Authors: Eleanor Brown
Bean, halfway through another glass of water, raised her eyebrows over the rim. “I didn’t tell them I was coming.” And then, more to change the subject than to give any additional information, she said, “Oh, and I heard about you. Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” Rose said, her finger flicking to her ring. Not that we didn’t tell you all this months ago, Beany. Don’t rush on our account. It’s not like Mom might be dying or anything.
“Ah, the ring,” Bean said, seeing the movement of Rose’s hand. “
I gave my love a ring and made him swear never to part with it.
Let’s see.”
Rose took an awkward step forward, holding her hand out stiffly. Bean grasped our older sister’s thick fingers with her own manicured talons and peered at the ring. A gleaming sapphire set in antique worked white gold. Rose had treasured the romanticism and uniqueness of the ring when she and Jonathan had selected it. In front of Bean, however, she was sure it looked cheap.
“Pretty,” Bean pronounced. “Different. It’s better that way. Diamonds are so boring.” As she released Rose’s hand, Rose caught a flash of Bean’s pinky finger, the fake nail snapped off in a jagged edge. Rose’s hand hovered uncertainly in the air for a moment before she pulled it back to rest on her thigh.
“Thanks,” Rose said. “I like it.”
“How’s Mom doing?”
“Fine. You know, as fine as you’d expect. She’s nearly finished with the chemo course. This is one of her off weeks—we’ll take her back next week for her next treatments. She’s tired, and she doesn’t eat much, but it’s not as bad as it could have been.” There was more she could have said—that our mother had been so exhausted after her first treatment that she had slept for nearly three days; that a little while later the chemotherapy had torn out her hair, and Rose had found her crying on the bathroom floor, nearly bald, clumps of wet hair wrapped around her limbs like seaweed; that even after the worst had passed, it seemed the fight would never end, but Bean would understand the way things were soon enough. “We’re making it through.”
“Huh,” Bean said. She could have asked follow-up questions about our mother’s health, but she was more interested in the way Rose made it sound as if she were a vital part of the whole enterprise, when our parents had survived so long as a nation of two.
Rose squared her shoulders slightly. “We’re okay here. You didn’t have to come home.”
Bean sneered a little bit, reaching up and tucking her hair back into shape halfheartedly. “Yeah, I should have guessed you wouldn’t be glad to see me.”
“That’s not it,” Rose said, and the defensiveness in her voice surprised her. “I was just thinking the other day that I wished we were all here.”
“Well, now you’ve got your wish,” Bean said, spreading her hands out, palms up, in a what-more-do-you-want-from-me gesture. “Cordy’s not here, is she?”
“No,” Rose said. “I’m not even sure where she is. Dad sent a letter to the last address Mom had in her book, but you know how Cordy is.”
“Good. I can’t deal with her right now anyway.”
“So how long are you staying?” Rose ventured delicately.
Bean shrugged. “For a while. Dunno. I quit my job.”
Well, that was news. Bean had worked in the human resources department—well, Bean
was
the human resources department of a tiny law office in Manhattan, though if you met her over drinks, she just would have told you she was in law, and let you assume the best. Or the worst.
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
“Oh,” Rose said. “Why?”
“Why does anyone quit a job? I didn’t want to work there anymore.” Bean pushed herself off the counter and strode over to the door. “I’m going upstairs to change. Where are Mom and Dad?”
“Dad’s at school, and Mom went out somewhere. They’ll be back later.”
“Great. Then I’m going to take a shower,” Bean said, and clopped off down the hall. The excitement over, Rose followed Bean up the bare wooden stairs and went back to her book. If we had been sisters of a different sort, Bean’s reticence might have been cause for curiosity. As it was, it was simply another secret we held from each other, one of a thousand we were sure we would never share.
Our parents, more out of atrophy than intent, had not changed our bedrooms in any way since we had officially moved out. This often led to curious paths of discovery, as it preserved objects and memorabilia we did not want to have with us in our new lives, but were still valuable enough that we couldn’t bear to throw them away.
Bean threw her bags on her bed—the heavy, tulle-crowned four-poster that she had swapped Cordy for years ago. Cordy now had the heavy, wrought-iron white bedstead Bean had deemed not sophisticated enough. To her, at fifteen, the heavy wood posts at the corners of this bed had seemed the height of elegance. Now it looked sad, the tulle grown dark with dust, the wood dull and unpolished, the bedspread faded where the sun had fallen, leaching out the color. She kicked off her shoes and walked over to the window, restlessly drumming her fingers against her stomach. The taut, trembling sensation in her belly would not release, even now, even five hundred miles from the city.
Pulling the curtain across the dormer, Bean walked back toward her bed, peeling off her clothes. The torn, sticky nylons went into the wastebasket, her suit she laid out on the bed. There was a grease stain on the skirt from a hamburger she had eaten on the road. She’d have to see if Barney had managed to get itself a dry cleaner while she was gone. When she took off her jewelry, a silver bangle watch and tiny diamond earrings, the tight feeling in her stomach welled up again.
She pulled off her underwear and wrapped a towel around her chest before she walked across the hallway to the bathroom the three of us had always shared. The heavy claw-foot tub still stood there, but with a new shower curtain wrapped around it in a circle. The shampoo she had left here the last time she visited—Thanksgiving? Last summer? Longer?—sat on the windowsill, thank heavens, because she hadn’t had time (or, let’s face it, money) to stop at the salon before she left. She turned the water on, icy cold to take away the sticky heat of the journey, and stepped under its punishing blast, baptismal, praying for the stone inside her to slip down the drain, to disappear.
Bean hadn’t thought of what she would do now. She’d been so focused on getting out of the city, sure that putting miles between that life and this one would grant her some kind of pardon. Annoyingly, this had proved untrue. In the car were boxes and boxes of clothes—for heaven’s sake, what had she needed all those
clothes
for?—each one a reminder of what she had done. Thief, she thought as she scrubbed her face.
Thou art a robber, a lawbreaker, a villain.
What was left of her makeup disappeared into the soap and water, but she kept pushing the washcloth over her face, her skin going raw and red.
No plan. No past. No future. She was at home, and of course Rose had to be here, too. She who might have been voted Most Likely to Judge You Harshly. Even Cordy, flaky as she was, might have been better. But Rose. Jeez.
Bean leaned down and shut off the water. She was going to have to solve this, somehow. Find a job. One that wouldn’t require a reference, of course.
If she could do that, could pay back the firm and get rid of everything she’d bought with that money, maybe she could make a fresh start. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back to New York yet, but another city—San Francisco? Better weather there anyway. There she could forget. There it would all be different.
A
t seven o’clock, the sun was finally considering its rest, bringing relief from the heavy heat of the day. In the kitchen, Bean sat on one of the counters, her back pressed up against the yellow wall, her arm hemmed in by the cabinets on one side. She hulled strawberries, as many going into her mouth as the bowl, it seemed, her fingers sticky with juice. The heavy ceramic bowl had come from our Nana, and it made Bean miss her.
Our mother stood in front of the sink, her fingers deftly flicking over a cucumber, peeling it with a knife, a skill none of us has ever mastered without risking serious bodily injury. She is a tremendous cook, but a notoriously unreliable one. If our mother is responsible, dinner is rarely served in our house before nine, and we remember, at times when we were young, our parents awakening us to eat, nodding heads drooping toward the table, thin legs in white printed pajamas swinging sleepily like pendulums under the chairs. Our mother is capricious, likely to be struck by a whim to prepare a four-course meal on an ordinary Wednesday, and then struck by equally strong whims to wander off in the middle of that preparation and take a soothing bath, or to pick up the book she had been reading earlier and involve herself in that world for a while until the pasta water boils away and the smoke alarm (hopefully) brings her back to reality.
Summer, however, is different, because in the midst of all these farms, there are roadside stands, fertile with the bounty of the season in Ohio: crisp, sweet, Silver Queen corn; perfectly ripe, yielding tomatoes the size of baseballs; delicately flavored cucumbers with satisfyingly watery flesh; strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, peaches—a dizzying array of colors, lush with juice. Often, in summer, this is all we eat, a table laden with fruits and vegetables, and Rose saw as she entered the kitchen that this was the case that night. Fortunate, as this also meant dinner would be ready before the crickets came out in earnest.
Bean popped a berry in her mouth and reached out under her legs for another, the bright greens nestled on top. She twisted the huller expertly and the head popped off. Seven in one blow. “What happened to the bookstore?” she asked. She had noticed, on the drive in, the empty windows of the storefront, the sign that read, in angry letters, FINAL CLEARANCE!
Walking up beside our mother, Rose picked up one of the naked, pale cucumbers and began slicing it thinly, setting it in rounds on a platter beside her. We always ate the cucumbers and tomatoes the same way, pushed together in stacked ovals and drizzled with sharp balsamic vinegar and fresh-ground pepper. Rose’s mouth watered at the thought.
“Oh, it’s a disaster,” our mother said. “They’ve gotten too big for their britches, really. Remember how they used to handle the textbooks for Barney?” We did. Barnwell, the name of both the town and the college where our father taught and therefore all three of us had matriculated, with varying degrees of success, had not had a bookstore of its own for years. The bookstore in town, nestled between a diner famous for its White Castle-esque burgers and the post office, took that honor, and during textbook sale and buyback season it was crammed with college students, looking hungry and desperate among the hand-knitted throws and souvenir Rice Krispie treats in the shape of the state (which, in Ohio, is not so far from the shape of a normal Rice Krispie treat).
“Uh-huh,” Bean said, flicking a strawberry into the bowl with a gentle
ping.
“Well, they said they didn’t want to sell the textbooks anymore, accused the students of shoplifting, basically.”
“They were shoplifting,” Bean interrupted. “Their textbooks were a total rip-off.” She remembered a friend of hers, a goateed, handsome boy with enthusiastically curly black hair, telling her the only reason he owned his winter coat was because the pockets were big enough to fit a chemistry book in.
“Textbooks are expensive everywhere,” Rose said.
“I’m sure not all the students were shoplifting,” our mother continued. “In any case, I don’t know what they were thinking. All those parents coming into town, wanting souvenirs, and now they are going to the booster store on campus instead for their sweatshirts and what-have-you.”
“So they closed?”
“Not at first. First they opened one of those coffee bars, which was a good idea, but Maura hadn’t the slightest idea how to run one. Barnwell Beanery is still open, you know, and the competition was too much.”
“Oh, you know who runs the Beanery now?” Rose asked. “Dan Miller. Didn’t he graduate with you?”
“Yeah,” Bean said, and she blinked a few times in surprise before she shifted and hopped off the counter, carrying the small bowl of discarded strawberry greens over to the trash can. She pressed her foot on the pedal and the lid popped obediently open. “Man, he’s still living here? That’s crazy.”
“Bean? Compost?” our mother said, raising her eyebrows and gesturing with the knife toward the container to the left of the trash can. Too late. Bean shook the last of the strawberry tops into the trash can. She shrugged, as though it had been out of her hands, and walked the bowl over to the sink.
“It’s not so bad living here,” Rose said, stung slightly.
“Oh, stop. I’m not talking about you. We grew up here, it’s different. It’s not like you went to college here and then just decided to stay because it was so bucolic.”
“It is bucolic,” our mother said.
“Not everyone wants to live in a city like New York,” Rose said.
“And that’s a good thing. It’s crowded enough there already,” Bean said, and dropped the bowl in the sink, where it clattered enthusiastically.
“What is the city but the people?”
Rose quoted.
“So you’re going to go back?” our mother asked.
Bean shrugged. “I’m not staying here, that’s for sure.” The knife slipped in Rose’s hand, making the tiniest nick in the fleshy pad of her thumb. She lifted it to her mouth, sucking sour salt, sweet tomato.
“You really quit your job?” Rose asked, pulling her thumb from her mouth and examining the cut.
Bean looked at her. “Yes. Why is that so hard to believe?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just thought you might have mentioned it to us or something. That you were planning to.”
“What, in our chatty once-a-week phone calls?” Bean sneered. “I didn’t realize I had to keep you apprised of my five-year plan.” She could feel the meanness welling up inside her, but was helpless to stop it. It was anger that should have been directed at herself, but for crying out loud, couldn’t Rose ever leave anything alone?