The Weird Sisters (25 page)

“Not yet. It’s been a little busy here, Jonathan.” This was not entirely untrue. But she had been procrastinating on making travel plans, a little in the same way that Bean had refused to open her bills. We are more alike than we would ever admit.

“I understand. Why don’t you see if you can take some time and get a flight, and we’ll talk about it more when you’re here. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said. She suddenly felt near tears, and very, very tired. All the excitement of seeing Dr. Kelly yesterday had run out of her. Jonathan wasn’t going to whoop with joy about turning down this job and moving back to Barnwell with her forever and ever. And she couldn’t imagine having worked her entire life, hoping that one day she’d have the opportunity to take a job here, only to turn it down.

One of them was going to have to give, or the whole thing was going to fall apart.

B
ean was extraordinarily hungover, which was embarrassing enough at her age—shouldn’t you leave those things behind along with consumption of alcohol through funnels?—but even worse on a Thursday morning. The sun was a cheerful irritation pushing its way through her designer sunglasses, and her stomach pushed and rolled with every step she took.

When she had walked up to the house that morning, Rose, barreling down the porch steps, had nearly knocked her over. “You’re just coming home? I didn’t realize you were going to be out all night.”

She hadn’t known she would be, truthfully. She had headed out with the intention of shaking off a little of the small-town stink and burying her troubles in alcohol. She hadn’t made it far, only to Edward’s house, to the front door, where he greeted her with a drink, and she returned the favor by slipping off her dress and draining the glass as he kissed his way down her neck.

“It wasn’t intentional,” Bean had said to Rose, pushing her way past our sister into the kitchen. She was more than aware that the scent of cigarettes and alcohol was pushing its way through her skin, underscored by the dank, vinegar smell of sweat and desperate sex.

Rose followed her back inside. “You smell like a brewery.”

“And yet I haven’t been in one. Odd, no?” Bean filled a glass with ice and then let the tap run, the ice cubes cracking, startled by the difference in temperature.

“What if something had happened?”

“Then I’m sure one of the three other able-bodied adults in the house, if not all of you, would have handled it with alacrity.” She took a long drink of the water, forcing her stomach back down as it lurched against her ribs in protest.

Rose felt the burn of unfairness in her stomach. It wasn’t right that Bean could just run around like this, while she was taking care of things. It wasn’t fair.

She opened her mouth to speak, to pass judgment, but at that moment, Bean put down her empty glass and their eyes locked. Bean’s hair was uncharacteristically ruffled, her eyes bloodshot and tired. She had misbuttoned her shirt, and her hands were shaking slightly as she went to fold her arms over her chest. When had Bean last looked so exhausted, so weak?

When Rose was six and Bean three, our mother nearly ready to give birth to Cordy, we were in the kitchen playing while our mother baked. We had brought in a set of wooden blocks and were constructing a castle with wide towers and drawbridges that moved with the aid of our clumsy hands. After she put a cake in the oven, our mother wandered out into the garden, forgetting us, perhaps, absorbed as we were in our architectural fantasies. Finally the scent of chocolate bursting in the oven’s heat became too much for Bean’s empty stomach, and leaving Rose building the walls of an empty moat around our creation, she toddled over to the stove. With arms deliciously baby-fat, Bean reached for one of the dish towels that hung over the oven’s door handle and pulled down. She blinked at the rush of damp heat that flooded out, the smell wafting into her hair and the weave of her dress. Before Rose could stop her, Bean reached inside and put her hands on the heavy glass pan, wanting to pull the richness of that scent to her.

Bean’s scream was unforgettable, Rose says. But what we remember is the way Rose sprang into action—yanking Bean away from the oven and letting the door slam shut with a thick metallic rattle, then lifting her onto a stool and running cold water over her hands and arms, already blistering red and white from the stove’s furious heat. We don’t know how she knew what to do, how to grab a towel and fill it with ice from the plastic bin in the freezer, place Bean’s arms on it. Bean, eyes wide and tears stilled by Rose’s efficiency, but mouth still working thick sobs, watching it all, the way our sister had saved her from herself. And then Rose running for our mother, whose own reaction was slowed by the weight of her belly and the way her mind was so often far from us.

Looking at Bean’s face now, Rose could see her wounds as easily as when she had cared for her burns all those years ago. She stilled herself and walked over to the cabinet beside the sink. She opened the door and flipped efficiently through the half-bottles of medicine until she found some aspirin. Shook two into her palm, refilled the glass on the counter, and handed both to Bean.

“Take these. And drink some water. You’ll feel better if you sleep.”

Now, hours of dreamless rest and one tentative piece of toast later, Bean was sitting on one of the hopelessly outdated chairs in the library. The faded orange wool scratched against her thighs as she shifted. Bean had one leg curled under her, a bent-legged stork. Across the uncomfortably wide table lay a handful of discarded books: a few on résumés, one on the color of her parachute, and a coffee table photographic journey through the distended bellies of the third world. She had eschewed all of them in favor of a fantasy novel. Not her normal fare, but guaranteed not to make reference to anything that might evoke one of the beasts of her current craptastic situation, the way one of those modern-day tales of shoes and ex-boyfriends, or even the drama of small-town life in Ireland, might. Someone was always getting betrayed in those books, and the fact was, being a betrayer at the moment herself, she couldn’t bear to think about it.

“It’s about that time, Bianca,” Mrs. Landrige called from the desk, where she was sitting, her hands folded neatly in front of her. The library was empty. “Are you checking anything out?”

Bean looked up, blinking, and lifted her sunglasses up, squinting through the lights to the falling dusk outside. Another day in paradise, gone.

“Yeah,” she said, slumping forward against the table to pull the scattered books toward her.

“Yes,” Mrs. Landrige corrected her, and Bean parroted the correction without thinking. That was the problem with coming home. You turned smack back into a teenager again.

Her stomach had stopped swirling and now it growled insistently as she replaced the books on the shelf before heading over to the checkout desk. “I’m glad you came in, Bianca,” Mrs. Landrige said, stamping the book efficiently and placing the card in the tray for filing. “I hear you’re looking for a job.”

“You do?” Bean asked. “Who said that?”

“Rose. She was in the other day and she mentioned that you were having a spot of trouble finding something. Not surprising, really. Wrong time of year, even if Barnwell were a booming economy.”

“Rose told you I needed a job?” Bean asked, still stumped. “My sister Rose?”

“What are you acting so surprised for? She is your sister. She’s worried about you.”

“Worried about me,” Bean said. “Right.”

“In any case, it’s not exactly a big secret. Maura at the bookstore mentioned you’d been in to see her, and you’ve been in the 650s all day.” She nodded in the direction of the books Bean had just replaced. Mrs. Landrige knew the Barnwell library without looking. You could ask her anything, and she’d spit out the Dewey decimal number and point a taut hand in the direction of the shelf. Puberty rites? 390, by the study carrels.
Charlotte’s Web
? Juvenile literature, by the windows. Soccer? 796, to the left of the drinking fountains. When we were little, we sometimes tried to stump her, thinking of the most arcane topics we could, but we never won. Mrs. Landrige was the champion of the Dewey decimal system.

“I suppose,” Bean said. “It looks like I’ll be here for a while.”

“I’m taking a leave of absence. Hip replacement surgery.” She looked up at Bean. The neck of her dress—it was always a dress, she was Of That Age—framed her neck, which looked so delicate against the fabric, the taut cords and loose skin standing out against each other. Bean stroked her own skin unconsciously, sure she could already feel the loosening of her jowls, the emergence of her clavicle.

“I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

Mrs. Landrige smiled. “It’s the problem with living so long, Bianca. Everything gets worn out. Makes me wonder if all these medical advances are really worth anything. But it’s apparently relatively common, so I’m sure I’ll be fine, albeit out of commission for a while. So I’m wondering if you would be interested in taking over for me in my absence.”

“As the librarian?”

“Certainly.”

“But I don’t know anything about it. I mean, I don’t have the right degree.”

Mrs. Landrige, had she worn glasses, would have looked over the rims at Bean. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s the Barnwell Public Library, not the Library of Congress. You’ve been coming here since before you could walk, and I trust you implicitly.”

Bean nearly laughed out loud. The last people who had trusted her could have had her arrested. “I don’t know, Mrs. Landrige. I don’t know if I’d be any good.”

“It’s hardly rocket science, dear. Be sensible. You need a job, and I need someone here. You can stay until we both get back on our feet.” She smiled at her little joke.

“Well, okay.”

“Then you’ll come in tomorrow bright and early and we’ll get started on a little training?” She pressed the book into Bean’s hands, and Bean looked dumbly at the cover. She couldn’t remember why on earth she’d chosen a book about a half-naked warrior woman with the thigh muscles of a Tour de France winner. And she couldn’t figure out how she’d suddenly been anointed the successor to a Barnwell institution.

“I’ll get paid, right?” she asked.

“Of course. We’ll talk about all that tomorrow.” Mrs. Landrige looked at Bean for a moment as though she were going to speak, and then closed her mouth. Bean turned to go. “Bianca?”

“Yeeeees.” Bean turned. She knew that scolding tone. It was the same one Rose had used on her that morning.

But Mrs. Landrige’s voice was softer, almost maternal. “Get some sleep.”

Bean flipped her sunglasses down again and headed toward the door. She walked quickly down the front steps outside, feeling the muscles in her inner thighs twinge, and she tried to shake off the memory of last night. How had she found herself in that house again? Wasn’t she supposed to be making a fresh start? Confessing everything to us so she could be free?

But she hadn’t confessed everything, had she? She was no cleaner than she had been when she arrived.
Drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence.
When she had woken that morning, wrapped in the sheet, what had seemed so giddy and right in darkness looked only violent and sad in the light. A bottle of wine empty on the floor beside his crumpled, abandoned clothes. Her mascara, crusted dark under her eyes. The film in her mouth, sour and dry. His sleeping face, drawn and empty without his lust for her.

Bean turned her head, shook it. She passed a family on their way home, the mother and father, each holding a hand of the little girl between them, lifting her high in the air and swinging her for a few steps before setting her down again.

In trying to apologize and repent, she had betrayed someone else she cared about, someone who had been nothing but good to her, who had opened her heart and her home and her family only for Bean to twist into something ugly. Again. She hadn’t changed. She hadn’t changed at all. Suddenly, she was filled with a hatred for herself so intense she had to dig her fingernails into her palm, letting the burn of physical pain take away the emotions, but it was too late. She was already crying.

B
ean tried on identities the way she now tries on clothes. She considered entomology (Rose was better at science), acting (Cordy was a better performer), dancing (our thigh issues have been mentioned), poetry (all our work was judged against standards you can probably guess at, and obviously deemed lacking), being the first female president (Cordy was a better public speaker), modeling (thighs again), fashion design (as a family, we are decidedly lacking in artistic talent, which is also why she could not go into painting), and business (Rose had to hold Bean’s money if we went into town to buy something, because Bean would either spend it on something pointless, or lose it before we rounded the corner onto Main Street).

The hardest cuts were the ones where we beat her at her own game, where she tried something only to discover Rose had done it first (not a problem) and better (problem), or for Cordy to swoop in and do it second (not a problem) and better (problem). In some ways, we think this is why Bean ended up in a lifestyle so unlike the Andreas family value system, because there was simply nothing left.

What do you do if you keep losing the game? You take your marbles and go home. Or in Bean’s case, you take your marbles and go to New York, and you decide to care about things like clothes and designer martinis and how best to pick up and bed an investment banker and still make it home before the city’s night life fully kicks into gear. And this makes you different, but it will not make you special.

Caught in the middle, Bean felt sometimes as though she were jumping up and down, waving her arms and shouting, “Notice me! Notice me!,” but the only times she got the attention she wanted were when she was very, very bad. So in high school she learned to stay out late, and came home coated in the thick, sweet smell of dope, and she snuck out with boys and they teepeed trees until they were caught and brought home by the apologetic town police, and she skipped her classes in college until her professors pulled our father aside as he strolled along the paths, and she worked out until she was sick-stick-thin, and still she could have jumped up and down for a thousand years and waved her arms and not gotten enough of our parents’ attention.