The Weird Sisters (38 page)

Bean sighed loudly, as though it were Rose who had interrupted her sleep. “Yeah, Mom’s in the hospital.”

“What?” Rose shrieked. Jonathan leaned over and put his hand on her bare thigh, the warmth of his skin shocking. “I’m gone for a few days and she’s in the hospital? What happened?”

Bean explained quietly, patiently. Rose was nearly panting, her teeth gritted hard, scraping against each other as she wrapped her fingers in the sheets. Why was this happening when she was over here? She should be the one taking care of a crisis. She would have known what to do, whom to call for help, how to talk to the doctors. There was no way Bean and Cordy could be managing things half as well as she would have.

“What’s the number of the hospital?” she asked. She snapped her fingers at Jonathan, who rolled over and then back, producing a pad and pen where she jotted down the number. “Okay. Call me if anything changes.” She walked over to Jonathan’s side of the bed to hang up and then began to dial again, but Jonathan put his hand on her wrist.

“She’s okay, right?”

“That’s what Bean says, but I want to hear it from the doctor. Would you let me dial?”

“No,” Jonathan said. He kept his hand on hers and reached out with the other to take the receiver, putting it back in the cradle. He pulled her down so she was sitting on the edge of the bed beside him. “It’s the middle of the night there. Let them sleep. You can talk to the doctor in the morning.”

Rose looked at him, his hair sleep-rumpled, his eyes tired. “But what if . . .”

Jonathan smiled, slipped his hands over her palms and then lifted them to his lips and kissed each one in turn. “You can’t control everything from three thousand miles away, Rose. Let them take care of things.”

“I won’t be able to sleep if I don’t talk to someone there.”

“Then we’ll stay awake together,” he said, and pulled her down beside him, tucking her body under his arm and kissing her forehead softly as the dawn broke around them and the old city stirred.

W
hen Cordy and Bean awoke in the morning, the house was like an empty pea pod, and they rattled around inside, always seeming to be in each other’s way, despite the unaccustomed space.

Bean had to go open the library, so Cordy was left to go to the hospital herself. She dropped Bean off at work and drove alone, the windows open, the radio blaring futilely into the rush of air. Her trip with Max seemed a lifetime ago, and the motion of the wheels over the pavement stirred no wanderlust inside her.

You might think that it was Rose who had the strongest moral compass of all of us, but we believe that this is actually Cordy’s gift. Rose’s beliefs are cold and hard, and suffer no sympathy for humanity. But Cordy both knows right from wrong and understands that they are not inflexible ideals, that people compromise for the sake of war, and love, and pain, and that they are simply doing what they must.

“I’m here to see my mother,” Cordy said at the front desk, and showed her ID and signed her name.

“Third floor west,” the receptionist said, and Cordy clipped the proffered badge to her shirt and stepped into the elevator.

It was precisely because of her sympathetic scruples that Cordy felt so guilty for having left when she did. Oh, she had made a brave show of it to Bean, and while she knew that it was all a coincidence, a terrible, horrible coincidence, that her run and our mother’s fall would come so close together, she could not shake her sadness.

The light of day on her flight of fancy dulled the romance and pulled away the glitter to reveal the irresponsibility at its core. And this more than our father’s letters made her resolute—that she would stay, grow roots, be still. Not because there was anything wrong with the life she had lived, but because it was time to face the reasons she had been living it.

“Good morning,” she said, dropping a kiss on our mother’s hairline. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” she said, though her voice was rough and her eyes tired. “Where’s Bean?”

“Work,” Cordy said.

“The doctor should be by soon. I was hoping she’d be here to talk to him, since Rose isn’t here,” our mother said. She glanced over at our father, but he was reading, stroking his beard thoughtfully, pushing his fingers through the bristles of salt-and-pepper.

“I can do it,” Cordy said. She reached into her bag and produced, after only a moment of rummaging, a tiny bound book and a pen. She held them up and smiled. “See? All ready for class.”

Our father humphed from behind his book.

“Where’d you go, Cordy?” our mother asked, holding out her hand. Cordy walked over and took it.

“I had to go away for a while,” she said. “But I came back. I’m better off here.”

W
aiting, after Jonathan left for work, was torture. Rose puttered around his tiny flat, organizing, picking up her book and then putting it down again after staring, uncomprehending, at the pages. She called the airline to find out how she could change her ticket, and shuddered slightly when the agent quoted her a price for a new one leaving that night.

She looked at the clock over and over again, calculating the time difference, waiting until it was late enough to call. When she did, our father answered.

“Rosalind!” he said, and there was that same surprise in his tone, as though he had forgotten her existence completely.
“What news from Oxford? Hold those justs and triumphs?”

“It’s fine, Dad. Bean called me. How’s Mom? I called the airline and I can come back tonight.”

“Don’t be silly. Your mother is fine. We just met with the doctor and she’ll be going home tomorrow. Gave us a great raft of information, but Cordelia’s got that well in hand.”

“Cordy?” Rose asked, the shock in her tone unchecked.

“
Nay, stare not, masters: it is true, indeed.
Bianca is working, but she’ll be home tonight, and Cordelia will take care of us quite well. How is Jonathan?”

“Fine,” Rose said. This was insane. Was he really saying that Bean—and
Cordy,
of all people?—were going to keep things running smoothly at home? “It’s not a problem for me to come, Dad. I haven’t really even unpacked.”

“Rosalind, calm yourself. We are fine.
Nought shall go ill; The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.
Your mother and I appreciate your concern, but she is not in danger—we have Bianca to thank for that—and we will be happier if we know you are with Jonathan.”

Rose wanted to object again, opened her mouth even, but then just nodded. “Okay,” she said, her determined drive cooling. “Let me talk to Cordy.”

“Hel-
lo
,” Cordy answered the phone. “We’re fine. Stop worrying.”

“How do you know I’m worrying?”

“Because this isn’t the first time I’ve met you,” Cordy said. “I talked to the doctor. I wrote everything down. You can obsess over it when you come back.”

“Are you sure you don’t need me?” Rose asked, and though she tried to sound determined and responsible, her voice was pitched and keening. She cleared her throat.

“We are going to be just fine. I have to hang up—the phone’s attached to the bed and the nurse is trying to get in here. Okay? Have fun! Send us a postcard!” There was a series of clatters and some murmuring as Cordy fumbled to hang up the phone, and then the line went dead.

On her end, Rose slammed down the receiver but kept her hand on it, as though she were expecting—hoping—it would ring again. It stayed frustratingly silent.

So this was it, then. She’d been replaced. Bean and Cordy were going to be the ones to put everything right. She thought of herself sweeping around the living room at home, putting bookmarks in the books to save their spines, dusting the lampshade, pushing everyone out the door to get to church on time. Apparently we could have done it without her all along.

She threw her things into a backpack and left the confines of the small rooms without a plan. It was nearly noon and the streets were swelled with tourists. A tour group passed in front of her, the tour guide holding a closed umbrella high like a lantern. At the back of the crowd, two women in kitten heels struggled along the stone street, the tiny points of their shoes slipping into the worn cracks between the stones. Rose looked down at her sensible, heavy walking shoes and pushed ahead.

So she was useless, then. We only wanted her if we were feeling too lazy to do what we were apparently perfectly capable of.

If only we’d been there to talk to her, to soothe those fears, to tell her that no, we could not have done it without her all those years, it was only now, only after all we had been through, only because we had seen her managing things that we could step in and take up the reins, do our part. That what Jonathan had said was right—people could change.

That maybe the time was ripe for her to change, too.

Or maybe she would figure that out for herself.

Rose strode down street after street, twisting into backways, residential corners hidden behind the colleges, stomping angrily along the sidewalks. People passed in a blur. She ignored the newsstands, the headlines written in thick marker on sheets of paper, always the same mysteriously tidy handwriting, screeching at her.

A tiny alley spit her out onto the High Street, flooded with people. She struggled through the traffic. The sidewalks clogged with a collision of nations who drove, and therefore walked, on different sides of the pavement. Her feet beat a tattoo as she turned things over in her mind. If she’d been home, if Jonathan hadn’t been offered this job, if . . . if . . . if . . .

In front of Carfax Tower, ninety-nine steps to the top, she paused. A school group scampered ahead of her, following a tiny National Trust guide inside. She paid the fee and then stepped into the darkness. It wasn’t until she had started the climb that she could feel her heart flickering inside her chest, and went immediately into the measured breathing that kept the pounding in her head quiet. Far above her, the children emerged onto the rooftop; above the traffic and the chatter of a thousand languages she could hear them calling to each other, teasing as they leaned dizzily over the edge.

What if she couldn’t make it to the top? What if she passed out? She didn’t even have Jonathan’s office number with her, and then they wouldn’t be able to get ahold of him until he got home....

At that moment, she hated herself. A couple of backpackers, scruffy and road-weary, edged by her. She hated her body for its vulnerability, for the way it exposed her fears and her anxiety in the vivid tattoo of her heart. She hated herself for not pushing harder, not fighting against our genetics to become strong and taut, like Bean. She hated herself for standing in this city of beauty, with the world swirling around her, shivers of energy running through her veins, and allowing her legs to stand locked beneath her. Her conversation with our mother came back to her, the gentle wistful nostalgia in our mother’s eyes for what might have been, oh, if only she had chosen differently. Rose could see a million of those moments in her own life, a million turns she could have taken, a million moments when she could have stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake.

And why couldn’t this be a moment, Rose? Why couldn’t this be your moment, like Cordy taking the road home instead of the one that led away, or Bean closing the door on Edward?

Why can’t you let it go?

What if there was no what if?

In the darkness, she climbed, the stone walls cool and damp around her, shutting out the bright heat of the day. Her heart pounded, her feet echoed against the emptiness—the students had spilled out, shrieking and joyous, before she had summoned the courage to enter—and her thighs shook with the effort. She pressed on, breathing deeply, counting the steps in sets of three as she breathed in and out.

And then, joyful, elated, exhausted, she burst out into the open air, the sounds of the street below filtering up to her, the breeze blowing stronger, and she spun around, the door laid open behind her. She climbed up the wide steps to the highest riser and looked out on her domain. Below, cars and buses hummed on the same busy streets, pedestrians strode, meandered, bicyclists spun by. In the distance, the spires of the colleges, the peaked stone roofs, the gentle slope of faraway hills, green as memory. She caught her breath, her throat rubbed raw, and laughed.

Oh, if we had only been there with her, only been able to see the smile on her face, watch her look out over what she had conquered, see the pure pleasure gracing her body, her arms sprinkled with sweat. But had we been with her, it would have spoiled the moment. She would have gone only because we had made her. Or to look out for us. Or she might have stayed behind while we ran off and did something foolish, our tether to the ground. We had not realized, until that moment, how much Rose gave up for us, and it was up to her to reach down to the ground and untie herself in order to float free into the sky.

The afternoon spilled blue and cloudless over the city. Rose came down from the tower, slightly misted with sweat, and darted into a pub, where she ordered a Coronation Chicken sandwich and a half-pint of hard cider and watched the people going by. When she finished, she admired the tiny half-pint glass, its perfect miniature proportions. She couldn’t have explained why she was so charmed by, why she was so drawn to it, and she certainly couldn’t have explained what she did. Lifting the glass to her lips, Rose drained the last drops and then slipped the tiny thing into her bag. As she left the pub, her backpack cradled in her arms like a baby, protecting her booty, her heart pounded madly. But this was not the same wild heartbeat of fear—this was a strange feeling of exaltation, the thrill of a roller coaster, and as she hustled away from the pub, the glass shaking gently in her bag, she couldn’t help but laugh out loud, sending her unexpected happiness out into the wild air.

Crunching down a path of gravel, she saw a collection of people standing on the impossibly green grass, moving slowly, pulling their limbs as if through honey. Rose recognized it as a tai chi class, and it brought back the delicate feelings of peace she had felt when she had first started yoga. The instructor was dressed in white, the loose legs of her pants fluttering in the breeze as she stepped wide with a calculated movement, bringing her arms up and over in a delicate arc, and held for just a moment.