The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [107]
Cordy nodded, hopping up on our father’s side of the bed rather enthusiastically, and apologizing at our mother’s grimace. “You haven’t started it yet?” she asked.
“No. Your father was being dreadfully bibliographic at the clinic, so we watched a movie. Something about a dog.” Cordy knew exactly what our mother meant. Occasionally our father would get in a mood, particularly while reading something complex, where he would harrumph repeatedly, and then stop at random intervals to read the quotes aloud, as if to say, “Can you believe this malarkey?” Not that he is likely to use the word “malarkey.”
Cordy nodded, opened the book. Our mother turned her head, her hair spilling across the pillow, and looked at her. “My baby,” she said, smiling up at her, and Cordy touched her hand to her stomach. “My baby,” our sister said.
Because you know our family now, you will not be surprised that when our father broke the ice, he did so with a note. And you will similarly not be surprised this was not a note written, but a photocopied page of his Riverside, lines gone carefully over with highlighter. Polonius to Ophelia. Our father had once written a paper pulling apart the advice given to Laertes (This above all: to thine own self be true—the same lines he had quoted to Rose) and that given to Ophelia (roughly: don’t sleep with Hamlet, you ninny). Now, given the way things turn out for Laertes and Ophelia, we have always figured that despite the gender inequity inherent in these two exchanges, Polonius was spot-on in both instances, and Ophelia really ought to have listened. After all, Hamlet = bat-shit crazy, and apparently it was catching.
But these words were more tender than we have admitted, and in our father’s gift to Cordy, they seemed innocent and kind. “You speak like a green girl, Unsifted in such perilous circumstance . . . Tender yourself more dearly . . . I do know, When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter, Giving more light than heat, extinct in both, Even in their promise, as it is a-making . . .”
Cordy gripped this paper in her hands, sitting in the shadowed alley behind the Beanery. A year ago, this would have been her cigarette break, but now was simply a moment where she leaned against the gritty sharpness of the brick wall to inhale the scent of aging garbage. Her apron was marked with incomplete handprints, as though she had recently been assaulted by a floury, three-fingered monster. She had unfolded, read, refolded it how many times now? The paper was already going soft along the creases from her sweaty palms.
Here’s one of the problems with communicating in the words of a man who is not around to explain himself: it’s damn hard sometimes to tell what he was talking about. Look, the sheer fact that people have banged out book after article after dramatic interpretation of this guy should tell you that despite his eloquence, he wasn’t the clearest of communicators. Not that any of us would ever say this to our father, but we had certainly thought it.
Cordy knew our father thought she was making a mistake, being immature, juvenile, that this was a passing fancy. And this assumption of juvenility was largely her fault. All her life, she had reveled in the favored daughter status, had taken pleasure in being the beloved baby, and here was the other side of that double-edged sword. Who would believe her now, when she said she had decided to be a grown-up?
“Cordy!” Dan called from inside. She put her hand to her face, feeling the burn of old humiliations. Who was she kidding? Our unspoken admonitions burned around her, swirled, twisting through her hair and blurring the edges of her sight. Had she ever succeeded in anything besides drifting, which was no accomplishment in and of itself? Long ago, she had thought bravery equaled wandering, the power was in the journey. Now she knew that, for her, it took no courage to leave; strength came from returning. Strength lay in staying.