The Weird Sisters

by Eleanor Brown

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgements

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PUBLISHED BY G . P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2011 by Eleanor Brown

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  “Amy Einhorn Books” and the “ae” logo are registered trademarks belonging to

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brown, Eleanor, date.

  The weird sisters / Eleanor Brown. p. cm.

  eISBN: 9781101486993

  1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Terminally ill parents—Fiction. 3. Middle-aged women—

  Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.R6965E

  813’.6—dc22

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  TO CHRIS

  For springtime, for a rock-and-roll show, forever

  But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim’s Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, “Would you like anything to read?”

  —DYLAN THOMAS, A Child’s Christmas in Wales

  I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth

  PROLOGUE

  We came home because we were failures. We wouldn’t admit that, of course, not at first, not to ourselves, and certainly not to anyone else. We said we came home because our mother was ill, because we needed a break, a momentary pause before setting off for the Next Big Thing. But the truth was, we had failed, and rather than let anyone else know, we crafted careful excuses and alibis, and wrapped them around ourselves like a cloak to keep out the cold truth. The first stage: denial.

  For Cordelia, the youngest, it began with the letters. They arrived the same day, though their contents were so different that she had to look back at the postmarks to see which one had been sent first. They seemed so simple, paper in her hands, vulnerable to rain, or fire, or incautious care, but she would not destroy them. These were the kind you save, folded into a memory box, to be opened years later with fingers against crackling age, heart pounding with the sick desire to be possessed by memory.

  We should tell you what they said, and we will, because their contents affect everything that happened afterward, but we first have to explain how our family communicates, and to do that, we have to explain our family.

  Oh, man.

  Perhaps we had just better explain our father.

  If you took a college course on Shakespeare, our father’s name might be resident in some dim corner of your mind, under layers of unused telephone numbers, forgotten dreams, and the words that never seem to make it to the tip of your tongue when you need them. Our father is Dr. James Andreas, professor of English literature at Barnwell College, singular focus: The Immortal Bard.

  The words that might come to mind to describe our father’s work are insufficient to convey to you what it is like to live with someone with such a singular preoccupation. Enthusiast, expert, obsessed—these words all thud hollow when faced with the sandstorm of Shakespeare in which we were raised. Sonnets were our nursery rhymes. The three of us were given advice and instruction in couplets; we were more likely to refer to a hated playmate as a “fat-kidneyed rascal” than a jerk; we played under the tables at Christmas parties where phrases like “deconstructionist philosophy” and “patriarchal malfeasance” drifted down through the heavy tablecloths with the carols.

  And this only begins to describe it.

  But it is enough for our purposes.

  The first letter was from Rose: precise pen on thick vellum. From Romeo and Juliet; Cordy knew it at once. We met, we woo’d and made exchange of vow, I’ll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray, That thou consent to marry us to-day.

  And now you will understand this was our oldest sister’s way of telling us that she was getting married.

  The second was from our father. He communicates almost exclusively through pages copied from The Riverside Shakespeare. The pages are so heavily annotated with decades of thoughts, of interpretations, that we can barely make out the lines of text he highlights. But it matters not; we have been nursed and nurtured on the plays, and the slightest reminder brings the language back.

  Come, let us go; and pray to all the gods/For our beloved mother in her pains. And this is how Cordy knew our mother had cancer. This is how she knew we had to come home.

  ONE

  Cordy had never stolen anything before. As a matter of pride, when our friends were practicing their light-fingered shuffles across the shelves of Barnwell’s stores in our teens, she had refused to participate, refused even to wear the cheap ea
rrings and clumpy lipstick or listen to the shoplifted music. But here she was in this no-name desert town, facing off against the wall of pregnancy tests, knowing full well she didn’t have the money to pay for one. A Wild West shootout: Cordy versus the little pink sticks at high noon.

  She’d wanted to do this somewhere anonymous, in a wide-aisled store that hummed with soft, inoffensive music and belonged to a company, not a person, but those stores had long ago gotten smart, put anti-theft devices like hunch-shouldered guardians at the doors. So she was in this dusty little mom and pop drugstore, her stomach churning, cheeks bright with fire.

  “Strike up the drum; cry ‘Courage!’ and away,” she whispered to herself, and then giggled, one thin hand sneaking out to grab one of the boxes—any one, it didn’t matter. They’d all tell her the thing she already knew but refused to admit.

  She slipped the box into her gaping shoulder bag with one hand, the other rooting around at the bottom for the remnants of her last, months-ago paycheck, the few loose coins buried in a grave of stale breath mints, lint, and broken pens. Along the way, she grabbed a toffee bar off the shelf and presented it to the cashier, digging for a few more pennies, her hand burning when she brushed against the box hidden in the loose depths.

  Outside the store, a rush of elation. “Too easy,” she said aloud to the empty street, her skirt whispering against the sidewalk, already gone hot and sullen in the rise of spring, her sandals so worn that she could feel the insistent warmth against her heels. The pleasure of the forbidden lasted until she had made it back to the house, ramshackle and dark, where she was staying, a few people crashed on the broken furniture in the living room, sleeping off last night’s excess. She yanked open the box, tossing the instructions in the direction of the trash can, and did the deed. Huddled on the toilet in the bathroom, tile cracked and shredding beneath her feet, staring at the pink line, pale as fading newsprint, her conscience caught up with her.

  “It doesn’t get much lower than this, old Cordy, old sock,” she could hear Bean telling her cheerfully.

  “How are you going to take care of a baby if you can’t even afford a pregnancy test?” Rose harped.

  Cordy brushed our imaginary voices aside and buried the evidence in the trash can. It didn’t make a difference, really, she told herself. She’d been headed home anyway, wandering a circuitous loop, going where the wind or the next ride took her. This just confirmed what she’d already known—that after seven years of floating like a dandelion seed, it was time to settle down.

  Settle down. She shuddered.

  Those words were a bell ringing inside her. That was, after all, why she’d left. Just before exams in the spring of her junior year at Barnwell College, she’d been in the study lounge in the psychology department, lying on the industrial carpet, her arms locked as she held a textbook above her face. Two women, seniors, were talking nearby—one of them was getting married, the other going to graduate school. Cordy lowered the book to her chest, its weight pressing harder and harder against her heart as she listened to the litany of What Was to Come. Wedding favors and student loans. Mortgages and health insurance. Careers and taxes. Unable to breathe, she shoved the book onto the floor and walked out of the lounge. If that was the future, she wanted no part of it.

  It was our fault, probably, the way we’d always babied her. Or maybe it was our father’s fault—Cordelia had always been his favorite. He’d never said no to her, not to her breathless baby cries, not to her childhood entreaties for ballet lessons (dropped before they got to fourth position, though she did wear the tutu for an awful long time after that, so it wasn’t a total waste), and not to the desperate late-night calls for cash infusions in the years she’d spent drifting around the country, accomplishing nothing in particular. She was the Cordelia to his Lear, legendary in her devotion. He always lov’d our sister most. But whoever’s fault it was, Cordy had thus far refused to grow up, and we’d indulged that in the same way we’d indulged every other whim she’d had for nearly her entire life. After all, we could hardly blame her. We were fairly certain that if anyone made public the various and variegated ways in which being an adult sucked eggs, more people might opt out entirely.

  But now? Growing up didn’t seem so much like a choice anymore. Cordy fumbled around through one of the bedrooms until she found a calendar, counting backward. It was almost June now, she was fairly certain. And she’d left Oregon, the last stop on that long, strange trip, in, what, February? She rubbed her knuckles on her forehead, thinking. It had been so long since things like dates mattered.

  But she could trace the journey back, before she’d started feeling so empty and nauseated in the mornings, before her breasts had grown tender enough that even the material of a T-shirt seemed like it was scraping against her skin, before the endless fatigue that swept over her at the strangest times, before she’d known. Washington, California, Arizona. Her period had come in Arizona; she dimly remembered a tussle with a recalcitrant tampon dispenser in a rest stop bathroom. And then she’d gone to New Mexico, where there’d been a painter, much older, his hair painted with shocking strands of white, his skin wrinkled from the sun, his hands broad and callused. She’d paused there for a few weeks, waitressing a handful of shifts to make money for the rest of the trip home, not that it had lasted. He’d come into the restaurant to eat, all by himself, and it had been so late, and his eyes were so lonely. For a week she’d stayed with him, spending the days curled on a couch in his studio, reading and staring out over the arroyos while he painted in silence: strange, contorted swirls of color that dripped off the canvases onto the floor. But he’d been gentle, and blessedly quiet, and after so much sturm and drang, she’d nearly been sad to leave. The last night, there’d been a broken condom, a hushed argument, dark dreams, and the next morning she had been gone.

  Slumping on the bed, Cordy let the calendar fall from her hands. What was she supposed to do now? Go back to New Mexico and tell the painter? She doubted he’d be excited to hear the news. She wasn’t exactly thrilled herself. Maybe she’d have a miscarriage. Heroines in novels were always having serendipitously timed miscarriages that saved them from having to make sticky decisions. And Cordy had always been awfully lucky.

  Until now.

  Cordy stepped over the piles of dirty clothes on the floor and back into the hallway. The crashers in the living room were still snoring as she tiptoed through to the kitchen, where she’d left her backpack. She’d lived here one winter—it seemed like years ago, but it couldn’t have been that long, since this was the address the letters had come to. Had it been years ago? Had it really been years since she had been in one place long enough to have an address?

  Gritting her teeth, Cordy began shoving things into the bag. She didn’t know what to do. But that was okay. Someone would figure this out for her. Someone would take care of her. Someone always took care of her.

  No problem.

  Bean absolutely and positively did not believe in anything even vaguely paranormal. But for the past week or so, she’d had the strangest feeling that something bad was coming. She woke up in the morning with a hard pit in her stomach, as though she’d swallowed something malignant, growing, and the weight stayed with her all day, making her heels clack more sharply on the subway steps, her body ache after only a few minutes of running on the treadmill, jewel-toned cocktails simmer in her stomach until she left them in their glasses to sweat into water on the mahogany bars of the city’s trendiest watering holes.

  Nothing in her bag of tricks made the feeling go away—not seducing a hapless investment banker over the din of a club, not a punishing spin class that left her so rubbery and tired that she vomited into the toilet at the gym, not a new pair of shoes that cost as much as the rent she paid for her tiny closet of a bedroom in a shared apartment in Manhattan. As a matter of fact, that last one made the rock inside her turn into steel.

  When the moment she had been dreading finally came, the managing partner of the law firm s
he worked at arriving at her desk and asking to see her in his office, it was almost a relief. “If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly,” she quoted to herself, following his wizened steps into his office.

  “Have a seat, Bianca,” he said.

  In New York, everyone called her Bianca. Men, upon asking for her number in a terminally hip watering hole, would have to ask her to repeat it, and then, upon comprehension, would smile. Something about the name—and, honestly, few of them had the synapses to rub together at that point in the evening to make any sort of literary connections, so it must have been something else—made her even more attractive to them.

  To us, however, she would always be Bean. And it was still the way she spoke to herself. “Nice going, Bean,” she would say when she dropped something, and her roommates in the city would look at her curiously. But being Bianca was a part she played well, and she wondered if part of the sickness she felt inside was knowing that performance was coming to an end. Forever.

  She perched on the edge of one of the leather wing chairs in his sitting area. He sat in the other. “We’ve been doing a bit of an accounting audit, you see,” he said without preamble.

  Bean stared at him. The pit inside her stomach was turning into fire. She stared at him, his beetled, bushy eyebrows, his soft, wrinkled hands, and wanted to cry.

  “We’ve found a number of . . . shall we say, anomalies in the payroll records. In your favor. I’d like to think they’re errors.” He looked almost hopeful.

  She said nothing.

  “Can you tell me what’s been happening, Bianca?”

  Bean looked down at the bracelet on her wrist. She’d bought it at Tiffany months ago, and she remembered the strange seizing in her stomach as she’d handed over her credit card, the same feeling she’d gotten lately when she bought anything, from groceries to a handbag. The feeling that her luck was running out, that she couldn’t go on, and maybe (most terrifying of all), maybe she didn’t want to.