The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [108]
She opened the screen door leading into the kitchen—once, long ago, the Beanery had been a restaurant, and Cordy had begun to eye the industrial ovens cannily, wondering—and listened to the squeak and the slam behind her. Ahead, the tiled floor spread narrow into a hallway, and then wider behind the counter. She walked toward it like a nervous bride.
“Hey,” Dan said, and he smiled at her. Cordy, like a pup kicked too many times, relaxed. “I’ve got a couple of sandwiches need making.” He nodded at a mother and daughter sitting at tables across the way. A high school student on a tour, it looked like. They sat stiffly, looking around, the mother judging, the daughter trying it on. This could be where I come on a date. This could be where my friends and I hang out after classes. “Chicken salad on croissant, turkey on focaccia.” He handed her the order slip and a wink, and Cordy set to work.
When she had finished the sandwiches, split them neatly on a plate, pickle slice, potato chips, watermelon cubes arrayed in an edible bouquet, she walked them over. “It’s so small,” the mother said, her fingers fiddling absently with her straw. “I’m not sure you could get used to being so far away from . . . everything.”
Cordy’s ears snagged on this statement, and a million thoughts rushed to her mind, but she simply smiled, set the plates down. Her approval wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The girl was like Bean, she could see, full of her own dreams and demands and ideas, and who wouldn’t fall in love with a place like Barney anyway? The evocative wide-stoned walls of Main, the bowed original staircases of Rubin, the skylights in the Student Union, deceptively alluring during summer campus tours, threatening in the depths of winter, the spread of the Quad, soft green in the shade of the maple trees. The campus is gorgeous, and lesser girls than she have fallen for its siren song.
“You live here, right?” the mother asked, and it took Cordy a moment to realize the woman had addressed her.
“Yes. Born and raised.”
The mother raised her eyebrows and nodded slightly at her daughter, as if to say, “You see what befalls people from a place like this?”
“Isn’t it difficult, being so isolated?” the mother asked.
Cordy hesitated. She couldn’t have cared less whether the girl came to Barney or not, but it seemed so unfair not to let her try it on for a little while, to stand in front of the mirror and turn this way and that, modeling the possibility of her future.
She turned toward the daughter, uncomfortable in her interview clothes, a green suit that hemmed in whatever personality she had. “It’s true, Barney is a bit isolated. But you’d be amazed how the campus comes alive during the school year. There are a million things happening—the admissions office usually has a calendar they can give you to show you what a week might look like—and if you want to take advantage of it, you can.” She found herself consciously guarding her accent, watching the betraying Midwestern vowels. “I think you’d find most people who go to college in a city are so wrapped up in the campus anyway they don’t go out much. And as a college student, you’d be too poor anyway.”
The daughter gave her a grateful smile. The mother looked cold.
“And besides, we’re only an hour from the city. Enjoy your lunch.” She smiled and headed back behind the counter. Dan was in his office, flipping through papers and sighing, so she set herself to work. Pushing her hip against the counter as she cleaned, she felt the crinkle of paper in her pocket and pulled out our father’s note again. She knew he was not warning her away from sex—it was completely obvious it was too late for that—so from what?
The towel in her hand drew circles on the counter, cold white imitation marble traced with gray veins. She remembered herself, maybe eight? When Bean and Rose had begun to draw away from her again, when she had become a less amusing plaything as she developed a will of her own. Rose had begun her quest for her Shakespearean prince, and Bean had become involved with anything more interesting