The Weird Sisters (40 page)

“Not in a million billion years,” Cordy said, and they grinned at each other, and Bean would have completely forgiven this joke at her expense, for the way it retied the bond between them.

“You know it doesn’t matter to me, right?” Dan said. He reached out, put his hand on hers, warm. Stilling.

“What doesn’t?”

“The baby. I mean, here’s the way I see it. I’d have no problem dating a woman who had a kid, you know? So what’s the difference in dating a woman who’s pregnant?”

Cordy could think of about a million and nine differences, actually. Hormones, sex, breastfeeding, the constant visible reminder of another man’s presence inside her body . . . but on the other hand, no. No, there was no difference at all.

“I had a crush on Bean, you know? Back in school?” He shook his head, a lock of hair fell into his eyes. He pushed it back. “For about five minutes. I think it was because she could drink me under the table. But she—Bean’s just raw, you know? Sheer force of will. Sharp edges, like she’ll cut you if you get too close.” He paused.

“But you’re different, Cordy. I mean, after you came to Barney, I totally saw why Bean had such a complex about you.”

“About me?”

His eyebrows shot up. “Totally. Like everything she could do, you could do better. She hated it. And people love Bean, you know that. But not like they love you. Bean’s like a whirlwind, she bowls you over because there’s just so much of her. But you, you’re like this silent meteor. You come in, and you make a crater, and you don’t even try. I used to watch you walking around campus and you were like a fairy princess. Like your feet never touched the ground.”

The bell on the front door tinkled. Dan jumped up off the stool. His cheekbones stood high and red, his ears burning. Cordy could hardly move.

“Mrs. O!” Dan said, as though the intimacy of the conversation between them had never been. It had, though, Cordy could feel it in the air, wrapped around them like a spiderweb, glossy, but substantial.

“Good morning, Daniel. Hello, Cordelia. Oooh, are these macadamia nuts?” She pointed at the bread.

“Cordy made it. Try some,” Daniel said, looking over his shoulder as he flicked down the tab on one of the urns, pouring coffee into a cardboard cup for her.

“I decidedly should not,” Mrs. O said, but Cordy had already whisked out a tiny plastic container and was putting slices in it for her to take away. “So are you going to be a baker now?” she asked.

“No,” Cordy said. “Well, maybe. Why don’t you tell me how you like those and then we’ll decide?”

Mrs. O’Connell nodded, as though she had known her opinion would be the key, paid, and headed out the door. She was always early, but her arrival meant there would be more customers soon. Even in summer, there was a slow drift in the morning as employees headed in to work, or some of the retired farmers came in to drink coffee and read the paper to each other, lost without the rhythm of their chores.

“I never knew,” Cordy said, turning back to Dan as though they had not been interrupted. She reached toward him, their hands connecting, fingers interlacing, and he pulled her to him, kissed her, the gentle scratch of stubble against her chin, one hand in her hair, the other at her waist, and the swell of her belly between them, soft and yielding against everything about him. And if her back pressed up against one of the urns, if the hot steel burned a tiny line into her back, well. She didn’t notice at all.

J
onathan came home from the lab to find Rose cooking happily over the tiny stove in his rooms, the scent of spices thick in the air. “Did you know they call zucchini something different here? Courgettes.” She lifted her head for his kiss, and smiled at the thrill his mouth still brought to hers. How many times had they kissed now? Hundreds? Thousands? Rose knew that no relationship can sustain the passion of newness, the energy coursing through a million cells at the same time at the touch of a new lover, but it brought her great satisfaction that she still anticipated his touch, did not take it for granted in the fade of comfort.

“Those wacky English people,” he said. He wound a finger around a loose tendril of hair that had curled in the steam rising from a pot on the stove and let it spring back. “Why can’t they learn to speak American?”

Rose lifted a wooden spoon, mock threatening. “How was your day? Any breakthroughs bound to win the Nobel Prize?”

“Sadly, not yet. We’ll have to keep hoping to win the lottery instead. You’re cheerful. How was your day?” He sat on the arm of a faded, heavy armchair and pulled off his shoes, wiggling his toes inside dark socks.

“Glorious,” Rose said. “I climbed Carfax Tower.”

“Quite a view, isn’t it? I told you this city was beautiful.”

“It was completely worth it. I nearly didn’t go—I thought the stairs would kill me, but I made it just fine.”

“You don’t have enough faith in yourself,” Jonathan said. He padded up behind her, slipped his arms around her waist and kissed the back of her neck. “What else did you do?”

“I crashed a tai chi class at Magdalen College. And I stole one of those little pint glasses from a pub. And I don’t feel guilty.”

Jonathan laughed and squeezed her against him. “Don’t bother. People do it all the time. I always knew there was a rebel hiding inside you.”

“I want to stay, Jonathan,” she said. She turned a burner down on the stove and then slipped out of his arms so she could face him. “I can see myself loving it here.”

He went back to the arm of the chair and perched there, his arms crossed over his chest. His face was serious, thoughtful. Like our father, he was prone to quiet consideration, and he let Rose speak.

“I feel . . . different here. Like, not myself. Freer.”

Jonathan nodded. “It might not stay that way forever. The new becomes commonplace.”

Rose wrinkled her eyebrows and thrust out her bottom lip for a moment. “I don’t think it’s like that, really. I mean, maybe it is, somewhat. But I was thinking today, maybe it all happens for a reason. Maybe the reason Cordy and Bean came home was to send me a message.”

“What do you think the message is?”

“That it was okay to leave. It’s like for years I’ve drawn this mental circle with Barnwell at the center of it. I never felt I could go beyond the edges, that someone had to be there—oh, it’s silly.”

“No, finish.”

“Like I was the thing holding the family together, and if I left it would all fall apart. And with Cordy and Bean gone, it was like my parents were mine again, like my sisters didn’t exist and I was an only child, so they needed me. But now that they’ve come back, and they handled this thing with Mom—it’s like they didn’t even need me and . . .”

“You’re free to go,” Jonathan finished for her.

“And maybe I should. Maybe all these things that have been holding me there weren’t the problem. Maybe they were a symptom of staying too long. A signal that I should have broken free years ago.”

She turned back to the stove and lifted a lid of a pot and then, satisfied, removed it from the burner and fished out a vegetable steamer, tiny perfect rounds of zucchini going translucent in the heat. When she turned back, Jonathan was sitting in the chair, his feet up on the coffee table.

“I suppose the only nagging question is what you would do while you’re here. I don’t know that you’re cut out to do nothing.”

Rose joined him, sitting across from him in an equally battered armchair. “No, I don’t think I am either. But I’ve never let myself do nothing, either. When I used to look at my mother and wonder how she filled her days, maybe I was being too judgmental. Because if she . . .” Rose caught herself before she said the words that, however unlikely, we had not dared speak aloud for fear of tempting fate. “Because if she doesn’t make it, I don’t think she’ll be wishing she’d spent more days at work. I think she’ll be wishing she’d spent more days in the garden, or reading, or taking walks with our father.”

Jonathan nodded. “Are you still worried about the wedding?”

“Not worried, no. Neither of us really wants anything big anyway, do we?” She tilted her head at him.

“I can’t think of anything that would give me less pleasure,” Jonathan said, smiling. Funny, she thought, that this man who delivered such excellent papers to audiences at conferences, who spoke with such ease in front of his classroom, would be so unwilling to be the center of attention.

“And I wouldn’t have to wear one of those awful dresses,” she laughed, holding the back of her hand to her forehead, mock drama. “We don’t have to do a big thing at Barnwell. At the end of the day, we’ll be married anyway, and that’s all that matters, right?”

“See? Blessings abound,” he said. “Now come over here, little hen, and give us a kiss.”

Rose climbed out of her chair and delicately sat in Jonathan’s lap, but then he threw his arms around her and pulled her close, and her tension dissolved into laughter. Were we wondering what it was that she so loved about him and he about her? Perhaps this: he had the singular ability to knock down her carefully bricked defenses, which was a compliment to them both, and the secret of their love.

That night, as they lay in bed side by side, she contemplated the shadow of the moon as it washed slowly across the duvet. It was, as the poets say, the same moon that shone over us back home.

Well, here she was. And she could continue to exist in the darkness of her fear, or she could tend and coax the seed of hope inside her. And Rose, with all the determined ferocity that had made us so proud as she had axed and hacked her way through the battles of academia, chose hope. She had changed the wide Midwestern sky for the blue and gray of England, but the place did not matter. It mattered only that she took the step from safety and trusted she would soar.

T
he letter seemed heavy in Bean’s hands. She turned it over, checked the seal on the envelope, turned it back. She had enclosed a check and a note—how she had agonized over the wording of that brief missive.

Too little payment for so great a debt,
both literally and figuratively. A check had arrived from the consignment shop, more than she had expected, but less than she needed. And a cheery note from the owner, letting her know that if she had anything else to sell, she should feel free to bring it by! As if. She had taken nearly everything she owned, the pound of flesh for her sins. Looking in the closet now was dispiriting, the way the hangers moved easily out of the way as she flipped through the now-meager possibilities. She had quit smoking, not because she had any fear for her own mortality, but because it saved her money she could send in the next check. But she would not complain.

Bean checked herself in the mirror over the hall table, flipped her hair over her shoulders. We did not know what secret she used to keep it so sweetly straight in the curling humidity. Animal sacrifices, perhaps. She gauged her appearance critically, slipped her bag over her shoulder. She had nearly emptied her bank account with this check. Not that she needed the money; it had been ages since she had spent anything. The secret to a wealthy life: living with your parents at the age of thirty. The thought left a bitter, metallic taste in her mouth.

“Well then, to work?”
our father asked, emerging from the kitchen. He was in uniform—short-sleeved shirt, tie, shapeless gray slacks. This is what he had worn for time immemorial, whether he was going to the office or not, and this is what he would wear until the end of days.

“I’m going by the post office first,” Bean said.

“I’ll walk with you,” our father said. “Just a moment.”

Bean sighed, the letter weighing even heavier in her purse. Just a letter to some friends in the city. Just a note to say hello, don’t sue me, here’s some money, I’ll get the rest to you as soon as I can. You know, the usual.

She heard his footsteps on the stairs and they headed out the door together, the squeak of the spring on the screen door announcing their departure. Outside, sprinklers hissed in the grass of a neighbor’s yard. She could hear some kids playing baseball, the crack of a bat and the shouts as they ran. Woven through it all, the hum of the insects and the peaceful morning greetings of the birds. The sounds of home.

“I hear you’re considering taking over for Mrs. Landrige,” our father said, without preamble. He slipped his hands in his pockets, his steps slow and measured beside hers. Had he always moved so slowly, or was this the evolution of age?
The sixth age shifts into the lean and slippered pantaloon, with spectacles on nose and pouch on side . . .

“Considering it,” Bean said. “I’d have to go back to school.”

He nodded. “Not so difficult.” Though the streets were silent, Bean looked left, right, checking for traffic before they crossed the street. She could feel the burgeoning heat of the pavement through the thin soles of her shoes.

“Do you think I should?”

Surprised, our father looked over at her, pulling his gaze away from the ground. “You were always so determined to get out of here,” he said. “I’ll admit to wondering why you came back.” He raised a hand, greeting Mrs. Wallace, who was out front gardening. She nodded back, dug her trowel into the ground, loosened a clump of wide-mouthed petunias.

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” she said. “I just . . . It wasn’t right for me anymore.”

“The lottery of my destiny bars me the right of voluntary choosing,”
he said. “Portia.”

Sometimes we had the overwhelming urge to grab our father by the shoulders and shake him until the meaning of his obtuse quotations fell from his mouth like loosened teeth.

“Mmm,” she said instead.

“Having you home would be nice,” he said. “Not that you need to stay with us permanently, though it has been tremendously helpful having you girls here right now. And to become a librarian! Not what we might have expected, but that may be better. A good, steady occupation.
Knowing I loved my books, he furnish’d me from mine own library with volumes . . .
”