The Weird Sisters (22 page)

Mrs. O looked a little surprised by Cordy’s sudden businesslike attitude. “Oh, yes. Well. It’s lovely to have you working here. I’ll have to come in and see you all the time now. I’d like a chicken salad sandwich, please, and a cup of the soup.” Cordy rang up all the women’s lunches and then began to work, setting the meals on trays, which Ian capped off with drinks and delivered to the tables. She heard the hen clucks of the women as they ate their lunches, and busied herself cleaning underneath the coffee machines. On breaks, she wandered back into the remnants of the kitchen that had been here when the space had, even beyond our memories, been a restaurant. Now it was a labyrinth of boxes—cups and napkins and straws and the interminably squeaky foam clamshells she had been wrestling with all morning. She walked around the rows meditatively, dragging her fingers along the dusty surfaces.

So this is what she had come to. The quiet silence of Barnwell again. An unscratchable itch surfaced inside her, like a phantom limb. When would she get to leave? Where could she go next? And then a gentle tug on the string of her mental balloon. She couldn’t go anywhere, not anymore. There had been a before, and now there would be an after.

Nearly two hours later, Cordy felt like she had cleaned every possible surface when Dan came in. He and Ian exchanged one of those highchinned nods of greeting only men of a certain age seem to be able to master, and Ian shucked his apron, disappearing into the back.

“Cordeeeeeelia,” he greeted her. “How’s it going?”

“I’m ready to chew my leg off from boredom, but other than that, it’s good.”

Dan barked a short laugh. “Enjoy it now, baby. It never gets this quiet during the school year. In case you’ve forgotten. It’s nonstop busy.”

“Like woah,” Cordy agreed, straight-faced.

Dan laughed. Cordy, as always, had pegged her target perfectly. “Mock if you must, but he makes a great cup of coffee. I’m going to be so bummed when he graduates. So what’s Ian kept you busy with?”

“Ringing. Making sandwiches. I think I’ve cleaned everything like seven times.”

“You can bring a book with you, you know. You do still read, don’t you?”

“Have you
met
my father?”

“On occasion. But I’ve also met Bean. I don’t think she cracked a book the whole year I lived on her floor.”

“Ah, this is Bean’s clever conceit. She graduated magna, did you know that? But she never let anyone see her study. Ruins the party girl image.”

“She had me fooled.”

Dan had opened the cash register and was stacking the bills all going in the same direction.

“That is a sign of serious psychosis,” she said.

Dan laughed again, and Cordy smiled. “You’re hired. I’m so glad to find someone who actually wants to make a sandwich without figuring out how to poison someone with it. You haven’t poisoned anyone, have you?”

“Not yet. But it’s still early.” Cordy fluttered her eyelashes endearingly.

“Then I’d better send you home. Come in tomorrow around this time, and I’ll show you around a little more.”

“You want me to leave now? Won’t you be alone?”

“Oh, and the rush is going to kill me,” Dan said, looking around the Beanery. A couple was sitting in a pair of chairs by the window, leaning over the tiny table between them, and a student lounged by the chess table, head lolling sleepily over the barely turned pages of Rilke in his hand. Probably just for show anyway. “G’wan. You must be bored stiff.”

Folding the damp towel, she dropped it onto the edge of the sparkling sink. It should have been sparkling—she’d gone after it with baking soda and lemon juice earlier. “I’m usually working as a waitress on a dude ranch this time of year. It’s out-of-control busy—so, yeah, this is a little weird.”

“Miss it?”

Cordy, untying her apron, stopped to think. She thought of the hot, wide-horizoned days and the cold, star-studded nights. She thought of being free to go anywhere and do anything, and owing and owning nothing. She thought of drugs and dizzy youth and eternal hunger, and the people she had kissed and left, promises she had made and broken.

“No,” she said, and it was impossible for us to tell if she was lying or not.

Cordy poured herself a cup of lemonade and flipped her apron over her shoulder as she left. The heat of the afternoon, slowly burning itself into evening, felt clammy against her chilled arms. She walked slowly, letting the humidity soften her skin. A few cars hushed past on the streets. Maura, the bookstore’s owner, poked her head out of the front door, waving at Cordy, who waved back halfheartedly, not crossing over. Maura disappeared back behind the FINAL CLEARANCE banner, which Cordy was beginning to think was all a ruse, since there was nothing FINAL about a CLEARANCE that lasted this long. The postmistress tooted her horn as she drove by, turning off Main and then disappearing into the alley behind the Beanery, and Cordy waved again.

So was this it, then? Was this her after? Kalah Justin was in New York becoming a star, and Cordy was in Barnwell becoming a barista. If only she’d finished college. If only she’d come home years ago when the shine started to fade, instead of grimly holding on, hoping it would get better. If only . . .

“Too late,” Cordy said to no one in particular.

ELEVEN

H
ave you ever thought about the word ‘no’?” Bean asked. She dropped her bag on the table by the door and kicked off her shoes. Across the room, Cordy was sitting cross-legged in an armchair, a book in her lap.

“Not really, but I’d be happy to do so if it would make you happy,” Cordy said.

“I have heard the word ‘no’ fifty thousand times today. I went to every place in town and beyond looking for a job. Nobody’s hiring.”

“Well, duh. It’s totally the wrong season.”

“Yeah, it’s also totally the wrong town.” Bean flopped down on the sofa and stretched her feet out. “Anyway, you got a job.”

“I think that was out of pity.”

Bean snorted. “I’d take a pity job at this point.”

“Bianca, can you please move off the couch?” Rose was rounding the corner, holding our mother’s good arm. Bean hopped up.

“Whoa. It lives!” Cordy said.

“Thank you, dear,” our mother said. “Your bedside manner is absolutely wonderful. I think you should go into medicine.”

“No prob,” Cordy said. She went back to her book. Bean walked over and helped Rose bring our mother to the sofa, settling her into a nest of pillows. She looked better; her skin touched again with pink, the whites of her eyes not so faded. She hadn’t been able to shower since the surgery, but they’d given her a sponge bath before she left the hospital, and she smelled pleasantly of sun-dried laundry and lotion. If we didn’t look at her torso, we could pretend that it hadn’t happened at all, that she was suffering from nothing more than a pesky summer cold.

Rose took a quilt from the back of the sofa and draped it over our mother’s legs, covering up the lurid pink toenail polish Cordy had inexpertly applied in a bid to make herself useful during hospital visiting hours.

Bean stood back and admired their work.
“The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne; burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold . . .”
she began.

“Poop,” Cordy said. “Ha ha ha.”

“You’re out of control,” Bean said.

“Thank you for the Cleopatra reference, Bianca. I’ll elect to take it as a compliment,” our mother said. Rose bent over and lifted a small bulb from beside our mother’s leg and rested it on her lap.

“You can’t sit on that, Mom. It won’t drain right.” She eyed the setup critically, and then walked into the kitchen.

“That’s the surgical drain?” Bean asked. “I thought it would be bigger. Like a hot water bottle.”

Cordy put down her book and squinted across the room. “Dude, that is nasty.”

“Again, darling, thank you,” our mother said. “I do hope that if you ever get ill we can all return the favor and make you feel similarly attractive.”

“Oh, Mommy,” Cordy said, clambering out of the chair and crawling across the floor to the sofa, where she butted her head against our mother’s hand, like a cat. “I’m just kidding around.”

“I know, love,” our mother said, petting Cordy’s hair. “Now what’s this about a job, Bianca?”

“Nothing. No job. Nobody wants to hire ye olde Beanster.” Bean sat down in the chair Cordy had vacated and rubbed her feet.

“Did you try the college?” our mother asked.

“Aye. No luck, unless I want to work in the electrical department, which I would totally do, but I think would be a bad idea for everyone involved, seeing as I don’t know anything about electrical wiring.”

“Good call,” Cordy said, tapping her nose with her index finger.

“Did you really go everywhere?” Rose asked. She was returning from the kitchen with a glass of water, which she put neatly on a coaster beside our mother.

Bean narrowed her eyes at Rose. “Yes, Rose, I really did go everywhere. The past two days I have inquired into the fields of beauty, fertilizer, accounting, food service, and everything in between.”

“Fertilizer,” Cordy mused. “That sounds interesting.”

“Don’t bother. They’re not hiring,” Bean said, and Cordy shrugged.

“If you’re really serious, if you really get out there and pound the pavement, I’m sure you’ll come up with something,” Rose said.

Bean’s mouth dropped open. “Are you kidding me? You don’t have any idea what I’ve been doing.”

“Girls, girls,” our mother said ineffectually. Bean was so mad she looked like a cartoon figure with smoke coming out of her ears. Rose retreated slightly. “Bianca, something will come up.”

“And in the meantime, you’ve got no expenses, right?” Rose asked.

“Right,” Bean said, staring at the floor.

Rose frowned. She’d intended for that to be helpful, but Bean’s expression was just as foul. She tried again. “If you need help, like, making up a budget or something . . .” She trailed off.

“That’s nice, Rosie,” Cordy jumped in sweetly before Bean could lash out. “That’s really nice.”

Bean exhaled through her nose. It wasn’t Rose’s fault. She didn’t know. She didn’t know that Bean could feel the debt on her shoulders like weight, that Daisy had now sent two letters, the second even more insistent, demanding that Bean pay what she owed them, that there was a passel of attorneys out there who could have her in jail as easily as take a breath....

No, Rose didn’t know. And Bean couldn’t tell her, even though she wanted to. When she woke up in the morning, the first thought she had was of money. When she got dressed, she calculated how much each piece of clothing had cost. She passed by stores and shoved her hands in her pockets, now sickened by the thought of spending anything at all. She dreamed of the faces of her creditors, angry and screaming, and she woke with tears dried on her face and a feeling of helplessness lying on her like a shroud. The back of her neck felt hot, and she wondered what would happen if she did spill her secret, open her mouth and let the pain go. The idea of relief was so tempting, so close.

But the idea of shame was worse. And the thought of what Rose might think of her if she told . . . she couldn’t face that.

Our mother was right. Something would turn up. Something had to turn up. Soon. The alternative was unthinkable.

R
ose walked into town to the pharmacy to pick up our mother’s prescription. We’d asked Cordy to get it on the way home from work the day before, but she had, shockingly, forgotten. After Rose paid, she wandered the aisles, not wanting to go back out into the heat, letting the cold air chill the sweat on her skin as her eyes tripped over the shelves.

“Dr. Andreas?”

Rose looked up from the battery display. She still started a little when someone called her by our father’s name, even though she had earned her own Ph.D. and therefore the title.

“Oh, Dr. Kelly!” Rose said, and walked over to the woman standing by the door. Dr. Kelly had been Rose’s favorite math professor in college, and was now the head of the math department. “It’s so nice to see you. How have you been?”

“Excellent. We just got back from a lovely cruise in Greece with the family.”

“Greece. Wow. Grandchildren and everything?”

“Grandchildren and everything. Carl and I were celebrating our fortieth anniversary, and we thought it would be nice to have everyone along.”

“It sounds wonderful. Greece is supposed to be gorgeous.”

“It is. You and Jonathan must go someday. Maybe for your honeymoon?”

“Maybe.”

“How’s your mother?”

“Mixed. She’s recovering okay from the surgery, but they found cancer in some of the lymph nodes they removed, so she’s in for some radiation and maybe another course of chemotherapy.”

“I am sorry,” Dr. Kelly said. “What can we do to help?”

“She’d like some company, I’m sure. Other than us, that is.”

“I’ll give a call and see how she’s feeling someday, then. The thing is, Rose, I was actually thinking about giving you a call.”

“Oh?” Rose asked. She shifted, crossed her arms. The prescription bag crinkled under her arm.