The Weird Sisters (32 page)

“It was the boyfriend I had before I met your father. Jack Weston. I loved him—not the way I love your father, you know, but I did love him.” We have seen pictures of this boy, this man who could have been our father. A camping trip in Pennsylvania, green mountains behind him, bare chest sunburned, a casual arm thrown around our mother’s shoulders. She is laughing, looking away from the camera, a joke told off-screen, but he stares into the lens, his eyes green and direct, teeth crooked and white against that slightly orange tone of early color photographs.

Rose sat, still waiting for the moment to pass, hoping the meat of the story would not turn out too meaty.

Our mother’s breathing was oddly thick and slow, and she paused between her sentences, summoning up the energy to continue. The light between the curtains grew heavy and yellow, sinking toward the horizon. “I thought we would get married. He was so passionate.” Here Rose tensed, but there was no need. “He was a dreamer. He believed in a better world. That’s why we didn’t get married. Not because I didn’t want what he did, but because he wanted it more. He signed up for the Peace Corps, to spend a couple of years in Africa. And he wanted me to come.”

Silence again, except for the rusty flow of her breathing. Rose nearly said something, should have asked—would later regret not asking—if our mother was okay, but Rose was too distracted by our mother’s sudden unburdening. Our mother’s eyes traced back and forth against the crepe of her lids.

“We don’t have to talk,” Rose said. She picked up the book again, ran her thumb up and down the spine, feeling the sharp folds of the cover around the bundle of pages. “You can tell me later.” Or never. Never’s good.

“You need to hear me,” our mother said, her voice suddenly sharp. When she spoke again, it was quieter, lost in the fog of memory or pain. “I was too scared to go abroad. I couldn’t picture myself there. I was scared I’d get sick from the water. Or that I wouldn’t be strong enough to do any physical work. Or that I’d be . . . homesick. Something.”

“That’s okay,” Rose said. “I’d be scared, too.”

“Oh, honey,” our mother said. She moved her hand across the covers, feeling blind, and found Rose’s fingers, squeezing them tight. “I know. That’s why I’m telling you this.” There was another long pause, and Rose thought she might have fallen asleep. She spent most of the time drifting in and out of semi-sleep, the twilight of anesthesia, as the poisons duked it out inside her.

“You have to go,” she said finally. Rose looked at our mother. Her eyes were still closed, her lips gray and cracked, despite the ice cubes we brought her hour after hour. She ate hardly anything, and drank even less. “You’ll regret it forever.”

This was a previously unseen development. Had we always been so selfish, presuming our parents’ lives began only when we did, and ceased, living in suspended animation, when we were outside of their orbit? Were they spinning through their days just like us, a jumble of memories, emotions, wishes, hopes, regrets?

Rose, at that moment, realized that she didn’t know our mother at all.

“But I’m scared,” she said, and that admission took so much, made her deflate, feel as exhausted as our mother felt, lying in bed on a perfectly beautiful summer evening, waiting to live again.

“Do one thing every day that scares you,” our mother said. “Eleanor Roosevelt.” She still held Rose’s hand.

“You don’t need me here?” Rose asked plaintively.

“Oh, Rosie, of course I love having you here. But what I need is for you to do whatever it takes to make you happy. And you’re not happy now, are you?”

“Not at this particular moment, no.”

“Then go,” our mother said, and weakly stroked Rose’s hand. “Go and see what might be. Before it’s too late.”

Rose felt tears at the corners of her eyes, as she watched our mother drift into sleep, exhausted by the conversation. But when Rose moved to stand and leave the room, our mother’s eyes opened again.

“I’m not sorry I didn’t go,” she said quietly. “But I wish I had. I could have been a different person.”

This was a possibility that had never really occurred to Rose.

I
want you to know I think what you’re doing is cosmically stupid,” Bean said to Cordy, who was doing her the kindness of driving her into the city. In the back of our parents’ car sat boxes of Bean’s city wardrobe, culled and wrapped like harvested sheaves of wheat, ready to be sold to the highest bidder at the consignment store she’d found.

“Thank you!” Cordy said. “I haven’t heard that recently. It’s nice to be reminded that I’m maintaining my title for another year.” She flipped the turn signal, drifted into the next lane.

“I’m not done. I also think it’s brave. And it’s not unprecedented. You were always so good with kids. Not like me.”

“You aren’t bad with kids, Bean. You just never enjoyed them very much.”

“But you did. And if you can get all the practical stuff sorted out, you’ll be a great mother.”

“Thank you,” Cordy said, her voice softer-edged. “I’m glad to hear someone supports me.”

“You know they’ll support you in the end. And by ‘they’ I mean Dad. Mom’s already supportive. She’s just too exhausted to care about anything right now, I think.”

“I hope so.” But Cordy’s voice was glum, tremulous.

It was so hard, the way our father retreated from Cordy, hiding even more than usual in his study, behind a book, grunting in response to her overtures, drifting through the house near us, but never with us. She had gone from most favored nation to useless ally, from Cordelia to Ophelia.

“Are you going to tell them about you?” Cordy asked. Her eyes remained fixed on the road, unreadable to Bean.

“No!” Bean said, scandalized at the thought. “Christ, can you imagine?”

“It’d take the pressure off me. I’ll do it for you,” Cordy said, a weak joke that made us sick to our stomachs. Other sisters did that kind of thing, probably, but despite our petty conflicts and discomforts, we were not that kind of sisters.

“Cordy, seriously. You can’t tell anyone. Ever.”

“You can’t just pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Pretending? You don’t even know. I think about it all the time, Cord. It’s the first thing I think of when I get up in the morning and it makes me so sick I just want to vomit.” It makes me so sick I have to spend the night in another woman’s bed, using her husband’s midlife crisis to make me forget myself.

“I know that feeling,” Cordy said, and she didn’t mean just morning sickness, but Bean wasn’t listening.

“I hate myself. I hate what I let myself turn into, what I let myself do. It’s like the person who did all that didn’t even . . . It’s like someone I don’t even know. Because I wasn’t raised like that. I don’t have some excuse, like some troubled childhood with a hole I’ve got to fill. I just did it because I thought I needed it. I thought I deserved it. It’s sick.”

“You like him, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Father Aidan,” Cordy said. She looked over her shoulder, reflex despite the cardboard blocking her view, moved toward the exit off the highway into the city limits. “You
like
him like him.”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything I was just saying?”

“Everything,” Cordy intoned.

“Look, he’s hot,” Bean said. “For a priest. But do you think a priest would have me?”

“I don’t think priests are supposed to
have
anybody,” Cordy pointed out. She pulled to a stop at the light. Beside us, a man gone ragged from wear held a sign drawn on cardboard. Cordy smiled and shook her head, and he rattled his way down the exit ramp.

“I just like him. As a friend. I think he can help me.”

“Just for the record, fucking is not helping,” Cordy said.

“Shut up,” Bean replied.

“If you want him, you’re going to have to break it off with Dr. Manning,” Cordy said.

Bean froze. Cordy looked over at her and shook her head. “Bean, you can’t think we wouldn’t notice.”

“I didn’t . . . It’s not . . .” Bean began, but there was nothing to say. Caught, again.

“I don’t think you’re a bad person, you know. You’ve done worse things, I’m sure. Hell, I’ve done worse. But that isn’t seriously what you want, is it?”

“No,” Bean whispered, and her throat was thick with tears and guilt. “I mean, when I’m with him I’m happy, but . . .” She trailed off. She wasn’t, of course. Forgetting wasn’t the same as being happy. Being drunk wasn’t the same as forgetting, and as often as she was literally drunk when she was with him, she was just as much intoxicated by the effort of forgetting everything she had to face.

“No, you’re not,” Cordy said cheerfully. “You’re obviously miserable, Bean. We’re at our most miserable when we’re doing it to ourselves. Sad, but true.”

“Like you’re so happy,” Bean said.

“They’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace.”

“Don’t martyr yourself on my account,” Bean snorted, but Cordy’s words had the sting of truth.

“I never claimed to be happy. Fortunately, we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. And how you’re going to break it off with him. Whether you want Aidan or not.”

“I can’t,” Bean said, retreating again.

“You must,” Cordy said. “It doesn’t make you feel the way you want it to make you feel. It doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t make anyone’s life any better. It just keeps you from moving on.”

“Moving on to what?” As if there was anything in Barnwell worth moving on to.

“Whoever you’re going to become,” Cordy said, as though that solved anything. “The new Bean.” And then she said, “New Bean,” again, because it made her giggle.

Meet the new Bean, same as the old Bean.

In New York she and her roommates had had a housewarming party, at which Daisy’s boyfriend had been in attendance. As usual, Bean had drunk too much, and the next morning, easing her way back into sunlight, a cautious vampire, Daisy had confronted her in the kitchen. “Leave Michael alone,” she threatened, the power of her words for once not undercut by the sweet sway of her Georgia accent.

“What?” Bean asked. She was off-kilter, a sailor back on land, and she had to grip the edge of the tiny table to face Daisy. The woman’s face had gone so white with anger that her freckles stood out like stars.

“You were all over him last night. My boyfriend.” Daisy jabbed a finger perilously close to Bean’s chest. Too exhausted and hungover to focus, Bean had stared at the doughy flesh, noting the unmanicured nails, the wide palm that had stretched the seams of the gloves in her debutante portrait.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Bean had stuttered, searching her memory for an apology. There was a dim image, a twist of her arm around Michael’s shoulder, her mouth near his ear. Her hand went to her face involuntarily. Crap.

“That’s your problem, you know? Ya’ll just never learned how to deal with a man when you weren’t fucking him.” The profanity startled Bean, coming in such sweetly laced syllables. Daisy caught the emotion crossing over Bean’s face and nodded, satisfied that her sally had hit the mark. “Yeah, I’ve seen it. You slinking around those bars, coming home stinking of cigarettes and beer and who knows what else. But I’m not going to put up with it. Leave. Us. Alone.” Bean had felt so betrayed, so righteously wronged. But Daisy had known her better than she had ever wanted to know herself.

The new Bean. She wanted to laugh, but she was sure that if she did, she would cry without stopping instead. There was no new Bean. There was only the same rotten apple, hiding herself under layers of makeup, lying and stealing—money, another woman’s husband. It was all the same thing. She’d sworn to change, but she hadn’t. She knelt for communion in church as though she were worthy of it, she went to community service projects as if the darkness inside her wouldn’t seep into the foundations of the homes they built, leaving trails of decay under coats of paint. Her stomach lurched, and she put her forehead against the window, letting the air-conditioning against the glass cool off the heat of her skin.

How much lower was she going to go? How many more lies could she tell?

Who was going to save her?

Cordy was right. She had to end it with Edward. And Aidan . . . She pictured his face in her mind, the way he touched her shoulder when they spoke, his shoulders spreading wide and strong when he worked on a house, his warm greeting when he saw her at church with our family.

It wouldn’t be so bad to love Aidan, she thought. Something about his presence made her feel clean again, made her feel like someday she could be whole, pulled back from the edge, restored from damage. She wanted that feeling all the time.

Rose had been wrong before when she told Jonathan she thought Bean was after Aidan. Or maybe she’d just been prescient. Because even though Bean hadn’t seriously considered him before, she was definitely thinking about it now. And as she thought of him, flipped back through her mind, he grew taller, more handsome, more perfect.

He was the one. He could save her from herself.

SEVENTEEN