feels less like selflessness and more like inevitability. She's thinking more and more nowadays that perhaps there was a reason why she couldn't ever picture herself as a wise, venerable grandmother, or even holding a baby in her arms. Maybe killing herself is what she's been working up to, in a way, all her life.

Doug's death was a senseless waste, a tragedy. Vera's will be nothing. Vera has always been nothing, only she was too brainless and stubborn to see it.

"Well, she's hardly getting married anytime soon. You've got decades to meet somebody who can give Daph away at her wedding. Hey, maybe you already know them. Did Doug have any good-looking friends?"

Edith laughs. "Vera!"

Vera rolls her eyes. "Single ones, you dope. Give me some credit. And no matter what happens, you're not going anywhere. You'll be there, in the front pew, bawling at your daughter's wedding."

"I'll bawl at yours first," Edith says. "You'll make a beautiful bride someday."

With anybody else, Vera would make some quip about veils. Instead, she says smoothly, "Here's some advice, direct from me to you: when you've got yourself a new man and have another baby, do not name it after me, under any circumstances. Me and Vera Lynn are the only ladies who can make the name Vera anywhere near sexy."

Edith shakes her head, laughs, and suggests they play cards for a little while, before she has to go. Vera goes through intermittent stages of wanting to let Edith win, and wanting to win herself. It's peculiar, the silly things a person gets hung up on when they're about to be alone for all time.

"I'd best be on my way," Edith says, rising and pulling on her coat. "We'll play again next time I come."

Vera's smile doesn't reach her eyes as she says, "Sounds great." Then, all of a sudden, Vera's opening her arms. It takes both of them a second to realise that she's asking for a hug. She's never really been one for hugging or kissing her female friends. Vera's always thought that sort of thing was just for girls who couldn't get a man. She's known since the moment the bandages came off that she was never going to have a man again, and yet she hasn't tried to hug Edith. She's been scared she'd start clinging and crying, and spilling the beans about what she plans to do, and she couldn't have that. Vera couldn't let herself get too close.

This might be the last hug anyone ever gives Vera. Edith most certainly is a hugging-kissing sort of person, and yet it's over much too fast, because Edith is thinking about the buses she has to catch, avoiding the rainstorm that's been brewing since the afternoon, and whether she'll have to pick up the aftermath of another pretend wedding in Daphne's bedroom.

She draws away, and looks over Vera with a mother's eye for telling whether someone is comfortable. Vera can see it in her eyes. Magazines, check. Full jug of water, shawl folded in the bedside drawer in case it gets cold, check, check.

"I'll see you after Armistice Day," says Edith, making her way to the door. "Take care."

There's nothing else Vera can say, apart from, "Take care, Edith."

x x x

Vera lay awake, listening to the sound of Frank snoring. Normally, she found the sound of her brother's snoring to be almost soothing, but it seemed especially loud and rasping tonight. She kept turning over and over in bed, sighing. She felt scared, but it wasn't of the dark, of monsters under the bed, or anyone's face pressing up against the window.

She climbed out of bed without waking her brother and sister (no mean feat when you slept in the middle) and padded into the kitchen in her bare feet. Vera's mother was sitting up at the kitchen table, doing some mending by the lamplight. She made no sign that she even knew Vera was up, not even when Vera pulled out a chair and sat down beside her.

Eventually, Vera spoke. "Where's Dad?"

"Still out," said Mom, her eyes on the sock she was darning.

"Mommy, Miss Hagerty died."

"Yes, I heard from Mrs Brewster." Mrs Brewster next door was the biggest gossip in the street, so she doubtless would have known about Miss Hagerty's death before the ambulance had even pulled up.

"Don't you think that's sad?"

"She was very lonely, dear. In a way, I think it's better. There was nothing for her, really. Her parents were dead, and she wasn't married." Mom seemed to realise that this sounded cruel, because she added, "Part of me thinks I should have made more of an effort, sent you three over to do chores for her, but there's no use in crying over it now."

No use in crying over a witch, Vera thought, but she couldn't muster very much terror at all. Witches were supposed to go swooping across a full moon on their broomstick, cackling fit to bust. Witches didn't die. Not like that, with hospital men taking them away on a stretcher, under a sheet.

"Would you still love me if I looked like that?" Vera asked. "Like Miss Hagerty?"

"Well, you don't, do you?" Mom said. "So what's the point in worrying?"

"But I-"

"But nothing. Just be thankful that what happened to Miss Hagerty will never happen to you. Now, off to bed with you."

It didn't seem, at first, like Mom had said anything particularly helpful. Vera resigned herself to a night of rolling around on the complicated mass of rag curlers in her hair, grumbling at the drone of Frank's snoring, as if that was what was keeping her awake. But when she got back into bed, curled up under the blankets, and tugged the pillow away from Hilda, the bed did seem cosy again. When Vera started to feel scared again, like a massive fist was curling itself around her heart, she thought about something Mom had said.

That will never happen to you, Vera told herself, over and over. That will never, never happen to you. She told herself that, over and over, and it calmed her enough to go to sleep.