The Weird Sisters (29 page)

Aidan laughed. “Maybe we should consider selling it that way. Community service as physical fitness.”

“Franchises in strip malls with pictures of us holding out our enormous jeans.”

“Now that’s something to aspire to,” Aidan said. A few of the St. Mark’s workers flitted by. Aidan greeted them, a hand on the shoulder, the other in a firm handshake. He laughed, told Amanda he’d see her in church on Sunday. Amanda lingered for a moment, possibly hoping for an audience with Bean rather than with Aidan, but then she slipped off and they were alone again. “I’m glad you came,” Aidan said.

“Me too,” Bean said, and she half meant it. It was nice to find forgetfulness in something other than a bottle of wine or Edward’s bed.

“We can really do something with this young members group if everything is as successful as today. And you did a great job putting it together on short notice. Should we do it again in a couple of weeks?”

“How about next month?” Bean suggested. “I think people like to have their weekends. Not me, of course, as I am now officially a spinster librarian and must stay home with my cat and drink tea.”

“Really? That seems awfully unfair.”

Bean shrugged. “Them’s the rules. It’s in the manual.”

“Well, I guess we should hit the road. I’ve got to finish writing my sermon for tomorrow and it looks like everyone else is ready to go.”

“Ooh, Father Procrastination,” Bean said, nudging him gently as they walked toward her car.

“It’s not that. I just like it to be . . . fresh out of the mental oven.”

“Piping hot homilies.”

“Exactly. And you?”

“Home,” she said, but that was a lie.

Bean herself could not define the gravitational pull that drew her to Edward’s, only that it made her as sick inside as it delighted her.

“Don’t say anything,” Bean said as Edward held the screen door back for her. He was smoking a cigar, the sour smell turning her stomach a little as she brushed past him. “I’ve been doing good all day, and I know I look like hell.”

“So you came by to do a little evil?” he asked, holding his cigar to his mouth and waggling it before he took another puff.

“I came by to take a little shower,” she said.

“And then?” he asked teasingly.

“Meet me upstairs in ten minutes and find out,” she said.

“You are a very bad apple,” he said, gesturing up the wide stairs to the second floor, and giving her a slap on the bottom with his free hand. There was blues playing on the stereo, and the newspaper was scattered around the living room. He’d adjusted so easily to the bachelor life, it was easy to forget that every time she was here, she burned away any good she could possibly do with a measly day of community service. His wife, his children, she wronged them all just with her presence. All the sermons we’d heard growing up, all the Bible storybooks we’d read until they fell apart, it had all been for nothing. It had occurred to Bean that she was ticking her way down the Ten Commandments, violating each one in an orderly fashion until there’d be nothing left of her soul but a tiny, torn shred, fluttering in the empty darkness inside her.

She walked toward the steps and turned back to look at Edward over her shoulder. He grew less handsome every time she saw him, she thought, his teeth still white, his hair still candidate-perfect, but his face distorted by alcohol and disappointment. But when he winked at her, toasting her with the tumbler in his hand, she winked back. And when she stood under the spray, washing away the sweat and the dirt of the day, and he joined her, she ignored her better judgment and let him dizzy away the cold, uncertain world and her new place in it. This was her life, then. Good on the outside, rotten on the inside. She was a bad apple, all right. Rotten to the core.

O
ur father was sitting at the kitchen table, reading his
Riverside Shakespeare.
Rose came in and sat down at one of the straight-backed chairs across from him. “Daddy,” she said, but he held up one finger, not taking his eyes from his book. This was his signal—just a moment, I’m reading. Rose rolled her eyes. It wasn’t like he didn’t know the ending, whichever play he was reading.

When he finished, he placed the book facedown on the table. Rose’s fingers itched to take it and mark his spot. “I need some advice.”

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry,”
he said with a self-satisfied little grin. Oh, Daddy, a
Hamlet
joke. How lovely. You shouldn’t have.

Rose forced an answering smile. “Thanks. But this is about work.”

“Ah. The lure of tenure,” he said. “What did Jonathan say?”

“He wants to stay in England. It’s ridiculous. Because then two years from now we’ll have to look again.”

“There are other universities. People move from college to college all the time.”

“You didn’t,” Rose said accusingly.

“No,” our father admitted. “But it was a different time. Vietnam left us with a glut of academics, and we were fortunate to find a space, especially at a school as prestigious as Barnwell. But you have options I never had. And you work in a field far less crowded than mine.”

“So you’re saying I shouldn’t take it.”

“I’m not saying anything other than pointing out, quite logically, my little mathematician, that there’s nothing forcing you to take it.”

“But what if I can’t get another job here?”

“Then you’ll go somewhere else.”

“I can’t leave you,” Rose said.

Our father beetled his brow. “And why not?”

Rose faltered. “Well, Mom. And Bean and Cordy are here now.”

“And none of these is your responsibility, Rose. No one ever asked you to care for us. I suppose it is your mother’s and my failing that we have allowed you to do so for so long. It’s always been your gift to care for others, but it’s a gift that’s come with a certain amount of sacrifice for you, whether you know it or not.”

Allowed. Rose had never thought of all the responsibility she had taken on as having been permitted by someone. It was something that she just had to do. At dinner in a near-empty Italian restaurant, Bean and Cordy playing hide-and-go-seek between the legs of deserted tables, their shrieks making the waiters jump as they carried full platters to the table where our parents ate with their friends, Rose escorting them to the entryway and keeping them occupied with crayons and a long white strip of butcher paper. At a summer department picnic, Cordy tearing off her clothes to run through a sprinkler until her diaper was heavy with water, Rose, embarrassed by Cordy’s childish nudity, taking her inside to dry her off and put her back in her yellow seersucker dress, tying the bow neatly on her back. At the grocery store when our mother had forgotten to buy anything we could pack for lunch, Rose having learned where the grocery money was kept, in a jar by the sink, carefully picking out white bread and bologna so our sandwiches would look like those of every other child at the table (until we went to Coop, of course, where the kid next to us was more likely to have hummus than Campbell’s in his thermos). In the living room, Rose carefully knocking the ashes out of our father’s pipe as he slept peacefully in the chair. Truly, no one had ever asked her to do these things, but we had relied on her to do them, relied so heavily that it had never occurred to us how unfair to her it might be, how much she had begun to think of herself as the person who did those things.

But if she didn’t do those things—if she no longer took care of us—then who would she be? Who would Bean be if she dropped her beautiful mask? Who would Cordy be if she stepped up to the plate in her own life? Who would Rose be if she weren’t the responsible one anymore?

“You’re going over for a visit, right?”

Rose was surprised that our father had registered this fact. She’d announced her trip, written it on the family calendar in the kitchen, but she’d fully expected to have to remind everyone a dozen more times before she left. When had our father started paying attention to things?

“So you’ll go and you’ll see.”

“But what should I do?” Rose asked, even more lost than when they had begun.

“This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
He reached across the table and patted her hand and then picked up his book again.

Conversation
finis.

Thanks, Polonius.

FIFTEEN

T
he night before our mother began her first week of radiation, Cordy dropped her bombshell at the dinner table. She had made bread, as she was always doing these days, and she had set it in a basket, broken grain against butter-yellow checked cloth, steam rising from the slices, scenting the air with yeast and comfort. Rose had said grace, and we were settling in to eat when she spoke.

“I’m going to have a baby,” our baby sister said.

Our father, buttering a slice of bread all at once, in strict defiance of our mother’s rule to spread only a bite at a time, stopped. His hand, holding the cream-striped knife, settled against the tablecloth. “Oh, Cordelia,” he said, and there were worlds in those words.

Bean looked up, unsurprised. She was still dressed from work, a lavender jacket over a white T-shirt, tucked into jeans she would tell you honestly had cost more than three hundred dollars. Mrs. Landrige would not have approved of the denim, despite the price tag. “Wow,” she said.

“You’re kidding.” Rose, tight-lipped, brow furrowed.

“What?” our mother asked. She was humming to herself, cutting a tomato into small pieces, her knife scraping against the plate.

There you have it. Our family in a nutshell.

“I’m pregnant. I’m having a baby.” Cordy said it again, as though we had not all heard her. Well, our mother had not, but that was nothing new. She was always delayed in her responses, spent most of her time picking up the threads of conversations as they spun across the table and weaving them back together herself.

So much was explained now, the weight gain, her quietness in the morning, the way Rose had noticed her stomach swelling against the waistband of her pants, her desperate urge to feed us all. And yet there were a million questions to be asked.

“Who’s the father?” Rose asked, leading the charge, and Cordy looked shaken, as though she had been unprepared for this question, as though it had never occurred to her that there was a father, that people might be curious as to his whereabouts.

“I don’t know,” she said, and our father flushed red, the streaks of white at his brow standing bright against his skin. “No one who matters.”

“Goddammit, Cordelia,” our father said, and his knife clattered to his plate, a sharp sound that made our mother jump. “You can’t have a child.”

“Too late,” Bean said, and smiled to herself. “I think the horse is out of the barn on that one.”

“Jim,” our mother said, a spill of silk over his anger.

“How are you going to support yourself? Pay bills? Feed the baby? Pay a doctor, for heaven’s sake?”

“I’ll manage,” Cordy said, and it was as much an oath to herself as a promise to our father. “I’ve got my job, and I’ll take another one if I need to.”

“And who will take care of the baby while you’re working all the hours God sends?”

“We will,” our mother said, and now the silk was steel. “We’re not going to leave a child of ours alone if she needs our help.”

The look that passed over our father’s face was painful to see. Had we ever seen our father cry? At his own father’s funeral, yes, he crumpled and wept in the church as the priest called a litany of Pop-Pop’s good works. But this expression was sadder, a thousand betrayals screaming across his face in an instant. He got up and stalked out of the kitchen, leaving his napkin on his chair as an afterthought.

“Nice going,” Bean said.

“Shut up, Bean,” Cordy said, and she looked miserable. “Like you’re not just as big a fuckup as I am.”

“Girls,” our mother said mildly. “Language.”

“You haven’t heard of birth control?” Bean asked. Cordy closed her eyes as the memory flashed across her mind. The painter, the desert, their last night on his tired futon. How long ago had that been? No more than three months. It seemed like forever.

“I’ve heard of it,” Cordy said.

“When are you due?” our mother asked, speared a piece of tomato delicately and chewed.

“December,” Cordy said. “Maybe Christmas.”

“Well, this is certainly going to change your life,” our mother said.

“I know,” Cordy said, and it was impossible to tell what the tears shining in her eyes were for. “I know.”

Later that night, we sat in the living room, pretending to read. After years living in this house with wooden floors, we had learned each other’s steps. Our mother, quick and light. Our father, heavy and purposeful; Rose, heavy and hesitant. Bean, firm and sharp, and Cordy, a flat run every few steps. We listened to the steps passing above us, our mother walking across the bedroom to the vanity, sitting down to put on her moisturizer. Standing again, walking across to the bathroom door, where her nightgown hung. Our father, ponderous and mournful, trodding into the bathroom, water running, plodding back to the dresser where he would empty his pockets onto the top, the coins clattering into the tiny dish where they would lie until one of us claimed them in the name of an ice-cream cone. And weaving through it all, the vibration of voices. Our father, loud and angry. Our mother, softer. Our father, angry again. Our mother, her voice raised to match his. The squeak of the bathroom door.