The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [102]
“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