The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [105]
The next morning, Cordy awoke to the sound of our mother vomiting, and though she had lately been doing the same thing herself, this seemed worse, desperate and painful in a way hers was not, uncomfortable as it was. Cordy stumbled out of bed, her hair tangled in the loose bun she slept in, T-shirt speckled with holes, and pajama pants tied loosely at her hips, and felt her way, sleep-blind, into our parents’ room.
How old were you when you first realized your parents were human? That they were not omnipotent, that what they said did not, in fact, go, they had dreams and feelings and scars? Or have you not realized that yet? Do you still call your parents and have a one-sided conversation with them, child to parent, not adult to adult?
Cordy, we think, figured this out at the moment she saw our mother lean back against the bed, our father’s arm around her shoulders, her mouth wet with saliva, her skin gone white and papery in the unforgiving arm of sun reaching through the curtains. Our father put down the silvery bowl we had all used, at some point, when in the grips of some awful intestinal trauma. The hollow clang against the bedside table made Cordy shiver with memory. Our father dabbed our mother’s forehead, then her mouth, with a wet washcloth, and she smiled at him, and he smiled back, and then she closed her eyes.
“Is she okay?” Cordy asked, her voice no more than a whisper. Our father shifted on the bed, turning to see her, and she thought how he always looked surprised to see us, as though he had not known us for our entire lives. Who goes there?
He took off his glasses, wiped them unnecessarily with the handkerchief he kept in his pocket for these purposes—such a gentleman, our father—and replaced them, peering at Cordy as though clearer lenses might resolve the mystery of her presence. To that, we have this to say: Good lucky, Daddy-o. “She’ll be all right,” he said. “I think it’s just the medications.” He looked slightly disappointed at this news, as though the chemical chains present in the pills had let him down on a deep and personal level.
“Can I help?” Cordy asked. She stepped forward cautiously, bare foot lapping over the ridge between the wide-slatted floorboards and the edge of the rug, gone bare at the edges from wear. Beside her, fingers fluttering, birds in flight.
“Come here,” our father said, and patted the bed on the other side of our mother. She did not open her eyes, but she smiled thinly when she felt Cordy sit down.
“Hi, Mommy,” Cordy said, and our father handed her the washcloth, which she dabbed carefully along our mother’s jawline, her mouth. She had always had such beautiful skin, taut and fuzzed softly like fruit, the tiniest freckles along the bridge of her nose (none of us had inherited those and how bitter we were about it), petals blooming in her cheeks. Our father stood and went to the bathroom, Cordy listening to the familiar clank of that bowl against the sink, the way it rang as he rinsed it out. “Do you need anything?”
“No, honey, thank you. I’m just tired.” Her eyes were still closed, flicking slightly under the blue-veined tissue paper of her eyelids. “Will you make your father some breakfast?” She paused, licked her lips. “And then maybe you can come up here and read to me.”
“Sure,” Cordy said. She kissed our mother’s forehead, gone cool and clammy, and stood up gently, careful not to move the bed. The air was cool in their room still, and she adjusted the thick white comforter before she pulled the curtains shut, blocking out the inquisitive rays playing their way, like fingers on a keyboard, across the covers. Cordy had always had this way about her, a calm willingness to accept what came. We had too often stolen toys from her chubby fingers before she had the motor skills or the will to fight back. But we would be dishonest if we said it did not still her to see our mother lying that way on the bed. Savasana. Corpse pose.
In the kitchen, Cordy clanked and fussed,