The Weird Sisters (31 page)

Her bloom counterpointed our mother’s withering. Our mother had lost a breast; Cordy’s grew. Our mother’s mouth was dry; Cordy drowned in liquid. Our mother’s hair had disappeared, her pale skull hidden underneath an assortment of scarves that made her look curiously glamorous; Cordy’s hair grew thicker. Our mother’s skin, oddly, glowed; Cordy developed pimples that made her moan in grief, asking whither the much-touted complexion of pregnancy, and how it was possible she should have to deal with wrinkles and pimples at the same time.

Cordy’s nausea was fleeting, leaving her hungry and creative. Our mother’s was persistent and the smell of food aggravated it most. One night, Cordy had decided to make bread with orange juice instead of milk, and it had turned out so stiff and crumbly the only thing to do with it was make French toast, which she and Rose were working on in the kitchen in the morning.

“Stop!” our father cried, clattering down the stairs. Rose and Cordy, doing nothing more dangerous than dipping bread in eggs and listening to a news show on the radio, froze.

“Your mother can’t take the smell,” he said. He was still in his pajamas, his hair gone slightly wild from sleep, his glasses askew. His belly poked out against the pajama shirt. Our parents have always been so formal about dressing for bed; they have never gone the route of night-shirt or sweatpants. Our father wears traditional cotton pajamas with executive stripes, our mother, nightgowns that were more than once pressed into service for various and sundry mad scenes in our theatrical productions.

“Oooookay,” Cordy said, a slice of bread still dripping thick yellow egg into the bowl. Rose sprang into action more quickly, flipping on the fan above the stove with one hand and pulling the pan off the burner with the other.

“Open the window,” Rose demanded. Cordy dropped the bread back in the batter and reached for the window. “Wash your hands first!”

“Jeezo Pete,” Cordy said. “Some people sure are bossy.” Our father retreated, a vision in flapping pajama bottoms. We worked in silence for a moment, fanning the invisible scent out the window. Rose took a plate of cooked slices off the counter and dumped it into the trash can. She closed the lid, then reopened it, tied the bag, and took it outside. “So we can’t eat anything with a smell?” Cordy asked.

“Cordy, the woman has cancer. You’re upset because you can’t have French toast?”

“Who said I was upset? I just want to make sure I understand the rules now.” She headed for the refrigerator and rummaged around, pulling out fresh berries and yogurt.

“Don’t be selfish,” Rose said. Cordy paused in the act of mixing the berries into the yogurt, splashes of blue and rose in the white, and stared at our sister. Her mouth gaped open and then closed, sealing the thought inside.

“I’m sorry,” Cordy said finally.

D
an needed his car, so it was Rose who drove Cordy to her doctor’s appointment. “Cordelia Andreas, four o’clock,” Rose barked at the receptionist. The waiting room was filled with women in varying stages of pregnancy, from the long-suffering swollen-anklers to the bright-faced newbies still bothering with makeup. Cordy stood behind Rose. Her pants were too long, and the hems by her heels had gone to threads trailing on the carpet.

“License and insurance?” the receptionist countered, unfazed. We suppose if you are surrounded by hormonal women all day, even Rose is not much of a threat. Rose turned back to Cordy and held out her hand.

Now, Rose would tell you that normal people would know these things were expected, that you might even have the documents in your hand when you approach. Cordy will tell you nothing about her is normal, haw haw haw, so why start here? The other women in the office had proper handbags, sensible black, playful silver. Leather. Cordy had draped her woven bag over one shoulder like a bandolier, and she reached inside, emerging with a book, a tampon that had seen better days, an empty pack of gum, a plastic spoon (in case of a spoon emergency?), the crumpled stub from her last paycheck, and finally, a tiny case functioning as a wallet.

“She doesn’t have insurance,” Rose said. “You brought money, right?” she asked, turning to Cordy. Cordy nodded.

“Okay, she can pay when we schedule her next appointment,” the receptionist said, and bartered Cordy’s driver’s license for a pile of forms. Rose sailed over to a chair in the corner, Cordy trailing behind, feeling very much like the third wheel. When she sat down, Rose had already clicked her pen officiously and begun filling out the form in her tiny, precise script.

“Are you going to have the exam for me, too?” Cordy asked, more out of curiosity than sarcasm.

Rose, chastened, stopped, and then shoved the clipboard and the pen at Cordy. “Do it yourself, then. I was just trying to help.” She reached into her own (grown-up) handbag and pulled out a book. Cordy stared hard at her and then completed the form, jamming the pen so hard against the paper that it scratched against the board underneath. The truth was, she was more than a little worried that she couldn’t do it without Rose. That she couldn’t do any of it without Rose—not the labor or the diaper changing or the cutting off of peanut butter and jelly sandwich crusts. The wanderlust crept up again inside her like a shooting star, a sudden, violent urge to escape disappearing into darkness again. She pushed down the afterglow and focused.

When the nurse called her name, Cordy reached for Rose’s hand. “Come with me,” she said, and her fingers slipped clammy against Rose’s.

To say Rose disapproved of Cordy’s decision to have this baby would be an understatement. Everything about the idea of Cordy having a baby worried her, from the fact that Rose should have been first, to the fact that she was pretty sure Cordy would flee from responsibility at the first opportunity. But then she looked at Cordy, trembling with the unknown, and she was just our baby sister again, and all she needed was someone to take care of her. “Okay,” Rose said, and they rose and walked together, hand in hand, into the office.

SIXTEEN

W
hen Edward emerged from the shower, Bean was curled up on the bed reading. She had long ago given up being offended by men who compulsively showered after sex. It was an excellent time to get a little reading done without anyone trying to talk to her.

Edward plucked the book from her hands, his fingers making wet prints on the pulpy pages, a bead of water skidding down the front cover. Glancing at the back cover, he scoffed and tossed it aside. “So what have you been up to all day?”

“Working.”

Edward flopped onto the mattress, the towel loosening around his waist. The sheet had come loose during their exertions, and he slipped slightly on the silky bare mattress. Bean rescued her book just in time, folding back the corner that had bent when he dropped it. “What do you think about the two of us getting away for a little while? A long weekend?”

“I can’t. I have to work.”

He dropped his face onto his cupped hands for a moment. “Bianca, surely that disaster of a library can survive without you for a couple of days.”

Bean whacked him fairly sharply on the head with her book, rolling over and pulling the loose sheet over her bare skin. “I have loved that disaster of a library since I was old enough to read.”

“Fine, fine,” he said, lifting his hands in front of his face to ward off blows. “I’m sorry.” (He wasn’t.) “Let me begin again. Fair Bianca, I long to journey to the countryside with you for a few days. Can thy temple of learning spare thee?”

“No,” Bean said, and rolled onto her back, opening her book again. Edward slapped it away, and Bean huffed in frustration. “What do you want?”

“I want a romantic weekend away with a gorgeous woman.”

Bean’s eyes became small and mean. “Romantic? What exactly made you think I was interested in romance?”

“Every woman is.”

“Don’t be so stereotypical. There’s nothing romantic about this relationship, Edward. This is a cheap affair.”

He actually had the gall to look hurt, which made Bean feel sorry for him. But only for a moment.

“Is that what you think of me?” His skin was still pink from the shower, and he looked swollen and tired.

Bean sat up and yanked the sheet tighter around herself. “What do you expect, Edward? This is not the great love of the century. You are, if I may remind you, married to a pretty terrific woman with whom you have some pretty terrific children. This is sex.”

The hurt look stayed. Dear Lord, Bean thought. He’d had some image of himself as a dramatic hero, a scandalously talented older lover to her young(ish) ingenue, and she’d gone and shattered the dream—shattered him—by being honest. She reached out to touch his arm, but his face was already turning cruel.

“You ought to be grateful for this. You’re not exactly in your prime anymore, Bianca.” She touched under her chin, unconsciously testing the sag. He saw the weakness and smiled. “It’s not like you have any other offers going, do you?”

Bean flashed back to that night in the bar, the faces turning away from her when someone younger and prettier came in. But he didn’t know. She tilted her head, defiant. “Would you like to test that theory? I imagine only one of us would be sleeping alone.”

Edward bent his arm behind his head and leaned back. Normally, Bean might have curled onto his chest, felt him warm and solid beside her against the coldness inside her. But his face was arch and she felt stiff inside.

“Maybe we should end this,” he said, but she knew he was just trying to get her to come back to him, to apologize. She was suddenly tired, suddenly wanted to be home in her own bed, the sound of our breathing in the rooms around her.

She dropped the open book on her face so she was breathing cheap paper. When she exhaled, the pages hummed like a blade of grass. “You’re being overdramatic.”

And kind of an asshole.

“I don’t see why it matters. If this is just a cheap affair, just sex, and you apparently have willing lovers lining up outside the door, then ending it will mean nothing to you.”

Bean squinted at Edward. With his wet hair pushed back, she could see his hairline receding. His chest was puffed out, and a tiny, self-satisfied smile played at the corners of his mouth.

No, Bean thought. His anger didn’t make her sad. It made her pity him. She didn’t want to be that way—bitter at getting older, living in a movie that played only in her own head, hurting anyone who dared to love her just because she was disappointed in herself. She could be better.

She distracted him the way she knew best—with a flash of bare leg against white sheets, the tumble of hair over her naked shoulders. But she couldn’t help but hate herself a little bit as his mouth moved over her skin and she drifted into another night empty of goodness.

Y
ou know, I wasn’t a virgin when I married your father.”

“Mom!” Rose said. She dropped the book into her lap, surprised. She had begged us to read to her; the light hurt her eyes too much. Everyone had said that radiation would be easier than chemo, but so far it didn’t seem to have been the case. Her skin burned an angry red across her chest, and the medication made her endlessly nauseated. She was constantly exhausted, a bone-deep fatigue she was hard-pressed to explain, but we saw it in the slow movements of her arms, the delayed reaction when sunlight spilled into the room and she tried to turn away, caught in the molasses of the fight inside her body.

Our mother continued, either ignoring or unaware of Rose’s discomfort at this particular bit of news. “I don’t know if your father knew. We never talked about it.” She spread her fingers across the covers, the sensation of softness against her aching skin.

“Do you want me to stop reading?” Rose asked, looking for a conversational escape. Our mother turned her head slowly to look at Rose, her eyes watery with pain, exhaustion, diluting the blue another shade toward white.

“Yes,” she said. Rose reached for a bookmark and placed the book on the edge of our father’s night table, perfectly aligned with the edges. They sat in silence for a moment, Rose’s hands folded neatly in her lap. We looked like our father in so many ways, but Rose and our mother together reflected photographic images of each other, sepia aged. The twist of their hair behind their heads, the tired lines at the corners of their eyes, the gentle slope of their shoulders, the way their mouths compressed in anger.