The Weird Sisters

by Eleanor Brown

  “No,” Rose said. The fact that other mothers might have been more eager, flipping through bridal magazines, begging to come along or even organizing the trip themselves, did not go without notice. But this was not our mother. She was not the kind of woman to raise her daughters to read bridal magazines, and therefore, of course, would not read them herself. “Everything looked hideous on me.”

  “That’s because everything was hideous,” Bean said.

  “It’s a hideous culture,” our mother said as Cordy finished brushing the light fuzz of our mother’s hair. Cordy had propped her up awkwardly, the pillows pressed into the small of her back, and when her gown gaped across her clavicle, we could see the spread of gauze across her skin, and the trail of clear tubing draining the wound. “Why would you want something like that anyway, Rose?”

  Rose’s cheeks burned with angry shame, and she fumbled for the right words, pushing her lips into silent protestations.

  “It’s her wedding, Mother,” Bean jumped in. “Besides, it’s not like she can wear your wedding dress. Cordy ruined it.”

  “I did not,” Cordy objected. She dropped the brush back into the unexplored caverns of her bag, and our mother relaxed into her pillows again, Cordy curled beside her like a question mark.

  “You spilled punch all over it at the prom.”

  “I had it cleaned, dumb butt,” Cordy said. “You can’t even tell. Rose could wear it if she wanted to.”

  Rose did not reply, but we all knew our mother’s swinging sixties minidress would be about as flattering on her as any of the hysterical poufs of fabric we had suffered through that morning. In any case, the subject had been changed, Cordy had been blamed, which was the way it ought to be, and at least nominal peace had been restored.

  “Out, out, out,” a nurse shooed us, as she walked into the room, her crepe-soled shoes squeaking insistently against the floors. We outed, scooting around the portable toilet the nurse had rolled in with her. Standing in the hallway, Cordy went back to shredding her cuticles until Bean batted her hand away from her mouth. Cordy stuck out her tongue at Bean, and Rose shot them both a disapproving glance.

  “When’s she coming home?” Rose asked our father, changing the focus from our disobedient sister.

  Our father cleared his throat, stroked his beard with the hand not holding his place in his book. “Tomorrow, I know not whether God will have it so,” he said, as though he were lecturing to a particularly erudite class of undergraduates, which we suppose we are, in a way. “The hospital is sending a nurse to let us know what to do.” He looked somewhat confused by the idea, as though he were not sure what would possess them to do such a thing. Bean looked relieved. She was wearing high heels like railroad spikes, and elegantly loose trousers draped in a cunning camouflage over the Andreas family thighs. This was not a woman any of us could see acting as home health aide, least of all Bean herself.

  “You should come home with us tonight, Daddy,” Bean said. “You look a mess.”

  Our father shrugged. “Your mother and I haven’t spent a night apart since we were married, and I’m not about to start now. I’ll clean up in the bathroom.”

  True, that. Our parents had married impossibly young, our father a fresh-faced master’s candidate, our mother a recent graduate, and possibly already pregnant (scandalous!). Our favorite photo of them shows them recessing down the aisle, the guests at the ceremony fashionably turned out in a blur of bobbing hats and elbow patches. Our father walks slightly ahead of our mother, whose veil trails out behind her in an invisible wind. He is smiling as though he has just won the jackpot. She is smiling as though she has discovered a secret.

  In any case, even the night Rose was born, back in the days when men were not typically present in the delivery room, let alone acting as paramedical assistants in cutting the cord, and babies were dutifully welcomed into the world with a hearty slap on the rump to elicit an (unsurprisingly) objectioned reaction, our father slept in a chair much like the one we had found him in today, having insisted Rose’s bassinet be brought into the room. With one hand extended to clutch the plastic edge of the container, he slept happily through both mid-night feedings.

  There is much made in the psychological literature of the effects of divorce on children, particularly as it comes to their own marriages, lo those many years later. We have always wondered why there is not more research done on the children of happy marriages. Our parents’ love is not some grand passion, there are no swoons of lust, no ball gowns and tuxedos, but here is the truth: they have not spent a night apart since the day they married.

  How can we ever hope to find a love to live up to that?

  TEN

  Cordy, come on!” Bean hollered from the foot of the stairs.

  “I’m coming!” Cordy shouted back. We were headed to a medical supply store to pick up some things the nurse had arranged for but that they had refused to deliver all the way to deepest, darkest Barnwell—a seat for our mother for the shower, a special camisole that wouldn’t press the drain into her skin, a pillow to allow her to sleep without moving too much, some kind of hand exerciser to help her recover the full range of motion in her arm.

  In her room, Cordy was frantically digging through her clothes, trying to find a shirt that fit. Her breasts had been tender for a long time, but in the past week it seemed they had grown enormously, and June was busting out all over. Her hippie skirts were doing the trick on the bottom half, but the little T-shirts and tank tops she was accustomed to wearing made her look like a stripper. She had snuck one of Bean’s sports bras out of the laundry, its compression making the change at least slightly less noticeable.

  “Cordeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelia!” Bean shouted again.

  “I am coming!” Cordy howled, stubbing her toe on the edge of the bed as she leaped over a pile of shoes she’d abandoned in the middle of the floor. “Dammit.” She finally found one of Rose’s loose tops, also liberated from the laundry room, and yanked it over her head. She shoved her feet into two sandals from the pile, fairly certain they belonged to the same pair, and clomped down the stairs.

  “Nice outfit,” Bean said. “Good that you took the time to put it together.”

  Cordy looked down. The top was batik, the skirt patchwork. She looked like she’d rolled in a bin of fabric remainders. “W.E.” she said.

  “We?”

  “What. Ever. Let’s go.” She hopped down the last two steps and grabbed her bag. How much longer was she going to be able to get away with forgiving elastic waistbands and pilfering clothes from our laundry piles? It was a good thing she’d given up the indie rock look—the miniskirts and baby tees would have given her away already. She’d have to buy new clothes soon. Maternity clothes.

  And she’d have to tell us.

  She sat in the passenger seat biting at her ragged cuticles as Bean drove, singing tunelessly along with the radio. It was all happening too fast. She’d already gained weight, back in our parents’ house where food was plentiful and actually tasted good, and her nausea was abating slowly. Time was ticking away. Maternity clothes were just the beginning—there needed to be doctor’s appointments and baby clothes and all those things meant money.

  She was going to have to take Dan up on his offer of a job. But how much would that pay? And what if our parents kicked her out when she told them?

  She could tell Rose first. Rose would come up with some kind of plan. Except Rose was even touchier than usual. Cordy tugged at a scrap of skin at the edge of her nail with her hands and it started to bleed.

  It might not be too late to have an abortion. The fog around her head cleared for a moment. The father—if you could call him that—wouldn’t care. He didn’t even know. And our family wouldn’t care if they didn’t know, either.

  But she cared. She didn’t want to but she did.

  Putting a hand on her stomach, she pushed against the tiny swell. We knew what the church had to say about abortion—we knew what it had to say about a l
ot of things, but that had never stopped us before. Cordy would be hard-pressed to say that it was anything to do with our faith that was giving her pause.

  She looked over at Bean, whose eyes were hidden behind designer sunglasses, still singing along with the radio, wandering in and out of pitch as though she were embroidering around the notes. Bean would have an abortion, no doubt. Probably already had had one. Rose would have the baby.

  But what would she do?

  She pictured herself with an infant, a toddler, a preteen, a teenager. Impossible. Hadn’t she just been a teenager herself? Wasn’t she still? Reaching out, she flipped the air-conditioning vent up so the cold air blew into her eyes, making her squint against the pressure.

  She couldn’t make this kind of decision. She never had—people always made decisions for her, or the wind took her where it would and she made the best of it. She’d make an appointment with the doctor and she’d think about it then. Not now.

  When they got back from the store, where Cordy had plopped herself into a wheelchair with pink bicycle streamers coming off the handlebars and been little to no help at all to Bean in checking items off the list, they walked inside to a quiet house.

  “Hellooooooo?” Cordy called, dropping the bags and shower seat Bean had harassed her into carrying in from the car. “Where is everyone?”

  “Upstairs,” Rose called. “Come up, please.”

  Bean and Cordy went upstairs into our parents’ bedroom. Our mother was lying in the bed, her eyes closed. Our father sat beside her, holding her hand. Rose was leaning against the fireplace, her eyes closed.

  “What’s wrong?” Bean asked. She and Cordy sat on the hope chest where we stored extra blankets.

  “The results from the lymph node biopsy came back,” Rose said. “They were positive.”

  “Meaning what?” Cordy asked.

  “Nothing good,” Bean said. She’d found a book on breast cancer at the library, and had read it, but the medical terms had jumbled in her mind and she found herself unable to follow the complicated flow charts of combinations and treatment options.

  “It means the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes under her arm. They’ll have to do radiation and maybe more chemo.”

  “Shit,” Bean said.

  “No doubt,” Cordy agreed.

  No one seemed to have anything else to add to that pithy pair of statements. We’d convinced ourselves that after the surgery it would all be okay, problem solved, and we could move on.

  “It could be worse,” our father said. “It’s stage IIIC. Treatable, provided everything goes well. And what remains will hardly stop the mouth of present dues: the future comes apace; what shall defend the interim?”

  “Daddy,” Cordy groaned. “Speak English.”

  “We’ll just have to deal with it,” our mother said softly, opening her eyes, which looked bright against the white of her skin. “We knew there was the possibility that things could be worse. And your father’s right—it’s treatable. The doctor said since the tumor responded so well to the chemotherapy, it’s likely it will respond equally well to radiation and maybe another round of chemotherapy.”

  Another round. As if she were buying drinks. Bean pictured our mother sitting at a bar, offering chemo cocktails on the house.

  “Well, we got all the things the nurse suggested,” Bean said, clearing the image from her mind.

  “Bring them up,” Rose ordered. “We’ll get things set up in here.” The nurse had suggested that we move our mother downstairs during her convalescence, but our mother was horrified by the thought of turning the dining room into her bedroom for the duration, and flat-out refused, despite the nurse’s perfectly reasonable arguments. So we had resigned ourselves to schlepping ourselves, our mother’s things, and, if need be, our mother, up and down the stairs for the next few months.

  Bean and Cordy trudged downstairs and brought everything up, and we settled ourselves into a rhythm of work and fussing, bumping into each other until our mother complained about the noise and we scattered like seeds into our own rooms to bury ourselves in all the things we didn’t want to talk about at all.

  Bean’s hands were cold as her heels clicked up the sidewalk to the Mannings’ front door. The evening wrapped, warm and humid, around her, the silk of her camisole pressing against her heated skin, but her fingers were chilled and shaking.

  “Bianca,” Dr. Manning said as he opened the door to her knock. He was wearing a dress shirt, the sleeves rolled neatly up, the fabric’s deep blue echoing in his eyes. “You look beautiful, as always.”

  “Edward,” she said, and proffered her cheek for a kiss. His lips were warm and dry and almost familiar, and he lingered a moment longer than technically appropriate, inhaling the scent of her.

  “Come into the kitchen,” he said. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

  Bean slipped off her shoes by the front door—barefoot, he was only a few inches taller than she—and followed him. The kitchen had been re-modeled since she had been here last, with expensive appliances that gleamed, self-satisfied, in the dim light. Bean might have asked about it, but doing so would have brought reality dangerously close to the fantasy, would have entailed mentions of Lila and the children, and Bean knew better than to spoil the moment. Leaning on the edge of the marble-topped island in the center of the room, she watched Edward’s hands as he deftly opened a bottle of wine and poured her a glass, the liquid settling joyfully into the bowl.

  “Let’s have a toast,” Edward said, filling and then raising his own glass. “To old friendships, rekindled.”

  “To the future,” Bean said.

  Same as the past.

  There had only been one married man on Bean’s too-long list, an attorney at the firm where she worked, too old to not yet be partner, tired and beaten down and welcoming of the wonder of this young beauty who brought pageantry and drama to his staid life. They made love on his desk, Bean laid bare on open files, a cold paperweight against her arm. They rented obscenely expensive hotel rooms for only a few hours. He bought her jewelry, plied her with lavish dinners, whispered lyrics from old power ballads in her ears. In his Walter Mitty dreams, he was powerful and dominant, and Bean let him believe that, let him be magnanimous at the expense of her own strength. But it wasn’t any of that which bothered her. It was the family pictures she turned her back on when she lay on his desk, the handmade card she found in his pocket while he showered in their room at the Plaza, lost in steam and floral soap. It was the way that when he moved above her she could picture him kissing his wife goodbye in the morning, pushing his children on the swings, living the life that she was pulling him away from.

  It appeared, after all, that Bean had some standards.

  But then here she was again, watching a very married man, married, frankly, to a woman who had done nothing but good for her, make her a very fancy meal. Pickings were, after all, rather slim. But, oh, it was so nice to be so obviously wanted. So nice to worry about her hair and her makeup instead of money and her awful prospects. So nice not to be turned away from for someone younger, prettier.

  There was a picture of Lila and their youngest child, who’d been only a baby when Bean graduated, on the refrigerator, nestled together against a backdrop of snow. Lila’s eyes, bright and blue, crinkled at the edges, above cold-pinked cheeks. Bean closed her eyes for a moment and sent out a silent apology. For these gifts we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly sorry.

  “How are we so lucky to be graced with your presence again?” Edward asked. He held his wineglass in one hand and deftly worked a wooden spoon in a skillet on the stove.

  Bean sidled around the edge of the island so she was closer to him, the picture behind her. Her heart beat faster, her hand slipped against the stem of her glass as she set it down. “It’s so noisy in the city,” she said. “I thought it was about time for a little piece of quiet.”

  Edward nodded. “Then you’re in the right place. I can’t remember the last time I
had to complain about the volume in Barney.”

  “You’re obviously not spending a lot of time at the keg parties,” Bean said. She rested her hand against the countertop and turned, pushing her hips toward him, calculatedly making herself available.

  “My interest in partying with college kids died shortly after bell-bottoms abandoned us. I think there’s an evolutionary limit on how long drinking warm beer can hold your interest.”

  Bean stepped closer again. “But all those nubile young coeds? Come on, don’t you find it the least bit tempting?” Oh, it was so easy for her, every move planned for maximum effect, every phrase calculated to raise the temperature. The thrill of the chase still excited her; though she knew its inevitable conclusion, though she could predict every breath along the way, there was pleasure in its incredible power to dull everything but the two people in this room. If only those silly boys at the bar knew what they were missing.

  “Children,” Edward said dismissively.

  “I was one of those children once,” Bean pouted.

  “But you’re not now, are you?” he asked. “You’re a woman.” His fingers still wrapped around the bowl of his glass, he brushed the back of his hand over her collarbone, his eyes locked with hers.

  And Bean, if she had ever been planning to fight, surrendered.

  Cordy’s first shift at the Beanery was quiet, as it would be in the summer. If you have never been in a college town in the summer, it is hard to explain. It’s a small town with a lot of large, empty buildings, and people knocking around between them like lost billiard balls. During the year it explodes, but in the summer there is nothing but time stretching thick and slow.