The Weird Sisters

by Eleanor Brown

  “I’m not sorry I didn’t go,” she said quietly. “But I wish I had. I could have been a different person.”

  This was a possibility that had never really occurred to Rose.

  I want you to know I think what you’re doing is cosmically stupid,” Bean said to Cordy, who was doing her the kindness of driving her into the city. In the back of our parents’ car sat boxes of Bean’s city wardrobe, culled and wrapped like harvested sheaves of wheat, ready to be sold to the highest bidder at the consignment store she’d found.

  “Thank you!” Cordy said. “I haven’t heard that recently. It’s nice to be reminded that I’m maintaining my title for another year.” She flipped the turn signal, drifted into the next lane.

  “I’m not done. I also think it’s brave. And it’s not unprecedented. You were always so good with kids. Not like me.”

  “You aren’t bad with kids, Bean. You just never enjoyed them very much.”

  “But you did. And if you can get all the practical stuff sorted out, you’ll be a great mother.”

  “Thank you,” Cordy said, her voice softer-edged. “I’m glad to hear someone supports me.”

  “You know they’ll support you in the end. And by ‘they’ I mean Dad. Mom’s already supportive. She’s just too exhausted to care about anything right now, I think.”

  “I hope so.” But Cordy’s voice was glum, tremulous.

  It was so hard, the way our father retreated from Cordy, hiding even more than usual in his study, behind a book, grunting in response to her overtures, drifting through the house near us, but never with us. She had gone from most favored nation to useless ally, from Cordelia to Ophelia.

  “Are you going to tell them about you?” Cordy asked. Her eyes remained fixed on the road, unreadable to Bean.

  “No!” Bean said, scandalized at the thought. “Christ, can you imagine?”

  “It’d take the pressure off me. I’ll do it for you,” Cordy said, a weak joke that made us sick to our stomachs. Other sisters did that kind of thing, probably, but despite our petty conflicts and discomforts, we were not that kind of sisters.

  “Cordy, seriously. You can’t tell anyone. Ever.”

  “You can’t just pretend it didn’t happen.”

  “Pretending? You don’t even know. I think about it all the time, Cord. It’s the first thing I think of when I get up in the morning and it makes me so sick I just want to vomit.” It makes me so sick I have to spend the night in another woman’s bed, using her husband’s midlife crisis to make me forget myself.

  “I know that feeling,” Cordy said, and she didn’t mean just morning sickness, but Bean wasn’t listening.

  “I hate myself. I hate what I let myself turn into, what I let myself do. It’s like the person who did all that didn’t even . . . It’s like someone I don’t even know. Because I wasn’t raised like that. I don’t have some excuse, like some troubled childhood with a hole I’ve got to fill. I just did it because I thought I needed it. I thought I deserved it. It’s sick.”

  “You like him, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Father Aidan,” Cordy said. She looked over her shoulder, reflex despite the cardboard blocking her view, moved toward the exit off the highway into the city limits. “You like him like him.”

  “What the hell does that have to do with anything I was just saying?”

  “Everything,” Cordy intoned.

  “Look, he’s hot,” Bean said. “For a priest. But do you think a priest would have me?”

  “I don’t think priests are supposed to have anybody,” Cordy pointed out. She pulled to a stop at the light. Beside us, a man gone ragged from wear held a sign drawn on cardboard. Cordy smiled and shook her head, and he rattled his way down the exit ramp.

  “I just like him. As a friend. I think he can help me.”

  “Just for the record, fucking is not helping,” Cordy said.

  “Shut up,” Bean replied.

  “If you want him, you’re going to have to break it off with Dr. Manning,” Cordy said.

  Bean froze. Cordy looked over at her and shook her head. “Bean, you can’t think we wouldn’t notice.”

  “I didn’t . . . It’s not . . .” Bean began, but there was nothing to say. Caught, again.

  “I don’t think you’re a bad person, you know. You’ve done worse things, I’m sure. Hell, I’ve done worse. But that isn’t seriously what you want, is it?”

  “No,” Bean whispered, and her throat was thick with tears and guilt. “I mean, when I’m with him I’m happy, but . . .” She trailed off. She wasn’t, of course. Forgetting wasn’t the same as being happy. Being drunk wasn’t the same as forgetting, and as often as she was literally drunk when she was with him, she was just as much intoxicated by the effort of forgetting everything she had to face.

  “No, you’re not,” Cordy said cheerfully. “You’re obviously miserable, Bean. We’re at our most miserable when we’re doing it to ourselves. Sad, but true.”

  “Like you’re so happy,” Bean said.

  “They’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace.”

  “Don’t martyr yourself on my account,” Bean snorted, but Cordy’s words had the sting of truth.

  “I never claimed to be happy. Fortunately, we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. And how you’re going to break it off with him. Whether you want Aidan or not.”

  “I can’t,” Bean said, retreating again.

  “You must,” Cordy said. “It doesn’t make you feel the way you want it to make you feel. It doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t make anyone’s life any better. It just keeps you from moving on.”

  “Moving on to what?” As if there was anything in Barnwell worth moving on to.

  “Whoever you’re going to become,” Cordy said, as though that solved anything. “The new Bean.” And then she said, “New Bean,” again, because it made her giggle.

  Meet the new Bean, same as the old Bean.

  In New York she and her roommates had had a housewarming party, at which Daisy’s boyfriend had been in attendance. As usual, Bean had drunk too much, and the next morning, easing her way back into sunlight, a cautious vampire, Daisy had confronted her in the kitchen. “Leave Michael alone,” she threatened, the power of her words for once not undercut by the sweet sway of her Georgia accent.

  “What?” Bean asked. She was off-kilter, a sailor back on land, and she had to grip the edge of the tiny table to face Daisy. The woman’s face had gone so white with anger that her freckles stood out like stars.

  “You were all over him last night. My boyfriend.” Daisy jabbed a finger perilously close to Bean’s chest. Too exhausted and hungover to focus, Bean had stared at the doughy flesh, noting the unmanicured nails, the wide palm that had stretched the seams of the gloves in her debutante portrait.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it,” Bean had stuttered, searching her memory for an apology. There was a dim image, a twist of her arm around Michael’s shoulder, her mouth near his ear. Her hand went to her face involuntarily. Crap.

  “That’s your problem, you know? Ya’ll just never learned how to deal with a man when you weren’t fucking him.” The profanity startled Bean, coming in such sweetly laced syllables. Daisy caught the emotion crossing over Bean’s face and nodded, satisfied that her sally had hit the mark. “Yeah, I’ve seen it. You slinking around those bars, coming home stinking of cigarettes and beer and who knows what else. But I’m not going to put up with it. Leave. Us. Alone.” Bean had felt so betrayed, so righteously wronged. But Daisy had known her better than she had ever wanted to know herself.

  The new Bean. She wanted to laugh, but she was sure that if she did, she would cry without stopping instead. There was no new Bean. There was only the same rotten apple, hiding herself under layers of makeup, lying and stealing—money, another woman’s husband. It was all the same thing. She’d sworn to change, b
ut she hadn’t. She knelt for communion in church as though she were worthy of it, she went to community service projects as if the darkness inside her wouldn’t seep into the foundations of the homes they built, leaving trails of decay under coats of paint. Her stomach lurched, and she put her forehead against the window, letting the air-conditioning against the glass cool off the heat of her skin.

  How much lower was she going to go? How many more lies could she tell?

  Who was going to save her?

  Cordy was right. She had to end it with Edward. And Aidan . . . She pictured his face in her mind, the way he touched her shoulder when they spoke, his shoulders spreading wide and strong when he worked on a house, his warm greeting when he saw her at church with our family.

  It wouldn’t be so bad to love Aidan, she thought. Something about his presence made her feel clean again, made her feel like someday she could be whole, pulled back from the edge, restored from damage. She wanted that feeling all the time.

  Rose had been wrong before when she told Jonathan she thought Bean was after Aidan. Or maybe she’d just been prescient. Because even though Bean hadn’t seriously considered him before, she was definitely thinking about it now. And as she thought of him, flipped back through her mind, he grew taller, more handsome, more perfect.

  He was the one. He could save her from herself.

  SEVENTEEN

  Our mother was recovering from her first week of radiation.

  She’d been tired for so long now, we’d nearly forgotten her any other way. She didn’t complain, though we knew she’d been having chest pains, and even the tiniest effort seemed to exhaust her.

  Bean was working, and Rose had gone into town, leaving Cordy alone with our parents. When our father had brought our mother home, she had seemed tired, but she played a game of Scrabble with Rose, and walked in the garden, and sat down with us at dinner, though she ate hardly anything, her presence serving mostly to smooth the rumpled silence between Cordy and our father.

  The next morning, Cordy awoke to the sound of our mother vomiting, and though she had lately been doing the same thing herself, this seemed worse, desperate and painful in a way hers was not, uncomfortable as it was. Cordy stumbled out of bed, her hair tangled in the loose bun she slept in, T-shirt speckled with holes, and pajama pants tied loosely at her hips, and felt her way, sleep-blind, into our parents’ room.

  How old were you when you first realized your parents were human? That they were not omnipotent, that what they said did not, in fact, go, they had dreams and feelings and scars? Or have you not realized that yet? Do you still call your parents and have a one-sided conversation with them, child to parent, not adult to adult?

  Cordy, we think, figured this out at the moment she saw our mother lean back against the bed, our father’s arm around her shoulders, her mouth wet with saliva, her skin gone white and papery in the unforgiving arm of sun reaching through the curtains. Our father put down the silvery bowl we had all used, at some point, when in the grips of some awful intestinal trauma. The hollow clang against the bedside table made Cordy shiver with memory. Our father dabbed our mother’s forehead, then her mouth, with a wet washcloth, and she smiled at him, and he smiled back, and then she closed her eyes.

  “Is she okay?” Cordy asked, her voice no more than a whisper. Our father shifted on the bed, turning to see her, and she thought how he always looked surprised to see us, as though he had not known us for our entire lives. Who goes there?

  He took off his glasses, wiped them unnecessarily with the handkerchief he kept in his pocket for these purposes—such a gentleman, our father—and replaced them, peering at Cordy as though clearer lenses might resolve the mystery of her presence. To that, we have this to say: Good lucky, Daddy-o. “She’ll be all right,” he said. “I think it’s just the medications.” He looked slightly disappointed at this news, as though the chemical chains present in the pills had let him down on a deep and personal level.

  “Can I help?” Cordy asked. She stepped forward cautiously, bare foot lapping over the ridge between the wide-slatted floorboards and the edge of the rug, gone bare at the edges from wear. Beside her, fingers fluttering, birds in flight.

  “Come here,” our father said, and patted the bed on the other side of our mother. She did not open her eyes, but she smiled thinly when she felt Cordy sit down.

  “Hi, Mommy,” Cordy said, and our father handed her the washcloth, which she dabbed carefully along our mother’s jawline, her mouth. She had always had such beautiful skin, taut and fuzzed softly like fruit, the tiniest freckles along the bridge of her nose (none of us had inherited those and how bitter we were about it), petals blooming in her cheeks. Our father stood and went to the bathroom, Cordy listening to the familiar clank of that bowl against the sink, the way it rang as he rinsed it out. “Do you need anything?”

  “No, honey, thank you. I’m just tired.” Her eyes were still closed, flicking slightly under the blue-veined tissue paper of her eyelids. “Will you make your father some breakfast?” She paused, licked her lips. “And then maybe you can come up here and read to me.”

  “Sure,” Cordy said. She kissed our mother’s forehead, gone cool and clammy, and stood up gently, careful not to move the bed. The air was cool in their room still, and she adjusted the thick white comforter before she pulled the curtains shut, blocking out the inquisitive rays playing their way, like fingers on a keyboard, across the covers. Cordy had always had this way about her, a calm willingness to accept what came. We had too often stolen toys from her chubby fingers before she had the motor skills or the will to fight back. But we would be dishonest if we said it did not still her to see our mother lying that way on the bed. Savasana. Corpse pose.

  In the kitchen, Cordy clanked and fussed, cracking eggs, dicing vegetables for an omelet, considering the tiny bottles of spices. Rose alphabetized the jars and cans in her kitchen. Here, they were piled against each other, drunken sailors spilling drifts of dried leaves across the bottom of the cabinet.

  “She’s sleeping,” our father announced gruffly, making his way into the kitchen. He must have gone out already, the paper was unfolded, a mug of coffee gone cold beside it. He lifted the front section as Cordy deftly slipped a plate onto the table, golden omelet flecked green and white with onions and peppers from the garden. “Thank you,” he said, looking at her and then back at the plate, pondering the mystery of how the girl and the meal were connected.

  “You’re welcome,” Cordy said. She poured and cooked another omelet, eased it onto her plate, and joined him at the table. Our father hid behind the paper, but she heard the sounds of his silverware, the grimacing swallow as he drank his coffee, bitter and black.

  As a child, Bean had developed a tremendous aversion to the sound of chewing. At the breakfast table, faced with the melodious crunching of our entire family’s teeth working against their cereal, she would grow furiouser and furiouser until she stood and stomped off to eat elsewhere, in peace. Cordy had never been bothered like this. She loved the symphonic harmony of people eating, the gentle sigh of pleasure at the meeting of taste and bud, the percussive notes of cutlery.

  “I really like working at the coffee shop,” she said, apropos of nothing. Our father lowered the paper, brows down, and stared at our sister. “I was just thinking, I love all the sounds. Like the steamer, and the bell on the door, and the conversations. I can work, and I can just listen to all those sounds around me, and it’s kind of comforting, you know?”

  “If music be the food of love,” our father said, and gave a short smile. Cordy took it, a crumb. He went back to his paper. She felt tears sting in her eyes. It had never been like this. He had always listened to her stories, asked her to share her dreams, laughed the hardest at her jokes. Now it seemed he could hardly bear to hear the sound of her voice, couldn’t even be civil enough for small talk.

  Cordy was sure we were wrong. He wasn’t going to come around. Maybe not ever.

  How had she never known
how good she had it until it was gone?

  She finished eating in silence, the food tasteless in her mouth, and went back upstairs while our father did the dishes. She stood for a moment, watching our mother rest, the quiet rustle of her breath in and out. Is this what it would be like? Wondering always if what you were doing was right, was enough, was tender and gentle and caring enough to soothe pains and nourish hopes? A little pulse of panic fluttered around her heart at the thought of so much importance. At least here we could pick up after Cordy when she left things undone. But a baby would be hers. Hers alone.

  She shifted slightly. When she heard the creak of Cordy’s feet on the floor, our mother opened her eyes. “Did he eat something?” she asked. This is our mother. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse could be bearing down hard and fast upon us, and she would want to make sure our father had eaten. So he wouldn’t, you know, get hungry in the afterlife or something.

  “Aye,” Cordy said. “The duke hath dined.” She looked at our mother more closely. “Are you okay? You look kind of”—she waved her hand—“funny.”

  Our mother sighed. “I’m fine. Just tired, as usual. And hungry.”

  “Do you want something to eat?” Cordy turned to head back to the kitchen.

  “No thank you, honey. Even if I could keep it down, everything tastes like metal these days. It’s awful.”

  “Oh.” Cordy tuned back and walked toward the bed. “You want me to read to you now?”

  “That would be lovely,” our mother said.

  Cordy picked up the book on our mother’s bedside table. “Tolstoy?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I figured I’d have a lot of time,” our mother said, and smiled wryly. We are notorious for our efforts to read the (non-Shakespearean) classics, but are similarly notorious, with certain exceptions, for our inability (or unwillingness) to finish them.

  Cordy nodded, hopping up on our father’s side of the bed rather enthusiastically, and apologizing at our mother’s grimace. “You haven’t started it yet?” she asked.