The Weird Sisters

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 half-heartedly. ‘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 any more.’ 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 colour. 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 towards 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 jewellery, 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.

At 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 towards the table, thin legs in white printed pyjamas 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 flavoured cucumbers with satisfyingly watery flesh; strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, peaches – a dizzying array of colours, 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 honour, 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 any more, 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?

‘You don’t have to bite my head off,’ Rose said. ‘I was just asking.’

‘You never just ask, Rose. You just want to criticize me.’

‘I’m not criticizing. Forgive me for showing a little interest.’

‘Girls,’ our mother said. We ignored her.

‘I quit my job. I didn’t want to work there any more. I was sick of New York. What more do you want? Take thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh.’

‘Don’t get dramatic. If I were going to quit a job I wouldn’t just up and do it without planning. That’s all I’m saying.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t. But we just can’t all be as perfect as you are, Rose.’ Bean walked over to the refrigerator and yanked the door open, staring blindly at the contents inside. The cold air pushed the tears in her eyes away. She closed the door and turned back to face them.

‘You can stay as long as you want. It’s nice to have you girls home,’ our mother said, as though she hadn’t heard our fight, rinsing her hands and shaking them dry. The last of the sunlight drifted through the window, illuminating the lines on her face, and Bean was surprised, as she always was when she came home, by how our parents were ageing. Like the changes in the furniture, Rose hardly noticed it. It was gentle as erosion to her. To Bean, it was a seismic shift. Since we were young, our mother had gathered her hair in a large, loose bun near the crown of her head, secured with invisible bobby pins. But the chemotherapy had stolen her hair, the deep brown we’d always shared with her, and her eyes, an intense blue that had lost the genetic battle with our father’s chocolate brown, looked pallid. The scarf tied around her head outlined her paling skin, her eyes looking huge and lost in her face. There were the beginnings of a wattle under her chin, yet her hands seemed frail and bony, the skin taut over sharp bones.

Bean ran her own fingers nervously under her chin, which, thankfully, was still firmly hugging her jawline. When had this happened? When had our mother gotten so old? Was it just because she was sick? Or was this happening to all of us, without our noticing?

A rush of fevered guilt swept over her and she gripped the edge of the countertop, willing herself not to faint. There was no use wondering about it – we were all getting old. And while time had been passing her by, Bean had been drowning her youth in a sea of clothes and meaningless men.

‘I’m going to change,’ she whispered to herself, as if the words had the power to do the hard work for her. Beside her, our mother and Rose chattered away, ignoring her distress. It didn’t matter. Bean had a long road to go before her vow would mean anything anyway. We all did.

‘Bianca, will you help, please?’ our mother asked. She was hunched over, dragging a basket of wet laundry to the back door. The house had a perfectly functional dryer, but our mother insisted, when the weather allowed, on hanging sheets and towels out to dry. We’d put our collective foot down long ago about having our clothes swinging on the line for the neighbours to see, but we hadn’t won the linens battle, so we put up with slightly stiff sheets and towels.

Bean was lying on the couch, her feet hooked along the back, reading a history of World War II with one hand, staining the pages with the juice from the plum she was eating with the other. She’d been home for three days, and had done nothing but sleep and read and eat, and only the fact that our mother didn’t typically keep corn chips and chocolate in the house had kept her from turning her hibernation into a fully bear-like preparation for winter.

‘Oh, leave it,’ Bean said. She shoved the rest of the plum in her mouth, working the flesh off the pit with her tongue as she got up, wiping her hands on her shorts. ‘I’ll get it,’ she said, mouth full. She was barefoot and bare-legged, her shorts revealing the slight shadow of her last spray tan. There was a dribble of pale juice along the neckline of her tank top.

Our mother pushed open the back door and Bean hoisted the laundry basket up, in one motion stepping out the door and spitting the plum pit towards the garden in a graceful arc.

‘Lovely,’ our mother said. ‘Very classy.’

‘Hey, maybe you’ll grow a plum bush. Or tree? Do plums grow on trees?’

‘Yes, trees. Classy and lacking in horticultural education.’

Bean dropped the basket under the clotheslines, the whites inside jumping and resettling on impact. ‘I can do this, Mom. You should go inside and rest.’

‘All everyone wants me to do is rest,’ our mother said. ‘I feel like I’m on a rest cure in some Victorian novel.’ She bent over and shook out a sheet with practised ease, the damp fabric bursting against the thick air.

‘Sorry,’ Bean said. ‘I didn’t know.’ She knew she had missed so much of what our mother had been through, that her phone calls hadn’t yielded the entire story, wouldn’t have even if Bean had made them more regularly.

‘Get the other end of this, will you?’ our mother asked. ‘It’s not you, Beany, I’m sorry. I do get tired quite a lot, and it’s frustrating not to be able to do all the things I’d like to do.’

‘Rose and I can help.’ Together Bean and our mother spread the sheet across one line and fastened it with a pair of wooden clothespins.

‘You can, but that’s not entirely the point. The point is that I’d like to be doing these things myself, not having you girls do things for me. Getting sick takes some getting used to.’ She straightened the sheet with an impatient snap that matched her irritated tone.

Bean pulled a heavy towel from the stack of laundry, unwinding it from the lascivious position it had gotten into with a pillowcase. ‘How do you really feel?’

Our mother shook her head, and her face softened. ‘Not so bad right now. It goes in waves with the treatments. It’ll be bad for a few days after the next round – it’s worst on the third day for me, and then it’ll get better. But I think I’m going to be tired for a long time, and I’m already fairly tired of being tired.’

‘But the chemo won’t be forever. And then you’ll feel better.’

‘No, but then there will be the surgery. And maybe more chemo. And maybe radiation. And maybe more surgery, if I decide to have the breast reconstructed. It’s going to be a long road.’

Slinging another towel over the clothesline and snapping the pins around it, Bean felt the same clutching feeling she’d had when she looked at our mother in the kitchen. ‘Are you scared?’

‘Of course,’ our mother said. Her voice was sure, but her face looked troubled and distant. Our mother took the last pillowcase from the basket and hung it, her fingers confident and practised. The sheets and towels hung around them, a cool, damp fort in the blooming heat of the day. A slight breeze shifted through, and Bean watched the shadows of the fabric move across our mother’s face. ‘I’m not done yet,’ she said, as though she were a long way away, and then paused, shook it off. ‘But I’ve got wonderful doctors, and I’ve got your father, and you girls, of course. We will make it through.’

‘Whatever I can do to help,’ Bean said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

Our mother lifted the empty basket onto her hip and speared Bean with a sharp look. ‘I appreciate it, Beany, but I don’t believe for a second that you are home just to help me.’

Bean froze. ‘What do you mean?’

‘How many pictures of New York did you cut out of magazines and paste up all over your room? How many times did you watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s – completely missing the point of the story, I might add? How many books about that city did you beg Mrs Landrige to order for the library?’

‘Thousands, on all counts,’ Bean said. She recalled, just barely, the way the city had seemed like the perfect escape, the way it had glittered like a mirage in the distance. But the promise had faded until it seemed like only a memory’s memory, a copy duplicated so many times it had gone pale and blurry. All she could remember now was the harsh reality of the dirty streets and the crowded subways and the ridiculous rent.

‘It’s not like I just met you, sweetie. Whatever made you give up that dream must have been awfully bad.’ Bean made a move to speak, but our mother held up her hand. ‘No, you don’t have to tell me. I’m not sure, honestly, that I want to know. I’m happy you’re here, and you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.’

‘Thanks,’ Bean said, and her throat was thick with tears that our mother was, thankfully, gracious enough to turn away in time to avoid seeing. The door to the house slammed behind our mother, and Bean turned to look at the back fence, where the honeysuckle grew in thick ropes around the pickets. So many of our favourite summer memories were here in this house: chasing the Morse code of fireflies in the yard at night, eating watermelon on the wide painted concrete of the front steps, the metallic taste of water from the hose, and the delicious spread of freedom in the hours arrayed across the sunlight. Even the smell of the laundry drying on the line could take us back. But that afternoon, none of those beautiful memories could reach Bean. Our mother was dying. Bean was a criminal. Rose was a bitch. Despite any promises, life was not going to get better any time soon.

Chapter Three

I’m walking into town,’ Rose announced to Bean, who was sitting in the living room, reading. The day had not yet launched into the still, stifling air that would bring real heat. Bean was leaning against the window, knees into her chest, toes curled under in the strangely feline way she had had ever since she was a little girl. She looked up from the novel she was staring at. She couldn’t remember a word of it, though she had turned fifty pages since breakfast. ‘Do you want to come?’

Rose watched as Bean’s attention moved slowly from the book, or wherever her mind had been, back to the room. Our mother pottered around in the garden outside, a broad straw hat over the scarf covering her tender scalp, anchored with a wide, elastic band. With great, solid yanks, she pulled weeds from the earth and tossed them carelessly over her shoulder, where they landed in a pile on the brick walkway, as though they had been ordered to do precisely so. ‘Do you think one of us should offer to help her?’